http://www.dbspin.com Thought Nectar Sat, 05 Apr 2008 21:23:17 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Simon McGarr, editor of online periodical Tuppenceworth, and in his role as council to Digital Rights Ireland, stalwart defender of all those juicy ephemeral rights and freedoms we currently enjoy online; has had an idea. You see Simon loves newspapers. He writes about them, speaks about them, and researches them, ... http://www.dbspin.com/media/we-the-newspaper/ For subscribers of this blog (and it does get one or two hits), who've been wondering why I haven't been updating with greater frequently, I'd like offer an explanation. There's a profound fragmentation going on right now in online identity. The change from isolated web sites (with technical, and ... http://www.dbspin.com/geekary/where-am-i/ As Twitter leaves the realms of 'joiner geek' social network, and (partly due to it's integration with platforms like Facebook), becomes a more popular and diverse service, its utility is being more rigorously critiqued. What is Twitter for? Its a cogent question. In a world of blogs, microblogs, and social ... http://www.dbspin.com/geekary/twitter-whats-the-use/ Social Network 'Facebook', has made an enormous splash this week with the release of the 'Facebook Platform', an opening up of the mature Facebook API to internal widgets with access to Facebook's 'core functions'. Whilst this move has been criticised by some influential members of the syndication community, it places ... http://www.dbspin.com/geekary/facebook-as-social-aggregator/ Filmed last weekend in Dún Laoghaire Harbour, with some kooky individuals. http://www.dbspin.com/web-video/pirates/ I spent about eight hours yesterday working out how to do this. A working method was surprisingly hard to come by, so hopefully this will be of use to someone. Luckily it's really easy once you know how. This technique should work not just for YouTube, but any other flash ... http://www.dbspin.com/digicasts/how-to-edit-youtube-videos/ This weeks award winning episode of radio show and podcast 'This American Life', addresses the issue of Habeas Corpus. Broadly speaking, Habeas Corpus is the right of a prisoner to apply to be brought before a court to have the legality of their detention adjudicated. 'This American Life' examines how ... http://www.dbspin.com/digicasts/habeas-schmabeas/ Paul Walch of Segala, asks 'Do we want a code for blogs?' This question has arisen due to the Kathy Sierra controversy, the case of the online harassment of an O'Reily writer by an anonymous group of commenters, at a blog created specifically for uncensored criticism. Very quickly the 'blogosphere' divided ... http://www.dbspin.com/blogging/no-code/ An article by Mike Elgan in Computer World Magazine, laying the boot into e-books, has sparked a surprisingly intelligent discussion on Digg. According to Elgan, e-books are bound to fail because.. They aren't cheaper - both the hardware and content are more expensive Content is available on other platforms ... http://www.dbspin.com/geekary/e-books/ Just back from Barcamp Ireland 3. What a day, so packed I couldn't possibly get to half the talks (which ran concurrently), but I managed three lectures and the panel discussion. The event was held in the beautiful Digital Hub, off Thomas St in Dublin. The building is fantastic, with ... http://www.dbspin.com/digicasts/barcamp-dublin/