Sex 2.0

An advantage of being abroad is having access to a wide range of TV stations from Latin America. I’ve been watching news reports from the excellent TV Chile about the rise of sexting amongst urban teenagers in emerging economies. While it is difficult to filter out the moral panic prevalent in such stories, it seems [...]

Remember a world without collective copyright management?

Whenever I travel back to my native Costa Rica I feel like I am going back in time. I know this may sound condescending, but having experienced the efficiency of developed societies for more than a decade, some of the many aspects of life in a developing country feel like looking at a world long [...]

Facebook privacy shocker

Who could have guessed? Social networking sites have proved to be a serious privacy threat. The new MI6 chief (who looks nothing like Dame Judi Dench), has been involved in a bit of a scandal because his wife had posted all sorts of personal information, pictures and other family details on her Facebook profile, which [...]

Printed press, RIP

Much digital ink has already been spent on commenting on Judge Richard Posner’s bizarrely reactionary proposal that the only solution to save newspapers is to ban linking. I usually try to avoid stories already heavily covered because most of the times I end up repeating things that some other people have already said in a [...]

Open Database Licence released

The Open Knowledge Foundation has announced the release of the version 1.0 of the Open Database Licence (ODbL). As the name implies, the ODbL is an open licence which protects data contained in databases, and allows the modification, redistribution, use and reuse of such data. Databases are protected either by copyright, or in Europe by [...]

If you build it, they won’t come

Last month I presented a paper about Web 2.0 broken expectations at a conference in Sweden. It seems relevant as there is once more talk of the death of blogging. Last year’s Technorati report first raised the alarm when it was noted that out of 133 million indexed blogs, only 7.4 million had been updated [...]

Downloads and sales: where is the evidence?

Feargal Sharkey has taken on one of those jobs that attract almost universal derision. The former vocalist for The Undertones has become the spokesperson for the UK music industry, a job akin to serving as the front for a kitten pie manufacturer in the eyes of many. Respect must go to him for taking on [...]

State of Play VI

I’ve been in New York for the sixth edition of State of Play. For those not familiar with the event, State of Play is probably the biggest academic conference showcasing research into virtual worlds. This is my second visit to SoP, and enjoyed it as much as I did the first one.

I will not [...]

Deadlines

This video conveys perfectly how I feel:

Just another example of that creativity that is not supposed to exist on social media sites.

Digital Britain

We spent lots of tax-payer's money drafting a report, and all we got was a lousy key.

The final Digital Britain report was released yesterday. It is long, filled with something for everyone, from digital radio to a new broadband strategy. Some interesting commentary already from panGloss, Charles Arthur, Chris Marsden, and TorrentFreak. The [...]