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Review: The Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser

opentechnologist.com — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 15:31:24 +0000

The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You by Eli Pariser is a must read for anyone that makes use of personalized Internet services such as Facebook, Google and Amazon. While personalization is becoming a preference for many, Eli investigates the danger of living inside these bubbles and how they affect our relationships, identities, creativity and democracy.

The book focuses on the present as well as where we will be if we don’t become aware of what us happening with our data. Some compelling examples reveal how Google uses 57 signals to guess who you are and what you most likely to click on when using the search engine. Even if you are not logged on the search results will still be customizable. The effect of living in bubbles can be a major problem. While you may be fed information that is relevant to you, these results tend to leave out the outliers and not diversify your content intake.

Another company highlighted was Acxiom who new more about 11 of the 19 hijackers of 9/11 than the U.S. government. Acxiom knows about 96% of American households and 500 million people worldwide. What they know includes family members, current and past addresses, how often credit card bills are paid, whether they own a pet, whether they are right or left handed and what kind of medications they use.

Imagine a scenario researching visiting a third world country and then applying for life insurance. Could the insurance company use that search results to increase your payments? Companies are developing technologies that will enable us to take a picture of someone and then search for pictures on the Internet to match up even if they are not tagged with your name. Imagine the possibilities.

These are just some of the few examples and put forward by Eli Pariser in his book, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You. Click Here to purchase the book on Amazon. For further information watch the TED talk below.

MXit PC – Download EVO Instant Messenger

opentechnologist.com — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 09:25:39 +0000

MXit Lifestyle have released a new instant messenger client for the PC. This is in addition to its existing plugin for Pidgin. MXit explains thats it has been specifically designed for the Windows environment making it faster and more efficient. Some of the features include:

Finding contacts in a search bar
Saving of chats (already a feature in Pidgin)
Emoticon support
Drag and drop file sharing
Facebook status integration
multiMX support
Audible alerts

MXit Evo for PC can be downloaded here.

Download MXit for Mac and PC – Adium and Pidgin MXit users can now make use of its services on...
MXit Android App Download MXit for Android can be now be downloaded from the...
MXit Releases App for iPhone – Download MXit Lifestyle have released an iPhone version of its popular...

Twitter Blocked – Access Twitter from Work or School

opentechnologist.com — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:43:33 +0000

If twitter is blocked from your work or school, there are various ways to circumnavigate the problem. However, clever system administrators always stay ahead and try and play catchup to these workarounds.

The latest method I have found makes use of iGoogle and adding a widget called TwitterGadget. It even has integration for Gmail and works perfectly. As long as the TwitterGadget website is not blocked this method should work. If all else fails try out psiphon which is an Internet censorship solution which is a bit more difficult to implement.

An Internet Censorship Solution – psiphon Internet censorship is denying people with access to valuable information....
Post URL to Twitter – Firefox Add-on Having been a long time Firefox user (and sick of...

Post URL to Twitter – Firefox Add-on

opentechnologist.com — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 08:58:33 +0000

Having been a long time Firefox user (and sick of it crashing) I decided to try out Safari out of curiosity. While I was not that impressed by Safari I was by a extension called safari140. This extension allows the user to post the current article been rendered by the Safari directly to twitter to share with your followers.

After switching back to Firefox I could not find a plugin with this functionality. So I decided to write my own Firefox add-on. The add-on allows the user to post the browser URL to twitter. It includes a URL shortener. It can be downloaded here. The add-on does the following:

Gets the URL from the browser/tab window
Uses bit.ly to shorten the URL
Opens up www.twitter.com in a new browser window and populates the twitter status box with the web page’s title and shortned URL

Once installed click on “Tools” and then “Post to Twitter”. This is the first version and does not mimic the exact functionality of safari140 as it allows the user to post to their twitter account without opening up www.twitter.com. This functionality will be added in a later release. Follow me on twitter: @sdhansay.

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Fennec – Firefox Mobile For Windows Open Source mobile web browser known under the code name...
Twitter Blocked – Access Twitter from Work or School If twitter is blocked from your work or school, there...

Download MXit for Mac and PC – Adium and Pidgin

opentechnologist.com — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 19:51:09 +0000

MXit users can now make use of its services on a Mac and PC. A vast majority of its users make use of the service via mobile phones. MXit Lifestyle have released Adium (Mac) and Pidgin (Windows/PC) plugins and can be downloaded. Adium and Pidgin are both multi-platform instant messenger clients. This means that you can chat using other instant messenger services while using MXit at the same time. I have been using the Adium version for the past week and am happy to say it has been working great. The Adium version does have limitations including:

Transferring files between users
Clickable links (when talking to services)
Registering
MultiMX
HTTP protocol support

MXit PC – Download EVO Instant Messenger MXit Lifestyle have released a new instant messenger client for...
MXit Releases App for iPhone – Download MXit Lifestyle have released an iPhone version of its popular...
MXit Android App Download MXit for Android can be now be downloaded from the...

Innovation – My Half Time Pep Talk for 2009

opentechnologist.com — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 15:39:03 +0000

The Board of Innovation are inviting bloggers to partake in the “My half time pep talk for 2009″ blog action. This will take part during the 24 hours of Innovation event.

The idea is for bloggers to share their views about what has happened so far during 2009 about innovation. Bloggers that take part will be allocated a time slot to publish a blog post within a 24 hour time frame. I will be publishing a blog post sharing my views about a topic regarding innovation.

For further information have a look at the Board of Innovation website for further details.

Innovation in the age of Mass Collaboration Mass Collaboration occurs when large numbers of people work on...

Grameen Foundation Statistics – Microfinance

opentechnologist.com — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:49:58 +0000

On Blog Action Day I blogged about how the Grameen Foundation is using open source software to assist there needs to rid the world of poverty. I just finished Jeff Howe’s book Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business and he provides further statistics about the Grameen Bank:

The concept of micro-lending started 1976 with a loan of $27 to 42 villagers
The Grameen Bank was started 7 years later
The Grameen Bank became self-sustainable by 1995
67% of savings deposits comes from people who utilize the low interest loans
58% of the 7.4 million borrows are no longer suffering from poverty

Tackling Poverty With Open Source Software – Blog Action Day The theme for Blog Action Day is poverty and the...

Linux History- Where it all started

opentechnologist.com — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:52:12 +0000

In 1991, Linus Torvalds decided to share code that he had created for an operating system which would later become known as Linux, in the hope of getting feedback from others on how he could improve it. I came across the original email that Linus sent and was amazed by the modesty :

Hello everybody out there using minix -

I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and
professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing
since april, and is starting to get ready. I’d like any feedback on
things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat
(same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons)
among other things).

I’ve currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work.
This implies that I’ll get something practical within a few months, and
I’d like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions
are welcome, but I won’t promise I’ll implement them

Linus (torva…@kruuna.helsinki.fi)
PS. Yes – it’s free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs.
It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never
will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that’s all I have .

Note the modesty “just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu“. Not even he new how big it would turn out. The full transcript of the responses are available here.

Charter For Compassion – Collaborating to Highlight What Religions Share

opentechnologist.com — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:13:26 +0000

Since I started this blog I have focused on a few mass collaboration projects happening with the aid of technology. A new project called the Charter for Compassion is a collaboration project recently started with religion being the central theme. It is the TED prize wish of Karen Armstrong.

The aim of the Charter for Compassion is to build a peaceful and congruent world by bringing together the voices of people from all religions and highlight that all faiths share the principle of compassion. The website will run over the next couple of months and anybody can contribute to the charter making use of group-decision software. The Council of Sages made up of a group of religious leaders and thinkers from different religions will then craft a final version. Once this is complete the Charter for Compassion will be publicized and promoted around the world.

The idea is to spread the word to others by inviting them to visit the website and offer their words in different languages to focus on what religions share and not what divides them. The video below explores the subject.

Karen Armstrong’s Charter for Compassion Last year I blogged about the Charter for Compassion, the...
Innovation in the age of Mass Collaboration Mass Collaboration occurs when large numbers of people work on...

Wikipedia For Schools

opentechnologist.com — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 08:26:02 +0000

Wikipedia Selection is a free version of Wikipedia that consists of hand-checked articles from Wikipedia applicable to the UK National Curriculum but also useful to many others. The project is run by SOS Children UK in conjunction with the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikipedia Selection has been distributed to schools in South Africa by the Shuttleworth Foundation and by the Hole in the Wall project to rural Indian children. It is the same size as a 20 volume encyclopedia and articles were ranked by importance by project members. Wikipedia does suffer from vandalism and SOS Children volunteers checked and tidied vandalized contents.

Wikipedia Selection comes in two forms:

Online
DVD

The online version can be viewed at http://schools-wikipedia.org/ . The DVD is 3.5GB and can be downloaded via BitTorrent. You can download the torrent file and SOS Children UK are asking people to seed the encyclopedia to help keep their bandwidth costs down.

People Participation in Mass Collaboration Projects One of the most prominent examples of mass collaboration is...
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