Hey! Bing is innovating! It has added social to search based on its relationship with Facebook. Oh wait, Google did that with Google+. So is this innovation or keeping up with the Joneses, err Pages and Brins? I thought this move by MS would happen faster given that FB and MS have been in bed [...]

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Yes! You can now shotgun a beer with less trouble and mess than before. I saw an ad for the new Punch Top can by Miller Light and couldn’t believe it. The claim is that the new hole is for a “smoother pour.” (see the ad below). Come on. This innovation is about shotgunnig beer. [...]

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Andrew Morin and six others have argued for open access to source code behind scientific publishing so that the work can be tested and live up to the promise of the scientific method. At least, I think that is the claim. Ah irony, the piece is in Science and behind, oh yes, a pay wall! [...]

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Disclaimer of the future: A computer will grade your essay. You understand and accept that as you take this test. In other words, deal with it.
According to this release from Akron University “A direct comparison between human graders and software designed to score student essays achieved virtually identical levels of accuracy, with the software [...]

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The Boston Phoenix has an article about what Facebook coughs up when a subpoena is sent to the company. The paper came across the material as it worked on an article called Hunting the Craigslist Killer. The issues that come to mind for me are
1. Privacy after death? In may article Property, Persona, and Preservation [...]

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I am excited to announce that Oxford University Press has published my book, Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources. I owe a huge debt to my Madisonian colleagues for their support along the way. I will post more about the book in the next few weeks, but here are some links and a short [...]

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There is an interesting blog symposium at Concurring Opinions about Marvin Ammori’s Free Speech Architecture article.  I am participating in the symposium this week, and here is my first post:
Thank you to Marvin for an excellent article to read and discuss, and thank you Concurring Opinions for providing a public forum for our discussion.
In the article, [...]

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I have been thinking a lot about authorship lately.  Perhaps this is because I am learning my first instrument and trying to write my first song.  Or because I failed miserably at a write-a-novel-in-a-month exercise last November.  Or because I am in the middle of a wrestling match with an article.
An interesting episode of the show [...]

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A few years ago I tried to express some anxieties about the rise of a remix culture that valued technology and novelty over timeless content. Those worries resurfaced while I was reading Rob Horning’s recent reflections on his own defensively reactionary tastes:
[T]he key issue is to think about why we choose novelty over immersion. [...]

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OK, that title is a riff on a line from The Player. I loved it when the film came out and still do. It says so much of nothing, but captures a vibe that persists. Yet again it seems the film industry is in trouble, or rather doldrums. The Times reports that this year’s box [...]

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I really enjoyed this OTM story on Ian Bogost’s game, CowClicker. The game allowed players to click on a cow, which would moo. It was as easy as hitting the broad side of a barn door with a snow shovel. So far, so Pavlovian. But, as Janet Murray explains, the game changed [...]

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This is an interesting story on a gallery exhibition of “24 hours of photos uploaded to Flickr.” It reminds me a bit of the Bright Eyes album “Digital Ash in a Digital Urn,” but in reverse: the very act of printing them all out seems to turn the creative efforts of millions into a [...]

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Here are some pointed questions about science, innovation, and technological progress:
First: What can be done, consistent with military security, and with the prior approval of the military authorities, to make known to the world as soon as possible the contributions which have been made during our war effort to scientific knowledge?
The diffusion of such knowledge [...]

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Much of the media blitz surrounding the death of Steve Jobs focused not only on amazing Apple products (AAP) that he shepherded to the market, and not only on what an inspirational, visionary leader he became, but also on How Can We Find More People Like Steve?
Steve Jobs, visionary leader that he was, thought about [...]

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I recently returned from our Summer Away program in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  While at the Taos Pueblo, I purchased a pot crafted by an Acoma artist at a small shop.  As I handed the money to the owner, she commented, “This artist has a patent on this design.  No one else can make pots [...]

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On June 20, ICANN announced that it would be opening up the domain space for new generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs),  meaning that anyone will be able to register virtually any word or phrase in almost any language or script as a gTLD.  Up until now, there have been 22 available gTLDs (eg .com, .net, [...]

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While sitting through demonstrations of free online video games (presented by my 5 year old), I noticed some clear similarities between the Johnny Finder games and the Indiana Jones movies.  While the games are clearly not passing themselves off as being officially affiliated with Indiana Jones, there are characters and plot elements that are similar [...]

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I’ve often wondered whether it is technically correct to refer to intellectual property infringement as a species of tort law.  We tend not to equate torts with IP in common parlance, but there are certainly similarities, notably with property-based torts like trespass and conversion.  Maybe we don’t use the tort terminology because it runs up [...]

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Congratulations to Cynthia Ho on publication of her new book with OUP, Access to Medicine in the Global Economy:  International Agreements on Patents and Related Rights. An important addition to the international IP literature…

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I’ve recently been reading Robin Barnes’ book, Outrageous Invasions, about rights of celebrities and public figures to protect their privacy and their reputations in the face of a free press.  The book again makes me think about the relationship between celebrities and the press and that old question about whether celebrities should be expected to [...]

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