Just Write

Pod­casts are an amaz­ing con­cept — but there are thou­sands of them, and good ones can be hard to find. One guy who con­sis­tently records excel­lent work is “your inter­net pal,” Dan Ben­jamin.

I met Dan out­side FOWA Miami. His first ques­tion was “What do you think of the iPad?” which led to an inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion about the future of mobile com­put­ing, pub­lish­ing, con­tent cre­ation con­trasted with con­sump­tion, etc.

He later asked me “How much do you know about patent law and the stuff Apple is up to?”

“Dan Ben­jamin brings together geeks and attor­neys to talk about the inter­sec­tion of patents and soft­ware devel­op­ment, and spec­u­late about Apple’s moti­va­tions and goals regard­ing their recent Android-​inspired law­suit against HTC.“

So I was a guest speaker on The Con­ver­sa­tion, a pod­cast with 30–40 thou­sand lis­ten­ers. The episode title is “Patent Sch­ma­tent,” and we talked about:

• soft­ware patents and copyrights
• tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion dur­ing the Mid­dle Ages
• “why have a patent system?”
• Apple v. HTC
• “what are they think­ing?”

It seemed to go well, and I had a lot of fun talk­ing with Dan, Dave and Wil. Hope to record more pod­casts, one of these days.

Pod­cast: “Patent Sch­ma­tent“

Clear­ing out some of the cob­webs around here, to say that I’m excited.

Excited about:

http://​pro​jec​t52​.info/

What is Project52?

Project52 is a per­sonal chal­lenge geared toward get­ting fresh con­tent on your web­site. The goal is to write at least 1 new arti­cle per week for 1 year. Because we all know what it’s like to pro­cras­ti­nate on our content.

All you need to do is just com­mit to the chal­lenge and write the con­tent. This site is just here to remind you of that commitment.

How to Participate

• On Twit­ter, you can fol­low @p52info or use the hash­tag #p52. We’ll track that as often as we can.

• Add your site to the form below. In time, we’ll gather the RSS feeds and begin sort­ing out who the slack­ers are.
• If you would like a ban­ner to add to your site, feel free to down­load the logo. Be sure to link here and help spread the word. It’s time to get peo­ple writ­ing again!
• You can also join the Google Group, if you’d like to share thoughts, ideas, and var­i­ous bits of inspiration.

An awe­some idea, whose time is overdue.

I love Bar­camps.

The energy, the peo­ple, it’s all good.

• Imag­ine a con­fer­ence about the Web–what’s cur­rent, and what’s com­ing in the future.
• Imag­ine over 500 peo­ple attend­ing a con­fer­ence, which is com­pletely orga­nized and run by volunteers.
• On a gor­geous day in Coconut Grove.

That was Bar­camp Miami 2009.

Won­der­ful event, peo­ple, top­ics and con­ver­sa­tions. Oh, and the loca­tions (Anohka restau­rant and the May­fair hotel) could not be bet­ter, (although I think the restau­rant was a lit­tle over­whelmed by lunch orders).

Over­all, an excel­lent job by all the orga­niz­ers and presenters.

See some pho­tos and some words.

I’m excited about 2009, and hope to see some of the same peo­ple at Refresh Miami meeting.

…and set a World Record

It’s an excit­ing time for the web world, with some big devel­op­ments com­ing up.

Fire­fox 3

If you haven’t tried Fire­fox, the web browser bet­ter than that other one, now is the time.

Fire­fox is a web browser that is faster, more secure, and cus­tomiz­able. And it’s free. The cur­rent ver­sion is 2.0.0.14 for Win­dows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Even bet­ter is Fire­fox 3, which will be released on June 17, 2008.

The cool kids at Mozilla are try­ing to set a new Guin­ness World Record, for most soft­ware down­loads in 24 hours. Down­load Day for Fire­fox 3 is Tues­day, June 17, 2008.

So, help us set a new Guin­ness World Record, and “Enjoy a Bet­ter Web.”

Opera 9.5

In the mean­time, Opera 9.5 has been released. Opera is a pretty good browser too, though web devel­op­ers will prob­a­bly wait for Drag­on­fly.

OpenOf­fice 3

While you’re at it, you might want to upgrade your Office suite, as well. OpenOf­fice is a free open-​source office soft­ware sui­tex, for doc­u­ments, spread­sheets, pre­sen­ta­tions, graph­ics, and data­bases. Lat­est release is ver­sion 2.4.1, and OpenOf­fice 3 is in beta.

In fact, my shiny almost-​new Vista lap­top has never run Microsoft Office. A state­ment I never expected to write, but with OpenOf­fice, I don’t even miss it.