On Friday, EFF and the law firm of Fish and Richardson filed an emergency motion to quash and for the return of seized property on behalf of a Boston College computer science student whose computers, cell phone, and other property were seized as part of an investigation into who sent an e-mail to a school mailing list identifying another student as gay.
Pull up the wrong undersea cable and the Internet goes dark in Berlin or Dubai. If the mishap occurs in the Irish Sea, the North Sea or the North Atlantic, Scotsman John Rennie comes in to splice the break together.
Last month an email message washed up at the offices of The Cook Islands News in the South Pacific. It was a request to place a half-page advertisement in the newspaper, which has a circulation of 2,500. The cost was $370. Even more surprising was who was paying for it: Google.
Last week I criticized Yahoo for their insecure password recovery mechanism that allowed an intruder to take control of Sarah Palin’s email account.
Human history is one of progressive improvement in communication. From the 20th century mail was a fundamental form of communication. The invention of email changed two things. It became cheap to send short mail, and delivery was instant. Email became favored for both corporate and personal communication. But email faces increasing competition. Chat, text messages, Twitter, social networks and even lifestreaming tools are chipping away at email usage. In this post we take a look at what’s happening and assess if email is in danger.
We are a society that lives more and more in our technology-induced bubbles. When we go outside, we wear an iPod; we talk on cell phones while driving. In urban areas, we might never meet our neighbors unless there’s a fire or earthquake. But can technology also help bring us together in our physical communities, and help us get to know our neighbors? Front Porch Forum (FPF) is making a valiant effort to do just that, offering up closed email forums that are strictly limited to people living within each physical neighborhood in Chittenden County, Vermont.
This is a section of the All Things Digital Web site featuring posts from around the Web, from other Dow Jones properties and also original pieces we solicit. The section is now explicitly labeled that it comes "from other Web sites."
We are fully aware of the controversies around how linking and aggregating is done on the Web and we, in no way, are attempting to "scrape" original content created by others. Instead, regarding third-party posts, we are trying to point readers of this site to other posts from around the Web that we admire and are trying to do so in the quickest manner possible.
The Internet is full of terrific content that is not ours and we want to help our readers find it by making editorial suggestions--Look, Mom, no algorithm!--of posts we think are worth their time.
That is why we have made even more changes to Voices to ensure we do this in the most transparent and timely way. While we don't expect that everyone will agree with our policies, we have made changes that reflect our intent in pointing to content outside our site.
So here is exactly what we do:
Because the site is wholly owned by Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, we aim to adhere to the journalistic standards of the best of the mainstream media. But, because it is run autonomously as a small online startup, we aim to exhibit the fresh thinking and nimbleness of the best of the new media. We want to be first, and sassy, but also well sourced and accurate. We will offer lots of opinion and analysis, but plenty of fact as well.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
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