McFilter

Interesting Things on the Internet in Q4 of 2013

This year the run up to Christmas seemed especially manic, so I seem to have accumulated an impressive list of open-tabs-to-blog-about-later, even by my standards. As usual, the original this-should-be-a-carefully-thought-out-blog-post moment has gone, but if they made it as far as a left-open tab they're definitely worth sharing...

• How I Built Emojitracker A great, in-depth explanation of building a web service at a massive scale (even though he didn't intend to do that when setting out to make it...)
• Following on from that, Stream Updates with Server-Sent Events was a good overview of how web servers can send multiple events to a client. A good way to avoid polling if you don't need bi-directional communication
• Disability Mapping with OpenStreetMap - one of the benefits of open-data such as OpenStreetMap is that new communities can repurpose it to better suit themselves, and everyone benefits from their work
• A fantastic overview from Tod E. Kurt of how they took blink(1) from prototype to production
• They may have the money, but we have the tools of technology, which is a longer-winded hint that more of the tech community is starting to realise that they can't pretend that tech is apolitical. For a more direct approach in a similar vein, see OpenPolitics
• The Inferno of Independence. Lots of this rang true, from the stress of being independent (see also Dan Catt); to the frustration at watching (and participating in) talented friends struggling to be paid for their good work while barely talented chancers cash in; to the importance of language and the words we use.
• Shared under sad circumstances, as an eulogy to Red Burns, but it's a wonderful list of maxims for thinking about technology and design
• In what's turned out to be a follow-up to my last post, which also linked to him, Jeremy Keith's transcript of his talk at Beyond Tellerand is a superb talk about the future of the Internet, caring about data, and longer-term thinking
• David Simon (creator of The Wire) speaks out about the divide between rich and poor in "There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show"
• More post-Snowden thinking from Bruce Schneier - The Battle for Power on the Internet
• Maciej Ceglowski's talk from XOXO - mentioned in The Inferno of Independence that I linked to above, but worth its own link - Thoreau 2.0

Owning, Not Renting, Your Online Home

Over on his journal (I think he's right that journal is a better term than blog but rather like the Internet of Things I think it's far too late to worry about names now), Jeremy Keith has written a great roundup and explanation of why I continue to pour most of my online contributions here, why I don't really use Facebook or Google+, and why you should care about this too.

It's the movements like Indie Web and Redecentralize that make me optimistic for a better future for the web. I'm aiming to add my weight to those movements by helping push for similar values in the Internet of Things.

[Jeremy also has an interesting new system for commenting, called Webmentions. His explanatory journal entry mentions that it's similar to Pingback, but it's been too long since I looked at the intricacies of that to understand why/how they differ. Maybe when he sees my webmention here he'll elaborate on it :-) (That's assuming his code can cope with two webmentions in one blog post, which I suspect it will, but might be new testing for it...*grin*)]

What's Going On?

I'm trying to pick at something that's been on my mind quite a bit of late. I'm not completely sure why, possibly it's the season of peak commercialism that's upon us, or maybe it's the continued gulf between the direction that the Government is intent on taking us and the direction I'd rather we were headed (the line in Smith and Burrows' song "When the Thames Froze" God damn this Government, will they ever tell me where the money went? seems to capture it nicely).

Quinn Norton (who is writing some excellent stuff of late - well, possibly has always been writing excellent stuff, but I've only discovered her recently) has written a wonderful article, ostensibly about Bitcoin, but more about money and poverty and family and community. All of it rings true with my experiences.

Then I read this piece about empathy, and the concern that the decline of our concern for our fellow citizens is a cultural problem.

That also rings true, bound up in the perpetual financialisation of language (everything is discussed in terms of return on investment or value for money, as if that were the only possible scorecard for measurement); ever increasing bureaucracy in an attempt to reduce risk; and a lack of consequences for gross abuses of power by some corporations (take your pick from the aforementioned bankers, alleged fraud from G4S and Serco, general tax avoidance of multi-nationals...)

I'm sure we'll muddle through regardless, as ever (although, as ever, those who could easily make a difference will be getting on just fine...). I just continue to hope that together we might come up with a better idea.

Twelve

The past couple of years have been quiet ones for new music, which is why you have to go back to 2010 to find the last time I had something to share on this day. I'd almost started to wonder if, despite my continued listening to new music on BBC 6Music, this was part of getting older.

However, this year has thrown up two choices. Rather different styles, but both tracks I've been much enjoying of late.

Pharrell Williams' Happy doesn't exactly match the mood of the day, but any other time is an upbeat and uplifting slice of pop. The companion 24hoursofhappy.com website is superb too, with a non-stop full day of different videos for it. The last link is one of my favourites of the versions starring Pharrell Williams himself, but this one is also pretty cool.

And more in keeping with my current state of mind, there's London Grammar's Strong...