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The original practice and promise of open source software is unique. The software experience cannot be ported whole-hog into other areas such as sharing songs or organizing public forums. It's worth looking at what goes into creating open source software, and what unique traits of software make the open source process work well there.

The visionary Lucas Gonze just launched Fresh Hot Radio.com, a smart new twist on Web radio. His mission is to connect mainstream listeners to Web-native music, so the site draws from band communities, musicians' own blogs, and bulletin boards where musicians go to get advice on their mixes. I like his choices.

Carl Malamud, an advocate for goverment transparency, is starting a grassroots campaign to become the Public Printer of the United States, a position responsible for the Government Printing Office (GPO). As Public Printer of the United States, Malamud would be responsible for publishing information about the federal government. In this interview, Malamud discusses his seven point platform and his 20 years of experience fighting for government transparency.

My consulting firm, Zaffra, has the pleasure of working alongside of a really interesting startup based out of Berkeley called Life360. One of their bylines is "taking care of your family's what-ifs" but instead of just developing yet another web...

At the Arisia Science Fiction Convention last weekend, I moderated a panel with SF Writer Lawrence Watt-Evans and comics fan Israel Peskowitz. We spent 45 minutes reeling off a list of the webcomics that we love, past and present. In no particular order (ok, in alphabetical order...), here's the list we came up with, along with the status of the comic when known. Remember, even when a comic is no longer active, it may have a huge archive worth perusing.

Is Digg Sexist? No. Is the community it attracts "sexist"? Likely. This post is a response to the recent criticism, a diagnosis, and a prescription for future collaborative filtering evolution. The problem with the current iteration of collaborative filters is that they don't account for more than one dominant preference cluster.

When I was in Boston this last September I was fortunate enough to be introduced to John Werner, one of the founders of http://citizenschools.org/, by John Palfrey who thought I could be helpful in helping John achieve success with Citizen Schools on the Web 2.0 front. John has a chance to make it in front of President-elect Barack Obama and Congress, but he needs your help. Please take a moment to learn more.

A brief conversation with Craig Newmark from this year's Personal Democracy Forum 2008. In this interview Craig talks about the founding of Craiglist, how he came to found one of the most popular sites on the web. Craig also discusses his work with the Obama team and some of the important customer service issues facing Craigslist.

Since the Tribune Company is about to file for bankruptcy, I thought I'd take some time to introduce you to your new Newspaper Editor. The replacement is an algorithm and a crowd of people, or is it? Are collaborative filters adequate replacements for human editorial decision-making? Is collaborative filtering making us more or less informed? Do we need to start thinking about transparency for collaborative filters? Just how do these algorithms work?

Good programmers tend to be polyglot programmers. I'm not sure that good applications tend to be polyglot applications; perhaps the way we build Internet applications is hazardous in the long term.

Do you trust web based applications with your password? What about trusting a third party web application? Sometimes it's hard to avoid the temptation of using a third party application, and sometimes you may not even know you're using a third party application.

Daniel Appelquist talks about Mobile 2.0, a one-day event scheduled for the Monday before the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Appelquist discusses the event and why he prefers to the more open, standards-based approach of the Mobile Web over the development of native applications for mobile devices.

It didn't take long for someone to say that the the financial crisis will bring about "Capitalism 2.0". In this article I talk about the overuse of the "2.0" modifier throughout media and identify three characteristics common to the everyday introduction of a new "2.0". With Money 2.0, Sport 2.0, Sex 2.0, Religion 2.0 has the "2.0" become the "e" or "cyber" prefix of the late 90s, and is it time to retire it? If so, what is the next "2.0" modifier?

Where 2.0: The State of the Geospatial Web — The GeoWeb is a rapidly evolving Web 2.0 market of innovative data and software applications—including location-based services, social software, and even augmented reality—for both the web and mobile devices. Propelled by the new location-aware iPhone, the GeoWeb is hurtling into the mainstream. This report maps out the new generation of geo products and services, identify the major players, and show how your business can leverage the power of Where 2.0. Learn more.