It may well have come up in your household because Pinterest.com – the photo-focused social network service that started in 2008 – seems to have gone viral all of a sudden. Unique visitors to Pinterest.com grew 400% last fall, CNN reports, calling it "2012's hottest Web site." Why so viral now? FastCompany suggests it's 1) the exponential-growth factor (what I pin gets "re-pinned" by my followers, … [Read more...] about Is Pinterest an interest at your house?
Revisiting copyright law – worldwide
Shades of the US's SOPA (anti-anti-piracy legislation) debate in eastern Europe, quite literally (see this Associated Press story): Street and online protests in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, remind me of a killer TED Talk by copyright legal expert and Harvard University law professor Lawrence Lessig: "Reexamining the Remix." Do … [Read more...] about Revisiting copyright law – worldwide
Too focused on fear of multitasking?
"A flighty mind may be going somewhere," writes Hanif Kureishi – a playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker, novelist, and short-story writer – in the New York Times. In a very personal account of a "wretched [five-year] period" at the bottom of his class in a suburban-London secondary school, he writes about how some of us really need distraction, and how can we parents really tell (as his couldn't … [Read more...] about Too focused on fear of multitasking?
FTC finds kid apps’ privacy practices ‘disAPPointing’
The US Federal Trade Commission has turned this week's wakeup call about mobile-app privacy into a conference call, adding kids' privacy to the conversation. The title of its just-released report "Mobile Apps for Kids: Current Privacy Disclosures are Disappointing" (that's the FTC authors' cute italicization) summarizes the Commission's conclusions well. But to make their point crystal clear, the … [Read more...] about FTC finds kid apps’ privacy practices ‘disAPPointing’
Growing signs social media are good for us
The other night the three of us still at home were talking face-to-face with our son and brother 1,000 miles away for about an hour, for free (well, not counting the cost of our family Internet connection). While enjoying the banter, I was wondering at this ability we had to look into each other's eyes across great distances on computer screens. Only the ability to hug would be better. But having … [Read more...] about Growing signs social media are good for us