Many of us have been following with interest the adventures of Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari, better known as A Gay Girl in Damascus, a half Syrian, half American girl writing about her struggles in the Arab Spring. I have to admit that although I have read some of her entries, Read more…
Twitter has been in the news quite a lot recently: Anthony Weiner’s inappropriate tweet to one of his followers; Wayne Rooney posts a picture of his hair-transplant; the whole Ryan Giggs keruffle trying to stop information about an alleged affair from leaking (I feel all journalistic by using the word Read more…
Two days ago I programmed my first Android app with Google’s App Inventor. Strike that, it is more accurate to say that I followed the instructions to create several apps using the tutorial. Still, the feeling I got when I uploaded the resulting apps into my Android phone, and seeing Read more…
This is just a short update on what is happening with the Lodsys patent dispute. Lodsys filed a suit against 7 app developers in East Texas (what a surprise). The companies affected are 6 Apple and one Android: Combay, Iconfactory, Illusion Labs AB, Shovelmate, Quickoffice, Richard Shinderman, and Wulven Game Read more…
A book by Yours Truly entitled “Networks, Complexity and Internet Regulation: Scale-Free Law” will be published in the near future by Edward Elgar Publishers in dead-tree form and hopefully also in ebook format. While negotiating the contract, the publishers kindly agreed to have the book published under a Creative Commons Read more…
I’ve been following with great interest (and a bit of amusement) the media saga taking place in the UK at the moment involving the naming of a footballer who allegedly had an extra-marital affair with a model. Perhaps some background is warranted to introduce this discussion. Imogen Thomas, a British Read more…
Imagine that you are a software developer, you hire programmers to produce real applications and offer them to the public. You produce innovative products, engage with customers, and sell quality applications. The software market is competitive, but you are doing relatively well. Then one day a letter arrives out of Read more…
The long-awaited Hargreaves report entitled Digital Opportunity: A Review of Intellectual Property and Growth, has been published. Several of the report´s elements had been leaked in advance, so the provisions do not come as a surprise. The motivation for setting up the review reportedly came from a meeting between UK’s Read more…
There has been a lot said about the PlayStation Network hack, enough to warrant its own Wikipedia page. With a calculated total of 77 million accounts affected, and a breach that has compromised both personal and sensitive financial details, this has been a PR disaster of epic proportions for Sony. Read more…
(Apologies to Aurelia and John for feeding the trolls). From time to time I come across an insidious, wrong-headed yet pervasive meme floating around the Internet; it can be encapsulated like this: Creative Commons is bad because it affects creators. How does it do it? There are two different versions Read more…