Blog Posts

January 2010

• 2010-01-05

  The Boston node of OSDV

  I’ve been working quite a bit on the Open Source Digital Voting foundation project over the last 9 months or so. It’s really weird but I’ve turned myself into a mini-expert on how elections are organized and run here in the USA. It’s fascinating and way complicated. OSDV is a non-profit organization dedicated to developing a suite of election (as in Democracy) hardware and software.

  The umbrella name for that project is TrustTheVote: an open source project, which will work closely with election officials around the country to learn requirements and then develop software which in turn will be offered free of charge to those who want to de...

  Read more →

  #boston
• 2010-01-04

  TrustTheVote project

  I’ve been part of the core tech team of the TrustTheVote project and recently have been blogging over there too. You can find today’s post about Open Source e-Voting here.

• 2010-01-04

  New words: COTS and GOTS

  In my work with the Open Source Digital Voting foundation, and TrustTheVote, I just learned two new words, for your educational pleasure: “COTS” – Commercial off the shelf “COTS” – Government off the shelf

  Ok, not all the posts here are gems, but it is also my personal memory bank 🙂

  

December 2009

• 2009-12-31

  Two movies: “Precious” and “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre”

  (Note: Spoilers for both movies, but nothing that everyone probably has already been exposed to) I saw both these movies this weekend. One I thought was very good but disturbing, the other I thought was so so, kind of sick, but I did watch it to the end. Yet thinking about it, is there a core theme in common and what does my reaction say about my biases?

  Precious shows the plight of a teenage mother, pregnant with another child, in desperate straights: she lives with an abusive mother, she is kicked out of school, people hav...

  Read more →
• 2009-12-17

  I’ll be teaching a course at Brandeis University

  Follow along as I develop the course: Brandeis University Web App Dev, Mobile App Dev and Incubator I’m fortunate to have the opportunity to co-teach 3 courses next year at Brandeis University. It’s something that I have wanted to do for a long time now and I am looking forward to it. As an experiment, I thought I would publish the course notes as I am developing them and perhaps get some feedback, suggestions or even volunteer guest speakers.

  Here are the blurbs:

  Web Application Development: *An introduction to web programming that covers t...

  Read more →

  #brandeis #education
• 2009-12-14

  Facebook and Twitter Hacking

  I guess it’s not surprising that people’s Facebook and twitter accounts are getting compromised. From the New York Times: ...

  Read more →
• 2009-12-13

  A good scratchboard/clayboard tutorial

  In my graphic design work I’ve gotten to know scratchboard (aka clayboard.) It’s a very cool material that I’ve had a lot of success with. Here’s an early example. Here’s a pretty good rundown of many of the tools, materials and techniques for working with clayboard. I found it very informative.

  

  #design
• 2009-12-07

  e-Readers: First review I’ve seen of the Barnes and Nobel ‘Nook’

  Here’s a nice detailed review of the Kindle competitor, “Nook“. If you are thinking of giving or getting one for Christmas or Channukah you might find the review useful.

  #books
• 2009-12-07

  First useful info from Twitter for me :)

  After sending an email to Terroir Coffee asking them to explain the roastiness terminology that they use for all their coffee. It’s obscure and not mentioned on the web site. No response. I happened to note that George Howell, who is their CEO and visionary was tweeting. So I posted the question to him on twitter for all the world to see, and lo-and-behold, I got an answer.

  

  Maybe I should try the same...

  Read more →
• 2009-12-07

  An interesting video about design of Windows 7’s default desktop colors

  If you’re interested in design and illustration, you might like this video of how Microsoft went about designing the default desktop for Windows 7. Also some interesting commentary about the challenge of designing an Operating System for an astronomical number of different PC configurations.

  #design
• 2009-12-02

  Dan Lewis, on what it means to ‘own’ something

  This post talks about the difference between owning, possessing and accessing a book or anything tangible: “If I buy (”own”) a book, I expect to be able to do things such as re-sell, loan, rent, gift it. If I rent or borrow (”posses”) a book, I don’t, but expect to be able to do things like take it with me on a trip. If I am in your house and flip through (”access”) a book, you being a mensch aside, I probably can’t just walk out the door with it.” (from What does it mean to ‘buy’ an e-book’)

  There’s another very practical aspect of physical goods which...

  Read more →

  #books
• 2009-12-01

  Stewart Alsop, Droid Doesn’t, Google UI

  This is an insider’s three-fer. In this article, Stewart describes his horrible personal experience with the Verizon Droid. It’s a fun read. Three angles: (1) It’s been years and years since I’ve seen Stewart Alsop publishing a product review. Stewart, years ago, was totally famous in the tech world as software taste maker par-excellence. Kind of like Walt Mossberg is today (whoops – you don’t know who Mossberg is?)

  (2) All I’ve see...

  Read more →

  #technology

November 2009

• 2009-11-30

  Shopping Tip: if you need to find a gift for a GEEK

  I’ve occasionally shopped here. I got another bit of mail from them for so-called Cyber Monday. Looking at the stuff they had (much of which I wanted for myself), I thought to send out a tip to non-geek friends of geeks who might be struggling to find a Christmas or Channukah gift for a geek. Check out ThinkGeek.

• 2009-11-27

  An interesting paper about compassion and action

  Ethan Zuckerman’s blog is more like a magazine of insightful, well written papers. I liked From compassion to action, from action to knowledge. Here’s a key bit: “If the inability to act makes us bored, cynical and apathetic, is it possible that doing something – even something that’s ultimately ineffective – could keep us engaged and compassionate? If so, is there an interplay between action and information-gathering that could turn a story into a movement that builds public will?” (from From compassion to action, from action to knowledge)

  

• 2009-11-23

  Another real-world ‘Diving Bell and the Butterfly’ story

  Did you read the book “The Diving Bell and The Butterfly”? Or see the movie? It’s quite an amazing story of a man with so-called “Locked-In Syndrome”. It’s an absolutely riveting story. Here’s a new account of a similar story that occurred in Brussels. From the article: ...

  Read more →
• 2009-11-21

  Waste, Fraud and Abuse: does that turn you off to health reform?

  An article from Canadian Healthcare Technology notes that US Healthcare wastes up to $800 billion a year. I don’t disbelieve this article but it doesn’t make me not want to start with healthreform now that it seems possible that it might happen this year, warts and all. One might even say that that it shows how from the perspective of the Canadian health system, the US system ‘has problems.’ The Massachusetts experience as covered in the press here is that the majority of the public like it; that it was consciously designed originally to try to tackle universal coverage and get to cost containment in future revs; oddly enough I have also heard some s...

  Read more →

  #politics #health
• 2009-11-15

  On the importance of confidence in voting systems

  I was following a series of articles about the Brazilian e-voting system, which apparently underwent a white-hat hack test and survived. It started with this Slashdot article, “Hackers Fail to Crack Brazillian Voting Machines” Problem is that the original article is in Portugese (although remarkably well translated by Google Translation) and is a general news article, without technical specifics. This took me to this ...

  Read more →
• 2009-11-12

  News about BlogBridge for iPhone

  I just posted an update on our work on BlogBridge for the iPhone. In summary, we got many many responses to our survey and the prevailing feedback was that like most iPhone apps, people wanted it to be free (those very people also are using BlogBridge for free, very likely.) Read the whole post for the rest of the story.

  #apple
• 2009-11-11

  My health insurance has gone up 15% for 2010

  Yeah, I just received the renewal paperwork for health insurance, and it’s up. This is with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, with whom I have been having a fine experience. I am happy with the service, and the responsiveness. But from 2009 to 2010, my bill is up 15%. Wow.

  Technorati Tags: healthinsurance, costs, bluecross

  

  #health
• 2009-11-10

  Wordnik is a new online dictionary and more

  Just came across Wordnik, what looks like a mega dictionary. Maybe it’s more of a meta dictionary. It’s part of the zeitgeist, don’t you know? You might like it.