The most well known, yet still problematic, area of data ownership in our web-based world is all the data we keep housed "in the cloud" in the machines of the services we use every day.

• The contents of your blog at Tumblr
• The documents your company shares on Google Drive
• Your to-do list at Nozbe or Remember the Milk
• The music you've bought and listen to at Amazon
• All your family photos kept ... more

What does it mean to "own" my data in a web-based world? I don't know what this means, but we should.

Before the growing responsibilities of "The Web" is for us, owning my data meant the files sat on ... more

I'm sticking with the netbook. It took longer to make this decision than I expected, but I'm sure of it now.

What really works better are the subtle things. I grab my netbook quicker and with less thought. It weighs lses, ... more

What's going on with me? What am I trying to do, what have I been doing, and what should I be doing?

I've had a couple months of unexpected things coming up in my life, and its thrown the things I tried to plan for in a ... more

I'm experimenting with a new laptop for January, and if I like it I'll be selling my previous 15 inch Thinkpad t510 and keeping the new machine: an 11.6" Acer Aspire. The change is significant, but I feel it is for the ... more

I thought about having a new years resolution, but I decided against it. I thought about starting some 365 day project, but I decided against that, too. I've realized that I need to optimize for minimally impacting failure. A ... more

Pocket is a reading list, and a far better way to track things you want to read, when you have the time, than the dozens of open tabs across multiple browsers and computers that many of us seem to be stuck in.

It is, for ... more

Private software is software one writes only for themselves and never shares or intends to share. It isn't commercial, because it isn't sold or even distributed at all. It isn't open source, but it shares something in spirit. I ... more

I looked forward to it, I planned on it, and I was prepared for it. My outlines were ready, my story was waiting. So, why am I not doing NaNoWriMo this year?

The energy and ethusiasm of NaNoWriMo is great, and I will ... more

I ran a conference.

I said it had to be done, apparently I said I'd even be the one to do it. Before I knew it, I was doing it and now its over.

All the way up to the date of our inaugural year I was feeling unprepared, afraid I was forgetting terribly ... more

I'm trying to write more lately. Part of that is trying to have a better idea what I want to do with the things I write. Blogging is something I have a lot of respect for. The voices of the world unhindered is an amazing ... more

Just a thought. We have so many tools for, essentially, ranking content.

We vote on Reddit, like on facebook, plus one on Google. We pretend this stuff is (relatively) new, but aren't they all just non-passive hit ... more

I have a constant problem with indecision, and perhaps double when I am dealing with anything technical. When I have to decide on some dependency for a personal project, the possibilities of deciding wrong keep me from starting ... more

I'm beginning something that has brewed in my head for years, in forms more and less solid from year to year. This is a project and it has no real name. It is something I need to do and something I'm very excited to put a new ... more