Great talk, information overload is often related to an inability to filter what comes in.  For the longest time had a love/hated relationship BoingBoing, this changed when I learned to filter for Cory and Xeni, and wait for my friends to share other worthy posts.  With other blogs I often look for someone like Kevin Donovan or Sarah Davies who do a great job reading through several blogs and sharing the better stuff via tools like Google Readers shared /w a note function.  The fact that people like Kevin and Sarah are willing to share with thier friends saves us all time.  One of the keys to managing your information is finding tools that allow you to leverage your network to filter the ever growing stream of new information.

Filtering & privacy points:
"facebook has the best expressed and best executed privacy management tools on any network"

"the problem is managing your privacy preferences is an unnatural act"

"Privacy was inefficiency in the system"

I strongly agree the current systems is extremely good at sharing information, what I call sharing others may (especially lawyers but not usually techie geeks) call a violation of privacy. This does not look good for privacy, the cost of filtering out information is so much higher then the cost of production and distribution that something has to give.  Although when privacy and free speech come into conflict, I am almost always on the side of free speech.

For people wanting to learn more about TEDx Seattle. This Friday there is a Happy Hour and TEDxSeattle Discussion at the Rat and Raven.

Here is the announcement from the Master of Communication in Digital Media list:

This Friday, in addition to our usual socializing and networking at our First Fridays Happy Hour, we will be having a discussion about where we stand so far on TEDxSeattle.

As part of this discussion, we'll have Tim Reha presenting his ideas for filming, streaming and live synthing the event with his internet dashboard approach.  Tim will be looking for student volunteers to learn about this approach and work on the TEDxSeattle event.  He hopes to pitch this work to the main TED based on our efforts here.  This presentation will go on around 6:00, once Hanson and the campus crew arrive.

We'll be in our normal spot at the Rat and Raven (http://www.ratandraven.com), conveniently located in the University District.

5260 University Way NE Seattle, WA 98105 - 206 524 3166

Street parking up there on the Ave is free and available at that time.  Happy hour specials include $2 off the entire menu (bar food, mostly standard with some twists); $3 wells, $3 domestic drafts and $4 imports (and $2 PBR if that is to your taste). We have reserved the *upstairs deck* (covered year-round, heated in cool weather, but open for nice weather).  It also has a shuffleboard.  There are also two pool tables upstairs, just outside the glass doors to the deck.

TEDx Seattle is happening at the Pacific Science Center on April 10th.  The event is being TEDx Seattle is organized by the Master of Communication in Digital Media (MCDM) program at the University of Washington.  One of the most exciting parts of TEDx Seattle is that they are strongly considering creating an interactive website for the event that promotes social media in real time.

Here are my two favorite confirmed speakers:

Ben Huh – icanhascheezburger.comBen is the CEO of the Cheezburger Network, the company behind the hugely popular blogs I Can Has Cheezburger?, FAIL Blog, There, I Fixed It, and more than 25 others. His job is to make the Internet laugh for 5-minutes a day.  In addition to making people laugh, Ben is a a true innovator in business models for user generated content websites.

Eugene Cho - Founder - www.onedayswages.org

Eugene Cho and his family began what became onedayswages.org when they made a decision to donate their 2009 income ($68,000) to the cause of fighting extreme global poverty. But we didn't want to stop there. We also wanted to invite our family, friends, and the rest of the world to consider donating just their "one day's wages" and be part of this international grassroots movement. And then to renew that pledge monthly, quarterly, or at least yearly, on their birthdays.

The complete TEDx Seattle list of speakers can be found here.

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The Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. FEC offends me (I know this is not a lawyerly thing to say, but this turns my stomach) as it allows corporations to pour large amounts of money into elections by equating corporate spending to free speech. The best response I have seen is bellow form Umair Haque:

Dear Supreme Court,

I'm highly impressed with your recent decision to vaporize limits on corporate political spending. It's the kind of campaign finance reform our ailing res publica needs. In fact, I found it so inspirational, here's an even better idea.

Let's give corporations the right to vote. One share, one vote. The logic? It's simple. Corporations are people; all people are created equal; ergo, corporations must have equal rights — and no right is more important than the right to vote. (Well, maybe the right to buy fully automatic machine guns, but that's another story).

Goldman Sachs, for example, has 514,080,000 shares outstanding — so they'd get 514 millon votes (in fact, maybe we should give them more, because they're so smart). Ford has 3.31 billion shares outstanding, so they'd get approximately 2.8 billion more votes than Goldman.

I've discussed this with several other economists, and we all agree: it's the most efficient solution. Why, it should save hundreds of millions in lobbying alone. Who needs K Street when corporations can simply, quickly, easily vote in the candidate of their choice? As a bonus, political scientists agree that the increasing polarization between left and right would quickly disappear, too. Human people — with their perpetual squabbling — would be simply outvoted by corporate people, who know what's good for everyone.

Read the rest at the Harvard Business Review

Watch Lessig's Video on fixing elections at Change Congress

I am still looking for a good human readable legal summary and will post it when I see one.

The Google Policy Fellowship applications are now open.  I highly recommend applying if you are interested in policy work.  Working at Public Knowledge last summer was amazing.  I was able to get first hand experience with the FCC, the Copyright Office and some amazing nonprofits in the DC area like KEI and EPIC.

This years sponsoring organizations includes a few new orgs:

American Library Association
Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic
Cato Institute
Center for Democracy and Technology
The Citizen Lab
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Creative Commons
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Future of Music Coalition
Internet Education Foundation
Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies
Media Access Project
National Hispanic Media Coalition
New America Foundation
Progress and Freedom Foundation
Public Knowledge
Technology Policy Institute

The application deadline is December 28, 2009.  Apply at the fellowship page.  Please feel free to ping me if you want to know more information about my experience last summer.

Amazing TED talk on mythology, liner time and cyclical time, binary logic and fuzzy logic. This talk covers a lot of why I am so attached to Rashomon and mythology!

I will need to re-watch it a few times to see if it holds up over time but my first impression is that this could on par with Wade Davis and Hans Hosling.

I am headed over to UW at noon for talk that looks very interesting:

Research Conversation: 'Technology and Disability in the Developing World' Speaker: Joyojeet Pal
JOYOJEET PAL is an NSF Computing Innovation fellow at the ATLAS institute at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His work primarily looks at issues around technology and development. He is also a research affiliate with the TASCHA group at UW's iSchool.

ABSTRACT
In the past decades, advances in technology and the growth of a rights based movement around disability has led to an increasing interest in issues of accessibility from scholars and practitioners, technologists and social scientists alike. However, much research and practice in this space is located in the industrialized world. This talk discusses the need for developing an agenda on issues of accessibility in the developing world in view of the importance of technology tools for social and economic inclusion. This talk discusses the need for broadening work in this space, especially in information schools.

Date: Monday, November 30, 2009
Time: 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Location: Mary Gates Hall 420
More Info: Event Website

Download event into Outlook/iCal
Add event to Google Calendar

Feel free to ping me if anyone wants to connect after the talk.

I soo loved these as a kid, they were a huge improvement over the stuffed pumpkin we had before they were invented! PS: was was raided vegetarian and have still never had a hot dog or a hamburger, although I have come to enjoy sushi.

Photo by Ms. Emily Meeks

I miss Portland, I have been in Seattle for several years now and still struggle to find good community based spaces.  I was recently in Cherry Street Cafe and offend by the staff.  here is the letter I wrote Cherry Street:

I was a local patron of the Cherry Street Coffee House's, on an average week I would come in two or three times a week of coffee and a bite to eat.  I have also held several short informal meetings at various Cherry Street locations with other tech and legal geeks. I moved up to Seattle from Portland almost 10 years ago and still miss the friendly Coffeee houses of Portland.  Rimsky-Korsakoffee House, Pied Cow, Anna Bannanas and Coffee Time on 21st still hold a special place in my heart.  By contrast I have always been bothered by the fast food feel of Seattle based Starbucks, SBC, Tully's and most recently Stump Town Coffee (the one on pike that replaced Aurafice is terible with bland corporate art walls & very unfriendly staff, the one by SU Law is better it is still boring but the staff are much nicer.)

Since moving to Seattle I have searched out locally owned coffee house's like Wayward Coffee to patron, until last night Cherry Street was on my favorites list.  I was even recently made the mayor of the Cherry Street Coffee House on foursquare, although my wife just stole it back. Last night I came in around 4:30 with my daughter, ordered a coco, bagel and scone.  After my daughter was done with here scone and coco she ask to borrow my phone to take pictures.  It was near 4:50 about 5 minutes before I was expecting to see Sarah, I did not see a problem.  She walked around took a few photos said hi to people including staff.  After about 3 minutes one of the staff who appeared to be in hurry to close came up to me and asked me to keep my daughter under control.  I was a bit offended, she was well with in my sight and merely being friendly she is on the extroverted side.  At that point I also realized that this was the first time a staff member at Cherry Street had spoken to me out side of ordering.

I find it quite odd that a Coffee House that promotes the comfortable atmosphere and community through things like a facebook page and a children area at one of the other locations can be so cold at this location. I have noticed that Cherry Street has expanded a lot in recent years, if you intend to move to a colder chain feel you might want to consider changing  your brand name to Cherry Street Coffee Corp.

PS: This post / email was written from a competing coffee house.

If I get a response I will post it. Until then I will be at other establishments like Wayward and Cloud City Coffee.