Ben Werdmuller helps leaders at newsrooms, non-profits, and mission-driven organizations to navigate their biggest technology challenges.
* Firefox (In)Security Update Dynamics Exposed The number of users with the latest patch on Opera and Firefox never exceeded 46% and 80% respectively. (80% seems pretty damn good to me, but does leave an awful lot of people exposed.) Interestingly, Internet Explorer couldn't be used for this
There are a couple of jobs advertised on Elgg.com - if you're an excellent PHP developer, Linux system administrator or business development manager with experience in social media, we'd like to hear from you.
Photography
I've got about twenty topics for blog posts that I intend to write at some point, but there's a lot going on, and there hasn't quite been the time. More prolific posting will resume soon. In the meantime, I've engaged in one
Web
1. Play it forward with Akoha Akoha is a game. You buy a deck of cards, each of which contains a simple, altruistic, real-world mission: buy someone a cup of coffee, and so on. Once you perform the mission, you pass the card on, and the recipient registers it on
General
Vero nails what I've thought for a long time: Since I moved from Canada, I have seen too many Brits or Europeans be very sheepish about self-promotion. American sales people are reputed to be bubbly, brash and bigger than life, speaking louder than anyone else in the room
Media reviews
Milk (Directed by Gus Van Sant) After the Open Stack meeting at the Digg offices the other week, I turned down a kind offer from Tony to allow me to invade his dinner date and walked back to my hotel. The route took me up Sixteenth St, through the Mission,
General
This lecture by Obama transition team member Greg Simon is worth a watch (click the Flash icon in the top right). While ostensibly about advocacy strategies for lobbyists, the fundamentals of what he talks about are applicable to marketing of ideas much more generally - commercial marketing, creative writing, and
General
A very happy new year to everyone reading this (assuming you follow the Gregorian calendar, obviously). One of my new year's resolutions, alongside the annual stalwarts like "lose weight", "eat better" and "go to bed before midnight once in a while", is
General
If these products existed, they'd make it onto my Christmas list for me and my loved ones: The open ebook reader * Electronic paper screen * A DRM-free format (in a perfect world) or at the very least a format that allows borrowing (from libraries and friends), lending and passing
Web
The Open Stack is a term coined by Joseph Smarr to represent the core set of open technologies that web application developers are converging on: I spent Friday evening at the Digg offices in San Francisco for the first ever Open Stack meetup. Organised by David Recordon (who continues to
General
I just finished watching Pirate Radio USA, a great little independent documentary about pirate radio and free speech over the airwaves. It makes one major, fundamental point: although freedom of expression is guaranteed by the US constitution (and by similar laws in many countries worldwide), because the medium of that
Elgg
The following post is a fleshed-out version of my notes for my talk at the Elgg International Conference on Monday, December 1st, wherein I discussed my attitude to social networks and how they should be built. My slides are available in Powerpoint or OpenDocument Presentation format. Let's take