Ben Werdmuller helps leaders at newsrooms, non-profits, and mission-driven organizations to navigate their biggest technology challenges.
A friend asked me to recommend some places to visit in Edinburgh — not the big stuff (Arthur’s Seat, for example), but the small haunts and little delights that I used to love. I lived there for a long time, and think back on the city with a lot of
I’d love to read about the early days of the Star Trek replicator. It’s a sometimes-useful macguffin in the context of Star Trek: The Next Generation and later shows: a device that can recreate virtually any object on command, from food to electronics. By the time ST:TNG
Nonfiction
Just fabulous. Maybe it's because his family history is not a world of different from mine, or maybe it's because his journey and interests feels intertwined with my own, but I wept openly as I read the final third of this. It's beautiful and
NotableLinks
"In interviews with The 19th, a dozen Black fans of country discussed reconciling their love for the music with its racist, misogynistic past, as well as the pervasive image of White men who continue to dominate the mainstream industry. They are hopeful that Beyoncé and “Cowboy Carter,” released Friday,
NotableLinks
"By 2013, Netflix had begun entering into a series of “Facebook Extended API” agreements, including a so-called “Inbox API” agreement that allowed Netflix programmatic access to Facebook’s users' private message inboxes, in exchange for which Netflix would “provide to FB a written report every two weeks that
NotableLinks
"You’ve also got to look at the long-term, at the end of the BBC, which somehow is surely undoubtedly on its way in some shape or form. What, is Doctor Who going to die then?" This is a pretty clear-eyed quote from Russell T Davies. And there&
I come from families of forced migrants. On one side, my father’s earliest memories are of the unspeakable horrors he endured in a concentration camp in Indonesia. On the other, my great grandfather’s Ukrainian village was burned down by the White Army as part of a vicious pogrom.
A writing-focused Homebrew Website Club is completely up my street and I'm excited to attend!
Yesterday I published a fediverse-aware / indieweb-aware version of a "share to..." / AddThis-like tool. It allows you to easily add a “share to ..” button to your website that works with as many social platforms as possible, and attempts to use whatever share intent a platform might have available. One
You know all those “share to Facebook” / “share to Twitter” links you see all over peoples’ websites? They’re all out of date. Social media has evolved over the last year, yet nobody has “share to” links for Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, etc. There have been a few attempts to create
NotableLinks
"This is a stranger story of how some small-time philosophers captured some big-bet billionaires, who in turn captured the philosophers—and how the two groups spun themselves into an opulent vortex that has sucked up thousands of bright minds worldwide." This jumped out to me: "If you’
NotableLinks
"All of this has led to some pretty serious soul-searching among America’s journalists. Is the future email newsletters? Will podcasts save the news? Does everything need to be short vertical video now? Well, here’s a question that it might be time to start asking: What about LinkedIn?