Browser privacy
HTTPS Everywhere
Adblock Plus / EasyList
Ghostery
NoScript (Firefox)
Chrome (Chrome)

VPNs
BTGuard (Canada)
ItsHidden (Africa)
Ipredator (Sweden)
Faceless.me (Cyprus / Netherlands)
Longer list

Internet traffic anonymizers
Tor
Tor Browser Bundle
I2P

Hard drive encryption
TrueCrypt (Windows / OSX / Linux)
File Vault (OSX)

Email/file encryption
GPGTools + GPGMail (OSX)
Enigmail (Windows / OSX / Linux)

IM encryption
Pidgen / Pidgin OTR

IM/voice encryption
Mumble
Jitsi

Phone/sms encryption
WhisperSystems
Ostel
Spore
Silent Circle

Update: There is now a site called PRISM Break that has a much more comprehensive list and will probably be kept more up to date than this one.

Many people are hoping for a new iPhone to appear, but my hopes are much simpler. I really just want two things.

1. Fix app discovery on the iphone
2. Fix iTunes

App discovery on the iPhone is horrendous. Most of the speculation around iOS7 is focused on the move from skeuomorphism to flat ui. Good design is about more than just how something looks. Good design also means functionally something works well. There are so many things that could be done with app discovery. How about telling me what apps my friends are using?

A few months back, iTunes went to 11. Reception was not kind. Although some minor updates added back in some features that were inexplicitly dropped (like the ability to update all podcasts at once), it still leaves a lot to be desired.

What do you think? Are we going to be surprised by iPhone 6 or something else all together?

A document has surfaced, which is allegedly remarks made by President Williams to faculty in response to their vote of no confidence. It can be viewed here. I cannot attest to its authenticity, so take it for what you will. (president_letter.pdf)

There is also a letter from Board of Trustee Chairman William T. Young Jr regarding this situation, which you can read here. This one seems legit. (WTY LTR to Faculty and Staff)

Inside Higher Ed has written an article specifically about the tenure dispute. Of particular interest is the comments section, in which two people, presumably my favorite two professors from school based on the usernames, argue further about the tenure incident.

This meme has been shared quite a few times. I don’t really understand the context, but it seems to resonate with many.

The most significant development has been that the faculty submitted a 35 page document outlining specific issues with President Williams to the Board of Regents and the Board of Trustees. They have also demanded he resign.

• Transy faculty to board: ‘Our institution deserves better’; seeks Williams’ resignation
• Transylvania faculty call for resignation of president Owen Williams

I’ll let everyone draw their own conclusions, my position remains the same. I just don’t have enough information from either side to be able to determine what is happening.

Here is a basic chain of events in the form of links to news stories:

• Faculty: Transylvania president has created ‘climate of distrust and demoralization’
• Transylvania faculty take ‘no confidence’ vote in president; trustees stand behind him
• Transylvania board chairman urges faculty to give president another chance
• Transy crisis hurt by defensiveness; board must exert impartial leadership

I’d love to link to some other sources, but there aren’t any others. The student newspaper is a joke. They ran a story about student demonstrations on the front page and left the filler copy in on the caption. When you miss a detail like that on the front page of your paper, it is hard to be taken seriously. Not that they have a good track record or anything.

Student newspaper incompetence aside, there hasn’t really been a lot of other information to come out. The faculty doesn’t want the original letter to be made public. The university sent out a mass email at 8pm on a Friday full of prepared PR language that basically said nothing. There is apparently a letter from full ride scholarship recipients floating around, but I haven’t seen it yet. Instead there is only this quasi-spoof from a less fortunate scholarship recipient. From the perspective of an alumnus, all of this is incredibly frustrating. As an undergraduate I was told to question the world around me a think critically about everything I encounter. Now I’m being told to just accept that everything is fine and not to worry about it.

Additional google searches do reveal some interesting information about R. Owen Williams. Although even searches by friends in graduate programs were unable to find any published academic articles, making the tenure dispute one more instance of irony in this giant clusterfuck.

First, there is this Darthmouth interview. Choice quote:

“When I left the financial world, my old boss gave me a trip to an Amish farm where you go to figure out what to do with the rest of your life. The perception of the people there was that I should be a college president. Then we started talking about how to make that happen, and it was off to the races.”

Next, there is this older Lexington Herald Leader interview done before his inauguration. Choice quote:

“We hope very much to be able to grow to something like 1,500 students…where does that number come from? We’ve just picked it out of the air.”

The closest I came to finding an academic article Williams has published uncovered this review of his book review from the original book’s author wherein he calls Williams his BFF.

While he does have a Wikipedia article (how has no one vandalized this yet?), Williams isn’t active on social media from what I could determine. The closest thing I could find is this incredibly inappropriate parody twitter account. President Williams never bothered to respond to my actual email a few weeks ago (someone in his office did send a very nice message saying he planned to get to it eventually). I didn’t bother asking him for comment on this, instead I asked the parody account. Below is our entire exchange.

Of course, there are all sorts of great photos of President R. Owen Williams online, along with a few poignant editorial cartoons.

The most recent development is a poorly worded mass email from the university asking alumni for money. I’m not sure poking fun at this entire situation in a mass email is the best idea, but good taste and appropriate responses obviously went out a window a long time ago. I’m guessing the person who put together that email is the same person that thought dressing this guy up as Dracula was a good idea.

In the end, I’m just frustrated. Enough information has come out to make the university and alumni look bad, but not enough to draw any meaningful conclusions about what is actually happening.

If anyone has any additional information, please use the comments section.

The company is called Ludovico Tech, below is a short explanation of where that name came from.

Why “Ludovico”
Stanley Kubrick’s work has had a profound effect on artists for generations. From his borderline insane attention to detail to the pioneering of one-point prospective, his influence on our own work is deep. One of his most iconic moments is from 1971’s A Clockwork Orange wherein protagonist Alex Delarge is subjected to a fictional form of therapy called the Ludovico Technique. The therapy features actor Malcolm McDowell’s eyes being forced open as he is subjected to sounds and sights and has become an indelible moment in popular culture. User engagement has certainly changed over the past four decades, to the chagrin of some. It is from this classic scene that Ludovico Tech takes its name.

If you notice any bugs, typos or grammatical errors, please let me know. I’m really proud of how it turned out, but additional sets of eyes looking for flaws is always helpful. Check out Ludovico Tech.

Here are a few of the data points that really surprised me:
• Yahoo is bigger than Facebook in the US (monthly uniques)
• Snapchat is growing at several times the pace of Instagram (photos shared per day)
• YouTube has gone from 0 to 100 hours uploaded per minute in just six years
• All forms of social are growing, except Facebook
• Americans are actually undersharing (15% vs. 24% world average, Saudi Arabia 60%)

And here are the biggest general takeaways:
• Wearables are the future (2x m/m growth in fitness devices alone)
• Mobile growth is still rapidly increasing, might even be increasing (15% of internet traffic today, will reach 30% in two years)
• It is becoming easier than ever to be an entrepreneur (further pushing all these trends, also reflective of changing labor dynamics)
• Everything seems established, but we are still early in internet innovation

• ConnectAd – ConnectAd empowers authors of user generated content (UGC) to select, control and interact with the ads around their content. I’m not sure how much I’m supposed to reveal about the platform these guys have built, but I can say this, it is very impressive. There are actually a few content changes still coming to the site, but there is enough to give you a good idea. The video on the main page is a placeholder for a really well produced one. Check out the team behind this startup, definitely one to keep an eye on. I built the entire consumer facing site along with a mobile friendly vesion. If you’re interested in getting early access to the beta, make sure you register your email.
• Chromatic Gallerie – A fully customizable women’s shoe for only $88. I worked with a small team of designers, creatives and marketing people to implement their vision for a redesign. The product is worth a look if you wear women’s shoes.
• Vetted by V – An exclusive club based in NYC. The founder actually found me based on some blog posts I’ve done about the future of social networks. If you email me I can get you access to the beta.
• Great American Home Design – An association based back home in Kansas City. They’ve been around for over 25 years, but they’ve finally made it into the future with this site. Mobile friendly as well.

I’ve got some other cool projects in various stages. The next thing to launch will probably be a redesign of my company web site. Hopefully I can wrap that up in another week or so.

We are most definitely in a Bitcoin bubble, spurred on by increasing media coverage and people wishing to strike it rich. The NY Times wrote a lengthy introduction to BitCoin that is worth checking out. Even better reading is finance blogger Felix Salmon’s post about the currency.

I’m not sure when I first became aware of Bitcoin, but on Tumblr I posted something about it last summer. If I had put $1000 into it on that day, I would have $36,000 today. Oops.

That said, viewers have so far been introduced to one hundred and sixty four different characters. About eighty percent of those have appeared in multiple episodes. Admittedly, many of those characters are no longer with us because part of the appeal of the show is that no one is safe. Even someone thought to be one the main protagonists of the series can be nonchalantly eliminated without a second thought. On the other hand, characters that seem insignificant will disappear for seasons at a time only to come back to be integral to the plot. The show has filmed across seven countries (so far) and cost an estimated $10M per episode. Some estimate that the books will eventually break ten thousand pages in total. The scope of this story is so epic it could very well take another decade to tell.

Game of Thrones takes its name from the first book in the series and centers around the political intrigue surrounding different factions vying for control of the Iron Throne. The one who sits in the Iron Throne is King and we all know it’s good to be king. The show takes place in a medieval world where more fantastical elements are slowly introduced. While it features its fair share of sex and violence, the show is really just characters sitting around talking to each other, which is the core of its genius.

As characters are wont to say, in a game of thrones you either win or you die. However, in this case it seems everyone wins. HBO took a risky bet on a property that has existed for almost fifteen years, but had not made it into mainstream popular culture. Before the show’s initial premiere, some critics deemed it un-filmable. Undeterred, HBO managed to get George RR Martin on board to consult on the show after he had held on to the television rights to the show for almost a decade. They have been rewarded with one of the most talked about shows on tv.

Fans of the series win as they are finally able to see images put to the vision in their heads. They can gloat about knowing what is going to happen already. They get to live in a world where a show like this can even exist.

Most importantly general tv audiences win. In a world where networks are encouraged to make safe, bland content that appeals to as many people as possible and relies on a laugh track to move plot along (see Big Bang Theory), Game of Thrones and other shows are showing that there is another way. Produce good quality content and people will show up. They will show up to watch, show up to buy the DVDs, show up to pirate the show in record numbers, show up to see an exhibit of props and costumes and create a line so long that your staff has to walk six blocks to tell the people in the back that there is currently a five hour wait and they might not get in before it closes. A hardcore audience is more valuable than a mass audience.

But even in a culture of binge watching, only so many people can show up. The resulting arms race has resulted in even more great shows getting green lighted. It has lead pundits to claim that tv is better than movies and proclaim that we have entered into a “Golden Age of Television.” You can’t help but wonder how much of a role the internet has played in all of this.

Arguably LOST was one of the first shows to really launch into the culture zeitgeist because of the internet. When LOST premiered, Twitter didn’t even exist. During the LOST finale Twitter was regularly seeing about 90M tweets per day (now that number is pushing 350M a day). When a show like HBO’s Girls can spawn countless in-depth thought pieces from major publications every week while only pulling in about 4M viewers per episodes, you know something has changed.

Although the finale of LOST only drew 13.5M viewers compared to the record breaking Seinfeld finale (76M viewers), that’s an indication of how our watching habits has evolved, not an indication of a lesser cultural impact of today’s tv shows. This isn’t as simple as a case of a more vocal minority outshouting the others, consuming television has dramatically changed. People watch with two screens, one of which is mobile and can broadcast to the world. Even people who aren’t following a show are dragged into a larger cultural discussion and more than ever before.

The best part of all of this is that it isn’t about to end any time soon. With companies like Netflix and Amazon getting into content production, the existing content arms race, and an increasingly connected world our golden age of television isn’t going anywhere. We are going to be watching and talking for a long time to come.