Miro - open internet tv

I use the upcoming release of version 1.0 of the Miro Media player (previously know as Democracy Player) as an occasion to report about this cool project. There are many video platforms in the web but most of them are silos based on proprietary formats. The Participatory Culture Foundation wants to solve that:

Miro is designed to eliminate gatekeepers. Viewers can connect to any video provider that they want. This frees creators to use the video hosting setup that works best for them - whether they choose to self-publish or use a service. It's the kind of openness that the internet allows and that we should all demand. [...]

Our goal isn't to dominate online video - our goal is to push the industry towards openness.

The project is based on three principles of openness: Open Access (not the meaning of scientific publishing), Open Standards and Open Source.
The Miro Guide contains already a lot of interesting channels!

In short: Rocks!

Concerns regarding OpenSocial

I guess you didn't miss the big hype about Googles OpenSocial (link doesn't work so far), which is a set of open API standards for social networks. I like Google for using open standards and working with and not against the community. But regarding this opening of social networks (same for FOAF/XFN) I have strong concerns as we lose too much control about the data and our privacy. Ralf Bendrath and others precisely describe the problems.

The Internet is challenging our current understanding of privacy/identity/society. Maybe we just have to accept this change and must adept our attitudes. For me personally it is not a problem that a potential employer can find out that I have fun in my spare time (as long as the information is correct ... which I cannot control) for other it might be different. But the potential abuse of this easy-to-harvest data by governmental agencies makes me refuse to stop questioning the legitimation of these technologies.

Puffy is back - OpenBSD 4.2

Who needs leopards if you can have fish? The OpenBSD project proudly presents OpenBSD 4.2 - the operating system for the practical paranoid. As usually Federico Biancuzzi has interviewed some of the developers about the current release. The interview will be is online at O'Reilly's ONLamp.

Bio::Blogs #16 - Halloween edition

Check out the 16th edition of Bio::Blogs hosted by Pawel.