War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery.
Ignorance is Strength.
-from 1984 by George Orwell

While browsing reddit.com this morning, I came across a link to an op-ed piece in the Washington Times by none other than internet expert John McCain. In the article, John makes a legitimate argument that the internet must remain free and open, that internet service providers must not be allowed to shape access to content and restrict bandwidth based on the destination of that bandwidth.

In other words, John McCain supports Net Neutrality. John goes on to state that he does not support Net Neutrality.

Confused?

While it seams confusing, as McCain is in essence contradicting himself, if you apply the concept of doublespeak, it all makes a lot more sense.

What is Doublespeak?

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines doublespeak as:

language that appears to be earnest and meaningful but in fact is a mixture of sense and nonsense

So if it seams like McCain’s article is illogical gibberish, well it is and was intended to be so.

Still confused?

Yeah, well that’s what happens when a politician speaks in doublespeak instead of speaking in plain language. McCain is utilizing the argument of Net Neutrality supporters to rail against Net Neutrality.

Let’s use an analogy.

You are a supporter of the New York Yankees baseball team. You believe they are the best baseball team of all time and to support that argument state:

The New York Yankees are the best baseball team of all time because they’ve won twenty-six World Series.

I am not a supporter of the New York Yankees. While I realize your argument is completely valid, accurate, and truthful, I will state the following as evidence that the New York Yankees are not the best baseball team of all-time:

The New York Yankees are the worst baseball team of all time because they’ve won twenty-six World Series.

Friends, this type of illogical statement is exactly what John McCain is using to scare the American public into killing the internet.

Did you know John McCain does not use a computer?

While, I don’t care that he does not use a computer, I find it absurd that he has the gall to speak about the internet, as he literally has no clue.

Another analogy.

I have never used a motorcycle.

John McCain practices Pinocchio Politics

Does that make any sense? Of course not. Does John McCain make any sense in promoting a free and open internet by railing against a rule that would force a free and open internet?

No.

Why does John McCain say these things?

• Because he’s the number one politician when ranked by amount of contributions from telecommunications companies.
• Because he has nothing to lose.
• Because he very well may have crossed that threshold of mental competence that old human beings tend to cross.
• Because he wants big business, big corporations to succeed and does not care what happens to individuals and small businesses.
• Because John McCain is corrupt.

In summary:

1. John McCain claims to support a free and open internet.
2. Net Neutrality requires Internet Service Providers maintain a free and open internet.
3. John McCain does not support Net Neutrality.

Still confused? That’s OK. The intent of John McCain is to confuse you. Basically, John McCain is lying and you should never trust anything he says involving technology because plainly put, he has no knowledge of it.

Here’s what you need to know, if you want the internet to remain free and open, and require that Internet Service Providers be unable to discriminate based on content, support Net Neutrality. Otherwise, if you want the internet to look this way, log off and don’t come back.

John McCain Photo credit: Dan “Soggydan” Bennett | CC 2.0
Pinocchio Politics Photo credit: Rachel Kramer Bussel | CC 2.0

Anyway, after balancing out the difficulties of learning about Astrophysics/Astronomy, combined with my false assumption that I’d be stuck in a desert somewhere with a small team staring out at the night sky, I decided to major in something a bit more practical but that I still enjoyed (Business, though looking back, I should’ve double-majored in Economics and Computer Science). But I still remained fascinated by space and spent many hours reading books and admiring high-resolution shots from the various telescopes and and other devices we send out in space.

Mars, baby, Mars

While watching Cosmos, which takes us on a journey through the known universe, from its very edge, back through to our galaxy, our solar system, and finally our planet, it struck me how little we’ve travelled in the past 40 years since the first moon landing. To many, it seems like we went to the moon and then flatlined in terms of space exploration progress.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I know we’ve made tons of advances in this area over the past 40 years, but in the grand scheme of the universe, it’s really difficult to think we’ve made it very far. Currently, we have capabilities to go to Mars. There are an immense amount of variables, for instance we don’t know the effect of such a voyage on the human body, or even if we could survive outside the zone around the Earth.

Ensuring that any astronauts who make the trip have enough air, food, and water to get to Mars and back is not a simple hurdle. The logistics of such an adventure are overwhelming to any one person. But, today we have all the capabilities to plan out and solve these logistics. We may fail, massively, but not trying is an even bigger failure.

Such a mission would likely require global collaboration, as the costs, time, energy, and man-power required to run the trip are likely too high a burden for any one country to take on. But imagine if it happens. It would spark a new era of humanity, one where we work together to achieve an awe-inspiring goal, the first human on Mars.

Goosebumps ran up and down my arms just thinking about it.

The technological and logistical progress we’d make by going on such a trip would alone be worth the cost. The really big hurdle to cross is the danger to the human astronauts who make the trip. This danger is not to be taken lightly, but neither should it be seen as an impossible impediment. I can’t speak for any potential astronauts who’d make the trip, but going off my gut feeling, if I had gone along a career path that would make me a viable candidate for a trip to Mars, I would be more than willing to put my life on the line. I’m sure there’s a talented crew who’d say the same, the value and progress of going to Mars would outweigh the real possibility of not coming back.

What about you? If you were an astronaut (or are one), would you be willing to risk it all to go to Mars?

The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean

The first episode of the space series Cosmos, narrated by the Carl Sagan. Absolutely fascinating and a must-watch.

Thanks to the Hubble telescope for the awe-inspiring photo of Mars.

For that reason, here’s a call to action to connect with me on Google Reader so I can read and share your shared items too!

While you’re at it, check out my Google profile to see where else I’m active online and let’s connect there too!

Looking forward to seeing what all of you read and where you’re active online.

While talking with Stuart Foster of The Lost Jacket yesterday, Stu admitted a bit of concern that no one will show up to his discussion as he’s talking opposite C.C. Chapman and Marta Kagan. Well, isn’t the whole point of an unconference, especially one revolving around new media, to hear new ideas from fresh faces?

Further, didn’t we all get into social media because it leveled the playing field and allowed everyone and anyone to have a voice? I know that’s a big part of why I love new media, it allows good ideas to rise to the surface no matter where they come from. So at PodCamp Boston 4, I do want to hear from the “A-team” but I also want to hear from the under-voiced. I want to hear from the new. I want to hear from those whom I haven’t heard from yet. I want to hear from the up and comers, the revolutionaries, the diamonds in the rough. This is your chance to shine. Your ideas are just as if not more valuable than the stars of the show.

Here’s three topics I’d love to talk about at PodCamp. Anyone and everyone is welcome, whether you’re a big superstar of the social media scene, a newcomer, or somewhere in between. Tweet at me or give me a call, 617 418 1055 if you’d like to meet up and discuss any of these topics.

How to Use Social Media to Implement Positive Hyper-Local Change

To me, social media is wicked grassroots. All it really takes is an internet connection and a computer, and even those two requirements can be obtained free of charge with a library card.

So, anyone and everyone can hop online and let their voices be heard. How can we leverage the never before seen freedom of voice we all now possess to push positive change on our streets, neighborhoods and cities?

Does Content Want to Be Free and If So How Can Content Producers be Paid?

I’m betting a 100% of the people at PodCamp produce, or at least consume, lots of content for free. And I’m betting a lot of those people would concur that when content is free (as in beer and as in speech, but mostly as in speech), it’s quality is better than paid, restricted content. The power of content comes not only from the content, but also its ability to be shared, analyzed and improved upon.

But, if the ideal mode of content is free, how can we ensure content producers are paid for their time so that they continue to pump out value? As newspapers and other media outlets turn to paid content, this issue will grow in importance. For our communities, free content is ideal but how can we balance that with the need for content producers to eat?

Does Social Media Have a Cult of Personality?

Bringing it all back, a big feature of new media is its ability to give anyone and everyone a powerful voice that can challenge and even supersede the mainstream media. But, as social media has taken off, have we become guilty of replacing one big voice with another? Is that OK, because the new big voices are more open to discussion, or have we fallen back on some of the old traps of old media?

Are big ideas drowned out by big names, and if so what can we do to reverse the course? Are we devaluing our medium by creating new mainstream voices? Or are we showing its true power to allow anyone to make their voices heard across the globe?

Personally, I think it’s a mix of the two. Some voices have gotten mainstream big and might be drowning out others, but at the same time those same voices have propelled the medium into the limelight. I think we need big names to act as leaders and representatives for the medium but also have to be constantly looking for big ideas from the voices that might not (yet) have a huge audience. We should look at the ideas that come out of new media, not necessarily where they come from.

These three topics revolve around things I find interesting. They’re mostly off the cuff ideas, some of which may lack good discussion points but hey, it’s still a bit early in the morning and I’m mostly trying to get the creative juices flowing. If any of the above talking points strike you as interesting or valuable, hit me up and let’s talk! Above all, my biggest goal for PodCamp Boston 4 is to meet and talk with some new people, connect with some online friends in-person and re-connect with others, no matter the context of those talks. Looking forward to some interesting discussions over the next two days!

Twitter: @AdamPieniazek
Google Voice: 617 418 1055

Twitter is Down: Denial of Service

Twitter joins 4chan, reddit, and the Gawker Media sites as the latest to fall victim to a Denial of Service attacks. What is going on lately with these DDoS attacks? A few weeks back, a large number of internet users experienced a web-wide slowdown due to a DDoS attack against some of the biggest U.S. sites, and since then it seems there’s been a new attack every few days against a huge site. With Twitter going down today, web geeks panicked as they had little recourse to send out messages about ___ being down.

As of 1 PM, Twitter is back up and functioning normally, but will they be attacked again? Who will be the next target? Is one group responsible for all these recent attacks or is there a copycat effect going on?

Facebook Struggles as Twitter Falls

Of course, the first place the majority of Twitter users would flock to would be Facebook. Unfortuanetly for them, Facebook too was having network issues today. As of 1 PM, I’m receiving errors at Facebook.

Facebook's Network Struggles

Die IE6, Die IE6, Die

CNN reports that the movement to kill off Internet Explorer 6 has been renewed with vigor. They’re not the first to break the story but are the biggest mainstream media outlet to report on it. Back in July a few major web companies begin announcing they are dropping full support for Internet Explorer 6. Mashable reported on the trend as well as listing a plethora of reasons why IE6 should be killed off and forgotten. Since then, the kill IE6 movement has been snowballing, reaching new heights today with the CNN article.

But, at the end of the day, most IE6 users are stuck in the antiquated browser because the corporation they work for has too many applications developed in-house that break outside of IE6. I don’t think anyone out there is willfully using IE6 because they think it rocks. Rather, they’re stuck using it.

Warning: Internet Explorer 6 is in your PC!

Still, going back to my corporate days I remember that it wasn’t exactly difficult to get Firefox running alongside IE6. Even Microsoft wants users to upgrade from IE6, but since it’s not easy to get fully working, fully supported versions of IE6 and IE8 running on the same desktop (I have such a setup for testing purposes, but it isn’t bug-free) we’ll likely continue to see corporate IT departments holding back the web by keeping IE6 on the corporate desktop.

I’m all for this movement, but it’ll take more than Youtube, Digg or Facebook not working properly to kill off IE6. It’ll take a truly huge site that corporate users must have access to, something like Google. Until then, web developers have three choices, ignore IE6 users, create a skeleton version of the site for IE6, or handicap their overall site by ensuring it works in all browsers by default.

Paying for Online News

Last but not least, Rupert Murdoch announced that he’ll be switching all News Corp. web-sites over to a paid format. The key quote from the announcement:

“Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalizing its ability to produce good reporting,”

Does that mean the Fox News web-site will remain free?

Seriously, paying for news isn’t a terrible thing. It’s unlikely to work, but if the quality is truly there, meaning news is reported pro-actively instead of re-actively, and has investigation behind it and doesn’t simply regurgitate press releases, then people will pay. How many is the real question.

Thanks to the Rich Man for the photo of the four horses.

With the rush of new Google Voice users (I’ve been using it for a while, since I got moved over to Google Voice when Google bought GrandCentral), I thought I’d share a quick video Google released letting users know that you can use Google Voice from your mobile device.

Currently, you can only download the Google Voice mobile application if you’re on a Blackberry or Android powered device. A third party developer has released an iPhone app called GV Mobile or, iPhone and non-Blackberry/Android users can just browse over to the Google Voice web-site and access the features there.

This way, you can share your Google Voice number with everyone, and also call them from the number wherever you are. If you haven’t yet, sign up for Google Voice. It’s free!

Oh, and if you’d like to call me, just scroll down to the bottom of this page and you’ll see a Google Voice call me widget. Talk to you soon!

That means all your columns from your home computer will also appear on your iPhone. The syncing is done in the background to reduce the processing strain.

Growl Notifications

Upon opening up Tweetdeck, you’re greeted with a few notifications in the top left of the screen, showing you the tally of latest tweets.

Welcome Screen for TweetDeck iPhone

You can access this tally via the updates menu at anytime in the bottom left corner.

Updates menu in Tweetdeck

Columns

You can switch columns via the left and right arrows in the top left and bottom right corners (respectively).

Switch columns from within a column.

Column view lets you flip through columns similar to flipping through windows in Safari.

Use column view to switch columns.

You can add a new column in the iPhone app and sync it to the cloud server to have the same column on your desktop. Create a user group, search, all friends, mentions, or direct messages column.

Add new columns and sync with the cloud

Settings

Both versions of Tweetdeck now come with full support for multiple accounts. It’s a very welcome feature and is implemented via adding more columns. Tweetdeck now supports unlimited columns, allowing you to add tons of accounts and scroll or flick through them.

Multiple accounts!

There’s a few cool general settings in the iPhone app. Settings include auto-correct, growl, choice of twitpic or yfrog, show real names, and option to shake to refresh the screen.

Tweetdeck general settings

Quick Follow

At the bottom of the Tweetdeck screen, there’s a row of icons. They include updates, refresh, add column, settings, and more. The more button pops up a screen with two options, sync columns and quick follow. Clicking sync will check the cloud for updates and allow you to then sync your columns.

Quick follow pops up a screen allowing you to type in someone’s Twitter handle and follow them with a quick click.

Quick Follow (handy for tweetups)

Tweeting and Bios

Creating a new tweet takes you to a relatively standard window allowing you to type up your tweet. There’s options to shorten a link, upload a photo, and update your profile location. You can also send out a map link to your current location. Cool tool for sending out directions.

Update bio location and add a map link (works on non-GPS too)

You can also look at individual tweets, which gives you options to reply, retweet, send a DM, favorite it or email the tweet.

The individual tweet window

From the individual tweet screen, you can also check out the user’s bio. Mostly standard stuff, but if you scroll to the bottom there’s an option to block/unblock the user and add them to a group.

The bio page, add to groups, follow, @, DM, or block

So far, I’m really digging the new Tweetdeck application for the iPhone. Up until today, I’ve been a staunch user of Tweetie and didn’t even bother looking for anything else. Tweetdeck has crashed a few times on my iPhone, but that’s to be expected for a first release (which is also free).

It might be due to my original (non 3G) iPhone or a few bugs they need to work out. But it’s happened rarely enough to not be a huge detriment so far. Aside from the couple of crashes, I love everything about this app. It’s a really intuitive interface for the iPhone and the columns translate really well to the smaller touch screen.

Read more about the new Tweetdeck desktop and iPhone applications on their blog. If you’re all set and ready to try out the update and new app, install Tweetdeck for the iPhone or Tweetdeck for the desktop.

Have given the new Tweetdecks a try? What do you think?

I also grabbed a few vanity URLs for some clients and friends. In the end, it doesn’t really affect me much since I use fbadam.com as a short, easy to remember and spell way to tell people about my facebook profile. Still, it’s nice to clean up my facebook URL and get rid of all that profile=”lotsofrandomnumbers” mess.

Did you get the facebook vanity URL you were hoping for?

If you haven’t yet picked out a username, hop on over and give it a try. Quick note, the period does not matter and your address will resolve with or without a period. AKA, facebook.com/adampieniazek and facebook.com/adam.pieniazek and facebook.com/a.d.a.m.p.i.e.n.i.a.z.e.k all take you to my facebook profile.

in the mill building right next to the river, look for the Museum under the smokestack

Love it! We eventually figured out that one girl in our randomly assembled group at the parking lot entrance actually knew where it was, so we followed her lead. Once we got inside, we were all awed by the cool industrial stuff in the museum, from 100 year old bicycles to old engines, watches, and a very old school and very cool fire pump that may or may not have been pulled by horses (note to self, do not touch anything).

As for the actual networking and product showcase event, well it rocked! Met great people and witnessed some very innovative technology products. Without further ado, here’s the three innovative products I enjoyed the most.

Top Three Innovative Products at Mass Innovation 3

In no particular order, here’s three products that I found useful, innovative, or just plain cool and slick.

1. Chatterbox

I met one of the members of Chatterbox at Tuesday’s tweetup event, where I heard a little about Chatterbox, but seeing the software live in person left me even more impressed.

Chatterbox [@ChatterBoxApp] is a “collaboration platform for social media teams and power users”. In essence, it’s a piece of software that allows you to pull information from your social networks, organize it, delegate it and share it easily. Todd Clayton from Chatterbox was nice enough to hook me up with a beta invite so look out for some hands on analysis in the coming days.

2. World Computing Grid

Remember SETI@home? It’s the largest distributed computing system in the world. SETI stands for the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence and a few years back I used to run their SETI@home program all the time in the hopes of helping them find some aliens (what self-admitted geek wouldn’t help with that cause?).

Well, IBM’s World Community Grid is also a distributed computing system (meaning it splits up computer tasks and sends them out to computers around the world to crunch the data, then sends it back to the home server). They differ from SETI@home because the WCG is really a platform that allows researchers and organizations to implement a distributed computing system into their projects.

Any research project can submit a request to get free help from IBM setting up a grid to crunch their project’s data (submit a research proposal here). It’s a really cool system and is extremely customizable. You can set it to run in the background and utilize a certain percentage of CPU power, or simply run when your computer is idle as a screensaver.

The list of research projects utilizing the World Community Grid includes:

• Help Conquer Cancer
• The Clean Energy Project
• Nutritious Rice for the World
• FightAIDS@Home
• and more research projects
3. Canson PaperShow

The product that was most likely to make peoples jaws drop. In essence, it’s a piece of paper that you can draw on and it instantly gets transferred to your computer screen. It’s designed for digital flipcharts and interactive presentations.

From the piece of paper, you can select colors, brush styles, and other editing tools. Yes, from the piece of paper. Canson Papershow has tiny microscopic points embedded into each piece of paper. Inside the pen, there is a tiny camera which transmits data via bluetooth to a USB dongle connected to your computer. It’s really quite seamless and needs to be seen to be truly appreciated.

To that end, here’s two videos showing Papershow in action:

Canson Papershow is available now from Staples for $199.99.

Thanks to all the presenters at Mass Innovation Nights #3 for a great time. All your products were innovative and cool, these three just caught my eye and fit my interests the most. And thanks to Bobbie Carlton [@bobbiec] for putting everything together!

Sign up for #MIN4, held on July 8th today. And here’s the wrap-up post from the Mass Innovations blog.