Archive for category Interwebs

Help stop SOPA/PIPA

Posted by Matt in Interwebs, Personal, Professional on January 17, 2012

My WordPress Site is going dark, on Jan 18th (tomorrow), in protest of Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA).

I’m following the lead that many people and companies are setting. If you haven’t heard about it yet, look into SOPA and PIPA. These are very bad bills that may come our way and may stifle creativity and free speech on the internet. This is pretty serious and all sorts of sites are blacking out their sits in protest. If you have a site, please consider doing the same thing so that the message is loud and clear. Speak up for free speech and let the government know that you don’t agree with the actions they’re taking.

I understand that combating piracy is a huge ordeal and is very costly, but these bills will globally sacrifice ingenuity and creativity and will cause more damage than what the makers of this bill have anticipated. I agree that fighting piracy is a good thing, but taking measures such as SOPA and PIPA are going about it all the wrong way.

If you run a WordPress site, please consider using a black out plugin. I’ve decided to go with Go Dark since it has the feature of setting a date and time when to start the black out as well as putting your own message on the site.

Here’s reasons why SOPA and PIPA are bad:

Note: Please don’t just black out your site.  Do it the right way.  Read this article for further details so that when the black out is over, you’re not penalized for doing so by the major search engines like Google and Yahoo!

Here is a great video explaining what these bills are about and what sort of trouble we’re in for if these pass in the house and senate.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

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Why should I use Google+ vs any other social networking site?

Posted by Matt in Interwebs, Personal on August 23, 2011

Pete Cashmore wrote up his top “10 things [Google+] does better“.  I recently posed the question on Google+ and one of my friends, Marc B., replied with this article.  I’ve had some time to use Google+ since I posed this question, and I will agree that Google+ is better on many fronts, but I never really saw a value in using Facebook because I’m a hermit.  Seriously though, I don’t like sharing a lot of information about myself mainly due to paranoia.  I don’t want freaks profiling me, and I think one of the reasons I think this way is because my job requires/recommends (gray area) I don’t share too much for this very reason.  So with me not seeing much value in Facebook, I sort of feel the same way about Google+.  I read this article hoping it would provide more “Ah-HA!” moments, but sadly I already knew the 10 things.  Don’t get me wrong, they are all valid reasons, and pretty good one’s to switch over to Google+ from any other social networking site, and I haven’t taken the time yet, but I plan on getting rid of all my FB information accept for a note indicating I’ve jumped ship to Google+ and how to reach me.

So not providing any more information, but reaffirming the reasons, or “things” as Pete put it, I still may get more involved in the social networking platform Google has developed.  Maker knows, I spend a ton of time on my computer at work and at home so I should be more willing to use it, but the maker also knows I spend a majority of my time reading about topics I’m interested in, attending school, playing games, or doing the many other activities on my computer.  So adding arbitrary information on a social networking site is the last thing on my mind.

Enough of my rambling, check out the review and you decide if it’s worth using.   http://goo.gl/W37aU

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