The Agitationist

Long Time Gone

Agitationist — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 01:32:55 +0000

Howdy friends and neighbors. My vacation from blogging is finally over. Why the absence? Fitting this blog into my time was daunting, especially for a perfectionist like me. I was spending 2 hours writing and re-writing posts other people would have finished in 20 minutes. From here on out,...

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Swedish Pirate Trial Now Officially a Circus

Agitationist — Fri, 22 May 2009 16:37:35 +0000

As discussed previously, the trial of the founders of popular torrent site The Pirate Bay was already a circus to begin with - both inside and outside the courtroom. Nonetheless, the Pirates were convicted on April 17th, but the absurdity continued when the Swedish press reported that the judge in...

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Get Off My Lawn! (Again)

Agitationist — Mon, 18 May 2009 17:07:11 +0000

…or, Another Post About Twitter. This time, courtesy of Mediapost.com’s Will Akerlof, who says it very nicely: Twits: Why Twitter Won’t Change Marketing

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Mashable: Off the Deep End

Agitationist — Fri, 15 May 2009 15:48:04 +0000

I wrote in January that the popular web news site mashable.com was obsessed with Twitter. Since I wrote that piece, they’ve only gotten crazier, though at least they’ve become a bit more honest about it by putting not one but two huge “Twitter” buttons at the top of their...

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Twitter Flu

Agitationist — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:59:41 +0000

Since I slag off Twitter regularly, I’ll let others do the talking today: Swine flu: Twitter’s power to misinform from foreignpolicy.com How False Rumors Can Cost Lives from canonical.org And, because I can’t resist, a few (actual) recent Twitter updates. Names are...

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The Explosive Growth of Twitter

Agitationist — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:30:52 +0000

Upon the 8000th time hearing that phrase, I think it’s time to put that into perspective: That’s still a lot of people, no doubt. But it’s still a baby learning to crawl when compared to facebook, or even myspace. Hell, it’s not even as popular as friendster, which is...

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Pirate Bay Judge: Conflict of Interest

Agitationist — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:47:33 +0000

Possible good news for the Swedish Pirates - according to a Swedish radio new program (link in Swedish, sorry), the judge in the case, Tomas Norström, has been a member of several of the same copyright protection organizations as some of the main entertainment industry representatives. These...

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Google is the New Pirate Bay

Agitationist — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:21:18 +0000

In my last post, regarding the conviction of four Swedes for maintaining a website which indexed torrents, I tossed off the comment that Google could be accused of the same thing. Three days later, Mashable backs me up with this: One of the claims from those defending and supporting The Pirate Bay...

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Swedish Pirates Convicted

Agitationist — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:42:44 +0000

As we covered March 5th in “Swedish Pirates on Trial“, today was verdict day for The Pirate Bay Four. The four defendants were accused of “assisting in making copyright content available”. This morning the verdict was returned. Peter Sunde: Guilty Fredrik Neij:...

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Facebook Makes You Stupid, Twitter Makes You Dead Inside

Agitationist — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:45:15 +0000

…or so say researchers, according to this article from The Register: Fresh research from America confirms that online social networks are in fact playthings of the devil. Ohio profs say that use of Facebook leads to lower college grades, and others in California have found that Twitter...

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