My good friend Eric Smith, whose successes in publishing and audience have kept me motivated, wrote some very flattering things in celebration of his own birthday, mostly about how we love to faux battle by way of our respective geek blogs Geekadelphia and Technically Philly. An excerpt: … Without realizing it, Chris had finally given [...]

The Founding Fathers would have loved and leveraged social media but been fearful of its future implications on privacy and speech issues, said a host of experts at an event on the impact of new communications patterns. Earlier this month, I moderated a panel on the subject at the National Constitution Center featuring Jennifer Preston, [...]

I’m moderating a panel on privacy, security and democracy concerns surrounding the social web at the National Constitution Center in Old City, Philadelphia next Thursday. You should come. More details here. It costs $10 for non-members. Number of Views:257

A year ago, I felt scattered. I wanted to focus in 2011, and I think, as a full-time employee of my own business with clearer goals and objectives, I have accomplished that. As detailed below, I feel very proud of the success I had in meeting my professional resolutions for the year. So, it’s important [...]

As I’ve done in passed years, as this year comes to a close, I like to dive a bit into the work I’ve done here in the last 12 months to gauge what was popular and what I was most proud of. Below, find my 10 best read posts of the year and a few [...]

Story Shuffle 10 happened this month and the theme of Parents offered a handful of interesting stories. See them all here or listen to mine below. Listen here. Number of Views:357

Metropolitan boosters — men employed in the late 19th century to encourage Americans to move west to burgeoning cities — have been of interest to me lately. I’m interested in how that concept can be brought to modern concepts or urban renewal. I came across a portion of an essay in ‘A companion to the [...]

My first smartphone arrived at my door yesterday. Considering it’s late 2011 and I report for a technology news site, you can be sure that I got a lot of crap for it being only my first. Of course, as I explained, in 2009 I was a struggling freelance writer so I had trouble enough [...]

Near the close of the OpenDataRace, a popularity contest for data sets that affect nonprofit missions, I was asked onto NewsWorks Tonight, the daily, local drive-time news radio show from NPR affiliate WHYY. We recorded the segment last week and it aired Monday. Read more about the contest here, see the data sets and register [...]

How jealousy and other bad qualities can be shaped to help motivate you to reach your goals was the focus of the story I told at Story Shuffle 9, with a jealousy theme. Listen to my story below or find it here, along with the other stories. LISTEN HERE. Number of Views:294