Will the future feel object-free, and placeless? If so, won’t we not know it when we’re there?

Joho liveblogs Bruce Sterling at reboot: “For people of your generation, objects are print-outs. Their frozen social relationships. Think of them in terms of hours of time, and volumes of space”

Zero History references a book-in-progress by William Gibson.

Opera releases Unite, and analysts rain down with run downs.

http://blogs.ft.com/techblog/2009/06/why-a-centralised-web-is-here-to-stay/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jun/17/opera-unite
http://www.inquisitr.com/26360/oh-duncan-if-opera-unite-is-the-future-then-were-going-back-in-time/

And so on.

So it’s been done before: Microsoft Live Sync, and IRC fserve
And it’s not secure enough for some things, but is it secure enough?
Blah, blah, blah.

Ignore the chatter. The back story is this…
Opera Unite makes personal file sharing into a browser setting, instead of a mile-long process. It means I can share without uploads, and I can host without dyndns. These are milestones indeed, if for no other reason than because it’s so simple your mom can use it.

http://www.ustream.tv/luckyyoufilms

Charlie Miller hacks browsers, and I suppose other web techs, but this little tidbit from our title shows a bit of the future. He works for Independent Security Evaluators, and in this ZDNet articles points the way forward for exploitists.

I have a new campaign. It’s called NO MORE FREE BUGS. Vulnerabilities have a market value so it makes no sense to work hard to find a bug, write an exploit and then give it away. Apple pays people to do the same job, so we know there’s value to this work. No more free bugs.

And this note:

I actually found this bug before last year’s Pwn2Own but, at the time, it was harder to exploit. I came to CanSecWest last year with two bugs but only one exploit. Last year, you could only win once so I saved the second bug.

We always knew hackers were smart, but Charlie proves they are also business savvy. Cheers to you Mr. Miller for turning the tables ever so slightly. You may piss off the elite hackerati, but I endorse your entrepenural spirit.

I first saw The Avett Brothers with my brother Kevin in Winston-Salem at an outdoor concert back in 2006. Tonight at 11:59 EDT they hit the stage at SXSW (listen live / archive). For those web and music jocks not yet exposed to The Avett’s I can think of no better statement for what you will experience (actually I wacked the title from NPR, but who’s counting).

Video here is from the Winston show courtesy YouTuber twicetreasured who ironically seems to also have a Chris Cook thing, a band I saw last night in Belmont and who’s playing the world famous Double Door Inn in Charlotte this Sunday, March 22, 2009. Go figure that synergy.

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv5FFtU9N5k

Clay Shirky has a words for the newspaper industry, article.

Some select quotes:

When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem.

When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution… They are demanding to be lied to.

When we shift our attention from ’save newspapers’ to ’save society’, the imperative changes from ‘preserve the current institutions’ to ‘do whatever works.’ And what works today isn’t the same as what used to work.

My money is on the OhMyNews.com citizen reporters model for local - not so sure about national, and bureau coverage but one has to think subsidized amateurs plays a role across the entire content spectrum.

Welcome to greenhorn journalism.

In January at the Citi media conference Barry Diller announced (registration required) that footrolls were not the way forward for (Internet) video advertising. Maybe John Moore with Interpublic Group’s Mullen was able to talk some sense into the Interactive Wizard. Is it just me, or isn’t that a footroll ad for Dillers Ask.com?

Looks Microsoft finally made their way through the massive stack of resumes for their “we don’t do retail” retail push. Only took 6 months.

According to Giz, it’s now official - Microsoft will open retail stores. Of course some of us saw this coming.