Facebook in the Time of Cholera (Revisited) Facebook Succumbs to demands for user privacy

Last week Aaron blogged about how a movie ticket purcahse landed on his Facebook MiniFeed. (Aaron commented on that post with an update, but I thought it warranted a bit more attention). I replied that MoveOn had started a petition to get Facebook to change its privacy policy around offsite or third party transactions. Well in a very short amount of time, tens of thousands of Facebook users signed the petition and today i got this email from MoveOn: Big news! Last night, Facebook changed their policy and announced that no private purchases made on other websites would be displayed publicly on Facebook “without users proactively consenting.”1 This is a huge victory for online privacy—and shows how regular people can band together to make a difference as the rules of the Internet get written. Facebook deserves credit for taking a huge step in the right direction. Their decision will hopefully set a precedent for all websites—that the wish lists of corporate advertisers must not be put before the basic rights of Internet users. When sites like Facebook listen to Internet users and take big steps in the right direction, a little positive feedback goes a long way in encouraging them to keep it up. Can you send an email thanking Facebook today? This is really important. What if Facebook users signed a petition to open Facebook up like OpenSocial? or to change the Facebook applications licensing...

SFLC to Assist Drupal Project on Licensing issues

Dries wrote on his blog recently that the Software Freedom Law Center will assist the Drupal Project on various licensing issues. The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) has agreed to provide legal representation and related services to the Drupal project. At the last board meeting, the Drupal Association’s board of directors has accepted the SFLC’s offer. I’m confident that the SFLC will be instrumental in making the Drupal project advance to the next level. Our own Henri Pool (FSF Board Member and Free Software activist) helped hook the FSFLC’s Eban Moglen up with the Drupal...

Big News: Rain City Studios Acquire’s Bryght!

On Tuesday night I got a tip that Bryght would have some big news on Wednesday morning. That big news? Rain City Studios acquired Bryght: The expanded company will operate under the Raincity Studios banner and the Bryght name will live on through the hosting products (i.e. Bryght Light Sites and Bryght Virtual Private Servers will continue). Raincity Studios will also continue Bryght’s work in leading edge technology like Jabber / XMPP and OpenID. And of course, all Bryght guys are now Raincity guys! More posts about it: Rain City Press Release Roland Tanglao’s Blog Post Congratulations guys! Good luck with your endeavors in the Far...

JustCauseIt.com named a “Killer Startup”

In September we launched JustCauseIt.com (beta) a social networking website that acts as a companion to a forthcoming print magazine. When the folks at JUSTCAUSE came to us with their idea and told me their mission is (as they put it on the website): To shine a bright light on individuals, corporations and the change agents who are working for the greater good. To inspire people to get involved, to reveal and help people understand the relationship between charity and community, to educate people about how to MAKE A DIFFERENCE and impassion them to TAKE ACTION; to give them a technology platform to enable that action.” I knew that this project was a good fit for us. We worked through the summer and early fall with a great team including Owen Barton, Bevan Rudge, Justine Hirsch, Amy Wolszyn, and the team at JUSTCAUSE to put together a well designed, clean looking website that could satisfy both the requirements for the magazine and the social networking. Using mostly out of the box Drupal modules like cck, views, panels, organic groups, buddylist, mysite, etc… (more on this in a later “case study” of the site), and a custom theme based on the designs for the print magazine. Users can blog, discuss topics, create causes for others to join, list events, and organize all this content based on a few primary “channels” like Arts, Environment, etc… I think we hit the mark, and just this week, KillerStartups.com recognized that. JustCauseIt provides a superbly designed, clean interface across which idealists can connect. Each category is filled to the brim with information, and the...

Drupal Wins Overall 2007 Open Source CMS Award

Last week Packt Publishing announced Drupal as the winner of the OVerall Best Open Source CMS. From the announcement: Initially released in 2001, Drupal has grown to become one of the most downloaded Open Source Content Management Systems with one of the most enthusiastic and committed communities. “This is a great honor for the Drupal community and the thousands of individual developers who’ve contributed to the project” confirms Drupal developer and core contributor Jeff Eaton. “We’ve worked hard to make Drupal as flexible, as scalable, and as accessible as possible. It’s a great week for all of Open Source; the winners in every category have shown that OSS can produce powerful solutions for a wide range of needs” he concludes. Flexible, scalable, accessible, these are among the reasons that CivicActions uses Drupal to deliver high quality websites for our clients. Congratulations to the Drupal Project and all...