Jim Willis

  • A Brief History of Hyperlocal News

    A Brief History of Hyperlocal News

    You can’t serve online users the same way as newspapers or broadcasters serve regional audiences. The news and information demands are wildly different. It is not enough to reduce printing and…

  • The results of my request for suggestions on sharing a PDF via the web for my neighborhood newsletter: http://tinyurl.com/aem4qw

  • sharing a PDF via the web

    Yesterday I posted a request on Twitter:  Looking for suggestions on a (free) web based file sharing site so I can share a link to a pdf file with a few hundred people.

    Since Twitter also posts to my Facebook page, I received a bunch of suggestions via twitter, email and FB so I figured I’d share the results here:

    • pdfvue.com
    • box.net
    • mediafire.com
    • yousendit.com
    • “build a wiki”  (closest to what I actually did)
    • sendspace.com

    As far as the above options went, box.net looked to be exactly what I was looking for but cost about $8/month and I don’t think I’d use it that frequently to make it worth it. 

    I run a email newsletter for my neighborhood in Red Bank, NJ and was looking for a way to share a PDF file with the neighbors without having to attach it to the email message. Because I hope to someday be able to delagate some of the newsletter building to other neighbors I didn’t want a solution that was tied to FTP or SCP’ing the file up to my banyansocialtech.com server. Hence, the looking for something like box.net. Anyway, in the end I setup WebDAV on my apache server so that next time around the newsletter writer can just drop the pdf file into a folder. Browsing and determining the resultant URL will probably be a bit of a pain but not a pain so large as I’d spend $8/mo to alleviate.

  • Looking for suggestions on a (free) web based file sharing site so I can share a link to a pdf file with a few hundred people.

  • Tonight’s Menu: Boeuf en Daube, toasted baguette w/ warm brie. Then, molton chocolate cake (just made a trial one for Jay. fricken awesome).

  • NJ’s $2.7 billion shovel-ready projects in the stimulus package: http://tinyurl.com/bpcw4x (from the awesome stimuluswatch.org site).

  • Looking for a sysadmin with 7+ years exp. for a 21hr/week gig in Red Bank, NJ area. Will help migrate client off of MS Exchange. Email me.

  • Bright Saturday-morning sun refracts off the snow onto my kitchen walls while I make the kids blueberry pancakes and listen to Lloyd Cole

  • Business Report – Obscene larceny of executive pay is the most glaring abuse

    Business Report – Obscene larceny of executive pay is the most glaring abuse

    I heard this guy on NPR this morning. This article captures his key ideas: Under the capitalist system, there is a time-honoured method of amassing wealth: it is called buying stock. Owners of stock…

  • Coverage of the council talk I gave is in The Hub: http://tinyurl.com/af3k4g (Anyone have a hardcopy of this they can share?)

Current Spins

Top Albums

Check out my album Set It All Down on your favorite streaming service.

Posts Worth Reading:

Free Internet vs Internet of Free Stuff

Letterboxd

Reading Notes

  • Read: Why Not Bluesky
    The real problem, in my mind, isn’t in the nature of this particular Venture-Capital operation. Because the whole raison-d’etre of Venture Capital is to make […]
  • Read: The Imperfectionist: How Not to Freak Out, Part Two
    The antidote to all of this, in the broadest terms, is *more reality*, more immersion in the finite here and now: more writing on paper; […]
  • Read: Recording: After the Election – Four Ways We Can Respond
    “Under the worst conditions, what’s the most important thing to have?” He replied: “Friends.” Source: Recording: After the Election – Four Ways We Can Respond […]
  • Read: Mud Boots of Empathy in Spain
    Spain’s unity at this moment is from the bottom up. Or, as Spanish professional soccer player Ferran Torres wrote on social media, “The people are […]
  • Read: Vision Con
    Unable, then, to see the world because I have forgotten the way of being in the world that enables vision in the deepest sense, I […]

Saved Links

  • Doppler Music Player for Mac and iOS — Brushed Type
    Built for people who buy music — Direct link
  • Sill
    Top news shared by the people you trust Sill streamlines your Bluesky and Mastodon feeds to give you a clear picture of what’s happening. — Direct link
  • Techmeme Ride Home
    The day's tech news, every day at 5pm. From Techmeme.com, Silicon Valley's most-read news source. 15 minutes and you're up to date. — Direct link
  • Queue
    Beautifully Simple Podcasts. — Direct link
  • Surveilled (2024) — The Movie Database (TMDB)
    Uncover the insidious ways in which our daily lives are being surveilled by the state. In a gripping chase, Ronan Farrow travels across the world following breadcrumbs and finally exposing a dark world of spywares, hacking, and peddling of private information, where activists and journalists are persecuted, and no one is protected from the watchful and vicious eyes of authoritarianism. #API #Actors #Actresses #Cast #Credits #Movies #Photos #Ratings #Reviews #Shows #Streaming #Synopsis #TV #Teasers #Trailers #User — Direct link
  • The Technology the Trump Administration Could Use to Hack Your Phone | The New Yorker
    Western democracies have been roiled by the use of spyware to target politicians, journalists, and other vulnerable groups. Could it happen here? Ronan Farrow reports. — Direct link
  • The Markup
    The Gentle January series shares one practical privacy tip a day from a Markup staffer who actually uses the advice in their own life. — Direct link
  • ongoing by Tim Bray · Why Not Bluesky
    "to be clear, I’m a fan of the Bluesky leadership and engineering team. With the VC money as fuel, I expect their next 12 months or so to be golden, with lots of groovy features and mind-blowing growth. But that’s not what I’ll be watching. I’ll be looking for ecosystem growth in directions that enable survival independent of the company. In the way that email is independent of any technology provider or network operator." — Direct link
  • The Great Migration to Bluesky Gives Me Hope for the Future of the Internet
    "I have been impressed with the tools that the open source development community is building to bridge the gap between the AT protocol and ActivityPub, and I’m hopeful that some mixture of Bluesky and Mastodon will eventually serve most of my needs as a social media user and, hopefully, as someone who co-owns a website" — Direct link
  • Helium Mobile
    Ditch big telco. Rise above with The People's Carrier, a new carrier owned by the people, and earn crypto. — Direct link