Author: Ben Werdmuller

  • Hypothetical items I’d buy for Christmas if I could

    If these products existed, they’d make it onto my Christmas list for me and my loved ones: The open ebook reader Electronic paper screen A DRM-free format (in a perfect world) or at the very least a format that allows borrowing (from libraries and friends), lending and passing on of ownership, like a real book…

  • The Open Stack is the future of the Web

    The Open Stack is a term coined by Joseph Smarr to represent the core set of open technologies that web application developers are converging on: I spent Friday evening at the Digg offices in San Francisco for the first ever Open Stack meetup. Organised by David Recordon (who continues to be a superhero in this…

  • Free speech radio

    I just finished watching Pirate Radio USA, a great little independent documentary about pirate radio and free speech over the airwaves. It makes one major, fundamental point: although freedom of expression is guaranteed by the US constitution (and by similar laws in many countries worldwide), because the medium of that expression has changed over time,…

  • The Internet is People

    The following post is a fleshed-out version of my notes for my talk at the Elgg International Conference on Monday, December 1st, wherein I discussed my attitude to social networks and how they should be built. My slides are available in Powerpoint or OpenDocument Presentation format. Let’s take this to first principles. Stating the obvious,…