Linked List: January 12, 2013

Saturday, 12 January 2013

Harvest 

My thanks to Harvest for again sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed. Harvest is a terrific time-tracking system for the web, Mac, and iPhone — designed for creative professionals, with an emphasis on ease-of-use and productivity. Well-designed software makes it easy and convenient to track your time and manage projects, and when you’re finished, you can send a professional invoice right from Harvest.

Check it out, then give Harvest a spin with a free 30-day trial.

‘The Administration Does Not Support Blowing Up Planets.’ 

The White House responds to a petition for the U.S. to build a Death Star.

A Day in the Life of Hunter S. Thompson 

“Midnight — Hunter ready to write.”

The New Disruptors 

Speaking of podcasts, my colleagues at Mule Radio have been busy. My favorite among the newest shows is The New Disruptors, hosted by the one and only Glenn Fleishman.

‘Unsolved Forever’ 

Beautiful tribute to Aaron Swartz from Cory Doctorow.

Lawrence Lessig on Aaron Swartz 

Lawrence Lessig:

Aaron had literally done nothing in his life “to make money.” He was fortunate Reddit turned out as it did, but from his work building the RSS standard, to his work architecting Creative Commons, to his work liberating public records, to his work building a free public library, to his work supporting Change Congress/FixCongressFirst/Rootstrikers, and then Demand Progress, Aaron was always and only working for (at least his conception of) the public good. He was brilliant, and funny. A kid genius. A soul, a conscience, the source of a question I have asked myself a million times: What would Aaron think? That person is gone today, driven to the edge by what a decent society would only call bullying. I get wrong. But I also get proportionality. And if you don’t get both, you don’t deserve to have the power of the United States government behind you.

Aaron Swartz Commits Suicide 

Aaron was a friend and a brilliant mind. He was my only beta tester for Markdown back in 2004, and frequently offered keen feedback on my work here at DF. He had an enormous intellect — again, a brilliant mind — but also an enormous capacity for empathy. He was a great person. I’m dumbfounded and heartbroken. Good thoughts and best wishes to his family and those who were truly close to him.