If you’re sick of Facebook or some other social-network site, don’t delete your account - gunk it up. That’s roughly the advice of Microsoft employee and tech blogger Jason Burns, who argues in this post that such a move leaves your identity open for other people to occupy: “Deleting a social network is at best [...]

The NY TImes has a post about a gathering of Zionists, teaching them how to edit wikipedia articles because “People in the U.S. and Europe never hear about Israel’s side, with all the correct arguments and explanations.” (Read it here) I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more often, frankly; by now I would have expected Vermonters [...]

The Globe reports (read it here) that roughly 70 percent of the 150 or so Bostonians who participated in a recent survey said that at least part of the time they watch TV shows via DVD, online streaming or (in rare cases) over mobile devices at a time of their choosing rather than when it [...]

The Concord Monitor has a good story today (read it here) about a Nevada newspaper suing an NH blogger (among many others) because an entire article was cut-and-pasted into the blog’s comments section. It’s a complicated issue that’s well presented - the Las Vegas Review-Journal has hired a company to scour the Net and sue [...]

The Pew Research Center has released a survey which it claims shows this:
By a 53%-41% margin, Americans say they do not believe that the spread of affordable broadband should be a major government priority. Contrary to what some might suspect, non-internet users are less likely than current users to say the government should place a [...]

Manchester airport, the biggest in Northern New England, has long been recognized for its growth, its relatively low ticket prices and other amenities, but now it’s got a a new, odd-sounding accolade: Top Ten Twitterer.
Forbes Magazine (which, like all us media outlets, loves to rank things) recently calculated the ratio of Twitter followers to total [...]

Self-publishing is a wonderful thing, but like all wonderful things it has a downside. Jeremy Davis, founder of the wonderful New England Lost Ski Area Project, has run face-first into one of them.
He is about to publish a well-researched book on lost ski areas of Southern Vermont, only to find that a wikipedia “scraper” project [...]

This is late (I’ve been hiking out West, Internet-free for better and for worse) but I thought I’d post it, in case any GraniteGeek readers missed it: “New Hampshire has joined a multi-state coalition of attorneys general probing the unauthorized collection of personal data from wireless computer networks by Google’s Street View cars.”
Read [...]

Curt Schilling - whose pitching for the curse-breaking Red Sox, including the “bloody sock” game, is known even to non-sports folks like me - is one of the folks behind a new video gaming company in Massachusetts. The Globe’s Hiawatha Bray has a short item (read it here) about the firm’s planning first game, which [...]

I have a story in today’s Sunday Telegraph (read it here) about the latest grant ($44.5 million in stimulus plus $20 million in added help locally) to spread broadband in New Hampshire. It’s mostly building a fiber-optic “middle mile” backbone, from which last-mile additions can be spread later, although there are also microwave-tower links and a hook into the interesting LINC (wireless broadband) system that’s planned in the upper Connecticut River Valley. The above map gives the big picture plan.

PC Magazine did a huge “speed test” of Internet providers around the country. (Read it here) Some interesting conclusions for the Northeast:

Verizon FiOS is the fastest service overall in the Northeast (1.19 Mbps vs. 1.04 for Comcast cable modem), but its even faster out West, where it averages 1.70 Mbps. Not sure why - perhaps [...]

The era of All Free Online All The Time is probably coming to an end, although I have no idea what it will morph into. The Telegraph took a step toward a pay wall today, requiring a paid subscription for unlimited access to nashuatelegraph.com. Visitors to the Web site will have access to [...]

The Connecticut attorney general says he’ll lead a group of state a.g.’s looking into whether Google broke the law when it sniffed personal data off of wireless networks around the world while compiling Street View pictures for Google Maps. Here’s the NY Times story. Google says it mistakenly grabbed fragments of data (including some email [...]

I don’t think the government will have much trouble with this recruitment effort, as this ABC News item says:
The FCC is seeking 10,000 volunteers to take part in a study of residential broadband speeds. Specialized equipment will be installed in homes across the country to measure Internet connections. Those results will then be compared with [...]

NHPR has a great program hosted by Virginia Prescott called “Word of Mouth”. The program runs Monday through Thursday and covers science and social subjects.
Next week, not sure of the day of broadcast, she will be interviewing editors of MAKE magazine and Boing-Boing. The magazine and websites are something I have subscribed to and followed [...]