Gregory Heller Get in touch

Writing

The blog

725 posts on careers, communication, technology and civic life, since 2005.

  1. Rollingston: 10 Wors Congressmen

    Rollingstone has an article on the 10 worst congressmen . It is great that a music/culture magazine like RS has takes up some big political issues, and, especially before the election, takes the ink to highlight some of the worst folks out there. it would be better though if they actually directed their readers to ways they could get involved in defeating these hacks, or highlighted their alternatives. Now on a technical front, it would be helpful to readers if they could search the 10 worst by state (at least) and send just a single profile to a friend (rather than the entire article). A TOC would also be a nice feature….

  2. Mass Mail: Thoughts on “From” addresses

    On a recent flight from San Francisco to Seattle, I took a few minutes to organize my personal email in box. Recently I noticed that some of my filters had stopped working. What I discovered as I cleaned them up, and added some new ones was that many of the “non-profit-y” types of lists i was on has no little consistency in sender names and addresses (while most of the totally commercial ones were standard). For example, one political action committee sent me emails from no less than three different addresses, and none of them were from a particular “person” so that was not the reason for the differences. A major national non profit rights group similarly used more than one sender address. A few organizations were even using “free” email addresses as the sender (think @gmail.com).

  3. I'm now a "member" CivicActions, LLC

    Yesterday I signed a membership agreement with CivicActions,LLC and I am now one of 5 members of the LLC. In addition to me, George Frost, our General Council, is also now a member. "Member" is kind of like "partner" but we are not a partnership so we are members of the LLC. I am…

  4. Return of the Drupal Shop Talk Call

    Last fall or winter I convened a few “Shop Talk” conference calls to bring Drupal development shops together on the phone to talk about projects, modules and other things related to the work we do with Drupal. The idea stemed from my discussions with Phillip Smith, Mike Gifford and Joe Murray at Web Of Change in 2005 . Since then those discussions have morphed into what I call “The Three ‘C’s”: Communication, Cooperation, Collaboration. There is a continuum of interaction that starts with communication and hopefully ends in collaboration. But you have to start talking first. This is why DrupalCon, Drupal User Groups, Drupal Groups and the Drupal Shop Talk are all important. They bring together people who are, despite the opensource nature of the Drupal Project, often isolated so that they can learn what eachother are doing, and avoid duplication of work (for starters) and collaborate on bigger and better things.

  5. DefectiveByDesign.org and Cardozo Cyberlaw Society

    Last week I particpated in a discussion of DRM and the DefectiveByDesign.org campaign at a meeting of the Cardozo Cyberlaw Society in New York City. It was interesting to hear these law law students talk about DRM and engage with each other on both sides of the issues.

  6. Work from, literally, anywhere…

    This is the latest in my series of “Work From Anywhere” videos. I’ve been traveling a bunch, and will soon be adding some more videos. The hunt for open wifi is different wherever I go. In this video, I had just finished a training with a client over VOIP on the wifi signal provided by the Hollyhock Retreat Center at the Web Of Change conference.

  7. Videocast with Matt Thompson of “Best War Ever”

    I took a minute to speak with Matt Thompson, a documentary film maker and indie journalist who recently complete BEst War Evern . Matt and I met last year at Web Of Change when he was still working with Independant World Television (which became “Real News”).

  9. October 3rd Day Against DRM

    October 3rd is the Day Against DRM . Check out DefectiveByDesign.org for more information. Protect your freedom!

  10. DefectiveByDesign.org: In the News and Gearing up for October 3rd

    DefectiveByDesign.org a joint project of teh Free Software Foundation and CivicActions got some digital ink this morning in the Chicago Tribune . Columnist Eric Zorn wrote about Amazon’s Unboxed license agreement which FSF ED Peter Brown described as: [A] road map for what all content providers want to have down the line: Their goal is to have so many locks and gatekeepers that every interaction you have with copyrighted material becomes a transaction. Cory Doctorow published a point-by-point analysis of the Unboxed license which represents some of the most restrictive and anti user DRM we have ever seen. This is why we have declared October 3rd the “Day Against DRM” . DBD members around the world will be taking part in both virtual and meat-space actions to raise awareness of the dangers of DRM . Check out the site, join an action , or start your own. The only way DRM will fail is if people know about it (and don’t take my word for it, that line is borrowed from a Disney Exec!).