I don’t want to waste your time with a really long paper. It’s not good enough yet.

However, I’m very passionate about this. I really think Citizen Journalism can happen, and needs to happen.
I recently explained the idea to a friend in an email, and it went something like this:

I imagine you’re sometimes suspicious of the news we’re told, and probably have a feeling that our government sometimes lies to us. But the extent to which we are controlled by corporate media is largely unnoticed.

Our world today is an a sad state, and in so many different ways. For some reason, I can’t just sit around and watch the world crumble… like everyone around us seems to be doing. Pollution, Erosion, Disease, Human Rights Violations, Hunger and Starvation…

Humanity can do better.

I want to make a difference. I want to make the world a better place. I hope you do too.

For myself, the way I think I can best make a positive impact is by helping “the people” take back “the media”. Yes, I’m talking about Citizen Journalism and Social Media.

Corporate news and corporate television networks rule our nation… and ever more of the world as our western culture is globalized through our government’s brand of capitalism. Corporate media has us in a reality distortion field.

The average American watches 28 HOURS of television per week.

As nice as watching TV can be, that’s just wayyy too much time to spend doing something so unproductive… that’s time better spent actually enjoying life on this planet. We buy the crap food we see on TV, buy the crap products we see on TV and listen to the crap music we hear on TV et cetera et cetera.

Anyway, I blame corporate media for leading people to live like this…

But now we have the Internet… something so fundamentally different from any form of communication humanity has ever experienced before. (I’m reading a great book called “A History Of News: From the Drum to the Satellite” … it’s an epic story, talking about how every human has been obsessed with news… that it’s a fundamental part of life, and this all leads me to think that everyone today is starved for real, true, important information and that we just stare at the fucking TV hoping to satisfy that desire… our natural desire to be informed is being exploited by corporations.

So what can we do about it?

Fast forward to the 21st century.

Everyone is a reporter now.

You, me, everyone you know.

Anything you do that’s awesome, I’ll write an article about it for the local newspaper.

Your family and friends will read about it. If it’s a really cool story it will spread. Neighbors will hear about it.

This is the promise of citizen journalism. A world where we inform each other about what is important to us.

I’m working on a platform for collaborative citizen journalism… a way for communities to work together to produce news easily and efficiently and provide it for free. Technically speaking, I’m applying for a grant to modify Drupal into an open source website system that we’ll offer for free to local newspapers so they can open up their reporting to citizen journalists. Readers of newspapers can get involved and write their own articles. The best may be edited for print.

So this system hasn’t been built yet. And instead of going out and trying to make money on this idea, and get VC funding and everything, I want to make it open source… with the hope that we can truly free the media from its corporate stranglehold.

I think this project could develop into something really cool… potentially incorporating the functionality of sites like Qik and Mogulus so these citizen reporters could even broadcast live video from events etc…

Imagine citizens covering every important local event. The latest cellphones will let you broadcast live video to the web. Other websites will let you aggregate those live video streams and produce a live online TV channel. Citizen Journalism doesn’t have to look like an online newspaper. Citizen Journalism can be fully multimedia and be more interactive and more accessible and better informed than anything we’re getting these days from the corporate news networks.

I’m not suggesting we totally dismantle the news industry. I don’t think that would be smart at all. I do, however, think that a little healthy competition would ultimately be good for everyone.

Are you ready for Citizen Journalism? Will you be a Citizen Journalist?

I told you August 20 and 27 about the growing fame of the "iPhone Factory Girl." A British iPhone buyer discovered several pictures on her brand-new iPhone. The photos were snapped inside the Chinese factory, and feature a smiling poser. The girl in the shots became a minor Internet sensation when the pictures were posted on a popular Web site. But the girl is now reportedly "SCARED BY THE MEDIA ATTENTION." Don't worry, iPhone Factory Girl. It only lasts 15 minutes.

QuickPwn is not a replacement for PwnageTool, they are different tools and provide different features, QuickPwn is for quickly pwning a device, whereas PwnageTool is designed to custom build and tailor the ipsw production process, both tools will be actively developed in the future.

To use QuickPwn 1.0 Mac OS X your device should be running 2.0.2, if it isn’t then you can upgrade it to 2.0.2 using iTunes and then use the QuickPwn tool, we repeat, it’ll only work on version 2.0.2 of the iPhone or iPod touch firmware. 

If you don’t want specific things to happen such as baseband updates then PwnageTool should be used to create a custom .ipsw with your specifics.

Here is the official torrent for the release, we are seeding it on a few different servers so it should be well seeded already, but we think it’ll be a popular download, so we thought we’d use bittorrent as some of you were not too happy about 2kb/s downloads :)

If you are not comfortable using bittorrent, come back in 12 hours and we’ll post a direct link on our server (when the initial rush has died down a bit!)

SHA1(QuickPwn_1.0.0.tbz)= 22ee0d6814a6bac9b1b9a8c7715dd714bd6bb449

GPS is really nice to have. It’s made the Google Maps application much more useful already, and I hear rumors of advanced navigation features in an upcoming iPhone update.

3G coverage is spotty, so it hasn’t been quite the revolution I was hoping for, but nonetheless an improvement, and quite speedy in some places.

The App Store is an interesting development too. I wish I had Installer.app still, but there are a lot of decent apps coming out for free in the App Store, including one from Wordpress which I’m using right now to write this post.

Anyway, I heartily recommend the new iPhone to almost everyone… You should get one today!

Yeah I’m Camping Out, originally uploaded by Rex Pechler.

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Alternative Transportation. I love driving, and I love my car. However, it’s really expensive, and usually not necessary. I just fixed up my bike, which I rode yesterday, along with Caltrain and the Highway 17 Express bus to get to class at UC Santa Cruz. Total cost: $16 (versus est. $22.50 for gas, plus $4 for parking). And I get some exercise as an added bonus.

Of course, I do need to drive sometimes (I can’t really carry large objects on my bike), and I’m really attracted to electric vehicles. Mainly because I could charge an electric car from solar panels at home (which I don’t have yet either).

Alternative Energy. I want cheap solar panels. And they’re apparently coming, from Nanosolar, a startup right here in Palo Alto, who’ve developed a new way to manufacture solar cells at 1/10th the cost, and reduce most of the waste and energy involved in traditional solar cell manufacturing. Hopefully we’ll start seeing some consumer products soon. Once I have solar cells on my roof, I’ll have an abundant, and essentially free source of electricity. I want to replace gas-using appliances like the old stove, but also maybe use electric instant hot water heaters instead of that big tank outside.

Alternative Eating. Food prices are going up, and America is slowly starting to realize that our society is not eating right. Maybe hamburgers are not good for you. Wouldn’t it be great if we could grow all our own food? (and cut out all the transportation costs!). Well, you can either move to a farm if you want to eat meat, or, start eating primarily fruits and vegetables, and grow them in your garden. Tear up that lawn and plant some tomatoes and carrots.

I’m probably extreme here, because I’m trying to eat only raw fruits and vegetables, and maybe nuts. This is the raw food diet that I’ve written about before. However, you probably already eat some raw food, like apples, bananas or oranges. Supposedly raw food is much healthier to eat. (for example, I heard a story that a farmer tested feeding his pigs raw potatoes instead of boiled potatoes and even though they ate the same amount, they lost weight instead of gaining like usual).

Ultimately, the goal is self-sufficience, or living "off the grid". Here in suburbia I’ll still need to use the sewage system among other services, but someday I hope to build a place on a hillside where I can take care of even that, and my only reliance on "civilization" would be an internet connection.

Sleeping Kittehs, originally uploaded by Rex Pechler.

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This is being spread around, so you may have seen it... I don't care. It's worth seeing again.

The Web Site Is Down

If you've got a MacBook Air SuperDrive and you've been hankering to use it with other computers (Mac or PC), tnkgrl over at tnkgrl Mobile has a solution. With a $9 part and some intestinal fortitude, you too can make your MBA Superdrive universally compatible.

Using the drive with other computers has been a desire from its inception. After some experimentation, tnkgrl found that simply replacing the IDE to USB bridge within the drive did the trick. Of course, that means removing the daughter-board and relocating the 12 MHz crystal. For an experienced hardware hacker, no sweat. For the average Joe, well, it's quite obviously an at-your-own-risk situation.

Check out the post at tnkgrl Mobile for the details.

Ur rite. Hoomanz don land on dere feetz.

kitteh nawt awlwayz land on dere feetz either.

picture: dunno source, via our lolcat builder. lol caption: Pauley464

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