David Wulf Riordan’s Weblog

Today Reddit launched a Subreddit dedicated exclusively to data sets. This, in the words of Joe Biden is, a “big f’ing deal.” When we have people striving to gain access to data (one of the federal government criteria for deciding which datasets should be released is public demand) and others curating it so it can [...]

I’ll spare the mid-90’s concrete mixer animations, and simply say that this site is long overdue for a redesign and a reinvigoration of content.  It is on the way.

The iPhone is not the place to compose the Great American Novel.

A few weeks ago, a major media buyer released a report on the average viewership age for network television programming.  It concluded that the average age of network television viewers was now 50.
Lets take a look at the live viewership per network:
And now lets look at DVR viewership over a 7-day period per network:
Notice anything?
Aside [...]

Being a completely new linux user used to suck.  Not because there wasn’t much software for it, but as a completely new user, it was difficult to install the software you wanted.  Software had to be compiled by the end user.  You’d have to go out and get source to the software you wanted, the [...]

Verizon has been blocking all social networks from their users until they build in parental controls.  That’s a good thing.
I’ve been using the location-driven social network BrightKite pretty heavily in the past few weeks (and it’s made me realize that I’m the only one who uses it since Fairfield County is not a web-hipster enclave), [...]

This morning, I heard Nas’ brilliant track Black President off his new “untitled” album, and it made me begin to realize the massive cultural impact of Barack Obama.  Barack Obama hasn’t just inspired Will.I.Am’s Yes We Can video, but a fairly substantial collection of tracks from a particularly influential group of artists all across the [...]

Walking through Grand Central, I saw a mid-60’s executive in a tan suit working out of a tan lock, latches, and leather briefcase.  Inside his case was a Macbook Air.
First it was the white earbuds, then it was the white plastic and brushed metal with lighted Apple logos across college campuses.  Now, iPhones and Airbooks [...]

Earlier today, I received a Facebook message from an old high school friend, Andrew Hoover, an incredible blues musician who’s career is taking off right now. He remembered my old web design business and wanted to know if I could point him in the right direction for a new site.  I responded with an [...]

Will Lawrence Lessig and the Free Culture movement become a political liability?
Ever since Lawrence Lessig emerged into the public sphere, there have been whispers among fringe critics that his ideology is just info-communism, but it looks like the innovators over at Red State have managed to create a new charge against Lessig: anti-christian.
It all started with a [...]