A Need for A Facebook for Neighbors?
Posted: March 21, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentAccording to an article at mashable.com, Everyblock, the hyperlocal news source, has relaunched itself as a community site. “We’re shifting from a one-way newsfeed to more of a community-empowered website,” says EveryBlock founder Adrian Holovaty. “Instead of going to the site to passively consume information, we’re going to offer a platform for posting messages to your neighbors, to discover who lives near you.”
Holovaty goes on to note that sites such as Facebook enable you focus on neighbors, not necessarily people you already know. In addition to the neighborhood-specific news, business reviews, crime reports and real estate listings the site delivered previously, new features encourage users to share and discuss local news, meet one another and coordinate neighborhood activities.
My question is whether people will actually care about reaching out to neighbors in this way…in other words, is this a product trying to fill a need that’s not really there?
Beaming Electricity-Pipe Dream?
Posted: March 15, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentThe devastation from the quake and tsunami in Japan, aside from the obvious terrible human losses and destruction of structures also raises another issue…transmission of power. The nuclear reactor problems are getting a huge amount of media attention, as they should. In the meantime, people are without necessities like food, water, & shelter.
It’s worth noting that not so much information is coming out as we have seen recently in Egypt, Tunisia, and other places where unrest has or may overturn regimes. It’s likely that a lot of this is due to the loss of electricity…which we rely on for daily needs, from household to running gas pumps. It goes without saying that it also runs the computers and cell towers that enable smartphones people use to post updates on the web.
An interesting thought for the future…transmitting the electrical power through the air without wires, so it could be rerouted virtually anywhere. No, I don’t have the plan for this, nor the capacity to form one, but offer this as a thought starter to perhaps find it’s way to some brilliant scientific minds out there. If we can beam radio waves around, how about figuring out a way to safely and economically beaming the actual electricity? Ok, geniuses…the ball’s in your court!
Corporations- No personal privacy
Posted: March 1, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentThe Supreme Court today ruled 8-0 that corporations do not have a right of personal privacy which would prevent disclosure of documents under the Freedom of Information Act. The opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts said that, despite the use of the terms “person” and “personhood” in describing corporations (and perhaps walking corporate rights back a tad after the Citizens United decision of last year), AT&T could not claim that a FOIA disclosure would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.
The FCC had released some information under an open records request, but withtheld other documents over concerns that business secrets or humans’ privacy might be compromised. The trade secrets protection for corporations still stands.
Justice Kagan worked on the dispute while at the Justice Department, and did not take part in the case. (FCC v. AT&T, 09-1279).
Web Access Cut at Wisconsin Capitol?
Posted: February 22, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentThinkprogress.org reports that pro-labor folks at the Wisconsin Capitol building can’taccess the site they have been using to update activities there, recruit volunteers, and call for supplies to the protesters. More here:
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/22/wisconsin-protest-internet/
This dovetails in with a lot of folks’ worst nightmare. The FCC recently appeared to ok AT&T and Comcast manipulating access and download speeds and data amounts. We saw how Mubarak in Egypt cut web access there, and infuriated people. Let’s hope that the people of Wisconsin get the word out, and are as angered about this as the people of Egypt were. For all the conservative talk about free speech, it now seems that free speech only applies if you agree with the conservative line. This could be a sad day for America, or the beginning of some real change for the better. It’s up to the people!
Judge says MERS doesn’t have right to transfer mortgages
Posted: February 15, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentYou may have heard about this, but if not, it levels the playing field for some homeowners who are under water in their battle to stay in their homes. The company that tracks around half of all American home loans has no right to transfer mortgages, according to a ruling last week (2-10-11) by Judge Robert Grossman of the U.S. bankruptcy court in Central Islip, NY. Judge Grossman’s ruling means that Merscorp Inc, a private company known as MERS and owned by large banks and mortgage processors, cannot act as an agent of the banks that own mortgages. If his ruling isn’t overturned by a higher court, or superseded by a new law giving it authority passed by Congress and signed by the President, it could significantly affect the foreclosure process nationwide.
MERS was designed to speed up legal recordkeeping of mortgages and sales of mortgage loans through securitizations, but critics– including borrowers’ lawyers and advocacy groups– contend it has no right to pursue foreclosures because it does not own the mortgage loans. If Judge Grossman’s ruling is picked up by other courts in other districts, and MERS is regularly found not to have authority to foreclose, many foreclosure proceedings could be halted indefinitely, and affected homeowners could end up with clear title to their homes. Watch how hard the banks push to have this changed by Congress!
Update: The ABA Journal reports that the state of New York is drawing up plans to use court-appointed attorneys to represent homeowners in some 80,000 foreclosure cases there.
clarkreid 
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