Collaboration and erasure

So, a few little things I fancied commenting on today.

First is the strange case of Boing Boing and Violet Blue (be warned, some stuff on Violet's blog is NSFW). To sum stuff up, Violet recently found out that Boing Boing deleted some posts she had made there. They don't seem to wish to tell her or anyone why exactly they've done this (which apparently happened a year ago). All they've said is that "Violet behaved in a way that made us reconsider whether we wanted to lend her any credibility or associate with her." and that they "were trying to do the right thing quietly and respectfully, without embarrassing the parties involved." Violet seems to be as in the dark about this as everyone else, stating that "I still have no idea what they’re talking about — except that it seems to be personal? — and really don’t understand why I’m being attacked, nor why they’re stating they kept it a secret (and are behaving this way) out of “kindness” toward me." There's lots to read about this and even I still haven't made my way through all of it. I'm a fan of Violet's work, so I'm on her side. I'll be interested to see if this ever gets solved.

Using Violet as a link, I'm jumping to NxE's Fifty Most Influential 'Female' Bloggers, where she appears as number 28. Also on the list (at number 41) is Cali Lewis from GeekBrief.tv, one of my favourite video podcasts. Looking through the list, I don't recognise many of the names, making me feel a tad "out of the loop". So, if anyone wants to point me to any good web stuff, whether it be blogs, podcasts or just anything along those lines, then feel free. I don't need any funny picture sites though, thanks.

Changing direction completely now, you might have seen the new Orange adverts. Their new slogan of "I am who I am because of everyone" is pretty much a translation of what Ubuntu means. I'm guessing it's meant to encourage people (at least in some abstract way) to communicate, rather than to collaborate and work together, the way Ubuntu does. I'm thinking it could be a bit too hopeful of me to start wondering if Orange might start producing phones running Ubuntu MID.

Sticking with ideas of collaboration, one of the newest TED talks is by Clay Shirky. In it he talks about institutions vs. collaboration and gives a great explanation of why stuff like open source software works and how he sees this as the future of technology.