Links for 2007-07-05

Posted July 5, 2007 1:17 AM.

• The Open Rights Group (of which I'm an advisory board member) released its report on e-voting a couple of weeks ago which is well worth a read... The conclusion is not positive, suggesting that while there are many flaws that could be fixed, fundamentally there may be very significant collisions between verifiable and trustworthy elections and e-voting as a concept.
• Universal have decided not to continue with iTunes under the same terms and will now only use it to sell artists 'at will'. Apparently it's a response to Apple moving away from DRM and it's a bad move. Strategically, even if you thought DRM was perfect, it would now be time to give up on music as a lost battle and concentrate on video.
• Ben Aldred talks about their experiences at Hack Day and the layer they made between data and Twitter services... He's right to point out that Twitter was everywhere during Hack Day. One of the major platforms that people were building against. Absolutely fascinating.
• Paul Mison talks about the Hack Day project he did with Candace to predict and be able to observe reflections of the sun off satellites in orbit... I didn't get to see much of the Hack Day stuff as it was actually happening, but I caught Paul and Candace presenting and I was overwhelmed with what a beautiful idea it was.
• RIP Fopp Well this is sad news. The lovely high-street chain Fopp, well-known for its cut price albums and racks of £5 CDs is closing down. Very depressing.
• Matt Jones talks about visiting Interesting 2007 and the second day of Hack Day... Among many awesome things he says about both events (very jealous I couldn't go to Interesting) he declares himself exhausted as a result! The cheek! He got to sleep at home in an actual bed on Saturday night! Ha!