The Internet and its social networking websites have sparked off endless debates about privacy. Scientific American brings its voice to the debate with an article written by law professor Daniel J. Solove. Should we just get over it and accept that every detail of our lives be published online, even rumors? Or is privacy a fundamental right that has to be protected?

In this article I learned about JuicyCampus, a website where students from everywhere in the U.S. can rant, spread rumors and divulge details concerning fellow college classmates, all that anonymously. The web 2.0 is going to give us its share of headaches…

Have you heard of the Kindle? This little e-book reader launched by Amazon in November 2007 has been making a lot of noise. Of course, the main question everyone is asking is whether it will ever replace actual books. In the May/June issue of the Columbia Journalism Review, Ezra Klein wrote extensively about his experience with the Kindle. (A video is also available on CJR’s website.) Klein comes up with this interesting idea that the Kindle might actually change the way we read an exchange ideas with authors. By eliminating printing and distribution fees, books could be updated more often and in direct reaction to the readers’ feedback.

The possibilities are endless, and many are obvious. Currently, authors are hampered by the nature of the publishing process. Books are begun years before their publication date, and finished months before they will ever reach readers … With electronic text, however, the original “book” could be just the first step in an ongoing relationship between author and reader. In the most simple form, the book could be updated with new chapters and commentary …

This could profoundly alter the relationship between authors and their audiences. One of the finest bloggers around is The Atlantic’s Matthew Yglesias, who’s also the author of the new book Heads in the Sand, an examination of the politics of American foreign policy. Currently, his blog is supported by The Atlantic. But what if readers of his book were offered the opportunity to subscribe to his commentary for $5 a year? Imagine that some thirty thousand copies are sold, and half those readers decide to pay for Yglesias’s further thoughts. That’s now a yearly income of $75,000, flowing directly from readers to author, unmediated by ads or institutions.

I don’t think that e-books will ever replace paper, they could just very well evolve into something different. But people’s fears that paper might one day disappear seem unjustified to me. They’re scared to abandon paper because they’re scared to adopt a new technology, just like the church was scared when the printing press was invented (I guess the monks weren’t too happy to see their jobs being suppressed.) We now think of that attitude as being reactionary, and therefore we should be wary of our own reactions.

I’ve recently discovered eyeOS, an open-source operating system accessible online. All data is stored in eyeOS’s servers, including files and applications, which means that it is accessible from anywhere where Internet is available. Company or individuals can also use it with their own server. There’s really no big difference with other operating systems. You just have to go online to use this one.

Online OSs and applications seem to be the next big thing. It is so convenient not to have to rely on your computer to access your data if it crashes or if you have to be away for a while. Microsoft is currently working on its “Midori” project, which according to rumors will be one of its next-generation OSs and would be based on the same principles. And tons of online softwares and storage space services are already available. Apparently this could lead to the creation of very basic computers that would only contain a web browser — and would therefore probably be very cheap, a great solution for developing countries.

The big question about this is security. How would you feel about having your data stored who knows where?

I’m really tempted to subscribe to eyeOS. It’s convenient, it has a great design, it’s open-source, it’s free and it reminds me of Linux without its downsides (I gave up on Ubuntu when it crashed while I was updating it on my Mac, it was too much work.)

How walkable is your neighbourhood? Check it out at Walk Score. The website compiled a list of the best North American walkable neighbourhoods, by looking at their density, the proximity of its amenities and how easy it is to get from one point to the other. Why walk? Because it’s healthy and cheap. And the best walkable neighborhoods are often also the most enjoyable ones (they’re never located in the suburbs, is that a surprise?)

The next big thing for urban dwellers is… gardening. We already knew about community and rooftop gardens, but recently, journalist and New York Times blogger Allison Arieff wrote about her experiment with vegetables in her own home. “It is truly growing into something that is wholly about collaboration, community and connection to food, to neighbors, to land,” she wrote. In Montreal, where I live, the neighbourhood committee Greening Duluth is organizing monthly markets where neighbours can sell the vegetables that they’re growing in their own garden. And an architecture firm is building an eco-project called Productive House where apartments and town house include a space to grow vegetables. Urban gardening is not just a trend born out of concerns about the environment, it is a movement in reaction to the lack of social interaction in cities.

Since being sustainable is the new trend, universities are now competing to become the most sustainable possible in order to attract environmentally-conscious students. College reviews from magazines like Forbes or Sierra now include ratings of the campuses’ sustainability. But is it really something that can be rated? An article published by the New York Times says not. Sustainability on campus, like the LEED certification sought by architecture firms for their buildings, is something that can be achieved through various means and can be deceiving. Some universities can be deemed sustainable if they take only a few superficial measures. But a real impact can only be done by making structural changes and investing massively for the future. Prospective students should be careful when they read or hear about such claims made by schools.

NPR cancelled the Bryant Park Project after only nine months of existence. The announcement was made last week and the last show will be aired tomorrow morning. The BPP was launched as an attempt to draw a younger audience. Its tone is light and conversational and its news stories deal with various subjects such as politics, culture and sports. It also relies on a strong web presence: its website features a blog, sound clips, videos and articles. The show also makes an original use of social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter.

The BPP was actually picked by very few NPR member stations. Most users listen to the show online or through podcasting, but that was enough to draw an audience of about one million unique listeners in April and May, according to the New York Times. In spite of this success, NPR decided to cancel the show because of its cost (it had a first-year budget of $2 millions.)

The show’s cancellation drew reactions from hundreds of angry listeners on its website as well as elsewhere in the web community. Many feel that it could be continued as an entirely web-based program, and that opinion is shared by the BPP’s staff. In my opinion, this is how it should have been created in the first place. Most NPR member stations and listeners were obviously not ready to give up on the Morning Edition, NPR’s traditional morning program. Traditional news media seem so scared to explore the possibilities that the web has to offer, they seem unable to give up on their usual format and to realize that there is an audience out there that is receptive to new ideas and concepts. It is a scary and difficult task to accomplish, I know, but as long as they don’t understand that the way they’ve been working for decades is not suitable for new technologies, the only online news sources that will be successful will be blogs and social networking services (and I want something better than that.)

Ok, I’m late to talk about this one, especially since the new issue of the New Yorker came out and caused all this controversy, but I bought the previous issue yesterday because of this article about a Danish island that tries to achieve sustainability and reduce its carbon emissions. Residents on Samsø island tried everything (almost): biomass, wind power, cars running on vegetable oil… Some of it didn’t work, but it was worth the try: they’re now producing more energy through renewable sources than they need.

The article points out to something that I really liked, which is the fact that reducing our energy comsumption and our greenhouse gas emissions is really not that hard, and it certainly doesn’t ask for any drastic change in our lives (at least if you’re living in a city and can rely on public transportation and nearby stores, but I guess that’s another debate.)

Have you ever felt confused by all the differing information about climate change presented in the news? That’s totally normal, since journalists themselves don’t always know how to tackle the problem. Which expert do you listen to? How do you know that an information is credible and can be published? How do you stay away from companies and think tanks that try to foist their agenda on you? And how do you separate objective reporting from advocacy when it’s so easy to talk and write all the time about climate change? Journalists try to do their best as usual, but few of them are equipped with the tools necessary to cover such a crucial and pressing issue.

An article published in the summer issue of the Columbia Journalism Review intends on leading journalists in the right direction and in the same time can be used by the public to learn how to be critical of what they read, see and hear.

In its July/August issue (already on the newsstands since June, go figure,) the Atlantic proposes a list of “The 11½ Biggest Ideas of the Year” that dominated American news and national affairs. Not surprisingly, they deal mostly with recurring themes: the war, the presidential elections, the war, global warming, the economic crisis and… the war. On a lighter tone, some less significant ideas were scattered on the side. For example, in the “Newly conventional ideas we used to think unimaginable” list, you’ll find “Viable nonwhite or nonmale presidential candidates” next to “Your dad on Facebook.” My favourite one: “Talking to our enemies” in the “Seemingly horrifying ideas that could have potential…”