The founder of Wikipedia is leading calls for search engines and social media sites including Google, Facebook and Twitter to take themselves offline for an entire day in protest against a controversial bill winding its way through the US Senate that could have profound implications for the internet.

Jimmy Wales has called for a “public uprising” against the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa), which critics say will have a “chilling effect on innovation” by forcing websites to keep a much closer tab on what is posted by users on their pages….

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On Jan. 11, nearly three weeks after the Great Christmas Eve Stratfor Hack, the Texas-based strategic analysis website came back online with limited service. And none too soon ”“ some of us were starting to show signs of withdrawal.

If you haven’t been following, Strategic Forecasting Inc., better known as Stratfor, probably the most reputable privately owned open-source intelligence firm in the world, suffered a massive hacker attack on Dec. 24. The hackers proceeded to publish the credit-card information and passwords of many of Stratfor’s subscribers (4,000 alone beginning with the letter “A”) and proceeded to use said information to make unauthorized donations to every major charity in sight….

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Bishop R. William Franklin, the lifelong theologian and esteemed academic who was installed as the 11th Episcopal bishop of Western New York last spring, has 894 Facebook friends.

“That’s a pretty good number,” says the jovial Franklin during an interview at the diocese’s Tonawanda offices. “My children say that I have more Facebook friends than they do.”

But Facebook is just one of the modern media that Franklin uses to communicate with his flock. His personal website, rwilliamfranklin.org, includes links to email for comments, questions or prayer requests. Franklin writes longer pieces and appears in video chats on a popular blog, jerusalem-crossing.com, named for the Jerusalem Cross he has chosen as his bishop’s cross.

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R.J. Williams, host and founder of Young Hollywood…is betting most of his personal savings and free time that two things will make him a next-generation media titan: hard work and YouTube.

That bet goes both ways. Beginning this month, YouTube is gambling $100 million that by seeding professional production firms such as Young Hollywood — whose slate of YouTube-only programming premieres Monday — it will draw more eyeballs for longer viewing sessions.

Williams calls the online video giant’s move a “game-changer” and argues that the growing number of stars who sit on his white sofa — Cruz came to see Williams straight from Jay Leno’s Tonight Show couch — spotlights the emerging clout of Web-only shows.

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When Dr. John McClure, a pathologist in Edina, Minn., was pondering his wish list several years ago, he added something a little out of the ordinary: learn to play the bagpipes. But his goal seemed like a long shot after a friend who had been teaching him moved away.

Now he is getting lessons from a top-tier teacher ”” Jori Chisholm, whose résumé includes a first-place award at the 2010 Cowal Highland Gathering in Dunoon, Scotland. Mr. Chisholm lives in Seattle, but distance is no longer a problem ”” Dr. McClure now takes lessons over Skype.

They even squeeze in a lesson sometimes when Dr. McClure, 50, is at work, though he keeps the noise down by using a practice chanter, essentially a pipe without a bag. “I’ve been on call, waiting for a specimen from the O.R., and I’ll do a lesson with Jori,” Dr. McClure said.

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Twitter has complained about changes made by Google to integrate its social network Google+ into search results.

The new feature, called Search plus Your World, will automatically push results from Google+ up the search rankings.

Tweeting on the news, Twitter’s lawyer Alex Macgillivray described it as a “bad day for the internet”.

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PC support company iYogi today released these survey results showing consumers spend more on staying connected to the Internet than on staying warm.

Not surprisingly, mobile phones chew up a large and growing chunk of the average household’s disposable income. Some 63% of American households spend 35% more on technology bills than utility bills, according to an in-depth survey of 1,100 adults.

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Phil Blackwell, pastor of Chicago Temple (United Methodist Church) in Chicago, said the opinion legalized the lottery online, but it did not change the fact that the Illinois lottery is “cynical, short-sighted and cowardly.”

Blackwell characterized the thinking of Illinois lawmakers this way: “‘Since people are going to throw away their money on gambling anyway, let’s get as much of it as we can.’ Unlike levying a ‘sin tax’ on the sale of alcohol and cigarettes, by devising and promoting the lottery the state government is the pusher of the ‘sin’ itself, dedicated to producing more and bigger losers in order to make it pay.”

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The Vatican has acknowledged that it used Wikipedia to produce biographies of 22 new cardinals that were sent out to journalists.

The biographies were copied from the Italian version of the user-edited online encyclopedia, word for word in some cases, and without attribution.

One clue was that many new cardinals were described as being “Catholic”.

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There are jobs for philosophers. But the irksome perception persists that a philosophy degree is only slightly more useful than an English degree, and so it was thought that a panel such as this might give frightened philosophers, many of whom came to this conference in search of gainful employment, some hope.

Philosophers: If you are pinning hopes of gainful employment on blogging, don’t.

But the three men on the panel have done so, and splendidly, with varying degrees of national recognition for their thoughtful punditry on political and cultural issues. Besides Sullivan, who has a Ph.D. in political philosophy and is known for his writings on conservatism and gay marriage, the other participants included Slate blogger Matthew Yglesias, who majored in philosophy at Harvard, and Grist magazine writer/blogger David Roberts, who has a master’s in philosophy.

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I am back at it today after a time for a more Christmas and Epiphany focus and some (needed) time with family. There is a lot of catching up to do–KSH.

Watch it all (link toward bottom).

May I take this opportunity to wish all blog readers a blessed and happy Christmas 2011–KSH.

Whatever struck you, moved you; whatever part of it which led you, like Mary, to ponder it in your heart–KSH.

Try to be as specific as you can as it will help readers enjoy it more–KSH.

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Facebook users will enjoy tighter privacy controls after the social networking giant was ordered by the Republic of Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner to change how it handles personal data.

The company was issued with a raft of recommendations including deleting personal information sooner and allowing users better control on the use of data.

The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner yesterday published the outcome of its audit of Facebook Ireland, which was carried out over the last three months.

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Everything’s going digital these days ”” including cheating….

“There’s an epidemic of cheating,” says Robert Bramucci, vice chancellor for technology and learning services at South Orange Community College District in Mission Viejo, Calif. “We’re not catching them. We’re not even sure it’s going on.”

Several security-related companies, such as Spycheatstuff.com, will even overnight-mail a kit that turns a cellphone or iPod into a hands-free personal cheating device, featuring tiny wireless earbuds, that allows a test-taker to discreetly “phone a friend” during a test and get answers remotely without putting down the pencil.

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Christians are using the social-media site Twitter to re-tell the Christmas story in novel ways this year.

In Germany, a Twitter-user called Joseph von Nazareth is journalling the nativity story from the perspec­tive of Joseph. Describing himself as a “35-year-old third-generation car­penter from Nazareth”, he regularly updates the site with short descrip­tions from the Christmas story.

Read it all and check out the winning tweets in the Bishop of Bradford’s competition.

Google’s annual run-down of Britain’s most popular and fastest rising searches always makes for a revealing list ”“ the internet search engine calls the study “Zeitgeist” because it aims to capture the spirit of our age.

This year the royal wedding was fastest-rising but, tellingly, it doesn’t even make the top 10 most popular UK searches. That’s dominated by functional queries for Facebook, eBay, YouTube, Hotmail and, oddly, Google itself. When it comes to individuals, the same is true: Kim Kardashian, Victoria Beckham and Emma Watson are most popular, untouched by the fastest-rising people such as the late American TV star Ryan Dunn or singers Adele and Ed Sheeran.

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“Massive and effective street protest” was a global oxymoron until ”” suddenly, shockingly ”” starting exactly a year ago, it became the defining trope of our times. And the protester once again became a maker of history.

It began in Tunisia, where the dictator’s power grabbing and high living crossed a line of shamelessness, and a commonplace bit of government callousness against an ordinary citizen ”” a 26-year-old street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi ”” became the final straw. Bouazizi lived in the charmless Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, 125 miles south of Tunis. On a Friday morning almost exactly a year ago, he set out for work, selling produce from a cart. Police had hassled Bouazizi routinely for years, his family says, fining him, making him jump through bureaucratic hoops. On Dec. 17, 2010, a cop started giving him grief yet again. She confiscated his scale and allegedly slapped him. He walked straight to the provincial-capital building to complain and got no response. At the gate, he drenched himself in paint thinner and lit a match.

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The other day I heard of someone whose funeral service was “streamed” to absent friends on the internet….what is the world coming to?

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The ongoing argument about whether the Internet is a boon or a bust to civilization usually centers on the Web’s abundance. With so much data and so many voices, we each have knowledge formerly hard-won by decades of specialization. With some new fact or temptation perpetually beckoning, we may be the superficial avatars of an A.D.D. culture.

David Weinberger, one of the earliest and most perceptive analysts of the Internet, thinks we are looking at the wrong thing. It is not the content itself, but the structure of the Internet, that is the important thing. At least, as far as the destruction of a millennia-long human project is concerned.

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Google’s Chrome Web browser has leapfrogged Firefox to claim the number two slot in the browser battle, according to Web analytics firm StatCounter.

Chrome held 25.69 percent of the worldwide market in November 2011 compared with Firefox’s 25.23 percent. Internet Explorer remains the top browser globally with a 40.63 percent share of the market.

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Mark Zuckerberg’s “law of sharing” is to social media what Moore’s law is to computing power. Coined a few years back, the Facebook founder’s law asserts that the amount of information shared digitally will double every year. This will never be more evident than in 2012. Around the globe, people will share more and more of their lives online, transforming relationships on every level””personal, commercial and institutional.

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We apologize for the troubles it is part of a transition that was necessary….

Update–The problem is now solved.

In a radical rethinking of what it means to go to school, states and districts nationwide are launching online public schools that let students from kindergarten to 12th grade take some””or all””of their classes from their bedrooms, living rooms and kitchens. Other states and districts are bringing students into brick-and-mortar schools for instruction that is largely computer-based and self-directed.
Journal Community

In just the past few months, Virginia has authorized 13 new online schools. Florida began requiring all public-high-school students to take at least one class online, partly to prepare them for college cybercourses. Idaho soon will require two. In Georgia, a new app lets high-school students take full course loads on their iPhones and BlackBerrys. Thirty states now let students take all of their courses online.

Nationwide, an estimated 250,000 students are enrolled in full-time virtual schools, up 40% in the last three years, according to Evergreen Education Group, a consulting firm that works with online schools.

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Facial recognition technology is a staple of sci-fi thrillers like “Minority Report.”

But of bars in Chicago?

SceneTap, a new app for smart phones, uses cameras with facial detection software to scout bar scenes. Without identifying specific bar patrons, it posts information like the average age of a crowd and the ratio of men to women, helping bar-hoppers decide where to go. More than 50 bars in Chicago participate.

As SceneTap suggests, techniques like facial detection, which perceives human faces but does not identify specific individuals, and facial recognition, which does identify individuals, are poised to become the next big thing for personalized marketing and smart phones. That is great news for companies that want to tailor services to customers, and not so great news for people who cherish their privacy. The spread of such technology ”” essentially, the democratization of surveillance ”” may herald the end of anonymity.

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