Jonathan's Starbucks Card

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Jonathan Stark:

Hi! I'm Jonathan Stark. You can download this picture of my Starbucks card to your phone and buy coffee at Starbucks with it. Seriously. My card gets charged, you don't. Details are here. If you're feeling generous, you can also add money to my Starbucks card by doing this and enjoy some serious good karma. Jonathan's Card is an experiment in social sharing of physical goods using digital currency on mobile phones. I stumbled on the idea while doing research for a blog post about Broadcasting Mobile Currency. Based on the similarity to the "take a penny, leave a penny" trays at convenience stores in the US, I've adopted a similar "get a coffee, give a coffee" terminology for Jonathan's Card. As it turns out, this is actually a new take on a wonderful old italian custom called Caffe Pagato, which translates to English as "Coffee Paid". Thanks to Francesco Pierfederici for alerting me to this article: Italian Lifestyle: the "caffe' pagato" (paid coffee) Custom. For the record, Jonathan's Card, Jonathan Stark (me), this site, or anything else I've ever said or done is totally not affiliated with Starbucks. Regardless of the fact that I should be paying rent in this particular location. You can follow the progress of the card's balance yourself on Twitter. As Andy Baio noted though, once this story hit Techcrunch, the balance has mostly stayed at zero.

The Follow-up To John Siracusa's OS X Lion Review

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If you enjoyed John Siracusa's epic OS X 10.7 Lion review, then you should be aware that he does a weekly podcasts on Dan Benjamin's 5by5 podcasting network called "Hypercritical". The most recent episode of Hypercritical, called "Nakedly Optimistic", serves as the first episode in what will probably be a couple episodes that covers his review in more depth (if that's even possible). John covers the details he wasn't able to get to, due to the uncertain deadline he was under depending on when Lion was released to the public. He covers a few mistakes he made, and provides a bit of follow-up to some of the comments he's seen regarding the review. I highly recommend you listen if this sort of thing excites you.

Draconian ISP Copyright Enforcement Coming Soon To Your Computer

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Greg Sandoval writing for CNet:

After years of negotiations, a group of bandwidth providers that includes AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon are closer than ever to striking a deal with media and entertainment companies that would call for them to establish new and tougher punishments for customers who refuse to stop using their networks to pirate films, music and other intellectual property, multiple sources told CNET. The details... Participating ISPs are given plenty of leeway to choose how to proceed. They can select from a "menu" of responses outlined in the plan, such as throttling down an accused customer's bandwidth speed or limit their access to the Web. For example, a suspected pirate may be allowed to visit only the top 200 Web sites until they stop illegal file sharing. The subscriber may also be asked to participate in a program that educates them on copyright law and the rights of content creators. And the part that really pisses me off: In addition to the NCTA, the White House was also instrumental in encouraging the parties to reach an agreement, the sources confirmed. President Obama has vowed to step up the fight against piracy and counterfeiting, and his administration has lobbied Congress the past several years to pass new pro-copyright legislation while instructing federal law enforcement to make antipiracy a priority. Not why I voted for you, Mr. President. It's becoming more and more clear to me that both political parties are the enemies of consumers & technology.