It doesn't take guts to sit around puling and crying because the way you are spoon fed your stories doesn't always agree with your achey tummy. It takes guts to stand up and dig in and find the stories that need to be dragged out into the light, and the skill and savvy to do that with a smile and a wink, so you can keep getting the interviews you need to do your job.

My first job in Web development was as a member of washingtonpost.com’s “Tools Team.” I was, in title if not in practice, a Tool. Done snickering? Let’s move on. The Tools Team built mostly internal applications and services that helped the Web site run better. I mainly got to work on front-facing projects like the Congress Votes Database , the <a…

A collection of the best open data sets and open-source tools for data science, wrapped in an easy-to-use REST/JSON API with command line, Python and Javascript interfaces. Available as a self-contained VM or EC2 AMI that you can deploy yourself.

It's essentially a specialized Linux distribution, with a lot of useful data software pre-installed and exposing a simple interface. For full documentation, see http://www.datasciencetoolkit.org/developerdocs.

Interesting post/comment thread on why businesses are often closed or "translucent" rather than transparent. Not everyone involved is interested in making a big announcement, don't want to be a "hot startup" just want to put their heads down and work "tending their own garden", "translucency == storytelling"—sharing finished ideas (rather than process?) is more convincing (and profitable?), dealing with "undisclosed conflicts", helpful private exchanges over email.

VC industry has a really complicated relationship with access to information. Another post (forget where) pointed out that it's truly a social undertaking. Everyone wants to be first, based on speculation. While it would be fun to have open/leaked access to these kinds of communications (I'm sure it would tell a different story) "openness" can't really apply here in the way it can to journalism. the point of journalism is to tell stories. The point of VC is to grow companies. One requires exposé, the other requires discretion.

Fred Wilson:
"At Union Square Ventures, we pride ourselves on our transparency and openness. Wednesday's Airbnb post and Paul Graham's followup posting of our email thread on that opportunity is a good example of where being open benefits everyone involved, from Airbnb, to Y Combinator, to Union Square Ventures, and mostly to entrepreneurs out there who have always been curious what really goes on.

But there are plenty of times when we are not open. If an entrepreneur comes in and pitches us on an investment, we don't blog about it. We have all sorts of things going on in our portfolio right now that we'd love to talk about but obviously we can't and won't. And when we make an investment that the people involved decide should be kept quiet, we are fully capable of doing that."

Image Retouching: A Critical Approach for Media Arts Educators
I developed the following course unit on image tampering, retouching and manipulation for my Introduction to the Electronic Media Studio (EMS1) class at Carnegie Mellon. The semester course is intended for first-year students with little or no computer experience, and serves the purpose of introducing students to basic media-editing tools. The emphasis in the course is not on technical mastery but on understanding digital media technologies as tools for creative cultural practice.

The loosely-organized materials I’ve cited below provide starting points for discussions about image manipulation from several perspectives, including: photojournalistic standards of truthtelling; the construction of idealized beauty in vernacular advertising; and the early history of 19th-century photocollages as an extension of narrative romantic painting.