Here´s Craig from Craigslist. I loved his presentation at DLD. One thing that surprised me is how Craig used the example of Bush´s reasons for invading Iraq when explaining the tools that Craigslist was implementing to avoid scams.

David de Rotschild is an adventurer and also an ecologist. He is the head of Adventure Ecology, an expedition group raising awareness about climate change. In this video, David speaks about his next adventure, Plastiki. I read Kontiki when I was 14 and fell in love with the book. I think Plastiki is a great idea to bring awareness of the problem of plastics in the ocean in a way that is constructive, fun but yet repetitive enough to make a difference. Unfortunately a lot of what happens in high seas is unregulated as anyone can basically do whatever they want in high seas. But as it happens with pirates when nations got serious about them most piracy ended as pirates need to come ashore and so do ocean polluters.

Just me being interviewed about Fon.

Technorati is about to launch a fantastic new feature. I saw it but swore to David that I would not disclose it. So in this video David speaks about Technorati in general but if you want to know what this feature is wait a few days and don´t bother viewing it.

It´s here, pls go to Sunday, 17:40.

Normally I go to conferences as a speaker. But thanks to my interests as a blogger, I have been asking for different roles so not only I can tell others about Fon but I learn about what others are doing. At SIME things work out well and I was both moderator of a very interesting pannel with Hjalmar Windbladh, Marko Ahtissari, Carlos Bhola and others and then I was also suprisingly given the role of rapper!, at DLD I managed to do slightly better. I am moderating an interesting panel with Nicholas Negroponte among others.

The problems YouTube recently had in India and Brazil illustrate the limits to automation when dealing with video content. What people who accuse Youtube do not understand is that Youtube, as well as eBay and other giants on the internet, rely on the fact that most people are actually honest and that if they are not other people will point that out. But this self policed system, already hard to understand to many in USA, in developing countries, who are used to video as delivered by regulated broadcasting companies, it is just too hard to comprehend.

How can Youtube –now owned by Google, a company that is worth many times more than the GDP of some LDCs– say it cannot afford enough people to police their site? To me the answer is not that it cannot afford them but that doing so destroys the Youtube business model.

Personally I suffered this problem this week. Youtube published a video that showed how Imams train radical Muslims in the UK. By the time I linked to this video it had been watched by half a million people but a day after I linked to it the video disappeared due to copyright violations. While I was annoyed and hate to see blog posts erased, I understood the situation and in the future I will link to Youtube again knowing that many Youtube videos come and go. I will do this because I believe in the Youtube model and want to support it. Indeed I think that self policing is one of the great things about democracy. But I do hope that others feel the same way and that the Youtube that we now know survives intact.