For some time now, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the non-governmental organization that governs the web has been working on a new set of standards called “HTML5”.

When done properly, standards are a good thing. Having standards means that no matter what web browser or computer you're using, you can view and interact with content on the web.

Over the years, one of the things that has been particularly irritating, has been the requirement for computer users to install various third party browser “plug-ins” in order to view certain types of content. Often, these plug-ins, although “free of charge,” are not free in the freedom sense.

What big media corporations call “Digital Rights Management” (DRM) and digital freedom activists refer to as “Digital Restrictions Management” has long been the toxic sludge of digital music, video and e-books.

With DRM, corporations impose digital locks on digital media and on digital devices that restrict what you can and can't do with that media or device.

In 2005, Sony BMG used DRM software on their music CDs, that secretly installed a rootkit on computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system that seriously compromised the security of countless numbers of machines.

Guest post by Michelle Langlois

I got a new smartphone seven months ago, and it's a pretty handy little gadget. I'll never get lost again since I have a map that can pinpoint my location down to whether I'm in the front or back of my house. I downloaded a banking app that lets me check my balance, pay bills, and transfer funds whenever I want to do it. And, of course, I can tweet, foursquare, play Frozen Bubble, and watch YouTube any time I like.

What if Microsoft demanded a 30 per cent cut of your speaking fees if you happened to make use of a PowerPoint presentation in your talk? What if you used Photoshop to edit your photos and Adobe only allowed you to sell your creations through their online photo store? Sound crazy? That's what Apple is up to with their new iBook Author software.

The first 10,000 Raspberry Pis will be coming off the assembly line in the next few weeks. What's a Raspberry Pi, you ask?

It's a little $25 single-board computer that's about as powerful as a typical smartphone. The project is the brainchild of Eben Upton of Cambridge University who co-founded the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The foundation is a registered charity in the U.K.

While the first batch of Raspberry Pis are expected to be snatched up by hackers, computer geeks and electronics hobbyists, the ultimate aim of the project is to get these cheap little computers into the hands of schoolkids.

I'm always saddened to hear about the passing of anyone before their time.

The recent announcements of the premature deaths of two very public individuals has brought wall to wall media coverage, very public displays of mourning along with speculation on the future of their life's work.

Having never been a fan of the empire that Steve Jobs built, I posted online wondering when this fawning coverage would end. Someone remarked sarcastically that it would last about as long as the coverage of Jack Layton's passing.

Last winter, I wrote in this space about Diaspora*, a new free software-based, decentralized, privacy-aware social networking service developed by four computer science students at New York University.

At the time, Diaspora* was in the very early "alpha" stage of development and access to the service was by invitation only.

Right now, there are probably a couple of dozen "Pods" (servers) up and running on the Net and for all intents and purposes, Diaspora* is open for business!

What's different about Diaspora*?   

"When Patents Attack!" is the title of a recent episode of This American Life, a program produced by Chicago's National Public Radio affiliate WBEZ Radio. This one-hour episode is an expose of a new and parasitic industry that's burst on the scene in recent years, namely the "patent troll" industry. It also takes a look at the current patent war under way between the giants in the tech sector.

I've been meaning to write this post for a long time, but like many of you I've been wasting far too much time on Facebook. Facebook has been dutifully logging all of my posts, photos, personal messages etc. They mine my personal data and display ads for ham radio and electronic parts companies, Linux web hosting companies, Wordpress training and even the occasional ad for a social justice organization. Facebook's data mining software knows me as a somewhat geeky lefty. Not bad.

Over the last year plenty of things both good and bad have taken place using the power of both social networks and mobile devices. We've seen millions in the streets of Tunis, Cairo, Athens, Madrid and now even Tel Aviv demanding social and economic justice.

This month saw Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation team up with the Apple Computer Corporation to launch the world's first digital-only newspaper called The Daily.

This newspaper is not available on the web at all. It's solely available as a paid app for the Apple iPad for US$39.99 a year, or US$0.99 per week. This new iThingie-only newspaper will have its own staff of approximately a hundred journalists.

Personally, I don't give a rat's ass what Rupert Murdoch puts out. I'm not going to buy it.