Over the many years I’ve been creating content online, one of the common themes in my writing and podcasting has been about the need for an “open internet” that allows for “distributed and decentralized” services.  In recent years, I’ve been concerned by a return to “walled gardens” like Facebook and Twitter where the service is in the control of a single entity, usually a company.  On this page I’ve gathered some of my best writing on the topic across my various blogs:

• The Super Simple Secret to Stopping Online Piracy (Hint: It’s not SOPA)
  January 2012, Disruptive Conversations
• The US Congress, PROTECT IP, SOPA, E-PARASITES… and the War For the Open Internet
  November 2011, Disruptive Telephony
• 3 Whitepapers You Need To Read To Understand How SOPA Could Damage DNS And Decrease Security
  November 2011, Disruptive Telephony
• Ch-changes – Taking A New Job At The Internet Society To Join The Fight For The Open Internet
  September 2011, Disruptive Telephony (about my job change, but also a lengthy piece on my view into the challenges the Internet faces today)
• Why The “Nym Wars” Matter – Preserving Pseudonymity On An Open Internet
  August 2011, Disruptive Conversations
• On The Importance of Aggregating The Digital Content We Post In Walled Gardens
  September 2011, Disruptive Conversations
• Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and the Return of the Walled Gardens of E-Mail
  May 2007, Disruptive Conversations
• Of DDoSs and SPOFs: How Twitter and Facebook violate “The Internet Way”
  September 2009, Speaking of Standards
• The Facebook/Burson-Marsteller Debacle, Google – and the World War For (Our) Information
  May 2011, Disruptive Conversations
• The 2 Big, Glaring Failures of the “Voice 3.0” Manifesto
  June 2011, Disruptive Telephony
• The iPad Paradox: A Completely Closed System Promoting Open Standards
  April 2010, Speaking of Standards
• The real meaning – and power – of identi.ca (a.k.a. open source Twitter)
  July 2008, Disruptive Conversations
• Skype and SIP interop – the two sides of the issue
  September 2008, Disruptive Telephony
• Do the IM protocol wars even matter? Adium and the continued *client* unification of IM…
  September 2008, Disruptive Telephony
• Skype says “No” to VoIP interoperability – *because customers aren’t asking for it!* – Well, I am!
  January 2008, Disruptive Telephony
• Ning’s Phase-Out of Free Services – Smart Business Move? Or Utter Betrayal?
  April 2010, Disruptive Conversations
• Twitter’s SPOF Stupidity Continues: Ever hear of redundancy?
  July 2009, Disruptive Conversations
• THE CLOUD MUST BE OPEN! Voxeo Announces Tropo: The Open Source Cloud Telephony Service
  July 2009, Voxeo Talks (obviously about a specific service, but making the point)

Many posts on this topic can also be found in the “Walled Gardens” category of my Disruptive Conversations blog.

I will add more posts here over time – and if you read any of my blogs, follow me on Twitter, subscribe to my email newsletter or see any of my presentations, you will undoubtedly hear this theme coming through. I’m just a wee bit passionate about it 😉

I have always enjoyed taking photographs and “back in the day” shot literally thousands of slides when traveling. These days I’ve joined the DSLR world with a Nikon D90 and post many of my photos to my Flickr account at:

www.flickr.com/photos/danyork

When appropriate, I’ve grouped photos into sets:

www.flickr.com/photos/danyork/sets

My DSLR travels with me to most events and so you will see sets coming out related to those conferences.  Sometimes I wind up posting those conference sets and other photos over to the Flickr site of my employer, the Internet Society:

www.flickr.com/photos/deploy360

And some of my sets of photos were posted to the Flickr site of my former employer, Voxeo:

www.flickr.com/photos/voxeo

Very occasionally I also write about photography at:

www.disruptiveconversations.com/photography

Today almost all the images I post are from my Nikon D90, although occasionally I’ll post photos taken with my iPhone. Photos prior to December 2009 were mostly taken with either my Canon SD1000 or my iPhone.

A View From The Crow’s Nest

Interested in staying up on what’s on the bleeding edge of communications? Both the technologies and the way in which we use them? Want my take on the latest in social media, web design, SEO, new web technologies… along with some typography, unified communications and telecom thrown in now and then?

If so, I invite you to join my email newsletter called “A View From The Crow’s Nest“. The title came from my oft-used metaphor of my study of emerging technology being like the guy up in the crow’s nest of an old ship… looking out at the horizon for icebergs and mountaintops… and then shouting down suggestions to the folks on deck.

I’ve now been sending it out periodically with thoughts about whatever I’m finding interesting that particular week or month. Sometimes it might be new services, toys or tools… other times it is projects I’m involved with or find interesting… sometimes it is all of that.

You are welcome to join in the journey… just fill out the form below and you’ll get my next newsletter. I promise I won’t spam you or provide your info to others… and I definitely won’t flood your inbox. We’ll just have a conversation about the tools and technologies that are changing the ways in which we communicate… via that retro medium of email. 🙂

I currently contribute to:

For Immediate Release (FIR)

Each month I contribute a 4-8 minute segment to “For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report” a weekly podcast from Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson  about the intersection of public relations/communications / marketing and online technologies. My reports typically focus on the underlying technology and provide information about why communicators should care.  I started listening to “FIR” in February 2005, about a month after Shel and Neville launched the show.  In September 2005, starting with FIR #66, I became a regular weekly “correspondent” for FIR and have been contributing a report each episode ever since.  (As of 2019, the podcast moved from weekly to monthly.)

• Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | Google Podcasts | RSS | Subscription Options

The Dan York Report

Seeking to do more with audio and to experiment with SoundCloud, I launched “The Dan York Report” in 2013 where I regularly provide commentary on the technical, cultural and social changes happening all around us, particularly related to the Internet.  I cover emerging technology, social media, security and other random topics. I also provide occasional personal updates, travel/trip reports and commentary on larger social, political or even religious issues that I find interesting.  It’s a complex mixture of topics… with a heavy focus on technology. You’re welcome to join the ride!

• Listen/follow on Soundcloud at https://soundcloud.com/danyork
• Subscribe via the RSS feed
• Subscribe via iTunes

FIR On Technology with Dan York

With the creation of the “FIR Podcast Network” in 2013, I decided to expand upon my regular weekly reports into the main FIR podcast and offer longer episodes where I do deeper dives into the tools and technologies that communicators need to care about, as explained in this post on the FIR site.  Thus was born “FIR On Technology with Dan York” with the first episode going live in December 2013.  The episodes will appear periodically with no particular set schedule.  Suggestions for topics are welcome.

• Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | Google Podcasts | RSS | Subscription Options

Past Podcasts

I previously produced other podcasts:

Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast

From October 2005 through October 2008 I produced and co-hosted “Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast” with Jonathan Zar, a colleague from the Voice over IP Security Alliance.  We recorded over 100 shows and interviews, had on average over 1500 people downloading the show each week, and built a strong community around the show.  Job and life changes caused us to put the show on a hiatus from which it never returned.  The past shows and detailed show notes are all still available at: http://www.blueboxpodcast.com/ 

• View the website (and listen to episodes there)
• Subscribe via RSS
• Subscribe via iTunes

Emerging Tech Talk

From November 2008 through June 2011 I produced and hosted a video podcast, “Emerging Tech Talk“, for Voxeo, my employer at the time.  In the 64 episodes of the show, I talked about and demonstrated new and emerging technologies, with an emphasis on communication apps, services and standards, but with the occasional iPhone app, gadget or other random topic thrown in. While the corresponding blog posts and show notes that were at http://blogs.voxeo.com/ett/ seem to have disappeared after Voxeo was acquired in 2013 by Aspect, the video episodes can still be found on YouTube.

• Watch “Emerging Tech Talk” on YouTube

I write across a good number of sites on the Internet.  If you would like to read my latest writing I would suggest you visit the site where I am aggregating links to all my posts:

• Danyork.me

The sites and blogs where I write that are currently publicly available are (please note that there is a separate page for audio/video podcasts):

Current sites

• Disruptive Conversations – how the “social media” of blogs, podcasts, wikis, virtual worlds, etc. are changing the way we communicate
• Disruptive Telephony – how Voice-over-IP (VoIP) is fundamentally changing the technology we use to communicate
• CircleID – a site focused on Internet infrastructure where I occasionally contribute articles
• Code.Danyork.com – a place where I write about programming/developer topics, typically outside the realm of communications/telephony.
• DanYork.com – my “personal” site where I write about topics that don’t fit in my other sites.
• Deep Dark Blue – a purely experimental site where I test out various features and tools.

I also write occasionally on the site of the Internet Society, my employer:

• Internet Society blog (my specific posts can be found by scrolling down my Internet Society bio page)

I also maintain sites for two of my recent books, although they are not updated all that frequently:

Older sites – rarely updated

• Migrating Applications to IPv6, published by O’Reilly in June 2011
• Seven Deadliest Unified Communications Attacks, published by Syngress in April 2010
• Curling Live Streaming – occasionally I stream out curling games via YouTube

Older sites – no longer updated

• My Advogato diary – My primary weblog May 2000 to June 2004. Started updating it in late 2010 with developer-related postings and now automatically syndicate posts from Code.DanYork.com over to this site.
• My LiveJournal Account – my primary weblog from 2004-2006 and then sporadically thereafter on more random subjects… Vermont, programming languages, curling, Linux and more…
• This Old Globe – about collecting terrestrial globes, a hobby of mine.  Started as an experiment and not updated after 2006.
• North of 45 (RSS feed)- Stories relating to living in Canada from the viewpoint of an American who moved north in 2000
• Voice of VOIPSA – a group weblog from the Voice Over IP Security Alliance on VoIP security issues
• Monadnock Curling Club – a site focused on bringing the sport of curling to southwestern New Hampshire (we moved to Vermont)

Older sites – no longer available

• Voxeo Weblogs – From 2007 to 2011, I administered the blog portal for my employer at the time, Voxeo, and was the primary contributor to many of the blogs there.  Unfortunately, with the acquisition of Voxeo by Aspect, Inc., in 2013, they shut down all of the old Voxeo blogs and so all the content is no longer available.   The were around 20 blogs on the site and I primarily wrote on the following blogs:
  • Voxeo Talks – the main blog with a view on Voxeo announcements, industry trends, company culture and more
  • Speaking of Standards – a Voxeo view on industry standards, particularly the W3C and IETF
  • Voxeo Developers Corner – tips, tricks and tutorials for developing applications on Voxeo’s platforms
  • Unified Self-Service – articles about building multi-channel applications that work across voice, SMS/texting, IM, web, video and social media like Twitter
  • Emerging Tech Talk – a video podcast on emerging technology issues
  • Behind The Blog – a blog about how the Voxeo blog site runs on WordPress MU (WPMU)

  Two of the Voxeo blogs continue to exist because ownership was transferred from Voxeo to Tropo, Inc. However because my account was not transferred (as I no longer was employed there), many of the posts I wrote prior to September 2011 have now been re-assigned to a different author:

• The Tropo Blog – news and tutorials for users of the Tropo.com cloud telephony service
• The Phono Blog– news, tutorials and updates about the Phono JavaScript library that turns any web browser into a phone or chat client