Skyway Recommended December 31st to January 6th

Happy New Year! Each Monday we’ll pass on links to articles we thought were well worth reading from the previous week, for those who live where we do (British Columbia, Canada), work like we do (high speed business internet), and think about things we do (internet trends, internet privacy, internet censorship, cutting-edge technology, etc.). If you don’t want to wait ’til Monday, we usually tweet and link to these as we come across them…

Fast Company | 20 Tech Trends That Will Define 2013, Selected By Frog Design

Yes, it’s already that transitional time when our current year ends and another begins, and today and tomorrow are quickly changing hands. Rather than look back at significant trends of the past 366 days (2012 was a leap year, remember?), we asked a wide variety of technologists, designers, and strategists across Frog’s studios around the world to take a look to the future. The near future, that is.  Read More…

A Smarter Planet Blog | Cheap Internet, Low cost Sensors and Integration fueling Internet of Things

People have been talking and writing about the “Internet of Things” for more than a decade. It’s the idea that at some point billions of electronic devices and sensors will be connected to the Internet in parallel to the hundreds of millions of people who have access to the Net. But, unlike so many of the whiz-bang technologies that are forever predicted but never arrive, such as flying cars and time machines, the Internet of Things is on the verge of becoming a reality. Read More…

The Guardian | Glenn Greenwald  | France’s Censorship Demands to Twitter are more Dangerous than ‘hate speech’

Few ideas have done as much damage throughout history as empowering the government to criminalize opinions it dislikes. Read More…

NY Times Opinion | Remember Google at its core is a Data Collection Company

A few years after it was founded, Google adopted a list of guiding principles it titled, “Ten things we know to be true.” No. 4 was “Democracy on the Web works.” That’s a worthy sentiment — though a bit surprising coming from the Web’s emperor. For that, arguably, is what Google has become. Read More…

IT World Canada | Microsoft calls on Internet users to dump Google Gmail for Outlook

It’s tit for tat on the free email front as Microsoft calls on Internet users to dump Google Gmail for Outlook. Redmond’s call came shortly after the search engine giant said it was shutting down its service which allowed Exchange users to link to their free Gmail account. Read More…

AllThingsD | Forget Photo-Sharing; DabKick Is All About Photo-Showing

Ever want to walk someone through your vacation photos while you’re chatting with them on the phone? Your best options might be using video chat or screen-sharing, or working out an awkward routine where you tell the other person to advance to the next picture. But it’s not really like being in the same room sharing a physical photo album, where you can look at good quality images and flip pages forward and backward together. To that end, DabKick has just publicly launched a set of tools to help people share pictures with each other remotely — live. Read More…