HBO doesn’t want to help Netflix undermine its subscriptions or streaming service any more, so it’s firing this salvo. This should be interesting as shows like Boardwalk Empire drive plenty of interest from consumers.

Even Vladimir Putin isn’t immune to the power of social media. We’ve seen how social media has fueled revolutions across the Middle East in the Arab Spring, and now Russian citizens are getting into the act. An independent election observer in Russia witnessed blatant voter fraud. He captured video on his phone and then uploaded it for all to see.

Mr. Duda raced home and uploaded the clip to YouTube. Though just three minutes long, it quickly became an election-day sensation, helping fuel a major demonstration of as many as 5,000 people on Monday evening in central Moscow. They chanted “Russia without Putin!” and “Putin is a thief.” Several hundred were arrested, including two major opposition leaders.

Valentin Gorbunov, the head of the Moscow City Elections Commission, confirmed the substance of the video and announced that Russian investigators had opened a case into ballot tampering by the head at Polling Place No. 2501, where the episode occurred, Russian news agencies reported Monday.

It’s stunning to see how oppressive regimes are losing their grip on the public. The key to power is controlling information, and in the past, control of TV and newspapers was the primary tool. But it today’s bottom-up world, that control is impossible with social media and the Internet. But it’s impossible to have a modern economy without an open web, so hence the dilemma for thugs like Putin. It also presents some risks but also huge opportunities for foreign policy goals in the United States.

Check this out as the founders of Kout discuss their start-up an their online payment service.

Hat tip – Robert Scoble

This makes it much easier for national figures to quickly ramp up campaigns. Elizabeth Warren is a great example. She has a ton of progressive support after her role in creating the Financial Consumer Protection Bureau, so when she announced her Senate campaign, she was able to immediately harness her political celebrity. She raised a ton of money online in a short period of time, mostly from small donors all around the country. The web tools for this are now very common and easy to implement. In addition to raising a ton of money, she is also organizing an army of volunteers. As a result, her opponents in the Democratic primary have dropped out.

These tools are also important for less well-known candidates. People can create local buzz, and then use the same new media tools to leverage that buzz. Things now move much faster.

That said, old-school politics are still critical, and things like appearances and shaking hands generate news stories, that then get disseminated and then motivate people to go to the candidates web site. Also, people want to show their support in many ways, so signs and stickers are still important. So campaigns still need to pay attention to things like sticker printing, but the web is also helpful here as well, as all these things can be ordered online.

It will be interesting to see what innovations are in store for 2012.

The latest phase in the I.T. revolution is being driven by the convergence of social media — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Groupon, Zynga — with the proliferation of cheap wireless connectivity and Web-enabled smartphones and “the cloud” — those enormous server farms that hold and constantly update thousands of software applications, which are then downloaded (as if from a cloud) by users on their smartphones, making them into incredibly powerful devices that can perform myriad tasks.

The emergence of the cloud, explained Alan Cohen, a vice president of Nicira, a new networking company, “means than anyone can have the computing resources of Google and rent it by the hour.” This is speeding up everything — innovation, product cycles and competition.

The October issue of Fast Company has an article about the designer Scott Wilson, who thought of grafting the body of an iPod Nano onto colorful wristbands, turning them into watchlike devices that could wake you up and play your music. He had no money, though, to bring his concept to market, so he turned to Kickstarter, the Web-based funding platform for independent creative projects. He posted his idea on Nov. 16, 2010, reported Fast Company, and “within a month, 13,500 people from 50 countries had ponied up nearly $1 million.” Apple soon picked up the product for its stores. Said Alexis Ringwald, 28, who recently founded an education start-up, her second Silicon Valley venture: “I have many friends — they introduce themselves as ‘reformed’ Wall St. bankers and lawyers — who have abandoned conventional careers and are now launching start-ups.”

Some like Rich Kaarlgard have been describing this as the “cheap revolution” for years. Friedman is explaining the new developments in that area. We now have it all at our fingertips all the time. It’s a powerful and exciting development. Kickstarter is a great crowdsourcing example that thrives in this environment.

Friedman uses the column to contrast Wall Street and Silicon Valley. It’s a good read.

Erin Andrews has advice for celebrities who decide to use Twitter. Andrews has a huge following, and she explains how famous people need to have thick skin to handle all of the tough comments thrown their way.

“There’s so many great things you can do with Twitter: get a message out; try to help people in need. I think the biggest thing you have to know with Twitter, and anything else from a blog to a newspaper, is that you just have to have a thick skin,” she said during a media luncheon for the 25th season of GameDay in New York last week. “You just have to let it roll off. You can maybe cry about it privately with your family. Talk about it by yourself. But you just can’t respond. It’s too dangerous.”

Tweet at your own risk.

Here are some tips for creating your online dating profile. The article is aimed more towards advice for women, but men can benefit from some of the tips as well. Online dating is becoming more and more popular, so everyone should check it out if you’re looking for love or even a hookup.

Read the whole article, but here’s one of the tips:

7. Don’t Provide A Laundry List Of Things You Don’t Want

“No ultimatums,” says Davis.

Starting out with “Don’ts” and “Nevers” makes you sound negative and also tends to induce oversharing. If you say you could never be with a guy who isn’t as loyal as Lassie, odds are someone will read between the lines and figure out your last boyfriend cheated on you.

This is pretty good advice, as many profiles created by women seem to have plenty of ultimatums.

Another tip we think women should consider involves picture of their dogs. So many women seem to be obsessed with their pets, and then litter their profile with photos of the dog. Really? Unless the guy is a real dog lover, this is going to turn him off. Let him meet your pet and then see how it goes, but pictures of dogs, particularly those tiny designer dogs, are going to chase many men away.

Our world is getting smaller and smaller, but not just because planes are getting faster and more people than ever live in the cities. One reason the world is getting smaller is because everything is shared, no matter where you go or what you’re doing. Even things as simple as movies and music collections can be shared easily through the use of companies like www.directstartv.com and a variety of platforms all over your home.

While some people think that media sharing is somehow brought about through fairy dust or phases of the Moon, this is just silly. In reality, it concerns a completely non-magical cloud and the settings on a variety of devices you might already have in your home. While it can be a bit of work to set up things initially, ultimately, your reward will be a lot of easy transferring.
Let’s look at how your media files get shared through various devices.

Apple’s Home Sharing

Apple is well known for making everything work with everything else for the most part. While the Apple Store occasionally has an issue with buying something on one platform and sending it to another, this is a fairly small issue that can easily be worked around. Ultimately, most Apple products perform extraordinarily well together and share efficiently.

For instance, sharing media files with Apple products such as the iPod, iPad and iPhone is a fairly simple matter. Since the later versions of these products are all equipped with wireless capabilities, all you have to do is enable file sharing in them and in your iTunes account. From there, assuming you have the right operating system installed for all of your hardware, sharing is as simple as clicking on the album or song you want to listen to.

Naturally, additional steps are required to store songs or other files on a wireless device in order to take them out of your home network’s range. However, they’re pretty simple, and the transfer process takes mere minutes if your connection is solid.
 
Home Streamers

There are a lot of different products that allow you to play your favorite media files without having to use your computer for such a task. While you can always hook up your computer to a TV and essentially use it as an external monitor, most people’s home theater setups are a lot different than their computer area setups.

If you do your “official” work in an office chair, but then retire to a big, plush couch to take in a flick, you might find trying to mix and match the two styles a bit jarring. So it starts to become obvious why you’d want to have a system in place that can easily transfer files from one device into itself, and then play them on your TV. The CinemaTube pictured above is only one possibility for your home networking needs.

One way you can transfer files into a device of this nature is through your home wifi network. However, it’s almost as easy to simply hook up an external drive to such a machine and transfer your files that way through a media streamer. Once your files are there, it’s super easy to use it just like you would an old-fashioned VCR, sans rewinding of course.

Home Networks and Discovery

Not many people realize this, but you can use your PS3 to transfer files to your PC through your home network. It’s an advanced enough system that it can act as a file storage and media transfer device. Of course, that’s just a fancy way of saying you can stream TV shows, music and movies from your PS3′s hard drive or online through your computer.

The major trick when you link up a PS3 and a PC is in the details of how your firewall operates, and whether all settings are correct for the task. While Network Discovery and Printer Sharing are critical to allowing your PC to find your PS3, a lot of people forget this vital pair of clicks.
Another thing you’ll want to be aware of if you want to play admin and link the two machines is the MAC (or Media Access Control) device number so you can pick out your PS3 among the other devices on your network.

Cloud-based Sharing

The great thing about how your home network operates is that it combines all of the devices on your network on the Internet and allows them all to share with the efficiency of dolphins in the ocean. When one of your devices spots a tasty group of files swimming by, it can access them and share them as easily as a pod can toss around a random piece of floating garbage.
Some services, such as those offered by Netflix, Amazon, Blockbuster or DirecTV, allow you to stream in movies and TV from the Internet and share them amongst your various devices. While the ways we talked about earlier technically allow you to do the same thing, most open up the possibility of using DVDs and other data transfer methods.

The process is far more streamlined when a company of Netflix’s size handles it. At that point, all you have to do is manage your own network’s settings.

CONCLUSION

There are a lot of ways to share information between your various devices. You can set up a home network, with or without wires. You can use portable data storage devices to ferry files around. You can even directly link devices to one another, if you don’t want to mess with having a full network to concern yourself with. Whatever method you choose, only a few easily handled details stand between you and being able to use your media files on all your devices.