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Andy Oram

Editor

Biography

Andy Oram is an editor at O'Reilly Media, which is a highly respected book publisher and technology information provider. An employee of the company since 1992, Andy currently specializes in free software and open source technologies. His work for O'Reilly includes the first books ever published commercially in the United States on Linux, and the 2001 title Peer-to-Peer. His modest programming and system administration skills are mostly self-taught.

Andy is also a member of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility and writes often for the O'Reilly Network and other publications. Topics include policy issues related to the Internet and trends affecting technical innovation and its effects on society. His web site is www.praxagora.com/andyo.

Andy works at the O'Reilly office in Cambridge, Massachusetts and lives nearby with his wife, two children, and a six-foot grand piano that can often be heard late at night.

Articles

Blog

Recent Posts | All Posts

Cloud computing perspectives and questions at the World Economic Forum

July 09 2009

The World Economic Forum started a research project at Davos 2009 concerning cloud computing. I've put up a discussion forum as a wiki. read more

Personal Democracy Forum conference: initial themes

June 29 2009

The first day at the Personal Democracy Forum conference revolved around the freedom to experiment, necessary infrastructure, and the need to change. read more

Rethinking ecommerce security: security experts asked to redesign credit card payments

June 26 2009

Ed Bellis, the chief information security officer at Orbitz, is trying to design a secure online system for credit card payments. read more

Personal Democracy Forum ramp-up: adaptive legislation can respond to action in the agora

June 24 2009

If legislatures could rely on public participation during the implementation of the law, they could write laws that embrace such input. read more

Personal Democracy Forum ramp-up: twenty-five hundred years of Government 2.0

June 19 2009

New practices in government transparency are just intensifications of things democracies have done for a long time: public comment periods, expert consultation, archiving deliberations, and so forth. So let's look back a bit at what democracy has brought to government so far. read more

What's your objective in learning Objective-C? Is it the medium or the [message]?

June 18 2009

At O'Reilly Media, we're looking for reader reactions to help guide our new books, workshops, conference sessions, etc. Is it a hurdle you have to leap or a start to a whole new programming style? read more

Four roles for publishers: staying relevant when you are no longer a gatekeeper

June 17 2009

In many areas of publishing, there are enormous resources of free online material and innumerable forums where individuals can quickly and conveniently post their own observations. Since we are no longer gatekeepers, publishers have to focus on how we add quality. read more

Personal Democracy Forum ramp-up: from vulnerability and overload to rage, mistrust, and fear

June 16 2009

The grand vision for government/public collaboration is a set of feedback loops that intensify the influence of the collective will on government policy. But will the White House have the time and resources to establish a foothold for a solid and lasting open government program? read more

Big fish, little fish: the benefits of cycling between start-ups and established companies

June 05 2009

Tacit understandings among companies to refrain from snatching away each other's staff are illegal anti-competitive behavior. But going back and forth between large and small companies is key to cross-pollination. read more

FCC discusses broadband: the job is a big one

May 27 2009

Related to a proposal I submitted for local forums to implement high-speed networks, the FCC released "Bringing Broadband to Rural America: Report on a Rural Broadband Strategy." read more

Local forums to implement high-speed networks (broadband); proposal open for votes

May 24 2009

I've posted a proposal titled Local forums to implement high-speed networks (broadband) to a forum on open government put up by the White House. Voting is currently underway. read more

MySQL faster, better, and still unified: notes about Sun, Monty Widenius, Percona, and Drizzle

May 22 2009

It might have seemed last week, with the announcement of the Open Database Alliance, that MySQL is forking. The ODA promises a "central clearinghouse for MySQL development" and claims to improve on areas where criticism has historically been aimed at MySQL AB/Sun: bug-fixing, performance, and community responsiveness. But what's going on behind the scenes is much… read more

Completing the circle on journalists and public participation

May 20 2009

Capital News Connection has jumped into Web 2.0 full-tilt with Ask Your Lawmaker. The opportunity for a virtuous cycle of public input, professional processing, and listener loyalty--especially in a field whose death has been predicted by many--puts Ask Your Lawmaker into an intriguing category of its own. read more

The limits of standards in OOXML and ODF office suites

May 20 2009

Nobody expected Microsoft to make its proprietary OOXML format really work with products that support ODF. But an office suite has to hook into a huge number of outside pieces in its environment. We're just going to have to live with a fuzz factor. read more

Credit card company data mining makes us all instances of a type

May 14 2009

The New York Times has recently published one of their in-depth, riveting descriptions of how credit card companies use everything they can learn about us. Almost eleven years \ I wrote an article criticizing this trend. read more

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Andy Oram