Eric Hoefler

Managing Your Facebook Privacy

Thursday, August 19, 2010

I developed a document for my work to provide an overview of the privacy options in Facebook. I’ve modified it a bit for personal use and thought that others might find it helpful. Of course, this will likely be out-of-date within a month, given the way Facebook’s privacy settings and offerings continue to evolve, but [...]

Amazon, Shelfari, and LibraryThing

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

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Amazon just acquired Shelfari along with used and rare book company Abe Books. Abe Books has been a long-time partner with and 40% investor in LibraryThing, a Shelfari competitor, so the Abe Books acquisition also gives Amazon a 40% stake in LibraryThing. A crowded shelf indeed. Details covered by Publishers Weekly and TechCrunch. I’ve never [...]

Copyright, Confusion, and Cooperation

Saturday, June 21, 2008

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I’ve been collecting posts, videos, etc. related to the copyright controversy in my Del.icio.us account, tagged copyright. As a writer, English teacher, lover of film and literature, and friend of many artists, I’m very concerned about this issue (as a survey of recent posts here should indicate). However, the more I learn, the less sure [...]

Free Fiction

Friday, June 6, 2008

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Paul Krugman has an op-ed piece entitled “Bits, Bands, and Books” in The New York Times today about the influence of digital content on existing business models. His focus is on “books.” The basic argument is that, as it becomes easier to duplicate and distribute digital content, the ability to make money from that content [...]

Still Not Convinced

Saturday, May 31, 2008

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I keep trying to understand the position of the “copyright abolitionists,” but so far, I’m still not convinced. Here are a few points I’m stuck on … and there are probably others as well. I think this is an extremely important issue, though, so I’ll continue to learn and think about it. Freely Sharing Ideas [...]

Software for Writers – Part 2: Blog-Writing

Friday, May 16, 2008

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Software for Writers – Part 2: Blog-Writing

For my needs, Windows Live Writer (WLW) is the best desktop blogging application I’ve found.1 WLW makes it easy to insert elements and format posts, even allowing you to write using your blog’s stylesheet so you know exactly how the post will look once it’s published. I also appreciate the easy access to drafts and [...]

Software for Writers – Pt. 1: The Quick List

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

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Software for Writers – Pt. 1: The Quick List

I received an email from a teacher/friend asking for tips on script format to pass on to her creative writing students. I sent a quick reply,1 but I also mentioned that the students should consider using some software that was developed specifically for writers (instead of business professionals). I’ve tried a number of these tools, [...]

Copyright and the Control of Information

Sunday, May 11, 2008

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Neil W. Netanel defines the problem newspapers face in the digital age: Newspapers thus suffer from the classic public goods problem. Producers of quality journalism invest heavily in investigating, reporting, editing, and fact checking. But once they make their work product available, they cannot prevent many others from copying from and reading their work without [...]

Am I Wrong?

Sunday, April 13, 2008

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Distributing copies of a “Harry Potter” book, in any format, without payment, is wrong according to my best understanding and ethical sense so far. But stopping the publication of a lexicon for the world of Harry Potter — which to me is a clearly transformative kind of thing — seems equally wrong.

Of Lovecraft and Bibliographies

Saturday, April 12, 2008

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Setup: Part One One of the requirements for my Masters in English1 was the standard scholarly research course. The major assignment of the course was to create a bibliography on a subject or author and then compose a bibliographic essay from the findings. I chose to research H. P. Lovecraft because I’d been interested in [...]

So Much Wrong

Monday, April 7, 2008

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I don’t even know where to begin with this recent article from New York Magazine, “Testing Horace Mann,” about the fallout (or lack thereof) from offensive student postings on Facebook. It’s at the center of the current technology-related problems schools face. Part of this has to do with new problems the technology makes possible, but [...]

Plugging Our Ears

Sunday, March 30, 2008

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This morning, Doug Noon shared a post entitled “The Fiction of Intellectual Property.” The post and the comments are thoughtful, but ultimately frustrating. What follows isn’t a direct response (hence, I didn’t leave a comment), but just some thoughts that have been kicking around my head for a while related to that post and many [...]

Different Writing Spaces

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

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I added a post on this topic to the TeachEng.us blog. Here’s the teaser: … if I were in the classroom right now, and had students with consistent Internet access, I think I’d ask them to keep a few different writing spaces: a private journal, a public journal, a blog “notebook” or two, and a [...]

Rough Draft 3.0

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

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I’ve just dumped Word for RoughDraft,1 at least when it comes to stories and scripts. So far, RoughDraft is much, much better than a typical word-processor for writing prose and scripts, and a decent replacement for (and certainly cheaper than) FinalDraft or Movie Magic Screenwriter.2 I haven’t worked much with FinalDraft, but MMS does have [...]

Working with Blackboard Presentation

Friday, February 15, 2008

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I delivered a presentation last night to teachers who work in a county that only allows them to use Blackboard. Given that, I saw no point to going in and talking about the possibilities that other tools and services make available, or complaining about the limitations of Blackboard.1 That’s a presentation for the administration. Instead, [...]