Friends our worries regarding online gambling is soon going to be over with states one after another looking to legalize online and brick-and-mortar casinos in the states. The next in line is Iowa.

A friend called this week to see what I thought of adding the word process to his tag line. He has a rock-solid process to help his clients and he is very proud of it. But as we talked, he realized that there is no way to convey what his process really offers without a lot more words and in a tag line, that wasn't practical.

This weekend I watched Shark Tank. I had avoided it because it sounded so goofy and so many other bloggers were on the band wagon. But what I saw happens all the time in real life too so it was worth discussing. Over and over people came in with their ideas that they held onto like children. But when questioned, they were so focused on the person asking the negative question that they ignored the fact that others were still interested!

If you are a Web developer, or run a Web site, you might be interested in a couple of free software tools that have recently been made available by Google. One of the key trends on the Web in recent years has been the greatly increased use of JavaScript on Web pages. Probably the best known site that makes very heavy use of JavaScript is Facebook.

I submit to your interest two speeches that challenge acceptance of status quos by which our collective frogs are slowly boiling. First is Freedom in the Cloud, by Eben Moglen, given at the Internet Society in New York on 5 February. Second is Making Sense of Privacy and Publicity, by Danah Boyd. Given on 13 March at SXSW.

In the last few months gambling has become a popular way for lawmakers to help their struggling economy. Isn't it funny to find the same body of lawmakers who once used to accuse these games that people like us love to play for mental relaxation or challenge as factors for demoralizing societies now thinking about them as a way to improve the sinking economy?

Earlier today Wikimedia announced a generous $2 million grant to the foundation from the Google Charity Fund at the Tides Foundation. This is the first gift to the Wikimedia Foundation from Google, and as an unrestricted gift it enables the foundation to support operations for Wikipedia and its other free knowledge projects across multiple priorities.

We have reached an interesting point in moving toward digital technology. The the barriers between paper and paperless offices are no longer technical but cultural. The components of a paperless office are readily available and not particularly expensive.

Soundcloud and Tumblr are leading the way in both of their respective fields, and combining the two by embedding SoundCloud's audio player is a popular way of sharing music.

By far my favorite book on the research methods, Unobtrusive Measures (first published in 1966), is a skeptical romp through social science where the authors take the position that most of what we call social science is wrong. The theme of the book is that research is likely wrong because research design is very difficult and researchers too easily substitute received wisdom and procedure for hard thinking about designing studies, experiments, measures, tests, and so on.

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