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For booksellers, hotel guests, and the faithful, one book remains a mainstay – The Bible. But despite the book’s unending popularity, for many it remains a daunting read. Enter Slate columnist David Plotz, who decided to scour the Good Book cover-to-cover, and blog about it for the unschooled among us. Plotz explained to us a few years back why he put his analysis online.
Should gun ownership be a private matter? After a Memphis newspaper put a searchable database on its website of all people licensed to carry a hand gun in Tennessee, the NRA went ballistic. The paper’s editor Chris Peck says the database is a legal, not to mention profitable, part of its online operation.
Online reviews are nothing new but few sites are as popular or powerful as Yelp, which launched in 2004. Now used by millions of people, Yelp's five star system can make or break a business. Co-founder Jeremy Stoppleman talks about the site's evolution.
Given Yelp's immense popularity, a particularly harsh review can leave business owners feeling stunned and powerless. So one San Francisco restaurant decided to confront its worst reviews by emblazoning them on T-shirts. Delfina Restaurant owner Craig Stoll talks about running a restaurant in the age of Yelp.
If you think your doctor has cold hands or worse, has made a mistake in your medical care, what better place to sound off then an online review site. There are dozens of such sites, but now doctors are fighting back. Dr. Jeffrey Segal, founder of Medical Justice, provides releases to physicians that when signed, prohibit patients from inveighing online.
There’s a name for how cruel people can get given a little anonymity on the internet. It’s called “online disinhibition effect” and the resulting venom can ruin your day or worse, destroy your good name. Bob looks at the fraught relationship on the web between reputation, privacy and the law.
The site Wikileaks posts leaked documents from anonymous whistleblowers worldwide, even if those documents pose a danger or could potentially lead to loss of life. Julian Assange, the site's investigations editor, explains why Wikileaks publishes almost anything it receives.
Richard Clarke served as special advisory to President Bush on cyber-security and is now a security consultant and author. His novel Breakpoint describes a frightening cyber-attack scenario and in this extended interview he argues it's not so far-fetched.
