Like a lot of folks, I was surprised this week when the tech publication Gigaom abruptly shut its doors. I swore off reading tech blogs a couple of years ago, I confess, because I couldn’t stand the cheery churnalism. But Gigaom was different, offering sharp analysis and not re-written press releases. There’s been plenty of talk about what went wrong –is venture funding a good idea for a media business? – along with speculation about how financially stable other publications might be.

The news about Gigaom was particularly striking as it came at the end of the day of a big Apple press fiesta from which reporters breathlessly transcribed everything uttered on stage. My how, the tech blogosphere loves these! The page views! (The best live blog came from Paul Ford and Anil Dash, of course, who didn’t even have to attend the event to provide coverage that was better than the rest.) A gold laptop! So thin! New keyboard technology! A new power cord! More data collection – “for science”! A $17,000 watch! Who can resist?!

(Well, John Herrman can apparently: “I was an iPhone man once, like you. Then Shitphone changed everything.”)

Meanwhile: “A crash course in privacy and security in the classroom,” by Jessy Irwin. And a series of videos on privacy, trust, and education, featuring Cory Doctorow, Nishant Shah, Dan Gillmor, Ulrich Boser, and me.

And over on Hack Education, I published this and this and this. I'm not going out of business any time soon...

Yours in struggle,
~Audrey