Publisher of goverment information on his daily tech habits

Carl Malamud runs Public. Resource.Org, a Sebastopol nonprofit that puts government information on the Internet. In the early 1990s, he ran Internet Talk Radio, the first radio station on the Internet, and soon after helped push the SEC into posting all public filings online. Last year, Public.Resource.Org was responsible for publishing 32.4 million pages of government documents and 588 government films on the Internet.

DailyGeek: What OS do you primarily use?

Malamud: On my desktop and laptop, I use Mac OS X. For utility servers like mail and DNS, we mostly run Ubuntu and for our big boxes we run Solaris. I also use NetBSD and FreeBSD on occasion.

DailyGeek: What search engine do you use?

Malamud: Grep, Spotlight, Google, WAIS and anything else I can find.

DailyGeek: What social network applications do you use?

Malamud: Twitter. Tried some of the other things like Facebook, didn't get it. Nothing wrong with that if that is what you like, though.

DailyGeek: What program(s) do you prefer using for Twitter?

Malamud: Well, now you're getting personal. Look, whatever works for you. I'm not very adventurous. I happen to use TwitterFox and the Web interface and TweetDeck is pretty cool, but this really isn't about Twitter, it is about your e-mail, browser, calendar, and other software on your desktop. It is worth investing some time in trying different applications and figuring out the mix that works for you.

DailyGeek: What is your favorite Open Source software program?

Malamud: That would be the Internet. And, from the Internet, there flowed Apache, BIND, UNIX, gcc, PERL, python, the list is endless.

DailyGeek: Favorite Web sites?

Malamud: I'm a news junkie, so I spend a lot of time at washingtonpost.com, wsj.com, cnn.com, news.bbc.co.uk, csmonitor.com, guardian.co.uk, latimes.com, boston.com, thehill.com and stuff like that.

DailyGeek: Preferred Internet browser?

Malamud: Firefox. I also keep Safari, MSIE, Opera and other browsers running for debug. I usually run the beta release of Firefox with Firebug and the Web Developer tools and a half-dozen other utilities. I'm intrigued by Ubiquity, a command-line plugin for Firefox.

DailyGeek: What type of phone do you use?

Malamud: I have an original

iPhone, but that is because my previous TDMA clunker was about to expire and a buddy of mine was in line when they were launching the

iPhone. He was in the middle of some Texas parking lot. I asked him how many phones he was buying and he said "just one." So, I had him get me one so I wouldn't have to go to a phone store. If I had to switch today though, I'd at least add an Android phone and maybe replace my iPhone.

DailyGeek: Favorite productivity tool?

Malamud: Andy's Market, just north of Sebastopol. Don't try cooking without it. Ace-in-the-Hole Cider Pub to the north and any of the coffee stands from there out to Hardcore Espresso are worth a visit as well.

Bonus question from last week's Q&A participant, Dane Jasper, co-founder of Santa Rosa ISP Sonic.net:

Dane Jasper: How important do you believe expanded access to broadband and faster broadband is to education and equality in the United States?

Malamud: Access to knowledge is a human right. Education is our most important piece of public infrastructure. I've lived in Japan and the Netherlands, and the difference in the public commitment to Internet access is striking. My friends in Japan have links into their house of 1 billion bits per second and they're upgrading to 10 gigabits. In their house. The U.S. needs to get serious here.You can reach Staff Writer Nathan Halverson at 521-5494 or nathan.halverson@pressdemocrat.com. Check out his blog at DailyGeek.Pressdemocrat.com.