jee, could i be any more unoriginal?

It has been my pleasure to serve the reBlog reader community for the past two weeks. From now on, I'll be browsing the web via rss, reading only headlines, and talking of 'there was this one cool thing i saw on the Internet... somewhere, yeah, google for it...' I had a couple days of information-overload attacks when I started, but I eventually got the hang of it after the first week. The practice of blogging has definitely grown in every direction since I started a few years ago. By the next election, we're so gonna change the scene.

Thanks for all the support, you guys rulez!

I'd like to leave one last link before I depart, to the funnest show you'll ever see in New York on Art+Technology+Innovation by some of the smartest kids on the block:

The ITP WINTER SHOW 2004

Founded in 1979 as the first graduate education program in alternative media, ITP has grown into a living community of technologists, theorists, engineers, designers, and artists uniquely dedicated to pushing the boundaries of interactivity in the real and digital worlds. A hands-on approach to experimentation, production, and risk-taking make this hi-tech fun house a creative home not only to its 230 students, but also to an extended network of the technology industry's most daring and prolific practitioners.

(as a recent graduate from the place, i guess you could say i'm a little biased)

It was fun to be here, thanks for having me, and happy reading!

- ann

awesome -- AP

^ From plateau to plateau: Viaduc de Millau. Opening december 17th.

Foster & Partners: Millau Viaduct

Structurae: Images pour Viaduc de Millau

"The Millau Viaduct designed by Lord Norman Foster will be the highest bridge in the world once put in service " -- AP

i just thought this image was awesome (in so many ways), you can read the rest of the firmware hacking detail at the title link. -- AP

um, with english subtitle, please? -- AP

Glowlab founder Christina Ray recently collaborated with her father for a show in Santa Monica, CA called Artist Inquiries II: Street Parking in Los Angeles. Ray and her father designed an informational sheet that was supplemented by photographs and drawings to depict the Los Angeles stresses and excitement in the pursuit of satisfactory parking. Details regarding the questionnaire and the artist statements can be found at the site under Artist Inquiries II: Street Parking in Los Angeles.

This project questions the urban landscape and the design of the personal use within that landscape. In Ray's artist statement she describes the ease of mind by not having a vehicle in Brooklyn thereby relieving her from worrying about "auto insurance, the price of gas, or alternate-side parking restrictions". Indeed, living in New York and even Providence, RI myself, the design of the urban landscape is more condusive for promoting walking. In fact, whenever I am in New York, I intentionally leave my car behind because there is no need for one. By contrast, when I recently lived in California I experienced first hand the necessity for a vehicle, even to go around the block. It wasn't so much that I became lazy when I lived in California, but that the area did not allow for me to comfortably walk from one location to another.

U.S. Constitution: Fourth Amendment

Fourth Amendment - Search and Seizure

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

UPDATE/CLARIFICATION : He doesn't say that the allegations are necessarily true.

Update, 12.12.2004: From a followup discussion with Joi Ito: Thinking about the goal of the Global Voices effort, I asked "What are we after, when we try to bring blogging to the rest of the world?" Joi: I just posted some stuff on the global voice blog. Take a look at some of the posts there. I don't think it's about bringing blogging to the world exactly it's providing free speech and voice in all of its forms, including video, wikis, paper, phone, etc."


Here's a new link, as well: Berkman Conference Transcripts

This is unquestionably the best book on the subject that I've read. It strikes the perfect balance between factual -- "Here is what is available, here is the law, here is the means by which you can download, here is how to minimize your legal risk" -- and philosophical -- "Here is a breakdown of music industry sales, here is Harlan Ellison's opinion on bookwarez, here's what crackers have to say about zero-day warez trading, here's the dumbass laws that have been proposed to allow rights-holders to remotely shut down your computer via secret kill-switches, isn't that crazy?"

Wang is an accomplished tech writer and a stand-up comic, so Steal This File Sharing Book is both funny and lucid. It assumes almost no technical knowledge and it walks the reader through everything from file-compression protocols to anonymizing proxies to the notorious cross-stitch-pattern-trading underground.

If you want to figure out how to file-share safely, avoid spyware, not get busted, and learn about the morality and ethics as presented by all sides of the file-sharing debate, this is the book for you. Link

And the award for the stupidest cops and teacher go to... -- AP

(windows media player) -- AP

A good thread on Ask MetaFilter about making sites that don't look like blogs, but are built with weblog tools. A good number of Movable Type-powered sites are mentioned, along with smart resources for doing the same yourself.

By web standards, this is old news: Google has launched Google Suggest. Though not ready for primetime, Google Suggest offers a fascinating glimpse into our collective desires on the web.

Think of it as an autocomplete zeitgeist for your browser. Each keystroke you enter subdivides billions of the world's most popular requests to a specific handful for you. Google Suggest does not offer predictive searching for you, but predictive searching for us.

That's why when you type the letter "A" it first suggests "amazon" and when you type "P," you get "Paris Hilton."

You might not have been looking for Paris, but it's what most of the world ususally is looking for.

In that way, Google's implementation of Suggest might not be perfect, but their intent is. Google continues to tap into the power of smartmobs, trying to help us help ourselves with the word that's stuck on the tip of our collective tongue.

let's rewrite the alphabet song... -- AP

Hunger costs. People who do not have enough to eat are often less able to work, for obvious reasons, while children who suffer long-term malnutrition often also find themselves afflicted with long-term developmental difficulties. Furthermore, people who are hungry also find themselves more vulnerable to epidemic disease and less able to adapt to climate disasters.

Therefore, investing in hunger relief is, in fact, making an investment in the society's future as a whole. As the UN says:

"Hunger and malnutrition kill more than 5 million children every year and cost developing countries billions of dollars in lost productivity, yet the resources needed to effectively prevent this human and economic tragedy are minuscule when compared to the benefits, according to the report. Without the direct costs of dealing with the damage caused by hunger, more funds would be available to combat other social problems. A very rough estimate suggests that these direct costs add up to around $30 billion per year.

Now, the Economist tells us, the World Food Program (WFP) is exploring ways of using derivatives to create insurance against bad harvests.

(Posted by Alex Steffen in Big Systems - Global Institutions, Governance and History at 07:16 AM)

This is a brilliant little media hack: the guy from the Yes Men goes on TV posing as a spokesperson for Dow (which ate Union Carbide) on the anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, apologizing, saying that the company was taking responsibility and compensating victims.

This of course forced Dow to issue a denial saying they were not sorry, were not taking responsibility and wouldn't pay the victims a dime. Brilliant!

Activist Andy Bichlbaum convinced the broadcaster he was a Dow spokesman by putting his number on a fake Web site for the company. The BBC acknowledged it had been duped and apologised for airing the hoax. Bichlbaum later said his goal was to show that "another world is possible" if Dow did the right thing and paid victims. In the interview, he told the BBC Dow Chemical was taking responsibility for the disaster and would pay $12 billion (6.2 billion pounds) to victims.

ical quickly said the story was not true and "Finisterra" was not its employee. The company says it bears no legal responsibility for the disaster and owes victims nothing.

(Posted by Alex Steffen in QuickChanges at 02:34 PM)

As an ex-smoker I really find the habit quite gross. So it's with great apprehension that I mention this product, but the fact of the matter is that it's a pretty brilliant design solution. Instead of putting butts in empties and making a mess along the way, pop on an Ashhole and get the benefits of an ash tray without the need to clean it out every 10 minutes.

One of the doctors at Saturday's news conference said the changes in Yushchenko's face will remain for a long time. More treatment will be needed to determine whether his face can be restored to the way it had been.

Yushchenko had long been known for his good looks.

Continuing through January 16, bitforms gallery in Chelsea presents a small survey of early computer-based work entitled, 'Scratch Code.' Ranging from Ben Laposky's seminal oscilloscope imagery to Peter Vogel's interactive sound sculptures, the show explores this genre of art in its mirror stage. The sounds and forms also reflect the space between this former period of computer graphics and the present. Like in Tony Pritchett's Flexipede, a looped animated piece in which an endearing centipede-like character is continuously disbanded and reconstructed, the awkward movement of the animation evokes a whole series connections to early video game systems and graphic programs like Basic and Logo. Increasingly, a contemporary generation of artists, web-designers and animators draws from this aesthetic of early computer animation, games and sound. For those that grew up playing with the electronic games and learning the programming languages of the 1970s and 80s, the significance of this history is intrinsically related to this particularly strange literacy and the set of references created by these types of designs and formats. - David Senior

http://www.bitforms.com/scratchcode/

Guido Ciburski, a television software engineer, wants to launch Cybersky, a Web service that aims to do for TV what already applies to music and video, which can be downloaded free from the internet.

At the end of January, his company, TC Unterhaltungselektronic, will unveil its Cybersky TV web service which will enable broadband users to distribute video programmes free, and exchange them with others.

Viewers will need a television connected to a computer set up to upload a chosen television programme on to the internet, where other viewers will be able to download and broadcast it on their own sets almost instantaneously.

As soon as one subscriber uploads a programme on site, it becomes immediately available to other participants. So, the more subscribers, the greater the choice of programmes.

The concept has alarmed Germany's established TV companies, and is likely to concern other broadcasters around the world.

Cybersky's response to charges that it will be illegally broadcasting copyrighted programmes without permission is that its peer-to-peer system does not technically amount to distribution.

His company is used to going to court to defend its innovations. Six years ago, they developed a device called the TeleFairy which enabled viewers to skip TV advertising. Germany's broadcasters sued but a five-year legal battle ended in victory for the inventors last summer.

Via The Independent.

A researcher at UNC is inquiring into the ethics of blogging. He would like your thoughts on ths subject.

I am a doctoral student at the University of North Carolina's School of Journalism and Mass Communication. I have recently started a project that seeks to determine what ethic (if any) is at work in the blogosphere. Also, I am trying to uncover any "duties" bloggers think they may or may not have and to whom.

ing blogethics2004.blogspot.com and sharing your opinion by commenting on some questions I have posted there.

I will be posting a completed research paper on the site in January for your open comment. I may use quotes from the site in that paper.

Many thanks,
Martin

Martin Kuhn
Roy H. Park Fellow, Ph.D. Student
Journalism & Mass Communication
University of North Carolina

Thanks, Paul!

Tired of waiting for Apple to come out with a Tablet Mac? Well, you could get off your ass and do it yourself, just like Joseph DeRuvo Jr. did. He took an iBook and more or less grafted a touchscreen onto it. It took a mighty amount of soldering, but at the end of the day Joseph had his i-Tablet. A monstrously thick i-Tablet that looks like it s a pain to lug around, but an i-Tablet nonetheless (and shouldn t it be iTablet not i-Tablet ?).

[Thanks, Rob]

To mark the beginning of the Internet + Society 2004 conference, the Kennedy School of Government cohosted an event this evening with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society on the topic of the internet in the 2004 elections. The forum consisted of two panelists, Joe Trippi, former campaign manager for the Howard Dean campaign and Michael Turk, online campaign director for the Bush-Cheney '04 ticket. The panel was moderated by Kathleen Matthews, anchorwoman for ABC News.

The discussion was awash with utopian musings around the effect of technology on politics in the last year, but a number of interesting points emerged from the discussion. Trippi noted that the Dean campaign was largely due to the fact that supporters used technology to support the campaign in ways that the organizers had never expected. Most of all he stressed the importance of the conversation that emerged among Dean supporters, something that was not available to citizens in the 2000 election.

Turk followed suit with a similar handful of anecdotes and stories that made technology out to be a central part of the Republican success. He noted that the difference in their campaign strategy was the extent to which "viral marketing" allowed for the efficient spread of information to interested parties. Instead of relying on a centralized machine, the GOP was able to take advantage of their supporters to spread the word.

Reader Brent says,

"The video is just a demonstration for the game. The Japanese test describes some features of the game, such as 8 people can play off a single cartridge (might want to double-check how true that one is) and that there is a two-button beginner mode."

I don t know enough about the DS to tell you whether they were indeed playing Diagasso! Band Brothers. However, it warmed my heart to see a bunch of Japanese adults geeking out to an anime intro theme song. If you re interested, the song is from the recent series Fullmetal Alchemist, and I believe the track is titled MELISSA (a clip is apparently available on the site I linked). Thanks for making my Friday that much happier!

you HAVE to watch the video!!! can someone translate the text, please? -- AP

Kelly Jenkins' Overlooked piece is a radiator knitted out of tubular steel. It's not just conceptual art, it's functional too.

"Industrial knitting and everyday objects are both overlooked and taken for granted, and I wanted to focus attention on them", explains the young designer. "It works like a normal piece of knitting. Each row is independent from the other, so you can unlink rows, or fold it up and put it away. It can also be customised. You can have just one row of seven stitches, or it can be made to any shape or scale."

It can be heated by either water, or with hot wire so that the heat can be regulated: "So you can sit on it without burning your bum." It can be mounted on a wall or sit on the floor. Each row can be turned on or off independently, so if you want a warm head, you can just turn on the top row.

Jenkins was sponsored by tube/pipe bending company Tubela Engineering, which shaped the tube metal.

Via The Guardian.

See also Heat_Horse designed by Gina Reimann.

RealClimate is here. It's a blog written by nine working climatologists from around the world (all experts in their field), focusing on explaining climate science, providing context to current reports in the mainstream media, and rebutting the fallacious arguments of carbon lobby hacks. They've started off with a bang -- in their first ten days of operation, they've covered climate models, critics of the "hockey stick" temperature reconstruction, the Arctic Climate Assessment, urban heat islands, solar influence, and more. For anyone interested in climate science, this site will be the first place to read every day. Highly recommended.

(Posted by Jamais Cascio in QuickChanges at 09:37 AM)

see the rest of the article at the title link -- AP

Should science have a higher profile with people who say another world is possible?
We who are of the left are fighting so that there will be more people in the world who will have all of the possibilities. I think that for us science is crucial, starting from the way we use our resources to the way we will be able to use whatever comes to us. For example, in the early 1960s my dad said that he would like to study nuclear science because at the time it was something from the future.

He also wanted to bring it into perspective, bearing in mind the realities of the planet - to develop science without killing the world. That is something we must bring back in our time. The challenge is to make use of the very interesting scientific developments that are being carried out without destroying the environment. There has to be a balance.

from the article: "until recently, the idea of watching people play video games wasn't a viable TV concept." -- AP

Sensory homunculus: "This model shows what a man's body would look like if each part grew in proportion to the area of the cortex of the brain concerned with its sensory perception."

Motor homunculus: "This model shows what a man's body would look like if each part grew in proportion to the area of the cortex of the brain concerned with its movement."

"Sensory Homunculus" would not be a bad band name.

re-narrating cities via nomadic technologies

"Multiuser environments in cyberspace have frequently been regarded as utopian spaces in which users could project their imagination. When communities are shaped in a hybrid space, mobile phones become new media tools for creating novel and unpredictable imaginary spaces, re-narrating cities. Fixed Internet users do not have the ability to move through physical space. But the emergence of nomadic interfaces represents a chance for such imaginary spaces to be enacted and constructed in physical space.

Nomadic technologies have a twofold role in the construction of playful/narrative spaces. First, they allow virtual spaces to be mobile, bringing them into the physical world. Second, when used to play games, they free the game from the game board or the computer screen, making it possible to use the city space as the game domain." from Are cell phones new media? by Adriana de Souza e Silva [Related]

Wired News: When bombs went off in Jakarta, Indonesia, in September, CNN.com readers weren't the first to know. Instead, members of Flickr, an online photo service, were among the very earliest to see pictures of what had happened.

"There were photos on Flickr before even any news stories," said Caterina Fake, a Flickr co-founder. "Within the hour, three Flickr users who happened to be in Jakarta had uploaded photos."

go to the title link for more details -- AP

American artist Michael Rakowitz's paraSITE project proposed to take advantage of the exterior ventilation systems on existing architecture to give the homeless a temporary shelter.

The deflated structure have handles to be easily transported or can be carried on one's back. Once he has found the outtake ducts of a building's HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning) system, the user attach the intake tube of the structure to the vent. The warm air leaving the building inflates and heats the membrane structure.

From February 1998 until April 1998, the artist distributed seven prototypes of the paraSITE shelter to several homeless people in Cambridge.

While these shelters were being used, they functioned also as a protest device against authorities willing to make their cities "homeless-proof". They made even more visible the unacceptable circumstances of homeless life within the city.

More about parasite architecture in the series written by A-Matter , via dezain.
Related stories: the work of Lucy Orta, Subversive shopping carts, urban furniture for the homeless.

This is so long overdue it s crazy. The Society for HandHeld Hushing, aka Coudal.com, made up this PDF with special notes you can print and hand out to anyone who feels that they absolutely need to have a loud cellphone conversation in public about how wasted they got last night or how their husband can t get it up anymore. We wish we d had one of these on hand on our flight to Seattle last week. From the moment our plane touched down at Sea-Tac until we reached the terminal we had to listen to some women shout at one of her underlings for fifteen minutes about some real estate deal that fell apart. Our strategy of annoying her back by calling one of our friends to loudly complain about how obnoxious she was didn t work.

P.S. - This is a link directly to the PDF. Now start with the cellphone vigilantism, ok?

[Via MobileBurn]

perfect for nyc -- AP