Big Bang, Big Boom: The Story of Evolution, Told in Graffiti // #blu #streetart

Posted on | July 16, 2010 | No Comments

The Amazing Brain Pickings blog recently made me aware of the latest creation by Italian street artist BLU; a stop-motion movie illustrating the story of evolution in the most brilliant way – and it becomes even more impressive when knowing that it was appearantly made with no post-production.

Read the original post at Brain Pickings – or visit BLU’s website.

How Google Works (infographic) #google

Posted on | July 9, 2010 | No Comments

As is almost always the case, infographics like this one manages to explain complex issues in a simple, understandable way – without making the facts any less impressive. This one outlines the mechanism that lies behind the Google search engine – which is nothing less than incredible.

Watch infographics in full size

Letting The AP Taste Their Own Medicine

Posted on | July 7, 2010 | No Comments

From Boing Boing: When internet-store W00t! posted its delightful notice about being acquired by Amazon, it was picked up and re-run by blogs all over the net. Not wanting to miss out on the action, the Associated Press ran the story and the text, too.

One problem: the AP has previously told bloggers that quotations — however brief — should be licensed before publication. They even offer these licenses. For a small fee, AP will generously allow you to quote one of its articles on your blog (provided that you don’t do so in a way that criticizes the AP, of course, and they reserve the right to take the quote back at any time).

So W00t! sent the AP a bill for $17.50 for the quotation:

The AP, we can’t thank you enough for looking our way. You see, when we showed off our good news on Wednesday afternoon, we expected we’d get a little bit of attention. But when we found your little newsy thing you do, we couldn’t help but notice something important. And that something is this: you printed our web content in your article! The web content that came from our blog! Why, isn’t that the very thing you’ve previously told nu-media bloggers they’re not supposed to do? So, The AP, here we are. Just to be fair about this, we’ve used your very own pricing scheme to calculate how much you owe us. By looking through the link above, and comparing your post with our original letter, we’ve figured you owe us roughly $17.50 for the content you borrowed from our blog post, which, by the way, we worked very very hard to create. But, hey. We’re all friends here. And invoicing is such a hassle in today’s paperless society, are we right? How about this: instead of cutting us a check for the web content you liberated from our site, all you’ll need to do is show us your email receipt from today’s two pack of Sennheiser MX400 In-Ear Headphones, and we’ll call it even.

Tetris Everywhere!

Posted on | July 2, 2010 | No Comments

Flickr user group L-plate Big Cheese has curated an impressive and funny gallery titled Tetris Everywhere, which shows the tetrism that is all around us.

Watch gallery @ Flickr

Support and sign the ACTA-declaration from EFF! #eff #acta

Posted on | June 27, 2010 | No Comments

I do not normally endorse causes with so little subtlety as in the headline above, but in this case I urge everyone to sign the petition to support the ACTA-declaration by EFF, the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Read why here (please do!) and sign here.

The semantic web and interesting thoughts about web 3.0

Posted on | May 28, 2010 | No Comments

This film, by Kate Ray, is indeed worth watching for anyone interested in what a so-called web 3.0 might look like. It’s major theme is the concept of the semantic web, which, during the film, is also explained for those unfamiliar with the idea.

Web 3.0 from Kate Ray on Vimeo.

0100101110101101.org strikes again #tacticalmedia

Posted on | May 17, 2010 | No Comments

Brooklyn-based art activism group 0100101110101101.org has once again made a brilliant and thought-provoking tactical media strike – this time titled ‘No Fun’ and targeting the development in the contemporary online mediascape.

From their subsequent press release:
“Thousand of people watched powerless while a person was hanging from the ceiling, slowly swinging, for hours and hours. It happened yesterday, in the popular website Chatroulette, where people from all over the world can anonymously and randomly see each other through their webcams and chat with perfect strangers.

The hanging man was in fact Brooklyn based artist Franco Mattes, and the whole scene a set up. The artist recorded all the performance and than posted it online. In the video, titled “No Fun”, one can see all possible reactions, from the most predictable to the most unthinkable: Some laugh, believing it’s a joke, some seem to be completely unmoved, some insult the supposed-corpse and some, more cynical, take pictures with their phones. Apparently, out of several thousand people, only one called the police. Watching the video can be a strange experience, at times exhilarating as well as disturbing.”

Watch the video:

As posted on Nettime – as well as on the 0100101110101101.org website.

Open source hardware booming

Posted on | May 10, 2010 | No Comments

The major proliferation in the production of open source hardware these last couple of years is starting to show magnificent results. The Singularity Hub blog recently published an interesting article that highlights how a range of companies and projects have used the open source ideology to create a million dollar business model around the making of commercial hardware products.

The story was also Boing Boing’ed and discussed heavily on Slashdot.

Big Content’s war on democracy / #acta

Posted on | May 7, 2010 | No Comments

We’ve probably all been following the ACTA-case with our breath held back to some extent (if you haven’t really been paying close attention, check out this great video – it’s 40 minutes, but really worth it). In this post I will not deal with the ACTA details themselves, but rather point the attention towards one of Boing Boing-editor Cory Doctorow’s interesting articles on the overall perspective of not only ACTA, but also ao. the legislation propositions we are seeing in the United Kingdom these days (often referred to as ‘three strikes‘).

In his article ‘This means war: Big Content’s war on democracy‘, Doctorow ao. explains how “the latest round of dirty tricks from the entertainment industry — perverting British law, proposing an American police state, building an oppressive global treaty behind closed doors — changes the game. We’re no longer merely arguing about the future of control over culture: now it’s about the fundamentals of a just and free society.” Read the full article, as published in The Guardian.

Making Closed Software Act Like It’s Open

Posted on | April 7, 2010 | No Comments

Via Slashdot and Gizmag: “Researchers from the University of Washington have managed to add customization and accessibility options to proprietary software without ever touching the source code. Rather than alter program code, Prefab looks for the pixels associated with the blocks of code used to paint applications to a screen, grabs hold of them, and alters them according to whatever enhancements the user has chosen to apply. Any user input is then fed back to the original software, still running behind the enhanced interface.”

Read the entire article at Gizmag or join the discussion at Slashdot.