Mass photography event in London today: I’m a photographer, not a terrorist

Posted on | January 23, 2010 | No Comments

From Boing Boing: “A reminder for Londoners: there’s a mass photo shoot-in at midday today in Trafalgar Square, to protest English cops’ continuing harassment of photographers under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act.”

Read the original post here – or visit the official website of the campaign.

Hiding from Google

Posted on | January 21, 2010 | No Comments

From Slashdot:

“Google offers Web users a simple trade-off: Let the search giant track a substantial portion of your comings and goings around the Web, and it will offer you a free, superior online experience. Now independent security researcher Moxie Marlinspike is making Web users a counter-offer: take Google’s giveaways and keep your privacy too. On Tuesday, Marlinspike launched a service he calls GoogleSharing, a plug-in for Firefox designed to give users access to Google’s online offerings while cloaking their identity from the company’s data collection tools. By hosting a proxy server with a collection of Google ‘identities,’ the privacy software will allow users temporarily to route their traffic through another computer that masks their identity by mixing their online actions with those of other users. The system is totally transparent, with no special ‘alternative’ websites to visit. Your normal work flow should be exactly the same.”

Grand initiative, I say. Finally someone addresses the privacy issues towards Google’s search engine. Read the original posting and follow the discussion.

Internet Survival Guide for Traveling Where Privacy Isn’t Respected

Posted on | January 15, 2010 | 1 Comment

The brilliant LifeHacker blog has posted an interesting article on privacy and protection against identity theft when backpacking – or simply travelling abroad. The author – who wishes to remain anonymous – explains how he keeps a tight leash on privacy when traveling in a country where the government actively monitors online communication.

Excerpt: “Internet cafes proliferate all throughout Asia and other remote countries, which makes getting online very easy and cheap. That said, as much as I love “the cloud,” keeping data online comes with security concerns, especially in places where internet restrictions and heavy government monitoring are commonplace.”

Read it here:
Internet Survival Guide for Traveling Where Privacy Isn’t Respected

Update on the Facebook vs. Suicidemachine issue

Posted on | January 11, 2010 | No Comments

After the story came out about how Facebook is trying to tyranize a small Dutch web-service, that helps people disconnect from social media services, quite a lot of attention has been drawn to the case. Especially on the wonderful Nettime-mailinglist where people gather to discuss issues of net criticism. One of the most interesting posts, by a certain Maja van der Velden, goes like this:

“Seppukkoo (http://www.seppukoo.com/), a Facebook suicide machine, which also received a Cease and Desist letter from Facebook, has sent a letter back to the lawyers of Facebook, see: http://www.seppukoo.com/docs/les_liens_reply_to_facebook.pdf“

Please take the time to read the mentioned strike-back letter. It is utter beauty from beginning to end and reminds me of a similar letter sent by the editors of Boing Boing to the lawyers of Demi Moore as a part of the hilarious W-magazine photoshop disaster story. Oh, Suicidemachine, please adopt this letter and stick it to The Man!

Facebook tyrannize ‘social media suicide’ website

Posted on | January 10, 2010 | 1 Comment

Facebook (FB) strikes hard on anyone who facilitate users to unhook themselves from the grip of the social media titan. The Guardian has an article on how the world’s largest social network, Facebook, has been bullying a small Dutch web-service that enables users to systematically delete their profile on social networks including FB – in other words; enable social media suicide.

When visiting suicidemachine.org, you find this announcement:

Probably you have heard that Facebook completely blocked and banned our service from their servers since last Sunday (in case you haven’t, please follow up the whole story by Paul McNamara here).

Yesterday we received a Cease and Desist letter (you can read the pdf here) from Facebook lawyers kindly asking us to stop our service and remove all Facebook profile pictures we collected for the memorial pages and anything else which could be associated with Facebook from our website. They gave us quite some time to respond upon their request. Therefore, we are currently considering our further steps and watching the countdown.

Time left to answer Facebook:

1 days, 10 hours, 49 minutes, 5 seconds (Ed.: At the time of writing of this blog post)

Read the Guardian article here – or go to suicidemachine.org.

New York urban art chair-tracking experiment

Posted on | January 9, 2010 | No Comments

Check out this funny urban experiment: You (that would be Blue Dot Studio) put out design chairs in the street at random sites in New York city, then trace them with GPS and video cams.

Blu Dot Real Good Experiment from Real Good Chair on Vimeo.

Homeless people relocated out of Whister, Canada, ahead of Olympics

Posted on | January 8, 2010 | No Comments

Taken from BoingBoing, where  reader Jeremy Gruman says, “Last month, homeless people started showing up in droves in towns 100 miles or so outside of Vancouver. They had been given one-way bus tickets and were forced onto the busses. Local shelters in those communities have been completely overloaded. All so that the world can see a shiny and clean (and totally false) version of our city.” Here’s a related news story.

This is despicable. I am short for words. Simply despicable.

The future of publishing? Mag+

Posted on | January 6, 2010 | No Comments

Geek or not, one cannot help looking immensely forward to the future, when we’ll all have one of these: Mag+.

I’ll let the video speak for itself:

The people behind it, Bonnier R&D and BERG, write:

“This conceptual video is a corporate collaborative research project
initiated by Bonnier R&D into the experience of reading magazines on
handheld digital devices. It illustrates one possible vision for
digital magazines in the near future, presented by our design partners
at BERG.

The concept aims to capture the essence of magazine reading, which
people have been enjoying for decades: an engaging and unique reading
experience in which high-quality writing and stunning imagery build up
immersive stories.”

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

The decade in icon-infographics

Posted on | January 2, 2010 | No Comments

The New York Times have presented an irresistible info-graphic by a guy named Philip Niemeyer picturing the last 10 years on the global scene. A fun way to reflect over the decade we just left behind us.

See it in full scale by clicking the image or here.

Remixed Danish tourist poster reflects the brutal Copenhagen police actions

Posted on | December 19, 2009 | No Comments

Check out this brilliantly made remix of the classic old ‘Wonderful Copenhagen’ poster, made by Camilla Brodersen. A remix that so accurately visualizes the political shift in mentality that has happened in Denmark over the last 5-6 years.

I found it at Boing Boing – read the original post here.