« February 06, 2006 | Main | February 08, 2006 »

February 07, 2006

andthennothing.net: Selenium on Rails

Japanese TV Version of "Spider Man"

move our money charts

move_our_money.jpgan initiative created to make the public more aware about the amount of money going into military & the Pentagon in the US. the campaign used highly simplified & large-format bar, column & pie graphs as well as physical representations like the inflatable structure in order to communicate a small but important amount of information on a very large scale. [quantumlight.com, sagmeister.com & sagmeister.com]

Who Cares About Grammys? He'll Take the Hit Records

Mariah Carey's record producer, Jermaine Dupri, says he'll take hits over Grammys.

"you are here"

These are amazing -- rooms painted with designs that only resolve from one particular angle. The "target" one is very Indiana Jones. Anyone know the source? These are by Felice Varini, and there are some short animations of some of them on his site.

Adobe: Universal Apps Could be a Year Away

According to MacNN, Adobe's first release of universal binaries could be up to 12-14 months away, probably with the next version upgrade.

I guess that could help stabilize Apple's non-Intel sales to creative professionals, but it seems like a misstep to not have ensured that Photoshop would run native on the new hardware before it was a year old.

It also leaves two unanswered questions:

  1. Wither Fireworks (which I personally prefer to Photoshop for comping pages) and the other Macromedia apps?
  2. Does this leave a gap for a compitetor to fill, or is Photoshop just so important and entrenched that it can't be toppled?

Homepage of Ruby's DBI

Al's Comics Saved!

95436357_6bd662b42f_m.jpg Good news. Al's Comics, a staple in the SF Mission District for seventeen years, has found a new location. Al had run into a bit of financial trouble and was subsequently evicted from his store at 17th and Guerrero. In a fantastic moment of true community support Al's customers present and past came together to help out.

Al's is moving to a great new space at 1803 Market Street, right next to It's Tops. It's a much bigger space, and he is planning all sorts of stuff to give back to the community, such as comics workshops for kids. Grand opening on February 8th. Al is VERY happy.

Go buy comics!

F34R TEH NS4

Ha! Take a look at what's on the screen of the "super-secret agency's headquarters" and then have a laugh here. I know when I think of national security, the number of Mozilla patches is at the top of my list.

Tag Team.

I'm "it". Learn something new, about me: Four jobs I've had: • Catch-All, Tokion Magazine, Los Angeles, CA & New York, NY • Music Management, Slayer, Los Angeles, CA • Environmental Health & Safety Consultant, Arthur D. Little, Boston, MA...

Tree Believer.

Cool trees Originally uploaded by tuckergurl. I have a lot of friends that live in New York City (and the outer boroughs). This IM chat happened with a Brooklyn-based friend last week: Friend: Nice trees. Me: That's landscape ARCHITECTURE....

OGLE Blog Launched

With all the cool feedback, links, and applications people are sending in about OGLE, I've decided we need to launch a lo-key blog for the site. This way its really easy to post things related to the project whenever they come rolling in. You may note that there are a number of posts from before this blog launched -- I went ahead and put in content dated for when it would have been posted had we already had the blog.

Social Unix

"(Dennis) Ritchie observes: 'What we wanted to preserve was not just a good environment in which to do programming, but a system around which a fellowship could form.'"

On Chinatowns

On Chinatowns. "Like many crowded Asian cities, Chinatown has mastered the art of the vertical, inspired by languages that can be written up and down, not just side to side."

Transparency's dirty little secret

When snap.com launched at Web 2.0 in 2004, Bill Gross was high on transparency. They were going to share their revenues openly and easily. There was a link on the home page straight to their numbers (they may have even shown their numbers on the home page). A visit to snap.com today shows no such transparency on the home page, no such link to revenue numbers. There’s not even a mention on their about page. If transparency was such a key component of snap.com, surely it would be part of what they’re about.

We’re seeing history repeat itself on Seth Godin’s Squidoo. When Squidoo launched just a few short months ago they had revenue numbers on their home page. And now it’s gone. I think it got up to about $2500 or so.

For the record, change is good. If something isn’t working for you you should change it. However, change regarding transparency is tough when you’ve made it a cornerstone of your business.

Bottom Line: Transparency is good marketing, but you’d better stick with it. Starting open and then trending towards closed is worse than starting closed and trending towards open. Think before you leap into transparency — it’s a lot harder than it looks.

Werner Herzog - some sort of superman?

Werner Herzog gets shot while being interviewed but continues regardless and goes on to save Joaquin Phoenix from a car crash. Which makes you question the wisdom of parodying his latest movie.

Posted to

Who's taking their clothes off this month?

It's been awhile since we brought you a comprehensive roundup of the women who have taken their clothes off in public as a career-advancing strategy. So here's who is going to appear naked on the cover of the upcoming Hollywood...

txt mob

txt mob. In the New Zealand Herald: “Syrian protesters who burned and looted the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus were encouraged to organise by the Syrian authorities, and received text messages from Islamic study centres urging them to gather. ‘The sheikhs told us to send five text messages to every true Muslim we knew urging them to participate,’ said a student from the Abu Nour Islamic Institute in Damascus.” And Radio Sweden: “The attack in Damascus followed SMS text messages which falsely claimed that people in the Danish capital Copenhagen planned to burn copies of the Moslem holy book the Koran.” (via)

PR Dei: When "The Da Vinci Code" became a publishi...

PR Dei: When "The Da Vinci Code" became a publishing sensation, leaders of the Roman Catholic organization Opus Dei realized they had an image problem on their hands.
Link

WWMNA

We Need Money Not Art

moneynotart.gif

"...Chinese new media art afficionados ... are translating their favourite posts of we-make-money-not-art into Chinese on we-need-money-not-art. [wow! well done Regine!] [via Regine on we-make-money-not-art]

Common on the Tavis Smiley Show

Prince Err, Some Guy on SNL

Dumpling Man at home

NYC Dumpling Man now offers freshly frozen dumplings....

Eat Air - A Vegan Food Log

For my vegan friends, another tasty vegan blog, Eat Air - A Vegan Food Log....

Grandmaster Flash "White Lines"

directed by spike lee featuring a very young laurence fishburne, this is great! (thx lars)

I/O

iologo.jpg

Inbox/Outbox Call for Participation

Inbox/Outbox is an e-mail institution operating and establishing connections between virtual and real public spheres as a means to propelling public access. Characterized by its temporary function as an agent, I/O avoids institutional incorporation of its subjects, thus removing itself from the final context, as well as allowing internal institutions and contexts to occur. I/O is based on a division into two binary functions, Inbox and Outbox, Inbox being the receiver of virtual data, which in turn is processed by Outbox and "forwarded" to public spaces.

Inbox/Outbox is currently channelling its activities through Centrifug, an exhibition space within Konsthall C in Stockholm, Sweden. The selection of exhibitions at Centrifug is based on a public booking list, released once every year. The Inbox/Outbox exhibition period is February 22nd - March 5th. I/O is for this occasion calling for participation. Admission will not be limited in any way, neither by amount of data, number of participants nor by any other criteria for selection, given the condition that submitted content doesn't infringe upon laws or regulations.

Submitted data must be suited for printing onto plain (A4) paper or for writing to audio-CD. Deadline is set for February 20th. Submit your data to inbox[at]inboxoutbox.org

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: AJAX for artists

From -> Plasma Studii
sorry if i wasn't clear. not what i meant by "just keep quiet". meant, "don't tell anybody, you are just doing it for no reason". glad people (and you) say stuff (even when i disagree). am mostly devils advocate who wants everybody to think hard about why they do what they do. so few admit the most trivial things to themselves. and it is cool posting ... [more]

Social Unix

“(Dennis) Ritchie observes: ‘What we wanted to preserve was not just a good environment in which to do programming, but a system around which a fellowship could form.’”

News: Apple offers 1GB iPod nano for $149

Apple has introduced a 1GB version of the iPod nano and cut prices on the iPod Shuffle.

Some of those things that blog

Working on the blogject workshop debriefing, I tried to gather some examples of ‘objects that blog’, or objects that upload their story up to web.

The simplest form Alex Pang from the IFTF suggested me are webcams but they are rather passive instruments, “reporting” whatever they see. Another simple example is a lamp which can show a history of persons who have entered a specific room (see this aula lamp on page 4).

Another suggestion (by fredhouse) was this project at EPFL that had a bunch of RSS feeds for sensor data from a mote-based sensor net. Using an embedded server component that publishes RSS data feeds and a datablogging platform could be a way to upload these information.
The point, as Gene described would be that every connected thing has syndication as a default capability, which is one of the thing we discussed in our workshop the other day.

Of course, there is the AIBO blog (see the aibo blog aggregator too) and the pigeon that blog thing I blogged about last week is very close to this: “Pigeons with GPS enabled electronic air pollution sensing devices, capable of sending location based air pollution data as well as images to an online Mapping/Blogging Environment in real time“.

Those things exist already, now there are some thoughts that begin to pop here and there:

Sascha think about something quite beyond that:

I spend some time thinking about object that would tap into the flow of money within Google AdSense, ultimately ending up with an artifact that could make (grow?) money for you. I believe that this would be especially interesting because you then could give people that have no access to these abstract means of generating value (e.g. having a website or blog) or are even illiterate the means to access it and even make a living using paradigms that are coming from a completely different background.
Imagine an artificial plant that would generate clicks (money) on it’s own AdSense-equipped website whenever its solar cells are being exposed to the sun, thus combining the most

Overall, I like the datablogging concept because it’s really close to the idea of various data aggregated with a potential goal, as in blogjects.

Well, we still have to write the workshop report :)

Technorati Tags: ,

My new phone arrived!!

After much waiting, my new phone is finally here! (That’s a picture of a Nokia N90 below, in case you’re reading this in an aggregator that doesn’t pull in linked images.)

Alright, so I’m last on the block to get one, I know, but I’ve really wanted this phone for it’s camera and high resolution (352 x 416) screen. Even though it’s four or five months old (that’s ancient, right?), it still seems to be top dog in camera phones, which is what I wanted.

However, before I go much further in explaining my excitement, I suppose it’s only proper to mention the standard disclaimer that I’m a little partial to the brand and technology in this phone, given my place of employment (ie., the company that makes it.)

With that out of the way, let’s start with first impressions. The packaging was nice — standard Nokia cardboard, but it opens well, creating a nice presentation and feeling of excitement. It’s not quite the experience of opening an iPod box, but it’s an improvement over previous box designs.

Removing the N90 from it’s clear plastic pedestal, you immediately notice the metal trim on the sides, which is cool to the touch. The phone feels solid, and you notice it’s heft. I hear people complain about the size and weight of this phone, but it carries the bulk well — it’s similar to how a solid car door feels compared to a flimsy entry model. Opening the clamshell, the mechanics also feel more solid then on my 7610 (although it could be the 2 Euro face plates from a Beijing street dealer that I was using.) The 7610 is a great phone (I carried it for almost two years!), but the N90 is certainly a step up.

Unpacking the rest of the box, you get a power cord (with a new, smaller plug that renders my collection of Nokia charges mostly useless), a single power-cord adapter for older chargers, a USB cable, a 64 MB MMC, and a wired headset that seems more like a prank then a real consumer product (I’m glad I still have the one-ear unit from the 7610.)

With the phone charged, I fired it up to be greeted by a gorgeous screen and a LOUD startup sound. Before mucking around, priority number one was to transfer my contacts and pictures to the new phone. Fortunately, I know that the new devices ship with a Data Transfer application, so I gave my new toy a Bluetooth device name, popped a dummy-SIM into my 7610, and kicked off the process. The 64 MB card in my 7610 was maxed-out with pictures, videos, flash files, and Python scripts, so I expected this to take awhile. It did — about a half an hour, but it worked like a charm. Having this work was particularly important to me since the N90 isn’t supported by Apple’s iSync yet, and I don’t have the patience to use Nokia PC Suite.

Next up was installing crucial applications. This includes, Python for S60 (of course), Calcium, FExplorer, Google Local Mobile, and my various card and puzzle games. Everything installed and runs fine, but you certainly notice the free memory numbers when installing — there was something like 25 MG free on internal storage! That’s a nice change of pace.

Using the phone will take a little getting used to. The controls are spaced differently, so I find my thumb occasionally hitting “end call” instead of ‘c’ (the “delete” key.) The D-pad placement is also going to make gaming a little tricky. It’s recessed in such a manner that my thumb is telling me I’ve been playing on the phone too long. The 7610 was no Snake-champ either (the 6600 is probably my favorite for that, or perhaps the original N-Gage), but I suppose I’ll get used to it. It’s also a little disorienting at first when you have to switch to different soft-keys and a side-mounted D-pad when rotating the screen. It “feels” right when you’re holding it, but it’s still something different.

I made a few mistakes when trying to take my first photo (of one of my cats, in case you’re curious.) Just when I had the shot lined up I would depress the D-pad hoping it operated the shutter. It doesn’t. It’s the button above that. And then when I finally figured that out, the cat was in for a surprise when the flash went off :-)

I’ve got a lot of exploring left to do on this phone. There’s a ton of camera functionality that’s new, and I might even try to make a phone call!

Python for S60 goes Open Source!

It’s finally official — Python for S60 is now open source: “Nokia to Release Python for S60 Source Code to Open-Source Software Developer Community!”

Quite a bit of work has gone into the project since the 1.2 release; However, most of it has been in the due diligence needed to release the source code. Still, the version number has bumped to 1.3.1 and there’s a few new goodies worth upgrading for (like the ability to monitor incoming SMS!)

The code hasn’t been moved into the SourceForge CVS system yet, so check the project files page to find the SIS file installers and the ZIP packages with the source code.

So what’s next? First up, the plan is to move the previous bug and feature-request databases to SourceForge. Next, we’d like to open up the documentation a bit better, possibly moving things like the “Getting Started” guide into a wiki. (On a related note, I was bummed to learn that MoinMoin doesn’t play nice on SourceForge, and that a MySQL-backed wiki engine will be needed. If you have a suggestion let us know, otherwise we’ll likely end up on MediaWiki.) I also expect a post from Jukka at some point to discuss the things he’ll be working on in the coming months (most of which will be focused on porting to S60 3rd Edition.) No idea yet if he’ll be commenting on his blog, the boards, or the new project site… but the good news is that project will continue development. We still have more process details to work out, but we’re headed in the right direction and I hope you’ll come along for the ride.

The project site on opensource.nokia.com has also been updated to reflect the new release status, but the Forum Nokia discussion boards and #pys60 on freenode are still the best places for developer information right now.

Congrats to the team and everyone who’s helped make this release possible! I look forward to hearing feedback and seeing what kind of up-take the project gets now that it’s released. We hope this release contributes to a solid foundation for mobile-python environments, not just on S60, but other mobile devices as well; And I hope that other developers porting Python to mobile devices will consider collaborating. (HINT: Everyone who’s emailed over the past year asking for a Series 80 port — now’s you’re chance to try compiling and submitting patches ;-)

Malcolm Gladwell on "power law problems" like homelessness, auto pollution, and bad cops

Malcolm Gladwell on "power law problems" like homelessness, auto pollution, and bad cops. These problems have solutions which focus on the small number of hard-core cases, like the 5% of Denver vehicles that account for 55% of the city's automobile pollution.

un_wiki

Democracy or Oligarchy

kaluga.gif

un_wiki, by Wayne Clements, gets quotes from Wikipedia the free encyclopedia’s Deletion Log: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=delete. The Deletion Log is a list of all the pages that have abused Wiki's democratic remit; it is the last stop on the way to destruction. It has small amounts of the offending texts. Clements uses a Perl script to get them and throw away the rest.

un_wiki explores the antagonism between formal democracy (anyone may edit a page) and actual oligarchy (sysadmins may delete or revert a page). [via Loreto Martin]

Kotaku: Lambda Legal Gets Involved in GLBT WoW issue

Kotaku is reporting that Lambda Legal has gotten involved in the World of Warcraft GLBT issue - WoW: Blizzard Gets Gay Rights Warning.

Kotaku also has the full text of the letter sent to Blizzard from the legal team.

Although Blizzard is well within its rights to insist that players avoid referring to other gamers in an “insulting manner,” Blizzard cannot issue a blanket ban on any mention of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Food for Thought 5 Contest

214238rwAV_w.jpeg Worth1000 is hosting a photoshop contest Food for . In this contest, food is swappd for everyday items, used in ways that it would not ordinarily be used. File under fun.

Do it yourself .Mac

".Mac emulation all the way from iCal publishing to tricking it into using the Backup program. Explict instructions on how to set this up."

The Art of De-Touch

Eyebeam's Processing utility lets you scrub through before and after retouches [via

Schemes of Turing

In the spring of 1941 Alan [Turing] developed a new friendship. It was with Joan Clarke. . . . If he came...

Nicknames We Gave Our Intelligence Sources

When "Curveball" just won't do.

Storytelling and the birth of companies

Last week I had dinner with some remarkably brilliant people, and we were talking about the importance of stories, how the human mind tends towards narrative, how causation, fort-da, one thing follows another chronology is necessary -- otherwise everything would happen all at once, haha. But the mind can't help but construct narratives out of everything. I brought up the research by Peter Nisbett wherein he found that people make up stories for 'how they know something' (look up his other stuff too, he did studies of people explaining why they thought one pair of identical panty hose was better than another pair, stuff like that). Someone once told me we sleep because we need to have a beginning and an end. We argued whether or not mathematical equations are narrative, and concluded they are not.

Why Start a Company?. On the blog from Plum, a new startup that just came out of stealth, a story about why they started the company, based on a personal story by the founder. It's a great story. Similarly, when we were trying to explain Flickr, we'd tell a story of Stewart's grandmother's 80th birthday party, where the photo albums were spread out across the table from the 20s, 30s and 40s, and how everyone would say things like "That must be the house on St. Lawrence Street just before the War" and "That was Tom's girlfriend Katie from 1974..." -- and how the conversations around the images were the metadata, but after the party was over, and everyone went home, everything was lost; no one knew where the albums were anymore -- obviously they had to be online, where everyone could get to them, and shared...thus, Flickr. A pretty good story. But even better is when people start telling us the exact same story, unbeknownst to them: one of my friends tells me she put some old family photos online, and found a long lost relative in Brazil, who started annotating the photos with her.

Looking at the graphic in the previous post is a little depressing; it reminds me of a fluorescent lit grocery store with a hundred brightly colored packaged goods clamoring for your attention. I'm burnt out on hearing/reading about/keeping track of all the bright shiny objects that are all over the place. But Plum has gotten off on the right foot, with its moving and very personal story.

Rumor: Google to buy Friendster. Hard to believe

We've heard a nasty rumor that Google has put out a bid out for Friendster -- and it comes from someone who previously worked at Friendster. We don't usually write about rumors, but we wanted to check with Google to see how they'd respond. "We cannot comment on rumor or speculation," said Eileen Rodriguez, a spokeswoman. We haven't done a definitive tally of how Google responds to these sorts of things, but note that this "no comment" is much more sparse than the outright denials Google has issued in the past when something isn't true, including its response to rumors last week about a possible acquisition of Napster. "We have no plans to acquire Napster, nor do we have plans to develop a music store at this time," Google spokeswoman Sonya Boralv said in a statement. We don't want to read too much into......

KataMario Kart

Katamario

Remote-control. Katamari. Awesome.

(The name "Katamario Kart" was coined over at Ludology; also, there's a whole blog full of projects like this. Whee! Electronic bits 'n cute stuff!)

art soldier

another New York art blog

Linus Torvalds on CC and DRM

Noted many places, Linux creator Linux Torvalds has written on using CC to marginalize DRM:

Creative Commons licenses already require that you can't use technological measures to restrict the rigts you give with the CC licenses. The "Share Alike" license in particular requires all work based on it to also be shared alike, ie it has the "GPL feel" to it.

If enough interesting content is licensed that way, DRM eventually becomes marginalized. Yes, it takes decades, but that's really no different at all from how the GPL works. The GPL has taken decades, and it hasn't "marginalized" commercial proprietary software yet, but it's gotten to the point where fewer people at least worry about it.

Emphasis added. This is embedded in a debate about a future version of the GPL, the dominant free software license. Regardless of how you feel about this debate (or know of its existence), your mission is clear: create and discover great CC-licensed content.

Dear ALA, how is that new website going?

A colleague of mine works for one of the companies invited to go to Chicago to present their proposal to ALA for the content management system for new ALA website. Since travelling to Chicago on their own dime in June, they haven’t head a word from ALA. I’ve heard, informally, that the field has been narrowed to two, possibly one candidate. It’s too bad that formally the other candidates haven’t heard anything. Especially bad, since they have blogs and can express their displeasure online. From the school of “I don’t know what Library 2.0 is exactly, but I know it when I see it” this sort of quick widely-distributable feedback is part of it, and that’s the good news and the bad news for some libraries. Please read An Open Letter to ALA. update: apparently Openflows has now heard from ALA. This post had nothing to do with that.

Prelinger Library is blogging

I’m trying to find a way to seamlessly integrate longer thought out posts with fewer links in with the shorter quick-link type posts I usually write. There may be some experimentation here over the next few days. For now, please enjoy the brand new Prelinger Library Blog and if you are in the Bay Area in California, please stop by and visit the Prelinger Library in person.

An amazing story of discovery in New Guinea

In this day and age it feels like someone’s seen everything and been everywhere. That’s what makes stories of discovery of hundreds of new species in one expedition so wonderful.

An astonishing mist-shrouded “lost world” of previously unknown and rare animals and plants high in the mountain rainforests of New Guinea has been uncovered by an international team of scientists… The scientists are the first outsiders to see it. They could only reach the remote mountainous area by helicopter, which they described it as akin to finding a “Garden of Eden”… In a jungle camp site, surrounded by giant flowers and unknown plants, the researchers watched rare bowerbirds perform elaborate courtship rituals. The surrounding forest was full of strange mammals, such as tree kangaroos and spiny anteaters, which appeared totally unafraid, suggesting no previous contact with humans.

Fascinating. I hope we get to see the photos soon.

conversation table

conversation_table.jpga physical & visual representation of the conversational dynamics between two people as they converse across a long table, embeded with light emitting diodes (LEDs). the LEDs are activated by two microphones which pick up the duration & volume of the conversation, triggering light animation from the end where one speaks toward the other. if both people speak simultaneously, the lights start animating from both ends. [mit.edu via we-make-money-not-art]

Catholic Group Says of 'Da Vinci Code' Film: It's Just Fiction

Opus Dei, a Roman Catholic organization with powerful members and a reputation for secrecy, is trying to change its public image.

Path Finder 4 Still Shows the Way

TidBITS: “Thanks to Path Finder 4, from Cocoatech, you can bypass the Finder in favor of a sensible, rational, gorgeously clean environment for working with files and folders. At every step, in every detail, Path Finder’s interface and behavior simply do the Right Thing.”

reBlog Sources

  • Get this list in XML (OPML)
Powered by
Movable Type 3.2 and ReBlog