support creative commons
by participating in this polish study about flickr here.
[thanks boing boing]
by participating in this polish study about flickr here.
[thanks boing boing]
I didn't post this earlier but the ratings are up for the sxsw panel, sex and computational technology, i was on. we scored a 4.62/5 and were the 12th highest rated panel [out of about 100]. woot!
here are a bunch of links pertaining to one of my projects, undersound as well as more general urban/representational stuff that i'm working on for my dissertation.
interfaces for public transport:
engaging bus shelters
oy! an oyster card game
S.U.I., smart urban intelligence based on suica cards
nyc subway smell map
overheard on the underground
scratch and sniff ads are banned in SF bus shelters
interfaces for sound:
sonic graffiti
stint an emobodied music sharing project from Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino
volume over lumen is a communication interface
mystrands does music recommendation mapping
bill to ban iPods in Albany crosswalks
interfaces for bluetooth:
imity is a bluetooth-enabled social network
echo is a robot which embodies online social networks
bluetooth ads are invading our phones
representations of and interfaces for urban spaces:
realtime rome
cityscape rugs
SuckUK tube map wallet
resistant maps took place in genova in 2006
aphrodite project platform shoes
googleplex display of queries round the world
misc:
nicoline van harskamp studies security guards
Cayetano Ferrer's transparent street signs of chicago
the aymara have an interesting way of talking about time
suburban sprawl making us chunky?
coconut couriers keep things moving
why websites are like games
there's a story on the bbc site today highlighting a debate between mpaa president bill glickman and eff [electronic fronteir foundation] co-founder / grateful dead lyricist john perry barlow. why do the people from the industry sound like such idiots all the time:
It is ridiculous to believe that you can give product away for free and be more successful. I mean it defies the laws of nature. Would a clothing store give all their clothes for free? Would a car dealership give all its cars for free? Of course not. If they don't make a profit in this world they're out of business. That's just the laws of human nature.capitalism obviously is human nature, face it. *cry*

bbdo of canada has created the above ad for pepsi. it has a fully funtional headphone jack in it, and when you plug in you get to hear samples of tracks available only at pepsiaccess.ca. they are up and running in toronto and vancouver right now. of course i'm interested in anything where public transit and music collide...
[thanks engadget]

this article from the fortean times was awesome. it's a conjecture about what the ark of the covenant might actually have been - a super fancy leyden jar. really cool stuff.

jetblue won a license to offer high-speed internet on their aircrafts yesterday. jetblue flies direct from long beach to boston which is great for me, and we already have wireless at the long beach airport. airlines like jetblue are super convenient and actually seem to attract customer loyalty considerably more than a lot of the "established" companies; they definitely have my vote. but i'm wondering a] is it going to be free and b] are they going to ban skype? heh.
[thanks gizmodo]

doesn't it though?
check out the full article from the la times after the jump.
[thanks boingboing]

it's not a completely new phenomenon - painting the rooftops of buildings to advertise to the skies. typically you find these places around airports, creating advertising for a nicely targetted crowd. however, apparently people have been seeing these things on google earth that aren't really close to any airports. this has all sorts of interesting implications for the evolving ways of navigating through and seeing, in both the literal and nonliteral sense, our landscapes.
[thanks boingboing]
a while back the associated press had a story about a 15 year old girl who snapped a photo of a subway flasher [his face, mind you] with her cameraphone and turned it over to the police. nice to see ubicomp appropriated for some good.
[thanks gizmodo]
my daddy is in the news. he is the new CEO of a company called supply insight which developed a distributed RFID framework. yay :]
Continue reading "rfid software provider
[supply insight] + my dad" »

if you seriously have "we are morally right" in your powerpoint presentation...
oh just kill me now.
[thanks boing boing]
logan airport [of boston] is trying to put the kibosh on free wifi. check out the story on cnet. this is completely ridiculous. not only should i have to pay $63 dollars for a cup of coffee, but now if continental airlines wants to offer up free wifi [albeit in their frequent flyer lounge which i'm sure i'll never visit] the fine folks at massport are trying to stop them. they'd prefer i pony up 8 bucks for their "reasonably priced" service. shame on you, logan. shame.
[thanks boing boing]
the AP has got a cool story about how saudi youth have coopted bluetooth for some less than acceptable: flirting.
But for many Saudi youths, who have almost nowhere to meet members of the opposite sex, the technology is a godsend. It is replacing a favorite method of flirting: throwing phone numbers at women through car windows or in shopping malls.
[thanks boing boing]

the ersb has rescinded its rating for grand theft auto: san andreas and advised retailers to stop selling the game. now, we all know gta is full of violence and debauchery already. but what's the problem? a mod [hot coffee] lets you unlock secret sex scenes which may damage your sensitive hacker mind. secret weapons which allow you to torture the other characters more violently [is that even possible?], now that, that would be fine. but sex, sex?!?!? you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
[thanks /.]
although you've probably heard about scigen already [if you are uberleet that is], what you may not know is that they actually went down to orlando to present along side WMSCI. they randomly generated the slides for their talk and did not give them a once over before presenting. but isn't that basically what we all do anyway? ahem. my advisor is not reading that... anyway, go and check out the video, it's hilarious. "and in doing so, it prevents the world wide web..."
[thanks boing boing]
the former health and human services secretary [yeah health, *snort*], tommy thompson, is going to get himself an rfid implant. way to go tommy! why would he do such a thing? because he's on the board of applied digital which owns the makers of said implant, verichip, duh. tommy plans on becoming a robot and joining the destructocons later this year.
[thanks boing boing]
the hard-hitting st. petersburg times [of florida] is reporting that a man was arrested for "illegally accessing" and "hacking into" someone's network [full article after the jump]. while sitting in his vehicle outside the man's house [on public property] he used the network, which was completely open and not encrypted. the owner of the network admitted he knew how to secure it but hadn't bothered. now i am sorry, but even if he was downloading pr0n or posting tips to terrorists this is not illegal. of course ISPs would like to make it be. but plain and simple that's like saying a neighbor who catches a glimpse of what's on someone's television set while passing by their window is a thief. we need to get this straight, america. otherwise i'm gonna go and sue someone for having their wifi access extend onto my private property and claim i'm getting cancer and start wearing a foil hat. wise up.
[thanks /.]
take the python challenge! no, not wrestling with a dangerous reptile. solving riddles using python scripts. it's brilliant, seriously.
[thanks meme pool]

i always say that americans tend to place more value on big-giant-safety-ensuring-machines than on the human aspect of security, and once again that holds true. so for all of you out there here is social engineering defense 101:
it's just that simple. most of the news coverage about this has been along the lines of "hackers are everywhere! beware!" but, the o'reilly network tells it like it is. instead of attacking the technology, maybe we need to start taking a look at the users. PEBKAC!
[thanks engadget]

it is so cool to take you love of dungeons & dragons and merge it with your stick shift. it really is.
[thanks gizmodo]

okay, probably not -only- in the czech republic. but who else could do it so well? a bunch of students from a technical secondary school there compiled their [apparently] traditional tableau of graduation photos but added a special twist. posing naked with bits of hardware tastefully covering there, well... bits. you can check the photos out at their original location but since they are getting hammered for bandwidth best to check them out at drunken blog instead. take note that women continue to be woefully underrepresented in the technical fields. girls, take of your knickers and throw on a hard drive ;]
oh these aren't particularly safe for work [depends where you work though eh?].
[thanks drunken blog]

this is no joke, richard wool [no puns please], a chemical engineering prof at the university of delaware, proposes to use chicken feathers to manufacture circuit boards.
Circuit boards are typically made of an epoxy-fiberglass composite, Wool said, which is then printed with wires and circuits. Wool envisions using soybean oil to replace the epoxy and chicken feathers to replace the fiberglass, creating a healthier composite for the environment.you can check out the full story in wired. for yourself. i'm all for renewable resources, and apparently the discarded feathers are usually used for cattle feed [don't get me started...] so i guess this is a better use for them. but, wouldn't that make my computer un-vegetarian? what is a girl to do.
[thanks we make money not art]
all you leet haxxors back home take note: e-walking into south station's wireless network is easy as pie. think computer has a great little white paper on just how wide open the network of the largest transportation hub in boston is. not only can you access the network itself, but you can get yourself onto 25+ other networks around the city without paying a dime! act now, because i'm sure this is a limited time offer ;]
[thanks /.]
the machintosh was born before my little brother [sorry jon, it's true]. it was one of the first computers i ever used and now we can all finally relive it's debut. awesome.
fitting that it was preserved on a betamax tape isn't it?