Ashmash writes "Phoronix is reporting on a new Linux driver nVidia is about to release that brings PureVideo features to Linux. This video API will reportedly be in nVidia's 180 series driver for Linux, Solaris, and *BSD. PureVideo has been around for several nVidia product generations, but it's the first time they're bringing this feature to these non-Windows operating systems to provide an improved multimedia experience. This new API is named VDPAU, and is described as: 'The Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix (VDPAU) provides a complete solution for decoding, post-processing, compositing, and displaying compressed or uncompressed video streams. These video streams may be combined (composited) with bitmap content, to implement OSDs and other application user interfaces.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's becoming such that news about another patent battle surrounding a new standard is barely newsworthy -- especially in the wireless space. Name the standard, and we can probably find someone claiming patents on it. There are still ongoing patent battles surrounding both WiFi and WiMax. The latest is apparently surrounding LTE, the choice of many mobile providers for their 4G next generation wireless. A company named ADC is claiming that LTE violates its patents and is now asking for royalties. As per usual, the company claiming patents over the technology just so happens to show up after a bunch of folks have committed to the technology. Funny how that works.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Build: Mini-Theremin @ warp speed from make magazine on Vimeo.

Assembly of the Gakken Mini-Theremin kit @ warp-speed - complete with error correction!

Mini-Theremin

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Kits | Digg this!

Protoclown writes "The National Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS), located at Oak Ridge National Labs (ORNL) in Tennessee, has upgraded the Jaguar supercomputer to 1.64-petaflops for use by scientists and engineers working in areas such as climate modeling, renewable energy, materials science, fusion and combustion. The current upgrade is the result of an addition of 200 cabinets of the Cray XT5 to the existing 84 cabinets of the XT4 Jaguar system. Jaguar is now the world's most powerful supercomputer available for open scientific research."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cute little set of "ghetto speakers" make from four disposable waters cups and toothpicks. Something for the kids to do on a rainy day, not as a replacement for your Bose (or your Altec Lansing).

CupSpeakers [via Dinosaurs and Robots]

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in iPod | Digg this!

lobo235 writes to tell us that a new underground data center designed by Sweden's largest ISP is fit for a classic supervillain, complete with greenhouses, waterfalls, German submarine engines, simulated daylight and can withstand a hit from a hydrogen bomb. "'Rather than just concentrating on technical hardware we decided to put humans in focus,' he said. 'Of course, the security, power, cooling, network, etc, are all top notch, but the people designing data centers often (always!) forget about the humans that are supposed to work with the stuff.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

[Pictured above, top to bottom: 1946 The Fleet Type Submarine manual, manual for the 1988 SR-71 Blackbird Environmental Control Systems, 1942 B-17F Flying Fortress Pilot Familiarization Manual]

We're hard at work on the next issue of MAKE, Volume 17, which will have a special "Lost Knowledge" section. For that, I've been on the hunt for interesting lost and out-of-favor technologies and techno-artifacts. In this search, I stumbled on this Wired photo essay (also in the latest print issue) of "Classic Instruction Manuals." I also discovered that someone has started an online Product Manual Archive. Let's hope he keeps it up. There are only a handful of entries to date.

A Photo Essay of Classic Instruction Manuals
The Product Manual Archive

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Toolbox | Digg this!

From the MAKE Flickr photo pool

Eric "ALH84001" Archer conducted some testing on the ability of a neon sign transformer to improve beverage enjoyment -

Round 1: Lone Star (the national beer of Texas). 1 cm arc discharge to surface of cold beer for about 15 seconds. Slight foaming occured at the point of arc contact. Panelist 1 (EA) noted the acrid flavor of ozone in the beverage and tossed it over the fence.

Round 2: inexpensive red wine. both electrodes beneath liquid surface, about 10 seconds. transformer hummed but no visible arcing. Panelist 2 (DF) noted a decrease in the "bite" of the wine.

For more results see here - Apparatus for High Voltage Treatment of Alcoholic Beverage

More:

The Boiler Bar at Maker Faire

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Science | Digg this!

Gallery of better alternate titles for 10 popular games.

"The 10 games should have been called..."

Kevin Kelly writes:

I gave a talk yesterday at the Web 2.0 Summit. It's a short talk, only 10 minutes long, so I decided to skip Web 3 - Web 9 and just speak about the upcoming Web 10.0 and what I think will happen in the next 6,500 days.

Kevin Kelly on Web 10.0

eToday has a photo gallery of female body builders. The photos are by Marton Schoeller, from his book, Female Bodybuilders. Watch a video here.

Female body builders gallery

Plenty of online shopping sites let customers store their credit card info to make it easier to purchase stuff in the future. And, for most home users, that is a convenient feature -- as it seems unlikely that a third party would access your computer and use your credit cards to order stuff. Except, apparently, a lot of parents forget about their kids being able to do that. A study in the UK found that plenty of kids were buying stuff online without their parents' knowledge or approval, using the stored credit card info on certain web shopping sites. Of course, if parents checked over their credit card statements regularly (or received the packages when delivered), you would think they would notice such activity.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Via Mister Jalopy at Dinosaurs and Robots:

As close as we come to a corporate D+R meeting, Mark Frauenfelder, Jenny Hart and I [Mister Jalopy] will all be at Felt Club this Sunday. All it takes is a trip to another craft fair to realize that Felt Club is a full 1000% cooler than those other pikers. Jenny will be teaching embroidery, but only to those who sign up early. Two classes, 10 people each, buy a starter kit at the Felt Club info table. Get there early, suckers!

I took Jenny's embroidery class at Austin Maker Faire and have been embroidering ever since.

Why embroider?

• It is a lot of bang for buck. Learn one simple stitch and you can go far.
  
• You can embroider while you half watch television. It turns out this is the perfect amount of attention to devote to TV.
  
• I am not an illustrator but I find that even doodles look fantastic when embroidered as it brings a nice formality to even the most basic drawings.
  
• Too butch to embroider? Whatever, dude! Tools are tools.
  

Felt Club, Los Angeles, Sunday November 16th

(Did I mention there is a full bar? There is. Crafters throw down.)

The New York Times is reporting that Google has added a voice interface to their iPhone search software. Expected to make its debut as early as Friday, users will be able to speak into their phone and ask any question they could type into Google's search engine. The audio will be digitized and results will be returned via the normal search interface. "Google is by no means the only company working toward more advanced speech recognition capabilities. So-called voice response technology is now routinely used in telephone answering systems and in other consumer services and products. These systems, however, often have trouble with the complexities of free-form language and usually offer only a limited range of responses to queries."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The New York Times is reporting that Google has added a voice interface to their iPhone search software. Expected to make its debut as early as Friday, users will be able to speak into their phone and ask any question they could type into Google's search engine. The audio will be digitized and results will be returned via the normal search interface. "Google is by no means the only company working toward more advanced speech recognition capabilities. So-called voice response technology is now routinely used in telephone answering systems and in other consumer services and products. These systems, however, often have trouble with the complexities of free-form language and usually offer only a limited range of responses to queries."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Paul J. Zak, a neuroeconomist and director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University, explains the psychology of cons using himself as an example. When he was a teenager, he was taken by the "pigeon drop."

Here's what happened to me. One slow Sunday afternoon, a man comes out of the restroom with a pearl necklace in his hand. "Found it on the bathroom floor" he says. He followed with "Geez, looks nice-I wonder who lost it?" Just then, the gas station's phone rings and a man asked if anyone found a pearl necklace that he had purchased as a gift for his wife. He offers a $200 reward for the necklace's return. I tell him that a customer found it. "OK" he says, "I'll be there in 30 minutes." I give him the ARCO address and he gives me his phone number. The man who found the necklace hears all this but tells me he is running late for a job interview and cannot wait for the other man to arrive.

Huum, what to do? The man with the necklace said "Why don't I give you the necklace and we split the reward?" The greed-o-meter goes off in my head, suppressing all rational thought. "Yeah, you give me the necklace to hold and I'll give you $100" I suggest. He agrees. Since high school kids working at gas stations don't have $100, I take money out of the cash drawer to complete the transaction.

You can guess the rest.

He goes on to explain the psychology of cons. In short, :The key to a con is not that you trust the conman, but that he shows he trusts you."

(Here's a video of the pigeon drop.) How to Run a Con

The organizers of the annual online video event NewTeeVee Live invited me to join them yesterday to talk about Boing Boing tv's first year on the air, on the intertubes. Here's a video of our "fireside chat," which was in fact, actually by a fire of sorts. Video is about 15 minutes long. NewTeeVee Live Star: Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin (GigaOm, and thanks, Om Malik, Liz Gannes, and Chris Albrecht)

Here is an incredible time-lapse video of Robert Burden painting Voltron. (Thanks, Kirsten Anderson!)

If you've never seen the Craftmanship Museum, either virtually or in person, prepare to have your geeky socks blown off. This video provides a tour of this astounding "model engineering" museum and workspace in Vista, California. This is really machining as an artform. Their "virtual museum" has an extensive online collection. Prepare to get lost in the stacks.

The Internet Craftsmanship Museum [Thanks, I-Wei!]

More:

• The Internet Craftsmanship Museum

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Makers | Digg this!

Inspired by these old school Kodak infrared flashbulb illuminated snaps of Japanese sexhibitionists and their peeping toms in parks that were shot by Kohei Yoshiyuki in the early '70s, fashion photographer Steven Meisel has created his own version in a layout that was (supposedly) too hot to run in Vogue Italy, so we get to look at them on the internets. NSFW, unless you work in an orgy pit.

Related:

"War-on-Terror-themed photo spread in Vogue Italia."

"Vogue's "camwhore" photo spread mimics web video tarts."

"Daphne Guinness Sets Supermodels Ablaze."

laejoh writes "Monty Python's 'Dead Parrot sketch' — which featured John Cleese — is some 1,600 years old. A classic scholar has proved the point, by unearthing a Greek version of the world-famous piece. A comedy duo called Hierocles and Philagrius told the original version, only rather than a parrot they used a slave. It concerns a man who complains to his friend that he was sold a slave who dies in his service. His companion replies: 'When he was with me, he never did any such thing!' The joke was discovered in a collection of 265 jokes called Philogelos: The Laugh Addict, which dates from the fourth century AD. Hierocles had gone to meet his maker, and Philagrius had certainly ceased to be, long before John Cleese and Michael Palin reinvented the yarn in 1969."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

My pal Jeff Cross sent me this link to fantastic photos of Swedish dance bands from the 1970s. As Jeff says, "This (reveals) what's wrong with music today... not enough costumes." Swedish Dance Bands From the 70's

Congrats India!

A probe from India's Chandrayaan-1 lunar mission has landed on the Moon, officials at the Indian Space Research Organisation said on Friday.

The Moon Impact Probe detached itself from Chandrayaan-1 about 100 km from the Moon's surface and crash-landed on the south pole of the Moon at 1501 GMT, officials said in Bangalore.

"It was a flawless operation," said SK Shivakumar, director of ISRO Telemetry's tracking and command network.

The probe, to be named "Aditya", aimed to kick up some dust, which instruments in the mother craft would analyse. It had already sent images from its descent to the mother ship, Shivakumar said. At the time of this posting, the images had not yet been published on ISRO's website.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Science | Digg this!

Tomas Carrillo designed this cardboard laptop stand:

I wanted something that could raise my laptop screen by 8? and not show too much cardboard. The final result is a stand that is partially hidden by the laptop's keyboard and takes up a small amount of desktop space. Although this stand has held up well under constant use, I wouldn't recommend leaving your laptop on it unattended! I've included some instructions below if you're interested in building your own, or you can download a PDF of the instructions.

PROS: The stand has a small desktop footprint, provides decent monitor height, and is comprised of inexpensive corrugated cardboard. Also, the cardboard can be composted and recycled depending on the recycling facilities in your neck of the woods.

CONS: It's not the most robust or stable stand out there, and CD/DVD slots may be obstructed if they're located on the front of the laptop. Also, if you consider cardboard to be ugly, then it's ugly. Last but not least, it's not advisable to type or mouse on your laptop's keyboard when it's sitting on the stand.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Computers | Digg this!

We live in a farm house built in 1930. Even though we're in Los Angeles, our neighborhood is zoned for farm animals and agriculture. Whoever lived in the house before us loved fruit trees. We've got grapefruit, oranges, clementines, olives, figs, persimmons, plums, and feijoas.

The feijoas, also called pineapple guavas, are my second favorite fruit from our yard (the figs are my favorite). They have a perfumey scent, a tart, firm, gritty flesh, and a sweet custardy center. (I'm not sure what kind of cultivar it is.)

This year's harvest came later than usual, and it looks like it's not as bountiful as previous years', but I'm grateful to have any amount. I wait for fruit to drop off the tree, then remove the rind with a vegetable peeler and eat the rest like a pear or apple. I eat up to seven or eight a day. Wikipedia article about feijoa

Previously on Boing Boing:
• It's guava time at my house

It really was just last week that we were somewhat impressed that movie studio Warner Bros. recognized that it needed to compete with piracy in China, and was doing so by offering super cheap movie downloads there. However, apparently that strategy isn't universal across Warner Bros., because, as a few readers have alerted us, the studio is acting in quite a different way in neighboring Korea. Rather than compete, Warner Bros., is apparently throwing in the towel and pulling out of Korea entirely.

To be honest, I'm quite confused as to how the same company could make both of those decisions in the course of a single week. Perhaps the situations are really different between China and Korea (though, I doubt it), but it's difficult to see why it would make sense to try to compete against widespread piracy in one country, and then insist it was impossible to do the same thing in another country.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Ashutosh Saxena writes "Stanford artificial intelligence researchers have developed software that makes it easy to reach inside an existing video and place a photo on the wall so realistically that it looks like it was there from the beginning. The photo is not pasted on top of the existing video, but embedded in it. It works for videos as well — you can play a video on a wall inside your video. The technology can cheaply do some of the tricks normally performed by expensive commercial editing systems. The researchers suggest that anyone with a video camera might earn some spending money by agreeing to have unobtrusive corporate logos placed inside their videos before they are posted online."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ycombinator and Reddit loved my piece about advertising being dead, most of the people thinking I was wrong (to paraphrase them with more respect than most of them had). I'm sure I was right. You had to click on the links and actually read the piece and have an IQ over 85 to understand what I was saying. I wasn't writing it for them, rather I was writing it for the small number of people who read this site regularly. It's been an evolving story. You don't have to believe me, or agree with me, but you could of course think about it and maybe get an idea or two of your own that isn't guttural.

However many people understood exactly what I was saying.

The Internet is a wonderful commercial environment. Its trained me to expect the impossible from real-world retail. When I last visited Fry's I wished I could hide all the items on the shelf that don't match my search criteria. I was looking for a DVI to HDMI adapter. The perfect product was sitting there right on the shelf, but it took me five minutes to find it, and I almost gave up. Had I been on Amazon, or even Fry's website, I would have found it much more quickly.

However this is not advertising! It is commercial information. The former is in our way, the latter is what we seek.

A commenter named Hartsock put it perfectly: "I look forward to the day when I can search like this: "pants waist:38in inseam:32in cargo" and find a listing of cargo pants that fit me and places I can go and buy them."

It's amazing that we're not there yet. But it would be unbelievable to think we're not going there.

So dear Internet idiots, that's what I'm talking about.

The death of advertising is on its way. The recesssion is going to slow down advertising (no not completely, of course) for the next few quarters at least. When the economy comes back there will have been enough progress in developing the commercial information side of things that marketers will not need to hitch a ride on other people's content, nor will there be any value in doing so, in order to be able to spread the memes, ideas, and info about their latest products.

For another example, how many ads have you seen for netbooks? Yet it's the hottest category in computers. No need to advertise, nor would ads have helped.

We're adept at influencing each other, we don't need to go to Madison Avenue for that anymore.

I saw the latest James Bond movie Quantum of Solace - besides some cool 3D phone imaging and some touch screen action there wasn't a lot in terms of gadgety spy gear. There was a hydrogen powered hotel but in the end that didn't really work out. So, if you're like most makers you probably like(d) 007 movies for crazy spy gadgets which eventually either became really or something you could make now. I still think "Q" had the coolest job in the world, he would outfit our hero with the latest gear for getting a spy job done: booby-trapped briefcases, walkie-talkie in a broom, bug decoders, tape recorder cameras, dagger shows, garrote watches, modded cars, homing beacons, underwater jet packs, x-ray desks, fake finger prints, mini-subs, the list goes on and on...

Here are some DIY versions (or close to) of what I saw in the movie... something for kids and adults out there who want to do this on their own :)

3D imaging...
Make3D --- convert your images to 3d. Stanford's 3D tool where you can upload your own 2D image and make it 3D...

Touch screens

Hand gesture multitouch using only a webcam.
5-minute multitouch.
The Future of Interfaces Is Multi-Touch.
Touchscreen Boombox PC.
Homemade touch-screen jukebox.
Interactive multi-touch display.

Hydrogen power

Fuel Cell Car & Experiment Kit.
HOW TO - Make Hydrogen.
HOW TO - Collect hydrogen and oxygen.

But! Don't worry about spy gadgets in upcoming Bond, there's hope - the rumor is that the next Bond will feature a "Q"-like character and maybe we'll see some high tech gadgets for super spies again - for now however - we've put together an ENTIRE issue of MAKE devoted to spy tech. Here's a run down and our video from the Spy volume MAKE 16.

Talking Booby Trap by Bob Knetzger
Surprise enemy spies with the sound of your own voice. Page 60

Portable Spy Scope by Eric Rosenthal
Turn your cellphone into a high-power digiscope. Page 64

Simple Laser Communicator by Simon Quellen Field
Talk in secret over your private laser beam light link. Page 67

Survival systems: shaken, not stirred by Thomas Arey
Miniaturize a serious survival kit. Page 70

Dead Drop Device by Brian Dereu
A hollow bolt hides secret messages. Page 72

This object will self-destruct... by Andrew Lewis
Create objects that melt into uselessness at your command. Page 76

USBattery by Andrew Lewis
Hide a secret flash drive in an innocent AA cell. Page 80

Checkmate, Mr. Bond! by Andrew Lewis
Unlock a secret compartment with magnetic chess pieces. Page 84

Covert Wireless Listening by David Simpson
Install a sneaky bug in a book. Page 88

Invisible Ink Printer by Mike Golembewski
Take a new twist on lemon juice. Page 92

You can get MAKE 16 here, or subscribe and start reading right away in the digital edition (use CMAKE to get $5 off).

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!

I loved this bit on ThinkProgress.

French President Sarkozy talking to Russian Prime Minister Putin. "Do you want to end up like Bush?' Mr. Putin was briefly lost for words, then said: 'Ah -- you have scored a point there.'"

How well do Sarkozy and Putin understand that, unless they organize their people on the Internet first, Obama might do it for them.

One more thing -- what a missed opportunity had we not elected Obama.

What will be left of the Republican leadership if Obama offers McCain a job in his administration and McCain accepts.

It must be too juicy an option, how could Obama resist. I don't imagine McCain has a whole lot of love for his party at this point, esp if Obama gets his buddy Lieberman a pass for his excesses during the campaign and esp if Obama offers something interesting.

Who then would be the leader of the Republicans in Washington?

When I was a kid and we studied the French Revolution, and, of course, the guillotine, the class buzzed with rumors that the executed could briefly maintain consciousness after decapitation. Damn Interesting just reposted a short piece on that notion of "Lucid Decapitation." From Damn Interesting:

In the heyday of the guillotine during the French Revolution, it is said that many of the condemned were asked to blink for as long as possible after decapitation. While many reportedly did not blink at all, some complied for as long as thirty seconds. Still other observations describe much more specific reactions to stimuli following beheading. Consider the case of Languille, a convicted murderer who was guillotined in France. He was observed by Dr. Beaurieux during his execution at 5:30am on June 28th, 1905. As written in Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle, here are the doctor's observations:

Here, then, is what I was able to note immediately after the decapitation: the eyelids and lips of the guillotined man worked in irregularly rhythmic contractions for about five or six seconds … I waited for several seconds. The spasmodic movements ceased.

The face relaxed, the lids half closed on the eyeballs, leaving only the white of the conjunctiva visible, exactly as in the dying whom we have occasion to see every day in the exercise of our profession, or as in those just dead.

It was then that I called in a strong, sharp voice: 'Languille!' I saw the eyelids slowly lift up, without any spasmodic contractions … Next Languille's eyes very definitely fixed themselves on mine and the pupils focused themselves … After several seconds, the eyelids closed again, slowly and evenly, and the head took on the same appearance as it had had before I called out.

Lucid Decapitation

John created a scrolling game by using Scratch. By using the GUI based programming environment, he was able to create his own version of Mario. The game isn't fully complete, but it has a lot of good going for it.

You can play his game by visiting the project's page on the Scratch site. If you would like to check out his code, make an account and download the file. Scratch is pretty easy to get started in, and has many possibilities. You can get a free download of Scratch as well.

Have you tried Scratch? Does your school teach programming? What can kids do with programming? What are some great ways to teach programming? Post up your ideas in the comments!

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Gaming | Digg this!

We're trying something out new this week - here are a few of the best posts this week from GeekDad, the parenting blog at Wired.com -- one of our favorite sites!

Tallest LEGO Tower Record Is Broken ... Again
Kids in Vienna build the largest LEGO tower ever, only a month after the last time it was done.

A Visit to Leonardo
If you're looking for an exhibit that can entertain the whole family, you can see "Leonardo: 500 Years Into The Future" at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, California until January 4th, 2009.

GeekDad HipTrax #18
GeekDad's bi-weekly geeky music podcast. This weeks includes Brad Sucks, MC Lars, and The Protomen.

From ABBA to Zebra Flesh with TV Adventurer Bear Grylls
A conversation with the host of the popular (and controversial) Discovery Channel reality-series.

Commander Cody and the Lost Clone Wars Airmen
Watching Star Wars: Clone Wars leads to re-discovering some classic rock, and a classic TV serial.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!

yaksha writes to tell us that the Indian Space probe, Chandrayaan has become only the fourth nation to land a probe on the Moon. The 35-kg Moon Impact Probe touched down in what officials are describing as a "perfect operation". "Developed by ISRO's Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre of Thiruvananthapuram, the primary objective of MIP is to demonstrate the technologies required for landing a probe at the desired location on the moon. The probe will help qualify some of the technologies related to future soft landing missions. This apart, scientific exploration of the moon at close distance is also intended using MIP."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jenny @ CRAFT writes:

Craftster user Weird_Lover_Wilde made this gorgeously detailed embroidered ear as a gift for her family doctor. She must have a great doctor to inspire this kind of craftsmanship! Look at all those lovely stitches!

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Crafts | Digg this!

Joshua Glenn says:

My friend Geoff Edgers, the Boston Globe's arts reporter, is spending all his free time on a personal mission: to reunite The Kinks. ("I've stood by helplessly as countless crappy rock bands have gotten back together -- Styx, Flock of Seagulls, The fucking Eagles!") Local movie director-producer Robert Patton-Spruill is documenting Geoff's quixotic efforts, but I haven't been paying much attention -- because it seemed crazy, to me. But check out this excerpt from "Do It Again," their documentary in progress. Geoff talks to Kinks bassist Pete Quaife, who compares the band to the movie The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly; he gets Sting's endorsement, and the two of them duet on The Kinks' "Set Me Free"; and Hollywood lovely Zooey Deschanel says she thinks the band secretly wants to get back together.

(By the way, I used this little trick to embed the YouTube video in higher resolution than normal.)

Išgyvenimo Drama is a former Soviet bunker near Vilnius, Lithuania that's been converted into an immersive theme park experience. It sounds like Colonial Williamsburg, but harsher. From Environmental Graffiti:

Išgyvenimo drama opened in early 2008 to some controversy. Tourists pay 120 LTL ($US 220) each to step back into 1984 as a temporary USSR citizen for 2.5 hours. On entry, all belongings, including money, cameras and phones, are handed over and under the watchful eye of guards and alsatians, tourists change into threadbare Soviet coats and are herded through the bunker.

Experiences include watching TV programs from 1984, wearing gas masks, learning the Soviet anthem under duress, eating typical Soviet food (with genuine Soviet tableware) and even undergoing a concentration-camp-style interrogation and medical check.

Europe's Strangest Theme Park

It would appear that Wal-Mart's lawyers need to come up with excuses to keep billing Wal-Mart every year around this time. Despite the fact that Wal-Mart employees admit that sites posting "Black Friday Ads" help drive more business, Wal-Mart's hired guns keep threatening sites for posting the ads, falsely claiming a copyright on the content (hint: you can't copyright prices). This year, they've stepped it up a notch and are claiming that it's illegal to even link to a site that has such content.

Specifically, Wal-Mart's high-priced law firm has sent a takedown notice to the site SearchAllDeals.com, which is a search engine/aggregator of various deals sites. The site doesn't host any content itself, but that didn't stop Wal-Mart from sending a false DMCA takedown claim to the site (and, of course, a false DMCA takedown is illegal). So, we have Wal-Mart, whose employees think deal sites are helpful, getting its lawyers to send out bogus takedown notices over content that isn't copyrighted, and then sending them to search engines that don't even host the content in question.

It makes you wonder how much the lawyers are charging Wal-Mart... and if the fees are being paid out of the legal budget, or the marketing and promotions budget.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

daveschroeder writes "George Washington University has today released a three-volume history of NSA activities during the Cold War (major highlights). Written by agency historian Thomas R. Johnson, the 1,000-page report, 'Cryptology During the Cold War, 1945-1989,' details some of the agency's successes and failures, its conflict with other intelligence agencies, and the questionable legal ground on which early American cryptologists worked. The report remained classified for years, until Johnson mentioned it to Matthew Aid, an intelligence historian, at an intelligence conference. Two years later, an abstract and the three current volumes of the report are now available (PDF) from GWU and the National Security Archive. Aid, author of the forthcoming history 'The Secret Sentry: The Top Secret History of the National Security Agency,' says Johnson's study shows 'refreshing openness and honesty, acknowledging both the NSA's impressive successes and abject failures during the Cold War.' A fourth volume remains classified. Johnson says in an audio interview: 'If you are performing an operation that violates a statute like FISA, it's going to come out. It always comes out.'" And reader sampas zooms in on a section in Document 6 about the growth of NSA's IT: their first Cray purchase in 1976, the growth of circuits between facilities, and internal feuds over centralized IT development vs. programmers-in-departments. "A young systems engineer named [redacted] was urging NSA to look at some technology that had been developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In 1969 DARPA had developed a computer internetting system called ARPANET... NSA quickly adopted the DARPA solution. The project was called platform."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New Scientist reports that Alexander Besher's new multimedia sci-fi novel, Manga Man, is not only available to read online, you can have it published to your mobile phone by scanning a QR code on a promotional t-shirt.

More unusually (at least by Western standards) is that the book is being published direct to mobile phones. Reading novels on mobiles hasn't really taken off over here, but it's all the rage in Japan, where the novels are sent in installments as text messages. Besher has come up with the sly idea of getting T-shirts printed with a QR code, which when scanned directs people to the website for the novel.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in News from the Future | Digg this!

A Guantanamo Bay-themed scarf from a fashion collection designed by Hannah Mitchell, a student at Massey University in New Zealand. The scarf is printed with distorted texts and the lyrics to Bob Dylan's "Masters of War." Lyrics sampler: "Let me ask you one question/Is your money that good/Will it buy you forgiveness/Do you think that it could/I think you will find/When your death takes its toll/All the money you made/Will never buy back your soul." (Via Pipeline.)

"It's a political continuum regarding the way media, in particular America's Fox News, distorts the truth behind cultural conflicts, civil wars and different situations around the world including Guantanamo Bay," Ms Mitchell said.

She has deliberately produced her garments from contrasting fabrics - free-flowing silk and restrictive leather - to make her point.

"Rather than producing a beautiful commercial collection, I am using fashion as a communication tool to say what I want to say."

Related: A music video collage of the outgoing regime's and others' war-mongerings set to Dylan's "Masters of War" and created by a guy named Brian.

Also related: "Torture Couture."

From Treehugger, here's an interesting call against recycling. In part:

Lets call recycling what it is- a fraud, a sham, a scam perpetrated by big business on the citizens and municipalities of America. Look who sponsors the National Recycling Coalition: behind America Recycles Day: Coca-Cola, Pepsico, Anheuser-Busch, Coors, Owens-Illinois, International Bottled Water Association, the same people who brought you that other fraud, Keep America Beautiful. Recycling is simply the transfer of producer responsibility for what they produce to the taxpayer who has to pick it up and take it away. ... So let's remove recycling from the three R's; it doesn't belong there, use "repair" instead. Let's demand returnable bottles and deposits on everything and let's celebrate Zero Waste Day on November 15 with a returnable bottle of beer.

Seems like a relatively-plausible conspiracy theory, and a confrontational way to frame the issue. But, I'd hate to see anybody delay working on a green-tech project while they wait for more sustainable product packaging... what do you think?

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Green | Digg this!

Chicago-based symbolist artist Gail Potocki has a new show of provocative, masterful paintings opening Saturday, November 15, at Billy Shire Fine Arts gallery in Los Angeles. The show, titled "Opened Apples," runs until December 5 and is also viewable online. Above, "Thaw" (oil on linen in handmade frame, 68" x 36"). Below left, "Corrupted Mother" (oil on linen in handmade frame, 42.75" x 54.75"). Potocki was recently interviewed for a special online feature in Hi-Fructose. From the interview:

For the last few years I have focused heavily on environmental themes with my work. I think the stresses humans are putting on the ecosystem are the most serious problems we are facing, so it is difficult for me to paint about more personal issues or to do humorous work. I am always thinking about how fragile the world really is and how close elements of it are to collapsing.

I think of the apple as a symbolic representation of the earth and, of course from the story of the Garden of Eden, as paradise. In the painting "Opened Apples" for example, a woman is taking bites out of apples and throwing them to the ground. It represents humans' careless disregard for the natural world and wasteful consumption. The idea of "Opened Apples" made me think of how we have savagely bitten into the symbolic "earth" apple and left it to turn brown and rot. Also, when I thought of the title I was thinking of the opening of Pandora's Box as a metaphor of what we are doing by "opening the apple" and unleashing unforeseen consequences.

I've addressed my concern with the plight of the honeybees quite a bit in this body of work. The mysterious loss of such a huge percentage of the bee population is one of the most alarming collapses and seems to be happening so silently with little press or media concern. I wanted to show the importance of this issue by making the bees larger than life while meeting their death in mysterious ways that I have imagined. In "Corrupted Mother" I use the woman as a representation of an ecosystem so corrupted that it is turning against itself. She is handing over the apple (paradise) to the evil aspects of humanity (snake). Even the snake is corrupted and is a mutation with two heads. In the background a polar bear walks through increasingly larger hoops of fire as a symbol for a rapidly warming planet.

Gail Potocki's "Opened Apples" (Billy Shire Fine Arts), Online Feature & Preview: Gail Potocki (Hi-Fructose) (Thanks, Richard Metzger!)

A baby monitor iPhone app:

Monitor your sleeping baby with this iPhone app. Simply place the iPhone near your sleeping baby, if it detects noise, it places a phone call to the number of your choice, you can then listen in for activity from your baby. Great for when you are on the go or traveling, no need to pack your regular baby monitor. One feature that makes this application exceptional is that the monitor has unlimited range!

Even use it to monitor when older kids arrive home from school, etc. The applications are unlimited. It also will detect if your baby picks up the phone. Great for curious toddlers that wake up from their nap without making noise. A fantastic value at only 99 cents.

(Via TUAW)

"One or more persons obscuring or augmenting any part of their body or bodies with record sleeve(s) causing an illusion." Also see the Sleeveface pool on Flickr. #

wiredog sends in a study from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Center For Biosecurity, assessing risks of human extinction and the costs of preventing it. "In this century a number of events could extinguish humanity. The probability of these events may be very low, but the expected value of preventing them could be high, as it represents the value of all future human lives."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Well, here's a case that may interest various bloggers who like to get press credentials to various events. Three "alternative" journalists in New York City are suing the NY Police Department for denying them press credentials, because they work for online or nontraditional publications. To be honest, it's difficult to see this lawsuit going very far. If a court finds that the NYPD is somehow required to give any alternative journalist press credentials, then it basically means that anyone can get press credentials (as, these days, anyone can become part of the press with a fews clicks) -- and makes the whole concept of press credentials meaningless. Of course, there are some who might say that's not a bad idea. But, on the whole, it seems like the NYPD (and anyone else) should be free to give out press credentials to whoever they want. It's not denying anyone's ability to report on things -- it's just determining what kind of access they have. The freedom of the press is about the freedom to report and publish -- not the freedom to go wherever they want and access whoever they want.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

TechDirt is reporting on a disappointing development out of Canada. An Ontario transportation board has fined PickupPal, a Web-based service for arranging carpools, because a local bus company complained of the competition. (TechCrunch apparently first broke the story.) "[The transportation board has] established a bunch of draconian rules that any user in Ontario must follow if it uses the service — including no crossing of municipal boundaries — meaning the service is only good within any particular city's limits. It's better than being shut down completely, and the service can still operate elsewhere around the world, but this is yet another case where we see regulations, that are supposedly put in place to improve things for consumers, do the exact opposite."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

(above: a Gucci ad by David Lynch)

timesculpture
uk tv worst adverts
tronic meets target
david lynch commercials
mcdonalds's commercials
usher films
the truth in ad sales

previously on web zen:
advertising zen

Permalink for this edition. Web Zen is created and curated by Frank Davis, and re-posted here on Boing Boing with his kind permission. Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!)

eldavojohn writes "From delaying Project Constellation to an additional $2 billion in funding, Space.com looks at some immediate decisions the President Elect will have to make once he takes office in January. The biggest one will be the shuttle plan: do we retire the shuttle fleet or keep it on for more missions? If it is retired, we would have to rely on another country to bring our astronauts into space between 2010 and 2015 as a new fleet is built. Will Obama hold true on his $2 billion pledge to NASA?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Reader eoinmonty writes in to let us know that Irish politicians are pressuring mobile phone companies to stop mobile phone bullying, and saying that if the companies can't do so, they'll be forced to put in place laws that require them to stop bullying. The whole thing is rather ridiculous, and, as one phone company rep accurately pointed out: "It is unrealistic and unfair to expect mobile phone operators to solve what is a broader societal problem." Indeed. It seems as if politicians think that somehow the mobile operators can just snap their fingers and stop undesired activity. They can't. And, to let them in on a little secret: even passing a law won't do much to help. People are going to be bullies -- and passing a law or asking the mobile phone companies to hold back the tide won't do much to stop them.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

An anonymous reader writes "As previously discussed, Microsoft's attempt to shield itself from further discovery over the Windows Vista Capable debacle has failed and more internal emails have been released. Although Microsoft has successfully kept CEO Steve Ballmer away from the witness stand on grounds the he 'has no unique knowledge of the facts in this case,' emails suggest otherwise. An email was released in which Intel CEO Paul Otellini thanks Ballmer for listening and making changes to the program allowing their 915 chipset to pass the grade: 'I know you did it.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Writer/puppeteer Mary Robinette Kowal has an excellent piece on papier-mache.

Papier-mache is one of the oldest forms for creating puppets and so a lot of people think that there must be something better out there. Actually, there are very few contenders. Done well, papier-mache is light, strong, fast, and non-toxic. I know, we've all had the experience of the lumpy paste, and corners that stick up and a thing that requires years of sanding to even resemble smooth. It doesn't have to be that way. I'll show you a technique that will only need three layers and can be danced on.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Crafts | Digg this!

There were so many different craft style projects at Maker Faire this year, from weaving to glassblowing and everything in between. Take a look at some of the highlights and make plans to attend the next Maker Faire.
To download Maker Faire Austin 2008 - Crafts MP4 click here or subscribe in iTunes.

More Weekend Projects are on the way.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in MAKE Video | Digg this!

Witness the scene at the 11th annual New York Chocolate Show, this year's chocolate fashion show theme: superheroes, where we hear the sad story of a chocolate-covered Leeloo from "The Fifth Element" who faints and breaks. (Via Grinding; photos at io9.)

netbuzz writes "The state of Washington is suing a search engine optimization and Web services outfit, based in Redmond, that has done business under the names Visible.net, Captures.com, and WebMarketingSource.com. In essence, the state says these entities have deceived mostly mom-and-pop sites through unfulfilled performance promises and financial shenanigans after charging up to $10,000 in up-front charges and more in monthly fees. About 90 complaints have been lodged over four years, the state says."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This probably won't come as a big surprise to most folks, but Sen. Byron Dorgan, has made it clear that he intends to reintroduce net neutrality legislation early next year. While the issue of net neutrality used to not be a partisan issue, somehow it became one a few years ago, with many Democrats lining up in favor of net neutrality regulations, and many Republicans against them. President-elect Obama's platform included network neutrality legislation, and with more Democrats being elected to both the House and Senate, it's no surprise that such a bill would quickly find its way to being introduced.

While we're strong supporters of keeping the internet's end-to-end principles intact, that doesn't necessarily mean legislation is the best way to do it. Once again, we'd urge anyone supporting the legislation to at least carefully read Tim Lee's paper on the subject. Yes, it's important to keep the internet working under these principles, and yes many internet providers would like to start double charging some providers for traffic, but this particular piece of legislation may not be the best answer -- and could, in fact, create more problems.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Has anyone tried this service? It's Spoonflower - a custom fabric print on-demand service via Photojojo. They're based out of an old sock mill in downtown Mebane, North Carolina and allow tours - sounds pretty rad.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this!

?This 10 foot tall potted plant consisting of extra-large power cords is a sculpture entitled "PowerPlant" by John Pashilk. John makes impressively large flower-related sculptures in public spaces. Check out the link to see some more of his impressive creations.

"POWERPLANT" by John Pashilk @ CalShakes

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this!

Sebastian made a hardware-only (no microcontroller) drum machine -

I wanted to make a device that plays back digital audio, without the use of any programming or a microcontroller or a computer. In other words, the most basic rompler, as a hardware-only device.

I'm continually impressed by the complex breadboarding I see in projects like this - that many jumper wires require a delicate touch and a very special kind of patience! - A True Rompler(2) Drum Machine

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Electronics | Digg this!

notthatwillsmith writes "We all know that Google purges known 'attack sites — sites that deliver viruses, spyware, or other malware to visitors — from its index of searchable sites, but that doesn't stop the text ad giant from happily selling ads linking to those sites. One wouldn't think it would be any more difficult to cross-reference the list of purged sites with the list of advertisers than it was for the main search index, would it?" To be fair, the article says that Google shut down the ad when notified of it; and no other examples of linked malware are offered. Was this a one-time oversight?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

holy_calamity writes "New Scientist reports on the latest idea from researchers trying to make microcomputers use photons in place of electrons — to make optical interconnects from strands of DNA. Mixing DNA strands with the right dye molecule upgrades them into wires for light, like microscopic optical fibers, able to absorb photons at one end and transmit them to the other. One of the neat things about using DNA is it is the right scale to play nicely with existing and future chip lithography. Quoting: 'The result is similar to natural photonic wires found inside organisms like algae, where they are used to transport photons to parts of a cell where their energy can be tapped. In these wires, chromophores are lined up in chains to channel photons.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sensor Interfaces by Tom Igoe. How circuits communicate with the outside world. Page 160 - MAKE 5. Read this article now in the MAKE digital edition.

Or get MAKE 05 as part of The Second Year from the Maker store and/or subscribe to MAKE (use code CMAKE for $5 off USD).

You can view all our in depth Primers from MAKE here too.

Solar Power System Design - A Primer @ MAKE
Solering and Desoldering - A Primer @ MAKE
HOW TO - Make printed circuit boards - A Primer @ MAKE
Welding - A Primer @ MAKE
Microcontroller Programming - A Primer @ MAKE
Sensor interfaces - A Primer @ MAKE
MIDI control - A Primer @ MAKE
Moldmaking by MythBuster Adam Savage - A Primer @ MAKE
Working with carbon fiber - A Primer @ MAKE

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!

The "Visible Sound" project attempts to create a physical version of the sound around it by sewing sound waves in realtime. Although this was just a concept, we like ways of making invisible objects like sound waves into tangible forms.

visible Sound

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this!

There was plenty of news coverage this week of the $585 million in criminal fines against Sharp, LG and Chunghwa for price fixing on LCD displays. LG is paying the largest share at $400 million -- though, in the interest of disclosure, I should note that I'm writing this post using an LG LCD monitor that I got for quite a good price a few months back. And that brings up an issue I haven't seen addressed anywhere, other than by Adam Theirer: if this was price fixing, the companies were doing it wrong. Prices on LCDs were sliding very quickly, and it while there may have been some collusion among these three providers, it didn't seem to do much good. That's partly because there were plenty of other providers in the market, so any attempt at collusion was rather ineffective in stopping the rapid decline in prices. Sure, collusion is a bad thing, but we see this over and over again in antitrust enforcement: regulators keep punishing certain activities without bothering to see if they actually do anything to harm consumers.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Laser cut jewelry - Floppy disk ring via the CRAFT pool.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this!

?Robert Sollis, a student at the Royal College of Art wrote an email to Google asking for a marker to be placed on Google Maps for the college's temporary site in Kensington Gardens. All he got back from Google was an automated response, so he decided to create his own marker out of individual carpet tiles, each measuring 185mm square which directly corresponds to Google's pixel information from their satellite images. Pretty impressive build that also reminds us of the MAP project.

Google Carpet via It's Nice That

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this!

CWmike writes "Microsoft today called its first month of predicting whether hackers will create exploit code for its bugs a success — even though the company got its forecast right just 40% of the time for October. 'I think we did really well,' said Mike Reavey, group manager at the Microsoft Security Research Center (MSRC), when asked for a postmortem evaluation of the first cycle of the team's Exploitability Index. 'Four of the [nine] issues that we said where consistent exploit code was likely did have exploit code appear over the first two weeks. And another key was that in no case did we rate something too low.' Microsoft's Exploitability Index was introduced last month."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This looks like a good project for anyone who rides a bicycle at night. I really like the copper housing. Just remember to polyurethane the copper if you don't want it turning green. Personally, I think the aged green/brown patina would look really cool.

For those of us traveling by non-motorized conveyance (bicycle e.g.), visibility is important in both forenoon and post-twilight conditions. The best way to ensure such visibility is through the use of excessively bright lights, of which the latest light emitting diodes (LEDs) are the acme. The following account will detail the process of building an LED based head-light capable of of more than 500 lumens of output using about 6W of electrical power. For comparison, this is the same output as a typical 45W halogen bulb.

More about making a DIY: High power LED bike light

In the Maker Shed:


The Best of Instructables Volume I

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Instructables | Digg this!

Udi sent in this link to a DIY: PVC C-Stand. If you are unfamiliar with a C-Stand, they are stands used in photography to hold things like backdrops, lights and screens. This is a cheap DIY alternative to expensive commercial versions. [Thanks Udi]

I love nothing better than a good PVC construction. This is why I was so happy when David Turman sent in this great PVC stand. As any stand it can double as a light stand or a backdrop stand. You can use the stand to mount the cool backdrop you already made, or "just" your store bought backdrop.

More about DIY: PVC C-Stand

In the Maker Shed:


High-Speed Photography Kit Version 4

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Photography | Digg this!

Earlier this year, we mentioned that Intel was suing a travel agency for having the name Intellife Travel, despite the fact that trademark law is pretty clear that trademarks only cover specific areas of business, and Intel is not in the travel business. This wasn't the first time Intel had stretched trademark law, either. As we wrote last year, it was suing a jeans company as well. Law.com is running an article noting that Intel appears to have stepped up its trademark lawsuit campaign this year, filing 15 lawsuits already, including a recent one against Intellectric, an electrician in Southern California who has been using the name for years.

Intel, of course, claims it needs to sue to protect its name, but this is incorrect. It only needs to sue in clear cases of confusion or dilution. These names of companies in totally unrelated businesses (where there's no chance of confusion) are situations where there is no impact on Intel and they need not sue. There are some cases where it could make sense -- and I'll grant Intel's lawsuit against the research firm "Insider Intel" might make sense, given Intel's trademark on "Intel Inside," but many of these other lawsuits are ridiculous.

Yet, because many of the businesses are small, while Intel is huge, the businesses are forced to settle. Remember the travel agency? Rather than fight the lawsuit (which it almost certainly would have won), the company decided to settle, though it can't talk about the terms of the settlement.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

An anonymous reader points out a story on the Irish Times that says "the Irish government is looking for ways to combat 'cyber-bullying' after data indicated that a significant percentage of young children are subjected to this kind of abuse via their mobile phone and popular social network accounts. The industry has been asked to come up with solutions for this problem and a government office is due to publish a guide on the issue in the near future. Surely this is a problem faced by children in all developed countries these days." Add "for the children" to the list of reasons to track the Web-site habits of mobile web users in Ireland.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here is another great piece by Amorphic Robot Works. The website has a lot more information on the build and a cool video.

Skeletal Reflections is an autonomous, humanoid robot that engages its audience by enacting art historical interpretations of the viewer's physical stance. In exhibition, human participation determines the machine's responsive postures. The viewers' bodily gestures are digitized and analyzed with motion capture technology. These poses are then used to summon similar classical poses from art history that Skeletal Reflections subsequently displays. The skeletal model is capable of not only holding different positions, but also of communicating a survey of historically significant poses.

More about Skeletal Reflections by the Amorphic Robot Works

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this!

Here's the CRAFT 2008 gift guide from CRAFT volume 09 (PDF). If you have your printed copy of CRAFT it's on page 81, a pull out, and in the digital edition it's at the end.

I also wanted to post up a great article by Rachel Hobson & Diane Gilleland called "Whose Craft Is It, ANYWAY?"... Elder crafters respond to the slogan "Not your grandma's craft."

Visit the craft aisle of your local bookstore, or surf the web, and you're bound to run into this phrase sooner or later: "This isn't your grandma's knitting." Or crochet. Or quilting. Just fill in the last word with any craft.?

On the one hand, this little marketing ditty makes sense. We're definitely in the midst of a crafting renaissance, and in many ways, we're making things very differently than our mothers and grandmothers. But look a little closer, and you'll find plenty of so-called "grandmas" participating in the modern craft culture and staking their own turf by making some very cool things, as well.?

There's no question that crafting has changed a lot in recent decades. Socorro Rivera, 87, remembers it this way: "In those days, girls had to know how to sew, crochet, knit, and embroider. That's what we were taught in school in Mexico to get ready for marriage." Today, Sorocco, who crochets, knits, makes jewelry, and sews in her home near Los Angeles, has her own page on Hannah Kopacz' website, called Made With Love by Grandma.?

Fredda Perkins, 62, mother of Naughty Secretary Club's Jennifer Perkins, marvels at modern crafty technology. "I learned to sew on a treadle sewing machine! Now machines are computerized and will do just about everything but kiss your ass when you walk in the room," the self-described "immediate gratification crafter," who makes purses, pillows, and broken plate mosaics in McKinney, Texas.

Speaking of computers, what about the internet? Crafters in their 20s and 30s seem to love it, but what about those in their 50s and beyond? 

"I honestly cannot imagine how I would still be doing my work if I had not found the [online] community," says Boston-based doll artist Mimi Kirchner, 54, who mixes vintage and reclaimed fabrics with a variety of fiber arts techniques to create contemporary human portraits. "It is a constant validation. People are interested in what I do, they check out my new work. And then there is the other side, seeing what everybody else is doing. The cross-pollination. The ocean of images." 


But the resurgence of the handmade movement under the banner "This isn't your grandma's ..." has left some seasoned crafters with mixed emotions. "On the one hand, when I first heard it, I knew exactly what they meant, so that is a good thing for marketing," Kirchner says. "But it got old really fast. Now it sounds like the slogan of people who have no idea what the history of craft in America is all about." True, most of what's considered hip in the craft world these days isn't what our grandmothers were doing. But the roots of today's craft brilliance grow in the rich soil toiled by our grandmothers. "Every new generation brings something different and innovative to the artistic stage," Perkins says. "That's what keeps crafting vital and alive." And while age is just a number to most of these women, their years of experience have left them with some invaluable lessons. "As I get older, I care less about rules," says quilted fabric artist, Opal Cocke, 64, of Camano Island, Wash. "I do what feels right in the moment."

?For Cocke, that may mean leaving raw edges or combining media in ways she hasn't seen before. Her work also includes painting, beading, stitchery, photography, and found objects. "But, I know that learning the rules from my mother and grandmother has given me confidence in breaking the rules," she says.

?These lessons from our grandmothers prove to be invaluable. And if you haven't been able to partake in your own grandmother's wisdom, you still have a chance to experience what previous generations have to offer.

?"I wish new crafters, whatever their age, would take the time to learn some of the history," Kirchner says. "People have been making things for as long as there have been people. Everything about craft and everyone who has enlivened the conversation with their vision is not necessarily on the internet. Go to the library. Check out some older books. See the amazing work that was being created all during the last century."

Rachel Hobson blogs at Average Jane Crafter (averagejane crafter.blogspot.com). Diane Gilleland blogs at CraftyPod (crafter.blogspot.com).

References:
http://naughtysecretaryclub.com
http://mimikirchner.com/blog
http://craftzine.com/go/cocke
http://craftypod.com
http://madewithlovebyhannah.com/grandma.html
http://madewithlovebyhannah.com/grandma.html
http://averagejanecrafter.blogspot.com
http://averagejanecrafter.blogspot.com

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Announcements | Digg this!

My buddy Sean Bonner pointed me to this non-hoax photo from the White House.We obtained it from this url, which originates at whitehouse.gov, and accompanied this news release. So, not a joke. Nevermind whatever the news release says, what the hell are they doing? Is that a masonic gang sign? The $700 Billion Shocker? Or are they throwing down for the largest, bloodthirstiest, thievingest gang in the world? Your conspiracy theories welcome in the comments.

One of these days, someone will do a fascinating study or book on the evolving nature of online crime. It's a constantly changing phenomenon that would be quite interesting to study. A few years ago, we noted that the ease with which script kiddies could jump into the phishing and online extortion market meant that margins were getting squeezed for older online organized crime groups who had focused on such practices in the past. Apparently, the big money now has moved away from standard phishing and into corporate espionage. Organized crime groups are figuring out ways to hack into company networks, suck up as much data as possible, and then sell it off to the highest bidder -- whether it's competing firms or foreign governments.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

The New York Times reports that China has "agreed to loosen restrictions on foreign news and information providers inside the country, settling a trade dispute with the United States, the European Union and Canada." Formerly, all such news sources required licensing through China's official Xinhua News Agency. Note that the focus seems to be on financial reporting and information, rather than all forms of news reporting.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The New York Times reports that China has "agreed to loosen restrictions on foreign news and information providers inside the country, settling a trade dispute with the United States, the European Union and Canada." Formerly, all such news sources required licensing through China's official Xinhua News Agency. Note that the focus seems to be on financial reporting and information, rather than all forms of news reporting.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Today, Jason Tester, my colleague at Institute for the Future, and Art Center College of Design launched a fascinating new alternate reality game that simulates public response to a massive earthquake. After Shock asks the key question: What will you do when the big one hits? The game runs for three weeks. Jump in anytime! From Wired News:

Aftershock, run by the Institute for the Future and Art Center College of Design, is based on a 300-page U.S. Geological Survey scenario report that details the extensive damage that Southern California could experience in the aftermath of a 7.8-magnitude quake on the San Andreas Fault. The game began on Thursday and will run for three weeks, prompting users to complete real-world missions — and submit content based on them to the gaming community.

"Disaster preparedness was at the point where the messaging had hit the limit. You can give people this really elegantly designed flyer, and they stick it in a drawer and it hits them in the head during the earthquake," said Jason Tester, the lead game designer at the IFTF. "[The game] says, 'You are experiencing a real earthquake.' We're trying to make it feel visceral."

Play After Shock (aftershock.net), "LA Preps for the Big One With Massively Multiplayer Earthquake" (Wired)

Previously on BB:
• Jason Tester: Case for Human-Future Interaction
• Aftifacts from the Future at IFTF

Here's an example of a normal embedded Youtube video, borrowed from Patty Schiendelman's Gakken Mechamo Inchworm post.

Back in march, it was discovered that when you view a video directly on Youtube, you could add a "&fmt=18" to the URL to enable a higher quality, higher resolution stream which is encoded with the H.264 codec.

To make this work in an embedded video, however, you need a slightly different hack. After pasting the embed code into a blog post, adjust the two video URLs (one in a param tag and one as the src parameter in the embed tag) by adding "&ap=%2526fmt%3D18" to the end.

For example, the above video embed becomes:

<object width="600" height="475"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/iMQBKkDJY2c&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&ap=%2526fmt%3D18"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/iMQBKkDJY2c&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&ap=%2526fmt%3D18" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="600" height="475"></embed></object>

And here's the result:

The still frame before the video is played is the exact same over-compressed image, but when a user clicks play, they will get a nice surprise. Instead of 320x240 video encoded with the Sorenson codec, the video will come in at a resolution of 480x360, encoded with the superior H.264 codec.

Embedding High Quality Youtube Videos [via Kottke]
View YouTube in high-res

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in hacks | Digg this!

News from Regine at WMMNA:

The Medialab-Prado people are launching the latest of their increasingly successful interactivos? calls for the presentation of projects.

A maximum of 8 projects will be selected for their production in a workshop that will take place in Madrid on January 28 to February 14, 2009. Happy project leaders will count with the help of instructors, assistants and collaborators. Pending application, Medialab-Prado will provide lodging in a Youth Hostel for participants residing outside of the city. They will also cover travel expenses wholly or in part for one person per selected project.

The theme of this edition of Interactivos? is Garage Science and its keywords include: critical design, bio-art, mechanical devices, impossible machines, Rube Goldberg machines, pataphysic, free hardware, fabbing, recycling, biocomputing, biology, biohacking, biopunk, "license to fail". Software, hardware, wetware! The selected projects will show innovative ways to make science, technology and art converge.

Now comes the best part: the Critical Art Ensemble will take part to the workshop.

Deadline for entries: December 14.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this!

Over the years, there have been many different attempts to bring back the old school terminal-mainframe computing paradigm with various internet terminals, but for the most part, they've failed to catch on. More recently, with the growth of various internet application suites, the concept is starting to seem a bit more viable, and the rise of super cheap "netbooks" have taken advantage of that. Qualcomm is apparently looking to take this a step further, with an attempt to basically turn any screen into an internet terminal using 3G connections in developing countries.

Qualcomm, obviously, makes money wherever there's more mobile data usage, so it has every incentive to create new ways to get more people online. The article is a bit short on details, but it sounds like Qualcomm will be offering up a small device that can easily connect to certain televisions or computer monitors, and connect them to the internet. The idea is that someone with one of these devices can turn an existing screen into an internet terminal, without having to go purchase a computer or netbook or whatever. As an idea, it's intriguing, but as with all of these things, it's the execution that really matters. And, my guess is that the folks who already have screens that would work with such a device, are more likely to already have other means of internet access already.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Toren Altair writes with this excerpt from a story at The Space Fellowship: "NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit communicated via the Mars Odyssey orbiter today right at the time when ground controllers had told it to, prompting shouts of 'She's talking!' among the rover team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 'This means Spirit has not gone into a fault condition and is still being controlled by sequences we send from the ground,' said John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., project manager for Spirit and its twin, Opportunity."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here's a simple project for making a flashlight that sits on top of a 9-volt battery. Less expensive than a flashlight, and quite small and convenient! One LED is best used on top of two AA batteries, but throw a few more LEDs in series and you're in business.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Instructables | Digg this!

A bunch of folks have sent in Cory Doctorow's essay on why he considers himself a "copyfighter," noting that sharing content is what creates culture -- and the attempts by Big Content to block sharing of content are effectively an attempt to stomp out culture, such that only they can determine what is culture (or so they believe).

Content isn't king: culture is. The reason we go to the movies is to have something to talk about. If I sent you to a desert island and told you to choose between your records and your friends, you'd be a sociopath if you chose the music.

Culture's imperative is to share information: culture is shared information. Science fiction readers know this: the guy across from you on the subway with a gaudy SF novel in his hands is part of your group. You two have almost certainly read some of the same books, you've got some shared cultural referents, some things to talk about.

When you hear a song you love, you play it for the people in your tribe. When you read a book you love, you shove it into the hands of your friends to encourage them to read it too. When you see a great show, you get your friends to watch it too -- or you seek out the people who've already watched it and strike up a conversation with them.

I would go even further than Doctorow does. I'm less concerned about the impact on culture, as I am on the impact on communication itself. Communication is at the heart of pretty much all economic activity -- and thanks to technology, these days, pretty much all communication involves some sort of "copying." Yet, because a rather recent industry was built up on the idea that "copying" was rare and was only done on professional built content, it's now trying to shut down and stomp out new means of communication just because, as a part of its nature, it allows for the copying of professional content as well. Yet, in doing so, they're slowing down basic communications, and with it, the core of economic activity and growth.

The attempt to apply ever more draconian copyright laws may appear to be in the interests of those who have relied on such artificial scarcity for years, but the end result is a significant restriction of economic activity, which harms everyone -- including the companies who are in favor of such copyright laws and enforcement. Purposely limiting a market is a dangerous short-term practice that has significantly negative long-term consequences.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Slatterz writes "Closely integrating GPU and CPU systems was one of the motivations for AMD's $5.4bn acquisition of ATI in 2006. Now AMD is looking to expand its Stream project, which uses graphics chip processing cores to perform computing tasks normally sent to the CPU, a process known as General Purpose computing on Graphics Processing Units (GPGPU). By leveraging thousands of processing cores on a graphics card for general computing calculations, tasks such as scientific simulations or geographic modelling, which are traditionally the realm of supercomputers, can be performed on smaller, more affordable systems. AMD will release a new driver for its Radeon series on 10 December which will extend Stream capabilities to consumer cards." Reader Vigile adds: "While third-party consumer applications from CyberLink and ArcSoft are due in Q1 2009, in early December AMD will release a new Catalyst driver that opens up stream computing on all 4000-series parts and a new Avivo Video Converter application that promises to drastically increase transcoding speeds. AMD also has partnered with Aprius to build 8-GPU stream computing servers to compete with NVIDIA's Tesla brand."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I just got my contributor's copy of the beautiful Blab! art exhibition catalogue.

Organized by the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University, BLAB!: A Retrospective features the work of 46 alternative comics artists, illustrators, graphic designers, printmakers, and painters from BLAB!, the annual anthology of visual art produced by Monte Beauchamp. Began in 1986 as a self-published fanzine devoted to MAD magazine and other ECComics publications, BLAB! has evolved into a significant outlet for contemporary artists andhas made meaningful contributions to the blurring of boundaries between alternative graphics and mainstream illustration.

The accompanying 128-page catalogue, designed by Beauchamp, contains 84 color illustrations and includes a range of essays that should be of interest to unfamiliar readers and aficionados alike. Bill North's "This Thing Called *BLAB!*: Notes Toward an Understanding" surveys the anthology from its inception in 1986 to the present. In "Blabbing about BLAB!" Mark Frauenfelder considers Beauchamp's methods as an art director from the perspective of the artists featured in BLAB!. David A. Beron "BLAB!: A Visual Journey" is a reflective recollection of his personal experience with BLAB! and the ways in which the anthology has informed his work as a scholar. Finally, Matt Dukes Jordan's extensive, in-depth interview with Beauchamp provides a frank and revealing glimpse into the mind of BLAB!'s creator.

BLAB! art exhibition catalogue

A magician friend of mine occasionally asks me to build tricks for him. I'm flattered and find this to be incredibly cool, especially after Michael Caine's portrayal of the magician's engineer (pronounced all French and awesome) in the movie The Prestige.

This time he wants a remote controlled ventriloquist's jaw mask to deploy on unlucky volunteers from the audience. It'll be the lower half of a face mask with a hinged jaw that flaps up and down. In the routine the "ventriloquist" will be offstage talking through a microphone and flapping the jaw on the "dummy" audience member via remote control.

This is my rough model of an approach I was thinking of testing. I'll stick small servomotors at the hinges, run a battery and receiver around back (maybe a belt pack?) and use an R/C remote. We'll probably make the mask out of very lightweight plastic, like a kid's Halloween mask, so that the jaw can flap quickly. What other approaches can you think of?

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!

John Hodgman says:

Hello, friends in Los Angeles, or recently moved from there.

You should feel zero obligation to come see me and Jonathan Coulton perform at the Echoplex. Seriously.

Of course, you should know that the 27 dollars includes a copy of my new book, MORE INFORMATION THAN YOU REQUIRE.

Additionally, the show will not only feature me wearing a tuxedo, but also COULTON playing guitar in the way only he can.

And now: SPECIAL GUEST JOHN RODERICK OF THE LONG WINTERS, who is missing a front tooth and really knows how to be awesome.

Plus other surprises.

All of the details, times, ticket info, etc, are here

HODGMAN
November 13, 2008
8:00 pm
WITH JONATHAN COULTON AND JOHN RODERICK

Echoplex
1154 Glendale Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90026
(213) 413-8200
Tickets are $27, and include a copy of MORE INFORMATION
THAN YOU REQUIRE
A BOOK SOUP event.

You may recall that a judge recently allowed Kentucky's governor to seize a bunch of domain names that were related to gambling -- even if neither the owners nor the servers were based in Kentucky -- setting a terrible precedent. That's why it's good to see the EFF, the ACLU and the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) team up yet again to ask an appeals court to overturn this decision. Hopefully the appeals court recognizes how truly awful the original decision was, and notes how it seems to violate multiple clauses of the Constitution.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

I was all impressed with Dorkbot Austin having held 18 Dorkbots, and I find out San Francisco's up to number 40!

dorkbotSF #40!
when: nov 25 7:30pm
where: retox lounge: 628 20th @ 3rd, SF ca (basically dogpatch)

speakers:

• Laura Mappin - laser cutting


• Trademark G - touchscreen video controller for live mashup

I'll bring some of those glow in the dark dorkbot t-shirts so gets yours then!

CASH BAR so 21+
FREE ADMISSION but donations appreciated!

will try and snag tamale lady to come by

anyone want to open dork, let me know!

-karen

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Events | Digg this!