MBCook writes "AppleInsider has an article discussing Dell's attempt to enter the smartphone market, as well as the news that the phone was rejected by carriers as too dull. The article doesn't pull punches: 'Dell's failure to successfully step from the commodity PC business into the mobile handset market should come as no surprise, as smartphones requires expertise in software platform development, consumer design savvy, and portable device engineering, all things Dell has never demonstrated any proficiency in.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Kugrian writes "Showing that it's not just the British and the French who have trouble seeing each other on the high seas, a US Nuclear submarine yesterday crashed into a US Navy heavy cruiser. The USS Hartford, a nuclear-powered attack submarine, was submerged as it crashed into the USS New Orleans in the strait of Hormuz, resulting in the spillage of 95,000 litres of diesel fuel. Both vessels were heading in the same direction when the collision occurred in the narrow strait and were subsequently heading to port for repairs. A spokesman for the 5th Fleet said that the USS Hartford suffered no damage to its nuclear propulsion system." According to the USS New Orleans' Wikipedia page, it's actually an amphibious transport dock.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Seeeduino V1.1 from the Maker Shed is an Arduino compatible micro controller. The design is based on the Arduino Diecimila, and it is 100% compatible with the IDE and available shields. Check out the "More Details" tab on the Maker Shed web page for more a lot more information.

Features:

• Micro-controller: ATmega168
  
• Operating Voltage: 5V/3.3V
  
• Input Voltage: 7-12 V
  
• Input Voltage: 6-20 V
  
• Digital I/O Pins: 14 (6 are PWM output)
  
• Analog Input Pins: 8
  
• DC Current per I/O Pin: 40 mA
  
• DC Current for 3.3V Pin: 50 mA
  
• Flash Memory: 16 KB (2 KB is used by bootloader)
  
• SRAM: 1 KB
  
• EEPROM: 512 bytes
  
• Clock Speed: 16 MHz
  

More about the Seeeduino V1.1

More:

More about the Seeeduino Catalyst Pack

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Dan Gillmor is a BoingBoing guest-blogger.

Brad Friedman at the Brad Blog has been keeping up on the latest too-real news about the nation's voting machines and the people who sell, buy and operate them. Two recent postings send the outrage meter way into the red.

First is California's continuing effort to clean up the mess it's made over the last few years. It's going to be harder than anyone imagined. As we learn in this post:

Even the audit log system on current versions of Premier Election Solutions' (formerly Diebold's) electronic voting and tabulating systems --- used in some 34 states across the nation --- fail to record the wholesale deletion of ballots. Even when ballots are deleted on the same day as an election. That's the shocking admission heard today from Justin Bales, Premier's Western Region manager, at a State of California public hearing on the possible decertification of Diebold/Premier's tabulator system, GEMS v. 1.18.19.

Then there's the incredible charges in Kentucky, where officials are said to have literally changed votes after the fact:

The Kentucky officials arrested and indicted today, "including the circuit court judge, the county clerk, and election officers" of Clay County, have been charged with "chang[ing] votes at the voting machine" and showing others how to do it!

It all makes you wonder if we're ever going to have voting we can trust.

KentuckyFC writes "Many countries censor internet traffic using techniques such as blocking IP addresses, filtering traffic with certain URLs in the data packets and prefix hijacking. Others allow wiretapping of international traffic with few if any legal safeguards. There are growing fears that these practices could trigger a major international incident should international traffic routed through these countries fall victim, whether deliberately or by accident (witness the prefix hijacking of YouTube in Pakistan last year). So how to avoid these places? A group of computer scientists investigating this problem say it turns out to be surprisingly difficult to determine which countries traffic might pass through. But their initial assessment indicates that the countries with the most pervasive censorship policies — China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia — pose a minimal threat because so little international traffic passes their way. The researchers instead point the finger at western countries that have active censorship policies and carry large amounts of international traffic. They highlight the roles of the two biggest carriers: Great Britain, which actively censors internet traffic, and the US, which allows warrantless wiretapping of international traffic (abstract)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Spotted in the MAKE Flickr pool, a nifty laser "sundial," controlled by an ATtiny24 MCU and a servo:

An Atmel ATtiny24 microcontroller drives an R/C servo which in turn rotates a line LASER taken from a LASER level.

The microcontroller runs a software real time clock and turns the servo and the line LASER to mimic the shadow cast from the style of a sundial as the time goes.

XXI century sundial - Now for Arduino also!

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alphadogg writes "Business incentives are completely lacking today for upgrading to IPv6, the next generation Internet protocol, according to a survey of network operators conducted by the Internet Society (ISOC). In a new report, ISOC says that ISPs, enterprises and network equipment vendors report that there are 'no concrete business drivers for IPv6.' However, survey respondents said customer demand for IPv6 is on the rise and that they are planning or deploying IPv6 because they feel it is the next major development in the evolution of the Internet."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MAKE Flickr pool member Whymcycles cross posted the above image to The DIY Bride pool.

As it turns out, there are loads of great things that the clever maker can do to spice up that most special of days. You and your family can create some wonderful materials for your wedding, from hand-made invitations, personally-crafted wedding programs, and other paper goods. Food and other tasty treats are included along with DIY wedding favors.

If you are looking to support makers and crafters, you may want to consider seeking out real people to create the physical components of your wedding.

Have you had a DIY wedding? What did you make? How would you make your wedding day more creative? What other groups do you follow on Flickr? Join the conversation in the comments, and contribute your photos and video to the MAKE Flickr pool.

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krebsatwpost writes "TrafficConverter.biz, one of the more notorious pay-per-install affiliate programs, was dismantled this week after media attention caused Visa and Mastercard to shut down the group's payment operations. The action comes just a few days after a report by The Washington Post that showed some affiliates were making more than $100,000 USD a week installing rogue anti-virus software. The credit card industry may have been spurred by the fact that the first version of the Conficker worm told infected systems to download a file from TrafficConverter, although the story posits that this could have been an attempted Joe Job rather than a blatant attempt to drum up more installs."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes "Speaking at a conference in NYC, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer did his best to refan the flames of the Mac vs. PC rivalry: 'Now I think the tide has really turned back the other direction [against Apple],' Ballmer said. 'The economy is helpful. Paying an extra $500 for a computer in this environment — same piece of hardware — paying $500 more to get a logo on it? I think that's a more challenging proposition for the average person than it used to be.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I put one sticker on each netbook, to give it some character, and to distinguish it from the others.

The first, a white Eee 901, had a sticker from the Democratic Convention in Denver.

The second, a black 1000H, which I got just before the November election, got the "I Voted" sticker I got when I voted.

I just found the sticker for the third, when cleaning out a closet, looking through an old knapsack I carried with me at Berkman, scanned below:



"cheesecake"

aremstar writes "I'm a final-year Computer Science student from the UK. During my studies, we covered 3 programming languages: C, C++ and Java. The issue is that we didn't cover any of these languages in sufficient depth for me to claim that I have commercial-ready experience. It's one thing being able to write simple programs for class assignments, but those are quite different from writing something as complex as the Linux kernel or a multi-threaded banking app. I'm thinking of spending a few weeks/months studying in order to specialize in one of those languages. Fortran also entered my consideration, as it is great for numerical computing and used by many financial institutions, banks, etc. In terms of skill requirements in job ads, my (brief) experience suggests that most programming jobs require C++, with Java a close second. C — unfortunately — doesn't appear as much. My question is: if you were in my shoes, which language would win your time investment? My heart suggests C, with a little bit of Fortran to complement it, but I'm a bit worried that there might not be enough demand in the job market."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tomorrow Jay Rosen and I are going to do our third Sunday podcast. These notes are for Jay in prep for the talk. In the spirit of being open and transparent.

Theme: I think Twitter is becoming the News System of the World and that scares the bejesus out of me. Here's why...

1. It's run by the tech industry, and the tech industry is very young and not very good about criticism.

To illustrate.. A comment in a thread on FriendFeed, and unfortunately there's no way to point to a comment in context, so I'll reproduce it here.

"On the other hand, I'm kind of glad that he put this out there in the open. I imagine it's the kind of things people at Google and Microsoft write about me when I criticize their products, except they don't have the guts to put them out there where we can see them. Truth is, the big companies, and Mozilla thinks it's one of them, do have this attitude about their users. This is why the tech industry can't be trusted to run the news networks, which is where it looks like it's going. Jay Rosen take note."

2. It's just a company, single point of failure, no route-around possible. At the same time, Twitter is having technical problems this morning. So even if they weren't just another tech company being fed constant reinforcment for the idea that the world revolves around them, it would still be unwise for the Future News System of the World to centralize on one company's set of servers. A company whose motives we know nothing about.

An aside to Fred and Bijan, this is why people need to know the business model. What are we investing in? There is a public element to what Twitter is, I'd argue the public element is much bigger than the interests of one small tech company.

Why is all this an issue for a professor of journalism? Because we're going to wake up one day, probably very soon, and realize that this is the new News System of the World, it's no longer in the future, and it's going to be owned by one company -- and that is going to suck.

The Narrative Fallacy writes "John Markoff has a story at the NY Times speculating about what will happen on April 1 when the Conficker worm is scheduled to activate. Already on an estimated 12 million machines, conjectures about Conficker's purpose ranges from the benign — an April Fool's Day prank — to far darker notions. Some say the program will be used in the 'rent-a-computer-crook' business, something that has been tried previously by the computer underground. 'The most intriguing clue about the purpose of Conficker lies in the intricate design of the peer-to-peer logic of the latest version of the program, which security researchers are still trying to completely decode,' writes Markoff. According to a paper by researchers at SRI International, in the Conficker C version of the program, infected computers can act both as clients and servers and share files in both directions. With these capabilities, Conficker's authors could be planning to create a scheme like Freenet, the peer-to-peer system that was intended to make Internet censorship of documents impossible. On a darker note, Stefan Savage, a computer scientist at the University of California at San Diego, has suggested the possibility of a 'Dark Google.' 'What if Conficker is intended to give the computer underworld the ability to search for data on all the infected computers around the globe and then sell the answers,' writes Markoff. 'That would be a dragnet — and a genuine horror story.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Got an extra router in your parts pile? How about an wifi enabled robotic car?

Wifi Robot: A remote control car that can be driven over the internet or with a laptop wirelessly from up to 500m away. It has a live-feed network camera so that it can be driven without line of sight and a horn so that you can honk at people.

Much to love here, parts libraries, pros and cons about microprocessor chips, oodles of photos, loads of text describing the process and downloadable libaries of files.

via Hack n Mod

What do you think? Let us know in the comments and contribute your photos and video to the MAKE Flickr pool.

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bugnuts writes "Blizzard has announced a policy change regarding add-ons for the popular game World of Warcraft which asserts requirements on UI programmers, such as disallowing charging for the program, obfuscation, or soliciting donations. Add-ons are voluntarily-installed UI programs that add functionality to the game, programmed in Lua, which can do various tasks that hook into the WoW engine. The new policy has some obvious requirements, such as not loading the servers or spamming users, and it looks like an attempt to make things more accessible and free for the end user. But unlike FOSS, it adds other requirements that assert control over these independently coded programs, such as distribution and fees. Blizzard can already control the ultimate functionality of add-ons by changing the hooks into the WoW engine. They have exercised this ability in the past, e.g. to disable add-ons that automate movement and facilitate 'one-button' combat. Should they be able to make demands on independent programmers' copyrighted works, such as forbidding download fees or advertising, when those programmers are not under contract to code for Blizzard? Is this like Microsoft asserting control over what programmers may code for Windows?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nancy Atkinson writes "Why is the James Webb Space Telescope (scheduled to launch in 2013) taking so long to build? Hasn't it had a huge cost over-run and several delays? Nobel Prize winner John Mather is the Project Scientist for JWST, and he addresses these questions and more in an in-depth interview, one of the few he's given about this next-generation telescope and successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. Quoting: 'The hardest thing to build was the mirror, because we needed something that is way bigger than Hubble. But you can't possibly lift something that big or fit it into a rocket, so you need something that is lighter weight but nonetheless larger, so it has to have the ability to fold up. The mirror is made of light-weight beryllium, and has 18 hexagonal segments. The telescope folds up like a butterfly in its chrysalis and will have to completely undo it self. It's a rather elaborate process that will take many hours. The telescope is huge, at 6.5 meters (21 feet), so it's pretty impressive.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Bad Astronomer writes "In Texas, a state legislator wants the ironically-named Institute for Creation Research to be able to grant a Masters degree in science. In fact, the bill submitted to the Texas congress would make it legal for any private group calling themselves educational to be able to grant advanced degrees in science. So, now's your chance: that lack of a PhD in Astrology and Alchemy won't hold you back any longer." The Institute for Creation Research made a similar request to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board last year, but were shot down.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes "After Gov. Tim Kaine intervened on his behalf, Vivek Kundra was quietly reinstated to his Federal CIO post on Tuesday after a brief leave following an FBI raid on Kundra's former DC office (Kundra was not implicated). Now, the Washington Post reports that the City of DC plans to fire 23 Technology Office contractors and place 4 employees on leave in the aftermath of the arrests of a Security manager and contractor on bribery charges last week. Another government employee has since been arrested for his role in the scam, and the mayor has promised that the tech office will undergo a 'full and formal review.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Liz writes in with information about an innovative new project to convert surplus shipping containers into medical clinics for people in the developing world. As it turns out, shipping containers are a pretty useful even if they aren't shipping stuff around.

A shipping container, once retrofitted for use as a health clinic, is a durable, standardized, adaptable, secure structure with significant potential for replication and consistency in care. The interior of an industrial shipping container can be renovated to allow space for a small consultation room, a small laboratory, an office for staff, and storage and inventory space. Modified for ventilation, light, and utility connections, a container clinic provides a personalized, local-level venue for community members to seek treatment services or preventive health education.

In many places, shipping containers are used as stores, cellular based phone access points and more. Once they have delivered their goodies, sometimes they can have a long and useful life by staying in place.

The Container Clinic can be organized as a stand-alone structure, or to complement and improve services and capacity adjacent to an existing structure - health facility, community center, school, or church. The container clinic functions as a gathering place for community members providing robust health education programming to address a multiplicity of community health concerns including prevention of disease transmission, sexual health, gender relations, women's health, antenatal care and eldercare.

By providing a shelter for the patients, medical staff and equipment Containers 2 Clincs hopes to make a dent in the pressing needs of those less fortunate. Their Facebook group has some more information and community around the project.

What is the most amazing thing you have seen done with a shipping container? Join us in the comments and add your photos and video to the MAKE Flickr pool.

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Make: television Season One has come and gone. But in case you missed it, we'll be rolling out the ten episodes of our premiere season again.

Episode Two, take two, coming at you:

Maker Cris Benton takes spectacular aerial photographs by rigging remote-controlled cameras to high flying kites. In the Maker Workshop John Park builds a Burrito Blaster, which can propel a burrito 50 yards, and Mister Jalopy shows off his giant iPod. The Maker Channel features vegetable flutes, cool remote control robots, printer that makes designs on a café latte, and a stealthy technique to park anywhere for free!

Get the m4v of Episode Two, or subscribe in iTunes. Watch the individual segments of Episode Two and find instructions for the Burrito Blaster after the jump.

All episodes, individual segments, and PDF instructions of our Maker Workshop projects from Make: television Season One can always be found at our Episode Guide. You can also watch Make: television videos on YouTube, Blip, Vimeo, or download our torrents at LegalTorrents.

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The folks over at Stamen Design released another slick visualization tool earlier this month, this one for showing video posts on Flickr:

It's a browser for the videos that people have recently started uploading to the site. They're arranged chronologically, and drawn from videos that people have posted to the flickrclock group on flickr.

The pool is quickly filling up with the usual Flickr brilliance: shadows, windmills, kangaroos, an almost casual "look at all this great stuff we have" that this community excels at providing. It will eventually autoplay, so you can sit back and let the user-generated goodness just wash on over you; sort of like Neave Television without all the wierd cat stuff.

If you want to add a video to the clock, just tag it with the hour of day it was recorded and post it to the Flickr Clock group. The format for the machine tag is time:hour=11PM (replace 11PM with the desired time).

Flickr Clock
Flickr Clock Info at Stamen Design

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London cops have been given the power to "disperse" anyone under 16, gathered in groups of two or more, from almost all of central London, after 9PM. The police don't have to see the kids doing anything wrong, they only have to believe "the presence or behaviour of a group of two or more persons in any public place in the relevant locality has resulted, or is likely to result, in any members of the public being intimidated, harassed, alarmed or distressed."

If you’re observant, in central London, you may have seen this notice casually cable-tied to a lamppost. From afar, it looks like a council planning application, or parking bay suspension. It’s actually notifying you that you’re now subject to an anti-social behaviour order, and the Police (and the not-really-Police Community Support Officers) have special powers to remove you from this area if they feel like it. These dispersal areas cover large swathes of London, and other cities in England. There are now over 1000 such areas.

It’s ambiguously worded, but it institutes law that in other words may not seem so palatable. There’s a curfew for unsupervised under-16s, from 9pm to 6am. Any group of 2 or more people can be broken up and/or that the member of the group have to leave the designated area (if they do not live there). Crucially, police do not have to see actual anti-social behaviour, but a constable in uniform has reasonable grounds for believing that the presence or behaviour of a group of two or more persons in any public place in the relevant locality has resulted, or is likely to result, in any members of the public being intimidated, harassed, alarmed or distressed...

the kids are alright (via Wonderland)

Al writes "Scientists from the University of Texas at Dallas have created nanotube-based artificial muscles that are light as air and work even under extreme temperatures. The 'muscles' expand width-wise by about 200 percent when a voltage is applied, but are stronger than steel lengthwise. The nanotubes within the fiber naturally stick together. Applying a voltage makes them obtain a charge and repel one another. The researchers created them by stretching bundles of entangled carbon nanotubes into long threads. Several cool videos show the strange stuff in action. Some experts, including one from NASA, believe that the nanotube muscles' ability to withstand extreme heat and cold could make them suitable shape-shifting materials for future space missions."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Many Noise Toys were born at last night's Handmade Music event. Kit creators Loud Objects were on hand assisting with assembly and soldering basics for those new to the sport. Bret Truchan, creator of GlitchDS (and its forthcoming desktop iteration), demonstrated his cellular automata based software and Eric Beug explained the inner workings of his Wireless Sound Objects. These free events at 3rd Ward are an excellent way to meet like-minded sound-makers or even just get a taste of the scene if you're curious. These are happening on the third Thursday of every month so stay tuned for the next one on 4/16/09.

Handmade Music 3-19-09 on Flickr

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Have you seen our bundles available exclusively in the Maker Shed. This one is for any of our online readers that haven't subscribed to the print edition of MAKE. For a limited time we are offering a "Welcome to MAKE bundle" at an amazing discount.

The Welcome to MAKE bundle includes:

• (1) Year subscription to MAKE Magazine $34.95 value
  
• (1) The Best of MAKE $34.99 value
  
• (1) Maker's Notebook $19.99 value

All for the discounted price of $48. That's an amazing 46% off the price if you purchased these items individually. Take advantage of this amazing deal before it's too late.

More about the Welcome to MAKE bundle in the Maker Shed

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tlhIngan writes "Since October 1, 2008, Sony has been billing game publishers for DLC bandwidth usage. The game companies are forced to pay 16 cents per gigabyte downloaded by users (the 'Playstation Network Fee') regardless of whether the content is free or paid. The good news is that free content will only be billed during the initial 60 days it's up, but paid content will require fees forever. (No word on whether free content will mysteriously disappear after 60 days, though.) Given that some popular game demos run over a gigabyte by themselves, it could easily start costing publishers serious money (16 cents each for a few million downloads adds up). So far, it hasn't cut down the content available (or few publishers have started pulling content), but it's too soon to tell. It should be noted that Microsoft isn't charging publishers any money for content on Xbox Live, though some may argue that the 'gold premium content' is the same thing." Perhaps this is one of the reasons various publishers are pressuring Sony for a PS3 price cut.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This gentleman was arrested on Monday for attempting to strangle his wife. Bradley Gellert, of Apollo Beach, Florida, was indeed wearing the "I [heart] My Marriage" t-shirt at the time of the arrest. From WTSP:

The arrest report says that the couple were arguing over drugs, and during the fight at their home, Gellert screamed in his wife's face, threw things, grabbed her neck and strangled her, and knocked her to the ground.

Man wearing an "I Heart My Marriage" t-shirt arrested for choking wife (Thanks, Tara McGinley!)

narramissic writes "A report released Friday by a group of cyber-security experts from greylogic finds it is very likely that the Foreign Military Intelligence agency (the GRU) and Federal Security Service (the FSB) directed cyber attacks on Georgian government servers in July and August of 2008. 'Following a complex web of connections, the report claims that an Internet service provider connected with the Stopgeorgia.ru web site, which coordinated the Georgian attacks, is located next door to a Russian Ministry of Defense Research Institute called the Center for Research of Military Strength of Foreign Countries, and a few doors down from GRU headquarters.' But Paul Ferguson, a researcher with Trend Micro who has reviewed the report, says it's a 'bit of a stretch' to conclude that the Georgia attacks were state-sponsored. 'You can connect dots to infer things, but inferring things does not make them so,' he said. One other interesting allegation in the report is that a member of the Whackerz Pakistan hacking group, which claimed responsibility for defacing the Indian Eastern Railway Web site on Dec. 24, 2008, is employed by a North American wireless communications company and presents an 'insider threat' for his employer."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Contrail is a device that applies chalk to the rear tire of your bike, leaving a trail behind you. It leaves trails for motorists and other cyclists to see, enabling bikers to "reclaim this crucial shared space." I'm not sure where you can get one or if it's even been physically realized, but I like the idea. It's like a cross between the prototype for the projected bike lane symbol and Bikes Against Bush, which sprayed chalk according to text messages. Via Cool Hunting.

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We've noticed quite a trend around here when it comes to the various business model discussions we tend to have: people who believe in the bad business models we discuss almost always start screaming about how we have no right to comment because we haven't embraced that bad business model. Thus, when we talk about music, we're told we can't comment because we've never sold music. When we talk about patents, we're told we can't comment because we've never received a patent. When we talk about the journalism business, we're told we can't comment because we've never been journalists. Of course, that's quite silly. It's like saying that no one who isn't an economist can comment on business models, because only economists understand business models. And, it makes even less sense when you realize that what people are effectively saying is "you can't tell us how stupid our plan is unless you decided to make use of the same stupid plan."

But now we're even seeing the flipside, as well. Randy Siegel is saying that Jeff Jarvis shouldn't be trusted on talking about the future of media because the worse newspapers do, the better Jarvis does -- both as someone the media goes to, and in getting consulting gigs that help companies trying to avoid the fate of newspapers. Of course, there's something tautological about the whole thing. Basically, Jarvis is being slammed for being right. Because he's right, more people go to him for info -- and to Siegel, that means he can no longer be trusted? Wow.

First people are told they can't comment on something if they're not in the business -- and now they're being to they can't comment on something if they are in the business -- and successfully avoiding the giant ice berg floating up towards them. I don't see how that makes any sense at all. Apparently, the only people allowed to comment on how to avoid the ice berg are those who are screaming their heads off about the ice berg coming towards them, but are unwilling to do a damn thing about it. It seems like those people almost deserve to hit the ice berg.

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via miters

This looks like fun. Nice project. University of Louisiana News has a decent interview with Dr. Terrence Chambers, and student Don Tamosaitis. The design draws on the work of Theo Jansen.

The crawler travels about 2-3 miles/hour. There were five of us working on it, there was a lot of 3D modeling of all the parts in SolidWorks, a CAD package. We tested our assembly in SolidWorks also. It's a really useful software tool, because you can make the parts and assemble them, and then check for interference, do some finite element analysis to see if it can take the stress.

It is nearing the end of the Spring semester for Northern hemisphere universities. What great projects have you cooked up with your classmates? Join the conversation in the comments and post up your photos and video to the MAKE Flickr pool.

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We've written a few times about Jill Sobule's business model experiment last year, where she was able to get fans to pre-finance her album, by offering tiered levels of support that all provided something extra (usually something scarce) that created a real reason to buy. Back at MidemNet, Sobule talked about the success of the experiment, but now, as that album is getting close to actually being released, more details are coming out about how the experiment worked (via Nancy Baym). It covers some of the familiar territory, but one key interesting point: she raised over $75,000 in less than two months and used it to produce an album just as if she were with a record label. That is, she didn't want to cut corners. So she hired famed producer Don Was and a bunch of top notch studio musicians.

I bring this up because one of the critiques that some readers have had whenever we talk about these business models is that under the business models we discuss, the "quality" of the music would surely decline. These commenters insist that such a model would focus on people recording crappy songs in their living rooms, rather than doing a full professional setup. While that may be true of some, it would seem that this is pretty clear evidence that it certainly doesn't need to be the case:

"I wanted to show the labels that I could do what they're supposed to be doing at a fraction of the cost, and do it better. I spent a couple of weeks in a studio in Los Angeles where Joni Mitchell and the Carpenters and Poison --- let's not forget Poison -- recorded. I wanted to make an album that could've come from a big-label artist, and at the same time was totally grassroots."

She does note, of course, that the process of "connecting with fans" is time consuming, and admits that there are times when her writing suffers because she's spending so much time online, communicating with fans. Indeed, that is an issue, and I think that artists who are adopting these models are definitely going to have spend some time finding the right balance -- or getting to a point where they can work with someone (the role that a good label should be playing) to help manage the "marketing" side of things. Still, can we kill off the myth that these new models mean that quality of new recordings suffers?

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DNA evidence from a multimillion-euro jewelry heist in Berlin leads to twins with a criminal record, but since the evidence could point to either one, German law says that neither can be convicted:

German law stipulates that each criminal must be individually proven guilty. The problem in the case of the O. brothers is that their twin DNA is so similar that neither can be exclusively linked to the evidence using current methods of DNA analysis. So even though both have criminal records and may have committed the heist together, Hassan and Abbas O. have been set free.

Both brothers have stolidly refused to comment ever since their arrests on February 11. Since no further evidence has become available, police cannot detain them.

(via Kottke)

Corie sez, "The Speculative Literature Foundation is offering a grant of $750 to any writer of speculative literature of 50 years or older at the time of application who is just beginning to work professionally in the field. There are no restrictions on the use of the grant money."

SLF Older Writers Grant (Thanks, Corie!)

Ian Lamont writes "As the Tiffany vs. eBay lawsuit winds its way through a federal appeals court, eBay has trotted out some numbers that show how many sellers attempt to sell fake goods on the auction site. Millions of auctions were delisted last year, and tens of thousands of accounts were suspended after reports were made to eBay's Verified Rights Owner program, which lets trademark owners notify eBay of fake goods being sold on the site. eBay says 100% of reported listings were removed from the site last year, most within 12 hours, and the company uses sellers' background information to make sure that they don't create new accounts to sell delisted items. Tiffany brought the suit against eBay in 2004, alleging that eBay was turning a blind eye to counterfeit luxury goods and demanding that eBay police its listings for bogus goods. Tiffany lost the case last July and will shortly present its arguments to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York. A similar case in France cost eBay $61 million."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anne sez, "I quickly got bored with the hi-res Tetris game profiled by BB here. So I left it running in a window and forgot about it, until the next morning, when the screen was only filled by a fraction. I've managed to leave it going for almost 2 weeks now, and my friend Dave made a tribute to it. He will continue to post images (and accompanying ungrammatical text in always-apropos Comic Sans) as the screen slowly fills."

Tetris HD (Thanks, Anne!)

Michael_S points us to the news that the Vancouver Olympics -- no stranger to massive abuse of intellectual property law -- is now using copyright law to prevent ticket resales. Now, lots of places around the world have anti-scalping laws that forbid reselling of event tickets (or reselling them above a certain price). Vancouver, however, does not have any such law. No problem for the Olympics folks... they're using the special copyright they were granted on a whole host of common terms, including "Vancouver 2010" to sue resellers offering the tickets. Obviously, that's got nothing to do with the purpose of copyright law, but when you grant silly monopolies, don't be surprised when they're abused.

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Richard sez,

For some time now, a self-proclaimed "freelance anti-terror investigator" named Glen Jenvey has been feeding stories to the media about on-line Islamic extremism, particularly in British tabloids (but also in the famous "Obsession" DVD). However, a blogger, Tim Ireland, has uncovered overwhelming evidence that Jenvey made bogus postings to Muslim discussion sites himself to create panics. Jenvey also boasts of having influenced the James Ujaama trial by releasing videos at strategic moments.

One high-profile British MP who has used his talking-points is currently in the process of repudiating him, and a number of journalists and others are possibly compromised by having relied (lazily) on his material. The link to my blog provides what I hope is a clear short introduction to the story, which highlights a lot about what's wrong with the "old" media. Regards.

Obsession Pundit Glen Jenvey in Meltdown (Thanks, Richard!)

DeviantArt's Diablo2003 whipped up these Vaderbucks for Star Wars Fan Days 2007, where he was an artist guest. Thomas, who suggested the link, says he thinks they're cooler-looking than greenbacks and I agree -- best note since the hyperinflationary 100 billion Dinar note with Tesla on it.

Starbuck by diablo2003 (Thanks, Thomas!)

The US mobile industry is gearing up for its big yearly trade show in Las Vegas in a few weeks, and Al Gore will be delivering one of the keynote addresses. Nothing too unusual there -- except that Gore wanted the press banned from attending his speech, as he's tried to do before. Call us crazy, but usually when you're speaking to advance a cause (as we thought Gore was doing with his environmental activism), press coverage is a good thing. Unless, of course, perhaps your attempts to ban press coverage are really just attempts to try and protect the big speaking fees you collect. Perhaps, though, all the attention in the mobile-industry trade press has caused an about-face. The page on the CTIA web site about keynote addresses used to contain the admonition that "VP Gore's keynote address is closed to the press", as the Google Cache version shows. But that line's been dropped from the currently live version. Maybe Gore and his people figuring out that an audience at a cell-phone trade show will probably be full of people with, you know, cell phones, who will send out Twitter messages and moblog posts and all kinds of other info from the speech? Even if the press is banned, the press will be there, and details of his speech will get out. Somehow it seems the more likely reason is the CTIA and Gore just don't want to look like censors.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Photo from Animated Knots

One of the challenges with learning knots is that it's often difficult to interpret written directions and sometimes it's tough to follow photos. Animated Knots by Grog has a neat collection of knot-tying animations. There are loads of variations, and the interface allows you to invert, flip, and rotate some of the animations to suit your needs. There are sections for various uses of knots. The rope care section could save you some headaches, if not your life.

You might also want to check out these offerings from Make: Online and CRAFT:

• Val ties the canoe


• The forgotten Zeppelin knot


• HOW TO - Star Knot Tutorial and this from


• CRAFT Volume 3, 101: Macramé

How has a knot saved you? How has a knot saved you money? Have you used your superhuman ropesmanship to impress or deter others? If you could suggest three or four knots that every maker should know, what would they be? Have you made animations like the ones on Animated Knots by Grog? What would you use for a setup to shoot animations of sequences? Add your thoughts in the comments and contribute your photos and video to the MAKE Flickr pool.

Check out MAKE, Volume 17: The Lost Knowledge issue!

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For years, people in the software industry have noticed that patents have become the nuclear stockpiling of the tech industry. Lots of companies feel the need to stock up on as many patents as possible, not for any good reason -- but to have something to scare people off from suing, knowing that they'll get sued right back. This is especially true today, since almost no tech product can be seen as not violating a whole bevy of patents from others. But, of course, when you're dealing with a nuclear stockpiling for deterrence purposes, eventually, nuclear war breaks out. That seems to be happening with the patent lawsuit between Microsoft and TomTom. While there's been speculation that TomTom really can't settle, apparently it can launch the nuclear war. It's now countersued Microsoft, claiming that the company violates a bunch of its patents. And, once again, the only folks who win are the patent attorneys.

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Dan Gillmor is a BoingBoing guest blogger.

Former VP Al Gore is speaking at the CTIA Wireless show on April 3. But the giant trade show says:

Special Notice: Photography, recording, webcasting and any other reproduction of Vice President Al Gore's speaking appearance is strictly prohibited.

The press, whatever that is these days, has been barred from coverage, too, according to a letter on the Romenesko media blog: No one with a press pass will be allowed in.

This calls for a) lots and lots of blogging of the event by attendees who are not registered as press; and b) "official" press interviews of attendees and publication of those interviews. (I might also note, just for the sake of noting it, that you don't have to be obvious about waving around a smart phone with a video camera; audio and video recording gear has gotten really small and cheap.)

It would be great if the good folks attending this trade show could help make clear to Al Gore and others in similar positions that a speech to 4,000 people is not off the record no matter how much they may wish it to be so, not anymore.

My own suspicion about Gore's reasons: He probably imagines he's saving the material for a new book or movie. Otherwise the only possible explanation is that he's giving the dullest speech in history and knows that already.