Two of the biggest tech flameouts of the late 1900s and early 2000s were satellite phone providers Iridium and Globalstar. Both had what sounded like a great idea: mobile phones that would work anywhere on earth. But the business model was a little more difficult: handsets were bulky, service was really expensive, and most of all, the costs of setting up and running a business based on satellites are, well, astronomical. Somewhat surprisingly, Iridium is still around, but that's really only because it went bankrupt and the current owners were able to pick up the company and its billions in infrastructure for $25 million. Globalstar is still kicking, too, and each company has about 300,000 subscribers, which isn't many considering the cost of the networks.

But a couple of companies aren't letting a history of pain in the satellite business get in their way, and are looking to launch satellite phone networks of their own. They're focusing on covering just the US or North America, rather than the entire world, and one of the networks will use only a single satellite, so the costs will be lower than previous attempts. However, many of the drawbacks still remain: the phones, though smaller than previous satellite phones, still need line of sight to a satellite, meaning they won't work indoors or if environmental elements are in the way. Handsets are still expensive: one company says its first device will cost about $700, calling into question its CEO's claim that people will want to replace their BlackBerry with one. And they say service will be under $1 a minute, which is cheaper than Iridium, but still much more than typical cell service. They'll offer some minor advantages over existing satphones, which might tempt some users to switch -- but these companies are all fighting over market that's very small relative to their infrastructure costs. While most things in the tech world tend to come down in price over time, satellites remain really expensive, and that's a difficult obstacle for companies to overcome.

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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An anonymous reader writes "The Guardian reports that Microsoft and Yahoo are talking about a search engine partnership as they desperately try to come up with something, anything, to take on Google. 'Although there is no suggestion that Microsoft's failed bid will be resurrected, the two companies are believed to be discussing ways they can link up to combat the growing power of their chief rival, Google. Quoting sources close to the discussions, the authoritative Dow Jones All Things Digital blog said that "the talks between the pair are preliminary and wide-ranging."'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

N!NJA writes with the mention of a recent alternative energies rally where the Tesla Roadster managed to cover 241 miles on a single charge, with another 38 miles of juice still left in the battery. "That would give the Roadster a theoretical maximum touring range of nearly 280 miles — 36 miles more than Tesla itself reckons the car will cover on a charge. If the numbers stand up to official scrutiny, Tesla will hold the world record for the longest distance traveled by a production electric car on a single charge. Of course, it should be pointed out that the Tesla was driven by a company staffer doubtless practiced in eking out every last mile from a charge, and that the speeds averaged on the run were hardly blistering — 90kph (56mph) on the motorways, 60kph (37mph) on trunk roads and 30kph (19) in the mountain roads. Tesla reckon the average speed for the entire journey was 45kph (28mph)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Canada-based National Post is apparently the first newspaper in North America to try adding 2D barcodes to its printed product. By doing so, its newspaper audience can whip out their mobile phones to see what kind of breaking updates have happened since the dead tree publication was stamped with ink. Readers just have to download an app to their phone (if it's not already a pre-loaded function), find the barcode on the front page of the paper, scan it with their barcode-capable phone, and voila! -- instant happiness. This is the best innovation since the CueCat! (/sarcasm)

Seriously, though, I'm not against experimenting with innovative products, but this combination doesn't make much sense to me. The newspaper audience that is tech-savvy enough to have a barcode-capable phone (and actually use it) does not seem like the appropriate target audience for a system that simply re-directs them to mobile content. Smartphone users are already reading mobile content, so this barcode system unnecessarily complicates what they're already doing. (In fact, it also drives these users away from the printed edition even more so by promoting the fact that more recent news is online.) And the newspaper readers who don't use smartphones are obviously not going to jump at the chance to figure out how to turn barcodes into newspaper articles. Clearly, if any audience is going to start scanning 2D barcodes, there must be a useful reason for doing so. Simply being the first newspaper to use barcode technology is nice, but there needs to be a compelling service behind the technology to succeed. I'm reminded of the colorful saying: "The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese."

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Over at Total Dick-Head, David Gill has word on the forthcoming comic book adaptation of Philip K. Dick's iconic novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Of course, this is the 1968 book that the film Blade Runner was based on. The first issue will have four cover versions with art by Denis Calero, Bill Sienkiewicz and Scott Keating, and Moritat. Warren Ellis is writing the first issue's back-matter, and that concerns Gill. Not me though, I'm a huge fan of Ellis's fiction and comix, and look forward to see what he comes up with in this context. "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? to Become a Comic Book Series"

UPDATE: BOOM Studios' Chip Mosher says the 24 issue series is not an adaptation of the novel but the "full text, fully illustrated." More here!

Here's day two of Jeri Ellsworth's, aka Circuit Girl, video lab journal, Short Circuit. In this one, she discusses frequency multiplication with tank circuits.

Fat Man and Circuit Girl

More:
Jeri Ellsworth and Short Circuit #1

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mb writes to mention that Germany has gone one step further in impeding access to Wikileaks. Germany's registration authority, DENIC, recently suspended Wikileaks.de without notice. "The action comes two weeks after the house of the German WikiLeaks domain sponsor, Theodor Reppe, was searched by German authorities. Police documentation shows that the March 24, 2009 raid was triggered by WikiLeaks' publication of Australia's proposed secret internet censorship list. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) told Australian journalists that they did not request the intervention of the German government."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

My Institute for the Future colleague Lyn Jeffery, of the virtual China blog 88 Bar, turned me on to Neocha.com, an incredible hub of indie Chinese art/culture/music. For example, dig the beautiful music of experimental zither player Zeng Xiaogang.

1. Yesterday was a rough day because the tr.im service had a lot of outages and that made my 40-twits app unreliable. But it's now updating consistently, so I hope the worst is over.

2. I've added a second user, the prolific linker, atul. His report is here. He's an amazing guy, if you're on Twitter and you like tech news you should follow him. He's the source for a lot of the links on TechMeme. He's also a joy to work with.

2a. I call his site AtulMeme. Which led me to call mine DaveMeme. Maybe I should call the software MemeMeme?

3. The fact that I have a second user is kind of a big deal. That means the software has been generalized, so adding the third and fourth user and so on is easier than it was to add the second.

4. I added another column -- RT -- for retweet. When you click on it, no surprise -- it directs you to the Twitter home page with status box pre-populated with a retweet. Easy.

Anthony Pontius is showing a new collection of his lovely, dark, phantasmagoric paintings at Seattle's Roq La Rue Gallery. Seen here, "Hotter Than Hell" (oil on panel, 18" x 24"). The show, titled "The Casual Calamity," opens tonight at Seattle's Roq La Rue gallery. Also showing at the Roq is Nathan Ota. Both exhibitions are up until May 2 and viewable online.

Anthony Pontius preview
Nathan Ota preview

When I was in 10th grade and heading off for a fun time visiting my sister at college, my friend rolled the Dodge Omni 3 1/2 times while driving me to the bus station. My February vacation turned out to be an adventure of a different, more medical sort.

That Omni will never get the love and attention that Morris Rosenthal's cherished ride is experiencing.

I've owned the Omni for 22 years, and I'm not going to give it up without a fight. My real goal is to build an electric car one day, or at least do a conversion, but the chassis has to be reliable first:-) But I'm not a restoration guy who's going to strip it to the metal, sandblast, and basically restore it to new. All I aspire to is safe and effective. So what does the Omni need? For starters, some serious unibody repairs. Last time I had the left front wheel off I peeled away a pound or two of rusted, jagged sheet metal from one of the formed structural members.

He goes on to tell the story of repairing the Omni with pictures, text and video. It is an archive of his process with his project. Electric car conversion? Sounds like a great idea, and this might be a good candidate body style.

The most important electrical connection in your car, if there is such a thing, is the ground. The ground is the heavy cable, normally color coded black, that attaches to the negative terminal of the battery. Anytime you are doing car work that involves electrical components, you should disconnect the ground cable from the battery first. With the ground removed, there is no way an electrical circuit can be completed by accident.

In the late 70s and early 80s, American automakers slimmed their cars down to meet demand for lighter, more fuel efficient vehicles in response to the previous oil crisis. Those cars fell out of favor as the price of oil stabilized at a low level for years. In today's environmental and energy conscious times, we could see a resurgence of interest in the old econoboxes. In some parts of the US, cars can last a very long time, in other parts, they rust out pretty quickly. Not everybody appreciated these small older cars, but there were some interesting designs and projects.

This collection of pages make up a good illustration of how to do car repairs on an old vehicle. The videos are short and to the point, and of decent quality. His text tells the story well and helps the reader understand the ideas and issues at hand.

Originally, I found this project while searching for a way to get into a Dell Profile 3 to harvest the hard drive, which apparently nobody has ever written about online. What I did find, however was another of Morris' sites with some cool flow charts of computer repair. More on that at another time....

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TechCrunch has released a few more technical details, pictures, and general comments about their CrunchPad project as a recent accidental leak saw a new round of images posted to the web. It seems that the tablet has continued to grow and evolve with the help of an Intel Atom chip (as opposed to the Via chip previously used), new software from Fusion Garage, and a bottom-up Linux install. "I wanted something I couldn't buy, and found people who said it could be built for a lot less than I imagined. The goal — a very thin and light touch screen computer, sans physical keyboard, that has no hard drive and boots directly to a browser to surf the web. The operating system exists solely to handle the hardware drivers and run the browser and associated applications. That's it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A bunch of folks have sent in the latest PR attempt by some musicians in the recording industry to force Google to pay unsustainable rates to keep their music on YouTube. Pete Waterman, who apparently co-wrote the Rick Astley "Rick Roll" song Never Gonna Give You Up has come out saying that Google "exploited" him, because he earned a grand total of £11 last year, even while the video was a hit on YouTube.

There are probably more details here, because no one actually says how much Google paid overall. For example, part of the problem may simply be the deal that Waterman himself signed concerning his royalties. But, more to the point, it's not Google that's doing any exploiting at all. Here's the simple logic process to run through (which Waterman and all the folks supporting this PR stunt failed to do):

• How much attention did Waterman's song get last year thanks to YouTube?
• Fine, take away YouTube. How much attention would Waterman and his song have received last year

Yup. No one would be talking about Waterman or his song at all in the absence of YouTube and the rickrolling phenomenon. The only "exploiting" being done is now, by Waterman, because he got totally lucky in that a bunch of internet jokesters happened to pick his song (mainly for how bad it is) to use as part of an internet joke. He deserves to get paid for that? It could have just as easily been any other ridiculous pop hit in the 80s. And, if it had been, then no one would be talking or caring about Waterman at all.

Furthermore, it was never YouTube making use of the music, but it was all these people on the internet, adopting the meme. YouTube was just the platform they used for it. So, no, Waterman wasn't exploited by YouTube in the slightest, though he seems to have no trouble at all trying to exploit the fact that he got lucky and whine about it -- even though it's the only reason his name is now in the news again.

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This is not a parody of a workplace safety video. This is an actual workplace safety video. Will You Be Here Tomorrow? (Thanks, John Walsh!)

An anonymous reader writes "By harnessing the shells of living organisms in the sea, microscopic algae called diatoms, engineers have tripled the efficiency of experimental dye-sensitized solar cells. The diatoms were fed a diet of titanium dioxide, the main ingredient for thin film solar cells, instead of their usual meal which is silica (silicon dioxide). As a result, their shells became photovoltaic when coated with dyes. The result is a thin-film dye-sensitized solar cell that is three times more efficient than those without the diatoms."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here's a fascinating video demo of Dasher, a single finger interface that allows you to enter text without a keyboard. Single-finger input without a keyboard? Wait, that's my iPhone.

Keyboards are inefficient for two reasons: they do not exploit the redundancy in normal ... all » language; and they waste the fine analogue capabilities of the user's motor system (fingers and eyes, for example). I describe a system intended to rectify both these inefficiencies. Dasher is a text-entry system in which a language model plays an integral role, and it's driven by continuous gestures. Users can achieve single-finger writing speeds of 35 words per minute and hands-free writing speeds of 25 words per minute. Dasher is free software, and it works in all languages, and on many platforms. Dasher is part of Debian, and there's even a little java version for your web-browser.

Dasher

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Here's a fascinating video demo of Dasher, a single finger interface that allows you to enter text without a keyboard. Single-finger input without a keyboard? Wait, that's my iPhone.

Keyboards are inefficient for two reasons: they do not exploit the redundancy in normal ... all » language; and they waste the fine analogue capabilities of the user's motor system (fingers and eyes, for example). I describe a system intended to rectify both these inefficiencies. Dasher is a text-entry system in which a language model plays an integral role, and it's driven by continuous gestures. Users can achieve single-finger writing speeds of 35 words per minute and hands-free writing speeds of 25 words per minute. Dasher is free software, and it works in all languages, and on many platforms. Dasher is part of Debian, and there's even a little java version for your web-browser.

Dasher

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The various music collections societies always like to present themselves as being there "for the artists." When we write about ASCAP in the US or PRS in the UK, we often get angry emails from supporters of those groups (or individuals who work for them) insisting that what they do is all to support the artist, and we should go pick on the record labels or something instead. Yet, that's misleading. These organizations always seem to keep looking to expand their collections duties, often at the expense of any other business model. Take, for example, what's happening in Germany, with its collection society, GEMA (which is separately battling YouTube over music videos). You see, like so many of these collections societies, GEMA works on the principle of "guilty until proven innocent." We've seen this with ASCAP and BMI as well -- where they insist that anyone who plays live music has to prove that none of it is covered by the collections society.

In the case of GEMA, unfortunately, German courts have agreed. The burden isn't on GEMA to prove that GEMA-covered music was performed -- but on the accused to prove that no GEMA-covered music is performed. Now, Wolfgang Senges alerts us to a rather ridiculous scenario. There's a startup, Jamendo, which has received a fair amount of press coverage, for offering a place for musicians to offer up their music under a Creative Commons (or similar) license. Artists uploading their works who want to offer a commercial license option (on top of the free option) have to show that they are not covered by a collections society like GEMA. As part of the commercial offering, Jamendo offers up a license showing that the music is not covered by GEMA. This is so that any establishment using Jamendo-licensed music can "prove" that the music wasn't covered by GEMA.

But, here's the fun part. According to Senges, GEMA refuses to recognize the license. That is, if you're a business that specifically licensed all the music you use from Jamendo, when GEMA comes calling to demand a blanket royalty fee, you should be able to show GEMA the license from Jamendo, showing that the music you play is not covered by GEMA and thus GEMA has no right to collect. But, GEMA refuses to recognize the license, and insists that every performance requires the venue/artists to fill out GEMA's forms about every song, to show that it's not covered by GEMA, or the group insists it has the right to collect, thanks to a legal ruling that states:

Because of the large and comprehensive repertoire GEMA manages, at performances of national and international dance and entertainment music there is an actual assumption militating in favour of the existence of a liability fee.

Oh, and lest we forget, it appears that even if you do fill out GEMA's own forms listing out all the non-GEMA music you played, you have to pay GEMA to file the forms. So... you end up paying no matter what.

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About a month ago, Mike Arrington ran an article at TechCrunch about a deal we did at UserLand in 2002 with Adam Curry, to include his RSS feed in the set of default feeds for Radio 8.0.

Mike, who used to be my friend and my lawyer, and who believe it or not I still feel affection for, said about me: "Credibility = Shot. Permanently."

When I read that I felt like Mike was aiming an ethical bullet at my head. Luckily I was wearing my bullet-proof helmet that day.

I wanted to let the accusations settle in before responding in detail. This really was between me and the users of my product, and possibly people who read my blog. After giving it some thought, I believe we should have disclosed that Adam paid us for inclusion in the OPML file, and we didn't. I apologize for that.

I explained further in a post on FriendFeed, earlier today.

Odelia Lee writes with a full review of Dell's new Adamo slimtop over at Gizmodo. While it may have an sleek exterior there are definite gaps (both literal and figurative) in their engineering. "The Adamo is both a compliment and an insult to Dell engineering. It's possibly the most beautiful computer Dell has ever manufactured, but I'm not sure that Dell has caught up to competitors in either aesthetics or power. There have been lots of qualitative Adamo reviews out there, but we got the first of the units that will actually ship to customers, so it's time for real benchmarks. As it happens, performance is really what's at stake here."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Why did lightinthebox.com remove this photo of a prom dress and replace it with a different shot of the same model in the same dress?

Public Radio International/WNYC Radio's The Takeaway has just produced a video offering a glimpse inside of NYC Resistor. Watch as they hack a sack o' busted iPods and print out giant red grasshopper butterfly hybrids (no, really).

The Takeaway

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unr3a1 writes to tell us that Time Warner Cable has responded to the massive criticism of its new plan to cap user bandwidth with a new pricing model. Users will be given a grace period in which to assess their pricing tier. The "overages" will be noted on their bill, allowing them to change either their billing plan or their usage patterns. "On top of a 5, 10, 20, and 40-gigabyte (GB) caps, the company said this week that it would offer an additional 100GB tier for heavy users. Prices (so far) would range from $29.95 to $75.00 a month, with users charged an extra dollar for every GB more they download, although that charge is also capped at $75. An 'unlimited' bandwidth plan, therefore, tops out at $150."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As newspapers like the Rocky Mountain News shutter operations, we hear more and more stories about the supposed looming end of journalism. The latest story, from the Wall Street Journal, fortells the doom of baseball writers, one of the oldest and most powerful sportswriting press corps in the country, in an article melodramatically titled Baseball Writers Brace for the End. The Baseball Writers Association of America seems to be buckling down and preparing for the "dark clouds" that they apparently see on the horizon. However, for an organization that only recently admitted web-only reporters into its membership, it makes sense that they see the changing journalistic environment brought on by the web as something bad rather than a new opportunity. Yes, it's expensive to send reporters on the road with teams, and yes, in these tough times, some papers are cutting their sportswriting staffs. That said, just because newspapers are cutting sportswriters, that does not mean that sportswriting itself will die. Like investigative journalism, sportswriting can certainly adapt to an online environment.

After all, it's not the paper that makes the content better, it's the content itself. Case in point, Yankee beat reporter Pete Abraham's blog is religiously read by hordes of Yankee fans. If, for some reason, The Journal News were to shut down, surely Pete would be able to find an audience to support him on his own. Granted, the Yankees would have to have the foresight to continue to give him press credentials. That said, large market teams like the Yankees and Red Sox are not likely to be the first victims to lose their writers. However, even in small markets, the MLB franchises themselves benefit immensely from well-written articles about their organizations. Mark Cuban pointed out last year that it is in the best interest of sports teams to keep the local coverage of their teams alive, since without it, their fans lose a vital connection to their teams. Cuban goes so far as to suggest that the teams form a "beatwriter co-operative" to fund coverage of their teams. Journalism purists may scoff at such a notion, fearing that funded reporters become merely corporate shills. But, in this era of growing transparency, anyone with a computer can easily point out if an emperor wears no clothes, so any reporter, whether on the MLB payroll or not, would think twice before squandering their hard-earned reputation on a questionable story.

That said, the costs of covering a baseball team should be plummeting. Baseball bloggers do a fine job of covering games by watching them on TV. Want an inside perspective on the game? More and more players are getting on twitter. Heck, sabermetric analysis of baseball games, popularized by Moneyball, does not even require that you ever go to a game (although, you're missing a lot if you don't). So, yes, even you can be a baseball writer, and perhaps that is what the BBWAA is really scared of.

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Designer Sebastian Errazuriz created this dress out of 120 zippers. I dig the idea of reconfigurable clothing that isn't ugly. Zipper Dress (Britannica.com, thanks Alex Pang!)

waderoush writes "At the CHI 2009 conference, which wrapped up yesterday in Boston, Microsoft researchers showed off two radical prototypes that push the boundaries of user interfaces. One was a 'pseudo-transparent' iPhone-like device called nanoTouch, which has a trackpad on the back rather than a traditional touch screen and gives visual feedback in the form of a simulated image of the user's finger (the effect is like looking straight through the device). The other was a folding dual-screen device called Codex that can switch automatically between landscape, portrait, collaborative, or competitive modes depending on its 'posture' or orientation. If Microsoft doesn't build such devices itself, 'somebody else will, so it's really important to understand what the issues are,' said researcher Ken Hinckley."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the TED blog (Via Jake von Slatt via speigl.org via verylowsodium):

Instructions:
1. Stare at the image for 10 seconds.
2. Look at something -- your hand, a book, your friend
3. Enjoy!

Download the MP4 here. Flash video above, click "fullscreen" icon inside player to view large. YouTube channel here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video.

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Boing Boing Video wishes you a Happy Friday. And surely there can be no better way to celebrate the end of a work week than to put on a Katamari Damacy head, crank up a favorite song ("Bodysnatchers" by Radiohead), and rock out in front of a webcam. This is what happened with our esteemed interview guests Peter Kirn of Create Digital Music and Matt Ganucheau of Expression College, who participated in Boing Boing/offworld's marathon live coverage of the 2009 Game Developers Conference. The interview was over, the chat room was buzzing, the Katamari costumes were just sitting there. I asked our chat room participants what we should force our guests to dance to, and all agreed to Radiohead. You'll hear me shouting out commands from the chat room during this video, and eventually, at the end, obeying a final command myself: to join in.

This moment is also memorialized by paperdummy, whom we thank for the kind loan of the Katamari heads.

Previously:

* Music in Video Games, pt. 2, with Peter Kirn and Matt Ganucheau
* Music in Video Games, a conversation with Peter Kirn and Matt Ganucheau
* Social Games, and The Quest for Virtual Poo.
* Doctor Popular's Awesome Yo-Yo Stylings
* Hideo Kojima on Metal Gear Solid Touch (games)
* Jane McGonigal on Emotion, Gaming, and Dance.
* Jane McGonigal - Games Can Change the World.
* Jane McGonigal's Game Developers' Conference talk on Making Your Own Reality
* BBV @ GDC live stream archives, at Ustream.tv
* Boing Boing Video and Offworld.com Live at GDC09: offworld.com archive
* Boing Boing Video and Offworld.com Live at GDC09: boingboing.net archive

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[ Special thanks to Joel Johnson for editorial help on this episode! BBV Live @GDC09 credits and thanks: Production Team -- Jolon Bankey, Derek Bledsoe, Daniela Calderon, Eddie Codel, Xeni Jardin, Allison Kingsley, Matty Kirsch, Alice Taylor, Wesly Varghese. Special thanks to Wayneco Heavy Industries (accommodation and studio facilities), Virgin America Airlines (air travel), Celsius (thermogenic energy beverage), Ustream.tv (streaming video host). Moral support, production assistance, additional talent, and good vibes provided by: Domini Anne, Scott Beale, T.Bias, Jeremy Bornstein, Brandon Boyer, Chris The Van Guy, Peter S. Conrad, Marque Cornblatt, Wayne, Bre, and the entire de Geere family, Marcy DeLuce, Cory Doctorow, Joel Johnson, Kourosh Karimkhany, Jim Louderback and the Revision 3 team, Karen Marcelo, Rocky Mullin, Alicia Pollak, Jackie Mogol, Taylor Peck, David Pescovitz, Micah Schaffer, and Teal. ]

Black Rain from Semiconductor on Vimeo.

Beautiful film from Semiconductor.

Here we see the HI (Heliospheric Imager) visual data as it tracks interplanetary space for solar wind and CME's (coronal mass ejections) heading towards Earth. Data courtesy of courtesy of the Heliospheric Imager on the NASA STEREO mission.

Working with STEREO scientists, Semiconductor collected all the HI image data to date, revealing the journey of the satellites from their initial orientation, to their current tracing of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Solar wind, CME's, passing planets and comets orbiting the sun can be seen as background stars and the milky way pass by.

As in Semiconductors previous work 'Brilliant Noise' which looked into the sun, they work with raw scientific satellite data which has not yet been cleaned and processed for public consumption. By embracing the artifacts, calibration and phenomena of the capturing process we are reminded of the presence of the human observer who endeavors to extend our perceptions and knowledge through technological innovation.

(via cgr)

Andrew Moffat from the site Musicslu writes in to let us know about its service, which is effectively a tool to let musicians get fans to "pre-fund" their releases. We've talked about such models in the past -- and it's similar to what Jill Sobule did last year. Other musicians have done it as well, but Musicslu tries to make it easier for artists. Basically, the band announces how much it needs to raise to release its album, and fans pledge money. No one actually pays until the full pledge number is hit -- and then once it's hit, the music is released for everyone totally free (covered by a Creative Commons license that encourages sharing). They've put up a YouTube video explaining how it works: Again, this isn't an entirely new idea, but it's nice to see a tool that makes it easier for artists who don't want to go through the hassle of setting it all up themselves. I'm sure some folks will complain that this sort of model only encourages "free loaders," but that ignores the reality. The band gets to set exactly how much it needs to make from the album, and be guaranteed that amount. If there's freeloaders after that fact, so what? If the band really builds up a huge following, then the next time around it can set a higher price. Besides, the band can continue to make money by selling other scarcities.

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Download the MP4 here. Flash video above, click "fullscreen" icon inside player to view large. YouTube channel here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video.

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Today's Boing Boing Video episode is part 2 of a 2-part conversation with Peter Kirn of Create Digital Music and Matt Ganucheau of Expression College about generative music, experimental audio in video games, new tools for music composition, and how sound changes our experience of gaming.

We conducted this interview during Boing Boing/offworld's marathon live coverage of the 2009 Game Developers Conference. Peter Kirn shares a couple of urls that came up during the conversation:

Composer Troels Folmann came up as a source of inspiration - and himself the advocate of something he calls "micro-scoring." His GDC session, in which he boils a waterphone (seen at the tail end of the video!), is here on createdigitalmusic.com.

And here is a previous interview in which he discusses his approach to adaptive music.

Previously:

* Music in Video Games, a conversation with Peter Kirn and Matt Ganucheau
* Social Games, and The Quest for Virtual Poo.
* Doctor Popular's Awesome Yo-Yo Stylings
* Hideo Kojima on Metal Gear Solid Touch (games)
* Jane McGonigal on Emotion, Gaming, and Dance.
* Jane McGonigal - Games Can Change the World.
* Jane McGonigal's Game Developers' Conference talk on Making Your Own Reality
* BBV @ GDC live stream archives, at Ustream.tv
* Boing Boing Video and Offworld.com Live at GDC09: offworld.com archive
* Boing Boing Video and Offworld.com Live at GDC09: boingboing.net archive

---

[ Special thanks to Joel Johnson for editorial help on this episode! BBV Live @GDC09 credits and thanks: Production Team -- Jolon Bankey, Derek Bledsoe, Daniela Calderon, Eddie Codel, Xeni Jardin, Allison Kingsley, Matty Kirsch, Alice Taylor, Wesly Varghese. Special thanks to Wayneco Heavy Industries (accommodation and studio facilities), Virgin America Airlines (air travel), Celsius (thermogenic energy beverage), Ustream.tv (streaming video host). Moral support, production assistance, additional talent, and good vibes provided by: Domini Anne, Scott Beale, T.Bias, Jeremy Bornstein, Brandon Boyer, Chris The Van Guy, Peter S. Conrad, Marque Cornblatt, Wayne, Bre, and the entire de Geere family, Marcy DeLuce, Cory Doctorow, Joel Johnson, Kourosh Karimkhany, Jim Louderback and the Revision 3 team, Karen Marcelo, Rocky Mullin, Alicia Pollak, Jackie Mogol, Taylor Peck, David Pescovitz, Micah Schaffer, and Teal. ]

the_insult_dog writes "Computerworld has an article up (with videos) about some of the coolest Easter eggs and other software surprises, ranging from full-featured games to strange messages from robots. What other eggs are out there? What's the coolest egg ever?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After having a stroke, a 64-year-old woman reports that she now has a "pale, milky-white and translucent third arm" that she can use to scratch itchy parts of her body. She also says the limb can't penetrate solid objects.

It is "the first case known to doctors of a person being able to feel, see and deliberately move a limb that doesn't exist." The woman underwent an MRI and when doctors asker her to move her imaginary third limb, her brain responded as if she really had the arm. Her visual cortex activity also indicated that she saw the arm. (Via Arbroath)

Artist, actress, and digital explorer Ann Magnuson has an art show opening up tomorrow night in the remote California desert town of Joshua Tree. The exhibition is titled "30 x 30," at Art Queen gallery, and chronicles Magnuson's adventures in creating 30 art works in 30 days. From the gallery owner's official blurb:

Ann Magnuson is an actress ("Making Mr. Right", "Clear and Present Danger", "Panic Room", series regular on the ABC-TV sitcom "Anything but Love"), writer, performance artist, former singer/lyricist for the psycho-psychedelic band Bongwater and a part-time resident of Joshua Tree. "I've been visiting JT regularly since the eighties" Ann told us. "My husband and I finally got a place out here 5 years ago and I love it." She loved our '30 in 30' exercise. "Making art is more fun than acting!" she told us. "The anything-goes approach gave me a sense of liberation I haven't felt since I was a kid. It's really helped me look at the creative process anew."

Although Ann had always enjoyed making craft projects or fake Jean Michel Basquiat paintings (which are fantastic!) she had never applied her talents to putting together a whole show of her artworks. Ann used materials from local thrift stores as well as organic and inorganic 'found objects' from her rustic desert environment in Joshua Tree. Please join us this Saturday, April 11, 7-10 pm for the opening party with live entertainment by the Plaids, Shari Elf, and maybe even Ann Magnuson!

More on the show here, and Black Book reviews another show she's in right here.

VIDEO: Ms. Magnuson is shown above in a video from 1983, a segment called "Girl Talk" from the Manhattan cable access television show "Your Program of Programs." She's a legend, and we love her.

IMAGE: Below, "Prince Charming is an Asshole," by Ann Magnuson, from the Joshua Tree show opening tomorrow night.

Crafter Becky Stern says: "To go along with my Vicodin earrings, I made this Vicodin ring from sterling silver. I sanded one side of the pill flat (while wearing a dusk mask, of course!), and bezel set it.

Sweden's tax authorities are cracking down on unreported webcam stripper income. They estimate that hundreds of Swedish women are dodging the law, resulting in a tax loss of about 40m Swedish kronor (£3.3m) annually. The search involves tax officials examining stripper websites, hours upon hours, for completely legitimate purposes. A slightly disheveled project leader said 200 Swedish strippers had been investigated so far, adding the total could be as much as 500. "They are young girls, we can see from the photos. We think that perhaps they are not well informed about the rules," he said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Mayor of Mt. Holly posted this terrific movie about World War I starring dogs, "All Quiet on the Canine Front." Here's a bit of information about the Dogville Shorts series (1921-1931). (Wot, no Wikipedia entry?)

Scott Beale blogs,

¡Ay, caramba! On May 7th the US Postal Service will be releasing a series of postage stamps commemorating The Simpsons. As part of the pre-release preview you can vote on your favorite Simpsons character and pre-order sets of the stamps.

Sneak peek at the images over at Laughing Squid. (Congrats, Boing Boing pals Matt Groening + David Silverman!)

bjork (above. seriously. this is. classic.)
salvador dali
on the set
as seen on tv
24: the 1994 pilot
pancake mountain
television obscurities
video home system
ernie kovacs show closing credits

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!)

As Time Warner Cable continues to roll out metered billing/capped broadband to more locations, the company's COO is apparently defending the practice by claiming that it's actually what customers want. That argument is easily demolished by Broadband Reports at the link... but it's great to contrast it with another story, also over at Broadband Reports, where Cablevision notes that metered billing confuses and annoys customers:

"We don’t want to give consumers more to think about. We think [broadband] is a pretty powerful drug and we want people to consume more of it."

While Cablevision has had its fair share of questionable practices over the years, one thing you have to admit, is that it's always been much better than a lot of other cable companies on these sorts of issues -- and often goes against what the other big cable companies do. Unlike Time Warner Cable, which caved to Hollywood about running a remote DVR service, Cablevision stood up for its rights and won (so far). The company also has gone against the grain in suggesting a la carte cable channels isn't such a bad idea. Plus, the company offered one of the first truly high speed broadband offerings, and then combined it with cheap or free additional services that helped build marketshare, rather than following the other cable companies in trying to offer every new service at a high price. And, now, it seems like it's taking the customer-centric approach to metered broadband as well (unlike Time Warner Cable, which just claims it is).

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palegray.net writes "Inspired by a recent Ask Slashdot, I've written a step-by-step tutorial for setting up an Openfire server on Debian Linux, for those interested in running their own open source collaboration server. Aimed at those just getting started with collaboration software, the tutorial shows precisely how to get Openfire up and running quickly on a base Debian install, and offers a basic feature tour of the software's plugin and IM gateway functionality."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Instructables user Kimberly8705 writes:

Mid-drive power wheel chairs (PWC) have become more popular in recent years. However, due to the placement of the front casters, the traditional side-mounted footrests have been replaced by a single center-mounted footrest. Unfortunately, center-mounted footrests do not have a lift/lower mechanism that is easily operable by certain PWC users who transfer independently. Many PWC users have limited trunk strength and range of motion, decreased sensitivity in their lower body, and lack of fine motor function. This causes difficulty reaching the footrest to raise it. There is a need for a design solution that allows PWC users to independently lift and lower the footrest.

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New 36-minute podcast explains why New Journalism won't appear in a big bang of epiphany; but will boot up, iteratively.

Anna Brones of Wend magazine has an article about business that use bikes to deliver goods and provide services. One company profiled, Soupcycle, delivers organic soup. Another Q19, is a house cleaning service that uses petrochemical-free cleaning agents. The article also mentions bike-powered business in Florida (organic produce delivery), Boston (pick-up and delivery service), and Philadelphia (recycling and compost).

Lazar delivers soup to “Souplandistan,” an area that covers most of inner Portland, with an electrical assist trike. The battery assist helps pull him and his bike and trailer up some of Portland’s hillier streets. Fully loaded the trailer and bike weigh a total of about 200 pounds, but Lazar calculates that he only uses the battery assist about 20% of the time; for the rest, it’s all legs.

Pedaling to Profit: The Upswing of Bike Powered Business

aleph60 writes "A German researcher is about to resurrect the first fully electronic general-purpose stored-program computer, the Manchester Mark 1 (1948). The functional replica will run the source code of an original program from 1952 by Christopher Strachey, whose sole purpose was generating love letters; it is historically interesting as one of the first examples of a text-generating program. The installation will be shown at an art exhibition in Germany at the end of April." Here is researcher David Link's Manchester Mark I emulator home, which generates a new love poem on each page load. When the Mark I had been used to search for new Mersenne primes in 1949, a press account coined the phrase "electronic brain" to characterize it.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Right after the first of the year, it looked like Monster Cable might be taking a new tack in its trademark "strategy", after it dropped a lawsuit against a company called Monster Mini-Golf. Monster Cable has a long history of suing lots of business -- no matter what line of work they're in -- that use the word monster in their name, but given the backlash against it and its subsequent apology in the mini-golf case, it seemed that maybe, just maybe it was changing its ways. That was false hope, apparently, as it's now going after a company called Monster Transmission (via Engadget). The cable company apparently claims it "has no issue" with the transmission company, but that's news to one of its owners. Monster Cable also claims the suit was filed before its backdown in the Monster Mini-Golf case, as if that's supposed to make it okay. But if the company really "has no issue" -- why not just withdraw the suit?

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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Here's a Atmel ATtiny13 driving a 10x8 LED matrix inside of a decorated sytrofoam Easter egg. Holiday maker fun for the whole family! Even Hello Kitty got in on the fun.

Gorgeous LED Egg

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bhodge writes "Aside from the obvious 'it stops working' answer, how does flash media — such as USB, SD, and CF — fail? Unlike with traditional hard drive, where anyone who's worked with computers for a while knows what a drive failure looks like, I don't know anyone who has experienced such a failure with flash. I've haven't been able to find more than scant evidence of what such failures look like at the OS level. The one account I have found detailed using a small USB drive for /var/log storage; it failed very quickly, and then utterly (0 byte unformatted device), after five years of service in the role. This runs contrary to other anecdotal claims that you should still be able to read the media after you can no longer write to it. So my question is: what have you seen of the nature of flash media failure, if anything?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Barrie Sutcliffe's installation titled The Small Within the Great consists of wall mounted strings played via data derived from the quantum decay of radioactive metals -

Experimental stage running brushed DC motors controlled via PWM amplifiers connected to an Arduino. Data is fed to the computer from an Aware radiation monitor that is looking at Americium 241. Speed of motors is controlled by this data, the time at which they change is a short constant to keep things as level as possible.
All strings are the same gauge, therefore when tuned via equal temperament only string length changes. This explains the ginormous, 7-meter long G1 on the top, which was so big that it really only gave off weird noisy overtones instead.

See more of the project in his Flickr set.

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megamerican alerted us to a leaked document (PDF) from a Virginia Fusion Center titled "2009 Virginia Terrorism Threat Assessment." The document is marked as "Law Enforcement Sensitive," not to be shown to public. Citizens for Legitimate Government has a write-up. Slashdot gets a mention on page 45 — not as a terrorist organization itself, but as one of the places that member of Anonymous may hang out: "A 'loose coalition of Internet denizens,' Anonymous consists largely of users from multiple internet sites such as 4chan, 711chan, 420chan, Something Awful, Fark, Encyclopedia Dramatica, Slashdot, IRC channels, and YouTube. Other social networking sites are also utilized to mobilize physical protests. ... Anonymous is of interest not only because of the sentiments expressed by affiliates and their potential for physical protest, but because they have innovated the use of e-protests and mobilization. Given the lack of a unifying creed, this movement has the potential to inspire lone wolf behavior in the cyber realms." According to the report, cell phones and digital music players have been used to transfer plans related to criminal activity, and therefore presumably could be grounds for suspicion. Podcasting is also suspicious.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One of the key elements of the trial against The Pirate Bay in Sweden was the claim by the entertainment industry that the site's owners were profiting massively by selling ads on the site. The defendants denied this, claiming that they basically earned enough to keep the site operating, but not all that much more. However, the entertainment industry may now have evidence of a new lucrative business model by The Pirate Bay. Apparently, 113,000 customers have already signed up for The Pirate Bay's new anonymous VPN service, which costs around $6/month. So, we're talking more than half a millions dollars coming in every month from this alone... and that's just based on customers signing up in the first week or so. But would the entertainment industry really be able to go after that revenue as well? After all there are plenty of services out there that provide anonymous VPN services, so you can't say that this particular revenue is "profiting from piracy." Either way, though... it's yet another sign that everything the entertainment industry tries to do to "fight" file sharing seems to come back to bite them.

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Masters of the Tesla coil ArcAttack recreate the theme from Doctor Who in their medium of choice - complete with Faraday suited 'conductor'. Delia would be proud. [via Synthtopia]

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Are you telling the truth? This fun and easy to build kit uses the galvanic skin response to become your very own personal lie detector.
In the Maker Shed:


More about the Truth Wristband Kit

To download The Truth Wristband MP4 click here or subscribe in iTunes.

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From Southern University of Denmark's Robot Laboratory comes this lawn mower bot, controlled by a Bluetooth connection to a Wiimote.

Welcome to the CASMOBOT website!

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Hugh Pickens writes "Launched on October 25, 2006, NASA's twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft are about to enter the L4 and L5 Lagrangian points, special points in our orbit around which spacecraft and other objects can loiter because the gravitational pull of earth and the sun balances the forces from the object's orbital motion. (The spacecraft won't linger at the Lagrangian points; they are just passing through.) 'These places may hold small asteroids, which could be leftovers from a Mars-sized planet that formed billions of years ago,' said NASA Project Scientist Michael Kaiser. STEREO will look for asteroids with a wide-field-of-view telescope. 'If we discover the asteroids have the same composition as the Earth and moon, it will support Belbruno and Gott's version of the giant impact theory. The asteroids themselves could well be left-over from the formation of the solar system.' L4 and L5 are also good places to observe space weather. 'With both the sun and Earth in view, we could track solar storms and watch them evolve as they move toward Earth. Also, since we could see sides of the sun not visible from Earth, we would have a few days warning before stormy regions on the solar surface rotate to become directed at Earth,' says Kaiser."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Electric Peasant's Banjo Processor takes the traditional instrument to sonic realms few have dared before, using a pitch-to-voltage converter along with a collection of bonus features -

When The Peasant built the SynthCase project, a keyboard was not included, as playing one is not something that he has ever learned to do. However, The Peasant is a banjo player, and so thought that it would be very interesting to use a banjo to control the analogue synthesizer. A number of years ago a pitch-to-voltage convertor circuit board, designed for guitar use, was purchased from fellow DIY enthusiast Harry Bissell. This pcb only used the bottom three guitar strings to extract the CV output, and so it was decided to expand the board to work with all five strings on the banjo. The board was designed to output CV, envelope, and triggers, and also included a built-in bass synthesizer. A special hex pickup was required to deliver individual string outputs to the circuitry.

During the design phase, "feature creep" reared it's ugly head, and the final project ended up including a preamp/mixer section, using the hex pickup and an input for a regular banjo pickup. Some extra functions were added to the bass synth, and some quasi sawtooth outputs were added courtesy of another small pcb from Mr. Bissell.

The pitch converter alone could prove much fun for guitar players. And as you might imagine the aforementioned SynthCase project is an impressive sight to see. Check out the Banjo Processor's jumbo pictorial over at EP's site. [via Deviant Synth]

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Logrusweaver writes "It looks like Red Dwarf is finally returning! Red Dwarf: Back to Earth is airing in 3 parts in the UK starting this Friday. It seems to be a 3-parter followed by a 'Making Of' special. Not trying to give away any more of the plot than the title does, but it does involve the crew finally returning to Earth. (Just hope it's not a bombed out planet with 'space angels' running around...)"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Man-o-man, what an inspiring collection of custom-fabbed hi-fi audio equipment and instrument amps to be found at Electron Luv, the home of metal fabricator, audio engineer, and tube-head Josh Stippitch. If this stuff sounds half as good as it looks...

Electron Luv

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The Wall Street Journal has an important editorial pointing out why it's a mistake for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geither to include venture capital funds in his new regulatory plan to deal with "systemic risk." There's no doubt that highly leveraged hedge funds contributed greatly to the current economic situation creating a level of systemic risk that we're only just coming to terms with. However, it's not at all clear what venture capital has to do with that. Yes, both are unregulated funds of private equity, but that's about where the similarities end. Venture capital relies very little on debt, and is usually a way for wealthy investors to bet money more long term on new innovations, rather than the sort of short-term speculation that is more common with hedge funds.

Yet, for some reason, they're being lumped together and will have the same regulatory burdens. This could significantly hinder venture capitalists, similar to some other recent regulatory changes, creating unnecessary and wasteful burdens that are more for show than any actual effort to protect the economy. As the editorial points out: we've already stress tested the venture capital world, when the dot com bubble burst, it didn't cause any systemic risk. No banks failed because of the bubble bursting. So why is the government suddenly acting like VCs are a threat to the widespread economy now?

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Well, well, well... a few folks have been sending in some of the investigations that have been going on concerning the logo designer, Jon Engle, who caused a big stir on a variety of sites (including ours) by claiming that he was being accused of infringing on his own logo artwork. However, as more people started investigating the matter, his story has become increasingly suspect, both with certain elements not adding up, and additional evidence suggesting that Engle himself may have, in fact, used images from others in the logos he had uploaded to sites. There are also some other claims that Engle had absolutely nothing to do with some of the logos that he said he designed. However, as the public scrutiny of Engle's story is spreading, Engle's reputation is taking a big hit -- showing how the damage done to one's own reputation by plagiarism can be punitive, even without invoking copyright law. Reputation is a scarce good... destroying it by lying and duping a bunch of folks is going to come back to bite you.

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Get a jump on your Halloween plans this year with the Special Effects Master Class DVDs from the Maker Shed. Each DVD is 3 hours long and packed with lessons taught by professional artists, most of whom work in Hollywood at effects houses including Stan Winston Studio, Spectral Motion, KNB and Motion Picture F/X, and teach part-time at Los Angeles-area effects schools like Westmore Academy, Makeup Designory, FX School and USC.

More about our Special Effects Master Class DVDs

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destinyland writes "A Japanese company is preparing limited mass production of a cybernetic bodysuit which dramatically increases user strength up to ten times. The "Hybrid Assistive Limb" suit synchronizes movements of a mechanical exoskeleton to biological nerve signals detected by biopads on the body. (Originally envisioned for people with disabilities, the suit also has industrial applications, and the company is planning annual production of 400 units at $4,200 apiece.) Its battery life is five hours, according to the company's web site, which promises they're also opening a EU branch to begin sales outside of Japan."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Michael Scott points us to an article concerning the Library of Congress issuing a report on how copyright law applies to libraries who possess unpublished audio works recorded prior to 1972. The problem, you see, is that no one was exactly sure whether or not these recordings were actually covered by copyright law. The real problem, though, becomes pretty clear pretty quickly as you read through the article: copyright law is a house of cards. We just keep layering new rules on top of old rules, and figure the courts will sort out the places where they contradict, overlap or confuse. But that leaves a ton of uncertainty in a variety of situations -- including this particular one. It should be a simple question: if a library is in possession of an unpublished sound recording from before 1972, what's the copyright status? But the mess that is copyright law makes it such that it's hardly an easy question at all -- and actually requires an 85-page report from the Library of Congress to go through all of the nuances. And then your everday individual is expected to understand what is "right" and "wrong" in copyright law?

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Police in Norfolk, England already have tracking units, The Automatic Vehicle Location System, installed in their cars that allow a control room to track their exact locations. Later this year a similar system will be attached to individual police radios to allow controllers to monitor the position of every frontline officer. Combined with equipment that can pinpoint the locations of 999 callers, the system will allow the force to home in on "shouts" to within yards. The system also lets operators filter a map showing the location of its vehicles and constables to reveal only those with the skills needed for a specific incident, like the closest officer with silver bullets during a werewolf attack.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mitch sez, "The small Dune roleplaying community in Second Life got a legal notice from Trident Media Group, the New York literary agency that handles the Frank Herbert Estate, via Linden Lab, which develops and manages Second Life."

Among the smaller of these is a group dedicated to Dune, the classic Frank Herbert sci-fi franchise of novels, movies, and other IP. Their leader, Vooper Werribee, counts 130 members who enjoy roleplay in the sands of an Arrakis based in Second Life, taking on the personae of sandworm-riding Fremen, Harkonnen-hating Atreides, and so on. (He believes only 20% of these are currently active.)

Notwithstanding those paltry numbers, last weekend Werribee and other members received legal notices from Linden Lab via Trident Media Group, a New York literary agency which maintains the Herbert Estate. "In particular," the notice reads, "Trident Media Group has complained about your use of characters, concepts and other material associated with 'Dune' in the Second Life environment." Those include roleplay locations entitled "Sardaukar Mask", "Fremen Domain", and "Bene Gesserit Retreat". The Lindens' notice ordered Werribee and his group to remove such titles and objects from Second Life within two days, or the company would do so itself.

Good going Trident! There's 130 Herbert megafans who won't be so quick to enjoy, proselytize and spread your client's work next time. Keep it up and you'll soon have the whole world turned off Dune!

Enforcers of Dune: Frank Herbert Estate Targets Dune Roleplayers In Second Life (Thanks, Mitch!)

A University of Washington engineering professor has come up with a new goop for his 3D printer that costs 1/30 - 1/50 of the authorized goop, using a mix of clay, sugar and nutritional supplements, then open sourced their formula. Basically, these guys are the inkjet cartridge refillers of the 3D era:

About five years ago, Mark Ganter, a UW mechanical engineering professor and longtime practitioner of 3-D printing, became frustrated with the high cost of commercial materials and began experimenting with his own formulas. He and his students gradually developed a home-brew approach, replacing a proprietary mix with artists' ceramic powder blended with sugar and maltodextrin, a nutritional supplement. The results are printed in a recent issue of Ceramics Monthly. Co-authors are Duane Storti, UW associate professor of mechanical engineering, and Ben Utela, a former UW doctoral student.

"Normally these supplies cost $30 to $50 a pound. Our materials cost less than a dollar a pound," said Ganter. He said he wants to distribute the free recipes in order to democratize 3-D printing and expand the range of printable objects.

Glitzy three-dimensional printers have become common in the industrial world, churning out fast 3-D prototypes of everything from airplane parts to running shoes. But the machines also are becoming popular among artists, hobbyists and educational institutions.

3-D Printing Hits Rock-bottom Prices With Homemade Ceramics Mix

As you're well aware, we've seen copyright extended over and over again, in ways that seem to go wholly against the purpose of copyright. After all, copyright is designed to encourage the creation of new content. Extending it after that content has been created makes no sense. The content was already created. However, not only has it been extended over and over again, but people are still pushing for it to be extended, even to the point that some claim that copyright should last forever (or, when pushed about the Constitution's demand that copyright be for limited times, they'll say "forever minus a day.") One of the common arguments in favor of copyright extension is that copyright should be passed down to "heirs," so that just as you can inherit a house, you should be able to inherit copyright. However, there's some new research challenging (or, rather, demolishing) that thinking. Reader (and frequent Techdirt critic) Wilton points us to this paper that questions the very premise of "descendible copyright" by Deven Desai.

Desai points out that the needs of "heirs" are quite often used to defend copyright extension because it creates an emotional image (you don't want the poor kids of an artist to go starving, do you?), but it's entirely misleading and unfair:

Yet, once one probes the heirs assumption, one finds it lacks any historical or theoretical basis. Instead, the assumption hides rent-seeking behavior, clashes between authors and publishers regarding who can extract that rent, and political maneuvering by the copyright industry; all of which are behaviors that copyright policy ought to avoid and/or prevent. In addition, the image of stealing food from heirs permits the debates to marginalize society's interest in a robust creative system with lower costs regarding the access to and use of knowledge and information.

In fact, Desai can find no support for the idea that heirs deserve the copyright of others. He does find it acceptable that copyright should last throughout an author's life, but should end upon death. I have trouble supporting the idea that copyright should even be that long, but the total dismantling of any support for the idea that heirs deserve copyrights is well worth reading. He points out that the whole point of copyright law is to encourage the production of new works -- and once someone is dead, they're not going to produce any new works, so it's silly to continue to "encourage" them.

For me, though, the most troubling part in reading the quotes Desai highlights of politicians and heirs fighting for copyright extension is this impression that somehow the public domain is bad. Just read this, from Senator Orin Hatch, to defend copyright extension a decade ago:

I would like to draw particular attention to the career of Walter Donaldson.... If the present copyright law had been in effect in the 1920's, all of Walter Donaldson's compositions would fall into the public domain within the next 2 years.

The implication,there, is that somehow this is a bad thing. Of course, reality is exactly the opposite. The deal with the public is that creators are given a monopoly for a limited time, so that it eventually goes into the public domain where everyone can benefit from it. Yet Hatch is implying that it's somehow a problem that the public would benefit from Donaldson's works.

Another stunning quote is from Samuel Clemens' (better known as Mark Twain) argument in favor of copyright extension, invoking his daughters as being too clueless and helpless to earn any money on their own:

My copyrights produce to me annually a good deal more money than I have any use for. But those children of mine have use for that. I can take care of myself as long as I live. I know half a dozen trades, and I can invent a half a dozen more. I can get along. But I like the fifty years' extension, because that benefits my two daughters, who are not as competent to earn a living as I am, because I have carefully raised them as young ladies, who don't know anything and can't do anything. So I hope Congress will extend to them that charity which they have failed to get from me.

This reinforces the totally unsubstantiated claim that copyright is designed as a welfare system to "protect" those who have no other means of earning a living. Of course, copyright wasn't designed for that purpose at all. Why the government should support it as a system of welfare for the children of copyright creators is never clearly explained at all. Desai contrasts Clemens' assertions with those of Victor Hugo, who while a big supporter of copyright and authors' rights, also spoke eloquently of how important the public domain is, and how it needs to be supported. He does suggest a royalty system for heirs -- but not a copyright system, saying that the ideas belong to the public.

So, the next time you see someone arguing that copyright should be extended in perpetuity for the sake of "their children," perhaps note that there's nothing in copyright law that has ever supported such an assertion.

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David writes in:

I am interested in fooling around with LEDs. Nothing fancy I just want to learn some basic stuff, and build some easy circuits. I am 65 years old and have some time on my hands so I want to explore these devices. Could you send me a list of some elementary school level books? I have a couple of grand children that I want to play with; and, I think we could have fun and learn some interesting things together. I don't know what aspect of this technology will interest them, but maybe we will build something that we can attach to an old cd player that will change colors in conjunction with the music.

Well, David, I don't know about elementary school level books, but I can certainly suggest some kits to start you and your grandkids off. LEDs are a great place to start. They don't take a lot of background knowledge or equipment to get started. A good first project is to make some LED throwies. All you need are LEDs, coincell batteries, magnets, and tape. You can get LEDs and batteries online, or from RadioShack or Fry's Electronics if there's one nearby. From there move on to blinkybugs and vibrobots, and then maybe the Sparkle Labs kit for learning electronics, which comes with an excellent booklet full of illustrations and easy-to-follow instructions for popular and simple circuits. As for making an LED blink in time with music, you could follow this Instructable. You might also like playing around with 555 tmers, as they're pretty easy to get going, too. There's a great article on them with sample diagrams in MAKE, Vol. 10. I'm so glad you're excited about building things with your grandkids!

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I just got Jeri Ellsworth's web video shows on my radar, namely The Fat Man and Circuit Girl. She and co-host George Sanger do an awesome job of explaining electrical engineering, science concepts, and various forms of hackery in a clear, straightforward, and fun way.

Jer's just started experimenting with short videos, with limited editing, of her describing something that's caught her interest, like a video lab journal. This vid, Short Circuit #1, is her describing how an analog falling edge detector circuit works (and yes, she knows that she said "variable capacitor" when she meant "variable resistor").

BTW: Jeri will be at Maker Faire in May! She'll be showing off her Easy Bake Oven chip lab.

Fat Man and Circuit Girl

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I'm still digesting what this means for the future of the internet and entertainment, but something about this feels like (a) the end of all media or (b) the beginning of all media to come. Snoop Dogg has a webshow on Ustream. As I blog, it's live right now. The show consists entirely of him sitting in a chair in his house, smoking a shit-ton of weed, and playing really good old-school music. Sometimes, singing along for a bar or two, or talking back to the chat room intermittently in Snoop-isms. Then, walking away entirely, leaving the webcam fixed on a poster of Snoop on the wall for, like, a half hour at a time. Seriously, that's it. Where the evolutionary arc of reality TV finally ends. Like Father Hood, but with all the plot stripped out. Someone smarter than I will be writing a media analysis column about this soon enough. I don't have anything pithy to say yet, just -- do observe. And, Josh Harris saw it coming. Snoop Dogg Live.

Scribd has come under some totally mistargeted criticism for being a supposed haven of book piracy. The company is clearly protected by DMCA safe harbors, and appears to work extra hard to deal with any infringement found on its platform. Part of that is an automated system that will take down content it believes is infringing. And, as we've seen with automated takedowns on others sites, sometimes it gets a little too aggressive. The folks over at Against Monopoly point out that it took down a copy of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, a book most of you would agree is very much in the public domain at this point. To Scribd's credit, the company quickly admitted the error (saying it was a technical error) and corrected it. But, still, it shows the dangers of such automated systems. They certainly don't do a good job dealing with fair use cases, and they often have problems with the public domain as well.

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supersloshy writes "I'm a user of Ubuntu Linux and I have been for a little while now. Recently I've been trying to copy DVDs onto a portable media player, but everything I've tried isn't working right. dvd::rip always gets the language mixed up (for example, when ripping 'Howl's Moving Castle,' one of the files it ripped to was in Japanese instead of English), Acidrip just plain isn't working for me (not recognizing a disc with spaces in its name, refusing to encode, etc.), Thoggen is having trouble with chapters (chapter 1 repeated twice for me once), and OGMRip has the audio out of sync. What I'm looking for is a reliable program to copy the movie into a single file with none of the audio or video glitches as mentioned above. Is there even such thing on Linux? If you can't think of a decent Linux-based solution, then a Windows one is fine as long as it works."

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This is some lost technology we can keep there -- Soviet light bulbs from 1935 with Joseph Stalin's silhouette as the glower. Too bad it didn't cast a Great and Powerful Oz-like ominous head on the walls.

First Soviet Bulb

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One of the key points in talking about giving people a real reason to buy is to make it an experience where people want to pay the prices that you're offering. In fact, one of the best to do this has been Josh Freese -- who set up a variety of hilarious options on what people could pay him for additional value beyond his latest album, causing the $250 option to sell out quickly -- and the $20,000 option to sell out as well (there was only one, but still... someone paid $20,000 for it). $20,000 is a lot, even for getting the following:

• Signed CD/DVD and digital download.
• T-shirt
• A signed DW Snare from the 2008 Nine Inch Nails tour.
• Maynard James Keenan, Mark Mothersbaugh from DEVO and I take you miniature golfing and then drop you off on the side of the freeway (all filmed and posted on youtube of course).
• I give you a tour of Long Beach. I'll show ya my first apartment, the coffee shop on 2nd St where my buddy paid Dave Grohl $40 to rip up some tile just weeks before he joined "Nirvana". I'll show you all my old stomping grounds....the Vandals old rehearsal spot, the house Quackenbush and I use to rent, where to go for the best tacos, Snoop Dogg's high school, etc.... for an extra 50 bucks I'll show you where Adrian and Tom from "No Doubt" live. For another $25 I'll throw in Brooks from Bad Religion and Eric from NOFX's houses too! We then spend the night at the Queen Mary and take the "Ghost Tour" (seperate rooms of course.....no spooning).
• I write 2 songs about you (or if you want 1 can be about you and the other one can be about whatever or whomever you'd like) and it goes on my next record (you can sing back up on them, clap, play the drums, triangle solo...whatever you want).
• Drum lesson OR foot and back massage (once again.....couples welcome).
• Pick any 3 items out of my closet.

But, still, the whole thing is fun, and that's a big part of the reason why people find it worth buying. There have even been rumors that some bands are looking at buying the $75,000 option, which would get them lots of attention, and include options like Freese playing on tour with them for a month and recording an entire EP about whatever they want.

But, of course, it's not just in the music business where this works. Reader William Jackson writes in to point to an interesting article of a guy noting that making buying fun works in a range of industries, from software to t-shirts. He describes the process of buying a t-shirt at the T-Shirt Deli, a t-shirt shop that is set up just like a deli, and makes the process of buying a t-shirt like the process of buying a sandwich -- including handing you the final product wrapped up in wax paper with stickers... and including a bag of chips as well.

So, if you're looking for ways to give people a reason to buy -- a good place to start is to make buying your product fun.

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The Lux Spectralis from the Maker Shed is a completely open source deluxe LED blinky. The kit features over 30 different high intensity color modes. These modes range from a simple night-light that shuts off after 5 minutes, strobes, and color washes. Click on the 'More Details' tab in the Maker Shed for a complete list of functions.

More about the Lux Spectralis kit

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In response to the report I posted a few days ago that the Openmoko FreeRunner phone had been discontinued, Pat Meier-Johnson writes on behalf of Openmoko to say that this isn't so. "Some bloggers have been misinterpreting a presentation by Openmoko CEO, Sean Moss-Pultz last week in Switzerland to think that the company is getting out of the phone business. That's not true. In fact, the Openmoko FreeRunner (their current model) is alive and well. (Also in Switzerland, Sean announced another project — not a phone — that they are calling 'Project B.' No details yet.) The next version of the phone, codenamed GTA03, has been suspended and there were some associated layoffs, but the GTA03 was in constant flux as a design. So the company is being prudent and focusing on the FreeRunner which has lots of open source community and most recently, embedded developer support." Glad to hear this, because the FreeRunner is an interesting phone.

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I tend to believe most of the lawsuits companies raise over the use of their trademarks as keywords or in ads on Google are bogus. They tend to stem from companies believing they own all rights to the trademark, rather than recognizing that a trademark is designed more to prevent customer confusion. Yet, a new case that is getting attention seems a bit different, and from the facts presented (admittedly from one side only), raises a lot of concerns. Jeremy Shoemaker, a somewhat well-known internet marketer (under the name Shoemoney), had gone through Google's regular procedure to register his trademarks to prevent other companies from showing those trademarks in an ad. Yet, he discovered recently that at least one advertiser was able to keep showing ads with "Shoemoney" in the ad -- and even using it as the sole "title" of the ad, which could certainly confuse people into believing the ad would lead to Shoemaker's own site.

The site that it did lead to was registered under a masked name, so he ended up getting a subpoena and uncovering the name of the individual who owned the site. And here's where it gets odd: there's a lot of evidence out there that the guy in question works for Google having something to do with AdWords. So, Shoemaker has sued the employee (not Google itself, though). There are a lot of questions raised about this, including why it appears a Google employee may have been able to bypass Google's own blocks on using trademarked terms to run these ads. There's also an accusation, though again from just one side, that the same guy appeared to be using the identical keywords that Shoemaker uses -- suggesting that he had access to Shoemaker's account.

The whole thing seems pretty questionable -- and Google's response so far (a big "no comment") isn't particularly reassuring.

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