An anonymous reader writes "The BBC is reportedly mulling over plans to come up with an international edition of its hugely popular iPlayer service, in a bid to allow global audiences to catch up with some of its top shows, according to BBC Worldwide, the corporation's profit-making arm. BBC Worldwide said that the move would help revamp its business model, and thereby help the corporation in raking in significant profits through its premium content."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here are some photos from my visit to Noisebridge, an amazing hacker space in San Francisco, CA.

Noisebridge is an educational non-profit corporation, 501(c)3 public charity status.

We provide infrastructure and collaboration opportunities for people interested in programming, hardware hacking, physics, chemistry, mathematics, photography, security, robotics, all kinds of art, and, of course, technology. Through talks, workshops, and projects we encourage knowledge exchange, learning, and mentoring.

As a space for artistic collaboration and experimentation, we are open to all types of art - with a special emphasis on the crossover of art and technology. From hardware labs to electronics, cooking, photography, and sound labs, anything that's creative is welcome.

Many interesting things are happening at all times. Sharing is essential to making this work. We believe in starting from a point of respect and trust. We believe it builds a safe community and that this will foster innovation and creation. Our code of conduct is "Be excellent to each other".

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These days my blog posts are always essays, but it wasn't always so. In the beginning it was all links, with pointers to articles both on this site and off-site. Example.

Then it became a hybrid, at the top of the page were the links and at the bottom were articles. Example.

Then in early 2007 (Jan 6, to be exact) I went all essays, and then a few weeks after that, started using Twitter. It's funny how one event followed another.

Anyway, this article by Rex Hammock is so lovely and so vindicating, I'd do a special post just to link to it.

Rex Hammock: Facebook goes River of News.

And one little thing, I'm going to have a linkblog up in the not-too-distant future. Again. Everything is new again, every few years, it seems.

Also it's sad that my friends, people like Rex, have to hedge so much because of a handful of stinkers who follow me around on the web. I'd like to encourage my buddies to just go through it, and say what you want to say and let the stinkers stink up some other place. Life is too short. With much love, Dave.

waderoush writes "Brewster Kahle of the San Francisco-based Internet Archive announced today that all 1.6 million books scanned and digitized by the Archive will be available for reading on XO laptops built by the Cambridge, MA-based One Laptop Per Child Foundation. The announcement came during a session on electronic books and electronic publishing at the Boston Book Festival. Kahle said the Archive has been collaborating with OLPC for a year to format the e-books for display on the XO laptops, some 750,000 of which are in use by children in developing countries."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This week has seen a number of excellent and much publicized and high profile releases -- Rockstar's conversion of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars from DS to PSP and Gearbox's post-apocalyptic co-op sandbox shooter Borderlands -- but no game has eaten as much of my time this week than a downsized iPhone version of a rhythm favorite. Rock Band [Harmonix/EA Mobile, iPhone] EA Mobile's downsized port of Harmonix's rhythm-standard enters an App Store dominated by clones and competitors (the Tap Tap series chief among them), and what sets Rock Band apart from the rest is a subtle but massively important distinction. With Harmonix's access to a staggeringly large library of original masters, the iPhone game is able to do what none of the others can: make the music itself reactive to your play. By comparison, Tap Tap plays as a transparent overlay on top of any given track: keep your hands away from the screen and the music cheerily plays on, unperturbed by your quiet failing. That Rock Band gives you its now embarrassingly too-familiar skronk on every missed note is key to sustaining the illusion that you're participating in the performance, even just by slapping a thumb onto a glass sheet. The iPhone version, unlike Rock Band Unplugged -- Backbone's similarly excellent PSP version released a few months back -- only lets you play one instrument or vocal track at a time, which allows for RB's least publicized and surprisingly well implemented feature: in the absence of three additional people to play its Bluetooth-enabled local multiplayer, players can send out invites to Facebook friends to participate in asynchronous "band" play. With it, each of the 2-4 players complete their individual instrument on their own time, submitting their score back to the 'band' afterward, at which time a total score and fan-increase is tallied and push-notification submitted back to each, making you feel far more connected than you would expect from such an otherwise solitary game. Losing the plastic-instrument charade might at first seem a down-step too far for more casual players, but with its promise of a continually refreshed music library (its in-app music store already includes six two-packs of add-on tracks), Rock Band is a long, long overdue and essential musical addition to the App Store. Small Worlds [David Shute, web] The week's other best surprise -- going off indie-circle buzz -- is David Shute's Small Worlds, a Flash game entered into the Casual Gameplay Design Competition hosted by free/web powerhouse site JayIsGames. Like so many indie efforts, the less said about the game up front the better: this CGDC's theme was 'Explore', and it's the play on exploration that makes Worlds so unique. Know, at least, that what it does best is take the iron-grip compulsion to 100% map screens in exploratory games like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night or Metroid and bring it directly to the fore of the game itself, making it its own reward. If this seems too frustratingly vague, it's because the Small Worlds experience is short, sweet, and immediately available: don't miss carving out some 20 minutes of your weekend for it. Eufloria [Rudolf Kremers & Alex May, PC] Elsewhere, Rudolf Kremers and Alex May have finally released their Indie Games Festival finalist Eufloria, formerly known as Dyson. As you can see above, it's a game that'll feel familiar to any iPhone gamer that's taken part in the arcade-strategy planetary invasions of Galcon, but with a fantastically gorgeous ambient score (courtesy Brian 'Milieu' Grainger) and visual design that soothes you into and through its dizzying floral battles, it's truly in a league of its own. Find it either via the official homepage, or through its Steam release. LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias [Frontier, Wii] Frontier's platformer LostWinds marked the stateside debut of Nintendo's console downloadable service WiiWare, and its long-awaited sequel also marks the services 100th release, and arguably remains the best exclusive the service has to offer (sitting happily alongside 2D Boy's World of Goo and Gaijin's BIT.TRIP series). Still unrivaled in its split approach to Wii-mote and joystick play, the game gives you both direct control over its vulnerable child-hero Toku, who's helped through his journey by Enril, a spirit of the wind, here represented by the flourishes of your Wii Remote. Its Melodias sequel brings every bit of the quiet charm of the original, and adds new seasonal powers giving you the ability to turn frozen ponds to deep-diving pools and a 'cyclone' ability to help puzzle your way further into its world and should be on top of the weekend download list for any Wii owner. Space Invaders Extreme 2 [Taito, DS] Finally, this week also saw the stateside release of another highly anticipated follow-up with Space Invaders Extreme 2: Taito's retro-futurist re-imagining of its arcade classic, still one of the finest reworkings in game history (edging out even their own masterful iPhone re-invention Space Invaders Infinity Gene). Following down the same disco-dance road as Q Entertainment's cult-classic Rez, Invaders Extreme is classic play done up in techno-rave clothes, each shot contributing to the deep-thumping remix beat that runs underneath. Its sequel adds the still perplexingly devised 'Bingo mode', and remains as essential an experience as the first.

siddesu writes with disappointing news to anyone who'd like to see solid-state storage dominate in the near-term future. "A new study of storage technology by the former CTO of Seagate predicts that hard disks will remain the cheapest storage technology in the next decade and probably beyond."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

lunatick writes "The controversial mandatory swine flu vaccine for health care workers in NY has been suspended. While the reason for the suspension was stated as a shortage of the vaccine, a connection was found Showing State Health Commissioner Richard F. Daines, M.D. and/or his wife may directly profit from the sale of the vaccine. Within hours of that connection being questioned on a radio show and the podcast being distributed, the announcement was made suspending the order. The health care community of NYS is petitioning the State Attorney general to investigate the connection."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MAKE Flickr pool member atduskgreg has been working on a drawing machine using parts scrounged from old cd drives.

It's actually a drawing machine. It's built from two stepper motors I salvaged from come old CD-ROM drives. In its current incarnation, it has two pots each of which controls the movement of one of the two motors: for moving the pen up and down or left and right.

It's great seeing students' progress as they reach milestones on their projects. If you are a student or teacher and want to show off your classroom breakthroughs, pass them along in the comments or Make Flickr pool.

Greg has parked some of the code used for the project online and has written about it on his blog. You can check out a bunch of photos of the build and products in his Flickr set for the project.

With Tom Igoe's help, I figured out how the connections to the steppers worked. They are both bipolar steppers so they have four connections each. I measured the continuity to find which pairs of leads were connected to each magnet. Once I had this right, I plugged each of them into an h-bridge and then connected the h-bridge's four inputs to the arduino and told the Stepper library about them.

In the Maker Shed:

Make: Arduino

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fsufitch writes "Wine has advanced enough to make Linux not immune to Windows viruses. However, just like many Wine applications, it takes a bit of effort to get the program off the ground. Also, just like some Windows programs running via Wine, not all features may work — in this case, the crippling of the system, immunity to the task manager, identity theft, etc."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes "It was the best of operating systems, it was the worst of operating systems. When it comes to the merits of Windows 7, it looks like Slate's Farhad Manjoo and PC Magazine's John Dvorak are going to have to agree to disagree. Manjoo gives Windows 7 a big thumbs-up (a sincere one, unlike Linus!), calling it a 'crowning achievement,' while Dvorak is less than impressed, saying, 'Win 7 is really just a Vista martini. The operating system may have two olives instead of one this time out, but it's still made with the same cheap Microsoft vodka.' So, for those of you who've had a chance to check things out, are things really different this time?" Multiple readers have also pointed out that there have been problems with the download and installation of Windows 7 upgrades obtained through the student discount offer, which Microsoft has confirmed.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From Let's Make Robots user lefthandsh8k, this truly disturbing light/shadow responsive haunt prop. It's controlled by a PIC16F84A and has seven servos and several vacuum-formed pops. The rest is "plywood, paper clips, and popsicle sticks." [Thanks, Matt!]

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

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lenehey writes "A new free iPhone app provided by NASA was released today. The app lists each of NASA's missions, and allows you to see a brief description, the latest news updates, images, videos, etc., corresponding to that mission. A timer is also provided for each mission, logging the days, hours, and seconds until (or since) the mission launch."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

wiseandroid writes "Google's mobile operating system Android has won plenty of adherents among cellphone makers and gadget manufacturers since its 2007 debut. Now defense contractor Raytheon is preparing it for a more urgent mission: saving lives in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan. Using Android software tools, Raytheon engineers built a basic application for military personnel that combines maps with a buddy list. Raytheon calls the entire framework the Raytheon Android Tactical System, or RATS for short. Mark Bigham, a vice president of business development in Raytheon's Intelligence and Information Systems unit, says the company selected Android because its open-source nature made developing applications easy."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When Matt told me that WordPress was going to support rssCloud that got me started using WordPress with new purpose. I've been learning to use the product through wordpress.com. I haven't yet started my own installation. My attention is focused elsewhere.

Anyway, the point of this post is to get help learning how to use BuddyPress. I don't want a huge hosting obligation. Ideally I want a freemium deal like the one at wordpress.com. However, it doesn't seem to exist anywhere, yet.

I just came across a site that says it lets you test BuddyPress.

http://testbp.org/

I was expecting to have to create an account, but it (apparently) found me on Facebook, and I'm already leaving a trail there. Totally not happy about that, but I suppose my gripe is with Facebook, who somehow has decided that they own the web and can give access to my account to anyone who asks for it? I was never asked to opt into this. Unless I'm missing something this seems just plain bad.

Anyway, I thought BuddyPress was supposed to be like Twitter. It doesn't look anything like Twitter. There's no box at the top of the page that asks What Are You Doing? Without that it's not Twitter-like.

Confused.

Update: I found my "wire" page -- and on that page, there's evidence that I had been here on April 30. So that lets Facebook off the hook. I must have created the connection then.

Update: Some free advice for the BP designers. The home page of my site has to look more or less exactly like the home page of the Twitter site. Any difference is going to equal pain for users, and pain for users means slower adoption. Later, when and if you achieve dominant market share, you can slowly evolve the UI, if you really feel you must. Users are less interested in innovation in the UI than you would think they are.

get quad writes "I continually have to remind our end-users to be vigilant about the usual web security hazards, such as not clicking links in the occasional spam email that passes through our filters, avoiding suspicious websites, why some websites aren't entirely safe or appropriate for the work environment (Facebook apps, MySpace, remote access apps, proxies, etc), and the myriad other things an end-user can do to get into trouble. What I'm hoping to find are video or flash examples (mind you, in layman's terms) of what Web-based exploits/zero-day threats are capable of, how they can happen, and the harm they can ultimately cause — rather than posting links to technical docs the users will never bother to read. Getting the point across in a purely visual and less technical manner seems much more effective. Does anyone have any suggestions or experience with this type of training?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

get quad writes "I continually have to remind our end-users to be vigilant about the usual web security safeguards, such as not clicking links in the occasional spam email which passes through filters, avoiding suspicious websites, why some websites aren't entirely safe or appropriate for the work environment (Facebook apps, MySpace, remote access apps, proxies, etc), and the myriad other things an end-user can do to get into trouble. What I'm hoping to find are video or flash examples (mind you, in layman's terms) of what web-based exploits/zero-day threats are capable of, how they can happen and the harm they can ultimately cause, rather than posting links to technical docs the users will never bother to read. Getting the point across in a purely visual and less technical manner seems much more effective. Does anyone have any suggestions or experience with this type of training?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Work Office in New York City is a participatory performance art installation inspired by the Works Progress Administration of the Great Depression. Over the summer, the two administrators of The Work Office -- Katarina Jerinic and Naomi Miller -- interviewed, hired, and assigned creative types to do various, er, odd jobs, like reinterpretng a newspaper photograph, start an American tradition that you'd like to be preserved, or giving a concert for your houseplant. A week's wage is $23.50 and the paychecks are distributed at public parties/openings. Jerinic and Miller are currently seeking funds via Kickstarter to re-open The Work Office again soon. The Work Office (Thanks, Miss Heather Sparks!)

jeno passes along this excerpt from New Scientist: "A deep hole on the moon that could open into a vast underground tunnel has been found for the first time. The discovery strengthens evidence for subsurface, lava-carved channels that could shield future human colonists from space radiation and other hazards. ... The hole measures 65 meters across, and based on images taken at a variety of sun angles, the hole is thought to extend down at least 80 meters. It sits in the middle of a rille, suggesting the hole leads into a lava tube as wide as 370 meters across."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

bennyboy64 writes "NewTeeVee reports on a criminal investigation that has been launched against senior executives of YouTube and parent company Google in Hamburg, Germany over allegations of copyright infringement. The case started after a complaint was filed by German music rights holders. Hamburg's prosecutor has formally requested assistance from US colleagues to compel YouTube to produce log files identifying who uploaded as well as who viewed 500 specific videos."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

bennyboy64 writes "NewTeeVee reports on a criminal investigation that has been launched against senior executives of YouTube and parent company Google in Hamburg, Germany over allegations of copyright infringement. The case started after a complaint was filed by German music rights holders. Hamburg's prosecutor has formally requested assistance from US colleagues to compel YouTube to produce log files identifying who uploaded as well as who viewed 500 specific videos."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Daniel sends pics of his laser-cut/engraved ouija board - the hand-painted fills add a nice touch!

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First thoughts on our San Quentin field trip.

I went for a late lunch in Sausalito with Scoble after spending most of the day inside the walls at San Quentin state prison. We were sitting on a quiet beautiful street with healthy, well-fed people walking by, driving in to eat at the Indian restaurant, riding bicycles and stopping to ask for directions. Scoble entered our location into Foursquare and a few minutes later a clean young, friendly young man showed up with an infant baby wrapped in a blanket. He greeted us with a smile, and Scoble instantly knew he was. We didn't in any way at any time feel we were in any danger. I was pretty sure most of the people with us there had never killed anyone.

That may strike you as an odd way to describe a normal lunch in the center of high-tech land, because that's our normal reality. We expect so much, and we get it. We live the all-you-can-eat lifestyle. But just a few miles away reality is very different.

We met a man who had never used the Internet, had never seen a cell phone, had no clue what Twitter is, and probably a million other things we talk about all the time. He's been in jail since 1987. He talked to us for a while in the courtyard just inside the entrance gate. He's in a "program" and my guess from the way it sounded, will be paroled in January. He murdered his little sister when he was 18. Blew her head off with a shotgun. He did it because she and her brother and mother hid his money and drugs. He told his brother that he'd kill his sister if he didn't tell him where the stash was. The brother said he'd never kill here. He did.

He didn't tell us this, Luna, the assistant warden who was taking us on a tour did.

The warden said that, ironically, that prison is a revolving door for people who commit minor crimes, but for murderers like the guy we were talking to, sometimes they get out and stay out. He says there's a point, usually at 11 years, where they realize that they could change. The guys who get sentenced for smaller crimes don't get there.

The guy we were talking to might not commit another murder, but I don't see how he can live with himself.

Everwhere we went we were being watched.

By everyone.

That may have been the oddest thing. I am accustomed to leading what I think is a fairly anonymous life. Sometimes on BART a stranger is staring at me, I imagine they recognize my face from my blog. But most of the time I move around without anyone paying much attention. Not inside the prison.

And it's not just us they're watching, they're all watching each other, all the time. Because prison is a dangerous place. Everything they do seems to be about keeping from getting slashed or beat up or killed.

We saw thousands of people in tiny cages.

We saw the outside of a building where people are locked up all the time, their crimes so heinous or infamous, or they attract so much attention, or they are people who will try to kill anything that they possibly can.

It's the contrast that is so striking. And what it tells me about who I am.

Having just lost my father, I'm thinking about what death means in a much more real and present way these days. Our guide tells us at one point that most of the people we're looking at, and there are hundreds of them, killed someone. And they're walking around like you and me in a park. Except it's nothing like the way we walk around in a park. Everyone is watching everyone. All the time.

I'm sure there will be other insights. Coming out of it, I think none of us knew what to write. That's the sign that we were doing something very different, something very very outside our normal experience.

andylim writes "Plans for a universal mobile phone charger have been approved by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a United Nations body. The charger has a micro-USB port at the connecting end, using technology similar to what is commonly used with digital cameras. It is not compulsory for manufacturers to adopt the new chargers, but the ITU says that some have already signed up to it. 'We are planning to launch the universal charger internationally during the first half of 2010,' Aldo Liguori, spokesperson for Sony Ericsson told the BBC."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

andylim writes "Plans for a universal mobile phone charger have been approved by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a United Nations body. The charger has a micro-USB port at the connecting end, using technology similar to what is commonly used with digital cameras. It is not compulsory for manufacturers to adopt the new chargers, but the ITU says that some have already signed up to it. 'We are planning to launch the universal charger internationally during the first half of 2010,' Aldo Liguori, spokesperson for Sony Ericsson told the BBC."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theguythatwrotethisthing sends in a write-up of his experience releasing a iPhone game on the App Store. By using a software flag to distinguish between high scores submitted by pirates and those submitted by users who purchased the game, the piracy rate is estimated at around 80% during the first week after release. Since a common excuse for piracy is "try before you buy," they also looked at the related iPhone DeviceIDs to see how many of the pirates went on to purchase the game. None of them did.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A film that denies the link between HIV and AIDS is being screened in the UK by the Spectator, in the name of "spurring debate." The Spectator's editor, Fraser Nelson, describes his motivation: "It's one of these hugely emotive subjects, with a fairly strong and vociferous lobby saying that any open discussion is deplorable and tantamount to Aids denialism. Whenever any debate hits this level, I get deeply suspicious."

And here comes our Ben Goldacre, explaining why "deeply suspicious" (which, to my ears, is a foreshortened phrase whose entirety is "deeply suspicious that I might sell a crapload of newspapers through a reckless disregard for public safety and the truth") is deeply stupid and deeply dangerous:

Of course people will have some concerns. Despite international outcry, from 2000 to 2005 South Africa implemented policies based on the belief that HIV does not cause Aids, and declined to roll out adequate antiretroviral therapy. It has been estimated in two separate studies that around 350,000 people died unnecessarily in South African during this period. We should also remember that "teach the controversy" is a technique beloved of American creationists, and of antivaccination campaigners (with whom Fraser Nelson has also, oddly, flirted). These groups know that in our modern media, where truth is halfway between the two most extreme views, to insert doubt is to win.

But debate is also good. So what kind of debate will the Spectator be hosting? They advertise a panel of "leading medical authorities". There are four people on this panel. One is Lord Norman Fowler. He is not a "leading medical authority".

Charles Geshekter is a professor of African history from the University of Chicago, and is therefore also not a "leading medical authority". He says there is no AIDS epidemic in Africa, simply poverty, and that belief in the epidemic was a product of racism and "western sexual stereotypes". In fact he calls it "The Plague That Isn't", and was on President Thabo Mbeki's notorious Aids Advisory Panel in South Africa in 2000.

Aids denialism at the Spectator

MAKE subscriber thom writes in to tell us about Marc Fischer's ambitious project to do something creative every day, for a year, and document it. One of his latest projects is a DIY MIDI footpedal, made from a pocket-sized MIDI keyboard and some blocks of wood. I would not have considered doing this, but it looks like it came out really nice. He doesn't mention it in his write-up, but an interesting side effect of re-purposing the keyboard in this manner is that the foot pedals will be velocity sensitive, opening up some new possibilities for control.

This is just one of his excellent projects, he has also made drone boxes, a music box, a felt monome case, a light speaker, and lots of wonderful photographs.

Back in 2008, I participated in the Thing-A-Day project, which is a similar idea but only lasts for a single month. I nearly drove myself crazy trying to make an electronics/physical computing project every day, but it was definitely a great way to force myself to actually work on things. I would recommend a project like this to anyone who just needs that extra bit of motivation to actually start getting things done. Good luck on finishing the year strong, Marc!

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Bonnie sez, "Star Wars artist Chris Trevas got hitched and had this glorious dead Tauntaun cake (complete with Luke Skywalker stuffed inside) made for the groom's cake at his wedding! The cake was made by Courtney Clark from Cake Nouveau of Food Network Challenge (and TLC Ultimate Cake-Off) fame!"

Dead Tauntaun Wedding Cake! (Thanks, Bonnie!)

My daughters and I have been fighting over my iPhone all night because we want to play DodgeDot, a new iPhone game that currently costs 99 cents. My friend and old school bOING bOING contributor Jim Leftwich co-created DodgeDot with his partner Steve Doss. He told me, "When I first thought the game up I was trying to come up with something that was a mix of the best qualities of classic and timeless games. Part skill, part strategy, part randomness, and something that was also calming and pleasant to look at."

The object is to drag colored dots of various sizes to matching colored rectangles around the perimeter of the screen. When dragging a dot you aren't allowed to bump into a dot or rectangle of a different color, or you will lose health or lives. There's more to it, of course, and the game becomes more challenging each level. The nice thing is that you can learn the rules pretty quickly by just playing it. My six-year-old caught on to the object of the game and its rules faster than I did.

DodgeDot works with the Jampaq Network (free, and accessible in the app), which gives players the ability to Follow and be Followed. Most importantly, it gives the game a new round each Sunday at midnight before Monday. All of the levels get new starting patterns (dot sizes, positions, and speeds), which really makes a huge difference in keeping the game fresh, and then we have new rankings for each Round," says Jim.

Now that my kids are in bed, I have it all to myself until morning.

DodgeDot | Follow on Twitter here

ruphus13 writes "Symbian announced over a year ago that they were going to Open Source their code, and the industry has been patiently waiting for that to happen. Well, it finally has. According to news on Wednesday, 'Symbian has released its platform microkernel and software development kit as open source under the Eclipse Public License. The Symbian Foundation claims that it is moving quickly toward an open source model, which is questionable, but the release of the EKA2 kernel is a signal that Symbian still means business about adopting an open source model. Accenture, ARM, Nokia and Texas Instruments contributed software to the microkernel, Symbian officials said.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Over the past several years, MySpace has lost a significant amount of the social networking market to competitors like Facebook. Now, MySpace is trying to recapture lost interest by increasing the site's focus on games and music, as well as keeping an eye out for new technologies that would directly benefit their users. "[News Corp.'s Jonathan Miller] said he is 'obsessed' with real-time technology, such as the one Twitter has exploited in its social networking and microblogging service, and he wants to see MySpace incorporate it. He also said MySpace is lagging by having a platform that has been 'too closed' to external developers, something that he wants to see changed, especially for the sake of MySpace's gaming offerings. In addition, he wants to see MySpace push ahead in mobile."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

DJLuc1d tips news that Chase Carey, president and COO of News Corp., has said that Hulu may begin charging for its streamed video content as early as next year. He said at a recent conference that the free-to-air model is not sustainable in the long-term. The Atlantic takes a look at several business models Hulu could employ and wonders how their current advertising system would be involved.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Reader Brad sent in a fascinating post from a little while back by Steve Streeting, a software developer who created an open source 3D rendering engine called OGRE. In the post, Streeting describes his evolving view on open source licenses. He basically points out that that open source licensing -- the kind that forces anyone who uses the code to open up and contribute back their code -- is actually creating an unnecessary restriction on developers as well, and it often doesn't make sense to have such restrictions. It's really quite a fascinating post, that brings up a number of issues I hadn't really thought about too much. For example, he points out that the restrictions aren't very helpful for code, because the best code contributions are from those who are contributing code willingly anyway -- so the restrictions are meaningless for them. Separately, he points out that the restrictions on licenses, such as the LGPL, simply are too complex and too restrictive for some developers, and the end result is fewer developers, which is the last thing you should want:

It was at this point that I realised that my previous opinions about permissive licenses not providing enough safeguards against exploitation for an open source project were off-base. In practice, open source projects don't really need protection, because their best contributors are going to be there regardless (yes, I realise the GPL provides more protection to end users who want to get at the source code, that's not what I'm considering here). 'Freeloaders' -- people who use or modify the open source project for their own ends but give no code or community contribution back -- are always going to exist; even under the GPL it's easy to freeload, if you make your money from hosting services for example, and thus license choice has little impact on the scale (if not the nature) of the freeloading. Besides the annoyance of 'that guy took my work and made some money out of it' -- which you have to accept as an inevitable outcome of going open source, so stick to making proprietary software if that bugs you -- freeloaders have little negative effect on an open source project, and actually their use can contribute positively to [publicity for the project]. The key is to recognise that in practice you can really just ignore freeloaders, and instead concentrate on maximising the positive contributors in your community.

So, if we acknowledge that the people whose contributions we actually want are those who contribute voluntarily, regardless of license, we quickly come to the conclusion that all that really matters is the size of the community. It's a fair assumption that for a given project there is a relatively stable percentage of users who will choose to contribute back (the percentage itself varies per project, but is fairly stable per project in my experience), therefore the easiest way to increase your contributors is to just increase your user base. Forget about trying to coerce people into being 'good' members of the community, just trust that the percentage will be there and will track your overall numbers.

One way in which to attract more users is to make the licensing simpler and more easier to understand. Programmers hate legalese, and a simple, clear license is bound to be more attractive than our LGPL (with static link exclusion), plus OUL option. It's for this reason that from OGRE 1.7 we're switching to the MIT License.

I find this fascinating on a number of different levels. The argument he's making -- within the open source world -- pretty much mirrors the arguments we make to copyright maximalists: that focusing so much on "freeloaders" is pointless, they're going to exist. Instead, focus on building your overall community, adding value, and setting up a model that works for those people. It's amazing to think that the excess restrictions in some open source licenses creates something of a parallel world, with parallel issues.

Once again, it all seems to come down to the same thing: restricting what others do is rarely a good strategy. Let people do what they want, and focus on providing the most value for the largest community that wants to be a part of what you're doing.

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Painter/sculptor Gregory Euclide starts his gorgeous diroamas by pouring blue resin onto the forest floor in Colorado. He then builds his lovely landscapes around that cast of nature. Euclide is showing his "Capture" series at Denver's David B. Smith Gallery until November 14. Video and more details after the jump.

From the show description posted at Hi-Fructose:

Euclide explores the difficulty of escaping the cultural lens from which we view nature. Images from traditional landscape paintings, wildlife documentaries and travel guides construct our cultural expectations and define how we view land. Euclide's work explores the conflicts between these images of idealized, picturesque views and the desire to truly experience nature as it is. The pieces in this exhibit contain a mixture of painted images shaped into sculptures with imagery drawn from memory, photo transfers based on traditional nature photography, abstract areas of raw paint, and actual artifacts such as pine needles and moss. The use of materials that are non-biodegradable, such as foam that has been weathered by nature, further emphasizes the invasiveness of the commercial world in which we live. It is this tension between the realistic and the representational, between the pristine and the changed, that makes the work so engaging. Pools of thick, blue liquid paint mimic the properties of the rivers and streams they are used to represent, calling into question the illusion of representational art. Similarly, the exaggerated folds of thick watercolor paper transform the flat, framed image of the traditional landscape into a dimensional topography with many points of view. The three-dimensional forms of these pieces-painted on both sides and containing hidden vignettes and small treasures-encourage the kind of exploration and excitement that might be found in experiencing nature rather than in viewing a traditional picture, further mixing and confusing the untouched and the idealized.

"Gregory Euclide literally Captures Nature" (Hi-Fructose)

Gregory Euclide online gallery (David B. Smith Gallery)

Elephant Toothpaste is the name of a classic chemistry experiment that's all about getting hydrogen peroxide to quickly break down into water and lots of oxygen. The result: Thick spirals of super-awesome foam.

There's lots of videos of this on the Internets, but I chose this one (despite the head-shakingly awkward co-host) because it demonstrates two versions of Elephant Toothpaste--one of which you can do at home with easily available materials. Fun!

As usual, if you've got a video you'd like to see on Saturday Morning Science Experiment, email me!

Thumbnail image courtesy Flickr user mauren veras, via CC.

If you're still looking for ideas for this (or next) year's Halloween display, check out HauntProject.com. They've done a great job of assembling cool Halloween projects from all over the web and have nearly 1,000 indexed and categorized as of this writing. Shown here are three of my faves so far. Above, a sweet crashed flying saucer prop by Scott Rossi. Below, a motorized monster-in-a-box by Bob and Cindy Stewart.

Finally there's this squishy-eyeball doorbell modification by Scott of Modd3d:

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

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Doug Lichtman's latest "IP Colloquium" podcast is on the question of whether or not "content can survive online." Specifically, it's a discussion about "online content business models." Oddly, though, rather than having business model experts, it's a conversation with four lawyers, starting with Doug, and including Brad Smith, General Counsel, Microsoft; Scott Martin, Executive Vice President, Intellectual Property, Paramount Pictures; and Dan Cooper, Vice President, Legal & Business Affairs, MySpace. Lichtman starts it off, oddly, by stating -- as if fact -- that talking about business models online is depressing because there's just not much in the way of business models online for content. I think that's damning things a bit early in the process -- something that comes up again later.

While I realize that the podcast is a legal podcast, it still strikes me as odd to bring together four lawyers to have them discuss business models, when their expertise is not in business at all, but in the law.

The podcast starts out with a discussion on the Google Book search and settlement, but oddly no one even seems to give any credit to the fair use question. But, again, since these are lawyers we're talking about, there really isn't much of a discussion on business models around Google Book Search, but on legal questions -- including a hope that Congress steps in to solve it. Amusingly, Microsoft's Smith early on suggests that it's a question Congress could solve "if the industry got behind it; if copyright holders got behind it." Striking, huh? He basically admits how copyright law works in this country. It's not about what's best for the overall society or economy. It's not about the politicians fixing things where they see a problem. It's not about consumers. It'll happen if the industry gets behind it. Welcome to the way things work in DC. The rest of this part of the discussion is interesting -- and it's one (rare) case where I mostly agree with Lichtman, that as a resource, Google's Book search is incredibly useful, and we should figure out some way for it to happen.

From there, the discussion moves on to other business models, and quickly seems to head off in directions that I don't think are accurate from a business model standpoint. It starts off with two premises set forth by Lichtman, each of which I think is suspect. First, he claims that piracy is a problem because "you can't compete with free." Frankly, I'm sick of this argument because it makes no sense economically or from a business standpoint. Economically, saying that you "can't compete with free" is the same thing as saying you can't compete -- period. It assumes, falsely, that the only way to compete is on price, but the history of the economy shows that's not true. You compete on price or you compete on benefits, and competing on price is often a losing battle anyway. Saying "you can't compete with free" just means you only know how to compete on price. If that's the case, you shouldn't be in business.

And, to make that point clear, tons of companies compete on benefits, and allow other companies to offer lower priced offerings. The popular example, of course, is "water," whereby it's free (or near free) to drink out of the tap, but the bottled water business is a multi-billion dollar business. Why? It tries to compete on other factors -- such as convenience, quality or safety (though, there are arguments that many of these benefits are perceived rather than real). But it's true in just about any other business as well. In the automobile business, a BMW costs more than an entry level Ford, and that's because BMW is seen to have a lot more scarce value. Ford could "copy" BMW, but BMW has its reputation and some amount of prestige that Ford simply can't copy.

Anyone who's in business recognizes that you don't just compete on price. So why is it that so many seem to assume that the only way to compete in the content market is on price?

Lichtman's second premise is that online business models don't work. He says that Hulu hasn't been a success because it doesn't make as much as TV, and that if Hulu displaces TV we "won't have the money to pay for" expensive TV show production. He claims that even if Hulu is really successful, it'll never make enough money to pay for the production of a show like Battlestar Galactica. First off, huh? How does he know that? If Hulu is successful, it absolutely could pay for such production. Already, we're seeing that some of the online ad rates are higher than TV ad rates. Hulu's barely been around for two years at this point. I'd be willing to bet that Hulu's revenue today greatly exceeds the revenue of television two years after it was invented. Give it time, Doug!

He then jumps on Redbox -- sarcastically saying "we're renting movies at a dollar per day?" Suggesting that this will never sustain the development of movies. Really? I always find it amusing when people insist that problems in the DVD market will mean the death of Hollywood. It really was just 25 years ago that Hollywood insisted that the VCR would kill the industry (Boston Strangler, anyone?). Now they finally get their "original" wish, and find that putting movies on recordable media is going away, and it's the worst thing in the world?

Either way, the economic fallacy that Doug seems to be relying on here is twofold. First, he assumes that early business model experiments are set in place and no further innovation will occur that allows them to flourish. He assumes that the markets won't grow, and some of these experiments won't click and get much bigger. Second, he seems to assume that the old revenue numbers for these industries need to be sustained. He doesn't consider that the old revenue numbers may have been a result of monopoly rents, limited competition or technological limits. Markets change all the time, and usually what comes out in the end is much better (subjective, I know, but I'm a believer that the world is a better place today than it was 25 years ago -- and that it will be even better 25 years from now).

But, of course, no one challenges him on this. Scott Martin at Paramount, of course, worries quite a bit about piracy of movies. While he admits (finally!) that he's just the lawyer, rather than the business guy, he discusses it in the terms of adding more windows to movie releases, rather than any discussion of adding more value to the product, or giving people reasons to buy beyond just the content. Then Martin repeats the myth that you can't compete with free, but leads in with a different myth -- claiming that the "copyleft" people say that piracy would go away if they just priced their movies better. That's a strawman argument. Perhaps someone out there made that argument, but it's hardly common. Then he says that "the idea that if we charged $2 a download instead of $10 a download, we'd get rid of piracy is a myth." Sure, it's a myth, but no one said that. You can't get rid of piracy. No one thinks you can get rid of piracy. No one suggested anything you do would "get rid of piracy." What many of us are suggesting is that you can build business models where that piracy isn't a problem. Even the people suggesting you just charge $2 instead of $10 aren't saying it would "get rid of piracy," but that at $2, enough people would pay for it that it would increase profits beyond what the $10 DRM'd version gets you.

Anyway, the discussion goes on from there, including a discussion of the DMCA that again doesn't make much sense to me, but the business/economic analysis throughout doesn't strike me as accurate at all. It's still an interesting discussion, but frustrating because I wish there were at least someone on the panel who would challenge a lot of the "accepted wisdom," put forth by everyone, that doesn't seem to be accurate. Brad Smith, at one point, does point out that this is all a "revenue" problem, and does a pretty good job describing the revenue problem... but then falls into the trap of saying the law needs to "fix the piracy problem" because without that, business models can't be built up.

The last analysis I'll talk about that is again faulty from an economics standpoint again comes from Scott Martin at Paramount, where he tries to defend the importance of DRM, noting that if he flies into JFK he has various price options on transportation: he can buy a car, rent a car, take a cab or take a train. So there are price differentials. He says that without DRM, content is like saying his only option is to buy a car. That is, if he had DRM, they could offer different "rental options" for content, with "one day pricing or one week pricing." But that's totally wrong again. There's a reason for the differential pricing in the transportation options: it's related to the marginal cost of each option and the competitiveness of the market. That's what sets the prices. But with content, the marginal costs are zero, so what he's doing is trying to set up an artificial barrier to pretend the markets are the same.

While I like listening to these discussions, I just find the economic fallacies frustrating.

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Boing Boing's Maggie Koerth-Baker writes:

Trouble is, they're being oversold, like whoa. For about two-and-a-half years, I've been reporting on LED lighting for a trade magazine called Architectural SSL*. During that time, I've watched mainstream press and enviro blogs tout LEDs as the green energy miracle light. Often, with a level of enthusiasm seldom seen outside rooms full of puppies. Don't get me wrong. LEDs are pretty cool. There are places where they're useful now, and places they probably will be soon. But if you're just hearing about the awesome, you aren't getting the full story. And, as more LED products start showing up on store shelves, that really starts to matter.

Join me, won't you, as we put on our Sober Assessment Goggles and take a peek at the current state of light bulb of the tomorrow...

LEDs: Throwing Some Light on the Hype

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Troy had heard the reputation that the 555 California Building's security guards had for hassling photographers, so he tried out the experiment of photographing (legally) the building, and was met by potty-mouth security guards who threatened to break his "fucking camera" and punch him in the face. A rep from property managers Voranado Realty later apologized and said that this wasn't "typical of our security team."

No photography, they stated clearly. Why, we responded. Safety, they said.

I decided to challenge this statement and the older of the bunch (left) asked me if I wanted to be punched in the face. No, I replied, I have to go back to work and a black eye would make things awkward for me. He then asked me how I would feel if he broke my camera. I told him I would be bummed, but that I needed an upgrade and if he touched me or my camera I would seek monetary legal action to the extent of a brand new Canon 5D Mark II.

Shortly after, my internal voice of reason set in and I decided to leave. The conversation was going no where and a definition of "safety" was unable to be produced.

One of the security guards did give me a phone number to call for more information, which I called this morning. Strangely, the number has nothing to do with BofA or 555 California, but in fact belongs to a woman in Chinatown who had no idea what I was talking about.

If you're in San Francisco and want to go by 555 this weekend to get a photo, do drop by the comments on this post to let us know whether this is "typical" or not.

"I Will Break Your Fucking Camera"

Huffington Post offers a selection of racist Halloween pet costumes. [via The Awl]

filesiteguy writes "Wired is reporting that the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation has announced the first release of Linux- and Ruby-based election management software. This software should compete in the same realm as Election Systems & Software, as well as Diebold/Premiere for use by County registrars. Mitch Kapor — founder of Lotus 1-2-3 — and Dean Logan, Registrar for Los Angeles County, and Debra Bowen, California Secretary of State, all took part in a formal announcement ceremony. The OSDV is working with multiple jurisdictions, activists, developers and other organizations to bring together 'the best and brightest in technology and policy' to create 'guidelines and specifications for high assurance digital voting services.' The announcement was made as part of the OSDV Trust the Vote project, where open source tools are to be used to create a certifiable and sustainable open source voting system."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This ad for Vodafone New Zeland is an impressive technical feat. They loaded up 1000 cell phones with ringtones for single instruments, and then built a system to send text messages to them in the correct order, to get them to perform a portion of Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture. Considering the amount of delay that I usually notice when sending messages, I was pretty surprised that they claim to have performed this over their regular cell network. [via gizmodo]

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Karl Bode, over at Broadband Reports, wrote up a great article a little while back about why Google Voice was more disruptive than anyone (especially the telcos) were willing to give it credit for being. The key underlying point: voice is just a form of data. Once you realize that, you realize that no one needs to be tied to any telco's own dialing system. Your mobile phone service provider really could just be a dumb pipe.

For years, I've always felt that the calls for "triple play" or "quadruple play" was incredibly misleading. All of the different "plays" (voice, video, data) were actually all just data. And when things are all just data, and its on an open network, then anyone can provide the services on top of that data. The telcos recognize this, somewhat -- which is why they've tried to block out others from offering certain telco services (it's why Google Voice was blocked on the iPhone), but it could be really game changing. Imagine if you could just buy a mobile phone that had no calling plan at all -- but it was all in the software? You could even use different dialers (with different numbers?) depending on what made the most sense or was cheapest.

The telcos hate thinking of themselves as dumb pipes, but there's something to be said for focusing on the pipes and making them as strong as possible, while letting everyone else innovate at the service level, and just selling good data plans. The more others innovate, the more valuable those data connections become.

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Paul Alan Levy writes in to let us know about how a New Jersey School Board is trying to get around the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which limits what information the government can get about online speakers, in order to find out the identity of some anonymous commenters on a series of newspaper stories about teachers in the district using questionable diploma mills to get "degrees" and qualify for higher salaries.

I contacted Marc Zitomer, the School Board’s lawyer, to get his explanation for the subpoena.

His explanation was that the Board, as a body corporate, has the authority to file suit against members of the public who defame or threaten its staff.  I rather doubt that a school board could file suit for defamatory words that are not "of and concerning" the school board – the of and concerning requirement, after all, is a constitutional requirement under New York Times v. Sullivan.  Moreover, Zitomer conceded that he could not identify any cases in New Jersey where a school board had filed such an action on behalf of its staff.  When I pressed him on these issues, Zitomer claimed that an additional reason for the subpoena was that the Board could take disciplinary action against any of the bloggers who were members of its staff.  But even assuming that the criticism is a proper basis for discipline consistent with the First Amendment, the Board cannot compel the identification of bloggers on that theory without putting forward an evidentiary basis for believing that the bloggers are employees.  It remains to be seen whether Zitomer will be able to do that.

Board member William Bruno has been quoted as justifying its subpoena on the theory that "If they have nothing to hide, what's the problem?"

You always know there's something bad going on when someone busts out the "nothing to hide" line. But, once again, this seems like attempts by thin-skinned officials who can't take the heat trying to expose anonymous commenters as an intimidation technique.

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As various newspapers continue to think about new business models, Adam points us to the news of a community newspaper in New Zealand that experimented with a special 3D issue, including various 3D images and (of course) special 3D glasses. The idea is to get people to spend more time looking at the newspaper. While it does seem like a neat gimmick, it doesn't seem like it is a sustainable idea on its own (they expect to do it again, but probably not for another year, due to the effort it takes). But, of course, no single gimmick needs to be sustainable by itself. It's neat to see publications recognizing that they at least should be trying out other things to add value that people will appreciate.

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Phil Clandillon has another maker-friendly music project.

Football Hero is basically an experiment to create a Guitar Hero type game played by footballers. The game was constructed in a warehouse in West London, and a talented young team of freestyle footballers were drafted in to participate. We created the game to promote the Kasabian single Underdog.

The game was powered by the open source GH clone Frets On Fire, and we used two enormous projectors to create a three story high image on the side of the warehouse wall. The coloured buttons on the typical guitar controller were replaced by five huge pressure sensitive pads which were carefully positioned on the wall in order to line up with the game's descending notes. The idea being that the footballers would try to hit the pads in time with the music in order to play the Kasabian track Underdog. Each of the pads contained a piezoelectric vibration sensor, and these were wired back to an Arduino, which in turn was connected to the MacBook Pro we used to run the software.

Phil's projects have a habit of bringing together some very talented people, and these footballers are no exception.

Paul Wood (Woody - the guy in red) was one of five guys that in 2006/7 travelled to New York with the aim of making it all the way to Buenos Aires to meet their hero, Diego Maradona. The five lads bought their flights to NY by busking around the UK. They arrived penniless in the states and raised all the money they needed by performing street football & freestyle all over the USA, Central and South America. Their trip was filmed and released as the documentary In The Hands Of Gods. Paul has since set up a freestyle academy and a junior soccer school here in the UK.

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From now until midnight Sunday, you can pick up our Maker's Notebook or MAKE: Halloween Special Edition at a special discount. How much? How's 50% off! Pick up one, or both, and start planning your Halloween inspired projects.

Our Halloween Special Edition brings you 40-plus DIY projects for the holiday that's made for makers. From the craftiest costumes to amazing animated props and the latest in computer-controlled haunted house effects.

Don't forget to check out the official Maker's Notebook page for more information, modifications, and reviews.

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