I guess most of the people reading this will have seen some of the multi-touch demos by Jeff Han, Apple and Tactiva. I wanted to play around with some ideas that required a multi-touch pad, but there aren’t any devices available (Tactiva aren’t shipping…)

Long story short, I made a simple one from a plastic bag, some dye and a camera

Link: Medallia Blog: dyeSight $2 Multi-Touch Pad Archives

The movement encourages volunteerism in young people. It was created to effect social change and act as a bridge between communities in need and the young people who want to make them better. Every volunteer who gives 4 hours of service, receives a ticket to a concert featuring the hottest artists today. Boost Mobile RockCorps introduces youth to service opportunities in their own neighborhood starting them on a lifelong commitment to civic engagement and service.

Link: ABOUT BMRC

In hip hop culture, the term grill refers to a cosmetic dental apparatus worn over the teeth. Grills are made of metal (often silver, gold, or platinum) and are sometimes inlaid with precious stones (traditionally princess-cut diamonds). Grills can cost anywhere from $50 to several thousand dollars, depending on the materials used and the number of teeth covered. Grills can be purchased online or at specialty shops. […]

According to the American Dental Association in June 2006, no studies have shown whether the long-term wearing of grills is safe. Grills made from base metals could cause irritation or allergic reactions. Additionally, school districts in Alabama, Georgia, and Texas have banned grills.

Link: Grill (jewelry) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Trixie Tracker is a hosted web application based on the collection of charts, graphs and data first seen on the Trixie Update in the fall of 2003. I created the software to help me take better care of my new daughter. […] It’s a full featured application that allows new parents to create detailed records and custom charts of Sleep, Diapers, Bottles, Solids, Nursing, Pumping and Medicine. […]

Keeping track of your child’s diapers can help you relax when it comes to diaper management. Here’s what you can do with Diaper Telemetry:

• Keep a general record of diaper changes
• Know how long it’s been since the last poopy diaper
• Keep track of leaks and accidents
• Estimate diaper usage so you’ll know when it’s time to buy more

Link: Trixie Tracker Tour

To ghost ride, frequently used in the context of “ghost riding the whip” (a “whip” being a vehicle) or simply ghostin’, is when a person puts the car in neutral or allows it to idle and then the driver (and passengers) of a vehicle exit while it is still rolling and dance beside it or on the hood or roof.

Ghost riding is one of the latest trends to be popularized by hyphy culture, which originated in the Bay Area of California. The act is one of the highest forms of “going dumb” and a representation of the style of hyphy.

Link: Ghost ride - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gestern erfahren: Deutschland ist wohl der größte Markt für kaufbare Downloadmusik, vor USA, UK und Japan. Selbst wenn man den iTunes Store mitrechnet.

ka obs stimmt.

Kirk Cameron extrapolates a recent Dilbert cartoon:

Since starting to work on the Identity Metasystem I’ve learned more and more about the hoists being pulled off in the context of virtual reality.  Over time, we have seen the attacks become more professionalized, and ultimately linked to well organized international syndicates.  Part of the basic equation is that the international nature of virtual reality makes it especially hard to deal with the type of organization that is emerging at the boundary of its interface with the brick and mortar world.

Link: Kim Cameron’s Identity Weblog — The virtualization of crime

Prompted by the recent Facebook uproar, Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 believes most users of social networking applications have yet to realize what kind of new world they’re entering:

It’s one thing for people to share their personal information in public when it’s only their friends stopping by to see what’s up, but when they wake up to the fact that technology can enable this information to be tracked and syndicated across the network — suddenly everyone starts to feel pretty naked. And granted this is just a matter of perceptions — information on Facebook is no more publicly accessible than it was before, but suddenly everyone is casting around for a fig leaf.

Link: Publishing 2.0 — This Is What the Social Networking Privacy Backlash Looks Like

This is amazing: The president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has started a blog. Apparently the posts are translated into English, maybe even other languages as well. You can imagine the huge interest this has spawned all over the wired part of the world — which means that sadly, the site is down due to high traffic, so I can’t say anything about its contents besides the second-hand commentary of others.

It’s not clear to me whether he will be writing the posts himself, but it’s probably safe to assume that this site is being used to spread a political message, not for chitchat about his cat, which means he probably employs writers to flesh out his ideas.

It’s also interesting to see the early reactions — the major consensus seems to be a mixture between joy (”The blogosphere now has a bona-fide head of state as one of its members”) and extreme scepticism (”It’s also multilingual, so even us western dogs can read the thoughts of this modern day Hitler.”)

Also note that Iran (alledgedly) is one of the nations that makes frequent use of Internet filtering technologies to limit access to dissident communication channels. Interesting find on Wikipedia:

All media in Iran is controlled directly or indirectly by the state, and must be approved by the Ministry of Islamic Guidance before it can be released to the public. The state also actively monitors the Internet, which has become enormously popular among the Iranian youth. Iran is now the world’s fourth largest country of bloggers.

Sounds intriguing — on one hand a country of highly monitored media, on the other hand a hugely successful adaptation of what we in the west perceive a liberating technology for free, uncensored, public discussion.

Link: ahmadinejad.ir
Link: TailRank discussion

From the eBay page:

Hi there, my name is Ron Steen. I am selling 2% of my future earnings for a chance to go to college. I am offering up 2% of every dollar I make for the rest of my working life for a starting bid of $100,000. I am starting Cal State University of Fullerton on August 21st, 2006 and I want to pay for college and its expenses by myself. In exchange for money to go to college I will send you 2% of whatever my income is annually in the form of a check once a year. This also means if I win the lottery you will get 2%, any income is your income (but I don‘t play the lottery so don‘t count on that one) The papers will be drawn up by my lawyer and you are more than welcome to look them over.

Link: eBay: 2 % of Ron Steen’s Future Earnings For College Money

I found this via reddit, then looked for blog quotes via technorati — not many people writing about this yet, let’s see how it develops.

Link: technorati search for the eBay article URL

Update: LazyMotivation.com publishes an insightful analysis of the auction, including a judgement of the value of this investment, and a list of false claims made by the auctioneer which makes this sound rather fishy. And: eBay took the auction down.

Link: LazyMotivation.com: Ron Steen lied about his SAT scores!

The “no boundaries”-nature of online communication acts as a liberator of public opinion and personal expression — but the world this creates should not be mistaken for a better democracy.

Tom Coates on GIYUS.org, a recent example of highly organized broadcast lobbying:

I’ve come to think of it as a really troubling kind of troll-supporting political malware, representing a technologically-empowered massively-distributed form of propoganda that I’ve never seen before. The site’s full name is Give Israel Your United Support and it works like this - individuals download a tool (the Megaphone Desktop Tool) which then alerts people to new articles and polls around the web that question Israel’s policies in the Middle East or ask for public opinion about them. The people concerned are then supposed to visit the site directly and respond to the poll or story or write an e-mail or whatever. […]

The reason for this activity? Stated at the top of the page, “Today’s conflicts are won by public opinion. Now is the time to be active and voice Israel’s side to the world.” The software is designed to do two things - firstly to make it clear that there’s a large active pro-Israel population in the world, but also it’s there to make sure that the pro-Israel point of view is over-represented in the popular media.

Link: On Massively Multiplayer Propaganda… (plasticbag.org)

We gradually need new terms to describe capitalism: the term “Monopoly money” is about to change its meaning. From paper to the virtual.

Monopoly board game players can now pay for properties with debit cards. Game makers Parker have phased out the standard multi-coloured cash in a new version. Players will instead use a Visa mock debit card to keep track of how much they win or lose. It is inserted into an electronic machine where the banker taps in cardholders’ earnings and payments. Parker said replacing of cash with plastic showed the game was moving with the times.

Link: Sky News: Monopoly Takes A Chance On Plastic

Washington Post:

The US Senate has ratified a treaty under which the United States will join more than 40 other countries, mainly from Europe, in fighting crimes committed via the Internet.

The Council of Europe’s Convention on Cybercrime, ratified late Thursday, is the first international treaty seeking to address Internet crimes by harmonizing national laws, improving investigative techniques and increasing cooperation among nations.

Link: Senate Ratifies Cybercrime Treaty

Ars Technica:

According to the EFF, “The treaty requires that the U.S. government help enforce other countries’ ‘cybercrime’ laws—even if the act being prosecuted is not illegal in the United States. That means that countries that have laws limiting free speech on the Net could oblige the F.B.I. to uncover the identities of anonymous U.S. critics, or monitor their communications on behalf of foreign governments. American ISPs would be obliged to obey other jurisdictions’ requests to log their users’ behavior without due process, or compensation.”

Link: “World’s Worst Internet Law” ratified by Senate

Yesterday on Ask Slashdot:

“For a while now my neighborhood has had to deal with an elderly neighbor who has displayed a slightly paranoid attitude towards myself and the fellow younger-adults of the neighborhood, believing us to be attempting to harass him in our day-to-day activities. Recently, he installed a Mosquito ultrasonic noise device as an apparent attempt to ‘get back at us’ for our harassment.

As the Mosquito emits a sound that’s well out of his hearing range, he can’t hear it, while most of the rest of the neighborhood is under 40 and can; at which point it’s causing everyone a great deal of discomfort. Unfortunately, because the police also can’t hear it, we can’t get the authorities to do anything about it, leaving us empty-handed in our attempts at getting some peace and quiet back.

What can we do to either help the police realize how disturbing this device is, or counteract it so that it’s no longer disturbing us? And is this the first of what may be a growing trend of civilians using high-tech discomfort weapons as a method of neighborhood warfare?”

Link: Slashdot | Combating Harassing Use of Mosquito Noise Device?

The LA Times informs us of a new oceanic phenomenon: a massive die-off of many highly adapted species.

In many places — the atolls of the Pacific, the shrimp beds of the Eastern Seaboard, the fiords of Norway — some of the most advanced forms of ocean life are struggling to survive while the most primitive are thriving and spreading. Fish, corals and marine mammals are dying while algae, bacteria and jellyfish are growing unchecked. Where this pattern is most pronounced, scientists evoke a scenario of evolution running in reverse, returning to the primeval seas of hundreds of millions of years ago.

Jeremy B.C. Jackson, a marine ecologist and paleontologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, says we are witnessing “the rise of slime.” […]

Jackson uses a homespun analogy to illustrate what is happening. The world’s 6 billion inhabitants, he says, have failed to follow a homeowner’s rule of thumb: Be careful what you dump in the swimming pool, and make sure the filter is working.

“We’re pushing the oceans back to the dawn of evolution,” Jackson said, “a half-billion years ago when the oceans were ruled by jellyfish and bacteria.”

Link: A Primeval Tide of Toxins - Los Angeles Times

CNN famously made its mark during the first Gulf War, as its 24-hour, on-the-spot reporting brought that conflict into people’s homes in a way never done before, marking a revolution in TV news. A story in today’s Washington Post suggests that the current Lebanon war may mark another revolution in how people get information However, this time the change isn’t coming from a news organization, but from videos posted by countless individuals on youtube.com

Link: The Technology Liberation Front: YouTube: The New CNN?

Motorola recently released the MOTOFONE and it seems to be the perfect “just a phone.” Motorola really took usability into consideration when designing the phone. It features a high-contrast screen viewable in a variety of lighting conditions, a cleaned up UI with icon-based navigation and a loud speaker.

Link: Motorola Listened, Made “Just a Phone” - PaulStamatiou.com

Friendster said Thursday that it has received a patent that covers online social networks, one the company had applied for long before its decline and recent recapitalization.

The U.S. patent, which was awarded June 27, is extremely general, and would seem to cover the activities of many other sites, especially those like LinkedIn that allow people to connect within a certain number of degrees of separation.

Naming Friendster founder Jonathan Abrams, who has left the company, as inventor, the patent refers to a “system, method, and apparatus for connecting users in an online computer system based on their relationships within social networks.”

Link: RED HERRING | Friendster Wins Patent

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Some of the country’s most notorious street gangs have gotten Web-savvy, showcasing illegal exploits, making threats, and honoring killed and jailed members on digital turf.

Crips, Bloods, MS-13, 18th Street and others have staked claims on various corners of cyberspace. “Web bangers” are posting potentially incriminating photos of members holding guns, messages taunting other gangs and boasts of illegal exploits on personal Web sites and social networking sites.

“I’m just being real and I ain’t got nothing to hide,” said Kristopher “Kasper” Flowers, 30, a professed member of the 18th Street gang with facial tattoos of “18″ and “666.” The main 18th Street gang Web site has a link to “Kaspers World.”

Gangs once only roamed the streets of big cities but now can be found in 2,500 U.S. communities, according to the FBI. Police departments suddenly faced with the unwelcome arrivals are looking for help anywhere they can get it, including the gangs’ own easy-to-find Web sites.

George W. Knox, director of the National Gang Crime Research Center, said he has trained hundreds of police officials in how to cull intelligence on gang membership, rivalries, territory and lingo from these Web pages.

Link: Excite News - Gangs Use Internet to Showcase Exploits

Just to give an unrelated update to my earlier Places of Technology-Enhanced Social Encounters article, these are among the things I’ve seen people doing at same café:

• Cutting out and glueing together an art portfolio from exhibition photographs (amazing art btw)
• Writing a grant proposal in the field of experimental modern dance choreography (topic: attention and chrystal meth)
• Screening and cutting digital video with a digicam and a PowerBook
• Writing a diploma thesis on music software in an artificial intelligence context
• Job interviews (several)
• Magazine interviews (at least once)
• Cutting a finished piece of electronic music (”Das wird wahrscheinlich ne Maxi”).
• …

And, of course, lots of people working on websites and doing other work-related stuff they’ve been doing at cafés for centuries. Like, say, homework.

(Another thing I noticed: There’s a 50% laptop ratio among visitors at most times, but that doesn’t mean that people stop chatting with strangers. Maybe even to the contrary.)

Insiders say that Apple want to deliver a new digital home solution by 2008. But they don’t want it to be PC based. What they are trying to work out is how the device will handle both entertainment and automation applications. Steve Jobs is in the thick of it with some saying that the solution being worked on could be one of the best products Apple has ever delivered to market.

Didn’t actually read the article, but thought we could start reprinting some rumors.

And in any event: it’s time someone finally makes the Digital Home happen. They’ve been promising it for 15 years, and my refridgerator still doesn’t talk or shop.

Link: Smarthouse

Dig this: Isobella Jade is 5′2″ [158cm] struggling model who recently wrote a memoir about her life experiences — entirely on the computers at a Manhattan Apple store. Apparently Jade has been homeless, so she doesn’t have a place to own or store a computer.

The amazing part of the story, though, is neither the fact that the model is so tiny, or that she is homeless, or that she has been writing her memoirs in an Apple store, or that she used to be an amateur nude model while in college — but how she manages to use these weird facts as marketing tools. The result may not be that someone will publish her memoirs, but I’m sure it’s now easier for her to get into parties and get other free stuff. Nice one.

Link: collision detection, FishbowlNY, FishbowlNY Interview

As part of his online diary “My Boring Ass Life“, director Kevin Smith reproduces a recent New York Times article on his persona and the upcoming Clerks 2 movie. The article touches briefly on the various means of ‘marketing’ Smith employed to promote the movie:

He has been cultivating fans on the Web for years, using his production company’s site and his own online diary. In an ingenious new ploy, he has recorded a commentary for “Clerks II” that will be available for free download on iTunes, encouraging viewers to take their iPods to the theater for a second viewing. (Eventually the commentary will also be available on the official movie site, clerks2.com.)

Kevin Smith also employed the Web’s new fondness for video clips to great effect; cf. the large amount of Clerks 2 clips on YouTube.

Link: My Boring Ass Life » Where the Fart Have I Been?!

The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Dept. has been working for several years with a defense contractor, Ocatron, to develop a specialized UAV [Unmanned Aerial Vehicle] for police work. Last week they gave reporters a demo. […]

“The plane is virtually silent and invisible,” said Heal. “It will give us a vertical perspective that we have never had.” […]

I think he’s completely correct and UAVs will probably become standard, even ubiquitous pieces of equipment for police.

Link: Lemonodor: Los Angeles Sheriff’s UAV Runs Headfirst Into the FAA

Meebo has noticed a sharp decline in instant message traffic during World Cup games involving England or Brazil. The world pauses to watch the game before returning to their computers for instant analysis.

At times like these it must be fun to be a popular service provider. Just imagine what their logfiles could tell us about their customers.

Link: PodSession: Instant Messaging