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Boing Boing
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Living on the Edge: Danny O'Brien's talk about moving our personal info off Web 2.0 and onto our computers
Here's some (way shakycam) video of Danny O'Brien's OpenTech presentation, "Living on the Edge," an extremely provocative and interesting talk about how we might restructure the Internet so that our personal and important moments aren't hosted by YouTube, Flickr, and Blogger, but rather on our own machines. Link, Link to slides...
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Post-apocalyptic bookmobile PSAs from Mississippi
Matt sez, "When I was in fifth grade, Mississippi Public Broadcasting decided to introduce a series of short films to educate children on how to use the library. For some godforsaken reason, the people at MPB decided that the best way to do this would be through a post-apocalyptic science fiction serial with children roaming the blasted earth in a… bookmobile… like a cross between 'Reading Rainbow' and 'Damnation Alley.' Confused? So was I. I loved the library and post-apocalyptic movies and television programs, and even I was completely nonplussed. Apparently someone has uploaded the entire run onto YouTube. The music still gives me the creeps!" Link (Thanks, Matt...
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Cameraheads in Seattle protest CCTVs in public places
The Camerahead Project is a Seattle protest group upset about the growing prevalence of CCTV cameras there -- they're staging a bit of theater tomorrow in Cal Anderson Park, walking around with giant cameras on their heads to get people thinking about what it means to have their public spaces under constant surveillance. Local artist Paul Strong, Jr. says he’s holding the demonstration, called the Camerahead Project, to remind people that video surveillance cameras are recording their every move at Cal Anderson Park and three other parks around town. “The project not only raises the questions of who is watching who and who is watching the watchers, but also … why we are being watched at all,” he says. “There is so much going on in the news about wiretapping and data mining, all these little thing that happen locally go right by.” I met Paul at one of my signings in Seattle for Little Brother and loved his camerahead outfit -- he says it was inspired by Pablo Defendini's Little Brother poster. Link...
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Yahoo Music shutting down its DRM server, customers lose all their paid-for music the next time they crash or upgrade
Yahoo Music just announced that it's pulling the plug on its DRM server -- that means that as of September 30, everyone who bought Yahoo Music will lose the ability to recover it from backup or transfer it to a new PC. Like I said when MSN Music proposed to do the same thing: "All those years the music industry spent insisting that the only way they'd sell music is with crippling DRM attached managed to totally discredit the idea of buying music at all." Once the Yahoo store goes down and the key servers go offline, existing tracks cannot be authorized to play on new computers. Instead, Yahoo recommends the old, lame, and lossy workaround of burning the files to CD, then reripping them onto the computer. Sure, you'll lose a bunch of blank CDs, sound quality, and all the metadata, but that's a small price to pay for the privilege of being able to listen to that music you lawfully acquired. Good thing you didn't download it illegally or just buy it on CD! No, you were one of the digital pioneers, and in this brave new frontier world, a few people are just going to get malaria. Fact of life. And someone will step in a bear trap, and then it's time for the bite rag, the alcohol, and the saw. Just the price of progress. And yes, some poor group will get trapped in snowfall when crossing the pass, and cannibalism may or may not be involved by the time they stumble barefoot from the mountains next spring. No one can prevent such tragedies. DRM still sucks: Yahoo Music going dark, taking keys with it (Thanks, Denver Jewelry Guy!)...
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Call for steampunk designs to be lasered into moleskines
Modofly -- who laser-etch designs into moleskine covers -- are hosting a contest for new designs for the next batch -- one of the themes is steampunk: Get your steampens and steambrushes (maybe steampunked computer?) ready artists! We are looking for steampunk art in a BAD way. We are really excited about this. We already have some of the hottest steampunk artists working with us, but maybe we don’t know about you, we have been trying to get you, or maybe this will be your first steampunk attempt. We are looking for artwork with airships, gears, steam engines, steampunk fashion, anything fun and retro-futuristic (we aren’t going to get too picky as long as its super cool). We can’t wait to unveil these books and showcase the artists, so make sure you have a shot at the action and send your stuff in today! Link See also: Dan Hillier's tentacle horrors -- now on moleskine notebooks!...
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Science
