links for 2008-12-22

• | The Public Domain |
  James Boyle introduces readers to the idea of the public domain and describes how it is being tragically eroded by our current copyright, patent, and trademark laws. In a series of fascinating case studies, Boyle explains why gene sequences, basic business ideas and pairs of musical notes are now owned, why jazz might be illegal if it were invented today, why most of 20th century culture is legally unavailable to us, and why today’s policies would probably have smothered the World Wide Web at its inception.
  (tags: opensource creativecommons copyright)
• Prof tries to dial down greenhouse emissions from cellphone use
  A report by the Global e-Sustainability Initiative says the power it takes to send and receive signals from cellphones and other wireless electronics creates the same amount of carbon dioxide per year as that generated by the aviation industry. According the report, 830 million tonnes of carbon dioxide is generated worldwide each year to keep communications towers buzzing.
  (tags: technology mobile sustainability)
• The Internet Tidal Wave
  Bill Gates wrote a paper titled The Internet Tidal Wave in 1995. It’s a concept that’s been used quite extensively since then. This was the document used as prove of the real concern od Bill Gates about Netscape's browser (Navigator) on the Anti-trust process at the and of the Browser War I.
  (tags: internet software)
• ViOS – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  ViOS (Visual Internet Operating System) was a client-server software system designed by Julian Lombardi in the mid-1990s and built by a team he led at ViOS Inc. from 1999-2001 as a way of spatially organizing all Internet-deliverable resources (including web pages) into a massively-scaled multiuser 3D environment with users of the system represented as customizable avatars. The basic concept behind the "ViOS 3D Internet Viewer" was to take the virtual world of the entire Internet and adapt it to a physical representation of large virtual landscape, complete with mountains, rivers and cities. This approach was taken because of the belief that virtual landscapes resembling our physical world are more conducive to exploration and social interaction than the flat and abstracted world of the current document-based Internet.
  (tags: internet virtualworlds metaverse 3d interface)
• One in five teens engaged in 'tech sex' – web – Technology – smh.com.au
  One in five US teens has sent nude or partially-clothed images of themselves to someone by email or mobile phone and twice as many have sent sexually suggestive electronic messages, a survey shows.
  (tags: onlinesafety technology teens)
• Export your Tumblr blog to WordPress « Web 0.2 – Hao Chen
  Fresh off the press, just finished coding a tool to that will export all the posts in your Tumblr blog into an XML file. You can then import that XML file into your WordPress.com blog or self-hosted WordPress blog.
  (tags: tools wordpress)

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights infographic movie

In (belated) honour of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights here is the document presented as an infographic movie (with a political message about Aung San Suu Kyi at the end):

via: information aesthetics

It’s important to bring the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into the forefront of our awareness from time to time, as the fight to bring human rights to all is still an ongoing process.

links for 2008-12-16

• KickYouTube – Download YouTube Videos
  KickYouTube serves up an elegantly simple solution: simply go to the YouTube video you’d like to download and insert the word “kick” at the start of the URL. The final url would look something like http://kickyoutube.com/watch?v=39pZ1r3MG2Q, and options to download the clip are provided at the top of the page.
  (tags: video webtools web2.0)
• Real Life will Trump Second Life, Microsoft Says – PC World
  Microsoft's Craig Mundie has dismissed the potential of "synthetic virtual worlds" like Second Life, saying that the potential for immersive environments will be likely realized through 3D tools that capture and model the real world.
  (tags: secondlife virtualworlds metaverse augmentedreality mirrorworlds)
• Hillary Clinton and the Action Bias
  The action bias, or the desire to do something rather than nothing when you have just been through a terrible experience, plays a powerful role in our lives. It influences individuals and companies, investors and leaders. You can see the action bias on display in current thinking on the housing and economic crises, in the bitter debates over the war in Iraq — even in discussions about how to fix a football team that's a perennial loser.
  (tags: psychology economics)
• Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman (pdf)
  The waning days of the 20th century seemed like an Orwellian nightmare: laws preventing publication of scientific research on software; laws preventing sharing software; an overabundance of software patents preventing development; and enduser license agreements that strip the user of all freedoms—including ownership, privacy, sharing, and understanding how their software works. This collection of essays and speeches by Richard M. Stallman addresses many of these issues.
  (tags: software philosophy foss)
• Exploring Second Life with Viwogeo
  Use ViWoGeo to find places of interest that exist in the real world as well as out in the digital metaverse. At current the database contains links to Second Life.
  (tags: secondlife virtualworlds metaverse 3d maps mashup mixedreality)
• Foreclosure Alley – SoCal Connected
  SoCal Connected tracked down some surreal sights associated with the crisis – a company that specializes in removing whatever people leave behind in their foreclosed homes. The process is called a “trashout” – a term the company came up with because it perfectly describes what happens. Everything that’s left is dumped in a trailer and taken to the landfill.
  (tags: trends economics video)

Yongfook – The Blog is Dead! (sorta)

The Blog is Dead! – SlideShare

To watch a video of Yongfook’s presentation you will have to go to: Ustream.TV: Yongfook talks about the move from blogging to lifestreaming and his Sweetcron, as I can’t embed ustream.tv videos here on WordPress.com (sigh).

You can read more on his blog post: The Blog is Dead! › Yongfook – Web Producer

I agree with what Yongfook is saying in this presentation – that people are using blogs less and other online services more.

I’ve come to realise that this situation suits me fine. I’m not much of a blogger, but I like capturing, sharing and somtimes commenting on what I find on the Web. I prefer to keep my blog for longer reflections.

You may have noticed that I have been a lot more active on the web of late. I’ve been Twittering more, I’ve been saving my bookmarks to delicious.com again and I’ve started a tumblelog at tumblr.com (which posts to Twitter via twitterfeed, via my identi.ca account). I’m currently streamlining my workflow so I can easily capture and share everything I come across on the Web that I find interesting or potentialy useful.

Eventually I’m going to move away from hosted Web 2.0 services (more about why I’m doing that later). I’m currently setting-up my own self-hosted online tools, using free and open software wherever possible. As part of this process I will be experimenting with Yongfook’s lifestreaming software, Sweetcron.

As an aside, I agree with Yongfook when he says WordPress is bloated. It’s become overly complicated and slow to use (on WordPress.com, at least). It’s suffering from featuritis (they’ve even added an RSS reader called “Readomattic” – only for WordPress.com blogs!) It makes a great Content Management System, but is not so good for quick and easy posting. It seems to be trying to be everything to everybody.

This is why I like microblogging with Twitter and, more recently, tumblelogging with tumblr – they are so much easier to use.

links for 2008-12-14

• Soon it will be time to start over, again (Scripting News)
  We're now reaching the end of a cycle, we're seeing feature wars. That's what's going on between Facebook and Google, both perfectly timing the rollouts of their developer proposition to coincide with the others' — on the very same day! I don't even have to look at them and I am sure that they're too complicated. Because I've been around this loop so many times. The solution to the problem these guys are supposedly working on won't come in this generation, it can only come when people start over. They are too mired in the complexities of the past to solve this one. Both companies are getting ready to shrink. It's the last gasp of this generation of technology.
  (tags: technology trends web)