unmediated

MøB is an environment for installations and realtime multimedia manipulation in GNU/Linux-based networks.

EffecTV is a real-time video effector. You can watch TV or video through amazing effectors

Drone is an open source software for digital and interactive arts. It allows the design of realtime signal processing machines for video and audio through a generic data flow interface.

Fluxus allows you to write Scheme scripts that create graphics live, interpreting audio and OSC input as a source of animation data. Fluxus also uses a fully featured physics library, which means you can script physical properties into objects and simulate them in realtime. Released for Linux under the GPL licence.

The built in scheme code editor runs on top of the renderer (see screenshots), which means you can edit the scripts while they are running. This allows Fluxus to be used for livecoding performances, or simply as a fast feedback way of experimenting or learning about graphics and animation.

From journalist Richard Ehrlich:

BANGKOK, Thailand -- US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have posted on the Internet "several hundred" photographs of mutilated corpses from "the real war," in exchange for free online pornography...

"This is an uncensored view of the conflict going on in Iraq and Afghanistan," 27-year-old Christopher Wilson, owner of nowthatsfuckedup.com, said in an e-mail interview. "These pictures are taken directly from the cameras of the soldiers and uploaded to my site.

The website in question - nowthatsfuckedup.com - remains online, where nestled between "Amateur Wives and Girlfriends" and the "Foot Fetish Forum" are some of the most disturbing images of the war imaginable. All of them appear to have indeed come from soldiers' digital cameras, and come complete with bloodthirsty comments from the troops. It only took me a few clicks before I had to stop (too queezy), but you should read Ehrlich's full story (below the fold).

As mobile phones become digital do-it-alls, handsets need better protection from hackers and from unauthorized access when they're lost or stolen, says an industry group proposing new, hardware-based security standards for the devices. [via News.com].

"Trusted Computing Groupplans to unveil its plan Tuesday at a conference sponsored by the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association."

In addition to voice calls, cell phones are increasingly used for taking pictures, keeping a calendar and sending text messages and e-mail. In the future they could replace wallets, say industry pundits, with consumers whipping out a specially equipped phone instead of a credit card to pay for a purchase. That would make securing the gadgets even more important.

The proposed standard doesn't just protect user data. The security hardware also enables copyright protection, according to the TCG, a feature demanded by the entertainment industry. This so-called digital rights management technology could mean access to more exclusive content on cell phones, but it could also limit the content that will play on devices..

via Boing Boing,

Danny O'Brien reviews ingenious ways the MPAA and RIAA might try to sneak provisions through Congress that would put copy-protection on media devices.

The rise of corporately owned malls... private CCTV security systems... radical demographic and cultural diversity... The dominant urban story of the past 20 years has been of creeping privatisation and social fragmentation resulting in the loss of space for shared experiences between people.

The challenge now is to find a new story that reconnects public, private and civic spaces alike, and can provide the impetus for growing the shared life of our towns and cities. This agenda applies as much to an out-of-town shopping centre as it does to a neighbourhood park.

in-depth studies of three British towns and cities the Demos study People Make Places explores how the best public spaces are created by people and communities themselves. The book sets out the forms of governance, design principles and everyday uses that can help boost people’s participation in public space and the wider public life of their town or city.

by Oliver Starr

A few weeks ago I authored a regarding something I call "Flash MobSharing". In essense this would be a relatively low tech, ad-hoc peer to peer application enabled via a near field technology like Ultra Wide Band or Bluetooth. The low tech component relates primarily to the fact that in order to circumvent the restrictions and possible legal consequences of sharing copyrighted or protected content, users have no automated means of discerning who has a particular desirable file and must basically "wait and pray" that someone eventually announces a "Flash MobShare" that includes such a file. The advantage to this method is of course the very thing that makes it low tech and somewhat inconvenient....it is purely spontaneous and as such should, if young people embrace this concept, strike fear into the hearts of any media executive concerned with digital rights management; you can't police or prosecute a phenomenon that can't easily be traced and which takes places and vanishes almost as quickly as it is announced. Whether "Flash MobSharing" takes off or not, the interest in locating and sharing various forms of stored content on other people's moblie devices in the same way that peer to peer file sharing does on PC's is a virtual certainty. As more and more mobile content and better support for data oriented applications allow for a richer mobile multimedia experience, the "that's cool, I want it" phenomenon is simply inevitable. In fact, it is testimony to the built in difficulty associated with doing so today. I can't believe that young people don't want to swap the expensive ring tones that have become one of the most lucrative data applications to date for mobile devices. With that in mind mophone (yes, that is supposed to be all lower-case) has just announced both a new application suite designed to support sharing of legally-shared content including ringbones, images, games and other types of files. What I'm wondering is if this clever leveraging of premium content will be the catalyst for opening a "Pandora's Box" of peer to peer via mobile - and more of the unregulated variety. I don't think that people will be content for the limited content that will be available via a model like this, but once they're awakened to what's possible, clever developers will extend the functionality to parallel that of the PC....that is any file that any one puts in a shared folder is going to become fair game. While I do not endorse flagrant disregard for copyright protection (and have lots tens of thousands personally when people have stolen and reused for their own means many of my works for hire in the nutrition and biotech spaces), I nevertheless am opposed to "walled gardens" or anything that acts as an artificial restriction that limits any legal use of which a device is capable. One thing is for sure; this cat is getting out of the bag and I don't think it's going to go back in. To see the official announcement by mophone, check the extended entry. Here's the press release circulated prior the mophone's debut at CTIA:

Designed by wireless usability experts, mophone lets members easily find and legally share virtually any flavor of content (photos, ring tones, wallpapers, messages, games, etc.) within dynamic mobile communities. mophone easily and seamlessly extends popular online social networking experiences -- photo sharing, blogging, music, gaming, sharing, and more -- to the mobile environment, all from a single destination. mophone members will enjoy premium, branded content from companies such as Airborne Entertainment and Indiagames, while one-of-a-kind content from independent artists will be available through Wireless Development Agency and "Emily the Strange" creator Cosmic Debris, among others. Additional content and distribution agreements are expected to be finalized before the commercial launch of mophone later this year. "mophone offers content providers an alternative, peer-driven distribution vehicle to complement their existing channels and drive incremental content sales," said Bill Bryant, CEO of Mobile Operandi. "Our service leverages key elements of social networking to create a highly-effective content merchandising platform based upon recommendations from friends and trusted sources." Turning the discovery and sharing process into purchasing power across a spectrum of social networking services is where mophone stands out and appeals to both end-users and a broad community of online and mobile companies, including mobile operators, MVNOs, portals/ISPs, content providers, application developers, and many more. "Peer-driven content discovery and recommendations are fast becoming a critical marketing channel for the gaming industry," said Vishal Gondal, CEO of Indiagames. "We love what mophone has created because it gives us an opportunity to further showcase popular games, such as 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' 'Bruce Lee,' and 'Predator,' amongst these credible, viral mobile communities."

flashmobsharing peer-to-peer

Mobile TV and video services viewed by operators as a means to drive 3G take-up and increase average revenue per user (ARPU) could run up against capacity constraints on 3G networks within as little as two years, according to a new report from market research group Analysys.

With currently under-used 3G networks, some mobile operators are offering streamed TV and video content at highly attractive prices to encourage consumers to adopt and use the services. However, warn the researchers, the heavy data consumption of these services demands careful management of service usage, pricing and technology evolution.

Although 3G networks will carry the vast majority of mobile TV and video services for the next five years, 3G has limited capacity to support the substantial network traffic generated by video streaming. According to report co-author Dr Alastair Brydon, 'The capacity of a typical W-CDMA network could be exceeded as soon as 2007 for example, if 40% of 3G users take up mobile TV and video services and each consumes only eight minutes of video per day.'

In a talk at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Mich., Dan Gillmor envisions a future in which citizen journalists do original reporting, conduct interviews, examine local, state and federal records, and help the New Orleans Times-Picayune win a Pulitzer Prize.

Google commodifies everything.

I’ve been thinking about that in relation to Google’s new program to sell advertising into print magazines. Rather than choosing and dealing directly with a print brand, advertisers can now go to Google, which buys pages in certain magazines and resells ads on those pages over a Google logo. So in the process, Google supercedes the print brand. I’m surprised that any magazines are going along with this. The big, slick publishers I’ve worked with are loath to allow anyone else to sell — or certainly undersell — their space. And they are very protective of the value of their brands because, well, that’s the only value they really have (otherwise, they’re just pages with words). Clearly, some publishers want the money.

What Google is really doing is commodifying those magazines and their brands: They’re pages are just space, their audiences just eyeballs.

Google certainly has done the same thing with online advertising. It’s doing that on this very page (half the time; the other half, Yahoo’s doing it) and it’s doing that with the big guys, too. And we all take it because, yes, we want the money. With AdSense, Google has commodified the content and brands of online content. It turns our pages into opportunities to play its advertising Match Game, placing ads on pages not on the basis of brand, context, content, environment, engagement, or trust — all the things advertisers supposedly care about and pay a premium for — but on the basis of the simple and perhaps coincidental occurrence of a word.

In that sense, Google also commodifies the audience. We’re not seeing these ads on the basis of our demographics or behavior or interests or relationships — also things advertisers value and pay for — but only because we have eyes. Everybody’s like everybody else. We’re just users. Might as well be pork belllies. We are a commodity.

(Continued at BuzzMachine.)

We all need a change once in a while, so taking a break from the usual black camera chassis, the Toshiba Gigashot V10 digital camera comes in a lovely Pearl White and includes a 4GB hard drive and a 1/2.5 CCD with 5 million pixels. So you can shoot video at 6.3 million pixels and still photos at 5 million pixels. Up to 128 minutes of video can be recorded on the hard drive and there is an SD slot as well. Also includes a cradle with A/V Out, USB 2.0, LAN and DC-IN. Battery charges under 150 minutes and lasts for 80 minutes for video recording and 120 minutes for playback. Weighs in at 2609 grams. $530.

Toshiba Gigashot V10 Video Camera with 4GB HDD and LAN [Slrworld]

Free collaborative editor based on libobby, a library which provides synced document buffers. It supports multiple documents in one session and a multi-user chat. It runs on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and other Unix-like platforms.

MetaMachine president Sam Yagan, citing the lack of financial resources, is forced to follow the recommendations of the music industry.

I've found Pixen, a freeware Mac graphics program specifically designed for pixel graphics. If you feel like making some good old retro art this maybe the ticket.

via tuaw.com

The concept behind the new site Rent My DVR is something that television networks will be extremely interested in. Users of the site can pay 20 Euro Cents to request an episode of a TV show. Other users on the site are informed that the episode has been requested and if they send a video file of the episode to the requester, they get paid.

OK, but is it legal?

Dave Zatz talked to founder Micke Langberg, who said I can’t see that there should be any legal concerns related to our service, since it is exactly the same thing as asking your neighbor to record a TV show for you. The FAQ on the site expands on this:

According to fox networks it is OK to ask a friend or co-worker to tape video shows for you. We at www.rentmydvr.com are all friends. See "ask fox question 8."

8. Can I get tapes of FOX Network Primetime Shows sent to me?

ANSWER:
The FOX Network does not provide nor sell videos of any of shows, specials or movies that air on the Network.

Our recommendation is to ask co-workers, friends, family and neighbors for anyone who may have taped off-the-air the show you are looking for.

OK, but is it legal? Well, that's for the lawyers to answer, but given recent supreme court decisions you might want to play it safe and check for spare change in your couch instead.

Despite insisting the system is archaic and impedes progress, Verizon's Fios TV deployment timeline is forcing them to sign video-franchise agreements, much to the chagrin of cable competitors like Cablevision. Verizon and SBC would like to eliminate local franchise agreements altogether, in turn eliminating community access television, a subject the Christian Science Monitor explores in more detail.

(As someone who's been following this story for a few years now, I can tell you that the story ain't as simple as 'The Anachronisms vs. Captain Progress'. In fact, it's not even as clear as Cable vs IPTV. -kc.)

D-Link today announced a wireless Internet Camera with 3G compatibility so users can view live video streams from a 3G cell phone.

D-Link's Internet Camera attaches to a home or small office network via a wired or wireless 802.11g/b connection and provides a convenient way to remotely monitor a home or office in real time from anywhere within a cellular phone.

The camera uses a fixed lens camera with resolutions up to 640x480 with user selectable JPEG or MPEG-4 compression. In addition to monitoring via cellular phones, the Wireless Internet Camera also allows for playback using any Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA) compatible devices and browsers that offer support for RealPlayer 10.5 and QuickTime 6.5.

The D-Link Wireless Internet Camera with 3G compatibility also comes bundled with free Windows-based surveillance software that can support monitoring and scheduled, motion triggered, or manual recording for up to 16 cameras.

The camera features a built-in web-based user interface and supports both static and dynamic IP addressing as well as Dynamic Domain Name Services (DDNS) support for access to the camera without having to remember an IP address. Pricing and availability were not announced.

USA Today explains that three guys in Berkeley came up with a crazy notion back in 2003 -- MobiTV. It proved that (some) cellphones were powerful enough to display television images. It wasn't great TV, but it moved...at a frame or two a second.

In November 2003, Sprint became the first wireless carrier to offer MobiTV to consumers. The $10-a-month service, now also offered by Cingular, has attracted 500,000 subscribers. Verizon's competitive service, V-Cast, utilizes their faster EV-DO cellular data network to deliver video clips, games and music for $15/month.

But using a cellular channel to deliver multi-media doesn't really pencil out. There just aren't enough channels. Multicasting, like broadcasting, is the ticket. Millions can receive programing over one channel with multicasting.

Technologies like Qualcomm's MediaFLO and Crown Castle's DVB-H offload mobile video on a separate channel outside the cellular band. MediaFLO will use 700 Mhz while DVB-H will use 1.6 GHz to deliver mobile video across the United States in a year or so.

Today, Qualcomm announced the first live, over-the-air demonstration of FLO (Forward Link Only), delivered to a wireless handset.

FLO Technology, a multicast technology, is lots cheaper. Qualcomm says it requires only two or three broadcast towers per metropolitan area -- that's 30 to 50 times fewer towers than required by traditional cellular systems. Operators can provide live streaming video channels (QVGA resolution at up to 30 fps), to millions. Short "clipcasts", audio, and data channels are planned.

(Continued at DailyWireless)

As mentioned yesterday, the FCC released an order that allows law enforcement to apply the same wiretap laws used for traditional landlines, to VoIP. Those laws never allowed the monitoring of information systems (broadband), but some legal experts argue the FCC has manipulated and stretched the language to imply such. As it stands, the FCC is forcing ISPs to include network backdoors and rewire their networks to accommodate wiretaps by 2007.

It's a move the Electronic Frontier Foundation has announced they will fight in court, by suggesting that the FCC has over-stepped their mandate, and stepped on the toes of Congress. "A tech mandate requiring backdoors in the Internet endangers the privacy of innocent people, stifles innovation, and risks the Internet as a forum for free and open expression," says Kurt Opsahl, EFF staff attorney. "The FCC's overreach is an attempt to overrule Congress's decision to exclude 'information services," (in the original CALEA wiretap laws) argues EFF attorney Lee Tien.

This has been a two-pronged attack on the part of Uncle Sam. While the FCC has worked to try and stretch CALEA to fit VoIP and broadband networks, the FBI has been working closely with hardware vendors to include backdoors in network gear.

Since 2003, Company's like MetaSwitch have created hardware that embeds police spy features to comply with the CALEA. "We simplified providing CALEA compliance for our customers by incorporating CALEA functionality on-board the MetaSwitch VP3500 rather than requiring additional external equipment", said John Lazar, Vice President of Sales and Marketing explained at the time. Cisco's Lawful Intercept Control technology is another result of that collaboration.

The FCC & FBI's approach isn't shocking, and many privacy advocates point back to 1999 when the door was left ajar on the issue of internet monitoring by the Internet Engineering Task Force. By not settling the issue then (which at the time was seen as a privacy and civil victory), you've now got the FBI and FCC making the decision for you.

Not processing power, mind you, just the electrical power used by their computer chips. Intel claims that about half the power consumed by processors comes not from active computing, but from "leakage current" when the transistors are in a "low-level sleep state." Intel's latest chip production process will result in processors that won't suffer from such levels of "transistor leakage." According to CNET, the new chips could cut wasted power by as much as a thousand times. Overall, the new design chips should use about one-tenth the power that current generation mobile technology processors use.

Although processor power consumption isn't the only draw on device power, it's an important one. This is the kind of development that will make self-powered mobile devices more likely, with greater consumption efficiency matching improvements in plastic photovoltaic production capacity.

(Via Mobile Technology Weblog)

(Posted by Jamais Cascio in QuickChanges at 02:31 PM)

Members of the Global Voices community met this morning on IRC chat to discuss the Reporters Without Borders Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-dissidents. It was an amazing group. Click here for the transcript.

We had a pretty strong argument about whether the use of "cyber-dissidents" is appropriate for the handbook, or whether the word "dissident" will frighten off a lot of people who would benefit tremendously from the guide. (I gave my own concerns about the issue in the review I wrote of the Handbook.) There was a wide range of rather strong views.

One possible solution suggested by Joi Ito was that the handbook could be re-mixed by people in various countries, with different culturally appropriate and non-scary titles and packaging, perhaps with relevant information tailored to specific blogging communities. There was tremendous enthusiasm for doing this, and discussion about how to proceed. Check out the transcript for more

There was also a fairly involved discussion of anonymity and credibility. And a question of the Handbook's goals: to facilitate blogging or to facilitate online free expression more generally?  Should people be pointed to options other than blogging when other options might be safer or more practical under specific local conditions?

We're hoping that the Global Voices community will start using the GV IRC channel at irc://irc.freenode.net/#globalvoices to continue talking about these issues, and to orchestrate projects of common concern.

Microsoft has been awarded a patent for using human skin as a power conduit and data bus. Patent No. 6,754,472, which was published Tuesday, describes a method for transmitting power and data to devices worn on the body and for communication of data between those devices.

This is a small cool product that connects to your TV and that copies everything it "sees" onto a SD, MS or CF... all in MP4 format and in different sizes for different devices (including the PSP):

MPEG-4/320x240/30fps, MPEG-4/368x208/30fps, MPEG-4/640x480/30fps.

The device measures 130x150x65 and weighs 53g, but it's not available yet... but it will be in a few weeks on GeekStuff4U.com.

"A two-day event on the campus of NC A&T State University, ConvergeSouth will focus on journalism and multimedia “web blogging” for everyone."

"China is moving to 'centralize all China-based Web news and opinion under a state regulator,' the Wall Street Journal reports, but determined citizens have found a way out of previous restrictions in what has become a cat-and-mouse game: 'Many Chinese Internet users, dismissing what they call government scare tactics, find ways around censorship. The government requires users of cybercafs to register with their state-issued ID cards on each visit, but some users avoid cybercaf registration by paying off owners. In response, the government has installed video cameras in some cafs and shut others. ... While certain words such as "democracy" are banned in online chat rooms, China's Web users sometimes transmit sensitive information as images, or simply speak in code, inserting special characters such as underscoring into typing.' Also noteworthy is that major portals seem to be cooperating with authorities' restrictions: 'Insiders who work for the big portal sites say they are already in regular contact with authorities about forbidden topics, such as the outlawed Falun Gong religious group, which their teams of Web editors pull off bulletin boards.'"

Rashmi Sinha has posted an interesting hypothesis on the cognitive psychology behind tagging (with easy illustrations for those of us who don’t remember psych class): A cognitive analysis of tagging (or how the lower cognitive cost of tagging makes it popular).

On the first weekend of October (1st and 2nd) the World Summit on Free Information Infrastructures is taking place in London. This event will bring together individuals and groups from across the world working on projects such as free wireless networking, free of copyright mapping and open hardware. It is also part of a larger season of events based around alternative approaches to knowledge production and access and timed to coincide with the UK's hosting of a pan-European Creative Economy conference.

They've switched from VLC to Flash, so now I can finally check it out

: SanDisk is expected to announce Tuesday that it be selling preloaded music and video on flash memory cards along with cards that can be filled with downloaded content, according to the WSJ. The cards, branded gruvi and with a suggested retail price of $39.99, also come with their own DRM but SanDisk says TrustedFlash isn't device driven and that users will be able to move content between devices. Initial supporters include EMI Group, Samsungs cellphone division, Yahoo Music, PacketVideo Corp., News Corp.'s NDS Group.
The price could be a deterrent but the cards can be used to store consumer content. They're also similar in price to Sony's UMD, which is much more limited in terms of use.
The Journal calls it "an ambitous vision" and I can't say I disagree.
Rafat adds: One of the things the companies are not yet talking about is a big music act which will sign on to use the service...I can't really say much, beyond the fact that it is one of the biggest rock acts in the world....you can put two and two together from here. More on this later...

A NY Times story today reveals a little more of Yahoo's strategy to pursue original video programming. A few weeks ago, they hired former NBC correspondent Kevin Sites. And now "sitcoms, dramas, talk shows, even a short daily humorous take on the news much like Jon Stewart's 'Daily Show' are in the works," reports the Times.

(And we shall call our short daily humorous take on the news "Yahoobang!" -kc.)

Like subetha, but all ajaxy, SynchroEdit is a browser-based simultaneous multiuser editor, a form of same-time, different-place groupware. It allows multiple users to edit a single web-based document at the same time, and it continuously synchronizes all changes so that users always have the same version.

The SMS projector system developed by Haase & Martin GbR is now available in an English version.

The SMS Chatwall receives short text messages, sent by any mobile phone and shows it on TV and projector systems. It is a new media event and promotion tool, separated into an administration and a visualization module. The administration module allows to look over incoming text messages before broadcasting them via projector system. All messages can be accepted, declined or edited by the administrator. Additionally all messages can be accepted automatically. Misuse is prevented. Together with the event organizer the administrator can display own messages or pictures to support an event with multi media screen content.

The BBC reports on a survey that finds consumers are starting to use weblogs, or blogs, as guides to what they should and shouldn't buy."The survey suggests that blogs could soon rival other media as sources of trustworthy information about products and services. In the survey of attitudes to blogs most of those questioned, 77%, said they thought the regularly updated web journals were a useful way to get insights into the products or services they should buy.As many blogs were the work of individuals, many believed that they were more honest and reliable because they were not subject to the same marketing pressures as corporate or commercial websites".

Shoppers use blogs for bargains

About one million telephone calls and 75,000 SMS messages were received by the centre for processing of the public’s questions during the live television and radio broadcast.

Motorola will sell more than 6 million mobile phones for less than $30 each in a new program to bring cheap handsets to developing markets, industry body the GSM Association said on Tuesday, reports Reuters.

"The cost per handset will dip below $30 from $40 in the first Emerging Market Handset (EMH) program awarded in February, which was also won by U.S.-based Motorola.

Ten operators in developing markets have promised to buy about 6 million of the two models Motorola will submit to the program, including the new C113a model which is exclusive to the program and the C113, which is available under the first EMH program and will be made cheaper.

The GSM Association, which initiated the cheap handset program that is part of its aim to "connect the unconnected", groups the world's mobile telecom service providers."

Is there anyone who doesn't yet realize that anything you write online can (and will) be found at some later date via a search engine? Apparently, even when that's the case, people still seem to mentally cling to the idea that there's some sort of privacy online -- even in very public spaces. E-Media Tidbits points to just such a situation, where the UK newspaper The Guardian used its own chatrooms as fodder for a print story, and the people in the chartroom freaked out, as if their privacy had somehow been breached. They had posted information in a chatroom that was run by The Guardian, and yet they were still quite upset to find the same info they posted online, and which could easily be found via Google, was put into a story that was printed on paper. Part of the problem may have been one of expectations. Even though the Guardian had stated that items on the boards could be reused, they didn't clearly state that they planned to use this content in an article. Still, it's a bit odd to think that someone could complain about their privacy being violated after they were the ones who proactively posted the info themselves in a crowded and well-read user forum.

We keep hearing analyst firms claim that mobile TV is going to be the killer app for mobile data, even as there have been plenty of questions as to whether or not anyone actually wants to watch broadcast videos on their mobile phones. Plenty of people have wondered what the attraction is to mobile video, and studies have shown people just aren't that interested... and yet the industry keeps forging forward on these efforts. Now, finally, some others are recognizing an issue that has been obvious for some time: wireless networks just don't have the capacity to handle mobile video. That's why all these new mobile data networks are so expensive. If people actually used the networks, they wouldn't have enough bandwidth. Thus, they limit it with the pricing spigot. It's also why companies like Qualcomm are investing nearly a billion dollars in a separate network just for broadcast style mobile video. It answers the capacity question, but seeing as it's one-way broadcast (and a Qualcomm rep danced around this issue last week at DEMOfall without ever saying that they really would make the network two-way) it takes away most of the benefits of such an offering. People still use mobile phones to communicate much, much more than they use it to consume broadcast-style content. It seems the only people who are really big believers in mobile video are those who hope to charge for it. This is the opposite of how business decisions should be made. Look for a customer need that you can solve, not something that you can charge for that you hope, eventually, you can convince people they need.

via Reuters/Billboard,
The rock band, the Presidents of the United States shot their latest video using only camera phones.
"Director Grant Marshall of Film Headquarters said he had spent 18 months looking for a band willing to go along with the mobile-only film concept."
thanks to Richard Ling for the link.

Late last Friday the FCC released it's CALEA First Report and Order (pdf), which allowed law enforcement to apply the same wiretipping laws used for copper - to VoIP service. The predicted move is something we've discussed frequently, though last week's release does hold a significant surprise. The original CALEA specifically omitted broadband "information services" from such wiretaps, but the FCC has somehow stretched a few definitions to allow the wiretapping of broadband connections, something that worries both legal experts and several of the commissioners.

A couple of interesting blog posts this afternoon:

Eric Jaffa chronicles his quest to get Current on Comcast in Minneapolis. Just like in San Francisco, Current is on the Super Digital Megatron tier, which costs a few extra dollars a month.

But Eric is idealistic, and I like it:

I don't mind the extra $6.49 so much as the notion that lots of other people won't get "Current TV" when they subscribe to Comcast. If there is valuable information in a Current TV video (for example one showing today about melting glaciers and global warming), fewer people will get the information because of how Comcast sets aside Current TV from its main packages.

Also: I've noticed more and more blog-links straight to videos in the Studio -- bloggers telling their readers to go check something out and/or greenlight it. Here's one example. It's a VERY cool trend.

Intel and Microsoft get behind Toshiba's HD DVD format. Also: Google Video streams television programs…. Google gets modest about the size of its database.… and more.

Music sounds better on an MP3 player you've built from scratch. A DIY journey, by Keith Axline.

Internet users are going to great length to avoid spam.

SP4M. D0 Y OU SWA1LOW? attempts to turn the relationship we have with spam around. A microcontroller-based Webserver retrieves spam sent over the Internet in real time, and remotely feeds a continuous shuffled stream of it to public displays. Spam thus becomes a diagnosis of cultural values and an alternate representation of societies.

"After collecting and examining a broad range of unsollicited emails, I felt like spam can be and often is culture specific. In the U.S for instance, spam mails are typically about get rich quick schemes, pornography, illegal medication. In India, spam emails often advertise websites and services for arranged marriages. Lebanon's junk mail is predominately sent by actual medium sized and small companies recruiting or real universities offering new courses or degrees."

Sp4m Map (picture above) represents a country through its junk mail and gives a feel of social values and desires in a culture.

A project by
Ayah Bdeir who will be speaking at the netporn conference in Amsterdam, on Friday Sept 30.

Sound-suit is a wearable synthesizer controller.

Sensors are strapped onto your elbows, wrists, and fingers. They translate your gestures into sounds which can then be manipulated and bent into new sound-shapes.

By Michael Trelford Una.

Quicktime video.

Images courtesy of the artist.

Marko Ahtisaari is another one of those thought-leaders sitting high on the technorati pyramid of tribal alphas. Here he offers an interesting take on what the world of mobile wants to look like from one designer's perspective.

Blogging Over Las Vegas

Image: The Register

Sony Upgrades PSP Firmware

In addition to launching a new service called "Portable TV" which will provide Japanese consumers with downloadable video content for the PlayStation Portable, Sony has also added the ATRAC3plus music format to the PSP in today's 2.00 firmware upgrade - which will enable users to purchase music from Sony's Connect Music Store for playback on the PSP.

[...] However, users can't browse the music store on their consoles yet, but that functionality could be added in the near future. The convergence of gaming and free/paid multimedia content on the same portable device is here folks...Depending on consumer uptake, Sony could be positioning itself to hit big initially in the Far East.

Are any of you familiar with the work done at MIT on holographic video? All you need is a coherent light source (a laser will work), a spatial light modulator (a small LCD will work, perhaps several set up in an array to get a desired size), and the computing power to back it up. Most of the work at MIT's Spatial Imaging Lab on holographic video took place in the early 90's, using supercomputers to do the number crunching. Marc Lucente, one of the researchers, predicted that by the year 2002 (according to Moore's law), computers would be powerful enough that it would be feasible to mass produce holovideo displays.So, what's the hold up?

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Scorched Happiness is a live performance in 3d multi-user cyberspace using Julia Kristeva's text Toccata and Fugue for the Foreigner as a structure to explore the properties native to 3d cyberspace.

Artists Adam Nash (VRML, music) and Mari Yamanaka (visuals) collaborate with John McCormick of Company in Space to draw parallels between the text's investigation of the psychology of foreignness and the new and the unfamiliar of cyberspace. The project proposes to explore alternate vocabularies to mimicking real space, or exploring the relationship between physical presence and virtual presence by recreating the human form as avatar.

There has been little work done investigating the potential of shared networked space as a site for live virtual performance art on its own terms. Scorched Happiness is an attempt to develop a live performative vocabulary that is native to shared cyberspace.

What are the native qualities of 3D cyberspace? Real space properties such as up/down, in/out, falling/rising, heavy/light do not exist in 3D cyberspace without considerable effort expended in creating them. Scorched Happiness uses abstract, non-humanoid avatars to explore as many permutations as possible towards understanding the properties of 3D cyberspace. As the foreigner in Kristeva's text explores wildly varied emotional geographies in an attempt to know the new place, so does the avatar in Scorched Happiness' cyberspace. The foreigner is by turns ebullient, aloof, confident, melancholic, multilingual yet mute, ironic yet naive. The avatars in Scorched Happiness become huge, layered, temporally chimeric audiovisual events filling up the space then receding away as they react to one another's manifestations.

Logistically, the performance is eminently scalable. Naturally (and at its most fundamental), the performance can be experienced by logging in to the multi-user space - virtual audience members can thereby navigate the space freely, their navigation becoming part of the perception of the performance. Additionally, performances can be projected onto large screens at physical sites. It is the nature of 3D cyberspace that the performers may also be present at such a physical site or may be logged in from physically disparate locations. Multi-screen, multi-source projections can augment the experience at a physical site by projecting the performance viewpoints of different performers and audience members, with workstations provided for physical audience members to log themselves in from the physical site. Finally, the performances and avatars themselves can be made available in 'real time archive' form in single- or multi-user form to experience when the performers are not logged in. These can naturally be accessed via the internet from a workstation or projected on to a large screen.

Playlisters have sometimes been accused of claiming to be the authors of any media files they link to. The idea behind this claim is that there is something unnatural about linking directly to media files unless the creator of the link is also the creator of the target.

I ran across this relevant bit of theory by Tim Berners-Lee in his personal notes on axioms of web architecture:

A normal hypertext link does NOT necessarily imply that

• One document endorses the other; or that
• One document is created by the same person as the other, or that
• One document is to be considered part of another.

Whoa..now you can use Processing to create gooey gui fun for your Java-enabled cellyphone!

Mobile.Processing

via regine

Epson has recently unveiled a passive RFID tag that features a display. The display component is implemented by using E-ink's EP Sheet and works without batteries.

Via RFID in Japan.

Geominder creates location-based reminders, anchored to physical, geographic places.

hen arriving at a marked location, the system can play an alarm and display a stored text note or a voice note previously associated to that location. For example: "When I arrive at the office, remind me to review next week's schedule", "At home remind me to call Dave"

Geominder uses mobile network's cell id information and doesn't require an extra GPS device.

It also stores text notes or voice notes, can use audio alarms or silent notifications, locations can be learned and tuned.

via we make money not art

Nullpointer's CCTEX installation is based on the expanding cultural practice of game modification and the increasing presence of CCTV and mass observation technologies. In CCTEX a level from Counter Strike is re-mapped to offer the user an experience of covert surveillance.

The environment is coated in imagery drawn from a set of webcams that are positioned around the installation space. Streaming video of the audience and gallery space are translated into textures that paint the modified game architecture. The textures are manipulated to create a semi-abstract reflection of the users' space outside the machine. The viewer is confronted with a distorted vision of themselves and their environment as they interact with the work.

Not only does CCTEX present the user with their own captured image but it also demonstrates how such data can be distorted and manipulated.

CCTEX will be showcased at Digital Space, Sheffield (UK)

Related: The Zone project.

Nokia to Launch Mobile Project With Eclipse

The Eclipse Foundation accepted its first mobile vendor, Nokia, to its board of directors, officials announced Monday.

The Finnish mobile phone manufacturer, which joins the open source Java tools group as a strategic developer member, plans to donate several components of its own developer software tool to launch a mobile Java application project at Eclipse.

Nokia will also spearhead the development of mobile Java applications for Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) and Connected Device Configuration (CDC) capabilities.

The Civic Journalism Interest Group, an approximately 100 member wing within the greater Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), will now take a on a new name, the Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group. We spoke earlier here and here of how some members feel about it. But now, after a vote, it is a done deal.

In the interest of full disclosure I was the one who made the motion to change the name at the AEJMC convention in San Antonio. So now the question is, is it time to change the name here to the Public and Participatory Journalism Network?

In someways it does not matter because at least here the site has defined itself as an international clearinghouse of information about public, civic, open source, participatory, and citizen media--and we might add we media.

Now the issue is how do we figuratively, and maybe literally, link all those together-- in the end that is what both the PJNet.org and the Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group are all about.

As part of the HDNet experiment, movie theater owners who played the documentary "Enron: The Smartest Guy in the Room" are receiving a 1% share of that film's DVD sales.

: BitTorrent, the commercial spinoff from the P2P software with the same name, has raised $8.75 million in venture funding, reports PE Week Wire, quoting an SEC filing. The round was led by DCM-Doll Capital Management.
I ran into Ashwin Navin, the COO of BitTorrent, at Digital Hollywood earlier this week and asked him point blank about the funding, but he was coy about it. The company's also working furiously to get any inroads into the Hollywood community, but it is going to be tricky. The Snocap and Mashboxx examples I'm sure give hope to the company and the new investors.
I suggested that changing the company name might help in getting traction with the media and entertainment community, but Navin dismissed any such moves.
Related:
-- BitTorrent's Bid For Legitimate Media Play
-- Hollywood Looks to BitTorrent For Distribution

A new project from Six Apart that is "focused on creating an advanced weblogging technology platform combining the best elements of all our products, giving people the ability to easily stake out, build and share their own place on the web."

The LabelMe database contains thousands of labeled images. To get the database, we only ask you to contribute to it by annotating some images.

Content designers need to think not about shoehorning content from other media onto the one-inch screen, and relying on marketers to goad the audience into buying it, but about investing in content design (like Pocket Kingdom) that is sympathetic with and extensive of the characteristics of the medium, and new media educators and researchers need to think about how to conceptualise such design.

Schizoid Arts offers a unique, entirely free web-hosting service to musicians and artists willing to publish some of their work under Creative Commons.

Viewing the Google bombing practice as a social movement provides an informative lens from which to analyze the nature and goals as well as the results of this form of online collective action.

Loomia is a podcast and videocast search engine plus much more. Our goal is to help you discover, share, and manage things of interest to you.

Interesting fill-in-the-blanks query method, check out the Yahoo news demo application

Soft Cinema project mines the creative possibilities at the intersection of software culture, cinema, and architecture. Its manifestations include films, dynamic visualizations, computer-driven installations, architectural designs, print catalogs, and DVD. In parallel, the project investigates how the new representational techniques of soft(ware) cinema can be deployed to address the new dimensions of our time, such as the rise of mega-cities, the "new" Europe, and the effects of information technologies on subjectivity.

Reporters Without Borders has just unveiled a remarkable how-to guide for bloggers and "cyberdissidents" who want to make their voices heard in/from countries that are hostile to free speech. It's more specialized than EFF's exhaustive Legal Guide for Bloggers, focusing on 1.) how to create an effective voice online and 2.) overcoming the specific technical and practical challenges to free speech and anonymity in the face of government monitoring and censorship.

Here's an excerpt from the introduction:

Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest. Plenty of bloggers have been hounded or thrown in prison. One of the contributors to this handbook, Arash Sigarchi, was sentenced to 14 years in jail for posting several messages online that criticised the Iranian regime. His story illustrates how some bloggers see what they do as a duty and a necessity, not just a hobby. They feel they are the eyes and ears of thousands of other Internet users.

The section called "Personal Accounts" is especially inspiring, providing the real-life stories of bloggers from all around the world; click on the links below for a few examples:

Hong Kong: "I kept my promise to those who died."

ww.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=15010">Iran: "We can write freely in blogs."

Bahrain: "We've broken the government’s news monopoly."

The guide is available in Chinese, Arabic, Persian, English, and French. Just outstanding.

The Washington Post has an article today announcing the guide's release here. Previous relevant Copyfight coverage: Zuckerman on How to Blog Anonymously.

We recently mentioned how a mistake at Tivo headquarters foreshadowed a change toward more restrictive DRM laden DVRs. Techdirt points to a new Microsoft Patent Application for "Control-based content pricing", where the cost of your service is raised or lowered depending on whether or not you skip advertising. Keep in mind Microsoft is providing software for most of the telcos (here and in other countries) IPTV efforts. They're probably tossing around new ad ideas to prepare for the death of the current model, but let's hope this isn't the industry's answer - unless they want to push users toward home-brew Bit Torrent solutions.

The Free Press takes a look at municipal broadband, and also offers a map that breaks down muni-projects state by state. They also offer a breakdown of all the laws currently being worked on to either restrict or protect municipal broadband, as well as a list of all the states that have banned (or plan to) such projects.

The number of mobile phone subscribers in the world has surpassed the 2 billion milestone Wireless Intelligence, an information service set up by industry body GSM Association and consulting firm Ovum, said on Sunday… "The bulk of the new growth now is coming from large, less well-developed markets such as China, India, Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa," Wireless Intelligence said in a statement.
That’s a good market for mobile content, but it will be in the low-end for a while. Things like ringtones and wallpapers will continue to sell well, just not in the same markets…

My first two thoughts are "OMG Nintendo is changing the industry!" and "OMG there will be no third party games for this!"

(I didn\'t blog it on Friday. For some reason I find it intersting today. -kc.)

Copyright may be the 800-pound gorilla of the Internet, but there's a brand-new pseudo copyright in the works capable of swallowing massive chunks of the public domain, bones and all.

As I understand it, the new right -- or rather, set of rights -- would give companies fresh exclusive rights on top of any existing rights for anything they "webcast" (that is, transmit by web servers over the Internet and other networks). In other words, a company could take a movie that's fallen into the public domain, webcast it, and keep the general public, to whom it belongs, from recording it. It could webcast Creative Commons-licensed songs that people have specifically earmarked for easy digital distribution and remixing, then demand that no one touch the webcast. And there is no additional creative effort necessary to accrue these rights. All you have to do is feed any combination of sound or images through a web server, and you're golden.

If you've been following the goings-on at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), you won't be surprised to learn that this new right is being negotiated behind closed doors at the urging of Yahoo and a handful of other companies, without any public debate and over the repeated protests of public interest groups and webcasters who have specifically rejected this new "protection." As CPTech points out in a new letter to members of Congress, this is a prime example US trade policy completely captured by a small group of corporate lobbyists. After all, how else could a set of rights this powerful slip under the radar -- especially when there has been, as CPTech notes,

1. No analysis of how US law would have to change in the treaty passed.
2. No analysis of the unintended consequences of creating a new right of transmission for the Internet.
3. No analysis of the impact of the new right on copyright owners.
4. No analysis or concern about how the new IPR right would affect the orphan works problem.
5. No analysis of the impact of the webcasting treaty on podcasting.
6. No analysis of whether the treaty language would unwittingly create a property right to persons operating peer-to-peer networks or search engines.

Negotiators are moving full-steam ahead, and there may be movement on this as soon as next week. CPTech has already petitioned the Library of Congress and US Patent and Trademark Office to slow down and invite the public into the process, but Congress may be more effective at calling on US negotiators for a time-out. I hope so.

Two quick recommendations before I go: When the treaty was released in draft form last year, Ernie Miller wrote an exhaustive analysis/critique that helps explain why these additional rights are "bad, bad, bad" -- check it out here. And don't miss Cory's post from last week, WIPO wants to give webcasters the right to steal from public domain, Creative Commons and GPL.

Do you think that readers will understand that a "blogvertorial" is advertising? That's the name of a new form of text advertising introduced last week on New West, a news website covering the Rocky Mountain West (and one that has a heavy "citizen-journalism" focus).

Blogvertorials are included on some New West section pages, most of which are presented in a blog-like format. On the homepage, there's one fairly high on the page, underneath (...)

Entry continued...

It's been nearly two years since we pointed out that savvy (or, depending on your viewpoint, sleazy) marketers were using eBay not just as a commerce platform, but as a marketing and PR platform as well. That is, they would use eBay to sell something weird or different, and the press would write up all these stories about this "weird" item on eBay driving up the price (and maybe interest in something else). It appears that someone at USA Today has just realized the same thing and has written an article listing out some of the more recent eBay-as-marketing-platform stunts that have been pulled. Of course, ever since that original posting, I've been (incorrectly, obviously) expecting eBay's status as a PR platform to decline. Just how many stories can the press write about nutty items on eBay? Apparently plenty, as long as a certain online casino keeps buying up every such nutty auction. Oh look, there they go again.

Takeo Igarashi, one of the creators of the software tool for smooth shape manipulations (the one regine mentioned the other day), has been working on a number of very interesting 3D projects. I cannot help talking about his series of works on 3D authoring tools including Teddy (now commercialized as Magical Sketch 2.)

[smooth teddy allows you to easily draw and paint in 3D. download]

Teddy is one of the most well-known works of his, which allows users to create 3D models just by drawing freeform strokes. Such a 3D authoring method could allow anyone to create 3D objects and effectively support creative processes of making 3D characters and objects. Look what kids made using Magical Sketch 2.

Let's say you just finished drawing a man using Teddy and want to paint him pink and dress him up. Igarashi's other software tools can help you (see Chameleon and Sweater). If you think he should dance, please visit Squirrel. Also, Chateau is a tool that can be used to make buildings and houses.

I'd hope to see his ideas and tools integrated into a software package I can buy and use.

The Passion.Room, by Fabrice Coniglio and Andrea raViola from ConiglioViola, is an installation for VJing: the shooting and editing are done in real time inside the huge inflatable rabbit and visitors are invited to participate to the passion-themed performance.

The inside of the rabbit's belly hosts masks, accessories and costumes and is totally green: using the chroma key system, whatever happens inside the Coniglio will be filmed, mixed (mixer video + laptop), edited, added on a surreal background and sent to the video projectors.

To be enjoyed at the XII Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean - Naples 2005 till September 28.

Via random and exibart.

Update: Italy is getting invaded by huge rabbits.

Viennese art group Gelatin has designed a 200-foot-long toy rabbit "knitted by dozens of grannies out of pink wool". The toy is expected to lie on the side of the 5,000 foot high Colletto Fava mountain in northern Italy's Piedmont region until 2025.

Via Ananova.
Images.

Cynthia Bruyns's Vibration Lab is a software designed to simulate the sound of any percussive instrument, real or imagined, in a computer. The system could someday enable musicians to play instruments that exist only on the screen, enable the design of new physical instruments, and boost the realism of virtual environments for education and training.

"Every object's sound comes from the way it's vibrating, and every object vibrates differently depending on its shape and material," says Bruyns, a Berkeley graduate student. "Instruments like violins are shapes that have been perfected over many years to produce a certain tone."

The software enables users to take a computer-generated 3D model of a complex object and bang it with a virtual stick to hear how it vibrates. For example, thin and flat metal objects sound very different from thick, curved wooden instruments.

Beginning with a 3D model, Vibration Lab adds mass and stiffness properties that mimic the characteristics of a real material like wood or bronze. The frequencies of the object are then calculated. Users can then "strike" the object in various places by hitting keys on an electronic piano keyboard connected to the computer using a standard digital music interface.

Via Boingboing < Lab Notes.

From Dan: "if you're interested, we're holding our first officially hosted Mobile Monday New York meeting at the AP. Free beer and wine too. Would love for you all to attend. (see below for details). And please pass this on to anyone who might be interested."

Date: September 19th , 7 PM – 9ish PM
Cost: Free
Theme/Topics: Mobile Communities/Social Networking
Planned Agenda:
- Quick welcome/intro
- Four 15-minute presentations
-> Socialight
-> WINKsite
-> NextBlast
-> Dodgeball (Google)
- Open discussion/networking with refreshments and snacks

Address:
Associated Press
450 W. 33rd Street (bet. 9th and 10th ave)
New York, NY 10001

On The Situation Room, Wolf Blitzer and his crew push the boundaries of television news by integrating internet technology and viewpoints. By Xeni Jardin.

iMediaConnection has an interesting interview with Burke Scott from Eyewonder discussing some of the things publishers should think about when it comes to online video advertising.

I think he hits on a few good points but I do have some issues with some of his comments. Basically he seems to be dismissing the value of the internet as a branding medium and implies that the displaying of TV ads online does a dis-service to the capabilities of the internet. I tend to disagree. Not everything is about direct response and offline advertisers get that. Also he talks about the fact that their are no tools available to report and mine in on the pre-roll/instream advertising. Again this is not true. Dynadco has a whole slew of data available for all of the instream advertising we enable. It almost seems to imply that the Eyewonder products are lacking in their reporting capabilities.

Of course they miss a very key issue, which is how to make things simpler and scalable for the publisher (which is what we pride ourselves on at Dynadco).

Anyway it is definitely worth a read and good fodder for discussion!

Introducing PEP, the Prodigem Enclosure Puller. With Prodigem's just released API, I was knocking around ideas about how to show it off quickly and effectively. I'm pretty happy with this first result. PEP is < 400 lines of PHP code I've thrown together (download it at http://prodigem.com/code/pep/pep.txt) which, when given your Prodigem username, password and an RSS 2.0 feed, will then find all the enclosures in that RSS feed and call into Prodigem to have a torrent created for each one. Automatically. You just run and/or cron the script on your home computer or web-server and PEP does the rest.

This bit of hackery (btw, the code has much room for improvement, please someone run with it) of course needed a good first RSS feed. Enter del.icio.us. Using their RSS feed for popular videos, Prodigem now automatically torrents the most popular videos on the web as decided by the del.icio.us folksonomy. That is to say, what the world wants, the world gets.

You can see the results on our newly created pep_delicious user page or even in pep_delicious's own Prodigem torrent feed. If you'd like to discuss PEP or the API (or this blog), that can be done in Prodigem's Forums.

(Hey Josh. Check this one out. Pretty cool. -kc.)

Onlife is an application for the Mac OS X that observes your every interaction with sofware applications such as Safari, Mail and iChat and then creates a personal shoebox of all the web pages you visit, emails you read, documents you write and much more.

WikiHome - The Wiki for Finding Web Service and Open APIs - This is a community effort to create a list of all APIs and web services that are publicly available for people to play with

Lots of recipes for turning audio files into other audio files

Here's all the software to put video with sound on your ipod

Zimbra is a community for building and maintaining next generation collaboration technology.

The Zimbra Collaboration Suite provides support for email, contacts, and group calendaring, and consists of a server and client.

The Zimbra Server supports existing desktop and wireless personal information management (PIM) clients via standard protocols like POP, IMAP, and iCalendar: for example, Outlook, Thunderbird/Sunbird, Apple Mail/iCal, Evolution, Eudora, and Wireless IMAP. The Zimbra Client is AJAX-based---Asynchronous Javascript on the client with XML/SOAP-based communications to the Zimbra Server, and runs on Windows, Linux, and Apple desktops in Firefox and IE browsers.

"Welcome to Placeopedia, a simple site where you can connect Wikipedia articles with places, and then make use of our database either to browse, or syndicate the whole lot. We hope that lots of people will connect places they know with their corresponding places they know with their corresponding Wikipedia article, and then our syndicated data can be used as a general geographic lookup table for Wikipedia."

LaCie has always made very nice looking hard-disk related products. I myself own a few LaCie drives—so when I heard about their new Carte Orange drive, I was very excited. $149.99 will net you the 8GB version which is about the size of a credit card. It needs no drivers and is USB 2.0 thank god. A 4GB version is available for $99.99 which is a very nice price for what you get. The sleek orange and metallic design is a nice compliment to any cluttered office desk as well.

LaCie Carte Orange 8GB [LaCie Product Page]

Outhink is focused on "taking the friction out of creating and publishing digital media."

Stuck in an airport with CNN yammering on and on in the background? Well, pop in the TerraTech USB TV Tuner and pick up reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond. The TerraTec is a self-contained tuner with software for watching TV on your PC. Interestingly enough, you can also record live video through the tuner and it also pics up digital signals, which I suspect are a bit more prevalent overseas than here.

Overall, looks like a great way to add live TV to a laptop sans breakout boxes and other heavy junk. Pricing is set at about $200.

TerraTec launch USB key TV tuner [Pocket-Link]

OK - so it continues.

Now Last.fm and Audioscrobbler have annopunced their APIs.

My My My

One can actually imagine a hub to connect all these services together and start doing REALLY interesting stuff - right?

Via Marc's Voice

Merrill Lynch analyst Jessica Reif Cohen makes a great point in a research memo: traditional media is in a better position on the digital front than first perceived. "They have multiple touch points with consumers," she writes. "This provides ample opportunity for cross-platform promotion, a more difficult proposition for Yahoo! and Google." But she adds, "Revenue will move online, and if the traditional media companies do not move aggressively to capture this revenue, it will be lost to more nimble competitors." In other words, the time is now.

Under a new deal, Sprint has teamed with Real Networks to create a wireless subscription service featuring podcasts and internet radio.

MNN Announcement
Hmmn.. I am going to have to read these bills.
Here is some more information from the Alliance for Community Media: http://www.alliancecm.org/index.php?page_id=201

digitalmedia.oreilly.com -- Welcome to the O'Reilly Digital Media Center -- computer books for digital media including photography, graphics and audio.
Great stuff.. Got that RSS feed.

Device UI toolkit gains low-level graphics API
From the Article:
Opera Software has added a low-level graphics API to its user interface (UI) development toolkit for home media device developers. The addition of GOGI (generic Opera graphical interface) allows Opera's Home Media SDK to build interfaces for devices that lack Qt, X, or other relevant graphical libraries, the company says.

MIPCOM has announced that its 2005 show will include the first Mobile TV Awards, including a showcase of the nominees on October 19 in Cannes, and an award presentation on October 20, both sponsored by Orange, as part of the MIPCOM's Mobile TV Day.

The winning projects will also be promoted on the carrier's Orange World portal. Categories include: Best Made-for-Mobile TV Format, Best Mobile TV Channel/Program Guide, Best Re-purposed Video, Film and Animation Content For Mobile, a Grand Prize for Best Innovation in Mobile TV Content, and a Best of Show Award, voted on during the screenings by SMS text message.

The industry seems hardly big enough to support an awards ceremony, much less one with so many categories, but hey, that's certainly never stopped the Interactive TV community.

fanboyslayer writes "Switchfoot's new album Nothing Is Sound shipped from Sony with copy protection software on the CD, much to the dismay of thousands of iPod-wielding fans. The band posted a response on their official forum apologizing for the protection and detailing ways to circumvent the protection and rip their songs to PC. Switchfoot linked to open-source program CDex's download page with instructions on disabling the autorunning protection and ripping the files to MP3. Many of Switchfoot's fans have been upset by the copy protection measures, and it's nice to know the artists seem to care about the issue."

Kazys Varnelis from the Annenberg's Networked Publics research lab forwarded me this link that he's found on Archinect. The Digital Derive project will be shown at the M-City exhibition (curator: Marco De Michelis) in Kunsthaus Graz, Oct 01, 2005 - Jan 08, 2006.

"Digital Derive harnesses the potential of mobile phones as an affordable, ready-made and ubiquitous medium that allows the city to be sensed and displayed in real-time as a complex, pulsating entity... Digital Derive (re)presents the city displayed simultaneously in the Kunsthaus Graz and in a publicly accessible website... The Real-Time City Map will register and visually render the volume and geographic source of cell phone usage in Graz, thus showing a different layer in the use and experience of the city. Furthermore the users of A1 Mobilkom Austria in Graz will be tracked anonymously by 'pinging' their cell phones as they move through the city. The record of this movement will be collected, processed and finally displayed as set of dynamic traces showing their paths through the city on the same map..."

The rendering of the peaks & valleys of cell phone usage here is reminscent of some oceanographic map of a deep sea trench, as if the city were drowned in a tsunami of spectrum (immersive media?).

As astonishing as this image is, the Digital Derive project arguably reproduces a static notion of urban space by using a conventional GIS overlay aesthetic. As Ali Sant notes in a text she has written about her "Trace" project, a collaboration with Ryan Shaw, entitled "Redefining the Basemap":

"Current collaborative mapping projects using locative media technologies have often overlooked the conventions of the basemap as a site for reinvention. Although these projects imagine alternative organizations of urban space through the way it is digitally mapped, they remain bounded by datasets that reinforce a Cartesian and static notion of urban space."

Thus reading the Digital Derive through Ali, perhaps the next big step for locative projects interested in mapping how a space is actually "practiced" will be to deform the base map into a kind of cartogram of cell usage.

Here I consider those famous "purple maps" of the last US election as deeply inspirational.

From a recent DIgital Mediawire newsletter:

Separately, the AOL's RED service for teenagers announced the launch of a new online reality TV show, which will feature six college freshmen documenting their experiences, using a camcorder and daily blog. "Project Freshman," produced by 2C Media, will offer new episodes every Thursday.

Browsing through NPR's Podcast Directory, one in particular stood out; not for its content but for the way it was created.

Most of the podcasts are simply NPR shows, but NPR: Most E-Mailed Stories is assembled based on the audience's reaction to NPR news stories. People tend to share stories they like, so in theory the best stories bubble up to the top. This podcast collects the stories from NPR's Most Emailed Stories that were aired in the past 24 hours.

A popular story list is hardly unique to NPR; Yahoo!, the New York Times, etc. all have these lists. The podcast is different.

There is no way NPR could do this without podcasting. The length of the show can vary wildly—the description on NPR's site says "approx 30 minutes" but Friday's show was 50 minutes long due to the popularity of a half hour interview with the author of The Republican War on Science. Podcasting has the power to free shows from the tyranny of the half hour slot.

Also interesting is where the premise of "most emailed" equalling "best" fails. The lead story from Friday's podcast (containing Thursday's shows) was a Day to Day story on an Ansel Adams photo. This story was likely the most emailed because of people wanting to share the breathtaking picture that accompanies it on the website. I doubt the audio would have made been considered the most important of the day had a human editor been choosing.

NPR: Most E-Mailed Stories shows how the media can use podcasting and the web to provide unique access to their content. It succeeds both as an experiment and as a practical resource for news and information.

(Oh, and if you want to know what other podcasts I listen to, I'll try to keep my Odeo profile up to date with them)

Tags: npr podcasting podcasts

Experts say the biggest problem in the newspaper industry is capturing readers between 18 and 34 years old, and now The Associated Press is looking to tackle that problem head on, reports The New York Times, via Agenda Inc..

"On Monday, the 157-year-old wire service is to start its "younger audience service," offering articles and "experiences" in multimedia formats, with audio, video, blogs and wireless text aimed at reaching readers between 18 and 34 years old. The service, one of the most ambitious projects undertaken by The A.P., is called asap, pronounced letter by letter, meant to evoke the wire service's legendary speed.

More than 100 newspapers have signed up for asap and will decide on their own how to make it available to their readers.

On Friday Sep 9th, the UK company of HHB launched a great device for radio reporters. They have built a flash recorder into the base of a Sennheiser microphone. On the bottom are connected for a pair of headphones and a USB jack to the laptop. You can transfer recordings to the laptop at 90 times faster than real time. The flash unit cannot be taken out (and lost), but you can get plenty of audio in - 3 hours at 48K linear, 18.25 hrs using the MPEG-1 Layer 2 standard at its lowest bitrate. This beast will appear in Jan 2006 at a price of 699 pounds sterling in the UK (VAT extra) and 999 Euros (VAT extra). Might interest some podcasters too who want to interview some famous people - looks better than the i-river or a mobile phone stuck under someone's nose.

Have a look at these two new D-Snap's, the SDR-S100 and SDR-S300. they will be released on the Japanese market mid-Novenmber. They support 2Gb SD's and we still get Mpeg-2 but this time with the use of the DIGA technology (the HDD recorder of the same brand) to render a better video quality. This D-Snap has a 0.8MP LEICA DICOMAR 3CCD sensor.

100 GB of storage for your cell phone?

Mobile phones could one day have the memory capacity of a desktop computer thanks to a microchip that mimics the functioning of the brain.

Researchers from Imperial College London, Durham University and the University of Sheffield say their new computer chip design will enable large amounts of data to be stored in small volumes by using a complex interconnected network of nanowires, with computing functions and decisions performed at the nodes where they meet a similar approach to neurons and axons in the brain.

I've talked about this before, but I want to say it again.

The problem with podcasts is you can't link to a specific part of the podcast.  You can link to the entire MP3, but if there is a funny joke or a great song, you can't highlight that and take me right to  it.

Last week I was walking to work and listening to the one of the earlier Smoke and Mirrors podcasts which is no longer available online (another problem - need permalinks).

Jackson played a great tune that was apparently lifted from the Expensive Wino sessions at Keith Richards' home in Connecticut and then treated to a superdub. I instantly wanted to blog it, but could not.  Jackson sent me the MP3 and here it is in case there are any Keith Richards/Stones fans out there who want to sample it.

We need the ability to link into a specific point in the podcast and we need good inexpensive hosting services so people can keep their podcasts up forever the way we keep our blog posts up forever.  What's a permalink worth if its not permanent?

I am a fan of podcasting and have even called myself a podhead in a prior post.  I listen to at least five and sometimes as many as ten podcasts a week.  Yet we have not made any of the podcast related investments that have been out there to make.  I guess that even with all my enthusiam for podcasting as a creator of them, a listener of them, and an advocate of them, I still find myself in the camp of David, Jeff, and Russell for now.

/feeds.feedburner.com/AVc?g=1437"/>

The next time someone freaks out on live TV, will the broadcaster flip the "Copy Never" bit to control the damage?

Read my full post over on PVRblog.

At the 2005 Canon Expo press conference Canon USA has announced their entrance into the high defintion camcorder market with the XL H1. The new camcorder features 1080 lines of resoluition, shooting at 60 interlaced frames per second. The camcorder includes a 20x lens. While it does not have a true 24 frames progressive mode, the XL H1 does feature movie-like 24 frames per second frame rate. While the 24 frame rate is a bit untested, it seems to fall somewhere in the marketplace between the true 24P on Canon's XL2 and the CineFrame effect on Sony's HDR-FX1. When the camcorder is in the 24 frames mode the chip records at a rate of 24 scans per second, but it should be clear that the chip is not a progressive chip. According to Canon, they are using their 8 years of experience in converting video from an interlaced chip to progressive-looking video to achieve the effect. Joe Borgacz, Assistant Director of Product Development for Video Division at Canon, stated that once the video is brought into a non-linear editor, it is nearly impossible to see a difference between it and true 24 frames progressive scan camcorder video.

(Continued at CamcorderInfo.)

Man, kids today have all the luck (and I'm not just saying that because I feel old and crotchety). First they get tailored-for-kids cellphones and video cameras, now we have Hasbro churning out an entire entertainment system that's kid-friendly. We're talking a fully-working projector with built-in DVD player here people. The Hasbro Zoombox DVD Entertainment Projector displays images sixty inches or larger, and AV cables allow game consoles to be connected as well. Sure the quality may not be that great but at less than $300, this is probably the most low-cost projector on the shelves. It'll be sold exclusively in New York and online through the HasbroShop this December, and be available nationwide next year.

And just in case your little brat wants more techy stuff to emulate his or her techy parents, there's also Hasbro's VuGo Kids Portable Media Player and DVR unit that contains 128MB of memory.

This is apparently enough to hold an hour of video, 6 hours of music, and over 1,200 photos (you could probably add more since the VuGo has an SD slot). Not too much news on the quality of the screen and all the specs, but considering this PMP actually has built-in DVR abilities is pretty huge for a kiddie device. The VuGo is scheduled to be available later this year, for an extremely affordable $120. Hasbro will even launch an actual video download service for the VuGo, probably full of cartoons and music videos (or whatever it is the kids are into these days).

Hasbro also released four more products that we weren't too excited about but your kid might be: The VCAM NOW (a simple video camera for $79.99), the I-DOG (what sounds like a Sega iDog rip-off for $29.99), VideoNow XP (an interactive video system that plays interactive games, music videos etc. for $59.99), and a ChatNow two-way radio (with the ability to transmit text messages as well as pics, for $74.99).

Heck, for these prices, screw the kids — just get them for yourselves.

Hasbro Zoombox Toy Video Projector with Built-in DVD Player [I4U]
Hasbro VuGo Portable Video Player and DVR [I4U]
Press Release [Hasbro]

An interesting quote in this StreamingMedia story about the recent surge in online video use. “Advertising for us is a challenge to sell because of the differences in selling for TV and selling for the web. Our sales force really hasn’t been entirely successful selling for the Web,” says Cris Nuernberg, webmaster for Boston’s WHDH. “It’s not a question of having the technological aspects in place. We could start serving ads today; we’re just not selling them.” WHDH saw a three-fold increase in video traffic after Katrina. (Via PaidContent)

Elective Affinities

...This international conference will explore the relations between word and image from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives. Our title has been borrowed from Goethe's 1809 novel Elective Affinities. In the novel, the chemical term “elective affinities” extends to human relationships, both intimate and political. Like the alkalis and acids of which Goethe's characters speak, words and images, though apparently opposed, may have a remarkable affinity for one another. At the same time, as one of the characters in the book objects, such affinities are problematic, and “are only really interesting when they bring about separations.”

How words and images represent and whether they enjoy a harmonious kinship, engage in border skirmishes, or seek to annihilate one another, are not merely formal matters. The history of iconoclasm tells us about the ideological stakes of the debate. Contemporary discussions of memorialisation seem to demand multi-media expression, and urban inscriptions such as graffiti and mural arts express political positions. New technologies for meshing words and images – such as medical imaging, virtual archives, the Internet – will also be discussed. Among the themes of the conference are: the arts of the book; early correspondences; political inscriptions; sacred words, sacred images; scientific imaging; spaces, places; photographic texts. [via]

New Forms

THIRD INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON MOBILE MUSIC TECHNOLOGY, 2-3 MARCH 2006, BRIGHTON, UK.

Combining mobile technology and music promises exciting future developments in a rapidly emerging field. Devices such as mobile phones, walkmans and iPods have already brought music to the ever-changing social and geographic locations of their users and reshaped their experience of the urban landscape. With new properties such as ad hoc networking, Internet connection, and context-awareness, mobile music technology offers countless new artistic, commercial and socio-cultural opportunities for music creation, listening and sharing. How can we push forward the already successful combination of music and mobile technology? What new forms of interaction with music lie ahead, as locative media and music use merge into new forms of everyday experiences?

Following two successful workshops that started to explore and establish the emerging field of mobile music technology, this third edition offers a unique opportunity to participate in the development of mobile music and hands-on experience of the latest cutting-edge technology. The programme will consist of presentations from invited speakers, in-depth discussions about the crucial issues of mobile music technology, hands-on group activities and break-out sessions where participants can get valuable feedback on their work-inprogress projects. The invited speakers include Michael Bull (University of Sussex, UK), often dubbed by the press as 'Professor iPod' for his iPod and car stereo user studies that reveal fascinating trends for mobile music.

The workshop will take place at theUniversity of Sussex in Brighton, UK. Brighton is situated on the British 'Sunshine Coast' and easily accessible: only 30 minutes from London/Gatwick airport and 60 minutes from central London.

Don't miss this chance to help shape the mobile music landscape of the future!

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS

We invite practitioners, artists, designers and researchers from all areas, including music, technology development, new media, sound-art, music distribution, locative media and industry to register for this international mobile music workshop.

CALL FOR WORK-IN-PROGRESS

Are you working on a mobile music project and looking for feedback from like-minded people to help you to move on with your ideas? We invite submissions of work-in-progress projects exploring the topic of mobile music. Projects will be discussed, receive critical review as well as support with ongoing problems and issues. Your work should not be completed yet, but either be on-going or just about to get started. Potential projects could include but are not limited to mobile music systems or enabling technologies, interface design, on-going or planned user studies, ethnographic fieldwork, art pieces and other areas relevant to mobile music.

Submissions should include a presentation of the project, explain its relevance to the field of mobile music and describe issues and problems that could be discussed during the workshop. Please include a short biography with the submission. Accepted project authors will be given time to present and discuss their work and will receive feedback by smaller groups of workshop participants including specialists in the field. Authors are encouraged to bring material and prototypes to the workshop.

CALL FOR MOBILE PLATFORMS AND SYSTEMS

In addition to the presentations, discussions and project feedback sessions the workshop will also offer handson group activities to explore technological platforms. We are looking for mobile platforms, systems, installations, applications or devices that include music features or can be used for musical projects. The workshop participants will get hands-on experience with these platforms, so they should be suitable for groups of at least 8 people. This provides you with the opportunity to introduce your platform to experts and practitioners in the field of mobile music and to gain valuable feedback. We invite you to submit a platform description, explain how it can be used for mobile music and how larger groups can use it during the workshop.

Details are here.

Help us create the story of We Media. We're asking participants to contribute stories about a collaborative experience. These stories will become part of the collaborations at We Media. Your story can be in any form: a short narrative, haiku, photo, email exchange, anecdote, audio file, podcast, video, office memo, napkin scribble, or brilliant idea. You decide - be creative.

We’ve posted our How-To of the week over at Engadget.com. Take a peep at our cool little mod for embedding a wifi sniffer into a backpack strap or messenger bag strap. Haven’t you always wanted to have squishy switches and LED’s built into your bag? Well, now you can! The How-To even has spiffy Flickr photos for your viewing pleasure.

If you make a cool version of this hack, please let us know. We’re sure you’ll come up with all sorts of ways to make this mod better: super bright LED’s, luminescent wire, fibre optics, etc. Take this How-To and run with it yo…

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
© 2005 Weblogs, Inc.

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a series of doodly visualizations generated from pop songs. the songs are analyzed note-by-note & at each note a specific line is drawn. the angle at which the line is drawn is determined by the pitch of the note, & the length of the line is determined by the volume of the note. the result is a series of playful, doodle-like, linear drawings. the authors consider these image series as a 'reinterpretation of the pop music media' that addresses the pre-adolescence (or childhood) aspect of pop music content. [structuredsound.net|thnkx Jake]

In addition to these provacative images, text strings mentioning the phrase "Protected MPEG-4 video file" were also found within iTunes 5.

Superstar is a multiplayer photo-based game designed for Ubicomp 2005, Tokyo. The game is free, and open for anyone with a phonecam and self-portrait Puri Kura stickers of themselves.

The game uses Japanese Puri Kura stickers as a starting point for an experiment in social networks, automated phonecam image analysis, and urban visual culture.
The goal is to see and be seen, using tiny images woven into the fabric of Tokyo streetlife.

To play, place your own stickers (with a star on it to recognize participants) wherever you want and collect the stickers of other players by shooting them with your phonecam. Whenever a player snaps a Superstar sticker both players earn points.

A link is then created between the two players. From this point on, any time either player earns points (by shooting a new sticker or by having their sticker shot) the other one will also earn points (though not as many).

Superstar thus builds a network of connections that forms a social, pyramid scheme. Successful players will be the ones that forge connections with other active players.

Automated image recognition (e.g. Mobot technology) will decipher who is photographing whom when players email their images to SuperstarHQ via their phonecam. A message is returned via SMS indicating points earned.

Developed by Frank Lantz, Kevin Slavin (areacode) together with Kamida (makers of Socialight), Michael Sharon and Dan Mellinger (Kamida)

Details in the PDF.

Via Metroblogging Tokyo.

(Nice work, Dan! -kc.)

The drive in that drives in

Is MobMov a "Guerilla Drive-in" or not?
Of course we are! We most closely resemble and revere the Santa Cruz Guerilla Drive-in. But we've gone beyond that original concept. In a traditional GDI like Santa Cruz, a bunch of guys would haul out a projector, some marine batteries, a screen, and some speakers to a park. Everyone in the know would in turn bring blankets and sit down. This is a very cool thing to do, but it's not a "drive-in" in most senses of the term. Our goal was to create a true "drive-in" experience by enclosing the projector and an FM transmitter inside a car. Participants drive in to a parking lot, tune their radios, and watch their favorite flick from the comfort of their car. As far as we know, we're the first ones to attempt this.

"The law should treat the internet as open by default -- a public resource rather than a gated community."

Handles turning files into torrents, hopefully BlogTorrent will support this ASAP

"I'm pleased to announce our new API which will allow any web-capable application on the internet the ability to use Prodigem's creation, hosting and management of torrents through a nice standards based interface. The docs are located at http://torrentocracy.com/mediawiki/index.php/Prodigem_API (the wiki includes links to a live demo page). All you need is a Prodigem account and as it so happens, for a limited time we've opened up our free Preview Account so that they come with full upload and torrent creation capabilities. That last part is a first for us as well, so get 'em while they're hot (and free).

And as it so happens, we've also nicely integrated the phpBB forum and messaging system into Prodigem so there's now a nice shiny place to discuss new things like the API (http://www.prodigem.com/forums/) or just generally mingle.

So all you internet programming types have a look at the API and tell us what you think. We're excited to see what you come up with now that every web application out there can have a 'make me a torrent' button. Or maybe it will be called a 'save my blog from this slashdotting' button, or perhaps a 'our fanbase is community of people already looking for ways to help us' button, or 'my company is in a crunch, Prodigem to the rescue' button, or..."

LibriVox is an open source audio-literary attempt to harness the power of the many to record and disseminate, in podcast form, books from the public domain.

a research paper by Jurij Leskovec, Lada A. Adamic and Bernardo A. Huberman investigating a large person-to-person recommendation network (4 million).

We observed the propagation of recommendations and the cascade sizes, which can be explained by a stochastic model. We then established how the recommendation network grows over time and how effective it is from the viewpoint of the sender and receiver of the recommendations. While on average recommendations are not very effective at inducing purchases and do not spread very far, there are product and pricing categories for which viral marketing seems to be very effective.

Since they've gone public, Google has been awash with new products aimed at pleasing investors. The latest is Google Blog Search, which edges in on existing outfits like Technorati (but may actually work well?). Keep in mind this is only a blog feed search; blogs that don't have feeds won't be found. Curious to see the latest trackbacks to your blog? Use "link:blog.yourblogname.com". SearchEngine Watch offers up a comprehensive dissection.

Brand new public beta versions of Fireant released for Mac and PC!

Fireant is an RSS video aggregator and media player. Subscribe to any RSS 2.0 channel and automatically download fresh media content to watch and listen to.

• Fireant plays *any* media format (Quicktime, Windows Media, Flash, Real) and can sync downloaded files with portable media players such as the iPod and Sony PSP.


• Fireant's integrated Yahoo! Video Search helps you find videos you are looking for.


• When a video is playing, you can make it play big!


• Use the magic Comment button to send feedback to video creators.

Get Fireant and prepare to get addicted.

Technologies of Memory

May 19-20, 2006, Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands). The conference Technologies of Memory in the Arts focuses on art as a cultural and technological practice to process and construct the past in the present. Central questions to this conference are: How do art and artistic practices function as technologies of memory? How are cultural artefacts implicated in complex processes of remembering and forgetting, of recollecting and disremembering, of amnesia and anamnesia?

As a shared artistic and social practice, cultural memory links the present to the past. In doing so, cultural memory has strong ethical and political aspects. The arts are continuously engaged in non-linear processes of remembering and forgetting, characterised by repetition, rearrangement, revision, and rejection. In artistic representations new memories are thus constantly constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed by narrative strategies, visual and aural styles, intertextuality and intermediality, representations of time and space, and rituals of remembrance. These complex processes of representation are what we understand by the term 'technologies of memory'.

The contemporary fascination with history and memory is accompanied by developments in media technology that have simultaneously a petrifying and a virtualising effect. Both individual and cultural memory are increasingly mediated by modern technologies, which means that memories are not only recorded and recollected by media, but are also shaped and produced by them. The digital media, in particular, allow for new ways of storing, retrieving and archiving personal and collective memories, as well as cultural artefacts.

The conference Technologies of Memory in the Arts specifically addresses the material construction of cultural memory. It aims to explore procedures of memory in both traditional and new media as well as to investigate the role of digitalisation of art and culture in relation to memory. Generally, its focus is on the materiality of representation and on the relation between the medium and the construction of cultural memory.

Keynote speakers (confirmed):
- Marita Sturken (University of Southern California)
- Ann Rigney (Utrecht University)

We are especially interested in panel and paper proposals on the following topics:

- Mediated memories
- Narrative strategies
- Intertextuality / intermediality
- Music as memory work
- Urban space and spatial dimensions
- Tourism and heritage
- Musical subcultures as memory space
- Representations of memory in the arts
- Amnesia and anamnesia
- Icons of the recent past
- Rituals of remembrance
- Rituals, music and the shape of memory
- Nostalgia and pastiche
- Retro styles as forms of cultural memory
- Rewritings of the classics
- Digitalisation of archives
- Music/sound recordings and the technology of memory

Deadline for proposals: 1 November 2005.

More information and submission:
http://www.ru.nl/comparativearts/research/technologies_of/

The BBC has unleashed the first installment of its (mostly) remixable TV archive. Containing about 100 clips, each a few minutes long, it mostly seems to be innocuous material such as animals and landscapes. Of course, many interesting mixes contain image of people but that seems likely to run afoul of the archive's Creative Archive Licence, which claims that the material must not be use to defame anyone. Interestingly, the CAL appears to be viral, in that anything created with its material must itself be licensed under identical terms.

The material is being made available to BBC Radio 1 listeners with an encouragement to create a 3-minute VJ mix. Clearly this pilot is targeting the most obvious audience. It will be interesting to see where this grows as the library of licensed clips grows and people expand the ways in which they're used. For example, could I use this material as background for a show I was DJing, if I was going to get paid for the DJ gig anyway and didn't get anything more for having the video acompaniment?

Hewett Packard today demonstrated HDTVs with wireless access to digital content currently stored on their PCs. The company is also shipping a new line of microdisplay, plasma and LCD TVs as well as its high-definition Digital Entertainment Centers in time for holiday shopping.

The prototype HP HDTVs demonstrated at CEDIA, a consumer electronics expo, contain a built-in digital media receiver that enables the TVs to communicate, wired or wirelessly, with practically any PC in a home. The new TVs won't be able to surf the Web, but they will be able to connect to certain Internet sites to buy or rent movies and download other video content. A wireless connection can pull up archived movies and audio content from a Media Center PC.

Accompanying HP software will allow consumers to create virtual databases of media content on their PCs – from digital images to audio and video files. Once the library of personal media is created and the wired or wireless connections are made, consumers can use their remote controls to easily access libraries of content from their PCs or broadband networks directly on their advanced digital media HP HDTVs.

HP is shipping three sizes of DLP-based microdisplay televisions (MDTVs) in time for the holiday season – in 50-inch, 58-inch and 65-inch sizes. All the MDTVs ship with a built-in ATSC tuner and include a connection panel that enables consumers to hook up to 10 sources in front of the TV.

HP’s HD Digital Entertainment Centers (DECs) are designed to pull everything together in one package, serving as a management, recording and storage component for all digital content – including music, photos, television programming, movies and games. The z555 model comes with a 250 gigabyte (GB) 7,200 rpm Serial ATA hard drive, and the z557 model comes with two 300 GB hard drives, one being a personal media drive to deliver over half a terabyte of combined storage.

Both Media Center PCs offer high-performance TV quality with the Nvidia GeForce 6600 PCI-Express graphics card.

HP estimates that U.S. consumers spend $42 billion a year to upgrade their televisions, buying high-definition and flat screens. At the same time, the way entertainment is stored and delivered is changing.

"We're not building a PC into a TV, but we're enhancing the functionality of the TV to give more access to your content," said Steve Nigros, senior vice president of HP's Imaging and Printing Group.

Sony, Toshiba and Philips are expected to offer similar products. Dell recently began selling televisions. Intel Corp. announced technologies last month designed to make it easier for PCs to play music and video.

HP's new CEO, Mark Hurd, sees entertainment as a key to the firm's growth. Tech companies are spending heavily on entertainment applications.

Pace Micro has announced the launch of the world's first DVB-H H.264 mobile personal video recorder (PVR) - the PDH400.

The Pace PDH400 integrates the new DVB-H standard into its existing mobile PVR device - the PVR2GO - enabling live digital content to be watched and enjoyed by the subscriber on the move - wherever they are, whenever they want.

With a 4.3" color widescreen display, the PDH400 also works as a shared experience for viewers. DVB-H trials are now underway in Finland (Helsinki), Germany (Berlin), United Kingdom (Oxford) and United States (Pittsburg).

As well as enabling live TV content on the move, PDH400 also works as a personal video recorder (PVR) and comes with a maximum hard drive capacity of 40Gb, which can store in excess of 200 hours of programming. Streaming H.264 from a solid state memory SD-card is also supported.

Pace has been working with Sony and Broadcom on the electronics.

Broadcom's mobile H.264 chip solution, the BCM2702, offers high-performance decoding for H.264, WMV9 and a whole range of audio and video codecs. Combining programmability with best-in-class power consumption, it is the ideal choice for DVB-H, T-DMB or any other mobile TV standard". Pace is also working with NDS to integrate NDS mVideoGuard DVB-H CA and an ESG (electronic service guide) into the PDH400.

Recently, DiBcom SA, a small French startup, announced they will partner with Intel to add mobile TV to Intel's Centrino and Xscale platforms. DiBcom's digital TV chips are capable of 24-Mbit/second reception at 150 miles per hour. DiBcom's DVB-H (digital video broadcast-handheld) competitors include TI's Hollywood Chip, Freescale, Philips, Samsung and STMicroelectronics. Crown Castle Mobile Media in Pittsburgh, operates an ongoing DVB-H trial using the 1.672-GHz L-band.

DaVinci is TI's next-generation digital video engine, expected to be inside IP set-tops, digital TV, video telephony, digital still cameras and portable video. The DaVinci processors consist of DSP-based system-on-chip, integrating DSP and ARM cores, accelerators, peripherals and necessary software, the Dallas-based company said.

For mobile phones designed to handle planned broadcast TV service in the U.S., Samsung's tuner operates in the L-Band (1,670-1,675 MHz). For those targeted at Europe, it also will function within the European UHF frequency range (470-890 MHz) and the L-Band spectrum likely to be allocated for European mobile TV broadcast (1,452-1,477 MHz).

Castle Mobile Media will use the mobilized television standard, DVB-H on their 1.7 GHz band next year. Other backers of DVB-H include Microtune, Nokia, O2, S-Communications, S3, Texas Instruments, TTPCom, and UDcast.

A DVB-H radio receiver in the handset sends 15 Mbit/s of data per 8MHz channel, and adds error correction to compensate for poor reception. U.S. television channels are limited to 6 Mbps, producing around 12 Mbit/s. The robustness of COFDM in mobile environments makes it a good match for mobile multi-media devices, receiving broadband TV and data off the air. DVB is a global television standard and uses COFDM instead of the multipath prone 8-VSB-based ATSC standard.

Pace also demonstrated the world's first DVB-S2 H.264 high definition (HD) set-top boxes for commercial deployment. The DVB-S2 standard is an MPEG-4 follow-on to the MPEG-2-based Digital Video Broadcast standard now used for DBS satellite television. It features 30% better compression efficiency.

Many new products are being demonstrated at the big International Broadcast Conference, this week in Amsterdam.

Our goal is to combine the physical annotation technology of semacode with the availability of high quality information using the free encyclopedia Wikipedia.

Imagine your cellphone as your smart travelguide. Promise is to provide free relevant ad-hoc high quality information to mobile users in the real world. Learn more ...

Via an IGDA newsletter I just discovered the website and schedule for the first annual Game Writers Conference — a two-day event dedicated to the art and craft of game writing, October 26-27, co-located with the annual Austin Games Conference focused on MMOGs and mobile games, and the Women’s Game Conference on women in the computer and video game industry.

Confirmed presentations for the Game Writers Conference include Mark Laidlaw of Valve presenting “Gaming the Narrative”, Clint Hocking giving a case study for writers about the production of Splinter Cell, and a talk called “The Writer/Designer Tag Team” from the developers of Gears of War.

I’ve written them to try to get Façade a seat on the “AI for Writers” panel, hopefully it’s not too late to squeeze Grace and Trip in there.

(Continued at Grand Text Auto.)

Chinese manufacturers are starting to introduce more and more good quality and nicely specced products lately, like this AMOI 660, a triband GSM (900/1800/1900) with camera functions like on a Xacti, but this A660 has a 1.3MP sensor and shoots videos in 352x288 (no fps info) and has 12Mb of internal memory.

Verizon is launching their coax-fiber Fios TV in Keller, Texas, the first location to get Fios service last fall. The company has released both a channel lineup and a price-guide for their television service. Residents of Keller are being told that they can now sign up for a 2 month free trial; the final effort to work out kinks before broader deployment begins later this year.

Some of the prices at a glance (obviously subject to change per market):

Basic 15–35 channels: $12.95

Digital Service, 160 channels (+basic package): $39.95

"La Connexion" Digital service, 115 channels (+basic package): $32.95

The company is also offering additional add-on packages:

Sports Package (15 channels): $5.95

Movie Package (26 channels): $11.95

Sports/Movie combo (41 channels): $14.95

Spanish language package (26 channels): $11.95

HD Package: $9.95

On Demand new release films will be offered for $3.95, while library titles will be available for $2.95.

While their channel pricing is great, some of their other installation costs leave a little something to be desired when compared to satellite or cable. While Verizon claims they'll charge users nothing to disconnect FiosTV entirely, they'll charge you $50 (plus $5 per set-top box) if you decide to downgrade from digital to analog. They also note you'll be charged $24.95 to have a set-top box disconnected (+$5 per box).

You can sign up via the Fios TV website to be notified when the service is available in your area. Keep your eye on this thread in our Fios forum for additional information from locals, and first impressions of the service.

I came to Wikipedia's Hurricane Katrina entry via the full coverage section on Yahoo News. Every scholarly editor and working journalist out there should give it a serious look as we reconsider old vs. new media and ivory tower/mainstream vs. citizen content. The transparency, version history, authority, self-policing, fact checking, accreditation, presentation, and wealth of information is a glimpse of a different future as the people's living encyclopedia chronicles a current event.

UPDATE: The downside of citizen media is seen as wikipedia's entry is defaced with "I'm a little teapot, short and stout..." at 16:01, 9 September 2005 by 206.176.119.180 (Piconjo pwns j00!), and the upside is seen when the site corrected and restored the entry minutes later [16:04, 9 September 2005 MrWhipple (Rvt vandalism)]. See the full history file.

Creative Technology has just released a new 4-in-1 digital camcorder that incorporates an MP3 player, voice recorder, and of course, a digital camera in its list of features. The DiVi CAM 428 has a 4-megapixel CCD sensor and able to take pictures at 8.0 megapixels using what's called an "in-cam interpolation." It'll record MPEG-4 in VGA (640 x 480) res at 30 frames per second, in a choice of either AVI or ASF format. Other features include 4x digital zoom, five flash modes, a Night mode, a Macro mode, integrated 32MB, and a 2-inch LCD that can rotate up to 270 degrees. Available starting this month, the price is a really affordable $199. Which is good, since all of these multi-function devices seem to suffer from a "master of none" syndrome. But with the low price and sleek stylings of the DiVi CAM 428, I may actually learn to like this one.

Press Release [Creative]
Creative DiVi CAM 428 does it all [MobileMag]

When I first saw this picture - i actually thought it was working code:

But then Michael Meiser discloses:

Eric Rice posts this picture of the Sony PSP loaded up edge to edge with thumbnails of videos theoretically just a click away. It's not really there, but it is a vision of what could be.

Then I see that Michael is complaining that the PSP doesn't have enough memory.

Dude - let me tell yah about the time we convinced Phillips to DOUBLE the amount of RAM it was defining for CD-I - from 500k up to a whopping 1M of RAM! That was back in 1989.

There will NEVER be enough RAM. My XP machine running 512M of RAM is contantly swapping and running out. RAM usage is like gas in a vacuum.

(I'd love to see someone get a PSP vogbrowser going sometime soon, as I've been working on PSP-friendly CSS and Javascript version of Rocketboom for a couple of weeks now. Hey Peter: I could've sworn you had a working demo of something like this going on somewhere. -kc.)

By now everyone knows that Apple is laying the Mini to rest and replacing it with nano. But have no fear: There's a new mini on the block. The TVix Mini C2000U is a 3-inch by 5-inch mobile multimedia jukebox that will give copyright lawyers bad dreams.

"The new 100GB TVix Mini C-2000U is the baby bro of the C-3000U and supports most video formats including MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (AVI, VOB) and MPEG-4 (AVI, DivX, XviD) as well as MP3, Ogg Vobis or WMA audio files. Plenty of room to store images on the 100GB HD combined with background music option makes this one useful for photographers, too. Also onboard is USB 2.0 OTG (On-The-Go) technology which TVix claim to have adapted. This allows users to connect and download files between the TViX mini and a USB device without the aid of a PC. So even when a computer isn't available images may be dowloaded from other compatible devices directly to the TViX mini via the USB port. It's also possible to copy and transfer data!"

Slap an LCD screen on the TViX someplace and I might just chuck the PSP (at least until there are some decent games for the thing).

New mini on the scene [iPod Studio Forums]

Tired of your kid messing up your $500 camcorder? Well just get your little tyke a video camera of his or her own. Mattel, maker of Barbies, has recently released the Vidster, a camcorder designed to be kid-friendly with its durable plastic housing molded to fit small hands. (And, later, it will be re-discovered by emerging directors and replace the Fisher-Price Pixelvision as a breakthrough in filmmaking.) Specs include 1.3 megapixels for stills, 1.1-inch color LCD, and 2x digital zoom (no optical). A 32MB SD card is included, which is enough for short 6-8 minutes of video with 320 x 240 res. Not the best specs obviously, but your kid probably won't mind anyway. Now to figure out how to project all those videos on the refrigerator door.

Makin' Movies with the Vidster [PC World]

Andy Kessler’s got a great piece on the eco-politics of muni wifi.

One of the worst hassles about having a tripod is that you have to carry it around everywhere. I don't know about you, but I don't have too much space in my messenger bag for a decent-sized tripod. The Pod, from the tripod experts at Bogen, aims to solve that by providing a simple and stable camera support without the use of a tripod. It looks like a tiny beanbag at first, but attach any camera or camcorder to its universal locking bolt, and you have an instant tripod replacement. It contains plastic beans, is Velcro-sealed, water-resistant, and has a non-slip base for additional stability when positioning the camera. And since it's only 5 x 2 inches, I could probably slip it in my bag, no problem. Now I can finally take a non-blurry evening shot with my dinky little camera. They come in yellow, red, and blue, and currently sell for $21 each.

The Pod [Bogen Imaging]

What would a public domain, collaboratively written novel look like? Some friends and I have started one. Jump in. There's lots of opportunities to contribute.

Auditions for a a video-taped daily news program which will be broadcast daily via the Internet as a 2-3 minute video blog. Let a thousand rocketbooms, uh, bloom.

community communication03
Originally uploaded by jdcreativity77.

An outline of 'Community Communications - ie, the future of public access merging with the Node concept

Understanding semantic relationships between concepts makes folksonomic tagging even more exciting.

Business Week media columnist Jon Fine examines the VJ and citizens media movements in this week's issue. The article features my client, WKRN-TV, and is a nice primer on what we're doing in Nashville. The fact that the article is in Business Week is what makes it important, and the final paragraph is priceless, especially if you know Mike Sechrist (WKRN G.M.):

What happens with WKRN will provide early insight into how well this democratization -- with all its delicious tinges of empowerment -- can work in a mass-market business model. WKRN also trained local bloggers in video production, so they too may contribute news segments. Plenty of big-name players are tinkering around the edges with citizen-journalism. It's harder to find a major-market network affiliate making such a far-reaching effort. Says Sechrist: "We are not going to go back." No pressure, Michael, but the media world is watching. If it works, we might start tuning in at 11 again.

isn't the problem for local media; audience is the problem, and we'll never resolve that without listening first.

Oliver Starr "stitch" posted on The Mobile weblog about MobSharing (the convergence of file sharing and flash-mobs) and adds in his submitted posting for Smartmobs:

"Thought you might appreciate what I feel has the potential to be a big thorn in the side of record companies; at least in the younger age brackets: Flash MobSharing...that is ad hoc wlans of kids using bluetooth or WiFi (or better, UWB "ultra wide band") to engage in ad-hoc P2P file sharing. It's a MoSoSo + FlashMob scenario if someone got creative with the software...you create your "hotlist" and when someone initiates a flashmobshare, you could be notified if any of your hot list files are available"

[Thank you Oliver !!]

It occurred to me after the fact that what this really needed to facilitate truly useful Flash Mobshares would be a finalized standard and commercialized product based upon Ultra Wide Band protocols. This protocol which is currently capable of speeds in excess of 800mb per second today, and which has theoretical limits over 1gig per second would make it possible to share whole DVDs in moments and complete libraries of personal media content in not much longer.

University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers have developed an algorithm that helps explain the sociological underpinnings of the "six degrees of separation" theory. From the press release." Participants in the Travers and Milgram study who efficiently sent the message probably acted intuitively by combining two human traits that apply to computerized network-searching as well,say the researchers. People tend to associate with people who are like themselves,and some individuals are more gregarious than others. "Searching" using both of these factors, one can efficiently get to a target even when little is known about the network’s structure. The tendency of like to associate with like,or homophily, means that attributes of a node—an individual in the Travers and Milgram study—tend to be correlated.Bostonians often know other Bostonians,and the same holds true for qualities such as age or occupation. The second important characteristic of these networks is that some people have many more acquaintances than others. This "degree disparity" leads to some individuals acting as hubs. Taking these factors into account simultaneously results in a searching algorithm that gets messages to the target by passing it to gregarious individuals who are most like the target. Or in the language of network-searching,it favors nodes that maximize the probability of linking directly to the target, which is a function of both degree and homophily,say the scientists".

"Six Degrees of Separation" Theory Explained in New Algorithm by UMass Amherst Researchers

The NewsMarket, Inc., an Internet video distributor, is making B-Roll of Hurricane Katrina relief efforts and donations available for journalists. The video is free to all journalists who have registered at The NewsMarket's Web site, which enables them to search, preview, and download ready-to-broadcast content.

News organizations can use this site to get free, immediate access to B-Roll, still shots, rich media and audio clips from relief organizations updating their relief efforts and seeking to raise funds, including the American Red Cross and America's Second Harvest, a national food bank.

Journalists seeking more video related to Hurricane Katrina relief and recovery efforts can register at thenewsmarket.com.

Digidesign's new Mbox 2 has some of you excited, others unimpressed -- but we were missing some details about how it differs from the original Mbox. Are the inserts gone? Does the fact that Digidesign no longer mentions "Focusrite mic pres" mean this is a downgrade, given that was a big selling point of the original? What about that handle -- what if you want it out of the way? We've asked Digidesign for details. Digidesign's Reinel Adajar gives us the scoop (thanks, Reinel!).

CDM: Will you still be able to buy the original Mbox?
Digi: No. Mbox 2 will be replacing the Mbox (which will be discontinued).

Have the TRS inserts been removed? TRS inserts let you plug in hardware effects easily without a mixer.
Digi: Yes they have. In maintaining the portability, this allowed for the space to be used towards the MIDI ports, which customers tend to use more especially with the new Ignition Pack [software bundle] that is now included.

CDM: The specs no longer show Focusrite mic pres? Whose mic pres are in there now?
Digi: The new mic preamp design in Mbox 2 utilizes a console-style preamp topology with a switchable balanced 20 dB pad in front of the main preamp—similar to what is used in most traditional mixing consoles. Mechanical switching is employed, eliminating the distortion associated with electronic switching, especially at high signal levels. The combination of improved topology and cleaner powering gives the preamp nearly 4 dBu of equivalent input noise (EIN) improvement over the original Mbox.

CDM: Is there any way to fold the handle or get rid of it?
Digi: The handle can be removed and switched to use the other piece included.

So, there you have it. Better mic pres, MIDI ports instead of the inserts (which I'll admit, most of us are more likely to use), and you can get rid of the handle if you want to save space. (See picture; it should reduce clearance in your bag, a good thing.) Add that to an improved software bundle, and this is definitely a good buy for Pro Tools users, especially assuming you don't already own an Mbox. I still see brisk competition for users of other systems like Live, SONAR, Logic, Tracktion, and the lot, of course, but it's nice to see audio interfaces for computers continue to evolve.

href="http://www.createdigitalmusic.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=856&Itemid=44"> Digidesign Unveils New Mbox 2 -- Here's What's Different
Some of the competition for Mbox 2.

The Augurscope: a portable mixed-reality interface for outdoors.

The augurscope consists of a tripod-mounted display that can be wheeled to different locations and then rotated and tilted to view a virtual environment that is aligned with the physical background. Video from an onboard camera is embedded into this virtual environment. The augurscope utilises a GPS receiver, electronic compass, accelerometer and rotary encoder to acheive global position tracking at the same time as smooth local interaction. In August 2001 we [researchers] tested an initial application in which the public explored Nottingham’s medieval castle from the site of its modern replacement. Analysis of use revealed issues with lighting, movement and relating virtual and physical viewpoints, and showed how environmental factors and physical form affected interaction.

Paper about it: Holger Schnadelbach, Boriana Kolvea, Martin Flintham, Mike Fraser, Paul Chandler, Malcolm Foster, Steve Benford, Chris Greenhalgh, Shahram Izadi and Tom Rodden. The Augurscope: A Mixed Reality Interface for Outdoors. In: ACM Conference on Computer-Human Interaction (CHI’02), pages 9–16. ACM Press, April 2002.

There is also a second version:

Communication Between Closely-Knit Group

WatchMe, by Natalia Marmasse, and Chris Schmandt, will be a platform for mobile communication and awareness, in the form of a watch, which addresses these limitations.

WatchMe enhances communication for a subset of people with whom we want an open channel of rich communication and for whom we want to be available. These are typically people from our "inner circle" with whom we have an established relationship, some common grounding, and a basis of trust. By sharing personal context information with our "insiders" we can enhance the instances of non co-located communication, and by providing channels of non-verbal communication we can foster more (verbal or non-verbal) communication and increase the existing sense of connectedness. The approach is to provide insiders with updated remote awareness information.

This mutual awareness serves two different purposes. First, it can strengthen the sense of presence of people we care about and may encourage further communication, besides being a form of non-verbal communication in itself. Second, it will provide insiders trying to contact us with enough information to make an informed decision regarding our availability and the most appropriate communication medium.

This project addresses mobile communication and awareness of people in a closely-knit group. It aims to enhance the telecommunication between them by providing relevant telepresence and a mobile platform facilitating various channels of verbal and non-verbal communication. Related: RealPlayer Movie; MPG Movie; UbiComp Paper (pdf).

Demand for wireless sensor networking is growing and deployments are accelerating, according to a recently published report by ON World.

Today, Panasonic announced the world’s first 3 CCD SD (secure digital) recording camcorder, the SDR-S100. Calling it “a genuine video camera,” Panasonic is adding legitimacy to the flash media camcorder market. The new camcorder includes a 2GB SD card for recording MPEG2 video and features 3.1 megapixel stills.

The SDR-S100 features three 1/6-in. CCDs. Each CCD has 800K gross pixels with 640K effective pixels per CCD in 4:3 mode and 540K effective pixels per CCD in 16:9 mode. The new camcorder features a 10x optical zoom and Panasonic’s Optical Image Stabilization. Billed as a take anywhere rugged camcorder, the model is extremely small, measuring just 49.9 mm x 96.7 mm x 80.4 mm and weighing just 242 grams. The camcorder weighs less than half of the PV-GS250, a similar Panasonic MiniDV model.

Nokia's Marko Ahtisaari has posted an insightful look at the future of mobile communications. With nearly 2 billion mobile phone users in the world expected next year, he starts with a simple question: What made this astounding growth possible?

If you believe there is a greater shared mobile future (and you probably do if your reading this), what obstacles are necessary to overcome?

Ahtisaari suggests:

• Reach


• Sometimes Off vs. Always On


• Hackability


• Social Primitives


• Openenss


• Simplicity


• Justice

: This is the first such investment from a public broadcaster that I've heard of: American Public Media Group (APMG), parent company to Minnesota Public Radio, has invested almost $1 million in the for-profit, Boston-based Gather.com. The new venture is a social networking website devoted to creating an online community of public-radio listeners.
The site, which has a beta version up now, will formally launch in December. It is designed for public radio's older, more sober audience...
APMG may add several hundred thousand dollars more during the next round of financing, which aims to raise about $7 million more. In the first round, along with APMG's million, CEO Thomas August Gerac added slightly more than $1 million as investment.

Here's a MetroTimes story about the power of blogging via the New Orleans citizen journalism site The Interdictor. It has been documenting events from day one from inside New Orleans.

Pointer from Romenesko.