Interesting (and well executed) idea — a daily critique of a submitted photograph, in the form of a downloadable video.
The war on photog…, er, terror (contd.)
From John Simons’s Blog…
On my recent trip back from India on British Airways, I was inspired by Julieanne Kost’s recent book, Window Seat (not to be confused with another book of the same title by Dicum) to snap some landscape photos at 35000 feet. I think we were over Iran at the time. After taking several shots, imagine my surprise when one of the BA attendants closed the window shade and informed me that it was against British Airways policy for passengers to take such photos for security reasons. I thought she was kidding, but the head attendant confirmed what I had been told. And that it had nothing to do with where we were flying.
UK Government climbs aboard YouTube bandwagon
Wow! This I didn’t expect.
Senior executives at the UK Cabinet Office have posted their first two short films – ‘Transformational Government’ and ‘Sharing the leadership challenge’, a slightly longer clip concerning Whitehall plans to save money by consolidating service departments and the leadership challenges this poses for managers…
Vodafone 3G On Apple MacBook Via USB
The only thing I want 3G mobile telephony for is broadband access on the move. Problem is: I don’t have a laptop with a PCMCIA slot. (And even when I did, the only PCMCIA cards available came with Windows-only drivers.) But now Vodafone are releasing a USB 3G modem.
[Link from Digital-Lifestyles.info via Quentin.]
3G is only an interim solution, I know. And it’s relatively expensive in the UK (see summary of data charges here). And Vodafone’s 3G coverage seems astonishingly skimpy. Still…
Symbiosis in action
Nice MediaGuardian column by Jeff Jarvis
Bloggers don’t think they’ll replace reporters, they want to work in symbiotic bliss, amateur alongside professional, complementing each other’s skills to expand the reach of the news. I call this networked journalism and I am seeing more examples of the two tribes coming together not to clash but to conspire.
For example, when a Reuters lensman faked up photos from Lebanon, blogger Charles Johnson at littlegreenfootballs.com demonstrated just how Photoshopping had oomphed up the action. Johnson was the same blogger who showed how the documents underlying former CBS anchor Dan Rather’s investigation of George Bush’s military service had been faked. But big media’s reaction this time was different. CBS stonewalled for 11 days. Reuters responded by suspending, then firing the photographer. They also gave Johnson credit, which is to say that Reuters saw they were on the same side – the side of honesty.
Similarly, when AOL released millions of web searches, thinking the information was anonymous, it was bloggers, like techcrunch.com’s Michael Arrington, who realised searches can reveal our identity. The New York Times reported a magnificent story tracking down searcher “no. 4417749” as an old lady in Georgia who’d sought “women’s underwear” and “dog who urinates on everything”. The Times, like the Washington Post, gave nods to bloggers for doing the legwork…
Home Solar as User Generated Content
Like many people, I’ve been brooding on my domestic energy use and wondering what to do about it. I’m fascinated by what Peter Armstrong has been doing to reduce the carbon footprint of his family (and keep warm while saving money). Likewise, I’m intrigued by the potential of small wind turbines (and if I lived in Ireland I would certainly have one already). But this post by Tim O’Reilly suggests another way of looking at home generation.
In a conversation the other day, Ed Kummer of Disney made a really thought-provoking observation: the spread of solar energy units to homes and businesses is an analog to other forms of user-generated content, and the overall trend towards a two-way network. While it’s possible to set up a solar system completely off the grid, most of the new customers feed power into the grid during sunlight hours, and draw from it when the daylight wanes. If we move to a solar power economy, it will be much more distributed and cooperative than the current one-way model…
Video satire
I’ve been looking at some of the hilarious video satires that increasingly pop up on YouTube and Google Video. here, for example, is a Bush ‘State of the Union’ Address ingeniously doctored. And here is a German video showing that Dubya is in fact a remotely-controlled robot.
On the other hand, here is Dubya doing an hilarious double act with comedian Steve Bridges at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Goggles: The Google Maps flight simulator
This is simply wonderful: a flight simulator written in Flash which uses Google Earth to provide the backdrop. I’ve just flown round London!
Thanks to Tom for finding it.
Can’t censor the internet? Tell that to your compliant ISP
This morning’s Observer column…
Dr Godfrey sued for defamation and, in 1997, won. Demon appealed but then unexpectedly decided to settle, paying Godfrey damages and costs. As a result, a chilling legal precedent was set which essentially undermines Gilmore’s blithe confidence in the ability of the net to overcome censorship. Godfrey v. Demon Internet established the principle that if you complain to an ISP about something hosted on its servers and the ISP does nothing about it, it can be held liable in subsequent proceedings.
Every since then, censoring the web has been child’s play, at least in the UK and Europe. Here’s how it works. If you don’t like something someone says about you on a website, get a lawyer to write a ‘notice and takedown’ (snotty, in other words) letter to the ISP that hosts the site. Seven times out of 10, the ISP will pull the plug on the site without further ado – and certainly without considering whether your complaint has any merit.
You think I jest?
Shrinking-Vacation Syndrome
From a New York Times report…
The Conference Board, a private research group, found that at the start of the summer, 40 percent of consumers had no plans to take a vacation over the next six months — the lowest percentage recorded by the group in 28 years. A survey by the Gallup Organization in May based on telephone interviews with a national sample of 1,003 adults found that 43 percent of respondents had no summer vacation plans.
About 25 percent of American workers in the private sector do not get any paid vacation time, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. Another 33 percent will take only a seven-day vacation, including a weekend.“
The idea of somebody going away for two weeks is really becoming a thing of the past,” said Mike Pina, a spokesman for AAA, which has nearly 50 million members in North America. “It’s kind of sad, really, that people can’t seem to leave their jobs anymore.”
Shrinking-vacation syndrome has gotten so bad that at least one major American company, the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, has taken to shutting down its entire national operation twice a year to ensure that people stop working — for about 10 days over Christmas, and 5 days or so around the Fourth of July.
“We aren’t doing this to push people out the door,” said Barbara Kraft, a partner at the firm in the human resources office. “But we wanted to create an environment where people could walk away and not worry about missing a meeting, a conference call or 300 e-mails.”
Ye Gods! What a country. I have a friend who’s a senior executive in a major US corporation. He gets two weeks of holiday a year, and reports that his colleagues get annoyed by his refusal to take a laptop away with him.