Rabu, 28 November 2007

Everything in the known universe about Boing Boing

Boing Boing is a weblog of cultural curiosities and interesting technologies. It's the most popular blog in the world, as ranked by Technorati.com, and won the Lifetime Achievement and Best Group Blog awards at the 2006 Bloggies ceremony.
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"Green Plug" Tries to Push Smarter Charging Standard

greenplug.jpg

Considerable power is wasted by battery chargers and wall warts, even when they're not recharging or powering a device. The "Green Plug" standard aims to remedy that problem by establishing a universal plug system with an intelligent charging base that will power down the charger when not needed. It will even work as a hub, powering multiple devices and turning off the power to each as necessary.

Great idea, but getting companies to settle on a universal power plug system—and then stop bundling superfluous chargers with their product—will be quite a hurdle for the company to clear. It took several years for phone companies to come to an agreement about mobile charging standards. If the Green Plug system could also work with other plug formats, especially USB and its variants, it would have a much greater chance of succeeding.

Lighted Shower Head Changes Color with Temperature

colorhead.jpgThis shower head's embedded LEDs change color with the temperature of the water, going from white to blue to red as it heats up. Even niftier, though, is that it requires to external power source to work, instead powering itself from the pressure of the water itself, presumably with a small turbine.

Right now it's listed on Alibaba.com, which means it's not easily available in a store, but perhaps will be when someone contracts the Chinese manufacturer to produce a bulk order.


iTunes: Boing Boing tv is a "best video podcast of 2007"


Whoah, this is super cool and the entire Boing Boing tv team is very grateful! iTunes is featuring Boing Boing tv as one of the top video podcasts of 2007: Link. Chris Albrecht of NewTeeVee wrote a roundup with more about all the selected podcasts: Link. (Thanks, Pete Alcorn!).


Dave Hill + Blip Fest + 8-bit Combat

BBtv and BB Gadgets sent internet funnyman Dave Hill to Blip Fest, a multimedia music festival celebrating music made from vintage video game consoles and computers. Mr. Hill was in a fightin' mood. Next, a short video from Walter Robot. (special thanks to Jesse Thorn and Joel Johnson!).

Previously on Boing Boing: Dave Hill is a very funny guy.


Film Racing

A mashup of selected shorts from "Film Racing," an annual contest in which independent filmmaker teams from 10 cities around the US must each produce a 4-minute digital film in exactly 12 hours. Also, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle squares off with, um, an actual turtle. (Thanks, Charlie Weisman!)

Previously on Boing Boing: 24-hour Movie People.



Everything in the known universe about Boing Boing

Memuat...

BBC's iPlayer sold us out -- and then failed

My latest Guardian column, "Downloaded BBC programmes should be forever," talks about how the BBC has sold us out with its failed, DRM-based iPlayer (a reliable source puts the number of active iPlayer users at less than ten thousand and a second reliable source says, "That number sounds high") and how it and the Trustees should have had the guts to go to rightsholders and say, "Sorry, we can't accept any deal that doesn't give the public at least as much freedom as they have with their existing VCRs."
You might decide, hell, I'm a paid-up licence-payer, why shouldn't I use iPlayer to store up several months' worth of the kids' favorite cartoons for them to watch in an all-day marathon on New Year's day - while I sleep off New Year's Eve? You might just reach into the guts of your iPlayer and change the line of code that says, "Delete my shows after 28 days" to "Delete my shows after 28,000 years".

If you did you'd be part of a grand old tradition of shed-tinkerers. A few years back I attended a DRM meeting in Edinburgh. We were wrangling over a DRM for DVB, the digital video standard that is used throughout Europe, Asia, Latin America and Australia. It was nearly Christmas, and one engineer slipped off at the break to buy his son an electronics kit at John Lewis. When he showed it around, all the engineers in the room immediately broke into nostalgic recollections of "building crystal sets with grandad in the shed" when they were growing up. These were the formative experiences that made engineers out of these gents, and yet there they were, busily designing a broadcast system that would prohibit user modification.


Small Beer Press xmas sale: fantastic literature at fantastic prices

Small Beer Press xmas sale: fantastic literature at fantastic prices

Small Beer press is the publisher started by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant, publishers of incredibly brilliant, mind-boggling science fiction and fantasy. They're copyfighter-friendly too, with many Creative Commons releases -- and they're committed to publishing some of the best independent work in the field.

Gavin writes, "Small Beer Press is having the End of the Year Blow Out Sale. All Books Come with Meaningless 100,000-Mile Invisible Warranty! All Books Printed on Paper! Guaranteed to Be Printed with Ink! All Books Guaranteed to Be Books! And all of them cheap as chips." Link (Thanks, Gavin!)

See also: Kelly Link's gorgeous short story collection now a CC download

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Canada's coming DMCA will be the worst copyright yet

Posted by Cory Doctorow, November 27, 2007 10:33 PM |
The Canadian government is about to bring down Canada's version of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and it promises to be the worst copyright law in the developed world. It will contain an "anti-circumvention" clause that prohibits breaking the locks off your music and movies in order to move them to new devices or watch them after the company that made them goes out of business -- and it will follow the US's disastrous lead with the DMCA in that there will be no exceptions to the ban on circumvention, not even for parody, fair dealing, time shifting, or other legal uses.

This will be even worse than the last Canadian copyright proposal, the defeated Bill C-60.

But there's hope. The last two Ministers who tried to push through a US-style copyright bill in Canada lost their jobs, thanks in large part to Canada's coalition of artists, educators, archivists, and public-interest activists. Selling Canada's digital future out to a handful of US companies is a bad career move for Canadian politicians.

Gear up for a fight in the New Year. The American record labels, in particular, are said to be well organised and ready to push this through on a fast track (even though they've abandoned DRM in the rest of the world, they view Canada as a weak sister they can push around).

If this law passes, it will mean that as soon as a device has any anti-copying stuff in it (say, a Vista PC, a set-top cable box, a console, an iPod, a Kindle, etc), it will be illegal for Canadians to modify it, improve it, or make products that interact with it unless they have permission from the (almost always US-based) manufacturer. This puts the whole Canadian tech industry at the mercy of the US industry, unable to innovate or start new businesses that interact with the existing pool of devices and media without getting a license from the States.

If this law passes, it will render all of the made-in-Canada exceptions to copyright for education, archiving, free speech and personal use will be irrelevant: if a technology has a lock that prohibits a use, your right to make that use falls by the wayside. Nevermind that you've got the right to record a show to watch later -- or to record a politician's speech so you can hold him to account later -- the policeman in the device can take that right away with no appeal.

If this law passes, it will make Canada into a backwards nation, lagging behind the UK, Israel and other countries that are passing new copyright laws that dismantle the idea of maximum copyright forever and in all things. Link




Cheap billionaires

Forbes has a slideshow of billionaire cheapskates who drive old cars, fly economy and stay in budget hotels:
Ingvar Kamprad & Family

$33 billion

Country: Sweden
Ikea's pennywise founder is famous for being cheap. He flies coach, drives a 1993 Volvo and often dines at lower-tier restaurants. He also reportedly furnishes his home with Ikea's affordable merchandise. Kamprad was recently quoted as saying that the only luxuries he splurges on are the occasional upscale cravat and Swedish fish roe.

Link (via Digg)

(Image credit: Ikea, a Creative Commons Attribution only licensed photo from Seth W's photostream)