The Latest from Boing Boing |
Nerd tuna tees -- Boing Boing Gadgets Posted: 06 Apr 2009 10:35 PM PDT Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Steven's found these swell, tuna-as-nerd tees: Geeks Are Big Eye Tuna!? |
National Federation for the Blind protest at Authors Guild in NYC today over Kindle text-to-speech Posted: 06 Apr 2009 10:30 PM PDT The Reading Rights Coalition and the National Federation for the Blind are staging a protest in New York today (Tuesday) at the offices of the Authors Guild, to let the Guild know that their successful campaign to remove the text-to-speech feature from the Kindle has hurt blind people and undermined their ability to access a wide variety of works in a more-accessible form. The Authors Guild argued that the text-to-speech feature in the Kindle violated their copyrights, saying that the private use of a file-conversion feature infringed the "performance right" in copyright, and that it was illegal for Amazon to make devices that could be used to infringe copyright, even if they could also be used in non-infringing ways. Neither of these premises stand up to legal scrutiny, but Amazon withdrew the feature anyway -- now, text-to-speech works only on books that have it switched on. The Authors Guild has gone on record saying that this has nothing to do with blind people (who have a statutory right to transform books to "assistive formats") because the Kindle's touchscreen wouldn't work for totally blind people. This is nonsense, and I assume the AG knows it. First, because "legally blind" is not the same as "totally blind." Indeed, the Kindle's ability to dynamically resize text makes it a natural for readers with limited vision, and it's entirely likely that a disproportionate number of Kindle owners are legally blind. Second, and most importantly: even if the Kindle had a big, Braille, "I AM BLIND READ EVERYTHING ALOUD TO ME" button (thus rendering all its text accessible to even legally blind people), the Authors Guild's legal theories would still prohibit its production. Under the theory that any devices that can convert text to audio is illegal if it's possible that some of those texts aren't "licensed for text-to-speech conversion," then no device that can convert arbitrary ebooks to audio will ever be legal. Sorry, blind people, guess you're out of luck. The Reading Rights Coalition, which represents people who cannot read print, will protest the threatened removal of the text-to-speech function from e-books for the Amazon Kindle 2 outside the Authors Guild headquarters in New York City at 31 East 32nd Street on April 7, 2009, from noon to 2:00 p.m. The coalition includes the blind, people with dyslexia, people with learning or processing issues, seniors losing vision, people with spinal cord injuries, people recovering from strokes, and many others for whom the addition of text-to-speech on the Kindle 2 promised for the first time easy, mainstream access to over 255,000 books.Reading Rights Coalition Urges Authors to Allow Everyone Access to E-books Previously: |
Monster motorcycle helmet -- Boing Boing Gadgets Posted: 06 Apr 2009 10:18 PM PDT One thing about riding a two-wheeled vehicle on a four-wheeled road, you 've got to be visible: that's why our Joel on Boing Boing Gadgets is so excited about these lovely, hi-viz helmets: This is a motorcycle helmet Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets |
ATM card skimmer in real life -- Boing Boing Gadgets Posted: 06 Apr 2009 10:16 PM PDT Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel's spotted a rara avis from the criminal underground: Local man finds card skimmer on ATM |
Cannonball floating in mercury Posted: 06 Apr 2009 10:14 PM PDT Twenty six seconds' worth of science: a cannonball floating in mercury! Cannonball in mercury (via Kottke) |
Posted: 06 Apr 2009 10:12 PM PDT From the "Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary" exhibition at the New Museum of Arts and Design, this wonderful accordioning vanity set made out of bits and pieces of old furniture, sawn and reassembled. |
Teaching journalism with virtual worlds Posted: 06 Apr 2009 10:09 PM PDT Joshua Fouts writes, "Rita J. King and I are premiering *today* a new documentary exploring the potential of immersive virtual journalism as a tool for empowering global journalism as the industry continues its transformation amidst the current upheaval and collapse. The documentary comes out of a project we did with the Larry Pintak at the American University in Cairo in which we brought a group of 8 Egyptian political activist bloggers into Second Life to explore the potential of the space for empowering and augmenting their work. We were fortunate that our first effort brought a high ranking US State Department official, James K. Glassman, who was then US Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy. Some interesting issues came up." The Launch of a Journalistic Experiment: The Virtual Newsroom of the American University in Cairo |
Long-secret Red Cross Report Says Medical Workers Helped US Torture Terror Suspects Posted: 06 Apr 2009 08:32 PM PDT A 2007 report by the International Committee of the Red Cross concluded that medical professionals helped the CIA torture detainees held at Guantánamo Bay prison and other "black sites" overseas, and said their participation in the abuse amounted to a "gross breach of medical ethics. The report was kept secret until recently. Snip from New York Times story: Based on statements by 14 prisoners who belonged to Al Qaeda and were moved to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in late 2006, Red Cross investigators concluded that medical professionals working for the C.I.A. monitored prisoners undergoing waterboarding, apparently to make sure they did not drown. Medical workers were also present when guards confined prisoners in small boxes, shackled their arms to the ceiling, kept them in frigid cells and slammed them repeatedly into walls, the report said.Report Outlines Medical Workers' Role in Torture (NYT) |
I demonstrate my 3-string dronestick on Core77 Posted: 06 Apr 2009 05:25 PM PDT Xanthe Matychak of Core77 and Chris Tomkins-Tinch of Rochester Institute of Technology's Makers Club interviewed me about my Clubhouse Strummer drone stick when I was in Rochester a couple of weeks ago. |
Mexican Band's "ultimate cellphone success story": Los Pikadientes Posted: 06 Apr 2009 07:02 PM PDT You gotta watch the video. (Update: Ugh, Sony BMG has stupidly geo-blocked most of the world from viewing this video on YouTube, maybe try metacafe if YT doesn't work for you). Josh Kun has a piece in the New York Times about the Mexican cumbia band Los Pikadientes de Caborca, who hail from Mexico's Sonora region. Their crazy ride to stardom and a major label contract was sparked by a cellphone ringtone for the song featured in that video, above. Last year Los Pikadientes de Caborca recorded "La Cumbia del Río" -- a bare-boned singalong about dancing and partying by the side of a local river -- on a home computer, uploaded it to their cellphones and, with help from Bluetooth and Memory Sticks, shared it with friends. The song quickly went viral, and its grass-roots popularity led to heavy rotation on radio stations across Sonora; before long, cellphone videos of people dancing to the song were flooding YouTube.Mexican Bands Hear Success Calling (NYT, via Ned Sublette's mailing list). You can buy their stuff here, too. Update 2: Jose Marquez from holamun2.com says, Happy to see the Mexican Village People on BoingBoing. :-) here's a TV interview they did with us in February. And here is a text interview with them from last October. And finally, we also worked with the band to make their first video before the label had a chance to. The guy in the video works in I.T. at NBC Universal. |
Stephen Wolfram talks to Rudy Rucker Posted: 06 Apr 2009 10:23 PM PDT Stephen "Mathematica" Wolfram, author of the tome A New Kind Of Science, has been developing a new browser search engine called Wolfram|Alpha. BB pal Rudy Rucker, a brilliant mathematician in his own right, spent two hours on the phone with Wolfram and wrote up his notes for h+ Magazine. From h+: Kicking off our conversation, Stephen remarks that, "Wolfram|Alpha isn't really a search engine, because we compute the answers, and we discover new truths. If anything, you might call it a platonic search engine, unearthing eternal truths that may never have been written down before..."Wolfram|Alpha: Searching for Truth Previously: |
Posted: 06 Apr 2009 03:18 PM PDT 8bitar Hero procedurally generates Rock Band patterns for you to play from the sounds made by someone else playing an NES game emulator. Brandon has the details and video over at Boing Boing Offworld. 8bitar Hero: procedurally generated Rock Band from real-time NES audio |
Man playing a hand-made, electrified, one-stringed musical instrument in New York's Central Park Posted: 06 Apr 2009 02:19 PM PDT I met this man in New York's Central Park. He was playing an electrified one-stringed instrument he had built himself. He couldn't speak English very well, but I showed him a photo of my 3-stringed dronestick, and he nodded in approval. I want to make one! |
Stan and Jan Berenstain's mid-century illustrations Posted: 06 Apr 2009 06:33 PM PDT (Click images for enlargement) My kids have a couple of Berenstain Bears books, which I've never bothered to read, because I don't find the art very compelling. I'm much more interested in Richard Scarry's wry humor, or Dr. Seuss' psychedelic meltiness, or Mel Crawford's primary-colored frankness. But a couple of weeks ago I visited the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, NY, and came across an exhibit of 1940s through 1960s era magazine illustrations by Stan and Jan Berenstain, and I was knocked over by how stupendously fun and brilliantly composed they were. The large illustrations, which appeared in Colliers, McCall’s, and The Saturday Evening Post, featured crowd scenes of dozens of kids fighting, making mischief, throwing temper tantrums, crying, taunting, hiding, and marveling at the world around them. The art rivals Will Elder's for its masterfully executed complexity and elements of humorous little details. It turns out there's a book that has many of these illustrations, called Child's Play: The Berenstain Baby Boom, 1946-1964 - Cartoon Art of Stan and Jan Berenstain. I just ordered my copy and am looking forward to poring over the pages with my kids. |
Droog's vibrobots and other hand-made motorized toys Posted: 06 Apr 2009 02:35 PM PDT (Click images for enlargement) Last week, I visited the Soho store of the design firm Droog and spotted these vibrobots and other hand-made toys on display there. I don't know how much they cost (the tags said "pricing on request" and I forgot to ask), but considering how expensive everything else was in the store, these toys probably sell for at least $1000 each.
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Posted: 06 Apr 2009 01:04 PM PDT (Click images for enlargement) I grabbed this bottle of Claire Brightwater water at a Whole Foods on Columbus Circle in Manhattan and when I sat down to drink it, I read the copy on the label. It makes more sense than a Dr. Bronner's screed, but just barely. This water has been programmed with music, crystals & prayers for good health, happiness, creative energy & prosperity.Here's an excerpt from a 2007 New York Times article about Brightwater's "programming" technique: It is a complicated process. Once the bottles arrive from their source near Saratoga Springs, N.Y., Ms. Brightwater said, she lays out tumbled stones that she has “programmed for love, health and prosperity” around and on top of each case. |
Posted: 06 Apr 2009 12:37 PM PDT Do you have a photo of your unabashed riot nrrrd childhood? Boing Boing Gadgets is seeking to celebrate our shared geekdom through the BBG Flickr pool. Tag your photo "dorkyearbook"! At top is our own Joel Johnson proud of his X86 hackery achieved over his 7th grade summer. The kid in the thin leather tie is yours truly, age 14, with my science fair-winning automated plant waterer. (Apologies for the bad photo quality.) I wrote an assembly language program for my Apple ][e to control a solid state relay circuit that I designed and connected to the RS232 port. The relay then triggered a solenoid that opened a valve for water to flow into the plant. I could set the program I wrote to water the plant on a regular schedule when I wasn't home. At the science fair, there was no faucet nearby so my dad got me a saline drip from his work that I used instead. But the salt water killed the plant. More on the Dork Yearbook at Boing Boing Gadgets. |
Farewell dear Boing Boing readers... Posted: 06 Apr 2009 11:51 AM PDT Richard Metzger was the Boing Boing guest blogger It was great fun posting here these past two weeks --really, you have no idea how much f'ing fun this is-- and thank you to everyone who commented (except the dude who said I should be denounced for my "Marx was right!" post. Who died and made you Joe McCarthy, buddy?). I learned a lot from all of you (except for that guy). [Jacobian, the link to Kapitalism 101 was tres cool, thanks for that!] I applaud my friends the Happy Mutants for their playful, yet purposeful entrepreneurial spirit --doing something you love and getting paid for it is a difficult and delicate thing to engineer-- and the necessary cultural explorations they perform for the readers and that the Boing Boing readers reflect back to them. It's a job well done on both ends. Paraphrasing somebody or something: If Boing Boing did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it! I'd say parting is such sweet sorrow and all of that, but you're actually not getting rid of me so darned fast. In fact, I'll be around every once in a while now moving forward as a correspondent for Boing Boing video, working with Xeni. This is very exciting news for me. There's already an interview with Douglas Rushkoff previewing his new book, "Life Inc" in the can ready to go and I posted an interview with Charles Hugh Smith here. I hope you'll give it some of your time, I believe Charles says some import things in these videos that you won't hear anywhere else. I particularly enjoyed being able to discuss music that I love here. With the closing of many/most of the record stores in this country, the fine art of BS'ing about music tends to happen on music blogs now. If I was able to introduce a few of you to the joys of Yabby You, Tuxedomoon, Snatch, Jobriath, Faust and "The Scene" (and my last time here, PJ Proby, Brett Smiley and mini-skirted 70s minx, Jeannie C. Riley) I am filled with rock snob satisfaction. If any of you will be watching Jam, Nighty Night, or The Trailer Park Boys, on my advice, I'm happier still. Speaking of BS'ing about music, a few weeks ago I was having lunch with BB pal Coop and we were talking about musicians or groups that we'd overlooked. My own list shamefully included Magazine and Joni Mitchell, who I now consider a god. Coop mentioned that Edwin Pouncey (AKA Savage Pencil) revered the music of Alice Coltrane above all else, and as I'd just watched Edwin on DVD the night before speaking authoritatively on Kraftwerk in a new documentary, I decided to follow up on that lead. Oh WOW. It was like having an orgasm in your head. I was blown away. You might be too, hopefully. So here then is my final post for you fine people, a link to a radio/DJ set of Alice Coltrane's gorgeous, spacey. lushly feminine take on jazz. Timeless. Deep. Mystical. Unlike anything else. And what you'd be hearing if you were sitting right where I am sitting now typing these words. A Tribute to Alice Coltrane with DJ Kirk Degiorgio It's been a tremendous pleasure! Have fun Lisa and Steven! Richard PS Add me on Facebook. |
Welcome Lisa Katayama and Steven Leckart to BBG Posted: 06 Apr 2009 01:02 PM PDT Join me in welcoming Lisa Katayama and Steven Leckart to the Boing Boing fold. They'll be coming aboard with Rob and I to work on BBG, although I wouldn't be surprised to see them contributing to Boing Boing and Offworld just every now and again, as well. You'll get to know them through the blog-o-squawk soon enough, but it'd be a shame to waste such bona fides as our two new contributors have collected. Lisa you guys will know as a former guestblogger at Boing Boing, as well as her blogging about Japanese culture and tech at her blog Tokyo Mango. She's also contributed to WIRED, Popular Science, and the The New York Times Magazine. (There's a big feature coming up there, isn't there, Lisa? Can you talk about that yet?) And of course she's the author of Urawaza: Secret Everyday Tips and Tricks from Japan. She has two min-pins named Malcolm and Ruby (no relation to my car), as per the requirements for BBG contributors. She's @tokyomango and will be her first name at boingboing.net once I figure out how we actually do our email forwards here. Steven's work has been seen at WIRED, DVICE, GOOD (and was the founder of ALL CAPS MAGAZINE), as well as the editor of our friend Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools. He also helped Chris Anderson with the books The Long Tail and the upcoming Free as a writing assistant. He has a pug named Gus, as per the requirements for BBG contributors. He's @stevenleckart on Twitter and will be his first name at boingboing.net once I get off my ass and set up that email account. [photo by Jonathan Snyder] Come on over to BBG and slap them around a little! And welcome, you two! I've stoked to have you aboard our undulating tanker ship of bubbling mutant goo. |
Jean-Jacques Perrey's EVA video Posted: 06 Apr 2009 10:24 AM PDT |
Posted: 06 Apr 2009 10:12 AM PDT Wired compiled a list of what they deem the "10 Best Geeky Last Words." Here are my favorites: How were the circus receipts today at Madison Square Garden? |
BB Video: Social Games, and The Quest for Virtual Poo. Posted: 06 Apr 2009 10:07 AM PDT Download the MP4 here. Flash video above, click "fullscren" icon inside player to view large. YouTube channel here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video. Today on Boing Boing Video, Playfish Games founder Sebastien de Halleaux joins us for a conversation about games developed for social networks. The Playfish game "Pet Society" is currently the most popular game on facebook, with millions of participants per day. Sebastien reveals an odd, unintended subculture that developed out of this game -- you feed these visrtual pets in the game, and eventually they poop, so fans began to "farm" poo, and compete to see who could cultivate the most. The game's developers in turn responded by creating high score poo variants, like the coveted rainbow poo, and the ultra-high-score golden poo. Playfish has other popular games on MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, and the like, including another one where you manage a restarurant with your friends. This episode is an excerpt from our marathon live streaming coverage of the Game Developer Conference. Previously: * Doctor Popular's Awesome Yo-Yo Stylings [ Special thanks to Hugo van Tilborg. BBV Live @GDC09 credits and thanks: Production Team -- Jolon Bankey, Derek Bledsoe, Daniela Calderon, Eddie Codel, Xeni Jardin, Allison Kingsley, Matty Kirsch, Alice Taylor, Wesly Varghese. Special thanks to Wayneco Heavy Industries (accommodation and studio facilities), Virgin America Airlines (air travel), Celsius (thermogenic energy beverage), Ustream.tv (streaming video host). Moral support, production assistance, additional talent, and good vibes provided by: Domini Anne, Scott Beale, T.Bias, Jeremy Bornstein, Brandon Boyer, Chris The Van Guy, Peter S. Conrad, Marque Cornblatt, Wayne, Bre, and the entire de Geere family, Marcy DeLuce, Cory Doctorow, Joel Johnson, Kourosh Karimkhany, Jim Louderback and the Revision 3 team, Karen Marcelo, Rocky Mullin, Alicia Pollak, Jackie Mogol, Taylor Peck, David Pescovitz, Micah Schaffer, and Teal. ] |
Posted: 06 Apr 2009 09:40 AM PDT Details for Maker Faire Africa have been announced. The event takes place this August in Accra, Ghana. I don't know if I'll be able to go myself, but I really want to. Sounds absolutely amazing, and there are great people involved. (thanks, Emeka Okafor) |
Posted: 06 Apr 2009 06:16 AM PDT Recently on Offworld there's been a lot of art appreciation as we watched LittleBigPlanet artist Rexbox serve up against Made In England designer Cookie in Coudal's game of Layer Tennis, and saw "I Can Read Movies" artist Spacesick create an 8-bit title screen for a NES game never made. We also saw Olly Moss's goomba/invader/zombie firing range target design Shoot the Baddies (right) finally go into print, watched Tea and Cheese create an 8-bit water slide in real life, and gawked at the I Am 8-Bit related T-shirt/print/sticker designs rolled out for Nintendo's Los Angeles DSi launch party. Finally, we watched the first cinematic for ngmoco's 3D spherical iPhone tower defense game and watched Mega64 show no mercy for the un-indie, saw Uniqlo's new games-related T-shirt designs, coveted the best Noby Noby Boy sneakers you'll ever see, and, best of all, downloaded both volumes of the brilliant reality-enhancing iPhone app RjDj for free, in celebration of their new social updates -- don't miss your chance to get them now. |
Jazzy covers of Mister Rogers' songs Posted: 06 Apr 2009 10:41 PM PDT Holly Yarbrough's Mister Rogers Swings! is a fine collection of swinging, jazzy, uptempo covers of songs from classic episodes of Mr Rogers' Neighborhood, with a big, brassy band backing sweet, passionate vocals. You can catch a preview of the disc with "Won't You Be My Neighbor" at the end of this week's Tank Riot podcast, around 1:10:14.
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Posted: 06 Apr 2009 05:18 AM PDT |
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