The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- Samasource: How African refugees are scoring Silicon Valley Internet jobs
- Family's personalized Where the Wild Things Are fresco
- Pretending and games, design, commerce and life
- Stacking 117 objects on a Lego block, then knocking it over.
- Alternate Star Trek pilot to be released
- Apple patents anti-user attention-complianceware
- UN goons destroy academic poster describing China's censorwall
- Secret Diary of a Specialist in Developmental Neurotoxicology and Cancer Epidemiology
- SAME we can believe in
- The Green Flash of the Sun
- Please release me: Modern Warfare, Spore Islands, and Half Minute Heroes
- Cellphone contracts getting even better!
- Struts & Frets: an indie-rock YA novel with heart and authenticity
- Hacklab.to's laser-cutter really *does* play the Mario Bros theme!
- Canada's "TV tax"/"Save local TV" squabble explained
- Hotel proudly proclaims Winston Churchill's displeasure with its service
| Samasource: How African refugees are scoring Silicon Valley Internet jobs Posted: 15 Nov 2009 10:59 PM PST  On a scorching hot June day in northeastern Kenya, an hour west of the Kenyan-Somali border, Leila Chirayath Janah arrived at the Dabaab refugee settlement in an armed convoy. She was there on a mission: to connect jobless, displaced refugees to the rest of the world through legitimate Internet-based jobs. Leila, 27, is the founder of Samasource, a non-profit organization reminiscent of a tech startup that outsources web-based jobs to women, youth, and refugees living in poverty in third world countries. I met her last month in the tiny office space she rents out in downtown San Francisco. She is tall and well-dressed, and has credentials that include Harvard, Stanford, and a fellowship with TED India. Her obsession with Africa started in her teens — when she was a senior in high school, she left LA to teach English to a class of 60 blind people in rural Ghana; a few years later she created an African Development Studies at Harvard, and a few years after that, she started working on Samasource. Leila's approach to development is pragmatic; her goal is to equip poor but educated people with tools needed to turn their intelligence and drive into the opportunity to earn income. "Donors love health and education," Leila says. "It's so sexy; everyone loves to be the one to save a life by buying a mosquito net or building a school. But in reality, when you look at what the developing world really needs, it's a connection to markets." Shortly after launching Samasource, she read an Oxfam report that mentioned a Dutch non-profit had set up a computer lab in the Dadaab refugee camps in Kenya. "I thought, how crazy would it be if i can get these refugees to do real work for clients in San Francisco? What if we could prove to the world that these people who have been written off completely as only good for receiving handouts, who are stuck in this camp receiving food rations, can be productive to the global economy?" Before she left for Kenya, Leila hooked up with Lukas Biewald, a former Yahoo! engineer who had created a job crowdsourcing software web site called Crowdflower. Lukas had agreed to help her hook up the refugees with real clients in California through Crowdflower — Leila would train the refugees to do simple work like data entry and Google searches at the camps while Lukas watched their progress remotely. Dadaab's refugee camps are insanely overcrowded. 300,000 displaced people live in a space that is only meant to accommodate 90,000. While some resell goods acquired at the market in town, most of the refugees don't have jobs because they can't get work permits under Kenyan law. Boys are routinely recruited out of their mundane reality by rebel groups that turn them into pirates and child soldiers. The camps are managed by CARE, so Leila coordinated with its reps to have 16 trainees picked out for her Samsource experiment. They had to have a certain level of education and basic knowledge of English. The computers in the lab were imported from China and rigged to withstand the heat, pressure, and dust that permeate the refugee camps. The tasks ranged from simple searches to transcription to virtual assistance to app testing. Leila spent an hour teaching her workers how Samasource would work and setting them up with a special Crowdflower login and an @samasource.org email address. "I taught them how to Google," she tells me. "They totally got it." Two days later, Leila called Lukas to see how her refugee workers were doing. "They're getting the same results as our for-profit clients," Lukas told her. "And in some cases, they're doing even better." One of the refugees Leila trained was a 24-year old Sudanese man named Paul Parach — a former Lost Boy who was seized from his home at age nine and survived by walking through the scorching desert with no food for days before arriving at a refugee camp in Kenya, where he was shot in the leg by a guy from a rival tribe. "You could see in his eyes that he wanted to get out of there," she says. A few weeks after she left Dadaab, Leila got a friend request on Facebook from Paul the refugee. "It was just crazy," she remembers. "This is a guy who, two months ago, had no idea he could be connected to the world this way." After that, he even dug up her cell phone number and started sending her texts with credit he bought using the money he made through Samasource. Leila points out that Paul is now just one connection away from Mark Zuckerberg (Samasource was one of this year's fbFund Rev winners). "Paul now has power and social capital; he's starting to build an online reputation and starting to become visible to the world. It was a totally unanticipated side benefit." Leila's experiment proved that a Somali refugee with a Kenyan public education could do a lot of the same work that educated Americans were doing. She now has 520 workers in six countries who are working with Samasource. They've generated over a quarter million dollars in sales working for clients like Google and the Stanford University Library, and have made more money than they would in years of doing backbreaking 50-cent-a-day labor at the camp. "Some people have accused us of creating a virtual sweatshop," Leila says. "I find that very funny. This is like the ultimate creme de la creme job you can possibly get. If your opportunities are working at a quarry or toiling away on some field, the chance to sit in front of this cool machine and do this work that connects you to the world is so empowering for people, especially people from marginalized groups who have been told their whole lives that they're not worth anything." You can hire a worker or donate to Samasource on their web site, or |
| Family's personalized Where the Wild Things Are fresco Posted: 16 Nov 2009 04:49 AM PST  Dan sez, "Where the Wild Things Are was my favorite book as a child. It was the first book I gave to my five year olf daughter India and my 6 month old son Aldous has a fresh copy waiting for him. So as a moving-in present to ourselves we commissioned our friend Simon Ings my favourite scene in stone. But Max was replaced by Aldous and India was carved in alongside. My wife and I get to be the wild things! As a kid, I dreamt of making mischief and sailing off to be crowned king of the wild forest. Now I get to swing from the trees with the whole family." Where the Wild Things Are in stone (Thanks, Dan!) Previously: |
| Pretending and games, design, commerce and life Posted: 16 Nov 2009 04:46 AM PST Russell Davies presentation on "pretending" and "barely games" from the Playful conference is a wonderful exploration of the importance of pretending to fun and games, a subject often missing when we talk about why and how games work. playful (via Wonderland) Previously: |
| Stacking 117 objects on a Lego block, then knocking it over. Posted: 15 Nov 2009 04:02 PM PST Artist Walter Wick stacks 117 objects on a single Lego block, then sends little wind-up creatures toward it to knock it over. Fun! (Via Gurney Journey) |
| Alternate Star Trek pilot to be released Posted: 15 Nov 2009 03:37 PM PST The forthcoming DVD release of Star Trek: The Original Series - Season 3 includes a pilot episode previously only available on the bootleg circuit. Apparently a German film collector found a print of this alternate version of the second Star Trek pilot, titled "Where No One Has Gone Before," and brought it to Paramount. Above are some clips from that alternate version of the pilot, which has never officially been released until now. From The Live Feed: The alternate version is in three parts with 1970s-style act breaks, an entirely different version of Captain James T. Kirk's opening monologue ("But now a new task. A probe out into where no man has gone before") and music that contrasts from the famous opening theme and an extended action sequence.Star Trek: The Original Series - Season 3, Blu-ray (Amazon, thanks Jason Weisberger!) UPDATE: From Memory Alpha, more background on this alternative version of the pilot episode: There is a different, pre-broadcast cut of ("Where No One Has Gone Before") in the archives of the Smithsonian Institution. This unique cut includes a few brief scenes trimmed from the aired cut of the episode, different opening titles, and a unique closing theme. The alternate closing theme can be heard on the GNP Crescendo CD Star Trek: Original Series (Volume 1) "The Cage" / "Where No Man Has Gone Before". The pre-broadcast cut is commercially available only in bootleg form, although it has been screened at numerous conventions. Paul Carr was credited as "Navigator" in the end credits of the original cut. The version on the first season box set may contain the alternate ending theme, but does have the changed credits. This cut will be finally be available commercially on the Season 3 Blu-Ray set. |
| Apple patents anti-user attention-complianceware Posted: 15 Nov 2009 12:58 PM PST Apple's filed a patent on a design for a device that won't let its owner use it unless that person demonstrates that she has complied with an advertiser's demands by paying attention to an ad and taking some action indicating her dutiful attention. It's amazing how many of these vendors fail to understand Chekhov's first law of narrative: "A gun on the mantelpiece in act one is bound to go off by act three." That is, if you design a device that is intended to attack its user -- by shutting her out of her own files and processes against her wishes and without her consent -- someone will figure out how to use that device to attack its user. Or as Mitch Kapor once quipped, "Architecture is politics." Designing your device ecosystem for 1984 gives you...1984. Cue Apple Fanboys who want us all to understand that the infallible and immortal Steve Jobs would only use this power to show us lovely, interesting, and informative messages that we're happy to receive in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1.... Its distinctive feature is a design that doesn't simply invite a user to pay attention to an ad -- it also compels attention. The technology can freeze the device until the user clicks a button or answers a test question to demonstrate that he or she has dutifully noticed the commercial message. Because this technology would be embedded in the innermost core of the device, the ads could appear on the screen at any time, no matter what one is doing.Apple Wouldn't Risk Its Cool Over a Gimmick, Would It? (via Warren Ellis) |
| UN goons destroy academic poster describing China's censorwall Posted: 15 Nov 2009 12:49 PM PST JZ sez, "The OpenNet Initiative, a joint effort of U. Toronto's Citizen Lab and Harvard's Berkman Center, tracks Internet filtering by governments around the world. We published a book detailing such filtering in 2008 called Access Denied, and the sequel is about to come out, called Access Controlled. ONI colleagues Ron Deibert and Rafal Rohozinksi were at the Internet Governance Forum today in Egypt, where they hosted a reception about Access Controlled. It featured a poster describing the book. The poster contained the following sentence: The first generation of Internet controls consisted largely of building firewalls at key Internet gateways; China's famous 'Great Firewall of China' is one of the first national Internet filtering systems. That was apparently enough to trigger concerns on behalf of the Chinese government, and UN-liveried security guards knocked over the poster and then later removed it." IGF 2009 event rattled by UN Security Office (Thanks, JZ!) |
| Secret Diary of a Specialist in Developmental Neurotoxicology and Cancer Epidemiology Posted: 15 Nov 2009 11:40 AM PST The author of long-running "secret diary of a call girl" blog Belle de Jour outs herself. Dr. Brooke Magnanti is a science blogger--and respected health researcher. And she really was a sex worker, for about a year and a half, while finishing her Ph.D. Takeaway lesson: Graduate school is expensive, yo. Takeaway debate: Is this good or bad for female scientists/science bloggers? It shouldn't matter at all. But does it? |
| Posted: 15 Nov 2009 01:03 PM PST SAME WE CAN BELIEVE IN: The Obama administration has granted Defense Secty. Robert Gates new powers to block the release of 21 color photos showing prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq being abused by Americans. The ACLU sued for release of the images. Federal courts previously rejected attempts to keep them secret. ACLU: "No democracy has ever been made stronger by suppressing information about its own misconduct." |
| Posted: 15 Nov 2009 08:01 AM PST  Sometimes, from certain places, the light from the sun can briefly appear green. NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day explains,
Astronomy Picture of the Day via Cliff Pickover. |
| Please release me: Modern Warfare, Spore Islands, and Half Minute Heroes Posted: 15 Nov 2009 06:53 AM PST For most, there will have been only one game released this week (and that most includes a number of major publishers, who, gun-shy from the competition, have pushed their own releases to Q1 of next year): Infinity Ward's return to the Modern Warfare franchise they laid down in 2007. Modern Warfare 2 [Infinity Ward, PC/PS3/Xbox 360] The developer has twice courted controversy in recent weeks, one for the very unfortunately devised viral video gag (for which IW has yet to offer a formal apology), and the second with early leaked video of what it surely intended as its most emotionally charged level -- a scene in which an agent embedded with an arms trafficker is present for a civilian massacre. Infinity Ward were correct on one count: taking the scene out of context is misleading, as the premise is the hook on which the global geo-political fallout that guides the rest of the game is hung, and your involvement in it has its own twist of fate. But they otherwise squandered what could have been a multi-faceted moral quandary and flattened it into a paper-thin action scene with no real ramifications. Players, who experience the scene looking down the barrel of their own gun, can easily simply play witness to the horrors around them without once pulling the trigger, but IW make it impossible to actually finish the level without killing at least a few of the SWAT team that arrives when the damage is done (unless I missed a route in my hour-long trial to do just that). But simply observing also never overtly raises the suspicion of the rogue team you're embedded with -- that only comes if you deliberately try to hang back away from the group for more than a minute (and, I don't know, say, distract yourself by taking a closer look at all of the hardcover jackets in the airport bookstore). Devoid of any real freedom of choice, then, and coming -- as it does -- far too early in the game for players to first become emotionally invested in its world, its execution (no pun) falls flat. That's a shame, too, because its bombastic volume drowns out a number of more genuinely affecting subtleties. Chiefly, the return of 'Soap' McTavish -- the rookie recruit who served as the first MW's player-character -- as a vet seasoned by your own actions in that game, now guiding and protecting you as an even fresher face (whose approval I found myself actively seeking in our duo levels). As a summer-blockbuster-esque rollercoaster (and one clearly made by a team in love with the essence if not the lessons of HBO miniseries Generation Kill), it's hard to come away unaffected by the thrill of its ride, and -- as with the original -- its true long term draw the unique lite-MMO structure of its multiplayer (that unlocks abilities as you level up through wins and kills), but it's a shame that it doesn't require more of you than thinking -- in the Colbert-ian sense -- from your gut, for as much as it chides you for shooting from the hip. Spore Islands [Area/Code / Maxis, web] Also recently launched and well worth your time is one of EA's first forays into the Facebook gamespace with one of its largest brands: Spore. Created by NYC developer Area/Code (the studio behind masterful iPhone puzzler Drop7) in conjunction with original creator Maxis, the game feels more closely akin to the direction the Spore franchise was headed in in the earliest days of development. Influenced by the biodiversity (and the high number of evolutionary experiments that died in their tracks) of the Burgess Shale, Spore Islands is a numbers game of statistic modifications to create a creature that can withstand both the elements and the set of creatures that inhabit your island -- or, with its deep social hook, the islands of your Facebook friends. The catch is that your observations (the simulations that let you see first hand how your character is faring and what weaknesses or strengths it needs to focus on) and the DNA point modifications to tweak your character to flourish in its environment are unlocked over real-time (or by purchasing them outright), but it's one of the games on the platform that's actually worth that wait, and easily the smartest time-sink on Facebook. Half Minute Hero [XSEED, PSP] And finally, another game released just a week or two prior but still eating up most of my time (in very tiny chunks) is the PSP release of XSEED's Half Minute Hero, a game which tells you more about its premise in its title than you'd first believe. Created originally as a miniscule freeware indie release that would be expanded to a full commercial production, Half Minute's hook is that of a traditional RPG, shooter, and strategy game played out in a world where there's only 30 seconds before total demonic annihilation. What this means as a player is that your 8-bit hero is tasked with leveling up via CPU-controlled random battles and player-controlled returns to town for better equipment while staring at a rapidly decreasing timer, desperately trying to save up the precious last seconds to defeat the inevitable time-controlling demon at the end (and undertaking various seconds-long missions in between to get there). It's a slow-motion version of the three-second micro-games of Nintendo's WarioWare series, and -- split as it is into easily digestible chapter missions -- is the perfect addition to a platform that's been very much in need of more portable plays. Already too much overlooked even by the hardcore, there aren't many other recent games that are more deserving of your 30 seconds at a time. Previously: |
| Cellphone contracts getting even better! Posted: 15 Nov 2009 09:55 PM PST Saul Hansell suggests that hated U.S. cellular carrier practices such as text message markups and fee-packed contracts ultimately give American consumers what they really want: predictable bills. In pursuit of this we learn of the psychological "nuances" of pricing and the "supersized logic" of using fat overage fees to upsell customers to expensive all-you-can-eat plans. "This year," he writes, "the deals are becoming even better." His piece even claims that the industry would love to give up the adhesive contracts, early termination fees and locked-in subsidy handsets that it won't give up, even when threatened by congress. Now all the carriers are selling heavily subsidized smartphones. They hate this state of affairs -- and wish that American consumers would just pay full price for the phones, the way people do in Europe. Hansell's evidence for this is the iPhone, which was "unsubsidized" when it was $600. It only dropped to $400 and then $200, he writes, when they moved to subsidies. He implies that the iPhone launch was initially unsuccessful and that this shows Americans won't buy contract-free phones: "Consumers balked at the high upfront cost. By the second generation of the iPhone, Apple reverted to a traditional subsidy model." For customers, however, the only practical option with the $600 U.S. iPhone was to activate it on the standard subsidy-payoff contract, with a compulsory data plan to boot. Whatever the unsubsidized payment arrangements between Apple and AT&T, the contract arrangements between AT&T and consumers always assumed a subsidy. In fact, my recollection is that AT&T itself wouldn't even sell you that "unsubsidized" iPhone without activating a 2-year contract on the spot. Buying one from the Apple store did not enforce activation, but everyday customers couldn't activate on other carriers (or on a pre-paid AT&T plan) without using warranty-busting hacks that emerged only later. In fact, AT&T didn't market a no-contract iPhone until March, 2009 -- for $600-$700 depending on model, more than the original iPhone model ever cost "full price." Throughout his piece, Hansell writes often of people's confusion. He claims that even economists find cellphone plans baffling. But they're not hard to understand except in the nickel-and-dime details. Hansell's repeated evocation of "confusion" is reminiscent of when characters in novels continually ask what's going on, or when they wake up in white rooms: it's because the writer himself doesn't know. Excepting the Yale professor whose words introduce the article, the people quoted in it are carrier flacks and cellular industry analysts: a fair sign of a piece tossed off inside a snowglobe of PR. |
| Struts & Frets: an indie-rock YA novel with heart and authenticity Posted: 15 Nov 2009 05:32 AM PST  Jon Skovron's debut novel, the YA book Struts & Frets, is a dynamite, nuanced story about fannish love, musical obsession, first romance and true friendship. It follows the adventures of Sammy Bojar, a small-town, midwestern high-school senior who's life revolves around his band, a trainwreck of ego and conflict called "Tragedy of Wisdom." The band means everything to Sammy because music means everything to him. He frames his whole world with indie pop, seeking out authenticity with a driven, blinding passion. Sammy's at the turning point in his life. His best male friend is coming out, his best female friend is in love with him (and it turns out it's mutual, though he didn't know it). The frontman for his band is a roiling, angry bully who is ever on the verge of physical violence. His beloved grandfather, a minor jazz legend, is sliding into incapacity as age and a hard life catch up with him. The plot-points are all pretty standard YA set-pieces, but there's never a stale (or dull) moment in Struts & Frets. That's thanks to the incredible nuance and heart that Skovron brings to the interpersonal relationships, using these familiar emotional scenes as pivots for a deft emotional acrobatic act that is as moving as it is engrossing. I was never a (good) musician, but I've always been passionate about music. I remember what it was like to be in the band, to be wrapped up in all the issues around creativity, friendship and identity; to seek out answers to life's big questions in music, to worry at the unanswerable questions of commercialism, success and popularity. Struts & Frets will feel instantly authentic to anyone who's ever felt the pride and shame of being an outsider. |
| Hacklab.to's laser-cutter really *does* play the Mario Bros theme! Posted: 15 Nov 2009 05:28 AM PST I owe the Hacklab.to people an apology. Last spring I ran this post about how they'd tuned the motor on their laser cutter to play the Super Mario Theme as it repositioned itself, and I mentioned that it was too perfect, and wondered "if it's not just some video of a laser cutter with a flanged-out version of the theme cut into the soundtrack." Yesterday, I dropped in at the Hacklab in Kensington Market (it's an amazing place), and saw the laser cutter do its thing. And you know what? It plays an absolutely perfect Super Mario Theme. Seriously. Laser etcher plays Super Mario. It's real! Hacklab.to, Kensington Market, Toronto, ON, Canada.avi |
| Canada's "TV tax"/"Save local TV" squabble explained Posted: 15 Nov 2009 06:45 AM PST My last few trips to Canada, I've been puzzled by difficult-to-follow advocacy ads in which the broadcasters and the cable/sat operators have fought each other tooth and nail, begging Canadians to take side in a dispute over -- well, that's the problem. What was it over? This Writers Guild of Canada YouTube clip does a great job of sorting it out. Both groups receive enormous subsidies to promote Canadian television (broadcasters get a "local programming fee" and cable/sat operators get a state-backed monopoly that keeps foreigners out). Both want more money, and both want the other guy to collect the fee, so they other guy looks like a jerk. A pox on both their houses. WGC: "Tv Tax?" "Save Local TV?" Here's the truth! CANADIAN tv! (Thanks, Emily!) |
| Hotel proudly proclaims Winston Churchill's displeasure with its service Posted: 15 Nov 2009 06:49 AM PST  Alice spent the weekend in a Scottish hotel that Winston Churchill was a regular guest at -- even though he seems to have hated it, as is demonstrated by this sign in the lobby. |
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