The Latest from Boing Boing

Free Culture Forum: Oct 28-31, Barcelona
HOWTO use Google AdWords to prototype and test a book title
Sweet new tees from Walt Disney World
Why building codes should be open
Air National Guard photos from Guam and Hawai'i, 1950s
Things Organized Neatly: images of well-organized stuff
Mortalcycle: dino-bike!
Smashing apartment high atop Seattle's Smith Tower

Free Culture Forum: Oct 28-31, Barcelona

Posted: 25 Oct 2010 04:50 AM PDT

Simona Levi sez,

The FCForum (Oct 28-31, Barcelona) is an international arena in which to build and coordinate action around issues related to free/libre culture and access to knowledge. The FCForum brings together key organizations and active voices in the spheres of free/libre culture and knowledge, and provides a meeting point where we can find answers to the pressing questions behind the current paradigm shift. Against the powerful lobbies of the copyright industries, the FCForum is a space for the construction of proposals arising from civil society in order to strengthen citizen's positions in the debate around the creation and distribution of art, culture and knowledge in the digital era.
The FCForum, which takes place in tandem with the 3rd oXcars Festival- /the biggest free/libre culture event of all time (a three-day event of international scope in which to organize strategies that encompass different solutions and proposals from around the world, so that they add up and complement each other). It aims to build a shared response to the asymmetrical pressure exerted on governments by the lobbies of a particular sector of the industry. In 2010, a key moment in this historical struggle, it is crucial that there be a discussion based on how to defend and generate new economic models that emerge in the digital era. This will be the main topic of the 2010 FCForum.

FC Forum 2010 (Thanks, Simona!)

HOWTO use Google AdWords to prototype and test a book title

Posted: 25 Oct 2010 12:29 AM PDT

Here's a fascinating case-study on how Timothy Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, prototyped and tested various titles and covers for his book, by buying various Google AdWords (for the title), and sneaking dust-jackets onto various business-books at the local Palo Alto Borders and watching how people reacted to them (for the cover).

He took 6 prospective titles that everyone could live with: including 'Broadband and White Sand', 'Millionaire Chameleon' and 'The 4-Hour Workweek' and developed an Google Adwords campaign for each. He bid on keywords related to the book's content including '401k' and 'language learning': when those keywords formed part of someone's search on Google the prospective title popped up as a headline and the advertisement text would be the subtitle. Ferriss was interested to see which of the sponsored links would be clicked on most, knowing that he needed his title to compete with over 200,000 books published in the US each year. At the end of the week, for less than $200 he knew that "The 4-Hour Workweek" had the best click-through rate by far and he went with that title.
His experimentation didn't stop there, he decided to test various covers by printing them on high quality paper and placing them on existing similar sized books in the new non-fiction rack at Borders, Palo Alto. He sat with a coffee and observed, learning which cover really was most appealing.

64) The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich (Thanks, Tom!)

Sweet new tees from Walt Disney World

Posted: 24 Oct 2010 11:27 PM PDT

The Disney Blog rounds up some of the smarter new t-shirt designs at Walt Disney World; as TDB's John Frost notes, "Disney's crew of Tee-shirt designers hare doing an excellent job," and I concur. The last time we were at WDW, the merchandise was pretty lacklustre, with the notable exception of the tees (this being the Threadless century, I find myself with vastly more tees than I can usefully own or, indeed, readily store -- but I still went home with two kick-ass shirts).

T-Shirt Update

Why building codes should be open

Posted: 24 Oct 2010 11:29 PM PDT

Here's rogue archivist Carl Malamud's five-minute Ignite Sebastapol talk on "Code City": the democratic necessity of making all of the nation's laws and codes free to read, download and analyze: "The laws that most directly touch our daily lives are not supreme court opinions or bills of landmark legislation, they are the public safety codes: building, electrical, plumbing, and other technical standards. Yet, these laws are the most inaccessible. Open standards make better infrastructure, and if we open sourced our public safety codes, our laws would be not only more relevant, but the law would be better."

Welcome to Code City! (Thanks, Carl!)

Air National Guard photos from Guam and Hawai'i, 1950s

Posted: 24 Oct 2010 10:02 PM PDT

MikeinSterrett sez, "Collection of scanned original photos of Air National Guard personnel and locations on Guam and Hawaii. Collection belongs to Marlin Jeffcoat who is in some/most of the photos. Includes people, vehicles, locations, and candid moments."

Marlin Jeffcoat's Military Photos (Thanks, MikeinSterrett!)

Things Organized Neatly: images of well-organized stuff

Posted: 24 Oct 2010 10:04 AM PDT

Things Organized Neatly is a Tumblr blog rounding up images of things that have been lined up all nice and kentucky. Consider my OCD well-tickled. (via MeFi)

Mortalcycle: dino-bike!

Posted: 24 Oct 2010 09:58 AM PDT

Jud Turner's new sculpture "MortalCycle," is part of a series of "delusional modes of transportation." Me, I'm a sucker for dinos, rust, Ed Roth stylings, and skeletons!

MortalCycle (Thanks, Jud!)

Smashing apartment high atop Seattle's Smith Tower

Posted: 24 Oct 2010 09:55 AM PDT

This weekend's NYT has a sweet profile of the Petra Franklin Lahaie/David Lahaie household, which is perched in the iconic pyramid atop Seattle's Smith Tower -- a legendary space that is a little awkward to reach, but worth the effort:

"In terms of the finishes and all that," Mr. Castanes said, "Petra basically mined the rest of the building."
When companies moved into the newly renovated offices, Ms. Franklin said, they "pulled out some of the marble."
"So I grabbed it."
One 9-by-7-foot gray slab became a kitchen counter; another heap of marble now skirts the tub that provides a postcard view of Mount Rainier, some 50 miles away.
The black wood scrim work that decorates the doors came from the Chinese Room; Ms. Franklin found the panels stacked in the building's basement. Nearby, she discovered a set of carved Chinese chairs that might be 300 years old. According to local lore, these furnishings were a gift from the last empress of China. (Mr. Willis doesn't buy it.) However they came to Seattle, they belong in the apartment now.
Performing a kind of archaeological dig in the bowels of the building was easy enough. Rappelling down the outside to open the sealed windows was a more formidable challenge. Each of the four faces of the pyramid has six teardrop-shaped windows. Yet Ms. Franklin managed to get even this daunting job done for free.

Making a Home in a Pyramid, 462 Feet Above Seattle

Who Lives There: The Pyramid Atop Seattle's Smith Tower (Photos)

(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

(Image: Stuart Isett for The New York Times)