A Mix of Art and Technology

What do you get when you mashup art, technology, and a room full of geeks? Some mind-boggling eye-candy for starters. Participants in these visual and musical flights of fancy come from the computer art subculture. They spend their days producing demos, writing CGI scripts, laying out design; and generally playing with sound, image and page layout.  When they get really creative, at all-night parties on the fifth floor of the annual Notacon show, this is the result.


Critical Glitch Artware Category .doc[umentary] from Nick Briz on Vimeo.

Tim Berners-Lee: Stop Snooping on my Web

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the World Wide Web, is worried. (image: Sir Tim Berners-Lee) As well he should be. The nature of his concern? Pervasive, Internet snooping by commercial interests that definitely don't have your best interests in mind. How pervasive? 24/7/365. Every URL, every keystroke, all your browsing habits and behaviors. Read about it here.

Why is that important? Think about it. Imagine the profile that can be created with that much data. Take a minute and actually contemplate that. Your personal profile is deep, wide, detailed and potentially dangerous in the wrong hands. Companies you've never even heard of know you better than your family and friends. And the upstart is, we just gave this up over a decade ago without even a conversation. There were no town-hall meetings, no forums, very few on-line threads around this issue. Total and complete loss of personal privacy... anonymity gone forever - without so much as a whimper from the peanut gallery. Breathtaking. From the article cited, here are some of Sir Tim's concerns:

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the world wide web, today warned MPs and peers that they should not allow third parties, including commercial companies, to snoop on people's internet browsing.

"We use the internet without a thought that a third party would know what we have just clicked on," Berners-Lee said.

"Yet the URLs [webpages] people use reveal a huge amount about their lives, loves, hates and fears. This is extremely sensitive information.

"People use the web in a crisis, when wondering whether they have a sexually transmitted disease, or cancer, when wondering if they are homosexual and whether to talk about it … to discuss political views."

He said people "use the internet to inform ourselves as voters in a democracy", adding: "We use the internet to decide what is true and what is not.

"We use the internet for healthcare and social interaction."

He said people would consider using the web in a crisis in a different light if they knew they were being monitored and the data would be shared with a third party such as an advertising company.

"There will be a huge commercial pressure to release this data," he said. "The principle should be that it is not to be collected in the first place."

Internet
Privacy
Berners Lee

White House Names Kundra CIO

The Obama administration today introduced the president's choice to be techie-in-chief at the White House. The Author is impressed. Vivek Kundra sounds like just what we need, at just the right time. Born in New Delhi, India, Kundra moved at an early age to Tanzania and his first language is Swahili. Awesome. And the man did a great job getting DC's technology shit together, and prior to that as the first dual cabinet member in the state of Virginia. Yeah. A real braniac. That's what I'm talkin about. Read about the appointment here. And check out Kundra's Wikipiedia entry for more background. I've extracted some of the relevant background in the quote below. Again, exciting news. After all, it's the digital age. What could be more important than technology and information management?

Vivek Kundra formerly served in Mayor Fenty's cabinet as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for the District of Columbia, responsible for technology operations and strategy for 86 agencies. He has been recognized among the top 25 CTO's in the country and as the 2008 IT Executive of the Year for his pioneering work to drive transparency, engage citizens and lower the cost of government operations. Kundra is also recognized for his leadership in public safety communications, cyber security and IT portfolio management. Before Kundra came to the District, Governor Timothy M. Kaine appointed him Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Technology for the Commonwealth of Virginia, the first dual cabinet role in the state's history. Kundra's diverse record also includes technology and public policy experience in private industry and academia. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia's Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership and holds a MS in Information Technology from the University of Maryland.

news
Technology
Government

The Woz Joins Fusion-IO

Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer, has joined the team at Fusion-IO as "chief scientist." woot! Check out the report. And I can remember when storage was the most boring part of the industry with MTBF as a principal subject of conversation.

With the advent of fabric- and cloud-storage; NAS, and, the new horizons that companies like Fusion-IO bring to SSD, all of a sudden storage is sexy. With The Woz involved, the cool and interesting factor just went through the roof. Who'd have thought?

news
Steve Wozniak
Fusion-IO

Don't Shout at the J-Drive

Thanks to my buddy, Tom the Palm Guy, at SUN for passing this vid along today. Just goes to show you shouldn't shout at your hard drives. Can't you just see the sign: Dude, don't shout at the storage. One has to wonder, is this why there are no sub-woofers in data centers?

Dell Readies New Mini Laptop

The next generation of mini-laptops, called "netbooks" by some, is really here. Hoo-ya, it's about time. Hat's off to Gizmodo for catching Michael Dell personally carting his hot, new mini around "All Things D." Dell has yet to spec-out the new mini, but it sure has the right form factor - a plethora of ports, and it comes in candy-apple red and midnight black. The company released the pictured image above today. Read Dell's cryptic blog entry here.

The credit for creating the steamy new market niche goes to Taiwan's Asus and their EeePC. The latest version, the 901, is Atom-based with powerful wireless connectivity. This Linux-based netbook has been a huge seller, taxing Asus' manufacturing to the max.

The point of these "netbooks" is that bloatware and on-board megastorage may soon be a thing of the past for mobile warriors. Google and others are busy tearing down the Microsoft fortress by migrating powerful apps and giga-storage to the net where they belong. Unless one is a mad gamer, or video editor, these mini-notebooks are all that is necessary to get a sh*tload of work done from just about any location with a signal. A powerful but tiny PC just in time for my tiny tax rebate check from the government.

Netbook
Dell
Gadget

Database of Red Light Cameras Offered Free to GPS Users

Get it now! This news will be on PRWeb Monday morning. After that, there may be some traffic to contend with on the download site. Bottom line: an extensive database of red-light and speed-trap cameras nationwide is being offered free to GPS users. So if you've got a GPS Nav system that you use in your vehicle, this database will expose all the speed traps and red-light cameras along your chosen route. Sweet. Even more interesting, the company is employing a user-driven, bottom-up approach to data acquisition. So surf on by this site and check it out.

Technorati Tags: speed trap,database,red light camera,GPS,CCTV,news

Google kicks some Microsoft Ass

Google continues to surprise me. They so get it. I totally understand why the company's stock just passed the $700/share mark.

Microsoft's expensive investment in Facebook got a lot of press last week. So the prospect, raised in a commentary by John C. Dvorak in PC World, that Steve Balmer and crew were "duped" into making the high bid for Facebook is especially delicious. Early reports cited the ruffians from Redmond as having "won" the bidding war. Not. In a stroke of dissmisive brilliance, Google followed up the announcement by releasing their OpenSocial platform and API, signing up almost the whole A-list of serious web 2.0 players to their team including MySpace, and then; a day later, highlighting 3rd-party apps that were already coming in to support the environment. Slam-dunk. And so well done, it takes my breath away. Gives a lot of credence to Dvorak's point-on hunch. Now I admit I've got a dog in this fight. I watched quite helplessly during the late 80's as Microsoft crushed and consumed a number of my clients. Just ate em right up, with prejudice.

The high-tech industry would be far better off had Microsoft failed in attempts to stave off anti-trust constraints. But they were too big and too vocal an opponent for the Feds - who declined to break up the company when it made sense to do so. Now, the marketplace is taking care of that piece of business. And let me go on the record right now: Google has already won, and Microsoft has lost - regardless of their recently reported profit from forcing Vista down the throats of their closest partners. And the GooglePhone, which promises to change the model for wireless voice communication forever, hasn't even hit yet. The anticipation for that launch is palpable and growing.

The world is moving, as well it should, to open systems and web-based software, storage and communications services. It's a good thing. Google gets that, and is facilitating the migration - making itself invaluable in every area of web 2.0 (and beyond) in the process. It's has the air of inevitability about it at this point. Microsoft's continuing relevance to this process is not clear, and certainly not inevitable as in the past.

I've posted about Google Apps before, here. I use many of Google's useful services, including: iGoogle, Google Apps, AdWords, Blogger, Picasaweb, Google Earth, Google Maping, Google Check-out, Google Page Creator and Google Alerts. What's really cool is that by combining the free and efficient services in creative configurations I can actually architect and build my own personal system, dashboard and communications platform from a single point. I love this stuff. And if you've still got confidentially worries, there's always the Open Office Suite running on the latest Ubuntu rev. as a viable Microsoft alternative. As the various flavors of Linux mature, developers respond with more applications and Open Systems gain market share. The ultimate effect of this trend seems pretty obvious to me. And I'm sure the scenario is creating indigestion on the fabled Microsoft campus. An image I confess to enjoying.

Robots Morph into Warriors

"More than 50 years after author Isaac Asimov argued in his classic novel "I, Robot" that a robot should never be allowed to do harm to people, the development of automated killers has become unstoppable," according to an article in Der Spiegel today.

Already deployed by the U.S. in Iraq and Israel in the Gaza, robotic enforcers, warriors, drones and airborne vehicles are everywhere. All the big guys; Honeywell, Northrup, Boeing and their ilk, are getting into the act. And then, there are the military nano-bots waiting in the wings. I've read stories about swarms of robotic bees and cockroaches capable of disabling jet engines, swarming into tunnels and operating as an integrated part of a multi-vehicle, robotic battle force. Now that's an image.

I'm conflicted about these developments. It certainly makes sense to sacrifice intelligent machinery rather than to spill human blood, but there's a nagging worry that the manufacturers and purchasers of these new killing machines will need an excuse to use them. Or that they could be turned on domestic opponents of a particular political regime. One newly deployed robotic enforcer is specially designed for "crowd control," which raises some hackles as well.

Once we're over the novelty and ultra-coolness of sleek and capable programmable machines, we need to consider the implications of these devices on things like the ease of establishing a police state. And that's just not my paranoia talking. Former Reagan advisor Paul C. Roberts is actually sounding the alarm about Bush's intentions in that regard.

Pimp my PC

Chrome spinners for the Impala? Hell no. Pimp my PC. It was bound to happen. Hot colors, specially formulated surface coatings, copper upgrades to speed cooling, the pimped-out PC. For a premium price, we can all now join serious A-list gamers - who have always sported the sickest gear. Check out the color selections at colorwarepc.com. Then point your browser to aquaboxpc.com and check out their take on the pimped puter. But be prepared for dazzle and glitz. Geek bling.

Viacom Gives Joost a Boost

After exiting YouTube with noisy complaints, media giant Viacom has joined studio-legend Paramount Pictures at Joost, according to a company press release dated the 20th. Hello, big news for media mavens. Joost has some serious horsepower behind it, including the founders of Skype and Kazaa. And some considerable horsepower requirments at the moment. Those without major bandwidth need not apply. And, of course, Joost is still in beta. That didn't stop Viacom, Paramount and others from signing on. So I'm guessing we'll see an iTV from Apple sometime soon, as the battle for the high ground in the new digital media world intensifies on the content, hardware and distribution fronts. For users, this will take internet protocol TV up a notch. It's a win for Joost, and arguably a loss for YouTube parent GOOGLE.

Steve Jobs on DM - Let's Talk

Steve Jobs has penned an "Open Letter" on Apple's Web site offering to open-up digital music to the masses by eliminating DRM copy protection. Jupiter Research's Mark Mulligan has already weighed-in , as has the BBC's News Blog.

So does this mean the end of "fair play" on iTunes purchases? Well, maybe. And if it does, we've got the pressure applied by the European Union, widely reported and cited by Mulligan, to thank. So Steve's at the table, for whatever reason. Let's get the negotiations going. Users want to share digital tunes across all platforms and formats. End copy protection now.