FAT Labs vs. Google

Posted on | February 8, 2010 | No Comments

Last week here in Berlin the Transmediale Festival took place – and it was great. However, the icing on the cake is to be attributed entirely to Berlin’s own FAT Labs art activism group (Free Art & Technology), who not only had an intriguing stall at the festival itself (titled ‘Fuck Google‘), but also put on a beautiful spectacle chasing the Google Street View car, which happened to criss-cross town at the very same time.

In brilliant live Twitter-report style, everyone could learn how the Google car was being chased – and later, FAT Labs somehow managed to get at GPS tracker attached to the Google car, so that one could track the Googlsters’ trip around the city. Many Germans took the opportunity to get their 15 minutes of fame (or whatever you call the middle finger message) – see the video here:

Google Street Car In Berlin from Evan Roth on Vimeo.

Follow FAT Labs on Twitter or visit their website for more antics.

“Google Xistence: Because life is too short for social interaction”

Posted on | January 30, 2010 | No Comments

About a week ago, I ran across a hilarious prank called Google Xistence that offered people to take care of the time consuming social media “stuff” by sending out randomly generated status updates and tweets for you, so that you would have time to get some work done. The site even bolstered the brilliant slogan: “Because life is too short for social interaction”. That’s funny.

The idea was so weird and the site so convincing, that – for a moment at least – I caught myself wondering if this in fact a hoax or not. Awesome.

Now the guy behind the website, “AMA”, has announced on Reddit that the site apparently has had a phishing-scam warning put upon it by Google themselves. He writes, under the headline of ‘I’m the guy behind Google Xistence. AMA‘:

“A few days ago, I launched a fake Google service called Xistence ( http://www.googlexistence.com/ ) that offers to live your social life for you so you can get real things done. After a few hours of frantic Twitter theatre, the nice guys from Mountain View slapped me with a “Phishing Scam” warning, ending my performance. AMA”

Check out the video presentation of the site:

See the Reddit announcement here, follow AMA on Twitter here or go directly to Google Xistence (make sure to mark as ‘not phishing’ in your browser).

Denmark ditches Microsoft

Posted on | January 29, 2010 | 6 Comments

This Friday morning it has been announced by the Danish government, that the Danish state administrative body will adopt the open format ODF as its sole document standard from April next year. This means that the Danish state will now ditch Microsoft’s proprietary document formats.

Below is a translation of the article just published by Danish national paper Politiken:

Politiken.dk, Friday January 29, 2010 – 11.45am

DENMARK DITCHES MICROSOFT

The science minister is happy, that the state turns its back on Microsoft.

“Hello, open free standards – and goodbye Microsoft monopoly.”

This is one way to describe the breaking news of the state administration’s use of the so-called open standards, which the Danish parliament has just agreed upon.

After four years of work the political parties have agreed that the state administration body from April next year will convert into using the open format ODF, when the state exchanges documents such as text files and spreadsheets.

This means, that the state to begin with chooses not to work with IT-behemoth Microsoft.

And that is something that science minister Helge Sander [of moderate right wing party Venstre] is proud of.

Enhedslisten [outer left wing party] agrees with the government parties
“My ambition is that we in the future will communicate solely via open standards,” said Helge Sander when addressing the parliament in a speech, according to IT-web magazine version2.dk.

For once the Enhedslisten-party agrees with the party in office. Per Clausen from Enhedslisten expresses get satisfaction over the decision that open standards have been chosen.

“It is our impression that the way forward is through open source, which should replace the patent mind-set that is dominant today,” said Clausen.

ODF is an abbreviation for Open Document Format, which is an ISO-standard for office documents (textfiles, spreadsheets, presentations). ODF was originally developed as document format for the open source-software suite OpenOffice.org, and is still to this day it’s standard format.

Documents saved in ODF can for instance be opened using the OpenOffice suite, which can be downloaded for free on the Internet, and also in Microsoft Word 2007.

The decision will initially apply for state administration body only. Municipalities and country region administrations will join later.

Read the Politiken article (in Danish) – and read also the original publication from web magazine version2.dk

The Apple Paradox, Closed Culture & Free-Thinking Fans

Posted on | January 27, 2010 | No Comments

Now this is something that I, as a complete Apple-o-phile, have also often pondered: How does Apple manage to retain it’s image as the favorite hard- and software provider for the world’s creative open culture community while being such a proprietary-centered business? It’s an immense paradox – which is highlighted in this interesting article from Xconomy.

The lead (slashed from Slashdot) goes:

“The secrecy surrounding the expected Apple tablet computer is only the latest example of the company’s famously closed and controlling culture. Yet millions of designers, musicians, and other creative professionals love their Apple products, and the Apple brand is almost synonymous with free-thinking creativity. How can a company whose philosophy of information sharing is so at odds with that of most of its customers be so successful? This Xconomy essay explores three possible explanations. 1) Closed innovation, overseen by a guiding genius like Steve Jobs, may be the only way to build such coherent, compelling products. 2) Apple’s hardware turns out to be more ‘open’ than the company intended — Jobs originally wanted to keep third-party apps off the iPhone, for example. 3) Related to #1: customers are pragmatic about quality, and the open source and free software movements haven’t produced anything remotely as useful as Mac OS X and the iPhone.”

Read the Xconomy article here.

Mass photography event in London today: I’m a photographer, not a terrorist

Posted on | January 23, 2010 | No Comments

From Boing Boing: “A reminder for Londoners: there’s a mass photo shoot-in at midday today in Trafalgar Square, to protest English cops’ continuing harassment of photographers under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act.”

Read the original post here – or visit the official website of the campaign.

Hiding from Google

Posted on | January 21, 2010 | No Comments

From Slashdot:

“Google offers Web users a simple trade-off: Let the search giant track a substantial portion of your comings and goings around the Web, and it will offer you a free, superior online experience. Now independent security researcher Moxie Marlinspike is making Web users a counter-offer: take Google’s giveaways and keep your privacy too. On Tuesday, Marlinspike launched a service he calls GoogleSharing, a plug-in for Firefox designed to give users access to Google’s online offerings while cloaking their identity from the company’s data collection tools. By hosting a proxy server with a collection of Google ‘identities,’ the privacy software will allow users temporarily to route their traffic through another computer that masks their identity by mixing their online actions with those of other users. The system is totally transparent, with no special ‘alternative’ websites to visit. Your normal work flow should be exactly the same.”

Grand initiativ, I say! Finally someone addresses the privacy issues towards Google’s search engine. Read the original posting and follow the discussion.

Internet Survival Guide for Traveling Where Privacy Isn’t Respected

Posted on | January 15, 2010 | No Comments

The brilliant LifeHacker blog has posted an interesting article on privacy and protection against identity theft when backpacking – or simply travelling abroad. The author – who wishes to remain anonymous – explains how he keeps a tight leash on privacy when traveling in a country where the government actively monitors online communication.

Excerpt: “Internet cafes proliferate all throughout Asia and other remote countries, which makes getting online very easy and cheap. That said, as much as I love “the cloud,” keeping data online comes with security concerns, especially in places where internet restrictions and heavy government monitoring are commonplace.”

Read it here:
Internet Survival Guide for Traveling Where Privacy Isn’t Respected

Update on the Facebook vs. Suicidemachine issue

Posted on | January 11, 2010 | No Comments

After the story came out about how Facebook is trying to tyranize a small Dutch web-service, that helps people disconnect from social media services, quite a lot of attention has been drawn to the case. Especially on the wonderful Nettime-mailinglist where people gather to discuss issues of net criticism. One of the most interesting posts, by a certain Maja van der Velden, goes like this:

“Seppukkoo (http://www.seppukoo.com/), a Facebook suicide machine, which also received a Cease and Desist letter from Facebook, has sent a letter back to the lawyers of Facebook, see: http://www.seppukoo.com/docs/les_liens_reply_to_facebook.pdf“

Please take the time to read the mentioned strike-back letter. It is utter beauty from beginning to end and reminds me of a similar letter sent by the editors of Boing Boing to the lawyers of Demi Moore as a part of the hilarious W-magazine photoshop disaster story. Oh, Suicidemachine, please adopt this letter and stick it to The Man!

Facebook tyrannize ’social media suicide’ website

Posted on | January 10, 2010 | 1 Comment

Facebook (FB) strikes hard on anyone who facilitate users to unhook themselves from the grip of the social media titan. The Guardian has an article on how the world’s largest social network, Facebook, has been bullying a small Dutch web-service that enables users to systematically delete their profile on social networks including FB – in other words; enable social media suicide.

When visiting suicidemachine.org, you find this announcement:

Probably you have heard that Facebook completely blocked and banned our service from their servers since last Sunday (in case you haven’t, please follow up the whole story by Paul McNamara here).

Yesterday we received a Cease and Desist letter (you can read the pdf here) from Facebook lawyers kindly asking us to stop our service and remove all Facebook profile pictures we collected for the memorial pages and anything else which could be associated with Facebook from our website. They gave us quite some time to respond upon their request. Therefore, we are currently considering our further steps and watching the countdown.

Time left to answer Facebook:

1 days, 10 hours, 49 minutes, 5 seconds (Ed.: At the time of writing of this blog post)

Read the Guardian article here – or go to suicidemachine.org.

New York urban art chair-tracking experiment

Posted on | January 9, 2010 | No Comments

Check out this funny urban experiment: You (that would be Blue Dot Studio) put out design chairs in the street at random sites in New York city, then trace them with GPS and video cams.

Blu Dot Real Good Experiment from Real Good Chair on Vimeo.