notes
Friday, 27 December 2002A Peek at History, Piracy-Free. Media company British Pathe, which produced 3,500 newsreels between 1910 and 1970, puts its entire collection online. But rather than adding digital copyright protection, the company simply stamped its logo on each downloadable clip. By Patrick Di Justo. [Wired News]
Jenny, the Shifted Librarian cuts the tip of her left ring finger and her thoughts turn subsequently to the plight of the tribes of thumb typists:
For Gadget Addicts: Splints for 'Blackberry Thumb'
"There are braces for bad knees, slings for strained wrists, and now a remedy for sufferers of gadget addiction: splints for 'Blackberry thumb.'
That's the ailment that afflicts people who spend too much time typing with their thumbs on the tiny keyboards of Blackberry wireless devices. When you add those to the masses using the new 'thumbboards' that hook onto hand-held organizers, it's clear that the opposable digit is under pressure. Some users of what addicts have dubbed 'Crackberry' log more than 500 e-mails a day.
Now a cottage industry is springing up to coddle their aching digits. The Futuro Thumb Stabilizer, launched this summer, is a flesh-colored contraption that holds the hand in a thumbs-up position. Other splints use high-powered magnets meant to draw extra blood flow to the thumb and encourage healing. Earlier this year, IMAK added thumb support to its Smart Glove for carpal tunnel syndrome (Think Michael Jackson, circa 1983). The company is planning a campaign in Wired and other technology magazines next month to reach the sore-thumbed.
'Techno-geeks are a really good market for us,' says Daniella Pentelute, marketing director of IMAK....
...Style is also a consideration. The Futuro has a high geek factor, with lots of confusing straps. Smart Glove is black and sleeker looking. IMAK is considering putting out gloves in fashion colors, so users can match them with their outfit." [The Daily Southtown, although, I can't find the article online yet]
And, of course, I typed all of this with my left ring finger wrapped in gauze. Of course, that's not because of 'Blackberry thumb' since I don't own a Blackberry.
Just think of the increase in health insurance costs the thumb generation is going to see....[The Shifted Librarian]
That 'thumb generation' link takes you to one of Jenny's reports on Sadie Plant's research into how young people use their thumbs in ways previous generations have not had to!
Why museum move is not child's play. £4m plan for exhibits that include craft of 19th century's video pirates. [Guardian Unlimited]
A great story about the fate of Pollock's Toy Museum in London - not to be confused with Bethnal Green - and a clash of museum curatorial/aesthetic values.
Toy theatres were invented apparently by "William West, a Georgian haberdasher with theatrical connections". The piracy tag below comes from the fact "He first published a sheet of characters from the pantomime Mother Goose, including the famous clown Joey Grimaldi. This sold so well he began to print more characters, then scenery, and finally elaborate wooden toy theatres, with oil lamps, trap doors, and slots to allow scenery rise and fall. They sold for up to £20, a poor man's annual income."
"Robert Louis Stevenson wrote: "If you love art, folly, or the bright eyes of children, speed to Pollock's," and when Mr Pollock died in 1937, aged 80, he was mourned with a Times obituary as "the last of the toy theatre makers". The business was sold - complete with 120 engraved plates and over 170,000 prints - and run into bankruptcy in the early 1950s, as Margeurite Fawdry, a French actress married to an English man, discovered when she tried to buy some wire slides for her son's toy theatre. She ended up buying the business, and started the museum to promote it, padded out with a valuable collection of optical toys loaned by a friend."
Pepys' diary, syndicated day by day! "he’s taken the Project Gutenberg edition of Samuel Pepy’s diary, and converted it into a blog - new entries every day from Jan 1st. It comes complete with space for annotations, and trackbacks".
Just wait until we get to the Great Fire bit - that's cool.. Sometimes people do small things that require a lot of applauding. Phil Gyford is such a man today: he's taken... [Ben Hammersley.com]
vlogging: collaborative online video blogging at tropisms.org.
A couple of weeks ago here in LA, I met an innovative documentary filmmaker and digital artist from Holland named Luuk Bouwman whose Tropisms.org site is the subject of this story in the French newspaper Liberation. The article is written in French, and describes the site as an "Internet road flick."
Luuk's work is all about vlogging -- that's shorthand for video blogging. His tropisms site is a sort of collaborative online travelogue in which participants from all over the world post video snapshots of their experiences traversing the globe. Luuk says:
"[The site] consists of 'crudities': pieces of raw experience, regularly uploaded...it aims at developing an extended version of the conventional weblog, one that allows users to upload visual input such as (streaming-) video-files and pictures as easily as texts. The attitude towards the internet is experiential: mastering equipment and getting the hang of tools comes before writing manifestos. 'Do it yourself' is the site's slogan."He's also working on a documentary film about Miltos Manetas' neen art movement, which promises to be equally interesting.
Link Discuss
[Boing Boing Blog]
Jon Udell's 1999-2002 BYTE.com columns. (SOURCE:Jon Udell's Radio Blog)-Excellent articles on knowledge management and a whole host of compelling computer related topics! Thanks for putting it back on the public web, John [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
Putting Pen to Paper, With a 21st-Century Twist. Do you simply prefer the feel and versatility of real ink on real paper? Lots of people do, and they can use the new InkLink handwriting system from Seiko Instruments to get the most out of old-fashioned ink and newfangled electronics. By Michel Marriott. [New York Times: Technology]
Big Thoughts.
There's lots of fascinating, futuristic stuff from many different authors on Ray Kurzweil's virtual bookshelf. Here are a couple titles that I find especially intriguing :
- Evolution and the Internet: Toward A Networked Humanity?
- The 10,000-Year Library
- Decoupling Art and Affluence
- Global Cyberspace and Personal Memespace
- Intelligence Augmentation
- What does it mean to have an educated mind in the 21st century?
- How to Change the World . . . Quickly
- The Emergent Self