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Montag, 29. November 2004 |
USB-powered fake flowerpot speaker. 
You know, it[base ']s hard enough already trying to convince people who drop by the house that we[base ']re not insane, so the
last thing we[base ']re going to do is completely confirm that by plugging this USB-powered fake flowerpot that doubles as an
external PC speaker into our laptop. Because that would remove all doubt in a lot of people[base ']s minds.
[Engadget]
5:34:09 PM 
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Perversely Interactive System. Perversely Interactive System,
by Lynn Hughes and Simon Laroche, puts the spectator into relation with
a virtual other whose image (s)he controls through a biofeedback device.
The system is made of a large scale video projection and a wireless biofeedback handset that monitors galvanic skin resistance (variation in sweat gland activity that measures the level of stress).
The video projection begins with the image of a woman with her back
turned. As the participant learns to reduce his or her stress / sweat
level, the woman on the screen gradually turns around, and advances
towards the participant.
So in this piece, excitation or effort hinders, rather than promotes,
successful interaction. If the participant[base ']s tension level rises (often
due to the excitement of success) then the woman stops.
Till December 12 at the FILE festival in Sao Paulo. [we make money not art]
5:29:52 PM
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iFrog one-handed Bluetooth keyboard. www.the The Gadgeteer has a review of the iFrog, FrogPad[base ']s
Bluetooth-enabled one-handed keyboard. You may be better off getting a proper folding model or just buying a PDA
or a smartphone with a built-in keyboard (we[base ']ve heard that they do exist), but the reviewer says that the big reason to
use one rather than a regular keyboard is that you can type with one hand (it comes in lefty and righty layout models)
and use a mouse in the other. But after three weeks of hardcore usage (as the primary keyboard), the
reviewer only managed to type 20 words per minute, way down from his usual 55 wpm using a regular keyboard.
Battery life was an excellent two weeks of daily usage, but there is no battery level indicator and
the iFrog itself is a whopping $225.
[Engadget]
12:21:51 PM
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Samsung Anycall Theater.  It's
great to be back in New York. Every time I leave, I come back to a city
that is a little bit more my home than before. Since I've got a lot of
catching up to do today (not nearly as much if Brendan Koerner hadn't
kept things in check last week, though!) expect quite a few short clean
up posts. I'm sure you'll be able to live without my erudite insights
into the latest leather cell phone case or whatever.
Inaugurally, this Samsung 'Anycall Theater' is a speaker dock
designed to let you use your Samsung phone as a stereo (practical) or
television (arrr, squinty).
Samsung "Anycall Theater" [Slashphone] [Gizmodo]
12:20:50 PM
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The JoyCoder PV395 personal video player. 
Ah yes, savor the cheap plasticky smell of this week[base ']s anonymous personal video player, the JoyCoder PV395. This one
has the distressingly par-for-the-course 20GB hard drive, 3.5-inch LCD, and support for playback of AVI and MPEG video
files, though apparently it does run on RealNetwork[base ']s RealOne software, which is incredibly uncommon for a personal
video player, and have built-in speakers.
[Engadget]
12:20:02 PM
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Ski Romania!.  In
addition to being the home of Dracula, Transylvania's capital town of
Brasov is a paticularly attractive destination for skiers and others
who travel outside of Bucharest. Brasov boasts a largely intact
Medieval town square (Piata Sfatului), and the Black Church, a gem of
Gothic architecture. It is also the home of Poiana, Romania's leading
winter sports resort, where lift tickets will run you a fiver.
Yes, kids: five quid. That's per-day, not per run. [Wanda Lust]
12:13:53 PM
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Low-Cost Latvia.  A few weeks ago I wrote about the new low-cost airline routes
launched last month from a variety of carriers -- flights that had
appeared out of nowhere to whisk passengers off to, well, nowhere I had
ever heard of. And so it was with great curiosity that I read a Guardian piece on trips to the Latvian cities of Riga and Jurmala.
Any country where beer is 60P a pint, dinner is under a tenner and
good clean rooms are £20 per couple B&B is a winner in my book,
but both travel writers seemed to find their Latvian destinations well
worth a visit. Riga, they tell us, is "bright and bohemian" while
Jurmala is "beautiful and unspoilt." Since the two cities are 20km
apart, it's nice that you don't have to choose. [Wanda Lust]
10:21:58 AM
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Heavenly Hotel Hospitality.  No, I have not lost my mind and no, this photo is not upside down, though the woman in it clearly is. Apparently,
she's a "wine angel" descending from the 13 metre wine tower at the
brand new Radisson SAS Hotel London Stansted Airport. The wine angels
are winched up and down by a computer system to retrieve your selected
bottle of plonk from its 4,000 bretheren in the hotel's bar.
I really can't decide if I'm appalled or enthralled.
Anyway, the hotel has 500 rooms in three diferent styles, which they claim are "distinct" but basically look like a choice of colour schemes
to me. The hotel also boasts a state of the art health club, wireless
Internet access, and 2 minute proximilty to the airport, but let's face
it: this one is all about the wine angels.
[Via: Hotel Chatter] [Wanda Lust]
10:19:45 AM
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RHD: Big Sur, California, USA.  In
the mid 90s, I took an epic road trip with my sister, driving from New
York City across the top of the US to Seattle and down the Pacific
Coast Highway to LA. It was on this trip that I discovered one of my
Top Three USA Destinations, and possibly the most romantic honeymoon
spot in the country.
To be fair, Big Sur, California is not so much a destination as an
experience. Travelling there is a bit of an adventure, and being there
is a fairy tale experience. [Wanda Lust]
10:19:12 AM
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Price War Won in Belgium. The Guardian reports that in a survey of online airfare websites, Belgian vendor Travelprice
consistently delivered the lowest ticket prices, sometimes by hundredes
of US dollars. The survey was conducted and published by Consumer WebWatch, which concluded that:
When booking international airline tickets, consumers may
want to consider buying them on German or Belgian travel Web sites,
which offered bigger savings and fewer "fare-jumping" problems than
U.S. sites Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity, according to new research
by Consumer Reports WebWatch.
The report also revealed surprising differences in fares between
different country sites of the same brand, such as Expedia and Opodo. A
flight booked on Opodo.co.uk may be significantly more or less
expensive than the same flight booked on Opodo.com. But either way, the
report also concludes that 25-75% of the time, the airfare you find
online will be cheaper than that offered by a travel agent.
Moral of the story: learn to read French and German book your own flights online. [Wanda Lust]
10:18:08 AM
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The Slippery Slope of Ski Costs.  The Telegraph has this excellent article
on the price of a week's ski holiday, comparing the costs of three
families with small children at the same resort. Family A drops
£13,000; family C gets away for a snip at only £2,000.
It's a very interesting way to look at what you value most in a
holiday and ways to save (or spend) money; I'd happily give up £600
worth of on-piste lunches for a daily massage at £250 for the week,
for example. But then, I've always enjoyed the apres more than the ski.
[Wanda Lust]
10:17:43 AM
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YO! Sushi! YO! Hotel!.  There's
good news and bad news here. The good news is that an ultra-hip,
ultra-modern, ultra-urban version of Japanese capusle hotel is coming to London courtesy of the people who brought civilization to the masses with YO! Sushi. This means cheap, well-designed,
groovy accommodation in the capital, which is nice. The bad news is
that while the 10x12 size may not put you off, the lack of windows
might.
Reportedly the company is still scouting locations. My suggestion is
that at £10 an hour, they avoid areas frequented by anything except
the very poshest call girls. Otherwise, the rest of us will never get
in. [Wanda Lust]
10:16:58 AM
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Good Afternoon, Vietnam.  I'm
not generally a fan of tour company trips, except under two
circumstances. One, when the destination is problematic due to
language, culture or planning problems, or two, when the tour is a good
deal at the right pace.
I like this tour
for both reasons. It starts in Saigon and ends up in Hanoi and features
a boat trip through Can Tho's floating market, a trip to the Holy See
Cao Dai Temple, tours of Hanoi, Hoi An, and the Unification Palace and
War Remnant Museum. The price of £750 per person includes meals,
tours, transfers, activities and hotels for ten nights and eleven days.
Airfare is additional. The tour is family-friendly and the tour company
practices responsible tourism. [Wanda Lust]
10:14:27 AM
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Italian Museum Fast Track.  As I've mentioned previously, one of the reasons I go on holiday is to get away
from pedestrian British queues, not to stand in more of them. Which
makes visiting museums and sites when abroad a bit of a chore and
something I only do when there's one I particularly want to see.
So this seems a clever
idea. You can book tickets online for specific days and times for
popular museums and sites in Rome, from the Catacombs to the Colosseum
and Palatine Museum. The company also runs booking sites for Venice,
Florence, Milan and Naples. There is a £1.50 booking fee for every
ticket, but then time, as they say, is money. [Wanda Lust]
10:07:22 AM
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Winter Sky, Northern Lights.  For
a winter spectacle that beats the pants off the neighbour's rooftop
holiday lighting extravaganza, head for Scandinavia and the Aurora Borealis,
also known as the Northern Lights. Telegraph writer Erik Owen saw this
phenomena whilst aboard a ship in Norway, and was captivated: "It is a
glory as spirals and blades of colour intertwine in a stately, silent
dance across the vastness of the sky."
[Wanda Lust]
10:05:49 AM
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RHD: New Orleans, LA, USA.  This
was actually the perfect US destination for us: lots of booze, lots of
music, plenty of places to get in trouble at night, and a beautiful,
romantic, historic city with very strong coffee in which to be hungover
during the day. Also, I was looking forward to introducing my British
husband to the joys of blackened catfish, gumbo, po'boys, and black
eyes peas. Not to mention that the city's bordello history also
appealed to my sense of what one should be doing while on honeymoon.
[Wanda Lust]
10:04:52 AM
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Trailer Park Chic.  If
you're ever in New Jersey (and having lived there very briefly, I'm
hard pressed to imagine very many reasons why you would be), you can
head for The Wildwoods, a seaside resort caught between the 1950s and the Jetsons. The Wildwoods is wild about doo-wop, and the classic amusements and retro architecture reflect the obsession.
[Wanda Lust]
10:04:13 AM
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Lego Land's Love Child.  What do you get when you crossbreed Legoland Windsor with Disney's EPCOT in a drunken all night orgy fueled by EU funding? You get Mini Europe, that's what.
I have no children and therefore think Legoland is utterly vapid. I
don't wear plaid and therefore abhor Disney parks the world over. But I
confess a certain weakness for Mini Europe, possibly because it's just
so utterly bizzarre. So if you're ever in Brussels, mildly
pissed and mildly bored, stroll over to the Automium to see Europe laid
out at your feet in 1/25 scale. Try not to knock over Big Ben. [Wanda Lust]
10:03:32 AM
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Sterling on Fab Labs.
We wrote about Fab Labs
a few months ago -- the combination of 3D scanners, Linux computers,
laser cutters, 3D milling equipment, etc., assembled by the Center for
Bits and Atoms at MIT for use in the developing world. It's one of the
coolest and potentially one the most revolutionary projects going, as
it could be the jumping-off point for the biggest developing world
leapfrog ever. Now Bruce Sterling (a name mentioned on WorldChanging
once or twice) writes about Fab Labs for the latest issue of Wired, doing what he does best: seeing the possibilities.
Now imagine a vast, rising tide of bastardized things, shoddier
than the cheapest postwar products of Japan, coming from Congo,
Myanmar, Fallujah - a global outbreak of Napster-fabbed mayhem. Fabbing
would be the ultimate industry for the perennially unindustrialized;
the consumer cornucopia for the antideveloping world; a mushroom patch
of recycled decay that pops up whenever the World Trade Organization,
World Intellectual Property Organization, or US Patent and Trademark
Office turns its back.
(Posted by Jamais Cascio in QuickChanges at 01:05 PM)
[Eyebeam reBlog]
9:58:23 AM
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WiFi detectors roundup. 
Handtops.com has roundup of five different WiFi detectors, SmartID[base ']s WiFi Detector WFS-1, PCTEL[base ']s WiFi Seeker, the
new Kensington WiFi Finder Pus, Hawking Technologies[base '] WiFi Locator HWL1, and the supposedly vaporous Digital Hotspotter
HS10 from Canary Wireless. They[base ']ll definitely save you from having to boot up your lappy just to see whether there[base ']s
WiFi about, but that[base ']s about the only thing these five have in common. Turns out there[base ']s a lot of variation in
detection strength, range, form-factor, and the ability to filter out non-WiFi signals (the Digital Hotspotter[base ']s the
only one that can display SSIDs and whether a network is closed or open), and there was no clear winner among the five
detectors.
[Engadget]
9:55:51 AM
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My Movies plug-in for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. 
Brian Binnerup, the guy behind the free [base "]My DVD Collection[per thou] plug-in for Windows Media Center PCs, has a new version
of the plug-in out called [base "]My Movies[per thou] that[base ']s for Media Center PCs running on the 2005 version of the software. It[base ']s
basically an indexing program that let[base ']s you keep track of your entire movie collection, whether they[base ']re downloaded
from the Internet or DVDs, from the Windows Media Center interface, and browse them by title, actor, director, or
genre.
[Engadget]
9:54:42 AM
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My tip for the winter hols: the Icehotel. The Icehotel is re-built every winter from tons of snow and ice, in the village of Jukkasjârvi in northern Lapland, Sweden.
In Icehotel are double rooms and suites, a lobby, a chapel, a film auditorium and an Icebar.
You sleep in specially made sleeping bag and in the morning (that's if
you're still alive, I guess) a hot drink is brought to you, then you
can hit the sauna.
The temperature in the Icehotel varies between -4 and -9 degrees centigrade. It´s a great experience staying overnight in Icehotel
They also organize activities like snowmobile safari, "Jack London" style dogsled tours, ice sculpting, etc.
Via WandaLust. [we make money not art]
9:52:56 AM
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OPSOUND LAUNCHES COPYLEFT RECORD LABEL TO SELL FREE MUSIC. "Opsound
is an experimental record label and open sound pool of copyleft music,
organized through the website opsound.org. It is a laboratory for
looking at how artists can release music in a manner synergistic with
the internet's capacity to encourage communication and sharing. Opsound
explores the possibilities of developing a gift economy among
musicians, borrowing from the model of the free and open source
software communities."
Thursday, December 2, CBGB Lounge 8pm - midnight and beyond.
313 Bowery, NYC- between 1st and 2nd streets - F train to Second Ave, or 6 train to Bleecker
[Eyebeam reBlog]
9:51:40 AM
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ArtCal. Finally, an organized. + neat online chelsea gallery guide complete with "top picks" from Barry of blgogy.com [Eyebeam reBlog]
9:50:52 AM
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3 Internet2 Experiments. 
Soundmesh:
Design and OSX version: Mara Helmuth; RTmix Collaboration: Brad Garton;
Linux version: Ivica Ico Bukvic. Soundmesh plays uncompressed audio
data to remote host ips. It handles 44.1KHz au/sun/next or aiff files.
It is a RTcmix-3.1.0 based application. You do not need to install cmix
as all binaries are included. Because high bandwidth is required, you
must be at an Internet2 site to participate.
SoundWIRE:
This project is fundamentally concerned with two areas of research:
streaming professional-quality audio to remote destinations using
next-generation Internet, and developing practical, intuitive methods
for assessment of network reliability. Currently, digital audio
streaming across the internet is compromised by restricted bandwidth
and buffering of audio data to safeguard against network
irregularities. The results are signal compression and potentially long
delay times.
Global Visual Music Project:
Goals are to: a) develop software for the creation, mediation, and
dissemination of real-time multimedia content, including high
resolution two and three dimensional graphics, digital audio and video;
b) develop a networking capability for this software, so that
multimedia data could be shared between users in many locations; c)
organize a high profile event to unveil these resources by staging a
networked multiple site public performance with accomplished artists in
established artistic and technological venues; d) create a web site to
disseminate information about our research; e) freely distribute the
software we create; and f) develop and publish a communication protocol
for networked distribution of high quality real-time multi-media data.
[Eyebeam reBlog]
9:50:14 AM
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RoboRecital, no hand requested. "RoboRecital" features no human performers, just four robots: GuitarBot, a self-playing guitar; an automated pipe organ; a Yamaha Disklavier, a modern player piano; and Lemur's
Modbots.
During the concert, composer J. Brendan Adamson will present his own
works but also Bach's Die Kunst der Fuge, BWV 1080, Contrapuncti Nos. 2
and 3, performed by GuitarBot, and Mozart's Allegro und Andante written
for self-playing organ.
RoboRecital, Paul Hall, Tuesday, Nov. 30, 8 p.m.
Via Rhizome. [we make money not art]
9:47:16 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Joerg Rheinboldt.
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