However, I did want to share a story with you. It was broadcast on This American Life – a weekly public radio show I listen to as a podcast.

The section I decided to present deals with the tunnels in and out of the Gaza strip. It’s Act 2 of episode #407 entitled ‘The Bridge’, originally aired on 05 July 2009:

In the Middle East, hundreds and hundreds of tunnels connect the Gaza strip and Egypt, allowing supplies to bypass the Israeli blockade against Hamas-controlled Gaza. Producer Nancy Updike speaks with Ira about the tunnels, and plays tape from an interview she conducted with a tunnel owner.

Every episode of This American Life has a theme and a “variety of stories on that theme. It’s mostly true stories of everyday people, though not always. There’s lots more to the show, but it’s sort of hard to describe.”

Why did Ofcom back down over DRM at the BBC?

Cory Doctorow tells us that… the corporation is endangering its own future by letting the Hollywood studios set the rules for its HD broadcasts.

Why 2010 will be the year TV and the web really converge

Steve Plunkett explains how milestones such as Project Canvas will bring together broadcast television and online media.

Is copyright getting in the way of us preserving our history?

Victor Keegan on The issue of copyright is a global nightmare for anyone interested in digital preservation.

and also:

Ducks, Nazis and Disney: well, that’s one way to get a TV transition

Cory Doctorow asks in part 2 of his article: Is crippling our sets, and handing over our cultural regulation to a foreign cartel, the best way to get viewers switched on to high-definition?

*** Update: a new article has been added.

John Naughton writes in The Observer:

The Google Three, Italy and Silvio Berlusconi

The web may be global but sovereign states still make up the rules.

– Let me know what you think.

Developed and researched by Forrester on what they call – Social Technographics – the tool can help identify the level of technological involvement by different groups of users across an identified 6 levels of participation: Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators and Inactives. A brief explanation on the different types can be found here.

University of the Arts - Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design

Twenty years ago, in April 1989, Central School of Arts and Crafts (est. 1896) and Saint Martins College of Art (est. 1854) merged into what is now called Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (CSM).

On Monday, I went to a panel at the college’s Cochrane Theatre, celebrating the 20 years since the union. Geoff Fowle, former director of the Graphic Design course, hosted the panel of graduates from the last 20 years, who discussed their experiences before, during and after studying at CSM.

After the panel, we were invited to a reception with Geoff and other members of staff and alumni, which lead to some interesting discussions. While sipping our drinks, my tutor asked my opinion on the university website. This was a very thought-provoking question and I wanted to share my ideas here.

~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~

When I joined the college (in 2002), CSM was part of The London Institute, a “constellation” of five art and design colleges in London: Camberwell College of Arts, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, Chelsea College of Art and Design, London College of Fashion and London College of Communication (formerly the London College of Printing). Two years later, the institute got a university status and was renamed to University of the Arts London. In 2006, Wimbledon College of Art joined the group.

Each of the colleges has it’s own unique teaching style, approach, campus life, and list of famous alumni. According to the Times Education profile of the University of the Arts, “The London Institute resisted the temptation to apply for university status after it was formed in 1986 because the art, design, fashion and media colleges that had come together for administrative purposes were world-famous in their own right.”

But in 2001, Sir Michael Bichard, the rector of the London Institute at the time, encouraged the change.

Since the grant of the university status, there was a series of branding exercises that led to the place it is now – a consistent approach that leaves a shell without identity to each of the university colleges.

Let’s take the graphic design course as an example. There is a major difference of teaching and practice approaches in the Graphic Design course of CSM compared to the ones in LCC or Camberwell. Studios, tutors, and students are different, so are the self-definitions and the anticipated outcomes of each course.

Below are excerpts from the description of each course on the website:

CSM: “The philosophy of the graphic design course at Central Saint Martins is that students define their goals, experiment with ideas and challenge current practices to produce work that is outside commercial constraints.”

LCC: “We seek to produce graduates whose understanding of visual language means that they will be a confident, influential and proactive participant in an increasingly diverse design community.”

Camberwell: “Great ideas are at the heart of the best graphic design and great ideas are also at the heart of this course, which encourages you to develop your own distinct and independent voice.”

From top: Central Saint Martins College website, London College of Communication website, Camberwell College of Arts website

Visually, however, when a user is going to the University of the Arts website to look for a graphic design course, he sees no difference, for the website does not reflect the brand uniqueness of these institutions. The university has one logotype and the colleges have their names added in the same font, albeit in a distinct colour. The website looks exactly the same for all six colleges, except for the different colour palette. Thus, each of the colleges in the university website carry the same homogeneous look and feel and there is no distinction and sense of individual identity to the colleges.

I guess the biggest question for the university and their branding agency is that: should each college have their own identity or should they all share the same university brand and trademark?

I believe it can go in both ways.

~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~

The BBC websites for its various channels could be a good comparison. The BBC has a distinct branding that we all know and cherish, but offline, online and on-air the BBC has a series of channels, with their own identity and branding.

From top: BBC One website, CBBC website, BBC Radio 1 website

The channel has it’s own distinct look, approach and visitors.

It looks and feels different, and it still keeps the same safe and familiar environment of the BBC brand.
Each of the channels is designed by a different design agency, but they all follow the design guidelines provided by the BBC, and while there are shared similarities, the feel is different.

It is plausible to expect that the university brand will be prominent presence on the website, but six different and distinct colleges should not dissolve and become almost anonymous parts in the general scheme.

As a student and as an alumnus of Central Saint Martins, I always felt more part of the college, rather then the university, and I believe the college I went to, as well as each of the other colleges should have its own identity, under the united presence of the University of the Arts.

A lot of the ideas came to me from reading Lawrence Lessig blog posts and books, as well as the work of The Creative Commons.

I’ve uploaded the PDF to Issuu.com, Scribd, and you can view it here, or you can download and share the PDF (908 kb).

The Freedom to Create and Creating Freedom

This work is presented with a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 – you are free to share and remix the work, under the conditions that you will give credit and distribute the result under the same license.

While looking for the best image on Google, I came across another blogger, who had the same idea few months ago.

I’m happy I’m not alone on this, but acctually – who cares?

I bought them from the official W.A.S.T.E website [booking confirmation available].

My partner and I really wanted to go, but have other commitments, so I have to sell them.

That’s part of the problem when buying a ticket 7 months in advance…

Contact me directly or go to the eBay page

“The record industry is dead. It’s six feet underground and unfortunately the fans have done this,” [Gene, aka Chaim] Simmons said, according to AOL News. “They’ve decided to download and file share. There is no record industry around so we’re going to wait until everybody settles down and becomes civilized. As soon as the record industry pops its head up we’ll record new material.”

Source: Gene Simmons blames fans, P2P for killing music industry [Ars Technica]

Gene, you belong to a dark past.

For your knowledge: Bad music killed the record industry. I’m afraid that Glam Rock was part of it.

… and it seems that Radiohead, Trent Reznor and Soul Williams are doing just fine.

Update:

“Oh man, I’ve lost all faith in man kind.”

Gene Simmons in Family Guy, Road to Europe, Season 3, Episode 20

That’s one of the best virals I have seen.

More than 2,000,000 downloads and still about 20 hours to go.

Get involved and download Firefox by 8pm GMT today [Wednesday, 18 June].

I wonder if there is already a world record, and if there is who’s done it last time…

People are not working — they are emailing, twittering, facebooking, and googling, while at work — and the big information conglomerates are in need to do something about it.

Now these companies that created the big information beast will find ways to sell their solutions to other companies. Smart asses.

Link: NY Times

Yahoo and arch rival Google said on Thursday they had entered a non-exclusive partnership on search advertising expected to add as much as $800 million in annual revenue.

This deal will give Yahoo! some money to breathe and will take Microsoft off their back. The real reason behind it is to give Yahoo! a bit more time to find a better partner and learn about my idea. 

In short: Adobe and Yahoo! should strike a winning deal. 

[I probably need to write a better proposal... now that time is on our side]

** Update **

Incremental Blogger suggests that “Yahoo should acquire AllTop.com along with Guy Kawasaki“. 

This is not a bad idea in its own right - directories are part of the DNA of Yahoo and Kawasaki does twits everyone with his AllTop evangelism. Advertising is maybe an answer, but its not the future. It could help Yahoo momentarily [like the Google donation], but it wouldn’t make it different and kicking.

We need something bigger here, something futuristic, something that will take Yahoo out of the miseries of Web 2.0 and into Web 3.0 [I'm afraid that Web 3.0 is going to be like World War III, but that's a different post].

Adobe, with their technological control over the future of the market, and with their stronghold of holding creative people in the balls, can trigger that move, and hey – every company in the world uses Adobe products. It  will give Yahoo the leverage they need, and a lot of it.

To my original post - Adobe + Yahoo = Web 3.0

Israel is not one of these countries, and I’m quite annoyed at this.

The most annoying thing is that Israel’s neighbours – Jordan and Egypt will get the iPhone. How ruthless can Apple be? People will stand on the other side of the border with their 3G iPhones laughing at the Palestinians and Israelis, who will fight each other just to get a glimpse…

Countries like Liechtenstein [pop. 35,365], Macau [pop. 520,400] and Guinea-Bissau [pop. 1,586,000] are going to get the iPhone.

Hello!!! The glorious people of Israel have already jailbreaked more than 25,000 iPhones. Bought in American and European Apple Stores and brought to Israel in deep pockets, or bought in one of the dozens private importers of the iPhone to Israel, without the consent of the valid distributor iDigital.

Israeli entrepreneur Ouriel Ohayon says: Who cares? 

But I do. I care!

Yesterday the news brought back the soap story of Yahoo vs “Big Company”, and I’ve had an idea.

I like Yahoo!  I like Adobe!

I think it’ll be a good idea if they’ll join hands and merge (or whatever companies do).

Two days ago Adobe released their news Media Player. Few weeks ago they’ve released Adobe Photoshop Express.

Wouldn’t it be just great if Flickr and Photoshop would live together?

It’ll be a lot better then Flickr and Microsoft Expression…

I normally buy the Nine Inch Nails albums, but I thought I’ll download it to check it out first. When Ghost I was downloaded I discovered a readme.txt file in it:

This torrent is an official upload from Nine Inch Nails.

We’re very proud to present a new collection of instrumental music, Ghosts I-IV. Â Almost two hours of music recorded over an intense ten week period last fall, Ghosts I-IV sprawls Nine Inch Nails across a variety of new terrain.

Now that we’re no longer constrained by a record label, we’ve decided to personally upload Ghosts I, the first of the four volumes, to various torrent sites, because we believe BitTorrent is a revolutionary digital distribution method, and we believe in finding ways to utilize new technologies instead of fighting them.

We encourage you to share the music of Ghosts I with your friends, post it on your website, play it on your podcast, use it for video projects, etc. Â It’s licensed for all non-commercial use under Creative Commons.

We’ve also made a 40 page PDF book to accompany the album. Â If you’d like to download it for free, visit http://ghosts.nin.com/main/pdf

Ghosts I is the first part of the 36 track collection Ghosts I-IV. Â Undoubtedly you’ll be able to find the complete collection on the same torrent network you found this file, but if you’re interested in the release, we encourage you to check it out at ghosts.nin.com, where the complete Ghosts I-IV is available directly from us in a variety of DRM-free digital formats, including FLAC lossless, for only $5. Â You can also order it on CD, or as a deluxe package with multitrack audio files, high definition audio on Blu-ray disc, and a large hard-bound book.

We genuinely appreciate your support, and hope you enjoy the new music. Â Thanks for listening.

http://ghosts.nin.com

Hence, what started as the illegal act of downloading an album over a torrent site, ended up as a totally legal act, approved by the creators of the content.

Maybe BitTorrent is not a bad word after all…

Few days ago Zephoria (aka Danah Boyd) wrote about her friend Bob who had bad encounters with Google:

Earlier this week, Bob received a notice that there was a spam problem in his Orkut community. The message was in English and it looked legitimate and so he clicked on it. He didn’t realize that he’d fallen into a phisher’s net until it was too late. His account was hijacked for god-knows-what-purposes until his account was blocked and deleted. He contacted Google’s customer service and their response basically boiled down to “that sucks, we can’t restore anything, sign up for a new account.” Boom! No more email, no more calendar, no more Orkut, no more gChat history, no more Blogger, no more anything connected to his Google account.

Yesterday an article in the NY-Times told us that Facbook

…offers users the option to deactivate their accounts, Facebook servers keep copies of the information in those accounts indefinitely. Indeed, many users who have contacted Facebook to request that their accounts be deleted have not succeeded in erasing their records from the network.

Here is a video that tell us the truth about Facebook, from the research I did myself, most of it is true. Frightening.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=B37wW9CGWyY

and here is one that tell the truth about Google. Scary!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAx-6nHEWbE

“I didn’t grow up buying every book I read,” said the English born Mr. [Nick] Gaiman, 47. “I read books at libraries, I read books at friend’s houses, I read books that I found on people’s window sills.”Eventually, he said, he bought his own books and he believes other readers will, too.

Neil Gaiman decided to give away one of his books free online (initially for a month), as a “celebratory birthday thing” for his blog’s 7th birthday.

You can vote and help him choose which one its going to be on his site.

At the same time, NYT publishes an article on how HarperCollins Publishers will begin offering free electronic editions of some of its books on its Web site.

About a month ago Lawrence Lessig announced that the last of his books is now free to download (and remix).

After a productive and valuable conversation with my publisher, Random House, they’ve agreed to permit The Future of Ideas to be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

On January 1st, Charles Sheehan-Miles decided to give the electronic version of his book, Republic, for free.

No more sample chapters, partial books that end in the middle, none of that. You can download and read the complete book. Share it with your friends, email it, do anything you want with it except sell it.

Here’s why: the biggest challenge most authors face isn’t online piracy. It’s not people out there diabolically copying their works and distributing them for free. In fact most authors (including yours truly) suffer from a different problem entirely — no one has ever heard of them. After all, literally hundreds of thousands of new titles come out every year, and only a few hundred writers in the entire United States (if that many) actually live off their books full time. So, by giving away the book, I hope more people actually read it.

Chris Anderson wrote about it at the time:

For the vast majority of authors, being read is actually reward enough. How to turn that recognition into a living is a whole other process, and not necessarily one that depends on the traditional book industry to deliver. Good thing, too, since it so rarely does.

I think 2008 is a good year for electronic book publishing. Let’s see what it’ll do for other media publishing..

BTW, a nice feature is that you can search in most of these books (and many more) in Google Book Search.

Facebook is giving users some control over whether to share information on their buying habits and other online activities with friends.

For the program announced Tuesday to work, enough users must actually say “yes” so advertisers can show users their pitches in the guise of friends’ endorsements.

It seems that Facebook is trying to make money out of its sudden success, but not exactly know how. It feels that its creators are shooting to all the directions, without success…

To tell the truth, web-advertising is a just another form of spam. If my Firefox plugin would have been only slightly better, I wouldn’t have any adverts on at all when browsing. Its a great spam filter.

But like with spam mails, I learned to ignore the adverts, and just mark them as spam, without even readin the content. I hardly ever go to advertised links, and it only happens by mistake, or because Google placed them in a strategic location at the top of my search results.

The major problem with spamdvertising is when heavy, loud, video adverts are appearing on certain news sites, jamming my bandwidth and crashing my browser. But I’m not sure that Google Adwords are doing any better.

I think web based companies should find other ways to make money than spam their users with advertising. Of course they might make good money of adverts, but the users don’t appreciate it a s good-will gesture, will not press on the proposed link (or doing it unknowingly), and will not remember the name of the brand. Slowly, we will just learn to ignore it.

Companies need to find a better way to advertise their products (examples 1 and 2). An simple ideas is that a marketing person will post the link on his (Facebook) page and will share it with his friends. If its good, his friends will share it with their friends and so on. This is lovable unspammed advertising (unless if its done excessively)

But how will the site (Facebook) will generate money of it?

Maybe the advertised company should donate money to the site after a succesful campaign? Maybe the site should create a pro version for their site (works for Flickr)? And maybe the site should sell T shirts and other products…

I know its difficult to generate money online, but can you please move on from web spamdverising and leave our reading space alone?

But now it seems that Sylvester Stallone is taking the film back to reality and has a message for the Burmese military government, via Reuters. :

“Why don’t you invite me over? Let me take a tour of your country without someone pointing a gun at my head and we’ll show you where all the bodies are buried.”

But not only that, according to news reports

the Burmese have “gone crazy” over bootleg copies of the film, and the line “Live for nothing. Die for something” is being used as a rallying cry by dissidents. “This movie could fuel the sentiment of Myanmar people to invite American troops to help save them from the junta,” one Yangon resident told Reuters.

[Link]

On to other news:

Son of Osama Bin Laden, Omar, said to his dad:

“Try to find another way to help or find your goal… This bomb, these weapons, it’s no good to use it for anybody.”

[Link]

Its interesting to see the differences in me, from being creative to becoming managerial. Funnily, it happened in my job too…

Zohar in 2008:

ESTP (Extroverted, Sensing, Thinking, Perceiving)

content, emotionally stable, outgoing, social, group oriented, finisher, does not like to be alone, open, decisive, likes external praise, likes to be center of attention, frequently joking, adjusts easily, likes crowds, self confident, neutral moods, good at getting people to have fun, disorganized, messy, talented at presentation, not easily annoyed, does not like to be alone, enjoys crude jokes, likes to lead, likes sports, more likely to come off as masculine, risk taker, tends to dominate conversations, fearless, can handle criticism, hard to discourage

Favoured careers:

ceo, sports management, fighter pilot, marketing specialist, business manager, race car driver, supervisor, economist, airline pilot, bar owner, consultant, cia agent, security specialist, technician, businessman, mechanical engineer, public relations specialist, coach, manager, marketing director, sales associate, mechanic, politician, publicist

Disfavoured careers:
poet, artist, art teacher, novelist, bookstore owner, graphics designer, museum curator, librarian, freelance writer, author, florist, painter, school psychologist, songwriter, musician, professional college student, editor, philosopher, english professor

Zohar in 2005:

INFP (Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Perceiving)

creative, smart, idealist, loner, attracted to sad things, disorganized, avoidant, can be overwhelmed by unpleasant feelings, prone to quitting, prone to feelings of loneliness, ambivalent of the rules, solitary, daydreams about people to maintain a sense of closeness, focus on fantasies, acts without planning, low self confidence, emotionally moody, can feel defective, prone to lateness, likes esoteric things, wounded at the core, feels shame, frequently losing things, prone to sadness, prone to dreaming about a rescuer, disorderly, observer, easily distracted, does not like crowds, can act without thinking, private, can feel uncomfortable around others, familiar with the darkside, hermit, more likely to support marijuana legalization, can sabotage self, likes the rain, sometimes can’t control fearful thoughts, prone to crying, prone to regret, attracted to the counter culture, can be submissive, prone to feeling discouraged, frequently second guesses self, not punctual, not always prepared, can feel victimized, prone to confusion, prone to irresponsibility, can be pessimistic

Favoured careers:
poet, painter, freelance artist, musician, writer, art therapist, teacher (art, music, drama), songwriter, art historian, library assistant, composer, work in the perfoming arts, art curator, playwrite, bookseller, cartoonist, video editor, photographer, philosopher, record store owner, digital artist, cinematographer, costume designer, film producer, philosophy professor, librarian, music therapist, enviromentalist, movie director, activist, bookstore owner, filmmaker

Disfavoured careers:
business professional, manager, executive, administrator, business owner, supervisor, office manager, business analyst, financial analyst, public relations manager, ceo, executive assistant, judge, event coordinator, lawyer, office worker

For me, it is just another point to prove how ridiculous the world, and more accurately, the capitalist world, has become.

Slashdot reported that US Patent and Trademark Office issued a really broad patent for a “mobile entertainment and communication device“.

“It’s a patent for a mobile phone with removable storage, an internet connection, a camera and the ability to download audio or video files. The patent holding firm who has the rights to this patent wasted no time at all. At 12:01am Tuesday morning, it filed three separate lawsuits against just about everyone you can think of, including Apple, Nokia, RIM, Sprint, ATT, HP, Motorola, Helio, HTC, Sony Ericsson, UTStarcomm, Samsung and a bunch of others. Amusingly, the company actually first filed the lawsuits on Monday, but realized it was jumping the gun and pulled them, only to refile just past the stroke of midnight. “

Did anyone ever patented the wheel? I need to check that. Could be a good way to pay my student debt.

Herbert A. Millington
Chair – Search Committee
412A Clarkson Hall
Whitson University
College Hill, MA 34109

Dear Professor Millington,

Thank you for your letter of March 16. After careful consideration, I regret to inform you that I am unable to accept your refusal to offer me an assistant professor position in your department.

This year I have been particularly fortunate in receiving an unusually large number of rejection letters. With such a varied and promising field of candidates it is impossible for me to accept all refusals.

Despite Whitson’s outstanding qualifications and previous experience in rejecting applicants, I find that your rejection does not meet my needs at this time. Therefore, I will assume the position of assistant professor in your department this August. I look forward to seeing you then.

Best of luck in rejecting future applicants.

Sincerely,

Chris L. Jensen

[Originally from here]

I guess this year really started for me with the Jewish New Year, in September. Then, I moved back to London, after almost a year in New York and New Jersey (with a break in California and Israel).

But if the real starting point was in September, then the Beginning is happening now. I mean, now I have a job, I have a house, I’ve settled with the fact that me and Dina are going to have a Cross-Atlantic relationship for some time.

This is the beginning of a new era, for me, for us.

I have only one problem – I’m working on a PC again.
I didn’t miss it.

For instance, the simplest thing: adding another keyboard language to the OS.
I have the permissions to do it, but Hebrew doesn’t exist on that system, I probably need the special Middle Eastern version.
On Apple’s OS X, it comes as standard. I can be anywhere in the world and I’ll be able to write in Hebrew.

Ridiculous.

Sometimes I’d like it to be a mix of all the things I do. Could it be?

I’m confused.

I’m growing up, I can feel it. And in some ways I feel that I might miss the train. I have some great ideas, and I find it hard to bring them to life. I think I’m waiting for something and I don’t know what. I’d just like to move on.

I’ve been sending some applications for internships. For all three subjects that are intersting to me: design for print, design for web and film production. I tried also for the game industry, but it seems there aren’t a lot of them, at least not in the design section.

I feel that I’d like an answer. Should I go this way? Should I go that way? or should I turn to a total different direction?

Some say the world is my oyster. I sure hope it is.

With IE 7.0 out, it is going to be harder to make people appreciate the other browsers.

Within the last week, two new browsers have been released. The good news is that both browsers have seen some significant enhancements in three key areas: user experience, security and web standards. The bad news is that one browser still has better features and standards support than the other.

(Wired News: A Tale of Two Web Browsers)

It is so hard to transform a netuser who just surfs. Most people just use the software that comes with their PC/Mac. For Mac its OK. Safari is a great companion.

But IE… I just hate Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. For web-designer it’s the worst thing that could ever happened. Nothing works correctly with it while with all the other browsers the design will work just fine. Most people don’t know the behind the scenes of creating web pages. It’s a big headache – esspecially when you need to twick the design to fit the different browsers.

“Every other browser renders correctly”

(Stopdesign | The IE Factor)

So true. This is a detailed story from a designer’s perspective.

With my website, for the moment, I don’t care about Microsoft, IE, or their users. I will recommend to Transform! My website will look nicer on Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc. and your satisfaction will be priceless…

Later I received my own first computer with the 1st generation Power PC (PPC 7200 with system 7.0). At that point I started learning about modding my Mac. SuperClock! was the first addition (back then the OS didn’t come with a built in clock). Kaleidoscope was the second, a utility panel to change the looks of the Finder.

I don’t remember the rest of the stuff that I installed (it was more then 10 years ago), but even now, when I’m working on PowerBook With OS X Tiger on it, I still like to mod my mac.

For the benefit of other Mac users, I’m writing about the plugins I likes the most, and of which, I think most of the users should look at.

First, we’ll look at the Menu Extras and some other Finder helpers.

Objectpark’s MenuCalendarClock is a replacement for the clock originally resides in the Finder. It adds a date and a pop-up calendar and is compatible with your iCal or Entourage. It makes life a lot easier, and checking the date doesn’t involve pressing on the clock and there are a lot more features to it. (Advanced features $18.95, basic features for free).

MenuMeters, created by Alex Harper, is a control panel for those of you who like to be in control of what your Mac is up to. It adds a CPU, memory, disk, and network monitoring tools to the menu. It helps to see if your network is online or if you are using all of your memory. (Free / Donation).

Colin Henein’s SlimBatteryMonitor is a replacement menu item for the normal Apple laptops battery menu. It gives the option to control the look and color of the different symbol (charged, charging, battery power, etc.) and can take less space on the menu. It is great for those who have too many items in the menu. (Free / Donation).

Ejector is a small menu item that adds an ejector button to the menu bar. You can eject any disk (e.g. iPod, external hard drive, .dmg or CDs/DVDs). (Free / Donation).

Quicksilver is an amazing application and you can do a lot with it. You can call any application with just a press on a key, or control iTunes with the keyboard from any application. You can check for a contact’s phone number, search the web, you can trigger any application to do anything. It is the best companion for the Finder and the Dock, and it can even replace them altogether. (Free / Donation).

Growl is becoming a standard notification system for the OS X. With Growl you don’t have to go to the Mail app in order to see the new mail. Growl will notify from whom the new mail has arrived with a short description. It also works with Quicksilver, Skype, Adium and iChat (with Chax). (Free / Donation).

More apps and handy plugins, later this week.

On my menu bar I have (from left to right): Quicksilver, Ejector, Amua, Menuet, ShuttleXpress, Salling Clicker, SlimBatteryMonitor, MenuMeters (Network, Disk, Memory, CPU), Airport, Bluetooth, Langauge, MenuCalendarClock, Spotlight.

When I was paying a close attention, everyday objects suddenly appeared to me new, unusual and even in an abstract form. The beauty I felt to revealed absorbed my attention, carried me away and evoked the desire to share this special experience.

Implementation of the long exposure technique on objects and people in movement produced a result which coordinated with my perception of reality – the city in a constant movement, the people who are in a constant hurry to achieve ‘the next thing’. In the theatre of fast city life, the settings and the surroundings stay in the same place, preserved throughout the historic periods, while the people always move, never stop in the same place and vanish into oblivion. I wanted to stop in the midst of this never-ending process and freeze that special moment, to capture the everlasting movement in a single moment in time.

Most of these pictures were taken without arrangement or plan, but were born out of a sudden urge to capture a different view of the everyday life and objects.

(From my portfolio)

Not flying cars like in Back to the Future (maybe that’s the future of the future), but hovering cars: without any wheels or friction.

It could be a nice start. We can later think on the flying-hover cars and Mr Fusion.

Digital Rights Management (generally abbreviated to DRM) is any of several technologies used by publishers (or copyright owners) to control access to and usage of digital data (such as software, music, movies) and hardware, handling usage restrictions associated with a specific instance of a digital work.

The producers of films and music are trying to keep the rights to their own. Slowly government rules are taking place, forbidding the right to copy digital work, even if its for personal purposes.
Lately, a bill has passed in France, known as DADVSI (in English: “law on authors’ rights and related rights in the information society”).

Most of the bill focuses on the repression of the exchange of copyrighted works over peer-to-peer networks and the criminalizing of the circumvention of DRM protection measures. The law… could significantly hamper free software, and also may significantly restrict the right to make copies of copyrighted works for private use.

StopDRM, (translated, original page here), a group of French activists are calling against the law.

After the adoption of law DADVSI by the government, greatest confusion reigns: the users of peer-to-peer received the insurance of the Minister for the culture which justice will be lenient, but the members of the StopDRM Collective worry for the consumers, who “do not pirate” but buy the music and films: what will arrive to them, now that the law was promulgated, if they circumvent the DRM for the legitimate use of works? And if they say it and inform the population? Are they assured them also any leniency?

3 members of the group have stepped forward. They went to the police to get arrested under the slogan “A lawsuit is wanted“.

The three have bought the original work of either music from iTunes or DVDs and transferred them to their portable media players by circumventing the code, thus breaking the law. One of them even have created a page Internet explaining how to remove the DRM of a protected bought work so that everyone can transfer its pieces on its portable player. While waiting for the response of the legal authorities, this page is accessible to all and is on http://drm.mediaarea.net.
The third, for its part, used a free software to read a DVD under GNU/Linux.

All of the three are about to face charges. The police officer was thinking that they are kidding with him, but at some point he discovered that they are right – this is illegal.

They most probably are facing sanctions of 3.750 euros fine for deliberated use with technical measurements realized by a Net surfer by his own means, six months of imprisonment and 30.000 euros fine for the provider of means of skirting, which acts in a deliberated way.

The problem is not the fact that you can do it at home, and nobody will know, but the fact that it is illegal to do so. A similar law is already applied in the US, and sooner or later, will take place in most of the countries in the world.
Ripping a DVD that I bought in order to save a copy of it at home or to be able to transfer it to a portable device and breaking the DRM of a song I bought from iTunes in order to play it on a non Apple device are my rights.

Lately, microsoft have released their own portable player, Zune, which is applying DRM to every song and video which is transferred to it, even if the title is under a GNU or a Creative Commons licence (of which, its against the licence to apply DRM).

The fight has only just begun.

A helpful hint for building your website: There is basic coding to be done (HTML) but all the rest of the stuff (javascipt, php, etc.) have been written already by someone. So the main thing to be done is to go and search for those things.

One good library for all good functional stuff is jQuery. If you want your website to be a bit more animated, a bit more flexible and a lot more dramatic.
Another one which is much more known is script.aculo.us. This library is dealing more with sortable menues and easy-to-use shopping carts, but you can find your own use for it.

More on this and my search for the best photo gallery later.

So now, I live in psuedo UK, in a county which is not the real Middle Saxon, but hey, at least I’ve got Wal Mart and Ikea really close.

Its my first time living outside of a big city.

I’m a suburban boy now. Oh, so american…

(no offence)

Manuel Mera - Obstacles EP

My friend, and star of my upcoming short film, Manuel Mera, is now featured on Rubysoho‘s Ruby Radio, and presented by Jaguar Shoes.

In your mind, recall the classic, 1986 RUN DMC/Aerosmith, “Walk this way” music video. Now rewind and re-enact, putting “The Police” in one room and “David Lynch” in the other.

Manuel’s music is thought provoking, rich and powerful. A cycle of emotions is being triggered as the songs are being played. One song is not enough, and the sequence of songs, as a matter of fact, builds up to create the whole.

The soundtrack to a schizophrenic’s tragic, yet hopeful psychotherapy session.

Quotes from Rubysoho’s Lifecam

Anagram map of London Underground
Mirror of the original at Geofftech.co.uk

About a week ago Boing Boing posted on a map of the London Underground where the station names were anagramed.

Then came the sad post that Transport for London censored the map, as it breaches copyright. Instead of the original map the page now reads: “Content removed at the request of Healeys Solicitors acting on behalf of Transport for London and Transport Trading Ltd.”

And then came the solidarity movement…

It started with Robot Johnny who produced an inspired version that remixes the Toronto Transit Commission’s subway map with anagrammed station-names”.

Toronto Transitt Anagram map (PDF Version)
Courtsey of RobotJohnny.com

Update: Since then the TTC cencored this map as well…

Then came remixed versions of the Amsterdam Metro and the Metra Map of Chicago.

The other day Boing Boing added a list of maps from around the world that influenced by the original censored version.

Oslo Anagram Map
Courtsey of The Martin

The Precision Blogger decided to make a really unorthodox version of the Subway map of New York, and maps of Atlanta, Boston, and Oslo.
Then came the anagramed U-Bahn of Vienna, the “DC Metro map anagram mix“, Stockholm, Los-Angeles, Berlin, Copenhagen, and Baltimore.

Then the first and the second booms arrived and the remixes of Calgary, Vancouver, Philadelphia, buffalo, Hong Kong, Seattle, Minneapolis and Detroit, together with Miami, Dublin, Ontario, Dallas, Galsgow, Portland, OR, Ottawa amd Houston appeared online.

Sidney Anagram Map
Courtsey of Leslie Nassar

The never ending story also brought the maps of Montreal, Helsinky, Monterrey and San Diego.
Last, but I’m sure that not for long time, joined the NY/NJ Path and Sidney.

Thus the story ends with 2 outlawed anagrams and over 30 different anagram-maps from different cities of the world. I reckon this is a marvellous demonstration of the power of solidarity on the web. I believe the ideals of copyright should change, especially when they concern art. No money making scheme was in any of these maps and the whole concept is made with humour. I think that the executives of TFL should learn something about humour as well as about creativity.

And now, the first manifestation of the change in the minds of executives. This is what Adam Livingstone, a producer of BBC’s Newsnight wrote yesterday:

First though, an apology. File sharing is not theft. It has never been theft. Anyone who says it is theft is wrong and has unthinkingly absorbed too many Recording Industry Association of America press releases. We know that script line was wrong. It was a mistake. We’re very, very sorry.

If copyright infringement was theft then I’d be in jail every time I accidentally used football pix on Newsnight without putting “Pictures from Sky Sport” in the top left corner of the screen. And I’m not. So it isn’t. So you can stop telling us if you like. We hear you.

Please stop with the ‘cease and desist’ orders and accusations of copyright infringement for they will not stop creativity but will harm the corporations more then they think.
Let us do our art in peace.

Update: The final cities have joined the party: Brisbane, Syracuse and Chicago.

Thank you guys for doing this and thank you BoingBoing for the networked platform to tell the world about it.

10 years ago John Perry Barlow wrote a manifesto that, in my opinion, all the internet users should read.

The manifesto, “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” is posted here. Barlow also co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an organization that defends freedom in the digital world, and takes active role is spreading its goals.These days there are a lot of stories coming up about internet censorship and privacy issues.

There is a constant gathering of information on each one of us, while we are not always aware to it. Companies like Google, Yahoo and AT&T are collecting all types of data on their users, which they might pass one day to the government.

Google Desktop search application, has a feature that copies information from the clients computer to their servers.
AT&T is being accused of “violating the law and the privacy of its customers by collaborating with the National Security Agency (NSA) in its massive and illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans’ communications.”

Reporters Without Bordes, a human rights movement, found out that Yahoo keeps reporting to the chineese government over “dissident expressions” that Chinese citizens have made in Yahoo’s forums. During the last 3 years more than 80 Chinese citizens have been jailed due to these reports.

Its not yet happening in any country in the world, or at least, we’re not sure, but – governments like to copy each other’s laws and regulations.

Today, more then ever, it is easy to store data on us and to keep track of our movement. These events and many others should remind us how important it is to put an emphasis on securing our privacy and protecting our freedom in a digital world .

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
by John Perry Barlow (barlow [at] eff.org)

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.

You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.

You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don’t exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract . This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.

Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.

We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.

We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.

Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.

Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge . Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis. But we cannot accept the solutions you are attempting to impose.

In the United States, you have today created a law, the Telecommunications Reform Act, which repudiates your own Constitution and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis. These dreams must now be born anew in us.

You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are too cowardly to confront yourselves. In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits. We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.

In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United States, you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that will soon be blanketed in bit-bearing media.

Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more noble than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish.

These increasingly hostile and colonial measures place us in the same position as those previous lovers of freedom and self-determination who had to reject the authorities of distant, uninformed powers. We must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.

We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.

Davos, Switzerland
February 8, 1996

(Original link)

Some of the EFF current campaigns:

Online Free Speech Campaign
The world’s largest Internet grassroots movement

The Campaign for Audiovisual Free Expression
Free speech & open access in new media

Privacy Now!
The campaign for online privacy

It is said that Leopard will make extensive use of Spotlight, which was introduced in OS X Tiger (10.4). Apple is said to redesign the whole Finder and bring it much closer to the iTunes and iPhoto interfaces.

The large hard drives that most of us have, and the amount of files that we carry on them, make the task of finding files more and more difficult. On the other hand, Spotlight, a searching tool with journaling method and fast searching ability, provides an easier way to find lost files. The idea behind the redesign of the Finder is to make file searching faster than it is today, when one has to go through all the folders in order to find a specific file.

On the interface design, Leopard will probably incorporate the look of the new iLife ‘06 and iTunes 6, with their smooth merge of Aqua and Brushed Metal. It is possible that Apple will come back to unified menus, as was in the Classic systems.

Leopard is scheduled for end of 2006 or early 2007, but Tiger, and its current version, 10.4.4, is a great in between and a vast improvement to 10.3 Jaguar, if only due to the use of Spotlight.

It is true that Tiger had some problems, and few of Jaguar users decided to stick with it for that reason, but since its recent updates, Tiger’s overall operation runs smooth and fast.
I believe that in order to get used to the changes which are about to occur to the Finder in the next big release, an upgrade to the Tiger environment is needed.

We still haven’t seen the movie ‘Paradise Now’, which has received the Golden Globe award for the best foreign movie, and is nominated for the Oscar in the same category. However, we do have to say a few things on the controversy around it.

The movie describes the process that leads two young palestinians to commit a suicide attack in the city of Tel Aviv.

“Each has his own reasons — and neither of them fits the image we have of the fanatical suicide bomber”.

 (from the Jerusalem Cinemtheque website)

Few moments ago we received an email from a friend. The friend, who lives in a settlement in the West Bank, forwarded a large number of recipients a petition calling “The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences” to withdraw the nomination of the movie for an Oscar. The petition is supported by a letter from a mother who lost her son in a suicide bombing.
The Main argument behind the petition and the letter, is that “giving an Oscar to this film will glorify these murderers & the groups that have sent them [and] may even encourage more murders of this type”. If the movie represented the executers of the Twin Towers’ destruction, argues the petition, it would have been severely condemned and certainly wouldn’t be nominated for such a prestigious prize.

It is possible to understand the logic behind this petition. It is also possible to understand why a mother who lost her son in a suicide bombing, will not like to see that kind of film nominated for (or winning) the Oscar. However, it is important to remember that the film’s dealing with the issue of a suicide attack doesn’t mean that it legitimizes the act of doing it. On the contrary, a complex, serious and insightful treatment of the issue can help to promote a fresh approach and a critical thinking in both sides of the conflict.

Judging by the comments and reviews we’ve read of the film, it doesn’t idealize the suicide bombers and attacks but

“without letting anyone off the hook, examines the most horrific phenomenon of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”.

(Jerusalem Cinemtheque)

The attempt of the petitioners to cause an avoidance of the issue will not make it disappear, but will prevent awareness and thwart serious discussion of it. Both sides still have to do a lot of learning and thinking on the issue, which this film could catalyze.

This is not the film that evokes protest for dealing with controversial issues. One of the most prominent examples is the film ‘Trainspotting’. The movie presents an unprecedented point of view of youth’ consumption of drugs, and especially heroin, in Scotland. The film doesn’t explores the question whether taking drugs is good or bad, but presents a sharp and unique description of an existing phenomena. The critics of ‘Trainspotting’ argued that the movie encourages the use of class A drugs.

One cannot control the personal interpretation of the viewers to every film. However, the very possibility of a problematic interpretation should not prevent films from dealing with controversial issues. Any art work should not be restricted by the common norms of good and bad, neither should be censored when it contradicts those norms.

Pushing the borders of the legitimate has always been the prime factor behind every intellectual and cultural development.
Thus, preventing ‘Paradise Now’ from an Academy Award nomination, will narrow its chances to become an incitement of critical thinking and re-evaluating of the accepted stereotypes.

Written in cooperation with Dina Fainberg.

Update: We have seen the film and we stand strong behind what we said!

I guess my goal is to keep evolving.

Soon to be online are my films, my better projects and my photos, in order to make it a proper online portfolio.

Now my Flickr is up and running and most of my good photos are up there. The plan is to set up a small gallery here as well, for the best ones.

But it seems that now an new route has been made. The creative mind in me has came to a settelment with the critic.

The critic is smiling to himslef. He knows that it is not for long. When the time is needed he will be back.

As most of the creative people working for their living (and not creating for the sake of the creation) will agree, it is hard to say no for an interesting brief. Hence my problem: I was taking more and more things to deal with.

There was a time when this “escape” was a good practice. When ‘escape’ refers to taking a break from one project in order to rest, and in the break to work on another project. But the time has arrived that my mind cannot stop. There is always something rushing there.

“His mind seemed to be full of noise, horses, smoke, and the stench of blood…”

Douglas Adams ones wrote for one of his characters in The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy. This is acctually how I feel right now.

Therefore, I’m trying to watch season DVDs like The Office in order to forget about the troubles of my own life.
It helps a lot and I just hope not to work in an office environment in my life. It also makes a bit of annoyance when I know that I’m suppose to be at the real office for at least two days a week, like I promised.

My life comes to the point were its only sitting in front of the glowing box and looking at glittering letters.
Reading articles. Checking dictionaries. Writing bullshit.
Filling boxes with my thoughts about life, the universe and everything.
The head rushes. The ashtray filles up. The coffee is boiling hot and the headache is taking over.

Drills in my brain. Oh, when is this going to end?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=05KIv9rUBV0