Doran sez, "In Congressional hearings into Salmonella found in peanuts, Stewart Parnell, owner of Peanut Corp. of America, declined a request by Congressman Greg Walden of Oregon to eat some of his company's own product. He did so by citing his fifth-amendment protections. Given what's come out during the hearing, it's no wonder. From the story":

Charles Deibel, president of Deibel Laboratories Inc., said his company was among those that tested Peanut Corp. products and notified the Georgia plant that salmonella was found. Peanut Corp. sold the products anyway, according to an FDA inspection report...

The House panel released e-mails obtained by its investigators showing Parnell ordered products identified with salmonella shipped and quoting his complaints that tests discovering the contaminated food were “costing us huge $$$$$$.”

Owner Stewart Parnell refused to testify at hearing; 9 have now died (Thanks, Doran!)

Taste the rainbow... HOW TO - Make Skittles vodka! Mix that drink writes...

Infusing vodka with Skittles is a very popular trend right now. There are a couple of different ways to do it. My way involves separating all the Skittles into their separate flavors and making five different bottles of Skittles vodka.

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crazyeyes writes "With Windows 7 set for release in Dec. 09, Microsoft is getting ready with their free upgrade program, which allows Vista users to switch to Windows 7 when it arrives. The folks at TechARP have consistently scored accurate scoops on Microsoft software releases. They have now revealed Microsoft's upgrade plans, schedules and even screenshots of the upgrade process."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The US has always had this odd hatred for online gambling -- but no state has been more aggressive about the issue than Washington state -- even to the point of threatening people with arrests for even talking about online gambling. So, you can imagine that the state didn't look too favorably on the launch of a person-to-person "wager" site called Betcha.com which claimed it had found a nice loophole that made it legal: you could renege on your bet. Yes, if you lost a wager, you could click a button saying "I refuse to pay." The catch, of course, was that the site had a rating system, and if you reneged, it was likely to harm your rating, and others might refuse to bet against you. Betcha claimed that the presence of the renege button meant that it wasn't actually gambling, because you never actually had to bet any money.

The state of Washington not only disagreed, it took a month or so until state authorities raided the company, arrested its founders and seized its computers. That seems pretty extreme for what does seem to be a rather open question in the law. And, in fact, a state appeals court found that the Betcha founder is right: the presence of the renege button means that the site is not a gambling site:

"Accordingly, there is nothing risked, which is the essence of both the common law and statutory definition of 'gambling.'"

Of course, that doesn't mean Betcha is coming back into existence. Since its founder (who has a law degree and had carefully researched gambling laws to make sure the loophole was legit) was arrested, thrown in jail, extradited to Louisiana, charged (in Louisiana) with gambling-related felonies finally forcing him to negotiate a plea bargain, dropping the charges if he agreed to certain conditions. With that experience in mind, restarting the site and risking it happening again just doesn't seem that appealing.

So, way to go Washington State -- you tossed a guy in jail for a completely legal web business.

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Windows Secrets writes "After two straight years of taking dead aim at Macbooks and Windows-powered machines, hackers at this year's CanSecWest conference will have shiny new targets: Web browsers and mobile phones. According to CanSecWest organisers, there will be two separate Pwn2Own competitions this year — one pitting hackers against IE8, Firefox 3 and Safari and another targeting Google Android, Apple iPhone, Nokia Symbian and Windows Mobile."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The latest Tank Riot podcast is an outstanding appreciation of Mister Rogers, possibly the nicest, most genuine guy in American history -- a man so nice that when his car was stolen, the thieves returned it once they figured out whose car it was; a man so nice that he was able to stop a Burger King ad that used a soundalike by publicly declaring that he was "disappointed" in them. Rogers saved public TV and was critical in the fight to legalize VCRs, too. This is a really great hour of audio -- the Tank Riot guys really know a lot about the subject are are filled with genuine affection for him (I defy you to listen to his Congressional testimony without getting a tear in your eye).

Mister Rogers! The team takes a look at the much maligned, but very important and wonderful children's television personality. We discuss his Supreme Court appearance, his contribution to TV and the VCR, his great guests (Bruce Haack) and his neighborhood friends (Chuck Aber, Robert Trow, Betty Aberlin, Don Brockett, John Costa, Keith David, David Newell, Joe Negri) and more!

Mister Rogers: Tank Riot: Episode 67

For those of you who are outraged (as I am) to discover that the Authors' Guild believes that a piece of software that can read an ebook aloud infringes copyright by "performing" the work as an audiobook, here's Neil Gaiman being unbelievably sensible on the subject.

When you buy a book, you're also buying the right to read it aloud, have it read to you by anyone, read it to your children on long car trips, record yourself reading it and send that to your girlfriend etc. This is the same kind of thing, only without the ability to do the voices properly, and no-one's going to confuse it with an audiobook. And that any authors' societies or publishers who are thinking of spending money on fighting a fundamentally pointless legal case would be much better off taking that money and advertising and promoting what audio books are and what's good about them with it.

What he said, but with no-severance layoffs for anyone who is blowing potential marketing dollars for audiobooks on pursuing this fool's errand. The Authors' Guild is hell-bent on convincing the world that ripping off authors is OK, because we're a bunch of greedy jerks like the record industry.

Quick argument summary

In poking around the InterTubes yesterday, looking for items related to my latest Lost Knowledge column, I happened upon Jake von Hildebrandt's SteamTV project, which uses the Nipkow disk TV technology I included in the column. And a Jensen desktop steam engine for power! Really cool. Unfortunately, it appears that this project hasn't been worked on since April '07. Let's hope he gets back to it at some point.

SteamTV Part 1 -- first looks at my newest project

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When the settlement between Google and authors and publishers, over Google's book scanning project, was announced, many saw it as a big victory for everyone -- as it allowed Google to continue moving forward with plans to scan books, while also creating a "business model" for authors and publishers. However, some of us were very troubled by the implications of the settlement. It seemed clear to us that Google had a strong argument for why its actions were perfectly legal. Settling did a number of dangerous things. It failed to clear up the legal issue at all (effectively making it cost prohibitive for anyone else to work on a similar project). It set in permanent place a business model which seemed hugely bureaucratic and inefficient. That business model is basically set in stone and set by the terms of this agreement, rather than any real market mechanism. Finally, it signaled (loudly) to the world that Google was plenty willing to pay a few million dollars to settle with opponents, even when it had a strong legal position, knowing that it would make life more difficult for competitors.

It appears that as the details have come out, more and more people are troubled by what the settlement actually will mean in the long run. Robert Darnton, the head of the Harvard library system (which had already complained about the settlement) has written a thoughtful piece, detailing his worries about how this creates an effective monopoly, and the many, many downsides that this causes.

Prior to this settlement, we had been one of the bigger defenders of Google's book scanning program against those who worried that it was creating a de facto monopoly. That's because there were no exclusive agreements. However, with the new settlement, while again others could enter in theory, Google has effectively priced the rest of the market out. Prior to this, there was a reasonable argument to be made that anyone could scan books and create an index, so long as they weren't displaying too much of the books. Now... Google has set a market price of $115 million, plus a set-in-stone business model, as the entry price. It's pocket change to Google, but it's a big barrier to others.

This is definitely raising concerns from a variety of other sources, who were at least cautiously optimistic when the deal was announced. The EFF now points us to James Grimmelmann's worries about the deal (pdf). While Grimmelmann does support the deal and say it will be net positive for society, he then goes through a pretty detailed list of problems with the deal, almost all of which go back to the idea that this deal gives Google effective monopoly power over digitized books.

Finally, as for my initial fear that this would signal something of an "open season" on Google, with demanding money from Google for Google daring to provide the service of helping others find their works, we're already seeing some of that in the early stages. Some in the newspaper business are using the book settlement as a template for how Google should pay them too.

In the long run, I think Google is going to regret this deal. Yes, in the short term it handed Google a monopoly and removed a distracting lawsuit from the table. But, it did some very dangerous things that will harm Google in the long term. It signalled Google's willingness to pay up even when it shouldn't have to. It set in stone a business model way before anyone knows what the best business model is for online books. And, finally, in knocking all competitors out of the market, Google has taken away its own best incentive to continue innovating and serving customers at the best of their ability in the book search realm. The end result may be a worse product that isn't nearly as useful (and revenue generating for Google) as it would have been if it had real competition in the market.

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kokito writes "OSNews managing editor Thom Holwerda reviews Haiku, the open source successor of the Be operating system. According to the review, Haiku faithfully/successfully replicates the BeOS user experience and 'personality,' boasting very short boot times, the same recognizable but modernized GUI using antialiasing for fonts and all vector graphics as well as vector icons, a file system with support for metadata-based queries (OpenBFS) and support for the BeAPI, considered by some the cleanest programming API ever. The project has also recently released a native GCC 4.3.3 tool chain, clearing the way for bringing up-to-date ports of multi-platform apps such as Firefox and VLC, and making it easier to work on Haiku ports in general." (More below.)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

kittens inspired by kittens, by blakekelly0. Probably the best internet video in the history of all time this week. (Thanks, John Walsh!).

RazvanM writes "Do the OSes really shrink? Perhaps the user space (MySQL, CUPS) is getting slimmer, but how about the internals? Using as a metric the number of external calls between the filesystem modules and the rest of the Linux kernel I argue that this is not the case. The evidence is a graph that shows the evolution of 15 filesystems from 2.6.11 to 2.6.28 along with the current state (2.6.28) for 24 filesystems. Some filesystems that stand out are: nfs for leading in both number of calls and speed of growth; ext4 and fuse for their above-average speed of growth and 9p for its roller coaster path."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Make: Day aims to celebrate the ingenuity and inventiveness in our community. Building off the success of Maker Faires and the American Maker events, Make: Day will give local engineers, artists, tinkerers and inventors the opportunity to showcase their DIY creations to Science Museum of Minnesota visitors.

Make: Day takes place on March 14th at the Science Museum of Minnesota from 10am - 3pm. That's right, Pi Day (3/14)!

Details are pouring in and we're happy to share who will be participating.

- Make: television episodes and projects
- Geek Squad Agents and Tech Tips
- Tim Kaiser, featured on Episode 6 of Make: television
- Scott Olsen - Inventor of Rollerblades and Kong Pong,
- Savage Aural Hotbed
- Beatrix Jar
- Leonardo's Basement
- Hands on Scratch programming demo
- Chicago Avenue Fire Arts Center
- Keston and Westdhal
- Asia Ward - Animatronic Sculptures
- Kyle Phillips - multitouch surface table
- St. Thomas Academy Experimental Vehicle Team
- FIRST Robotics in Minnesota
- The LED Obi - wearable technology

Be sure to arrive early, the state high school hockey tournament is going on across the street and it's huge (I'll leave the nerds v. jocks jokes for the comments section).

We'll post more info each week, so stay tuned!

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Gavin sez:

John Wesley Harding has a new CD, "Who was Changed and Who was Dead," out next month and it has the best list of tiered pricing options we've seen for a while. (Also: some great pop songs!)

BASIC: $15.98 (+ $2.50 postage & packing)
DOWNLOAD plus CD with BONUS LIVE DISC!

BASIC PLUS: $29.98 (+ $5.00)
DOWNLOAD plus CD with BONUS LIVE DISC and T-SHIRT!

FANCY: $49.98 (+ $5.00)
DOWNLOAD plus CD with BONUS LIVE DISC, T-SHIRT and limited edition DVD!

SUPERFANCY: $79.98 (+$9.99)
DOWNLOAD plus CD with BONUS LIVE DISC, T-SHIRT, DVD and signed ARTWORK!

CRAZY DELUXE & PERSONAL: $5,000.00
DOWNLOAD, plus CD with BONUS LIVE DISC, T-SHIRT, DVD and signed framed ARTWORK plus READ ON! Includes the entire SUPERFANCY package PLUS, and it's a BIG PLUS:

John Wesley Harding will come and perform at your house, for you and your friends, on a mutually agreeable date. NO JOKE! If it's near, he'll even pay the transport; though if it's far, you'll have to pay. The price of this epic package, including your own personal John Wesley Harding concert, is $5,000, and at that price, we're waiving the postage and packing. This is the only offer of its kind, and quite possibly the only offer of its kind ever.

rspcjwh (Thanks, Gavin!)

Over at Boing Boing Gadgets, Joel Johnson takes a deep look about what went wrong with the Sony PSP. Along the way, he writes a thoughtful prescription for the PSP2 and how Sony could emerge from its own ashes. From BB Gadgets:

It's the wrong time for Sony to launch a PSP2. The economy is the dumps. Sony has posted a $1.12 billion loss, its first in 14 years. But they must also be looking towards the future, making tough decisions about whether they should remain in the gaming space at all.

I don't think there's much doubt they will. Sony, after all, has never lacked for stubbornness and pride.

So what should Sony's next portable gaming device be? A phone? An all-singing, all-dancing convergence device of the future? Or a pared down device that does gaming—and only gaming—as perfectly as possible?

“If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, you'll probably never do much of anything.” – Win Borden, senator sentenced to 2 years and 3 months for failure to file tax returns

Sony has always had a problem with convergence, in that it does it poorly. That's because the company, despite attempts by its latest CEO to bring the company in line, still operates as the prototypical engineer-led Japanese company, a field of silent ivory silos that rarely communicate as a whole. One division of the company might make a camera with a web browser in it, while another might make a camera for the PSP, while yet another sells cameras that connect to their laptops— none of which can actually communicate with other Sony devices. It must be a herculean challenge for a company that makes products in nearly every consumer electronics category to coordinate and executive as a collective whole, but it should not be impossible, even in notoriously regimented Japanese corporate culture. Difficulty does not excuse a failure to meet the challenge...

Read the rest of "The PSP2 and the Return of Sony" at BB Gadgets

There have been various attempts to claim that the internet makes people stupid, though that seems difficult to support in actuality. As someone recently sent to me (uncredited, tragically -- so someone feel free to claim it!): "the internet doesn't cause stupidity, it just makes your stupidity more obvious to others." However, it does need to be admitted that there are a ton of ridiculous ideas online with no factual basis -- and some people cling to those ideas fervently. This certainly goes against the early utopian theories of the internet that said making more information available to people would help fight ignorance.

So what's going on? Clive Thompson checks in with a fairly compelling explanation. He points to research done by Robert Proctor, a science historian at Stanford, who coined the term "agnotology" to explain the phenomenon of ignorance increasing with the spread of information. But it's not the fact that information can be spread more easily that's at fault, but that there are special interest groups who benefit tremendously from that ignorance being spread. Thus, they make use of the same tools that most of us use to try to spread legitimate information to spread propaganda -- and it often works. Sometimes, it goes to an even more ridiculous level, where they purposely spread ridiculous information that's similar to legitimate information, just to make people stop trusting anything, including the legitimate information.

Of course, there's an immediate next question: can (and should) anything be done about this? Thompson suggests that collaborative tools like Wikipedia that are built through consensus are actually quite good at combating agnotology -- though, I would imagine that the internet-is-making-us-stupid supporters of the world (who tend to be Wikipedia-doubters) would disagree. They tend to prefer "official" sources of truth, though I think history has shown those to be just as prone to propaganda forces as well. In the end, much of it comes down to the individual level: how open are they to actually learning the truth vs. merely looking for facts that support pre-held opinions. One thing you can't change easily is how open people are to new ideas.

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miller60 writes "As more companies look into using a 'data center in a box,' you can now get your UPS and generator in a box as well. HP and Sun have begun offering containerized power and cooling infrastructure along with their data center containers, offering an expansion path for facility owners that have run out of power and cooling capacity. Microsoft also plans to use containerized power and cooling in its next-generation facilities, allowing it to build them with no roofs (remember its tent data centers?)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This clever fellow suspended his Wacom pen above his Wacom tablet and made a cool drawing pendulum with it.

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This unofficial fan-made commercial for Trader Joe's is terrific, hilarious, and so true. The company should pay the maker and run it on TV. (via Dinosaurs & Robots)

Bobbie Johnson, over at the Guardian, does an excellent job of explaining why ebooks really haven't taken off yet: there's just not enough piracy going on. With the launch of the second generation of Amazon's Kindle ebook reader, we're getting another round of stories about ebooks. They've done marginally better recently, but the Kindle is hardly making strides that match with the iPod -- a device to which it's frequently compared.

Johnson points out that (as we've seen elsewhere), piracy is often a leading indicator of what consumers are doing with new technologies. It's a great way to find out what people actually want, and then you can build around that. That's what made the iPod (and eventually iTunes) successful. But the Kindle doesn't have that going for it. Instead of trying to dive into a new market that's already happening, it's trying to drag the market along -- creating the space as it goes. That's a much more difficult sell. It doesn't mean that ebooks can't or won't become a much bigger deal. But it suggests that the market is quite different, and won't develop nearly as quickly.

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eldavojohn writes "Ars Technica has a story on a Texas judge who has ordered Topix.com to hand over the identifying details of 178 trolls that allegedly made 'perverted, sick, vile, inhumane accusations' about Mark & Rhonda Lesher. Mark Lesher was accused of sexually assaulting an unidentified former client (and subsequently found not guilty) which prompted the not so understanding discussions on Topix. Topix has until March 6 to give up the information. Let's hope the Leshers don't visit Slashdot!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Big scoop over at Boing Boing Offworld: Culture hub/shop/magazine Giant Robot and gaming label Attract Mode are pairing up game developers and illustrator/artists for a series of new games. As Brandon writes, this kind of collaboration epitomizes what Offworld aims to cover and even cultivate: "One of my goals for (Offworld) was to see artists and illustrators from outside the games industry have more influence within, as it's been in those moments that we've seen some of gaming's most memorable experiences." Indeed. This should be mindblowing. Hit the link to meet the players. "Only on Offworld: indie game and artist all-stars collide at Giant Robot/Attract Mode's Game Over II"

Next week I am going to try out the Designing Automata Kit from the Maker Shed. It's a beautifully made kit that seems to have endless possibilities. When I opened the box, I was really surprised at just how many pieces are included in the kit.

The New Designing Automata Kit is great value and fantastic quality. No glue or tools are required, and you will learn about simple mechanics using cams and a crank slider mechanism. Many different designs can be made, and the kit used over and over again. Produced in Thailand using chemical-free rubber wood, from sustainable sources.

Using the kit straight out of the box is going to be a lot of fun. Then again, I wonder how I might add some electrical components to make my Designing Automata Kit really unique.

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BB pal John Law is guestblogging over at Laughing Squid, where he informs us that the inimitable Doug Wellman (aka "Puzzling Evidence"), high priest in the Church of the Sub-Genius, radio host, and icon of SF weird-dom, is opening up his video archive as a YouTube channel. From Laughing Squid (photo by Scott Beale):

Church of the Sub-Genius High Priest (REALLY high!) and KPFA radio personality Doug Wellman or “Puzzling Evidence” as he’s known of to cultists and the power elite, has been posting edited videos from his backlog of tens of thousands of hours of the weirdest and most ridiculous events to take place in the Bay Area and Beyond from the last 25 years.

Doug has been with Subgenius since the halcyon days of the early 80’s. Among his exploits in intensive voyeurism, surreal tourism and enigmatic conspiracies, Doug has, among other notable accomplishments, killed (allegedly) Subgenius Prophet Bob Dobbs, inspired David Byrne to write the song “Puzzling Evidence,” been accused of being a Oakland Police Intelligence officer by a crazed anarchist lawyer and survived a combat tour of Viet Nam as a naval officer.

"Puzzling Evidence Releases His Video Archives To The World"

the4thdimension writes "CNN is running an article covering the technology used at Sea-Tac for preventing airplane bird strikes, like the one that occurred weeks ago to the now famous Flight 1549. The hardware used ranges from low-tech pyrotechnics, to netting, to lasers, to avian radar. Using a combination of all these technologies, Sea-Tac believes they save hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in avoiding dangerous bird strikes."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Mellotron is a 1960s sample-playing keyboard where each key triggers a short tape recording of a real instrument. Today Sunday is the premier of Dianna Dilworth's Mellodrama: The Mellotron Documentary at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, Montana. (Watch the trailer above.) Over at Rhizome, BB pal John Alderman interviews Dilworth about her film and the revolutionary music machine. From Rhizome:

John Alderman: People often find uses for devices that are outside the inventor's original intentions, and it seems like that's what happened with these instruments.

Dianna Dilworth: Absolutely. Harry Chamberlin, the man who invented it was really into playing the Hammond organ but he wanted one that would play orchestral sounds, and so he started doing experiments and working with the Lawrence Welk Orchestra to record sounds. His vision for it was very much for it to be in every living room across America for sing-a-longs and socializing. Yet it was adapted by non-conventional musicians and it took off in psychedelic and progressive rock, and that he really didn't intend. In fact, people would try to buy the instrument from him and he'd tell them, "no, no, you're supposed to use it like this."

What are the most recognizable songs that feature these instruments?

The most famous song is "Strawberry Fields" by the Beatles; the flute sound at the beginning is a Mellotron. On the other Beatles' song, "Bungalow Bill" there's a Spanish guitar sound at the beginning, and it's actually just a rhythm track on the Mellotron. The Moody Blues' "Nights in White Satin" has it throughout the song. It was largely associated with progressive rock, but it was used by other people like Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, and the Zombies.

"Interview with Mellotron Documentary Filmmaker Dianna Dilworth"

Samm Bennett, best known as a mainstay of the 1980s New York avant garde music scene, has a new album out, Roomful Of Ghosts. Cultural critic Mark Dery digs it big time. I haven't heard the album but Mark's review is fantastic in its own right. From Shovelware:

Call it slumdog gagaku. Or gutbucket p'ansori. Or a black cat moan wrapped around a lonesome train whistle, cured in Tokyo fog and nailed to some grotesque African fetish, deep in the swamp dark. If that's too clever by half, let me just say that I love the unvarnished honesty of this stuff; the pensive moodiness of "I Burned This Song"; the heart-stoppingly beautiful stillness-in-the-middle-of-a-fast-moving-boxcar vibe of "Until You Kiss Me"; the loping, hypnotic gait of "A Thousand Rhymes."

And the lyrics! They're uncut brilliance, reminiscent of the electroconvulsive blues of Captain Beefheart or Rauschenberg's droll "combines," Pop art mash-ups like "Monogram" (you know, the stuffed Angora goat with the tire around its middle).

"Alabama Song"

Bill Keating (above, from this video), a former Texas Sheriff, pleaded guilty in federal court to sexually assaulting a woman, telling her she had to comply or face jail on a drug charge.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert K. Roach decided to allow Keating to remain free until sentencing in May. The honorable Judge Roach said Keating was neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community because he had a "stable marriage" and because "this crime and other alleged misdeeds happened when he was acting as the sheriff."

Keating and [as many as 12 other former sheriff's personnel and inmates] also face state charges related to having sex with inmates and taking illegal substances into the jail, Montague County District Attorney Jack McGaughey said. He declined to reveal specifics Tuesday but said he would present cases to a grand jury in February.

So rapists get special treatment if they carry a badge? And did the judge ask Keating's wife how "stable" her marriage with this rapist is? Civil Liberties Examiner has more.

Last year, a series of lawsuits were filed over the publishing of a book based on the hit website Hot Chicks with Douchebags. Some of the "hot chicks" and at least one of the "douchebags" claimed it was libelous. However, in a rather entertaining ruling, a judge has dismissed the case filed by three of the women, noting that after he "carefully scrutinized" the book, he determined that the use of the term "douchebag" along with the various photographs was "used for humorous social commentary" -- making it perfectly legal. So, kids, remember when calling someone names, make sure to do so in a way that is funny and used for social commentary. Otherwise you might not only look like a douchebag, but you might end up in court.

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Joe MacDonald writes "The earliest UNIX shell I encountered was the Bourne shell on a SPARCStation 2 at my university. As with many students of my generation, prior to that nearly all of my exposure to command line interfaces was some variant of DOS. I was quite proficient with the primitive scripting language that was available on such platforms but I immediately felt far out of my depth in this new environment. The commands seemed arcane, possibly dangerous, and almost immediately I regretted stepping into this unfamiliar wilderness without some sort of guide." Read below for the rest of Joe's thoughts.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Wall Street Journal may have said it best today: "On State Secrets and Rendition, Holder Holds the Bush Line." Or, NPR -- "Deja Bush." Yesterday, the Obama administration invoked the "state secrets" privilege when opposing the reinstatement of a lawsuit alleging that a Boeing unit flew detainees to countries where they were tortured as part of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program.

The Washington Post has a quick roundup here, but read Glenn Greenwald's coverage at Salon for the most thorough coverage I've found: "Obama fails his first test on civil liberties and accountability -- resoundingly and disgracefully." Greenwald writes:

Two weeks ago, interviewed the ACLU's Ben Wizner, counsel to 5 individuals suing the subsidiary of Boeing (Jeppesen) which had arranged the Bush administration's rendition program, under which those 5 plaintiffs had been abducted, sent to other countries and brutally tortured. Today the Obama administration was required to file with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals its position in this case -- i.e., whether it would continue the Bush administration's abusive reliance on the "state secrets" privilege to prevent courts from ruling on such matters, or whether they would adhere to Obama's previous claims about his beliefs on "state secrets" by withdrawing that position and allowing these victims their day in court.

(...)The new President -- who repeatedly condemned the extreme secrecy of the Bush administration and vowed greater transparency -- has now acted to protect, purely on secrecy grounds, the government and company that did this, as Wizner described:

"They were essentially the CIA's torture travel agents. They were the one who arranged all the overflight rights for the CIA civilian planes to be able to fly from country to country. They handled the security and the logistics. They filed dummy flight plans to try to trick air traffic controllers into not being able to track where the actual flights were going. And we know they knew what they were doing because we have a witness in our case, someone who's given us a sworn declaration, who was an employee of Jeppesen DataPlan, and who was present when senior officials of the company were openly boasting about their role in the torture flights, and about how much money they made from them because the CIA spared no expense.

"We were able, with the help of an investigative journalist and other documentary evidence, to link Jeppesen to an number of very specific CIA rendition flights, involving these five torture victims who were flown to countries like Egypt, Morocco, to CIA sites in Afghanistan and eastern Europe. . . .

"[Plaintiff Ahmed Agiza] was picked up off the streets of Stockholm and then he was taken to an airport where a CIA rendition team--this is a bunch of men dressed all in black, with their faces covered--sliced off all of his clothes, put a suppository into him, chained him to the floor of an airplane, flew him to Egypt, where he was exposed to absolutely brutal torture, including shock treatment, all kinds of beatings. He was then given a show trial in an Egyptian military court and sentenced to 15 years for involvement in a banned organization."

Below, two recent episodes of Boing Boing Video which document the testimonials of "extraordinary rendition" survivors. These episodes are excerpts from the WITNESS documentary OUTLAWED. Read the original blog posts for each of these Boing Boing Video episodes, for more background:

* Boing Boing Video: "OUTLAWED" excerpts, pt. 1 -- Guantánamo Detainee Who Survived Torture.
* Boing Boing Video: "OUTLAWED" excerpts, pt. 2 -- Khaled El-Masri.

Ed Note: Boingboing's current guest blogger Gareth Branwyn writes on technology, pop and fringe culture. He is currently a Contributing Editor at Maker Media. Recent projects have included co-creating The Maker's Notebook and editing The Best of MAKE and The Best of Instructables collections.

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Manly Palmer Hall has been called the America Madame Blavatsky, which probably isn't far from the truth. Like the controversial Russian-born founder of Theosophy, Hall seemed dedicated to quantity over quality in his writing (authoring more than 50 books on esoterica and self-help), and like Helena, the troubling smell of snake oil swirled in his rotund wake. Manly P Hall is one of the people principally responsible for the birth of the New Age religious movement in the United States, first in LA, starting in the '20s, and then beyond, through his writings and endless lecturing. While some of his lesser works, like Questions Answered on the Problems of Life by Manly P Hall, Philosopher, may have proven less than influential, his occult encyclopedia The Secret Teachings of All Ages was a bedrock influence on New Age thought then, and to some extent, remains so today (Secret Teachings still sells well, as is now in its 16th edition). LA Times staff writer Louis Sahagun's biography, Master of the Mysteries: The Life of Manly Palmer Hall (Process Media) is an engrossing look inside, not only the life of this self-taught philosopher and spiritual teacher, but the growth of the often bizarre alternative religious movements that were busting out all over Southern California in the first half of the 20th century. This is Hollywood Babylon in Egyptian ankhs and yoga pants. Actors, artists, musicians, politicians, and scientists of the time flocked to hear Hall lecture on the mysteries of East, self-help psychology, and secret societies. Allegedly blessed with photographic memory, Hall was capable of absorbing huge amounts of information and then reformatting it into his own books, frequently under suspicions of plagiarism and playing fast and loose with facts and legitimate sources (another dubious distinction he shared with Blavatsky). Through Sahagun's engaging text and lots of photos and bits of ephemera (lecture ticket stubs, news clippings, plans for Mayan temples in downtown Hollywood, hand-written death threats), we're taken on an amazing LSDisney trip through the most surreal spiritual theme park imaginable. We get lots of juicy gossip along the way about the Hollywood of the times, a creative-community as hungry as it will ever be for deeper levels of meaning, rejuvenation, and fulfillment. As if to cap off this bizarre tale with a scene cut straight from gas-lit celluloid, Hall died under gruesome and mystery circumstances. Foul play was suspected when he was found dead on top of an unslept-in bed with traces of dirt around his face and thousands of black ants streaming from his nose, mouth, and ears. The LA Coroner's Office subsequently botched the autopsy, the investigation was poorly handled, and the case was never solved. Even when I was a teen seeker and into a lot of fluffy New Age beliefs and practices, I got a bad odor from a lot of Manly P. Hall's work and tended to steer clear of it. (Color me an unimaginative skeptic, but I found the whole Mayan temple in downtown Hollywood to be a tad on the flamboyant side.) So, I went into this book without a lot of respect for its subject. I can't say that opinion was significantly changed, but I do think I understand "Dr" Hall a lot better now. This was obviously an extraordinarily smart man who fervently believed in what he was talking about. You gotta give the guy props for passion. He remains the most prolific writer of mysticism and the occult and he continued lecturing until his likely-murder at 89. What I found most interesting in this story was the parallels between Hall and another Southern California occult resident of the time, Jack Parsons (covered in another recommended Feral House book Sex and Rockets -- Process is an imprint of Feral House). Parsons was also self-educated, began his occult career at an early age, had matinee-idol good looks and an impressive ability to learn things quickly, hobnobbed with bohemian Hollywood, saw himself as birthing a new religion, and died under mysterious circumstances (though Parsons' death was likely an accident). They also each had their own court "confidence men," Hall, the mysterious colonic-loving "Dr. Fritz" (suspected in Hall's death), and Parsons, the reality-barnstorming L. Ron Hubbard. Ultimately, the most fascinating character in Master of the Mysteries is the City of Angels herself. Through the tale of one of her more extraordinary residents, we can almost feel a new city emerging, one with an identity like no other. And with her naive sense of wonder and an openness to new ideas, new beliefs, and novel experiences comes a lot of seriously weird shit. Previously: L.A.’s occult roots: Master of the Mysteries

On Twitter early this morning I said something provocative. "I've made over $2 million from my blog and Dan thinks blogs can't make money. He needs to get out of the box more often."

I was referring to Dan Lyons, who had written a piece in Newsweek that said among other things: "While blogs can do many wonderful things, making huge amounts of money isn't one of them."

I agree. Blogs don't make money. But people with blogs can.

Dan, this is not a fairy tale, I got the check and it had seven figures. But this isn't one of those pitches to get you to buy a book or a video or to come hear me give a lecture. I've made a lot of money with this blog, and may make a bunch more, but I'm not going to show you how to do it. But I will try to get you to change the way you think about blogs and other social media.

Let me start by asking a question.

Assume you run a business and you advertise. How much money did you make from your advertisements?

Presumably your ads make money, otherwise why are you running them?

Now in figuring out how much money you made from the ads, did you look for ads on your ads? That makes no sense of course. Why would anyone try to make money by putting an ad on an ad?

So when I told you I made over $2 million with this blog, why did you immediately look for ads? I can save you the trouble -- there aren't any. And in the 12 years this blog has been here there has never been an ad on this blog. With a caveat, unless you count me talking about my products. Because I do talk about my products here. I try to stay as balanced as I can, but of course I tilt toward the positive. I have a bias -- I wouldn't have made the products if I didn't think they were good. But like all people with real products I know they're not perfect, sometimes they're imperfect, and I try to be honest about that.

Now -- how did I make more than $2 million with this blog?

Well, I ran a commercial company for quite a few years, UserLand Software, and I used this blog to talk about what the company was doing. We had reasonable sales -- probably over $1 million while I had the blog. We never took out an ad, or hired a PR firm. All the promotion ever done for the company was done right here. So let's count half of that $1 million toward the total.

Then there are the consulting gigs I've gotten over the years I've been running the blog. None of them directly resulted from pitches I made here, I never said "Hire me to tell you how to build your product, or work with your community, or serve your users," but the posts I've written here have served as a calling card, a way of keeping my name and ideas on people's minds. Over the years, that's a few hundred thousand.

But the real whopper was the deal where I sold weblogs.com to Verisign for $2.3 million. Again, a product that never had an ad, never had a PR campaign, the only way anyone heard of it was through this blog.

So we're already over $3 million -- and all I did was what any blogger does -- talk about what I'm doing. And that's the role of a blog, it's a way of communicating what you're doing. Companies, consultants and authors need to do a lot of communicating, and blogs allow you to go direct, and be more efficient, less diluted. People get a real feel for who you are and how you think and what you're like as a person.

Why would I ever let someone else hitch their "message" on this -- it would get in the way of me making money!

If I had any advice to offer it's this -- get in the habit of communicating directly with the people you want to influence. Don't charge them to read it and don't let others interfere with your communication. Talk through your blog as you would talk face to face. You'd never stop mid-sentence and say "But first a word from my sponsor!" -- so don't do that on your blog either. I can't promise you'll make any money from your blog, and I think the more you try the less chance you have. Make a good product and listen to your customers to make it better, and use the tools to communicate, and you may well make money from the whole thing. To expect the blog alone to pay your bills is to misunderstand what a blog can do. You'll only be disappointed like Dan Lyons was.

Ellis sends us these, "Two wonderful 1930s British news reels on how 'the weaker sex' can use jujitsu to deal with 'objectionable people'"

Homebuilt gas powered ice cutter to make ice for non-electric icebox.

Kevin Kelly wrote an essay about the Amish's relationship with technology, which is really quite different and much more interesting than many people think.

The Amish have the undeserved reputation of being luddites, of people who refuse to employ new technology. It's well know the strictest of them don't use electricity, or automobiles, but rather farm with manual tools and ride in a horse and buggy. In any debate about the merits of embracing new technology, the Amish stand out as offering an honorable alternative of refusal. Yet Amish lives are anything but anti-technological. In fact on my several visits with them, I have found them to be ingenious hackers and tinkers, the ultimate makers and do-it-yourselfers and surprisingly pro technology.

Kevin visited some Amish and wrote about their pneumatic system:

The boss, Amos (not his real name: the Amish prefer not to call attention to themselves), takes me around to the back where a huge dump-truck-sized diesel generator sits. It's massive. In addition to a gas engine there is a very large tank, which I learn, stores compressed air. The diesel engine burns fuel to drive the compressor that fills the reservoir with pressure. From the tank a series of high-pressure pipes snake off toward every corner of the factory. A hard rubber flexible hose connects each tool to a pipe. The entire shop runs on compressed air. Every piece of machine is running on pneumatic power. Amos even shows me a pneumatic switch, which you can flick like a light switch, to turn on some paint-drying fans.

The Amish call this pneumatic system "Amish electricity." At first pneumatics were devised for Amish workshops, but it was seen as so useful that air-power migrated to Amish households. In fact there is an entire cottage industry in retrofitting tools and appliances to Amish electricity. The retrofitters buy a heavy-duty blender, say, and yank out the electrical motor. They then substitute an air-powered motor of appropriate size, add pneumatic connectors, and bingo, your Amish mom now has a blender in her electrical-less kitchen. You can get a pneumatic sewing machine, and a pneumatic washer/dryer (with propane heat). In a display of pure steam-punk nerdiness, Amish hackers try to outdo each other in building pneumatic versions of electrified contraptions. Their mechanical skill is quite impressive, particularly since none went beyond the 8th grade. They love to show off this air-punk geekiness. And every tinkerer claimed that pneumatics were superior to electrical devices because air was more powerful and durable, outlasting motors which burned out after a few years hard labor. I don't know if this is true, or just justification, but it was a constant refrain.

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If you look around your office space you likely have an abundance of boring papers and sticky notes, but that doesn't mean they need to stay that way. While the sticky note has some very industrial beginnings, it's become a fun art material too...

It was invented by 3M's Art Fry using an adhesive developed by a colleague, Spencer Silver. Until the 1990s, when the patent expired, Post-it notes were only produced in the 3M plant in Cynthiana, Kentucky. Although other companies now produce them, most of the world's Post-it notes are still made in Cynthiana.

The name "Post-it" and the canary yellow color are trademarks of 3M. Accepted generic terms for competitors include "sticky notes" or "repositionable" or "repositional notes." 3M manufactures other products related to the Post-it note concept, leveraging the success of the brand. Computerized versions of Post-it notes include 3M's own "Post-it Software Notes," and Apple's "Stickies."

How to make a sticky note Mosaic...

Make a sticky note lamp!

OUTDRA.WS - The most useful DIY post-it note...

Here's a collection of 8-bit art made with colored Post-It Notes...

Sticky note Art Show...

Electronic post-it notes.

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Editor's note: We're extremely pleased that Cheetos is now a sponsor on MAKE! Each week we'll have a fun "Take a Break with Cheetos" sponsored post for part of the day, only the links below are part of the campaign - we're going to have fun with this! This week was fun with Post-It notes! Last week was fun with finance - pt

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Honestly, it's getting difficult to keep up with the massive amount of stories every day from old school journalists -- often with no business or economics background -- either complaining about how things used to be or somehow wishing they could put in place solutions to bring that world back again. It's gone. We'll start with a piece by James Warren in The Atlantic, which you would hope would be a bit more intellectual -- but instead makes the same old errors. Warren seems to imply that investigative journalism can only be done by newspaper reporters -- apparently not realizing that the investigative reporting he's talking about is a very new concept, rather than true "traditional journalism." Also, in trashing online sites, he seems to totally miss why sites like the Huffington Post enjoy such a large community. He blames it on their combination of stiffing writers (including himself) and simply building off the works of those wonderful newspaper reporters.

But that's obviously ridiculous. If online sites were only "winning" the traffic battle because they were ripping off others' content, then that would be easy to fix: those very same newspaper sites should do the same damn thing. Hell, it should work better, since they'd have the original content. The problem is that it's not the reporting that's attracting the community. It's the community. For way too long, the newspapers have ignored or diminished the role of the community. They were forgetting that, in the end, it really is the community that's their "product." They sell the attention of that community. But, for years, they had little to no competition in doing so. That meant they could basically ignore serving the community... and they did. Now that there are sites that actually do serve the community, people prefer going to them than the sites that treated the "community" like lower class riffraff to be kept away. Funny how that works.

Warren also gets quite mixed up in pretending that when newspapers put content for free online, they get nothing back for it. He goes on for a few paragraphs about the disaster of giving away content "for free" (gasp!) even making a stupid joke that maybe the NY Times' columnists should work for free if they want their work distributed for free. Apparently Warren (like so many others) seems to be missing the point again. News organizations sell readers' attention. You don't get that attention if you don't get the readers. And you don't get readers by charging for content. So, when newspapers give away content for "free" -- it's not for "nothing" -- it's because it's supposed to be a part of a larger business model. The problem is that the newspapers have fallen down on that end of the business model. But the answer isn't making it more difficult to get more community attention. That's like purposely burning your most valuable asset.

Along those same lines, Romenesko points us to a painfully bad idea from another journalist: getting all big newspapers, and the Associated Press, to collude with each other to stop publishing any news online for a week. The idea, of course, is that suddenly the rest of the online world will recognize what they're "missing" without these big newspapers. Of course, that (once again, incorrectly) assumes that journalism only comes from newspapers (aren't these big time journalists supposed to research this stuff before publishing such obviously wrong things?). If all the big newspapers don't publish online for a week, what they may actually discover is that people get on just fine without them.

Why? Because the demand for good content is still there, and someone smarter than these journalists will supply it. Imagine if you're a young news organization entrepreneur, and all of the biggest names in the market have just decided to take themselves out of the competition for a week. Talk about a huge market opportunity. So, sure, let the dinosaurs hide for a week (and watch out for antitrust complaints). The journalists who think this is a win-win idea, may quickly discover that all it really shows people is how little the old model is needed. There's plenty of room for good journalism to thrive. It just might not involve newsprint.

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Recently, the spreadsheets-in-space game EVE Online was rocked by a huge scandal -- one of the largest virtual "corporations" in the game was infiltrated and toppled through in-game espionage. Much phosphor has been spilled over this, but master game designer Raph Koster has the smartest analysis I've seen -- explaining how this scandal was inherent to the nature of what made the game fun.

In any PvP scenario which has a temporal component — even one as simple as leaderboards — you need to “overturn the anthill” or else you will end up with a static power structure. The guy who held the record will hold it forever. The top guild will stay the top guild, etc. This is why you often see leaderboards offer different time spans — “best today,” “this week,” “all time,” etc. Otherwise, it’s hopeless to compare yourself against statistical outliers who always win.

In the case of something like a PvP-centric team-based game, there’s really two ways to accomplish this overturn. One is to wait until the empire rots from within (security breeds carelessness, inattention, and eventually vulnerability). The other is to aggressively force the rot, by attacking the hubs and attempting to co-opt them.

This has been used as a business tactic: World of Warcraft consciously pursued the guild leaders of the largest and most influential guilds in its successful attempt to dethrone Everquest. By recruiting them over to the new game, they managed to harm the social fabric of EQ while also creating a ready-made community within WoW.

In the case of a self-contained (and richer) simulation like EVE, there’s assets to worry about. The loss of one director might be a blow to BoB, but the real blow is the destruction of its assets, largest of which was the alliance itself, the group’s identity, but which also include the money, ships, and so on. Without those things being scattered to the winds, there would be no overturning of the empire.

So unless a traitor can empty the bank accounts and disband the alliance, it’s very unlikely that BoB would fall. And the game, as a game, does want BoB to fall, because from a purely mechanical point of view, what is fun about EVE is the struggle, not the victory condition. The victory condition is boring.

The EVE upset

(Image: Destructoid)

nandemoari writes "A hole allowing hackers to take control of Microsoft Exchange was just one "critical" issue the Redmond-based company promises it has fixed with a patch correcting a total of eight vulnerabilities in its programs, including the Internet Explorer browser, Office, and its SQL Server. Three of the eight vulnerabilities patched yesterday were marked "critical". The most concerning is an issue with Exchange that would allow attackers to take over an Exchange server by simply forwarding a carefully crafted message to a corporate mail server. Microsoft has admitted that the vulnerability can be exploited when a user opens or previews an email in the Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format (TNEF)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "According to the Register, Senator Diane Feinstein is attempting to put language into the stimulus bill that would kill net neutrality. The amendment that her provision was attached to was withdrawn, but lobbyists tell Public Knowledge that Feinstein hopes to put it back into the bill during the closed-door conference committee that reconciles the House and Senate versions." Bad Senator! No Cookie!

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Kristin says:

Illustrator, cartoonist and writer Ward Sutton joins the Barnes & Noble Review this week, inaugurating his series of cartoon reviews in the Barnes & Noble Review Gallery with a colorful take on T. C. Boyle’s new novel, The Women.

In The Women, acclaimed novelist T. C. Boyle turns his attention to the life and loves of celebrated architect Frank Lloyd Wright, animating human dramas and illuminating both history and American culture with inventive energy. Sutton’s signature cartoon style both illustrates and illuminates the work.

View “Daddy Frank and the Curse of Sex” in a slideshow

We've been talking about how the various favorite lawyers of the big content lobbying organizations all seem to be ending up in the Justice Department. Some have pointed out that these lawyers will most likely be focused on other DOJ business, since IP issues aren't a major issue within Justice. They also point out that folks in the Justice Department have very little impact on policy. That may be true... but at the hearings to confirm Tom Perrelli as associate attorney general, he did talk quite a bit about IP issues, saying that he hopes the Justice Department will bring renewed focus on the issue, while noting that existing US intellectual property laws "don't seem to be addressing the problem." As a starting point, that's not a great sign, especially since he focuses on the supposed "problem" when it's not even clear that there is a problem. He claims it's "counterfeiting" and "piracy" but we've already seen that piracy isn't a problem -- smart business models address that. And, as for counterfeiting, both the OECD and the GAO have made it clear that any "problem" has been massively exaggerated by industry lobbyists -- such as those Perrelli used to work for.

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Mike writes "The Author's Guild claims that the new Kindle's text-to-speech software is illegal, stating that "They don't have the right to read a book out loud," said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. "That's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law." Forget for a moment that text-to-speech doesn't copy an existing work. And forget the odd notion that the artificial enunciation of plain text is equivalent to a person's nuanced and emotive reading. The Guild's claim is that even to read out loud is a production akin to an illegal copy, or a public performance."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Instructables user btop writes:

Gas bottle wood burners are very easy to make, efficient, and are perfect for late night parties. If you turn them right up, the middle can start to glow red, you can put a kettle on the top, or cut the top off and add a hot plate. These are really easy to make, and be changed however you want.

Some welding required, but besides that, it looks relatively straightforward!

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coondoggie writes "The Federal Aviation Administration has joined the growing list of government agencies that have had their supposedly safe systems hacked. The agency this week notified about 45,000 employees that one of its servers was hacked into and employee personal identity information was stolen. The FAA was quick to say the server that was accessed was not connected to the operation of the air traffic control system or any other FAA operational system. It did say two of the 48 files on the breached computer server contained personal information about more than 45,000 FAA employees and retirees who were on the FAA's rolls as of the first week of February 2006."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Providence Daily Dose has the scoop on the upcoming Roller Races to benefit Recycle-a-Bike, Providence's volunteer-run bicycle maintenance and education collective:

What are roller races?

Two riders at a time, sprint out 500m trials, on single speed track bikes strapped to a set of rollers. Rollers are wired up to an electronic clock that simulates the distance each rider has gone. Top times in both men and women categories will face off to win!

Race for $5, cheer for FREE, guaranteed a good time!

Providence Daily Dose: Roller Races // Recycle-a-Bike Benefit

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From the MAKE Flickr pool

Unsatisfied with the limited catalogue of wordage offered by the household favorite Electronic Catch Phrase, Adam decided to make his own. Enter the expandable "Klugephrase" handheld game device -

You turn it on, and it shows a list of categories. you pick a category, and it shows you a word from that category. It ticks periodically, signifying a time limit. You can go forward and back through words, and you can mark words as completed. The buzzing gets faster, and the pace quickens. *BUZZ*! Your round is over. Your completed word score is shown.

It uses an Atmega168 for the core, and it is Arduino compatible. It can be reprogrammed and it has a telnet and Python front end for easily adding new words through USB. All the source for both the device and the wordlist updater is available at github, so feel free to browse or make changes.

And since games like this are often used for spurring socialization, playing via an interesting version you've made by hand will of course be much more effective. Much more detail on programming and hardware is available on Adam's site.

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Since I've been having serious problems with satellite all week, DeviceGuru's submission was really interesting to me. He sats "Inspired by Roku's awesome Netflix video download box and impressed with Boxee's free A/V media center platform, it was merely a matter of time before DeviceGuru blogger Rick Lehrbaum would create the BoxeeBox, an Ubuntu-powered HTPC with Boxee serving as its primary media center UI. Based on a 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, the BoxeeBox has the look and feel of consumer A/V equipment and packs 2GB RAM, 1TB HDD, CD/DVD drive, USB, Firewire, HDMI, DVI-D, RGB, and 8-channel surround sound audio."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last month, it seemed silly that EU regulators were pursuing Microsoft for antitrust violations in the browser market for bundling IE. It was clear that some of the initial complaints had come from Opera -- an also-ran in the browser market. However, it seemed silly because there is vibrant and growing competition in the marketplace. Firefox has continued to grow its market share, and in the past few years we've seen new entrants in the browser market from Apple and Google -- both of whom have established small, but significant footholds.

So, it's especially disappointing to read that the Mozilla Foundation appears to be siding with the regulators, complaining about Microsoft's actions. Obviously, Mozilla is competing with Microsoft in this space, so at a first pass it may seem in their best interests to lobby the EU to punish Microsoft. But it's disingenuous to say the least. Mozilla got where it did because it competed effectively. It built a better, more secure browser that many people made the choice to support over IE. In fact, Firefox's chief architect, apparently unaware of what his "bosses" were cooking up, seems to have recently contradicted the Mozilla Foundation's new position, where he admitted that he couldn't see how anyone with a straight face could claim that Microsoft's ability to bundle created a monopoly, noting that Firefox's success in growing marketshare showed that making yourself "demonstrably better" worked. Oops.

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Yesterday on Boing Boing Gadgets: • We got the details on an unofficial developer camp for the Palm Pre. • Dell released a sweet new multi-touch capable tablet, the XT2. • Brownlee discovered luxury speakers that looked like sacrificial alter from another world. • HP will be shipping their netbooks with an insane three versions of Windows 7, including the Starter Edition, which only allows three applications to run simultaneously. • If you're going to offer an over-expensive service for turning an Apple laptop into a tablet, do yourself a favor and animate the process in stop-motion like these guys. • The Sony Vaio P is a sexy little not-netbook, no doubt, but if you really want it to shine, put XP on it. • Brownlee thinks everyone should buy a smartphone, and recommends a pretty excellent seeming one. • Beschizza spotted a skinny iPhone clone useable for jugular slicing. • Stackable Duplo bricks become a swank, extendable USB hub. • We scratched our heads over the Isophone, a sensory deprivation system for teleconferencing. • Joel sucked himself through a dimensional vortex and took an ultrsasonic bath, complete with "spurting endometrial nozzles." • So erotic, toothpaste squeezing. • Brownlee discovered an antifreeze ice cream scoop, although he thinks it'll work on other flavors. • We discovered that Unix time will be 1234567890 on Friday, February 13th, 2009 at 18:31:30. • Brownlee toured the terrifying and beautiful monster factories of Japan. • Beschizza totally eviscerated an Author Guild's director's absolutely ridiculous claim that the Kindle 2's text-to-speech ability is illegal and a violation of property theft. And more besides! Come read us. Link

You've got to love any site that has a dedicated NetHack category:

TTYShare is the webservice that allows anyone to upload his/her ttyrec data and to view/share it online.

...

Since this service is now in beta stage, online tty player is still experimental, and doesn't support full tty sequences yet. Current player limitations:

• Support only 80x24 tty data
• Support only utf-8 encoded data
• Does not support some tty sequences

TTYShare ([via agbiotec on Twitter]

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An anonymous reader writes "Germany has a new minister of economic affairs. Mr. von und zu Guttenberg is descended from an old and noble lineage, so his official name is very long: Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg. When first there were rumors that he would be appointed to the post, someone changed his Wikipedia entry and added the name 'Wilhelm,' so Wikipedia stated his full name as: Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Wilhelm Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg. What resulted from this edit points up a big problem for our information society (in German; Google translation). The German and international press picked up the wrong name from Wikipedia — including well-known newspapers, Internet sites, and TV news such as spiegel.de, Bild, heute.de, TAZ, or Süddeutsche Zeitung. In the meantime, the change on Wikipedia was reverted, with a request for proof of the name. The proof was quickly found. On spiegel.de an article cites Mr. von und zu Guttenberg using his 'full name'; however, while the quote might have been real, the full name seems to have been looked up on Wikipedia while the false edit was in place. So the circle was closed: Wikipedia states a false fact, a reputable media outlet copies the false fact, and this outlet is then used as the source to prove the false fact to Wikipedia."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Art Donovan, one of my favorite steampunk makers, has a beautiful, gigantic new artwork, "The Illuminated Astrolabe." Be sure to click through to see the various cunning works:

My most most complex Steampunk work to date with influences of Hinduism, Freemasonry and ancient astronomy. 72" tall x 72" wide. Solid Mahogany, Solid Brass, Glass, Spun-Filament Fiberglass, Plaster, LED + Incandescent Bulbs, Acrylic Resin, Ultra Violet Tubes + Electric Motors.

New Steampunk Design by Art Donovan: The Illuminated Astrolabe (Thanks, Art!)

The Milwaukee servo electric guitar requires no fretting or even tuning - that work is left to a team of servo motors mounting prominently on the bridge area -

A servoelectric guitar is a fretless guitar that is played by controlling servomotors that change the tension of the strings over an octave or more on a real-time basis. Tuning is maintained by closed loop tension feedback for rapid and predictable response. Relatively small electrical motors and DC servo amplifiers are possible through a novel compensator spring design.

Using the Milwaukee servoelectric guitar design, a servoelectric guitar can be constructed with a relatively modest home workshop having a jigsaw and electric drill and using standard components available from a hardware store, electronic supply catalog, hobbyist websites, and surplus parts dealers. The project is not simple, however. You should have access to basic electronic equipment including a voltmeter and oscilloscope and a good working knowledge of electrical circuitry or friend who has such knowledge. The current prototype was constructed using the additional tools of the table saw, drill press, and power sander.

The design makes for some interesting diving and bending tones - experiemental is an apt description. The instrument would likely pose quite a challenge for traditional applications. A thorough build tutorial is available on the project site.

[via Hacked Gadgets]

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(shown above: the RFID project we'll be using in Tom Igoe's Hands-On RFID for Makers workshop)

RFID's are associated with credit cards, passports and inventory systems. However, they can also be used to add a proximity interaction to a service like entering a subway via a passkey (Jan Chipchase has several posts describing these interactions around the world). By linking yourself to an RFID tag you can let a device know who you are. If you add in a link to an online, personal profile the interaction can be very personal.

By having your information at the ready an RFID tag can give you a much simpler interaction with technology. It is very easy to conceptualize the possibilities, but to really get a feel for how RFIDs can effect your interaction It's an area that has to be explored physically.

That's why we are giving all of the attendees at ETech RFID tags that can be linked to their conference profiles (opt-in). With these tags you can interact with several projects we'll have at the conference.

ETech is happening March 9-12 in San Jose, CA, USA. Use et09pd30 at checkout for 30% off.

Come to ETech; Experiment with Physical Computing and RFIDs

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Economics is all about incentives -- and when you create incentives for bad activity, you can rest assured that you're going to get more bad activity. This has become especially troubling with respect to the belief that (a) ideas are more important than execution and (b) that you can "own" ideas. You cannot own ideas -- and even though, technically, intellectual property isn't supposed to let you own ideas, in many cases it's created either scenarios where that is what's happened -- or where enough people believe it's true that you can insist that ideas aren't ownable, but you'll still have a costly legal bill to pay.

So what does that have to do with incentives?

Well, we keep seeing scenarios where winners innovate, but losers litigate. That's because the market "losers" claim that they had the "idea" that allowed the winners to innovate and succeed in the market. But, of course, that overvalues the idea and greatly undervalues the actual execution. Anyone who's built a successful business recognizes that it's the process and execution that leads to success -- not the idea. But, with courts all too often rewarding the losers, it's simply too lucrative for marketplace losers not to sue.

In one such case, it seemed absolutely ridiculous that the founders of a competing social network, ConnectU that had briefly employed Mark Zuckerberg before he founded Facebook was suing him for "stealing" their idea. ConnectU had been a massive failure in the marketplace, while obviously Facebook has been much more successful. But, of course, the "idea" part was rather meaningless. There were already a bunch of similar social networks out there when both ConnectU and Facebook were getting started. Yet, rather than avoid a drawn out legal battle, Facebook eventually just agreed to settle -- though with the demands that the terms of the settlement remain confidential.

That worked... briefly. It turns out that the lawyers for ConnectU couldn't resist bragging, and accidentally advertised that they had won $65 million from Facebook. The number is not really accurate -- as the settlement was a mixture of cash and equity (whose value is really anybody's guess). However, it does show you why losers litigate so often. Imagine being handed millions for failing in the marketplace? Why wouldn't you litigate? But, if you believe in basic free market capitalism, you should recognize how this is rewarding exactly the wrong behavior. It punishes those who best served the market, and rewards those who couldn't serve the market.

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Frostedminipete gears up for a proper day of learning with this enhanced backpack -

Bet you've never seen anything like this before though, huh? Side pouches on my bookbag were a bit dull... so, the one I keep my water in now has a switch to make the water glow, and the other side has an Atari Punk Console housed in it.

That's quite an original (yet convenient) enclosure - and on a rainy day that APC circuit might just bend itself!

And if you happen to be one of the few who hasn't gotten around to building one of these noisey boards yet, be sure give the project plans a look-see.

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Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Rob has the news that the always-retrograde Authors' Guild believes that Amazon is violating copyright law by shipping a device that can read text-files aloud using text-to-speech, because "that's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law."

The Author's Guild also thinks used books are a form of theft, and that books shouldn't show up in a search-engine result unless the search engine pays for the privilege.

Kindle 2's flagship feature is the reading of text out loud, in the same way as software that's already built into desktop computers and Prof. Stephen Hawking's famous voice box. This has caused a "stir." Paul Aiken, executive director of the Author's Guild, told the Wall Street Journal that you have no right to use this feature. It's a free audiobook, see.

"They don't have the right to read a book out loud," said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. "That's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law."

An Amazon spokesman noted the text-reading feature depends on text-to-speech technology, and that listeners won't confuse it with the audiobook experience. Amazon owns Audible, a leading audiobook provider.

Forget for a moment that text-to-speech doesn't copy an existing work. And forget the odd notion that the artificial enunciation of plain text is equivalent to a person's nuanced and emotive reading. The Guild's claim is that even to read out loud is a production akin to an illegal copy, or a public performance.

If a machine reading a book creates a derivative work, why not a person reading a book?

Ideas grow to fill the containers they imply, and the problem with bad ideas is that their containers are leaky and misshapen. Even if you firmly believe in broad copyright laws, intellectual property is a bad idea because it recasts a legal device as its own philosophical justification. This journey from the utilitarian to the exalted creates a sublime monster that can't help but govern not only the duplication of things, but every aspect of their expression and the culture that makes them meaningful.

Author's Guild claims text-to-speech software is illegal

Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets)

Just posted! Our new lens review featuring Tamron's latest exercise in nominative brevity, the SP AF 10-24mm F3.5-4.5 Di II LD Aspherical (IF). With the widest zoom range in its class (and joint widest-angle view), this lens certainly looks like a tempting prospect for photographers in search of sweeping vistas. So to kick off a new series of wide-angle zoom reviews, we test this brand-new design to see if all those letters equate to top-notch optical performance.

Wired's got a fabulous gallery of photos from the Toy and Action Figure Museum in Pauls Valley, OK -- the metastasized personal collection of one wonderful obsessive named Kevin Stark: "In 2000, Stark convinced the Pauls Valley City Council that the town needed a tourist attraction and the museum should be it. In 2005, it finally opened its doors. The museum seems a little out of place among Pauls Valley's other businesses: a gun store, a couple of gas stations, an insurance company or two."

Giant Midwest Mecca of Nerditude in Oklahoma (Image: Jim Merithew/Wired.com)

Having a ring flash in you studio is really helpful when photographing small objects. Unfortunately, ring lights can cost a lot of money. We have seen a few different DIY versions on the MAKE blog before. You can save a lot of money by making a ring flash yourself. I especially like the use of an old toothpaste tube for enclosing the fiber optic tubing. Who knew it was so reflective inside?

This is a fibre-optic flash extension for your DSLR's popup flash. Totally easy! Works great! Durable! Designed specifically for K20D with 100 2.8 DFA lens but adaptable to other lenses (see Tamron Adaptall 90 2.5 example at the end.) Build your own!

DIY: DSLR fiber optic ring flash [CrunchGear]

In the Maker Shed:


High-Speed Photography Kit Version 4

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Last August, Marc wrote about Albert Hwang's Wiremap display. It's a 3D display technology which uses a standard projector to illuminate an array of vertical strings. The strings are carefully spaced so that a vertical row of pixels on the projector can illuminate a single string. This allows objects to be rendered in a three dimensional physical space and as you can see from the video, it's pretty amazing to look at.

The whole project is released under the Creative Commons license. Even better, Albert recently posted an Instructable which guides you through the finer details of making one yourself from scratch. Aside from the projector, the cost is fairly negligible, and it would be an easy way to go about producing your own three dimensional artwork.

How to Build a Wiremap
Albert's Wiremap Resources

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Back in 1999, when plans for satellite radio were first talked about, I thought it was destined to fail. I had two reasons for why: I didn't think there really was that much demand and having just closely watched the disaster known as Iridium, I was intimately familiar with the massive and business-strangling capital costs associated with running a satellite-based business. It just seemed so capital intensive that any underestimate in terms of demand would kill you. And, in fact, Sirius has a pretty long history of being on the verge of failure.

With the news of Sirius XM preparing for bankruptcy, it's worth revisiting those original thoughts. While I'd love to claim credit for calling this a decade ago -- I think my reasoning turned out to be wrong. I vastly underestimated the number of folks willing to sign up for satellite radio (though, I think I was correct in recognizing that the number of subscribers would need to be massive and that would be difficult to achieve). And, while the capital expenditure costs were large, it seems like they, by themselves, may have been imaginable. What I hadn't fully expected, was the massive expenses the companies (now company) would ring up trying to lock up "talent" to drive subscriber numbers up. Also, I didn't expect ridiculous regulatory restrictions. The 18 months it took federal regulators to approve the merger between XM and Sirius, combined with the ridiculous restrictions that were put on the combined company significantly contributed to satellite radio's troubles. And, finally, additional competition in the form of internet radio and podcasts/portable media really have put pressure on satellite radio -- none of which I foresaw at the time.

While the company is clearly looking to restructure and keep going, you have to wonder if it even makes sense at this point. With those alternatives increasingly becoming popular in the market, it's difficult to see how satellite radio can possibly provide enough excess value to pay for the increased capital costs compared to the competition. Even if the company restructures and comes out of bankruptcy, who's willing to bet it will have to through this whole process again in a few years?

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Accrochages is a public art project by Sofian Audry and Samuel St-Aubin. Together they create these really interesting works of art that made from recycled components. I really like the idea of interactive art in public spaces. I just wonder how well these would be received after incidences like the one up in Boston on 1-31-07.

Accrochages is a duo project by Montreal-based artists Sofian Audry and Samuel St-Aubin. It stems from their will to bring their art practice out of the walls of a gallery space, on the walls of the city itself. The intent is to build small active and autonomous objects that can, through simple means, give new qualities to the city environment by creating different interactive situations.

More about Accrochages

In the Maker Shed:


Peggy 2 Kit

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theodp writes "Microsoft's new Windows ad made its debut during the Grammy Awards on Sunday. It stars a 4-year-old cutie named Kylie (Silverlight required) showing how easy it is to use Windows Live Photo Gallery to edit and share photos. And while it's impressive that little Kylie is able to transfer a snapshot of her pet fish from her camera to a PC, color-correct it, and e-mail it to her family, what's truly amazing is that the toddler was also apparently able to read, understand, and accept Windows Live's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. (But minors can't legally execute contracts, can they?)"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mau sent me a link to his latest project. This time he built a pole camera based on the one from MAKE: Television. Almost all the parts were recycled from previous projects, so his cost was minimal. Great job Mau, and thanks for sharing!

Have you made any projects from MAKE: Television? If so, leave a link in the comments below so we can check it out. Thanks!

More about a Pole camera inspired by MAKE: Television

Related:

Maker Workshop - Pole Camera on MAKE: television

In the Maker Shed:


Digital Photography Hacks

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Making sense of complex products, services, and ideas by using visuals and easy to understand story-lines is going to be a blooming business for many years to come. Photo credit: tombaky Explaining difficult ideas, or complex new technologies to non-technical people is going to be a professional activity by an increasing and unstoppable popular demand. As technology keeps changing faster and faster and as the number of tech-based solutions that can have positive impacts on one's own daily life steadily increase, the need to understand and make sense of these technologies and their use keeps growing. How many times did you try to explain some new cool web service or technology to a friend, only to discover it was harder than you thought? Not everyone is a geek, and, when it comes to technology, if you want people to understand what you say, you have to explain things (especially tech stuff) in a language that they can understand. Nutintuit is a small company that specializes in creating animated video tutorials which are short, simple, and easy to understand and which help companies promote and explain new technologies to their potential customers via fun and enjoyable cartoons. This is why I have decided to reach out and ask for a video interview with Joshua Gunn, one of the two guys behind Nutintuit, a small company devoted just to make explanatory videos for companies wanting to explain how their technology works. How did Nutintuit get started? What made them realize this was a hot market to enter? What makes the ability to explain things effectively so much appealing for online marketers? Here is my video interview with Joshua alongside a full text transcription:

Explaining Things To Non-Technical Users Is A New Business

Duration: 9'
Full English Text Transcription

Intro

Robin Good: Hi everyone, here is Robin Good, live from Rome, Italy, and I'm together today with Joshua Gunn. Hello Joshua, where are you connecting from? Joshua Gunn: Hey Robin, I'm in Boston, Massachusetts. Fine to see you.
Robin Good: Fantastic, fine for me to see you, because what you and your great partner, Xavier Viñas, have started doing is something that strikes the same chords that here on MasterNewMedia we try to play everyday, that is: trying to make it easy for people who are not geeks to better understand technology. But let me hear from your own words: What are you up to these days with your project, and what is it called? Joshua Gunn: We started a studio called Nutintuit Studio. We make short, animated videos called "nutshells", and we're in the business of explaining things. It's really as simple as that. We just want to make things easier for people to understand, and... that's our project!
Robin Good: Good. Repeat please the name slowly, and tell us where is the URL where we can see some of your stuff first. Joshua Gunn: It's Nutintuit Studio, the web address is www.nutintuit.com

Explaining Things as a Business: Nutintuit

Robin Good: Good, and how did you get this idea of going this specific direction? Joshua Gunn: I became friend with the Common Craft folks out in Seattle. I used to live in Seattle about a year ago. We met, I was inspired by what they were doing, and I realized there was a lot of space for this work to be done. Common Craft is a great idea. I love their work, and I thought I could use something a little bit different, but in the same spirit. That's how I got started.
Robin Good: The natural question for somebody wanting to emulate what Common Craft and you have done... would be to be hesitant, because there is already someone there doing that thing very well. What I want to know from you is: What did you and Xavier thought more specifically that gave you the enthusiasm and motivation to go in a road where there was already somebody clearly successful at it? Joshua Gunn: That's a great question. I think the answer is that there's so much need for quality explanation. There's so much confusion out there, and there are so many companies that are interested in educating their customers and really appealing to them on a more authentic level. I think there's plenty of room in this space for more than just CommonCraft, and more than just Nutintuit. I think the question is: How are you going to execute it? And... are you good at what you do? We've done a lot of work and we've answered that question for ourselves, then we're moving forward. We're really happy with what Common Craft does and we're really happy with what we do, and we support each other. It's a community of people who are making explanatory videos. No one is an island in this small industry.

How Nutintuit Was Born

Robin Good: Let me ask you then: How did you start doing this? You started, I imagine, with a few tutorials, but how did you make this become something you could think of living on? How did you spread the word and converted it into something that brought in money? Joshua Gunn: That's a great question, too. For many years I was a product writer at Amazon.com. I wrote about products, explained them to customers. Thousands of products. To own the company was some partners that provided content at Amazon and all we did was write about the Amazon products and review them. I had a lot of experience as a product writer. I knew how to write well about products and ideas, but I didn't know anything about motion graphics, so I left my former company, it took about three months to teach myself how to do motion graphics. Then I realized I could really use some help with the artwork and some of the visual design, and visual ideas, and that's where Xavier came in. He's really brought a lot to Nutintuit in terms of illustration and the visual concept of the videos we do. The first video we did, I did, was on what is a smartphone. It was just a spec project, I wanted to see if I could do it, and things grew after that. I attracted clients thanks to some other spec videos that I did for Amazon, and things just grew from there. I really think you can make it if you really focus on what you're good at, and get help in the areas where you need help. That's where Xavier came in.

Key Marketing Advice in Explanatory Videos

Robin Good: If you were to advise somebody else trying to follow your tracks, what would be the two or three key marketing steps you would advise somebody wanting to do video explanatory work to do to get their work out, and to start getting somebody pay for it? Joshua Gunn: I think there are a number of things:

1. I think, obviously, the way the work is marketed now is drastically different than the way it was just a few years ago. I found other people who were doing what I was doing and got them interested in my work, and they liked my work, and they referred me to the clients. That was a key way that I got started.


2. I went to old context that I had from other work experiences, and I said: "Hey, look, this is what I'm doing now! What do you think? I think this applications for you guys, let's talk about it!"

That's how I got some work with Brooks running shoes, and working on a series for videos of them, as well.

Which Business Model for the Future?

Robin Good: My last question would be about the future: How are you going to scale and what kind of business model you have in mind? Are you going to hope that you just get more and more request, and you do more custom videos for different clients, and each one of them pays for them, or are you thinking in some way to scale this up as the Internet would suggest to do so that you produce x, but you sell 10x. Joshua Gunn: Right now we're in a phase where we're trying to perfect what we do and to show a wider audience that we do great work. We really are in a building phase with clients right now, but I agree with you. I think the future is in scaling videos so that.... a guy who's going to a conference, for instance, and he wants to teach people about what is a blog, or what is the best way to collaborate with people online using free tools... the guy who's going to a conference wants to teach people about that, maybe he might want to buy a video from us and take that to the conference with him. That's a model that we believe in. Obviously it's a path that we're probably going to go down soon, but we're not quite there yet.
Robin Good: Fantastic. Thank you for sharing all of these insider information and insight from your experience. Bring my very best from the passionate readers of MasterNewMedia to Xavier as well, and thank you Josh for spending the time with us. All the best to your new company! Guys please go check out their work, and how they're communicating and explaining in simple words how complex technological things are, and how they function. Please, I leave you with the opportunity to repeat one more time your URL and web site for everyone else, and ciao from Robin Good in Roma and thank you for your great work! Joshua Gunn: Thank you so much Robin, it's been a pleasure. It's www.nutintuit.com.
Robin Good: Ciao! Joshua Gunn: Thanks Robin, bye-bye!

Originally shot and recorded by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and first published on January 11, 2009 as "Explaining Things To Non-Technical Users Is A New Business - Video Interview With Joshua Gunn".

Photo credits: How Nutintuit Was Born - AlexStar Key Marketing Advice in Explanatory Videos - adempercem Which Business Model for the Future? - John Kounadeas

Making sense of complex products, services, and ideas by using visuals and easy to understand story-lines is going to be a blooming business for many years to come. Photo credit: tombaky Explaining difficult ideas, or complex new technologies to non-technical people is going to be a professional activity by an increasing and unstoppable popular demand. As technology keeps changing faster and faster and as the number of tech-based solutions that can have positive impacts on one's own daily life steadily increase, the need to understand and make sense of these technologies and their use keeps growing. How many times did you try to explain some new cool web service or technology to a friend, only to discover it was harder than you thought? Not everyone is a geek, and, when it comes to technology, if you want people to understand what you say, you have to explain things (especially tech stuff) in a language that they can understand. Nutintuit is a small company that specializes in creating animated video tutorials which are short, simple, and easy to understand and which help companies promote and explain new technologies to their potential customers via fun and enjoyable cartoons. This is why I have decided to reach out and ask for a video interview with Joshua Gunn, one of the two guys behind Nutintuit, a small company devoted just to make explanatory videos for companies wanting to explain how their technology works. How did Nutintuit get started? What made them realize this was a hot market to enter? What makes the ability to explain things effectively so much appealing for online marketers? Here is my video interview with Joshua alongside a full text transcription:

Explaining Things To Non-Technical Users Is A New Business

Duration: 9'
Full English Text Transcription

Intro

Robin Good: Hi everyone, here is Robin Good, live from Rome, Italy, and I'm together today with Joshua Gunn. Hello Joshua, where are you connecting from? Joshua Gunn: Hey Robin, I'm in Boston, Massachusetts. Fine to see you.
Robin Good: Fantastic, fine for me to see you, because what you and your great partner, Xavier Viñas, have started doing is something that strikes the same chords that here on MasterNewMedia we try to play everyday, that is: trying to make it easy for people who are not geeks to better understand technology. But let me hear from your own words: What are you up to these days with your project, and what is it called? Joshua Gunn: We started a studio called Nutintuit Studio. We make short, animated videos called "nutshells", and we're in the business of explaining things. It's really as simple as that. We just want to make things easier for people to understand, and... that's our project!
Robin Good: Good. Repeat please the name slowly, and tell us where is the URL where we can see some of your stuff first. Joshua Gunn: It's Nutintuit Studio, the web address is www.nutintuit.com

Explaining Things as a Business: Nutintuit

Robin Good: Good, and how did you get this idea of going this specific direction? Joshua Gunn: I became friend with the Common Craft folks out in Seattle. I used to live in Seattle about a year ago. We met, I was inspired by what they were doing, and I realized there was a lot of space for this work to be done. Common Craft is a great idea. I love their work, and I thought I could use something a little bit different, but in the same spirit. That's how I got started.
Robin Good: The natural question for somebody wanting to emulate what Common Craft and you have done... would be to be hesitant, because there is already someone there doing that thing very well. What I want to know from you is: What did you and Xavier thought more specifically that gave you the enthusiasm and motivation to go in a road where there was already somebody clearly successful at it? Joshua Gunn: That's a great question. I think the answer is that there's so much need for quality explanation. There's so much confusion out there, and there are so many companies that are interested in educating their customers and really appealing to them on a more authentic level. I think there's plenty of room in this space for more than just CommonCraft, and more than just Nutintuit. I think the question is: How are you going to execute it? And... are you good at what you do? We've done a lot of work and we've answered that question for ourselves, then we're moving forward. We're really happy with what Common Craft does and we're really happy with what we do, and we support each other. It's a community of people who are making explanatory videos. No one is an island in this small industry.

How Nutintuit Was Born

Robin Good: Let me ask you then: How did you start doing this? You started, I imagine, with a few tutorials, but how did you make this become something you could think of living on? How did you spread the word and converted it into something that brought in money? Joshua Gunn: That's a great question, too. For many years I was a product writer at Amazon.com. I wrote about products, explained them to customers. Thousands of products. To own the company was some partners that provided content at Amazon and all we did was write about the Amazon products and review them. I had a lot of experience as a product writer. I knew how to write well about products and ideas, but I didn't know anything about motion graphics, so I left my former company, it took about three months to teach myself how to do motion graphics. Then I realized I could really use some help with the artwork and some of the visual design, and visual ideas, and that's where Xavier came in. He's really brought a lot to Nutintuit in terms of illustration and the visual concept of the videos we do. The first video we did, I did, was on what is a smartphone. It was just a spec project, I wanted to see if I could do it, and things grew after that. I attracted clients thanks to some other spec videos that I did for Amazon, and things just grew from there. I really think you can make it if you really focus on what you're good at, and get help in the areas where you need help. That's where Xavier came in.

Key Marketing Advice in Explanatory Videos

Robin Good: If you were to advise somebody else trying to follow your tracks, what would be the two or three key marketing steps you would advise somebody wanting to do video explanatory work to do to get their work out, and to start getting somebody pay for it? Joshua Gunn: I think there are a number of things:

1. I think, obviously, the way the work is marketed now is drastically different than the way it was just a few years ago. I found other people who were doing what I was doing and got them interested in my work, and they liked my work, and they referred me to the clients. That was a key way that I got started.


2. I went to old context that I had from other work experiences, and I said: "Hey, look, this is what I'm doing now! What do you think? I think this applications for you guys, let's talk about it!"

That's how I got some work with Brooks running shoes, and working on a series for videos of them, as well.

Which Business Model for the Future?

Robin Good: My last question would be about the future: How are you going to scale and what kind of business model you have in mind? Are you going to hope that you just get more and more request, and you do more custom videos for different clients, and each one of them pays for them, or are you thinking in some way to scale this up as the Internet would suggest to do so that you produce x, but you sell 10x. Joshua Gunn: Right now we're in a phase where we're trying to perfect what we do and to show a wider audience that we do great work. We really are in a building phase with clients right now, but I agree with you. I think the future is in scaling videos so that.... a guy who's going to a conference, for instance, and he wants to teach people about what is a blog, or what is the best way to collaborate with people online using free tools... the guy who's going to a conference wants to teach people about that, maybe he might want to buy a video from us and take that to the conference with him. That's a model that we believe in. Obviously it's a path that we're probably going to go down soon, but we're not quite there yet.
Robin Good: Fantastic. Thank you for sharing all of these insider information and insight from your experience. Bring my very best from the passionate readers of MasterNewMedia to Xavier as well, and thank you Josh for spending the time with us. All the best to your new company! Guys please go check out their work, and how they're communicating and explaining in simple words how complex technological things are, and how they function. Please, I leave you with the opportunity to repeat one more time your URL and web site for everyone else, and ciao from Robin Good in Roma and thank you for your great work! Joshua Gunn: Thank you so much Robin, it's been a pleasure. It's www.nutintuit.com.
Robin Good: Ciao! Joshua Gunn: Thanks Robin, bye-bye!

Originally shot and recorded by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and first published on January 11, 2009 as "Explaining Things To Non-Technical Users Is A New Business - Video Interview With Joshua Gunn".

Photo credits: How Nutintuit Was Born - AlexStar Key Marketing Advice in Explanatory Videos - adempercem Which Business Model for the Future? - John Kounadeas

There have been so many stories of people blaming YouTube or social networks like MySpace and Facebook when stupid criminals post evidence of their crimes online that some politicians actually have been pushing to pass laws that ban posting evidence of your criminal activities to any of these sites. It's as if politicians want to make the job of police officers that much more difficult by telling criminals to stop incriminating themselves. Sometimes, even the police seem to make this mistake, blaming websites for crimes, even when they're actually great resources for helping to catch criminals.

Luckily, not all police officers think this way. Mark writes in to tell us of a case where police not only used both Facebook and YouTube to track down people setting fires in celebration following the Superbowl, but that the department looks upon those tools as being a useful way to catch criminals:

"We are using this (Facebook) as a crime-fighting tool. It's becoming pretty common."

Sure, this seems like perfectly normal common sense -- but given how we've seen some others react to crimes displayed online in this manner, it's nice to be reminded that some people really do have common sense (though, that clearly does not include the criminals posting such incriminating evidence).

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Danny Choo is a guestblogger on Boing Boing. Danny resides in Tokyo, and blogs about life in Japan and Japanese subculture - he also works part time for the empire.

---

To folks in the US - how is your new president doing? Well in Japan, hes doing quite well as you can see from this photo taken yesterday. Softbank is the exclusive carrier for the iPhone in Japan and it looks like Obama-san has a part time job helping them sell mobile phones. The tag line in the poster is:- "Yes We Kau!" - "Kau" meaning "to buy" in Japanese.

Obama-san also performs magic on Japanese TV as you can see from the video below.

And for you fact fans out there - there is even a town in Japan called Obama were residents celebrated the new presidents victory.

Video from Japan Probe, photo stolen from dannychoo.com

(Ed. note: Today, Boing Boing welcomes a new guest blogger, "Tokyo Stormtrooper" Danny Choo.)

Herro BB comrades! My name is Danny Choo - originally from the UK (London Hackney) and been living in Japan for 10 years now.

Formerly Website Manager at Amazon, Product Manager at Microsoft and now run my own company Mirai Inc which focuses on licensing multi-lingual consumer generated e-commerce web platforms. My full profile and other bits n pieces lives here.

In my spare time I run a Japan Portal at dannychoo.com where I post daily photos and write about life in Japan and Japanese subculture - do RSS subscribe if you want a daily dose of Japanism.

I also work part time for the Empire where I spend most of my time recruiting new troopers. I do this by attempting to "Dance" around Tokyo in Stormtrooper armor to let people know how fun it can be working for the dark lord - you may want to subscribe and see more of my recruiting videos at YouTube. I never mention the possibility of getting a Vader Force Choke though.

I'm humbly honored to have been given the most bodaciously awesome opportunity by comrade Xeni to write for BoingBoing. For the next two weeks I'll be introducing you to some crazy and not-so-crazy down to earth daily stuff from the rand of the lising sun.

An example of some recruiting for the empire below.

Hugh Pickens writes "NASA and the European Space Agency are expected later this week to settle an ongoing debate on whether to send a robotic mission to Jupiter's moon Europa or Saturn's moon Titan. Both are difficult places to get to — a mission to either would cost several billion dollars/euros to build and execute — and both have become alluring targets in the quest to learn whether Earth alone supports life. On the one hand, Europa is believed to have liquid oceans beneath its frozen crust which (on Earth at least) are a source of life-supporting chemistry. Scientists would like to scan Europa's surface for bits of material that may have seeped up from beneath the ice. 'Imagine if there were microbes entrained in material that has exuded onto the surface of Europa and they've been sitting there for maybe three million years,' says planetary scientist Dr. Brad Dalton. On the other hand, Titan has two enticing features in the search for life: liquids on the surface, and a thick atmosphere that can be used to slow down a spacecraft and help put it into orbit. Titan's surface water is locked into the crust as ice, but scientists suspect there may be a subsurface ocean where water mingles with ammonia. The mission will not get to the launch pad before 2020. 'It's unfortunate that there has to be a decision,' says NASA/JPL astrobiologist Dr. Kevin Hand. 'It's important to go to both. They are both such amazing and tantalizing worlds in terms of finding life.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Recently on Offworld we listened to good things like the free soundtrack to Konjak's Legend of Princess, which always brilliantly stays just a half-note off the Zelda originals that inspired it, and another fantastic NES mega-mix from Japan's YMCK. We also saw good things get nominated for rewards as both the Game Developers Choice Awards and the UK's BAFTA committee announced their nominees. We saw zombies surging from multiple fronts as we got more details on Left 4 Dead's first DLC and the first footage of the new Romero-inspired Dead Rising 2. We saw both new content for old versions of Katamari Damacy, and one last pre-release look at Katamari creator Keita Takahashi's new Noby Noby Boy. We saw old things in new forms from Oregon Trail coming to the iPhone, to the celebration of where this all started at the newly opened Pong Museum, and saw lots more miscellaneous excellence: Zelda translated into Latin (above), the very first (non-knitted) Sackboy toys, 8-bit Punch-Out!! in real life and brilliant papercraft Mario automata, and, finally heard word that one person is officially bringing Twitter to Call of Duty.

BART, the regional train service for the San Francisco Bay Area, announced this week that it was going forward after a pilot project to provide public WiFi access on its train lines under a partnership with WiFi Rail, Inc. BART expects to cover 104 miles of track and 43 stations by 2011. Since BART is government-run, this plan is inevitably discussed in the context of the (mostly) failed muni-WiFi plans we heard so much about from 2004-2007, but the BART plan has some key differences which will help it succeed where blanket WiFi coverage failed.

Here are 10 reasons why it sounds like a good plan; 5 based in technology and 5 based in business:

1. BART intends to cover a manageable, finite area. The space in trains can easily be covered using WiFi as the delivery technology.
2. BART has full control of the delivery area, no lease rights, light posts, or permissions are needed.
3. Although BART uses WiFi as a delivery technology, it really is a fiber network, and Wi-Fi is only used to connect to subscribers the last few yards, because WiFi is so ubiquitous in consumer electronics. The fiber "future-proofs" the network, whereas the Wi-Fi can be relatively cheaply updated to newer standards or protocols if required. Other existing rail solutions tend to use cellular or satellite backhaul, which has nowhere near the capacity of fiber optics, has dead zones, and doesn't work underground. These cellular/WiFi hybrid solutions will find it hard to compete with future cellular direct-to-consumer offers.
4. BART has rights-of-way for the core network all along their rail lines. It can easily install and manage its own backhaul (fiber) as well as the delivery (WiFi) network.
5. The fiber/WiFi hybrid network will work in the tunnels and underground. No other wireless technology will be able to compete, without explicit permission from BART to go into its tunnels.
   
   Now on to the marketing reasons:
   
   
6. It's clear that commuters on a train may have some demand for connectivity. Sure, some prefer to sleep or read, but some will want to work or play online. These people are often captive, seated, and bored - a great target market.
7. Further, the density of bodies on a train makes for a better market than muni WiFi's parks and streets. Population density is like catnip to telecom providers.
8. BART is intelligently offering flexible pricing. Unlike the telcos one rate of $60/month with a two year contract, BART will offer annual, monthly, and daily plans immediately, and there is talk of a 2-hour price, and even a 3 minute, ad-supported freebie. BART seems to be smart about removing the barriers for trial and familiarization. The prices seem a bit high, but the range of choices and the lack of commitment are nice.
9. BART can use the network for its own operations: for train telemetry, for surveillance cameras, security, etc. This amortizes the cost and makes the business case better.
10. BART can use the system to pump real-time content and advertising to screens in stations and in trains. Train displays will show location-sensitive ads and information based on current location, and time of day.

Some of the potential negatives are, as mentioned, the price is still too high. The market will likely push them down, and hopefully, the business can withstand that. But captive audiences may reluctantly pay. The contract with WiFi Rail, Inc. has raised eyebrows in that it has a 20-year duration. That does seem awfully long for a technology deal -- even if it is optical fiber-based. Future-proof tech is one thing, but 20 years! Hopefully BART has escape clauses in the deal if the vendor should disappear or fail to perform sometime in the next two decades. Muni WiFi failed because it tried to make the technology do something it wasn't intended to do. But in this case, appropriate technologies are being used correctly, trials were run, true costs are understood, and hopefully other rail operators will be considering similarly structured solutions worldwide.

Derek Kerton is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Derek Kerton and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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In May there will be an extended workshop in wearable art and interactive performance at Arizona State University:

Workshop participants will explore emergent electronic technologies for performance and installation framed by the theme Lunar Outpost. Interactive technologies offer the means to extend, manipulate, and add color to our environments in a new manner. Workshop participants will work with Arduino micro-controllers and Bluetooth to create networked sensor systems for the control of lights, video projection and sound. Projects will emerge from group discussions and experimentation and can include interactive costumes, props and sets, or responsive environments. Students will learn methods for creating soft, sewable electronics as well as more traditional circuit building.

The workshop will run from May 18-29 at the Tempe, AZ campus. Workshop leaders are John D. Mitchell, Hilary Harp, Galina Mihaleva, and special guest Keiko Courdy. The application deadline is April 10.

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Smidge207 writes "Lately there has been a huge push by Certified Microsoft Professionals and their companies to call (potential) clients and warn them of the dangers of open source. This week I received calls from four different customers saying that they were warned that they are dangerously insecure because they run open source operating systems or software, because 'anyone can read the code and hack you with ease.' Other colleagues in the area also have noticed that three local Microsoft Partners have been trying to strike fear in the minds of companies that respond, 'Yes, we use open source or Linux' when the sales call comes in. I know this is simply a sales tactic by these companies, but how do I fix the damage these tactics cause? I have several customers who now want more than my word about the security of systems that have worked for them flawlessly for 5-6 years, with minimal expense outside of upgrades and patching for security. Does anyone have a good plan or sources of reliable information that can be used to inform the customer?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's well-known that Warren Buffett is a ukulele fan. From Ukulelia, Gary says:

Every so once in a while, a story comes around that is so mind-bogglingly complex, I get stymied on how to blog it. I'm still wrapping my head around this, but here evidently is the dope.

Performance artists Roger Geenawalt and David Barratt recorded and performed all 185 Beatles songs with 185 guest artists...on ukulele, natch.

The performance was then cast as a benefit for Warren Buffett. (Head about to explode. Must. Keep. Blogging.) And they've now just delivered the cash to him in person. (Following is the BEST interview with Warren Buffett evar.)

In the WTO fight between the US and China -- in which the US declared victory recently, despite losing most of its arguments -- Canada had joined the fight on the US's side. However, as Michael Geist has discovered, by accessing government documents using the Access to Information Act in Canada, Canadian officials didn't see any reason to get involved at all, not believing the dispute impacted Canadians in any manner. However, it appears US officials didn't like that very much, and a rather heavy attempt to pressure Canadian officials into signing up ensued, with both US officials and the Canadian Recording Industry Association (often seen as basically a puppet of the RIAA) applying the pressure. While Canadian officials continually expressed doubt about participating, noting little evidence that China's practices had any impact on Canadians, eventually they signed on in support. As Geist notes, the end result has been quite damaging to Canada. Since the main points of the case were won by China, Canada signed up with the wrong side of the arguments and the effort has damaged Canadian relations with China. That's what you get for getting pushed around by the IP bullies...

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Wagner James Au sez, "There's probably easier ways to illustrate our disconnect from the consumer products around us, but none this crazy:"

Thomas Thwaites is trying to make an electric toaster, from scratch. Beginning with mining the raw materials. And yes, that means extracting oil to make plastic and even processing his own copper (to make the pins of the electric plug, the cord, and internal wires), iron (for the steel grilling apparatus, and the spring to pop up the toast), mica (around which the heating element is wound) and nickel (for the heating elements!)...

The only known deposit of Nickel in the UK has long since been exhausted. In Finland however exploitation of a huge deposit has begun. I'd very much like to go and bring back a lump of nickel ore from this remote industrial area, and make it in to an element for my toaster. I'm also trying to negotiate a helicopter ride to an oil rig in the North Sea to collect some oil from which I would try (and certainly fail) to make plastic.

The Toaster Project (Thanks, James!)

Gamasutra is running a feature by game developer Brian Green on how he and his colleagues are still striving for legitimacy and respect as part of a medium that's still commonly thought of by many as "for kids" and "potentially harmful to kids." He notes that while financial legitimacy is no longer in question, artistic and cultural legitimacy are taking more time. Green makes some interesting parallels to the early movie and comic book industries, and points out that moral outrage against comic books did significant damage to the medium's growth in the US. "... in the United States there was a 'moral panic' about the corrupting influences of comic books on children, as there often is with many 'new' media. The government threatened to enact laws to censor comic books, for the good of the children. (Does that sound familiar to game developers?) The industry reacted by enacting their own regulations, the Comics Code Authority (CCA). The Comics Code Authority heavily restricted the content that comics could contain. For example, the words 'horror' and 'terror' were not allowed in the titles of comics. Werewolves, vampires, zombies, and similar creatures of the night were forbidden."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple's made a lot of noise lately about the strength of its patents covering the iPhone's multi-touch interface and the lengths to which it will go to defend them. Most recently its harsh talk was aimed at Palm, whose new Pre device also features multi-touch. VentureBeat is now reporting that Google left support for multi-touch out of its Android OS -- because Apple asked it to, and Google didn't want to jeopardize its relationship with the company. VentureBeat sources the claim to an anonymous "Android team member", while a recent multi-touch hack for the G1 device was made by uncommenting several lines of code. This would indicate the capability was in the OS, but later "commented out", meaning it was left in the code, but preceded with an instruction for it to be ignored by the device. If this is true, it's scary to think that companies would make these sorts of arrangements in which one competitor gets to determine the features of another's products. Competition benefits everyone: consumers get the benefit of innovative new products, while companies get spurred on to continue development and continue raising the bar. Setting up an environment in which people need permission to innovate really doesn't help anybody -- even Apple, who apparently now believes it's got more to gain by keeping competition out of the market, rather than by focusing on innovation of its own. Is multi-touch really so important that Apple needs to make all of these defensive moves? Or has the company run out of the sorts of ideas that have kept it a step ahead of its rivals?

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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The "Beatles Complete on Ukulele" is an ambitious and awesome blog. They've posted three MP3s of Beatles songs so far. Here's Fiona Silver doing "Run for Your Life."

Run For Your Life is the final song on The Beatle's creative breakthrough album, 1965's Rubber Soul.

They put it last for very good reasons.

While not the worst Beatle song it might be the worst one written and sung by John.

Consider the unfortunate first line.

"I'd rather see you dead little girl than to be with another man."

Happily, the culture has come a long way baby since 1965.

From Ukulelia:

The Beatles Complete On Ukulele is a web based project by Roger Greenawalt and David Barratt where they will

A) Record & perform on ukulele all 185 original compositions by The Beatles with 185 guest singers/artists.

B) Write essays to coincide with each release.

C) Make available for download one new recording and essay every Tuesday for 185 weeks, beginning January 20, 2009 (Inauguration Day) and climaxing July 24, 2012 (The eve of the London Olympics)."

Buffet's recording is actually song three of 185. The first two are that old ukulele chestnut While My Guitar Gently Weeps, performed by Dandelion Wine, and Oh Darling, sung by Kathena Bryant of The Hippynuts.

(Thanks, Gary!)

While there are still some non-believers who continue to insist that there is nothing useful about Twitter, plenty of folks who have jumped in headfirst are finding new ways to make the service more useful every day. Here's a recent example, from E-Media Tidbits, which reports that in the recent "state of the state" speech by Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, the governor's staff first announced a hashtag to be used in Twitter (MiSOTS), and then had the Govenor's staff adding the high points of the speech to Twitter as they came. But the more interesting part is that this created a real-time public participation and commentary on the speech as it was happening. Plenty of others used the official hashtag to respond to points and discuss what was going on in the speech in real-time, providing a fascinating play-by-play commentary of the address that would have been hard to do in any widespread manner previously (perhaps in a specialized chat room -- but that would have a much smaller number of users). While it doesn't appear that the governor or her staff responded in real-time, it also gave them a very useful look at how people were perceiving the address, and also gave them people they could quickly follow up with in the future. While I'm sure some Twitter doubters will still brush this off as nothing special, the ability to better communicate shouldn't be ignored or underestimated.

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soDean writes "Miro just launched their 2.0 release today. The free and open source HD video player and Internet TV features an all-new interface and an entirely rewritten UI engine, plus tons of new features and improvements — it's less of a collection of new stuff and more of a rethinking of the whole experience. You can download Miro 2.0 here for Linux, Mac, and Windows. Miro is developed by the Participatory Culture Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, hell-bent on making Internet video more open and decentralized, along with a dedicated community of users, volunteers, translators, testers, and coders."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ed Note: Boingboing's current guest blogger Gareth Branwyn writes on technology, pop and fringe culture. He is currently a Contributing Editor at Maker Media. Recent projects have included co-creating The Maker's Notebook and editing The Best of MAKE and The Best of Instructables collections.

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For all of my writing about role-playing and tabletop wargaming (I used to host a sci-fi tabletop modeling site), I've actually not spent that much time heavy-duty gaming, at least not since I was a teen/20-something. Most of my gaming time in adulthood, and definitely my most enjoyable time, has been playing various light-duty card games. Since a lot of my friends are not as deeply geeky as I am, it's often hard to get them to sit still long enough to learn rules for an RPG or tabletop game, and by the time they've created a character or an army, the little lightweights are tired (many of them have these bizarre constructs I don't understand called "day jobs") and they need to head home. Card games usually have easier rules, quicker play times, and tend to be more social/less serious (proverbial beer and pretzel games). I've never played a game of Steve Jackson's Chez Geek without everyone involved, regardless of how into such games they are, not coming away having had a ball. I can't recommend that game, and its spin-offs (Chez Goth, Chez Guevara -- for all your leftie-commie friends, etc), highly enough. And for the anarcho-libertarians in the chez, there's always Illuminati. It's more "medium-duty" than Chez Geek, but still suitable for general play. I've been playing that game since it was one of the infamous "pocket box" games (go Car Wars!). My most recent attempt at feeding my friends a gateway drug to deeper gaming nerdom is Keith Baker's Gloom, from Atlas Games. I tend to be attracted to games with gimmicks and this has a great one. The cards are printed on clear plastic. As you play your hand, and cover the cards you've laid down with further draws, the cards change values/capabilities, depending on which attributes show through the card stacks. The other thing that attracted me to the game is the objective. As you play, you try to increase the happiness of the other players' characters, while increase the miserable things that happen to yours (you choose from four families of dysfunctional freaks in the core game). You want to end up with the gloomiest family in the end. Gloom good, happy bad. (Does Morrissey know about this?) The artwork on the cards is really lovely, evocative of Gorey, Addams, and Lemony Snicket. The game is designed for 2-4 players and the rules are fairly simple, so even older kids can play. Unfortunately, since I bought it over Christmas, I haven't been able to cajole anybody into playing it with me yet. Pocket-Protector Barbie sez: "Being a geek is HARD."