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I'm not a fan of vampire fiction, but The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan is more along the lines of a vampire-zombie-epidemic-in-New York-City, and wow is it terrific.
The first chapter (after the short prologue, which didn't interest me and almost made me abandon the book) is about an airplane that lands at JFK from Germany and goes completely dark on the runway. It's so creepy that when I told my wife and daughter about it *they* got creeped out just from my description.
Someone said The Strain is a combination of The Stand, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and I am Legend, which I'd say is a pretty fair way of describing it.
I was sent a review copy by the publisher, but I wanted to read it past our usual bedtime so I bought the Kindle version and read it in the dark on my iPhone so as not to keep Carla up with a reading light on. I recommend reading all scary books in the dark this way.
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She tried to wake him up (when she woke to find him urinating in the closet), but she said he pushed her out of his way. Scared he might hit her, she said, she grabbed a knife and held it up as he approached, cutting him. His injuries are believed to be non-life threatening."Man stabbed while sleepwalking"
I love this ceramic art, a mash-up of classic blue and white Chinese pottery and modern-day Japanese manga robotics, by Canadian artist Brendan Tang. Brendan tells MAKE: "All works are composted utilizing traditional ceramic processes, from the throwing of the vessels to the hand painting of the forms."
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Joshua Foer is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Joshua is a freelance science journalist and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Dylan Thuras.
User curiosity_nl recently added the Bottle-Ship Museum in Enkhuizen, Holland to the Atlas Obscura. It sounds like a place I'd like to visit:
This tiny museum is said to hold the world's largest collection of bottle ships--over 750 of them. An incredible variety of miniature boats--rescue boats, whaling ships, steamships, and modern dredgers--have been stuffed into every variety of bottle, from the tiniest light bulb to a 30-liter wine jug. Magnifying glasses are available where needed. On occasion, there are demonstrations of how to build bottle ships.
Shown above is a model of the Half Moon, the ship Henry Hudson was sailing when he discovered Hudson Bay and the Hudson River. It's builder, Ralph Preston, estimates that it took about 500 hours to assemble.
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(Download MP4 / Watch on YouTube)
A spectacularly campy "Scopitone" music number featuring Joi Lansing from 1965 which appears to be a cautionary tale about the perils of online dating, or spiders, or both.
Scopitones were basically 1960s video jukeboxes. As Pesco blogged earlier this year on Boing Boing, "Scopitones and Cineboxes were first introduced in Europe in 1959-1960 and came to the US a few years later. The coin-operated machines were quite popular but were swept into the dustbin of dead media by the 1970s."
More required reading, if you're interested in the history of these primordial music video jukeboxen:
* Scopitone Archive
* Wikipedia entry
* NPR: Rise and Fall of the Scopitone Jukebox
* Scopitone of the Day
The video comes to us as a special courtesy of Oddball Film + Video, a San Francisco stock footage company that maintains a truly amazing and extensive archive of weird old moving images. They do regular screenings in San Francisco.
Where to Find Boing Boing Video: boingboingvideo.com. RSS feed for new episodes here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video.
(Thanks to Boing Boing's video hosting partner Episodic, and to Robert Chehoski and Stephen Parr of Oddball Film + Video)
Dylan Thuras is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Dylan is a travel blogger and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Joshua Foer.
When conquistadors arrived from Spain they were shocked. Spanning vast canyons, and longer than any existing European or Roman bridge was a type of bridge which they had never seen before: an Incan suspension bridge. Today only one example remains.
Made of woven grass, the bridge spans 118 feet, and hangs 220 feet above the canyon's rushing river. The Incan women braid small thin ropes which are then braided again by the men into large support cables, much like a modern steel suspension bridge. Handwoven bridges lasted as long as 500 years and were held in very high regard by the Inca. The punishment for tampering with one was death.
Over time, however, the bridges decayed, or were removed, leaving this single testament to Incan bridge engineering. This previously sagging bridge is now repaired each year, and christened with a traditional Incan ceremonial bridge blessing. The bridge is in extremely good condition and is a perfect location for all of us wishing to indulge in long harbored Indiana Jones fantasies.
Though the Spanish tried many times to build stone arch bridges all were failures until steel and iron bridges were introduced to the mountainous Peruvian countryside. Today the rope suspension bridges are being studied, and even recreated by MIT students. The students made a 60-foot-long version of the Incan bridge which was stretched between two campus buildings.
More on the Atlas here, more on the story of the bridge here, and about the MIT recreation of the bridge here and slideshow here.
That's why I took an inactive iPhone with me to Spain. I used WiFi and Skype on it and it cost me nothing.
Researchers say the idea is to replace explosives in small hand grenades with a certain variety of red chilli to immobilise people without killing them.India plans hot chilli grenades (Thanks, Carlo Longino!)
The chilli, known as Bhut Jolokia, is said to be 1,000 times hotter than commonly used kitchen chilli.
Scientists at India's Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) are quoted as saying the potent chilli will be used as a food additive for troops operating in cold conditions.
Rolly Crump, the Disney Imagineer who Kevin Kidney wrote about on Dinosaurs and Robots, drew these incredible beatnik posters in 1960. Here's one, here's another. (I like the sound of the Weed Quartet: "Lou blows Kazoo," "Turk on the Twig," "Betty bangs Tambourine," and "Booboo on the Bottle.")
Here's Rolly Crump's Tower Of The Four Winds, a 120 foot tall kinetic sculpture unveiled at the 1964 New York World's Fair
And just look at the Disneyland ticket booth for Tomorrowland that Crump designed in 1967.
Jason Groh has some more outstanding 1960s work by Crump. Says Groh, "Rolly was Tim Burton before there was a Tim Burton!"
Here's Rolly Crump's website. He's still creating wonderful art!
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Joshua Foer is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Joshua is a freelance science journalist and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Dylan Thuras.
In 1995, the Japanese psychologist Shigeru Watanabe made a splash when he proved that pigeons could be trained to differentiate between paintings by Monet and Picasso. Now he has taught them to recognize the difference between good and bad art. New Scientist reports:
He trained four birds - on loan from the Japanese Society for Racing Pigeons - to appreciate children's art by linking correct assessments of paintings with food. Works deemed good (see image) had earned As in art class, while bad paintings (see image) garnered Cs or Ds. Watanabe also put the paintings to a jury of 10 adults, and pigeons viewed only works unanimously declared good or bad by the panel.
After a series of training sessions consisting of 22 paintings on average, Watanabe presented the birds with 10 paintings they hadn't seen before: 5 bad, 5 good.
The birds had been trained to peck at a button for good paintings and do nothing in response to bad works. With never-seen works, pigeons picked good paintings twice as often as bad paintings, a statistically significant difference.
Watanabe's paper, "Pigeons can discriminate 'good' and 'bad' paintings by children," is published in the latest issue of Animal Cognition.
Now, if only pigeons could be taught to pilot missiles.
As Steve Lodefink says: "Awesome teen angst comedy mischief pop by Chair."
Marc Steinmetz took these wonderful photos of gadgets made by prisoners to help them try to escape, to conceal contraband, or to help them conduct forbidden activities.
This shotgun was "made from iron bedposts; charge made of pieces of lead from curtain tape and match-heads, to be ignited by AA batteries and a broken light bulb. On May 21, 1984 two inmates of a prison in Celle, Germany, took a jailer as a hostage, showed off their fire power by letting go at a pane of bullet-proof glass [bottom of picture], and escaped by car."
Marc Steinmetz' photos of prisoner-made escape devices (via Street Use) Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Gadgets | Digg this!
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Yup, it's true, it's hard for Apple to adequately assess the conflicting claims about proprietary rights on the iTunes Store. Say, I've got an idea: what if they stopped playing mad pope emporer of your telephone and let you install any code you wanted on your property?
As for the sleazebags who shake down programmers by claiming to own the rights to Muni arrival times, someone needs to give them the "Hey, dipshits, facts aren't copyrightable," speech and a smack upside their collective heads.
Does A Private Company Own Your Muni Arrival Times?
(Thanks, John!)
But the point, I hope, is clear.He goes on to talk about how silly it is to think of "accreditation" and defining who is and who is not a journalist by pointing out that everyone is a journalist in some way. This isn't necessarily the "citizen journalism" trumpeted by some pundits, but a recognition that social networks make everyone the journalist of their own lives:
The old means of control don't work.
The old categories don't work.
The old ways of thinking won't work.
We all need to come to terms with that.
Fundamentally, the old media won't control news dissemination in the future. And organisations can't control access using old forms of accreditation any more.
Those statements mean what they say and not necessarily more.
I am not arguing that newspapers and magazines and news services will die.
No, just that they must change.
To say they can blog as long as it isn't journalistic, misses the point.And this is the point where traditionalists freak out and talk about putting up special walls. But, Schlesinger seems to recognize both how that's silly, and how the real response is to not freak out about the threat, but to embrace the opportunity:
To a 23 year-old athlete, used to putting out a "news feed" of every detail of her personal life and training on various social media platforms, there simply isn't a distinction.
Her life IS a news feed. Her blog IS a publishing platform. Her Facebook page IS the daily newspaper of her life.
And none of these things is really private. They can get indexed by Google; they get searched; they can be public to the world with a potential circulation of every single user of the internet.
Take this scenario: I will easily aggregate my imaginary athlete's comments and thoughts on winning or losing or on the standard of judging with tweets giving the audience perspective from various parts of the stadium. I'll then add that in with mobile phone camera pictures and video posted on Flickr and youtube.
Well, my friends, who really needs the rightsholders, AP or Reuters if you can do that?
Some may be frightened of the picture I paint. Some may think I exaggerate. I actually get energised.And, finally, he notes how silly it is to think that professional journalists are somehow above everyone else:
The only question I ask is: So what can we do to survive, or more fundamentally, to stay relevant?
I think the only path is to embrace the change and embrace the new. Longing for the ways of the past will not work.
We in the traditional media and you in the IOC must concentrate our efforts on defining and developing that which really adds value.
That means understanding what really can be exclusive and what really is insightful. It means truly exploiting real expertise.
It means, to my earlier point, using all the multimedia tools available and all the smart multimedia journalists to provide a package so much stronger than any one individual strand.
It means working with the mobile phone and digital camera and social media-enabled public and not against them.
Working against them would be crazy. Could you imagine gun toting guards trying to confiscate every phone off every spectator? That would become the story of the Games and it would ultimately fail, anyhow.
No, working with them is the answer.
Inspire them, and encourage them to do things that will enhance the Olympic spirit and actually improve the bottom line.
We have spent countless decades enveloping our activities in the cloak of professional mystery.That last bit applies to so many industries today. It's great to see that, at least via these words, it looks like Reuters is really looking to embrace what the technology allows, rather than pulling an AP and pretending it can somehow turn back the clock.
That era is over.
We must devote the time now to demystifying what we do, and working in concert with those who would seem to be a threat to the old order.
Remember that the world ultimately is a reciprocal place.
Treat people with respect and as partners, and they will partner with you.
Treat people as a threat or as criminals, and they will threaten your institution and ultimately bring it down.
This path doesn't have to be scary.
C.K. Sample III (author of PSP Hacks) just posted his technique for making an iPod tripod mount; he used the form-fitting packing material that came in the box as the basis of the holder. You could probably extend his technique to a lot of other gadgets, too:
I was thinking about this tonight, and remembered the nice little white holster of plastic that came in the box of my iPhone 3GS and cradled it so nicely. So, I took that, took a 3/16 drill bit and drilled a hole where the camera is and another where the recycle symbol was on the back of the plastic holster. I shaped each hole slightly wider using the drill. The recycle symbol hole was just the right size to be a bit tight for the mounting screw, so that the screw itself could tap its own path tightly in the plastic hold...
How to make a cheap tripod mount for the iPhone 3GS
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The folks over at Hack a Day have gone into the electronic components biz. Teaming up with Seeed Studio, they're producing the Bus Pirate. The Bus Pirate is a universal serial bus tool. Use it for understanding how components work before you build a full prototype. Their parts posts page shows many example uses. Here's more about the board:
The Bus Pirate is a universal bus interface that talks to most chips from a PC serial terminal, eliminating a ton of early prototyping effort when working with new or unknown chips. Many serial protocols are supported at 0.6-5.5volts, more can be added.
* 1-Wire
* I2C
* SPI
* JTAG
* Asynchronous serial
* MIDI
* PC keyboard
* 2- and 3-wire libraries with bitwise pin controlWe added other stuff we need, like,
* 0-6volt measurement probe
* 1hz-40MHz frequency measurement
* 1kHz - 4MHz pulse-width modulator, frequency generator
* On-board multi-voltage pull-up resistors
* On-board 3.3volt and 5volt power supplies with software reset
* Macros for common operations
* Bus traffic sniffer (SPI)
* A bootloader for easy firmware updatesSince this has been such a useful tool for us, we cleaned up the code, documented the design, and released it here with specs, schematic, and source code.
The Bus is available for pre-orders and sells for $27.15.
Bus Pirate preorders open
How-to: The Bus Pirate V2 with USB
The Bus Pirate universal serial interface
This is [Sona restaurant chef de cuisine Kuniko Yagi's] recipe for making tofu from soy milk, and it's the one Yagi uses: Add a teaspoon of liquid nigari to 500 milliliters of cold soy milk and stir. Then pour it into heat-proof bowls and cook (in a water bath or steamer) until it sets like custard. That is it. There's no heating the soy milk to bring it to a certain temperature before adding the nigari. No separating liquids from solids. No straining once it's cooked.Do-it-yourself fresh tofuKariya had figured just the right amount of soy milk (which he makes -- so he knows that the brix, or percentage of dissolved solids, is 14%) to use with a certain amount of nigari (which he imports from Japan and has magnesium chloride and other trace minerals), so that his tofu recipe works consistently. He sells both the milk ($3.50 for a half-gallon) and the nigari, which isn't cheap but will make a lot of tofu and will last almost indefinitely ($25 for a pint).
Fun video of a toy train that floats about the track using a liquid nitrogen-cooled superconductor. (Via Evil Mad Scientists)
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ATLAS/CERN Multimedia Contest and Intern Program: (Thanks, Joao!)CERN, the world's largest particle physics laboratory, birthplace of the World Wide Web and home of the famous Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has a great opportunity for you. We are about to kick-start the most complex scientific project ever conceived by mankind, and would like you to witness and record its unveiling, and help us spread the news.
We want you to start by showing us your communication and creative skills by producing an original short film or multimedia piece, incorporating material about ATLAS, the biggest experiment on the LHC. The best submissions will be posted on the ATLAS website and YouTube page with full credit to the author, and enter a competition for a paid internship at CERN or alternatively win a Adobe Production Suite package. The winner will be offered a trip to CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, and given exclusive access to scientists working on the project as well as all the equipment and expertise in CERN's audiovisual lab.
What we want from you is your unbridled creativity. In return, we offer a chance to experience history in the making, and a global platform for your work as the world's eyes look towards CERN this fall. To apply, read the official rules and register below. What are you waiting for?
The deadline is July 31, so lights, Camera, Action!
Starting this weekend, Copperfield's books in CA is hosting a series of mini Maker Faires, we hope you can join us for a fun afternoon this summer! Download this PDF for more information.
Mini Maker Faires at Copperfield's:
6/26 - Sebastopol (11am - 1pm)
7/11 - Petaluma (11am - 1pm)
7/18 - Montgomery Village (11am - 1pm)
7/25 - Healdsburg (11am - 1pm)
8/1 - Petaluma (11am - 1pm)
8/8 - Montgomery Village (11am - 1pm)
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Dorkbot DC has been on a hiatus for the past few months, but we're back, baby! July will be the first of a series of some events co-presented with our pals at HacDC. If you're in town, we hope you can make it.
Schedule for next meeting (Co-presented with HacDC)
7 July, 2009
7 PM - 8 PM (ET)
ALWAYS FREE!
Location:
HacDC (Room TBA)
1525 Newton St NW
Washington DC 20010
Keith Sinzinger : Tubular Bells: Construction and Processing
Fresh from having performed in the Baltimore Electronic Music Festival Keith will talk about how he conceived of, researched and constructed a set of tubular bells from scrap galvanized pipe. He'll also touch on some other ongoing musical construction projects. Following a Q&A session, he'll demonstrate the bells as he generally use them in performance, processed through a variety of electronic effects.
About Fast Forty
Keith calls this genre Intense Ambient: found sounds, altered electronics, scrap metal and other devices, blended to soothe and stimulate. His musical roots were developed in an industrial city (Cleveland), where he grew up in the virtual shadow of a Ford plant. He's also lived most of his years within a few blocks of railroads. His musical experiments tend to reflect these environmental influences.
DorkbotDC would like to thank HacDC, DC's hacker space, for arranging this talk and inviting us to co-present with them.
More info here.
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To be successful, copyright holders and legislators must consider the construction of ethos and credibility. This is done not only through the reputation that one gains, but also through the discourse itself. Legislators and copyright holders must portray themselves as trustworthy. More specifically, the recording industry must appear to be treating artists and fans fairly, and legislators must appear to be acting in the public interest.... Legislators and copyright holders must maintain a stance that encourages the public to obey copyright laws. When legislators consider altering copyright terms, the public domain is necessarily affected, and great consideration must be given to how the public will react to the proposed action. When the public sees little incentive to honor the ostensibly limited protection granted under copyright law, copyright law will increasingly become unenforceable. However, if the public is provided with compelling reasons why term limits are in the public interest, they may be more likely to support these terms. Likewise, copyright holders must make more compelling arguments concerning why the public should obey copyright law. If the people have a compelling narrative to follow, they will do so--whether it is true or not. The challenge, then, is not to craft better law; the challenge is to craft better rhetoric.The problem, of course, is that this doesn't pass the laugh test. It's pretty difficult to find anyone who believes that the copyright holders and legislators are doing anything in the public interest. And, I guess if it were possible to come up with rhetoric that made the opposite case, then perhaps people would change their actions. I just question how they could come up with such a story when all of the evidence points to the contrary.
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You may not use the Services and may not accept the Terms if (a) you are not of legal age to form a binding contract with GoogleBut, as Soghoian notes, in all 50 states in the US, that legal age is 18 -- meaning that those under 18 may be breaking Google's terms of service. And, of course, as we learned in the Lori Drew case, violating the terms of service of a website (even if you haven't read them or done anything to agree with them!) can be grounds for making you criminally liable for "accessing a computer without authorization." That seems like a problem, doesn't it?
Joshua Foer is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Joshua is a freelance science journalist and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Dylan Thuras.
I've recently been enjoying Edward Rice's wonderful biography of Sir Richard Francis Burton, the Victorian explorer, soldier, diplomat, linguist, translator, and self-described "amateur barbarian," who became one of the first non-Muslims to make the Hajj to Mecca.
Burton was a sponge for languages, and by the time of his death he was said to be fluent in 29 of them--plus at least a dozen dialects.
This got me wondering whether he might have been the most multilingual person in history.
Far from it, it seems.
Wikipedia has compiled a list of the world's most prodigious polyglots, including Sir John Bowring, who supposedly knew 200 languages (but only spoke 100), and the Italian cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti, who was said to speak 38 tongues, despite having never left Italy.
I was led to Charles William Russel's 1863 biography of Mezzofanti, which excerpts an incredible run-in between the cardinal and Lord Byron, as described in Byron's memoirs:
I don't remember a man amongst them I ever wished to see twice, except perhaps Mezzofanti, who is a monster of languages, the Briareus of parts of speech, a walking polyglot, and more; --who ought to have existed at the time of the Tower of Babel, as universal interpreter. He is, indeed, a marvel--unassuming also. I tried him in all the tongues in which I knew a single oath or adjuration to the gods, against post-boys, savages, Tartars, boatmen, sailors, pilots, gondoliers, muleteers, camel-drivers, vetturini, post-masters, post-houses, post, everything; and egad! he astounded me--even to my English.
Russell then adds (with a note of skepticism) a postscript describing a comical swear-off between Mezzofanti and Byron:
When Byron had exhausted his vocabulary of English slang Mezzofanti quietly asked, "And is that all?"
"I can go no further," replied the noble poet, "unless I coin words for the purpose."
"Pardon me, my Lord," rejoined Mezzofanti; and proceeded to repeat for him a variety of the refinements of London slang, till then unknown to his visitor's rich vocabulary!"
What a great scene!
The Life of Cardinal Mezzofanti by Charles William Russell [HTML book]
An Introductory Memoir of Eminent Linguists, Ancient and Modern (preface to Russell's biography of Mezzofanti)
"We have reached the conclusion that we do not agree with the conflict of interest claim," Sweden Court of Appeal Judge Anders Eka told Swedish media. In the appellate court's written opinion, the three-judge panel said that backing "the principles" of copyright law "cannot be considered bias."Pirate Bay Retrial Denied (Wired / Threat Level)
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Thank goodness Michael Bay made the new Transformers movie, because if he hadn't Charlie Jane Anders wouldn't have written this stupendous review for io9.
Transformers: ROTF has mostly gotten pretty hideous reviews, but that's because people don't understand that this isn't a movie, in the conventional sense. It's an assault on the senses, a barrage of crazy imagery. Imagine that you went back in time to the late 1960s and found Terry Gilliam, fresh from doing his weird low-fi collage/animations for Monty Python. You proceeded to inject Gilliam with so many steroids his penis shrank to the size of a hair follicle, and you smushed a dozen tabs of LSD under his tongue. And then you gave him the GDP of a few sub-Saharan countries. Gilliam might have made a movie not unlike this one.Michael Bay Finally Made An Art Movie
Step 1: After purchasing a file, rename the file e.g. Mike_Final-Paper.Corrupted files for sale to students to buy extra time (Via Orange Crate Art)Step 2: Email the file to your professor along with your "here's my assignment" email.
Step 3: It will take your professor several hours if not days to notice your file is "unfortunately" corrupted. Use the time this website just bought you wisely and finish that paper!!!
Note: The only difference between each Word file is its file size, because it will look a bit odd if your 10 page term paper is only 1k in size! Yes, we thought of everything! We guarantee and stand by our product!
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Instructables user thatoneguydavid shows us how to make an ultra-mini boiling pot from a beer can for backpacking. He also put together a 1 oz. spice kit with which to cook.
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From the MAKE Flickr pool
Some nice shots of breakables caught in mid-shatter can be found in this photoset from Flickr member whosdadog (ytmnd!)
In the Maker Shed:
High-Speed Photography Kit Version 4
Instructables author (and Community Manager) Randy Sarafan writes:
Theoretically it sounds really easy; you can make a tape loop by taping the ends of a short piece of magnetic ribbon together and sticking it back inside the cassette tape. However, if you ever actually tried to do this, you will soon realize that it is a tad bit trickier than one would think. I spent an afternoon working out and refining this science. After many tries and many, throw-my-hands-in-the-air-and-promise-to-give-up sorts of moments, I think I have it down reasonably enough to write instructions for someone else to do it. Now you too can tape the ends of magnetic ribbon together, and profit!
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From the MAKE Flickr pool
Flickr member planetwrite created these rather unique solar night light art pieces - check out his etching process in the project photoset.
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Dave posted this vid along with a write-up, covering the ins-and-outs of the unbalanced diode mixer circuit -
This circuit uses the small non-linear response area of a single diode to create combinations of sum and difference frequencies of two input signals (or one input signal containing multiple overtones). Radio designers use this type of circuit to "downconvert" received RF signals to a lower intermediate frequency, which makes it a lot easier to design the radio's signal processing circuitry. We can use the same circuit for electronic music to generate non-harmonic overtones. (In the RF circuitry literature, there is a class of related circuits that all use diodes to do frequency mixing functions. What we call a "ring modulator" originated as a more sophisticated version of the circuit presented here.)Much more info + schematic available on his blog entry.
There was no discernible reason why Japanese developer AQI should have to parody Steve Jobs to announce a new version of their portable Korg DS-10 synthesizer, which makes the fact that they did (above) -- and pulled it off with pitch-perfect style -- all the more fantastic, and sets a high bar as one of the cutest game announcements in recent memory.
Elsewhere on Offworld, we saw more game/music crossovers, listening to the latest and most accessible chiptune/downtempo/glitch sampler for San Francisco's DUTYSTYLE III show, happening tonight at 8pm (check the post for full details), and finding Open Emu, a new modular Mac emulation system that's a boon for budding 8-bit VJs, as it lets you control both the visuals and the play of emulated games with audio and MIDI.
We also saw that early-oughts cult classic shooter Serious Sam (which shipped with our favorite cheat-mode of all time, turning gibs and blood splatter into hamburgers, fruit, and bursts of blooming flowers) was being remade for Xbox Live Arcade, and that EA/DICE's similarly tongue in cheek free-to-play shooter Battlefield Heroes had quietly gone live, and will likely be taking up the majority of our weekend (as it should yours).
And our 'one shot's of the day: the mathematical beauty of building pixel Invaders, the aching shoulder-slump of BioShock 2's original Big Daddy concept, the certifiably longest beard in gaming's history, and, of course, Michael Jackson, in memoriam.
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Here is a brand new version of the popular potato cannon built by the DeRose family
and shown at this years Maker Faire. Check out their website for more details.
To download The Potato Gatling Gun MP4 click here or subscribe in iTunes.
Seven Sexton sent us a link to this awesome 1992 video of Queen's Brian May talking about "The Fireplace," his famous electric guitar that he and his dad built from scrap bits such as a mantle from a 100-year old fireplace (hence the name), a chunk of a table, a spring from a motorcycle, a piece from his mother's knitting needle, etc. Amazingly, this is not some fragile relic he keeps in the closet, but a working guitar, one you've heard on many Queen songs. His family was poor and his dad built most of their home electronics, including their television and radio. Wonderful, inspiring little piece. I love the opening quote from him:
I'm still a kid. Basically, I LOVE the sound of the guitar. I love making it. I love standing there and making that noise.
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Qik, the "phonecasting" folks, have released an early alpha of their software to the Android Marketplace. Unlike most streaming video services out there, Qik focuses on streaming live video from mobile phones. What makes this release unique is the diversity of the Android OS. It can be found on mobile phones, netbooks, picture screens, embedded systems, and set-top boxes. New possibilities arise when you add something like live video into the mix.
[via diTii.com]
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That looks like one rascally rocket to ride, but hey, it's a PULSE JET! You can buy one of the jets from the maker, on eBay (link on the Instructables item below).
Buy this pulsejet so you can make your own jet bike
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Photo credit: Kheng Ho Toh and Ron Chapple Studios mashed up by Robin Good
Despite the surge in interest in digital video by both the consumer and advertiser, there are still many components of video advertising that are confusing, making the need for standards and best practices essential. To leverage and navigate the fast growing online advertising marketplace, a basic familiarity with web video industry standards like key terminology, perfomance metrics and video ad formats has become a critical necessity.
For this reason and to address the need for greater business awareness around the potential that online video advertising offers, the International Advertising Bureau (IAB) has released an overview guide to make sense of the online video advertising business.
Inside this IAB guide to the online advertising marketplace, and to its standards and best practices, web publishers and content owners will find:
by Internet Advertising Bureau Digital Video Committee
Digital video advertising was born almost a decade ago after several seminal events, but many agree it was the sale of Mark Cuban’s and Todd Wagner’s Broadcast.com to Yahoo in 1998 for the sum of $5.7 billion that put digital video on the map.
During the early 2000s, as the Internet valuation bubble burst and the interactive industry regrouped, digital video progressed slowly.
As the interactive industry rebuilt, leaders such as Microsoft’s Windows Media Player, Yahoo’s Launch, The FeedRoom, and MSNBC’s video content inched the industry forward by selling "test" programs to blue-chip advertisers who wanted to learn about the medium and gain insight. CPMs tended to run on the high-end of the TV-CPM range and inventory was limited.
At this point, many believed that the future of digital video content lay in a subscription, rather than an ad-supported, business model.
In 2005 however, growth began to accelerate quickly. An explosion of companies from networks to content providers made both premium and user generated video content available as new revenue streams. Widespread adoption of high-speed internet connections and improvements in video.
Two events served to focus the advertising world on digital video’s bright future.
Video Advertising Operating Ecosystem
The operating ecosystem for video advertising can be complex and contains various entities, all of which play a different but vital role in the development, production and distribution of video advertising. These include:
and more. In an environment as fluid as the Internet, these roles are sometimes blurred and can be confusing. The following table lists the key video operating ecosystem entities along with a description of their functions:
- Web Sites and portals,
- Ad agencies,
- Networks,
- Measurement,
- Auditing,
- Research firms,
- Ad serving technology and service vendors,
- Video technology providers,
Content Experiences
With tens of millions of videos available online today and millions being added each month, consumers can view videos never before accessible through traditional mediums like television. Consumers can effortlessly go from watching a professionally produced television show to a 10-second clip of a friend describing their first year away at college. Although this universe of content is broad and varied, the disparity of video content can be classified into three main areas:
- Premier programming: gives users professionally produced content, generally, re-purposed from broadcast video and cable networks. There is a large amount of professionally produced video that has not been digitized but is quickly working its way online.
- Professionally-generated specialty programming: video content professionally but generally created for a specific subset of online video consumers. Whether it is original content for the web or content from traditional media like local news or community events, consumers are searching for and consuming video content relevant to their micro interests.
- User-generated video: consists of clips created and uploaded by everyday people and make up the largest volume of videos available online. Generally, the majority of these clips are watched by a small group of users but due to viral word-of-mouth messaging some become extremely popular and are viewed by millions.
While these categories may vary in production quality, time length, and resolution, consumers are drawn to each category for different reasons and a variety of video ad products have been developed to best fit each of these different experiences. See the video ad product compendium section below for more information.
Click to enlarge image
In May 2006, the IAB broadband committee (now the digital video committee) defined a video ad as a commercial that may appear before, during, or after a variety of content including streaming video, animation, gaming, and music video content in a player environment.
This definition included "broadband video commercials" that appeared in live, archived, and downloadable streaming content.
Since 2006, both the experiences and consumption of video content has evolved significantly. While the 2006 definition of a video commercial is still relevant today, newer video ad formats have been introduced to compliment these emerging types of video experiences and environments.
Through 2007 and into 2008, the most common digital video ad experiences were either viewed within or around "in-stream video", "in-banner" or "in-text" formats.
In-Stream Video Advertising
There are two core video ad product categories in today’s in-stream ad experiences. These are, "linear video" ads and "non-linear video" ads:
- Linear video ad: is presented before, in the middle of, or after the video content is consumed by the user, in very much the same way a TV commercial can play before, during or after the chosen program. One of the key characteristics of a linear video ad is that the user watch the ad instead of the content as the ad takes over the full view of the video. Examples of linear video ads include:
Because a user cannot experience the intended video content during a linear video ad impression, the ads are either placed before the content (also referred to as pre-rolls), between the content, or after the content.
- A traditional repurposed 15 or 30 second TV ad
- A purpose-built digital video ad product with interactivity inherent within the core video product experience
- A full screen display ad or bumper ad viewed within a video player
Note: the term "pre-roll" is also regularly referred to as a 15 or 30 second spot, but in this document "pre-roll" is used consistently as a description for the placement of the ad which is preempting the start of the video.
- Non-linear video ad: runs parallel to the video content so the users see the ad while viewing the content. Non-linear video ads can be delivered as text, graphical ads, or as video overlays. Common non-linear video ad products include:
- Overlays which are shown directly over the content video itself
- Product placements which are ads placed within the video content itself
Both linear and non-linear video ad products have the option of being paired with what is commonly referred to as a "companion ad".
- Companion ads: commonly text, display ads, rich media, or skins that wrap around the video experience, can run alongside either or both the video or ad content. The primary purpose of the companion ad product is to offer sustained visibility of the sponsor throughout the video content experience. Companion ads may offer click-through interactivity and rich media experiences such as expansion of the ad for further engagement opportunities.
The video ad products that publishers and vendors sell to media buyers are generally a combination of linear, non-linear and companion ad products packaged together in a compelling way. Popular combinations of in-stream ad formats include:
- Linear ads (A) + Companion ads (C)
- Non-linear ads (B) + Companion ads (C)
In-Stream Video Examples
The following section illustrates examples of different in-stream ads and combinations:
1. In-Stream Video Ad Example
In MSN’s video player example to the right, a linear video ad plays before the video content and is accompanied by a clickable, expanding 300 x 250 display companion ad product.
2. In-Stream Video Ad With Skin
In this example by heavy, a 1020(w) x 620(h) ad unit surrounds a video for the duration of the program and actually becomes part of the viewing experience.
3. In-Text Video Ad Example
Vibrant media’s screenshot to the right shows a user mousing over a relevant word which triggers a relevant video advertisement.
4. In-Stream Video Ad Overlay
This screenshot depicts a non-linear overlay ad product in an original show. The advertiser is McDonald’s in a broadband enterprises production "The fantastic two"
5. In-Stream Video Ad Overlay
In this screenshot, Yahoo! offers a non-linear overlay that is triggered by the user mousing over the video advertisement content. This overlay communicates a call to action to the user.
6. In-Stream Video Ad Overlay
This screenshot illustrates a non-linear overlay ad format with an accompanying companion ad to the right of the video.
The core metric used for currency in digital video advertising is a "digital video ad impression", also referred to as a broadband video commercial impression as described in the IAB’s broadband video commercial measurement guidelines released May 2006.
In 2006, the IAB’s broadband committee and measurement task force developed a set of broadband video commercial measurement guidelines.
Specifically, these guidelines determined at what point a video commercial is counted by defining a video ad as a commercial that may appear before, during, and after a variety of content including streaming video, animation, gaming, and music video content in a player environment.
The key point to this guideline is that the video impression is measured at the latest point possible in the delivery of the ad creative to the user’s browser, which is the closest opportunity to see by the user.
The 2006 measurement guidelines are still the basis for the currency of video buys in 2008, specific to in-stream, linear and most non-linear video ad products.
In the future as the IAB embraces new non-linear ad formats into the mix of standardized video ad products, careful attention will be paid to determining the proper currency metrics for these new formats where appropriate.
Other non-currency measurement metrics exist today but because of the amount of innovation in the medium, none have become standard.
The buyers of digital video advertising include the interactive and traditional ad agencies and extend to major marketers, long-tail marketers and resellers. For the most part, digital video advertising buying mirrors other media buying behaviors.
Today, most buying of digital video is being done by interactive agencies on behalf of the major marketers. Traditional agencies and buyers of traditional media have lagged thus far, but are entering the marketplace. Progress at agencies where digital buyers are working closely with traditional buyers presents a powerful model for the future.
The sellers of digital video advertising range from the largest portals and media companies to the most specialized user-generated content sites on the web.
The major online portals and broadcast media companies comprise the bulk of the video traffic and all have made strategic moves in both the content and technology space to insure their leadership positions.
The smaller content sites generally use both direct sales and/or network sales strategies to fulfill their inventory needs. To take advantage of incremental video advertising revenue many websites are now choosing to deploy in-text video advertising within their content pages.
Current pricing practices in digital video suggest that the medium is quickly maturing.
CPM-based pricing is the predominant model for buyers, particularly the In-Stream, Linear Ad format (pre-rolls, post-rolls, etc).
CPMs can span a wide range and are based on a number of factors including the quality of the site’s content and users, targeting capabilities, and individual programming.
The CPA and CPC models are also available and are the predominant measures for in-text video advertising.
These buying models are helping to bring large, direct marketing advertisers into digital video and long-tail marketers or "mom and pop shops" that have not had a place in the medium in the past.
Many brand-based advertisers believe the CPA and CPC models lend accountability to brand-based advertising where other media have traditionally struggled.
<span class="photocredit"The IAB digital video committee is comprised of IAB member companies who are committed to creating and implementing a comprehensive set of guidelines, measurement, and creative options for interactive video advertising. Additionally, the committee will educate markets and agencies on the strength of broadband as a marketing vehicle.
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Small enough to fit on your key chain, the MAKE Warranty Voider is the perfect companion for mobile fixing, hacking and MacGyvering. This is a limited offering with custom "MAKE: Warranty Voider" laser lovingly etched with care using a 35w laser.
More about the MAKE: Warranty Voider - Leatherman "Squirt" P4 (plier version)
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Small enough to fit on your key chain, the MAKE Warranty Voider is the perfect companion for mobile fixing, hacking and MacGyvering. This is a limited offering with custom "MAKE: Warranty Voider" laser lovingly etched with care using a 35w laser.
More about the MAKE: Warranty Voider - Leatherman "Squirt" P4 (plier version)
Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Toolbox | Digg this!
Existence is the ultimate proof of the possible. Every time a bold new project is tried, and works, we advance our sense of the achievable. Given how much transformation we need in order to meet the challenges we face, we need many more attempts at innovation, and we're not getting them. The achievable is not advancing quickly enough. ...Hmm, I dunno. Regulation is an impediment to innovation (for example, it's hard to play with cognitive radio when the FCC says that you can't talk in claimed bands, guard bands, etc). But SEZs are also places where countries have experimented with horrendous working conditions, human trafficking, rampant environmental degradation, and other subjects of regulatory "red tape." And it's not easy to say where one ends and the other begins -- take the cognitive radio example. If you've got a theory that you can use cooperative frequency-hopping, directional transmission with phased arrays, and other technologies to make more signal happen in the same spectrum, is the "safety" regulation that prohibits emitting in bands used by emergency services or radio astronomers "red tape" or "safety"?In many ways, the Global North is as hamstrung in the face of bright green challenges as China was in the face of capitalism. What if the answer is a sustainability and social innovation equivalent of China's answers: a sort of "Special Innovation Zone"?
Imagine a place -- perhaps a shrinking city, or a badly savaged brownfield neighborhood -- where laws were set up to strip rules and regulations down to a do-no-harm minimum (maintaining criminal laws and protecting health, safety, workers' rights and civil liberties, but perhaps limiting liability and certainly slashing red tape and delays) allowing for wild deviations from existing patterns for buildings, systems and operations. Imagine a free-fire zone for sustainable innovations, where new approaches could be iterated and tested rapidly, and, when they work, sent to proliferate outside the Zone. Conversely, some of the freedom might paradoxically come from imposing boundary limitations that can't yet be made practical or survive politically outside the Zone, such as bans on broad classes of chemicals or strict greenhouse gas emissions limits.
Special Innovation Zone: Imagination Without Regulation
(Thanks, Alex!)
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Steampunk Transhuman Artifacts
(Thanks, Marque!)
But to answer the question properly - what are we missing out on - my own regret is that I don't get to read French steampunk!MIND MELD: Guide to International SF/F (Part I ) (via Beyond the BeyondI know there's a lot of it - I did a panel on steampunk a few years ago in Nantes and it was horrible, being surrounded by steampunk writers telling me about their (very cool sounding) books and I can't read any of them! I'd also love to see some of the Chinese SF novels, and at least get a glimpse into the Arabic SF that's being published. I'd love to read some of the Cuban stuff... stop me when you've had enough. Israel has some very interesting home-grown YA fantasy at the moment. To be honest, the way I get to read non-Anglophone writers is mostly in the crime genre, which seems to be a lot more open to translating in the field - so the Cuban or Japanese or French writers I do read are crime writers - check out Detectives Beyond Borders, which is a great introduction. But I think things are changing in science fiction and fantasy a little, too. Certainly, since I started the World SF Blog I've been amazed by how much was out there - in English - translations from Korean and Spanish, writers who occasionally sell an English story but work predominantly in other languages, and a huge amount of articles, blog posts, online communities, a great deal of discussion, from people around the world who are simply passionate about the genre and want others to know about it, too. The problem with the old model of World SF was that it was Anglophone-led, but now it's not! The Internet's been a major catalyst in that regard. A few years ago, three German fans started InterNova, which was meant to be a magazine of international SF. They only managed to do one issue, and it was plagued with distribution problems, but the remarkable thing about it was that the initiative came from the outside, and the contributors, editors, proof-readers, translators - everyone involved - was likewise from the non-English world. And that was quite remarkable to me, this idea that you can do this, you don't need one of the old English writers or editors to do it for you. You can do it yourself. We're seeing more and more of this now, and the Internet's been great in allowing people from all around the world to communicate with each other, talk to each other, exchange ideas - there's a real cross-polination taking place, and it's very exciting and rewarding to be able to do that.
Meet the chief US ACTA negotiator: Kira Alvarez, the Deputy Assistant USTR for IP Enforcement (Thanks, Jamie!)
Ask MAKE is a weekly column where we answer reader questions, like yours. Write them in to becky@makezine.com or drop us a line on Twitter. We can't wait to tackle your conundrums!
Henry writes in:
There are several ducts and wall spaces I would like to be able to look in. They sell pipe inspection cameras but these are expensive because they are based on fiberoptics. I think an inexpensive video camera and a few LEDs would give you the length of a USB cable and the image could be captured on a laptop. Has anyone made such a thing?
Well, I haven't seen this particular setup DIYed for such a purpose, but I'm sure you could rig up something quite easily. They even make wireless spy cameras small enough to do the job you're talking about. A piece of flexible conduit would work nicely, as you could run the wires for the LEDs down to the handle, but a wooden rod would do the job. Just wire up your LEDs/battery circuit with the battery and switch at the handler's end of the operation, and surround the camera with the LEDs at the business end of the contraption (3 white LEDs wired in series with a 9V battery should do the trick).
When I was a kid, my parents took on a home remodeling project that ended up exposing the long-hidden colony of carpenter ants in the wall above the old sliding glass door. If they had one of these things, it probably would never have rained ants all over my dad! If you find anything cool in there, let us know! Here are some projects to get you started:
RC boat with cheap wireless video
From the pages of MAKE, Vol. 14 (Optics):
Living Room Baja Buggies by John Mouton. With wireless cameras on board, these radio-controlled racers give you virtual reality telepresence; Living Room Baja Buggies in the Digital Edition.
Covert Spy Sunglasses by Kip Kedersha. Record what you see and hear with these low-cost stealthy sunglasses; Covert Spy Sunglasses in the Digital Edition.
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The Raygun Gothic Rocketship is an impressive large-scale installation piece in the works by the same fine crew that created the Steampunk Treehouse. The rough sketch above gives a general sense of perspective (plus it just looks cool); the highest point of the structure is 40 feet. From the site:
The Raygun Gothic Rocketship is an immersive rocket base environment consisting of a tall metal rocket connected via walkway to a taller gantry with a well-defined lighted perimeter. Participants can interactively explore the rocket's three interior chambers accessible through the bottom of the rocket and the top of the rocket via the gantry. Aesthetically the project will be done in a rococo retro-futurist vernacular between yesterday's tomorrow and the future that never was, a critical kitsch somewhere between The Moons of Mongo & Manga Nouveau.
Inside, the three circular rooms have windows and are connected by ladders. There is a control room, a bio lab and observatory, and an engine room. All of the project's specs are listed in detail on the site. Naturally, the piece is headed to Black Rock City, NV, for this year's Burning Man.
Here are some fun video highlights of the Rocketship:
If you're in the Bay Area, hurry on over to the Desert Arts Preview going on as we speak (6:30 - 10 p.m.) at 1590 Bryant Street in San Francisco. Sean Orlando, Nathaniel Taylor, and David Shulman will speak on the past, present, and future exploits of the Raygun Gothic Rocketship. "Questions will be answered. Death rays will be autographed. Mysteries will be revealed. Surprises will be had. All are most heartily invited."
The average age of a Member of Parliament is 55. And I point that out, only to underline the fact that the average Canadian watches about 26 hours of television a week. Those under the age 25, it's about 12 hours a week. But they're consuming more media than ever before. But, they're consuming it where they want it on their iPhones and on their Blackberries and on their PVRs and on their laptops. And they're doing it through mechanisms that didn't exist.It's great to see some politicians at least having a sense of the opportunity, rather than the "threat" posted by new technologies. Hopefully he can back those statements up when the time comes.
And you'd be surprised the number of Members of Parliament who have never held an iPhone, who couldn't tell you, functionally, how a Blackberry works and have no idea how these things integrate. And when you ask the average member of Parliament "How do you consume your music?" They'll say "well, maybe I'll go out and buy a CD and drop it in the thing or maybe I'll hear something on the radio on the way" and you say "How do you watch movies" and they'll say "Well, I'll go out to the theater when I have the time on a Friday night or maybe rent a DVD at home" and you say "How do you listen to radio or get your news?" and they'll say "Well, I'll sit at 6 o'clock after the meal, finish a steak and watch the news, or get the paper in the morning."
The old way of doing things is over. These things are all now one. And it's great and it's never been better and we need to be enthusiastic and embrace these things.
I point out the average age of a member of parliament because don't assume that those who are making the decisions and who are driving the debate understand all the dynamics that are at play here. Don't assume that everybody understands the opportunities that are at play here and how great this can be for Canada. Tony is doing his job and I'm going to do my job and be a cheerleader and push this and to fight for the right balance as we go forward. The opportunities are unbelievable and unparalleled in human history.
Google China mess gets messier (China Economic Review, via @rmack)Gao (shown here during the broadcast) complained that the pornographic content on Google.cn was particularly harmful. He said in the interview, 'I have this fellow student and he's been curious about these kinds of things. He visited porn Web sites and ended up becoming absent-minded for a while.'
Which sounds pretty authentic. Viewing porn sites causes memory loss. Not a known syndrome but possible, possible.
Some viewers doubted the truth of Gao's comments and suspected that he had been coached beforehand. So an Internet search was carried out -- there is no place to hide -- and it appears that he is a current intern with CCTV. His page on the popular Chinese social networking site Xiaonei.com seemed to support the claim that he was working for the state broadcaster at the time of the interview.
Dylan Thuras is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Dylan is a travel blogger and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Joshua Foer.
As one who answers the Call of Cthulhu, I have a special interest in locations that have to do with Lovecraft or the Cthulhu mythos. Risking my grasp on reality and sanity I have assembled three places that display the distinct geometry of evil that occurs when Lovecraft and the Atlas Obscura meet:
The home of Jonathan Corwin, one of the judges involved in the Salem Witch Trials, which sentenced nineteen "witches" to hang and crushed one man to death in an attempt to make him confess to witchery. It is the only structure left with direct ties to the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692 and referenced in Lovecraft's "Dreams in the Witch House."
Danvers State Hospital for the Criminally Insane
The insane asylum was the basis for Arkham Sanatarium in H.P. Lovcraft's Horror stories and Batman's Arkham asylum but is now a horrifying condo. However a nearby cemetery where the residents of Danvers were buried went unmolested by the condo developers and is worth a visit. The hospital is referenced in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" and "Pickman's Model."
The Atlantic Avenue Tunnel was built in 1844, and is possibly the worlds oldest subway tunnel. The tunnel lay sealed and hidden under the busy Brooklyn street for almost 140 years until it was rediscovered by a twenty year old in 1980. One can take a tour of the site, which the discoverer of the tunnel still gives. Be prepared to enter via manhole in the middle of Atlantic Ave. Referenced (not by name, but Lovecraft was likely referring to it) as the location of devil worshippers in "The Horror at Redhook."
A much more detailed list of Lovecraftian sites can be found here at the HPLA , and great Lovecraftian travelogs here and here.
In today's Boing Boing Video episode: our mini-documentary of "Day in the Cloud," a mile-high frag-a-thon aboard two dueling Virgin America planes both eqipped with in-flight WiFi.
During the one-hour flights, bloggers and game dorks played games that required internet connections, to compete for netbooks and pure ultimate leetness over their foes.
Competing on the plane from Los Angeles to San Francisco (named "YouTube Air"): me (Xeni), Rob Beschizza from Boing Boing Gadgets, legendary internet hilarity farmer Ze Frank, web personality Shira Lazar, and Wei-Hwa Huang, former Googler and world puzzle champion.
On the plane from San Francisco to Los Angeles (named "Superfly"): Kid Beyond, singer, beatboxer, and game nerd.
Lessons learned: Google makes it easier to cheat. Absinthe makes it harder to win. WiFi makes flying less boring. Kid Beyond and Ze Frank are very funny. Wei-Hwa Huang is the guy you want on your team in a puzzle competition. And finally, Rob and I should stick to blogging/vlogging, and forget about competitive puzzle-solving.
Photos and more about the fragathon after the jump. Here are some photos from Eddie Codel, and more from Virgin.
Where to Find Boing Boing Video: boingboingvideo.com, and on-board Virgin America planes.
RSS feed for new episodes here, YouTube channel here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo. (Disclosure: Virgin American provided free travel services for Boing Boing Video crew and on-camera guests, and covered some production costs associated with this episode. Special thanks to Eddie Codel).
Sponsor shout-out: This week's Boing Boing Video episodes are brought to you in part by WEPC.com, in partnership with Intel and Asus. WePC.com is a site where users come together to "share ideas, images and inspiration about the ideal PC." Participants' designs, feature ideas and community feedback will be evaluated by ASUS and "will influence the blueprint for an actual notebook PC built by ASUS with Intel inside."
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