Archive for the ‘links’ Category

Digital rights in a restrictive age

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

One of the difficulties of working in the internet industry is we sometimes feel like we’re fighting a losing battle against regulation. Despite the new horizons the digital age offers:

state databases of our information are growing, yet our access to public information is being eroded,
copyright is becoming more restrictive, making a criminal out of a bedroom DJ who creates a mashup of old songs,
the songs, films, phones and hardware we buy are so crippled with copy protection and DRM that we sometimes can’t even use the damn things legally.

None of this is necessarily the government’s fault. In the absence of their own technical knowledge, legislators regularly turn to Big Business for advice. Unfortunately, some of Big Business (not all) profits by keeping these very restrictions in place. The customer, the end user, the public misses out.

The Open Rights Group was set up as the voice of the other side of the debate. They don’t want anarchy and piracy on the open internet seas; just a chance to protect civil liberties wherever they are threatened by the poor implementation and regulation of digital technology.

Of course, ORG is a volunteer organisation and needs funds. As they’re on a big recruitment drive, they’ve asked supporters to help spread the word: so, without wishing to be too brazen, I do recommend you check them out if you’re not familiar with them, and maybe consider whether you could support the consumer side of an often under-reported and one-sided debate.

Posted in links, music, privacy, web | No Comments »

Easter links

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008

Merlin Mann’s SXSW presentation – “uncomfortably sticky”
Interesting article on the controls of Shadow of the Colossus. Seems to me (and this was backed up by a chat with a friend in the industry) that gaming is not particularly au fait with interaction design, surprisingly. Here’s an example that breaks the mould
Shrine of the Mall Ninja
The most frequently used features in Office are Paste, Save, Copy, Undo and Bold
Women’s online video preferences are tamer than men’s

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Bulk discount

Tuesday, February 19th, 2008

I’ve not yet stopped buying CDs because I like having the physical artefacts. Mostly because I have a pretty decent hi-fi setup that trumps any MP3 in quality but, candidly, also thanks to mild music snobbery: the narcissistic chance that some visitor to my home will examine my collection and be suitably impressed. It does happen.

But my modest (615 CD, according to iTunes) collection pales into insignificance compared to this astonishing 3,000,000-strong record collection being sold on eBay. Reserve price: $3 million. Beyond my means – until, that is, eBay generously decided to offer $10 cashback.

Posted in links, music | 2 Comments »

February links

Monday, February 11th, 2008

Lasagna Cat – live action versions of Garfield strips, with ridiculous (Dadaist?) musical homages. I found it horribly funny, but then I do like nonsensical crap.
Cuts in movies, and their impact on memory
Joshua Porter on Why I’m excited about the Google Social Graph API (although, like Tom Morris, I loathe the term)
Here’s Looking At You – judging books by their covers
List of American words not widely used in the UK
GUI Magnets – Visio UI stencils meet fridge magnets

Plus, I recommend someecards.com for heart-warming St. V’s D schmaltz:

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FFFFound

Sunday, January 27th, 2008

Just to air my love of ffffound.com, a new image bookmarking site in private beta (as every new website is these days). Full of beautiful pictures like this:

At the moment I’m just taking the entire RSS feed, which will obviously become unmanageable once the userbase grows. No indication yet of whether there’ll be any easy way to navigate pictures in future (there isn’t yet), but for now it’s populating my /Inspiration folder magnificently.

Posted in design, links | 1 Comment »

New Year links

Saturday, January 5th, 2008

Australia plans web censorship, as seen in China, North Korea etc. For bonus points, they’re even using that truly idiotic “free speech = kiddie porn” argument. The web’s too important to be left to politicians.
Matt Webb’s 2007 braindump is fascinating reading, if rather heavy going.
Create unpleasant photographs by replacing people’s eyes with mouths.
Stop storyboarding now!
DRM is dead – what a difference a year makes…
Regret The Error 2007 – the year in media errors and corrections. Highlight: “A story on Page B4 on Wednesday about foraging for edible mushrooms contained a photo of amanita muscaria, which is a poisonous and hallucinogenic mushroom.”

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All I want for Christmas…

Monday, December 17th, 2007

Been busy working on exciting things (I’ll post them when they’re done), drinking Christmastide pints, and watching Pitchfork’s Top 50 music videos of 2007.

It’s not that I’m opting out of Christmas. I’m just doing it my own way. A little selfish, yes, but really all I want to do this year is relax, walk around North London on Christmas morning, and spend some time in a quiet office working on interesting ‘big picture’ stuff (thus saving myself time off for when it’s hectic and stressful).

I also plan to catch up on my blogging and guitar playing, two things I’ve rather neglected this year. Still haven’t recorded Letter From Don Quixote To Dulcinea Del Toboso, still haven’t posted my thoughts on the new BBC site (in short, a good effort given the undoubted politics of that organisation). All in good time.

Some stocking filler links:

Assessing your team’s UX skills
The nine most badass Bible verses
Portal: a feminist subversion of the first-person shooter genre? (see previous post)
50 Cent: Filesharing doesn’t hurt artists (who knew he had a brain?)
How much punishment can a robotic dinosaur take?

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November links

Monday, November 12th, 2007

Stop, filler time.

How To Be Ugly – the rise of New Brutalism in design
Google v Yahoo homepages over the last ten years
Why percentages don’t add up – which is scarier: a medical procedure with a 95% survival rate, or one that kills 1 in 20 people?
Spam One-Liners – “experiments in hand lettering… an ongoing series based on spam subject lines in my mailbox” (see below)
The Red Rings Of Death t-shirt – Xbox 360s as HAL