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May 31, 2004

My favorite Brooklyn Heights take-out place

Cucina La Traviata

Posted by vanevery at 08:29 PM | TrackBack

International Country Calling Codes

International Country Calling Codes and World Time Zones

Posted by vanevery at 08:00 PM | TrackBack

Hot Spot in a Box

Boingo Wireless - Hot Spot in a Box
From the site:
The Boingo‚Ñ¢ "Hot Spot in a Box" will enable you to quickly and easily offer commercial high-speed Wi-Fi Internet service in your location and start earning revenue right away! Enabling the Boingo "Hot Spot in a Box" at your venue will put you on the cutting edge of technology, attract new patrons to your location and make you money!

Posted by vanevery at 07:22 PM | TrackBack

Need a Max object, look here:

Max Objects Database
From the site:
We all waste time in looking for objects and unless having the memory of a genius, it's impossible to keep in mind all of them and what they are designed for.

Posted by vanevery at 07:20 PM | TrackBack

Aerial photo madness

NPR : Database Nation
From NPR:
May 4, 2004 -- As subscribers pull the June Reason magazine out of their mailbox, something about the issue should look familiar. The magazine published 40,000 individualized covers displaying an aerial photo of the subscriber's home and the surrounding neighborhood.

Posted by vanevery at 07:18 PM | TrackBack

Grants grants and more grants

The Foundation Center - Helping grantseekers succeed, helping grantmakers make a difference

Posted by vanevery at 07:16 PM | TrackBack

Go international

Arts International-About AI
Showing work overseas, Art Internation can help:
Creation of Projects & Partnerships that help to identify, develop, and circulate new work crossing borders worldwide.
Development of Advised Funds and Regranting Programs that provide support to artists and arts organizations engaged in international work.
Use of New Technologies & Media to share information, reach new audiences, educate and serve the public, and create connections among artists and cultural organizers around the world.

Posted by vanevery at 07:11 PM | TrackBack

Wearables conference

ISWC '04
Colocated with IEEE and ACM International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality
From the site:
ISWC 2004, the eighth annual IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers, will bring together researchers, product vendors, fashion designers, textile manufacturers, users, and all other interested parties to share information and advances in wearable computing. We invite you to attend ISWC 2004 and submit to one or more of the following categories: papers, posters, demonstrations, tutorials, and exhibits.

Posted by vanevery at 06:53 PM | TrackBack

Internet radio goes ART

WPS1
From the site:
WPS1 presents a daily, 24-hour stream of music, talk and historic spoken-word programs focusing on contemporary art, music and literature from around the world.

Posted by vanevery at 06:46 PM | TrackBack

Record that audio

Ambrosia Software, Inc. -- utilities/freebies
From the makers of Snapz Pro X screen recorder software.
This explains it all:
WireTap is a free product for MacOS X 10.2 or later that allows you to record any audio playing on your Mac, saving it to a file for later listening or processing. This allows you to record news from Internet radio stations such as the BBC News, sound snippets from your favorite DVD movie, record the audio from a game, or even iChatAV conversations.
WireTap works using a simple tape recorder-like interface. Simply click the record button, and any audio playing through your Mac will be recorded to disk. WireTap can record any sound that is playing regardless of the source, so RealPlayer, iTunes, DVD Player, Windows Media Player, etc. are all supported.

Posted by vanevery at 06:43 PM | TrackBack

Throwing away something valuable?

NY WasteMatch Materials Exchange
From the site:
One companyís by-products can be another companyís raw materials. The Materials Exchange is a free service that matches generators of valuable commercial waste and surplus goods with organizations that can reuse them. Waste producers sell what they once paid to throw away; reusers obtain materials for free or at low prices.

Posted by vanevery at 06:30 PM | TrackBack

PPC emulation - MacOS X on a PC

PearPC - PowerPC Architecture Emulator

Posted by vanevery at 06:27 PM | TrackBack

Engadget reviews some ITP work

Engadget visits NYU's ITP Spring Show - Engadget - www.engadget.com

Posted by vanevery at 06:25 PM | TrackBack

Making MacOS X into a Kiosk

macosxlabs.org - Documentation

Posted by vanevery at 06:23 PM | TrackBack

Some notes and a forum regarding DivX, 3ivx and VLC on the Mac

macosxhints - Play any DivX file using QuickTime Player
Some suggestions for Ogg and MPlayer as well.

Posted by vanevery at 03:56 PM | TrackBack

3ivx MPEG-4 D4 4.5

3ivx D4 4.5 - MPEG-4 Audio and Video Compression
A very nice looking and efficient MPEG-4 codec. Compatible with QuickTime's built-in MPEG-4 decoder!

Posted by vanevery at 03:45 PM | TrackBack

Microsoft Research: building a Memex

Stuff I've Seen - Home Page
More about Vannevar Bush's Memex
From the site:
SIS is a prototype tool that makes it easy for you to find information you've seen before, whether it came as email, attachments, files, web pages, appointments, tablet journal entries, etc. We do this by providing a single unified stored of different sources and providing an interface with quick sorting, filtering, previews and thumbnails.

Posted by vanevery at 02:33 PM | TrackBack

A nation of debtors

Maxed Out Generation - A Consumer Debt Blog
I've been thinking about the massive debt that I have incurred as a result of school. It was quite a wake-up call for me to look at the total owed on credit cards and student loans in relation to my income (which is $0 right now) and monthly expenses.
This blog offers a sympathetic human perspective to the problem.
From the blog:
Millions of people are caught in the trap of credit dependence. There is a silent epidemic of shame and anxiety because our society perpetuates the belief that this problem is self-inflicted, that people who have debts are deadbeats. Meanwhile, credit card companies keep coming up with new ways to deceive us and to keep us locked in debt, with the help of our lawmakers. This blog explores the human side of debt, what the credit industry doesn't want us to know, and strategies for survival.

Posted by vanevery at 02:24 PM | TrackBack

future physical

Future Physical
Looks to be a British art group that commissions performances, research and events that stretch the boundaries between the physical and real.

Posted by vanevery at 11:24 AM | TrackBack

Clay's talk about games, rules, code and the real world

Shirky: Nomic World: By the players, for the players
In this talk (edited version online), Clay Shirky discusses code as the rules and structure of virtual worlds (online multiplayer games). Much is stated about the structure that these worlds might assume if control was given to the players and what the out-comes might be. In the end he states: "We should experiment with game-world models that dump a large and maybe even unpleasant amount of control into the hands of the players because it's the best lab we have for experiments with real governance in the 21st century agora, the place where people gather when they want to be out in public. "

Posted by vanevery at 10:59 AM | TrackBack

May 30, 2004

Wow! Japan copyright laws worse than ours..

Japanese website closed after screenshot-related arrest - Ferrago
From the story:
Reports this morning inform us of the rather troubling news from Japan that the owner and Editor of popular online gaming site Gamesonline, one of Japan's most popular news sites, has been arrested for alleged breach of copyright concerning screenshots used on his website.

Posted by vanevery at 11:57 AM | TrackBack

Documentating a defense of open source

Welcome to the Grokline Project: Grokline's UNIX Ownership History Project
From the site:
This is an open, community-based, collaborative research project, a living history, designed to carefully trace the ownership history of UNIX and UNIX-like code with the goal of reducing, or eliminating, the amount of software subject to superficially plausible but ultimately invalid copyright, patent and trade secret claims against Linux or other free and open source software. If there is any code out there that represents a conceivable risk of that kind, we'd like to identify it and mitigate the litigation risk now. If there isn't any valid claim that can be made, we'd like to be able to prove it.

Posted by vanevery at 11:54 AM | TrackBack

RIAA: We must not allow any use, let alone fair use

Mindjack - Will Digital Radio Be Napsterized? by J.D. Lasica
From the article:
The Recording Industry Association of America has discovered that digital radio broadcasts can be copied and redistributed over the Internet.
The horror.
And so the RIAA, the music business's trade and lobbying group, has asked the Federal Communications Commission to step in and impose an "audio broadcast flag" on certain forms of digital radio.

Posted by vanevery at 11:52 AM | TrackBack

Clear Channel using patent to keep bands from selling concert CDs

RollingStone.com
Another example of patent abuse.
From the story:
Artists net about ten dollars for every twenty- to twenty-five-dollar concert CD that's sold, no matter which company they use. But with Clear Channel pushing to eliminate competition, many fear there will be less money and fewer opportunities to sell live discs. "It's one more step toward massive control and consolidation of Clear Channel's corporate agenda," says String Cheese Incident manager Mike Luba, who feuded with Clear Channel last year after promoters blocked the band from using CD-burning equipment.

Posted by vanevery at 11:46 AM | TrackBack

May 23, 2004

More evidence of video based networks turning to Flash

Streamingmedia.com: Flash Powers Comcast.net's Innovative Video Browser
The interface is a bit funky but the review is glowing. Sounds a lot like what a dot bomb company I was working for a few years back was trying to develop. I would like to see Flash open up a bit more and see some better authoring tools but it does seem as though they got some things right with the video streaming. All in all, pretty interesting, too bad it is the same content that can be found on TV.

Posted by vanevery at 08:50 PM | TrackBack

No need for Napster when you can just grab the songs from a stream

Replay Music
Although I have appreciated this type of functionality in software such as FreeAmp, I am not sure that I like this as a commercial product. Not only does it add fuel to the music industry's assault on online music services it deals a major blow to streamers who don't encrypt their streams (allowing greater player and platform choice) or do it just for fun without any hope of profit.
From the site:
Just play music from your favorite online radio station or streaming music service, and every song is saved on your PC as a high quality MP3 file, automatically tagged with the artist and song title, and perfectly separated into individual tracks.

Posted by vanevery at 08:28 PM | TrackBack

May 19, 2004

Linux 2.6 comes to RedHat's Fedora project

A Tip of The Brim With New Fedora Core

Posted by vanevery at 01:04 AM | TrackBack

Frontier "kernel" open sourced

Scripting News: 5/17/2004
Very nice.. Frontier is the kernel for other UserLand products such as Radio and Manilla. It will be interesting to see what comes of this.

Posted by vanevery at 01:02 AM | TrackBack

May 18, 2004

Nice C Tutorial

Howstuffworks "How C Programming Works"
Thanks to Josh for the pointer.

Posted by vanevery at 09:11 AM | TrackBack

Turn that Game Boy into an embedded development environment

Charmed Labs
Check out the Xport 2.0!

Posted by vanevery at 09:09 AM | TrackBack

The joy of statistics - Music sales actually up

RAIN: Radio And Internet Newsletter
The labels manipulate the numbers showing declining sales as a result of peer-to-peer file sharing. In truth, there are other reasons for the numbers and music sales at stores are actually up.
From the article:
Now here's where things get interesting: The RIAA forecast a 7 percent decline in recorded music sales for 2004, but data from market research outfit Soundscan, which measures point-of-purchase sales, shows a 10 percent increase in music sales when comparing the first quarter of 2004 to the first quarter of 2003...

Posted by vanevery at 09:07 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 17, 2004

What is the dominant party where you are right now?

Red | Blue from Gravity Monkey
Good illustration of some of the interesting software that may be developed with cell phones as they start integrating various technologies and bridges between them with J2ME.
From the site:
red | blue (pronounced 'red or blue') is a free Java app that figures out where you stand, or perhaps more accurately, where you are standing in our politically polarized country.

Posted by vanevery at 11:55 PM | TrackBack

Healthcare, grants and other services for artists

Fractured Atlas - a Non-Profit Arts Service Organization
Like the site says:
Fractured Atlas provides services, resources, and support to liberate a nation of artists. From healthcare to publicity to collaborative production grants, we supply critical tools for independent artists and arts organizations so they can focus on their creative responsibilities. By nurturing today's vital but underrepresented voices, we hope to play a role in fostering a dynamic and diverse cultural landscape of tomorrow.

Posted by vanevery at 11:04 PM | TrackBack

The truth about the H2 (Hummer)

FUH2 | Fuck You And Your H2
From the site:
The H2 is a gas guzzler. Because it has a gross vehicle weight rating over 8500 lbs, the US government does not require it to meet federal fuel efficiency regulations. Hummer isn't even required to publish its fuel economy (owners indicate that they get around 10 mpg for normal use). So while our brothers and sisters are off in the Middle East risking their lives to secure America's fossil fuel future, H2 drivers are pissing away our "spoils of victory" during each trip to the grocery store.

Posted by vanevery at 10:51 PM | TrackBack

May 15, 2004

Open hosting

Metawire Network open hosting
Sort of an open source model for server hosting.
From the site:
Metawire.org is a collaboritive effort between Daniel Selans and Eric Harrison to provide free shell, email, and webhosting at a quality of service unheard of on the Internet today. Metawire.org offers the most storage space, a diverse selection of domains to choose from, and a great underlying OS (OpenBSD) to power a new generation of free hosting services. Metawire offers unrivaled levels of service, poising itself high above any and all existing competitors.

Posted by vanevery at 09:00 AM | TrackBack

The empty black cube

On Tele-absence
Elliott has a nice write up on the concept and ideas behind Tele-absence (the opposite of Tele-Presence, something I have been spending the majority of my time on).
From the site:
I recently, along with Anees Assali, created a large black cube that sits motionless and visually impenetrable in a gallery space. Beyond its simple physical structure, the cube is also a web server with a fixed address. When viewers choose to visit the web site broadcast from the cube, they see a live video stream of its interior, which is empty. The cube does nothing other than serve up an empty space

Posted by vanevery at 08:44 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

A road trip THROUGH (not to) NYC

psychogeography project new york presents: The 24 Hour Road Trip - NYC

Posted by vanevery at 08:27 AM | TrackBack

jMax, Max for Java

freesoftware@ircam
A new version of jMax was recently released. For those of you who don't know, jMax is a version of the Max family of sofware (Max/MSP, PD and so on) that uses a Java front end.
From the site:
jMax is a visual programming environment for building interactive real-time music and multimedia applications.

Posted by vanevery at 07:38 AM | TrackBack

May 06, 2004

Linux Unwired, WiFi, Bluetooth and GPRS on Linux

oreilly.com -- Online Catalog: Linux Unwired
Anyone want to buy this book for me?
From the description:
Linux Unwired is a one-stop wireless information source for on-the-go Linux users. Whether you're considering Wi-Fi as a supplement or alternative to cable and DSL, using Bluetooth to network devices in your home or office,or want to use cellular data plans for access to data nearly everywhere, this book will show you the full-spectrum view of wireless capabilities of Linux, and how to take advantage of them.

Posted by vanevery at 07:35 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 01, 2004

Who wants to play Pac Manhattan

Pac Manhattan
This looks like fun, the pictures of Dens are hilarious. Hope they put up the videos soon!
From the site:
Pac-Manhattan is a large-scale urban game that utilizes the New York City grid to recreate the 1980's video game sensation Pac-Man. This analog version of Pac-man is being developed in NYU's Interactive Telecommunications graduate program, in order to explore what happens when games are removed from their "little world" of tabletops, televisions and computers and placed in the larger "real world" of street corners, and cities.

Posted by vanevery at 01:41 AM | TrackBack