Mindjack - Daily Relay

1.5Gb Closer to a PDA/Phone/iPod

2004-09-07T13:45:00.000-03:00

Samsung has shown what they hail as the worlds first hard-drive based phone. The gadget has a (not)whopping 1.5Gb hard drive. Although not a world shaker - except for the $800 price tag - it's a start. As much interest is that the unit "also features an FM radio, 64-voice polyphonic ringtone support, a 240 x 320 display and TV output." For sale only in Korea starting next month.

Spike Lee's Inside Man "machinima"

2006-04-17T15:07:00.000-03:00

A bit late with this one, but the Hollywood Reporter has an interesting article on what went into the creation of the "machinima" piece used in Spike Lee's movie Inside Man. Although I'm not sure if using 3D Studio Max and Maya technically qualifies as machinima.

Lee asked for the sequences to show two black characters in a ghetto environment dressed in West Coast-style gangster attire: baggy white T-shirts, baggy pants, do-rags and Timberlands. Alba digitally photographed reference stills of buildings near the Marcy Projects in Brooklyn. Portions of "Gangstas" were pre-visualized in 3D Studio Max, then stills were imported as textural samples and added to animated cut scenes created in Maya.

Alba said House of Pain considered using a gaming engine to create an actual machinima for the movie, but they wanted complete control of the animation. The sequence also needed to play both in-camera as a practical playback on the kid actor's PlayStation Portable and also had to be rendered out to play onscreen in full film frame resolution (2K or 4K files), which a professional animation tool like Maya supports.

Microsoft censoring Chinese blogs

2005-06-14T14:18:00.000-03:00

BBC News reports that Microsoft is censoring users of its MSN Spaces blog service in China, blocking words like "freedom", "democracy", and "demonstration". According to the BBC, Microsoft's response is that they abide by the laws, regulations and norms of each country it operates in.

Will Wright's GDC keynote

2006-04-06T15:33:00.000-03:00

Will Wright is arguably the most influential person in video games. He's the creator of SimCity and The Sims, and his upcoming game, Spore, already has people tossing around phrases like "best game ever," even though no one has actually played it. Much of that excitement came from Wright's keynote speech at last years Game Developers Conference, where he showed off the game to a stunned crowd. His speech at this year's conference took a different approach, focusing on the research process behind games like Spore, but looks like it was no less interesting. GameSpy has a wrap-up:

Real artists are able to embed deep messages in creative forms. Will Wright pointed out that Stanley Kubrick is his creative hero. Kubrick is also a fan of heavy research, and you can see the results in landmark films like 2001, which made space travel real for so many people. Wright strives to have that level of depth in his games.

The Rise of the Toilets

2005-04-05T13:56:00.000-03:00

Two recent short articles from BBC News Online ("City toilets rise to the occasion") and the Register ("Rise of the man-eating cyberloo") are pointing at the installation of futuristic retractable urinals in the center of Aberdeen, Scotland.

The City Council considers that there are not enough public toilets, especially at night and that these 6 feet retractable toilets will prevent men to urinate in the streets. These Urilifts will be remotely controlled by city employees and can welcome three men simultaneously.

There is also a version for women, called Urilady, but apparently the City Council is not considering such an installation for the moment. This overview contains other details, references and pictures, including one from the Urilady, neglected by the press -- and the City Council.

BlogOn Wrap-up

2004-07-25T22:14:00.000-03:00

The BlogOn conference on "the business of social media" wrapped up on Friday. J.D. Lasica has some good coverage of the event as well as a photo album on his blog.

EFF Brings Class Action Suit Against Sony

2005-11-22T00:53:00.000-04:00

Via BoingBoing: The EFF has filed a class action lawsuit against Sony BMG over the company's DRM practices, specifically that recently used on a number of Sony music CDs. From the EFF press release:

The suit, to be filed in Los Angeles County Superior court, alleges that the XCP and SunnComm technologies have been installed on the computers of millions of unsuspecting music customers when they used their CDs on machines running the Windows operating system. Researchers have shown that the XCP technology was designed to have many of the qualities of a "rootkit." It was written with the intent of concealing its presence and operation from the owner of the computer, and once installed, it degrades the performance of the machine, opens new security vulnerabilities, and installs updates through an Internet connection to Sony BMG's servers. The nature of a rootkit makes it extremely difficult to remove, often leaving reformatting the computer's hard drive as the only solution. When Sony BMG offered a program to uninstall the dangerous XCP software, researchers found that the installer itself opened even more security vulnerabilities in users' machines. Sony BMG has still refused to use its marketing prowess to widely publicize its recall program to reach the over 2 million XCP-infected customers, has failed to compensate users whose computers were affected and has not eliminated the outrageous terms found in its End User Licensing Agreement (EULA).

The MediaMax software installed on over 20 million CDs has different, but similarly troubling problems. It installs files on the users' computers even if they click "no" on the EULA, and it does not include a way to fully uninstall the program. The software transmits data about users to SunnComm through an Internet connection whenever purchasers listen to CDs, allowing the company to track listening habits -- even though the EULA states that the software will not be used to collect personal information and SunnComm's website says "no information is ever collected about you or your computer." If users repeatedly requested an uninstaller for the MediaMax software, they were eventually provided one, but they first had to provide more personally identifying information. Worse, security researchers recently determined that SunnComm's uninstaller creates significant security risks for users, as the XCP uninstaller did.

Online funeral ambushed

2006-04-07T14:15:00.000-03:00

Mark Federman points to a report of an ambush that took place in World of Warcraft, where a funeral was being held for a player that had actually died in real life. Video of the event is here. In the comments on ShoutWire, the responses to the incident are sharply divided, with some saying it's just a game and the players fairly took advantage of a situation, and others saying the memorial should have been respected.

Federman adds: "I'm often asked about the relative reality of the goings-on - including relationships - in the cyberworld. My answer, derived from the medium is the message, is always the same: If the effects persist when the computer is turned off, it's real. Mediation is a confusing bitch: the content blinds us to the true effects that work us over, whether we consciously realize it or not."

Well co-founder Larry Brilliant named director of Google.org

2006-02-25T14:12:00.000-04:00

Google announced this week that they have named Well co-founder Larry Brilliant as director of Google.org, the company's philanthropic organization. According to Google, Google.org focuses on areas like global poverty, health, energy and the environment and has made over $7 million in investments and grants to date.

[Via BoingBoing]

Lessig gives virtual talk

2006-01-20T14:15:00.000-04:00

Author and Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig gave a talk in the virtual world of Second Life on Wednesday, Wagner James Au (a.k.a. Hamlet Linden) has the first part of the transcript up on his site, New World Notes.

Microsoft Launches New Search Engine

2004-11-11T14:51:00.000-04:00

Microsoft launched MSN Search today (still officially in beta). Search guru John Battelle has a good overview of the main points on his blog.

Major League Gaming announces deal with USA Network

2006-04-17T14:40:00.000-03:00

The Associated Press reports (via The Globe & Mail) that Major League Gaming, the world's largest organized video gaming league, has signed a deal with USA Network tha will bring video game competitions to TV later this year. "This is the sign that pro gaming has finally arrived to the mass market," said Matthew Bromberg, MLG's president and chief operating officer. "It's like poker was two years ago, or NASCAR 15 years ago."

Disney to offer free, ad-supported TV shows on the web

2006-04-12T15:37:00.000-03:00

Disney is set to offer four TV shows, including "Lost" and "Alias" for free on ABC.com beginning in May, the AP reports (via The Globe & Mail). The shows will have ads that can't be skipped, unlike the videos ABC currently sells on iTunes for $1.99. New episodes will be available the day after they air on ABC. It appears to just be an experiment to gauge interest, however, and will only be available for two months.

Google defends self-censorship in China

2006-04-12T17:22:00.000-03:00

Google's CEO Eric Schmidt today defended the company's practice of self-censorship in its Chinese-language search engine, saying "we believe that the decision that we made to follow the law in China was absolutely the right one,” the AP reports (Via MSNBC). Schmidt also said "I think it's arrogant for us to walk into a country where we are just beginning to operate and tell that country how to operate," adding that "[t]here are many cases where certain information is not available due to local law or local custom."

Currently, searches originating in China on topics like Taiwan, Tibet, and democracy are filtered.

[Via Google Blogoscoped]

Forrester report: 1% use podcasts

2006-04-07T14:59:00.000-03:00

According to Forrester Research, just 1% of online households in North America regularly use podcasts. Forrester's Charlene Li adds that "when you include all of the people who are just interested or have used podcasts, they strongly favor listening to existing content like Internet radio or broadcast radio, not necessarily new content."

Our pal and occasional contributor Tony Walsh offers a few thoughts on why the number is so low:

Nobody knows what a "podcast" is, or thinks it's Apple-exclusive technology.
99% of podcasts are crap.
Even if someone knew what a podcast was, and knew of a good podcast to listen to, usability/interface barriers are too high.

Joshua Ellis' Trinity essay

2006-04-06T14:07:00.000-03:00

Following up the last post, Joshua Ellis has just posted his excellent essay: Dark Miracle: Trinity, the Manhattan Project and the Birth of the Atomic Age. It's a must read.

There's an old story that in the hours before dawn on July 16th, 1945, a young woman named Georgia Green was being driven back to school at the University of New Mexico by her sister Margaret and her brother-in-law Joe. Suddenly, she saw a bright flash of light, and she gripped Joe's arm hard enough to make him swerve the car. "What's that light?" she asked.
The thing is, Georgia Green was blind.
At that moment, some fifty miles away, a tall, gaunt man in a porkpie hat was also staring at the light, through a pair of darkened welder's glasses. He was the architect of Georgia Green's dark miracle, and he was very, very tired -- as tired, perhaps, as anyone can be and still move and breathe. It had been a long road coming out to this empty desert spot, which he called Trinity. It had been a long war.

Continue reading here.

Ed Grothus and the Black Hole museum/junkyard/surplus store

2006-04-05T16:05:00.000-03:00

Erstwhile Mindjack contributor Joshua Ellis took a trip to the Trinity nuclear test site in New Mexico recently and has been blogging along the way. Now he's posted a great video he shot of Ed Grothus, former nuclear bomb maker and proprietor of the Black Hole, a surplus store and museum "dedicated to the detritus and ephemera of the Los Alamos National Laboratory."

The New York Times vs. The New York Times

2006-04-05T15:31:00.000-03:00

What happens when the online edition of a newspaper is better than the print edition? Slate's Jack Shafer cancels his subscription.

Apple lets Mac users run Windows (officially)

2006-04-05T13:28:00.000-03:00

Apple has just released a beta version of a program called Boot Camp, which lets users of Intel-based Macs choose to boot either Mac OS X or Windows XP, BBC News reports. The software will be standard in the next release of OS X. The announcement comes just a few weeks after a pair of enterprising individuals came up with their own solution for running Windows on a Mac, and won a $13,000 bounty in the process.

Danah Boyd on the O'Reilly Factor

2006-04-04T23:54:00.000-03:00

Danah Boyd was on The O'Reilly Factor last week discussing MySpace and has now posted the video on YouTube. It should be noted -- but wasn't by Mr. O'Reilly -- that MySpace is owned by News Corp, which also owns Fox News.

[Via plasticbag.org]

YouTube's 'Bowiechick' influences, doesn't sellout

2006-04-04T21:00:00.000-03:00

A YouTube user going by the name Bowiechick sparked interest in Logitech webcams when a video she created with one was viewed over 300,000 times last month. But, as CNET News.com reports, she didn't sell out to Logitech when she later did a video demonstrating the camera, which itself was viewed almost 200,000 times. The videos were so popular that they appparently caused a short spike in sales of the cameras on Amazon. After Logitech noticed the popularity of the videos they offered Morrision a free Logitech product of her choice, but she hasn't yet taken them up on that offer. She also said that at least one website has offered to pay her if she mentioned the site, although she hasn't yet agreed to that either.

Michigan violent video games law struck down

2006-04-03T20:52:00.000-03:00

GameDaily Biz reports that a Michigan judge has struck down a state law that tried to ban the sale of violent video games to minors, ruling that the law was unconstitutional and could not be implemented.

The state of Michigan had argued that the interactive nature of video games made them less entitled to protection under the First Amendment. But Judge George Caram Steeh shot that argument down, saying "[t]he interactive, or functional aspect, in video games can be said to enhance the expressive elements even more than other media by drawing the player closer to the characters and becoming more involved in the plot of the game than by simply watching a movie or television show," adding that "[i]t would be impossible to separate the functional aspects of a video game from the expressive, inasmuch as they are so closely intertwined and dependent on each other in creating the virtual experience."

The Entertainment Software Association's statement on the decision is here.

Chevy gets a taste of culture jamming

2006-04-02T22:26:00.000-03:00

Chevrolet recently launched a website where it lets visitors create their own advertisements for the new Chevy Tahoe SUV. But, as World Changing points out, there's nothing stopping anyone from creating ads that criticize the Tahoe and SUVs. Here is one example. A number of sites, including Network-Centric-Advocacy and Total Tactics, are collecting links to user-created ads, although some have already reported cases of ads being censored.

[Via Kris Krug]

U.S. senators introduce CDC video game investigation bill

2006-03-10T14:07:00.000-04:00

Gamasutra reports that a group of U.S. senators including Democrats Joseph Lieberman, Hillary Clinton ad Dick Durbin and Republicans Rick Santorum ad Sam Brownback have managed to convince a Senate committee to initially approve a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that would examine video game ad other electronic media use. Lieberman first introduced the bill in 2003, saying "For one thing, we should know whether games like Grand Theft Auto that celebrate violence against women, beyond being sick and offensive, are actually leading to more violence against women." That first bill allocated some $90US for the study, but no figure has been confirmed for this new study.

SIRIUS co-branding in latest Tony Hawk Game

2005-10-19T11:56:00.000-03:00

Tony Walsh brings up an interesting point in his post on the integration of the SIRIUS brand in the latest Tony Hawk Game. With so much advertising in games these days, why aren't they cheaper?