This showed up in my email inbox today: Some TheStreet.com (TSCM, Strong Buy rated) investors have expressed concern about the possibility that Rupert Murdochs News Corp (NWS, not rated) could decided... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Jan 2008 | 12:38 pm
Daryn must have changed the tumblr player I blogged about last night because when I loaded this page this morning the player in the upper right of the blog now fits squarely in the sidebar and we can... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Jan 2008 | 11:11 am
Robert Scoble, who has long been proud of the fact that his popular blog remains free of advertisements or sponsorships, will soon put ads on his site, he told me yesterday. The change comes as part of... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Jan 2008 | 10:46 am
Here’s a quick update for you iPhone owners running OS X who want to get in on the 1.1.3 jailbreaking fun . We told you that Nate was working on a solution for Mac users, and he just... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Jan 2008 | 10:14 am
Nokia, the worlds largest mobile phone maker, sold four in every 10 phones globally for the first time at the end of last year, boosting full-year operating profits by 46 per cent to 7.9bn ($11.6bn). ... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Jan 2008 | 10:10 am
crosshatch brings us news out of Purdue University, where researchers are developing a radiation detection system that would rely on sensors within cell phones to locate and track potentially hazardous material. From the Purdue news service: "Such a system could blanket the nation with millions of cell phones equipped with radiation sensors able to detect even light residues of radioactive material. Because cell phones already contain global positioning locators, the network of phones would serve as a tracking system, said physics professor Ephraim Fischbach. 'The sensors don't really perform the detection task individually,' Fischbach said. 'The collective action of the sensors, combined with the software analysis, detects the source. Say a car is transporting radioactive material for a bomb, and that car is driving down Meridian Street in Indianapolis or Fifth Avenue in New York. As the car passes people, their cell phones individually would send signals to a command center, allowing authorities to track the source.'"
Top bidders put up a total of more than $2.4 billion on Thursday in the opening round of the Federal Communications Commission 's auction of coveted U.S. government-owned airwaves. CNN reports. ... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Jan 2008 | 9:56 am
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Market researcher IDC expects growth in the global market for mobile phones to slow to single digits from this year onwards after unit sales rose 11.6 percent last... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Jan 2008 | 9:55 am
Scientists have developed a technique that dramatically improves the success rate of face-recognition computer systems Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 25 Jan 2008 | 9:36 am
If you’re as big of a Star Trek: TNG fan as I am, you’ll immediately recognize this dome aquarium from Captain Picard’s ready room aboard the Enterprise-D. The aquarium was home to Livingston... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Jan 2008 | 9:20 am
The bookshop by my office has a huge, blown-up quote from George Orwell's 1936 essay "Bookshop Memories" over the counter, which inspired me to go look up the original essay. It's a hilarious, ill-tempered,... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Jan 2008 | 9:14 am
The bookshop by my office has a huge, blown-up quote from George Orwell's 1936 essay "Bookshop Memories" over the counter, which inspired me to go look up the original essay. It's a hilarious, ill-tempered, mean-spirited and vastly entertaining rant about what's wrong with the booky trade -- sure to be appreciated by recovering booksellers like me, and bookstore junkies (like me):
A bookseller has to tell lies about books, and that gives him a distaste for them; still worse is the fact that he is constantly dusting them and hauling them to and fro. There was a time when I really did love books — loved the sight and smell and feel of them, I mean, at least if they were fifty or more years old. Nothing pleased me quite so much as to buy a job lot of them for a shilling at a country auction. There is a peculiar flavour about the battered unexpected books you pick up in that kind of collection: minor eighteenth-century poets, out-of-date gazeteers, odd volumes of forgotten novels, bound numbers of ladies’ magazines of the sixties. For casual reading — in your bath, for instance, or late at night when you are too tired to go to bed, or in the odd quarter of an hour before lunch — there is nothing to touch a back number of the Girl's Own Paper. But as soon as I went to work in the bookshop I stopped buying books. Seen in the mass, five or ten thousand at a time, books were boring and even slightly sickening. Nowadays I do buy one occasionally, but only if it is a book that I want to read and can't borrow, and I never buy junk. The sweet smell of decaying paper appeals to me no longer. It is too closely associated in my mind with paranoiac customers and dead bluebottles.
TOKYO - A Japanese man suspected of creating a computer virus had to be arrested on a copyright infringement charge, police said Friday, in a case that highlights the nation's lack of... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Jan 2008 | 9:11 am
Earlier this month, I blogged about The Black Mustang Club -- a fan-club for owners of Ford cars -- being told by CafePress that they weren't allowed to publish their calendar because Ford had contacted CafePress and demanded that the calendar be removed on the grounds that it infringed their trademarks.
A few days ago, I heard back from Ford, with a different side to the story. According to them, they hadn't said anything of the kind to CafePress -- rather, Ford had taken the opposite tack, releasing tons of pictures and bric-a-brac under generous Creative Commons license to encourage Ford fans to do cool stuff with their work.
So what happened? After a few rounds of correspondence with CafePress, here's where I've netted out:
* Ford had previously sent very stern letters to CafePress about similar projects, warning them in no uncertain terms that CafePress had better not produce projects similar to the Black Mustang Club Calendar
* CafePress contacted the Black Mustang Club and either said "Ford told us that you can't do your calendar, because they control all images of their cars" or CafePress contacted the Club and said "Ford told us that we can't can't do projects like your calendar, because they control all images of their cars" (I haven't been able to reach the Black Mustang Club people to confirm which it was, though they certainly wrote that it was the former)
* Ford has since contacted CafePress and The Black Mustang Club to say that this project and future fan-run projects (that don't imply an endorsement by Ford) are OK -- this is consistent with trademark law and a reasonable position for them to take
There's a couple of interesting lessons for Ford and CafePress to take away from this. For Ford (and companies like it), the lesson is surely to tighten the reins on your legal department. When they send stern letters to online service providers that threaten legal action, the natural outcome is that OSPs are going to get gun-shy -- and they'll tell your fans that they can't do anything and blame it all on you. The usual overkill approach from corporate counsel will come back and bite you on the ass.
For CafePress, the lesson is to take your customers' side when the law is with them. Even if Ford did tell CafePress to kill the BMC calendar, they'd have been wrong. The BMC calendar is legal -- even without Ford's blessing -- and when you protect yourself from legal liability by shutting it down, you incur PR liability by seeming like a bunch of candy-asses who can be bullied into submission by a memo from some white-shoe legal goon from a Fortune 100. Word gets around.
I don't know that we'll ever be able to find out whether CafePress told BMC that Ford was down on their specific calendar, but at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. Ford's earlier letters on the subject clearly scared the hell out of CafePress, and CafePress's lawyers clearly need a refresher course in trademark and liability.
There's one very good piece of news to come out of this, though: Ford's program to let its fans do whatever they want with high-quality shots of the cars is a damned forward-looking and decent bit of strategy.
For the record, here's what Ford and CafePress had to say about this:
We have spoken to both CafePress and the Black Mustang Club and explained the situation about the Black Mustang Club’s calendar to everyone's satisfaction. Ford has no problem with Mustang or other car owners taking pictures of their vehicles for use in club materials like calendars, including the logos as they appear in the pictures of the vehicles. What we do have an issue with are individuals using Ford’s logo and other trademarks for products they intend to sell. Understandably, we have to take the protection of our brands and licensing very seriously.
Ford did not send the Black Mustang Club a “cease and desist” letter telling them that they could not use images of their own cars in their calendar. The decision not to allow the calendars to be printed was made by CafePress because we had contacted them in the past about trademark infringements on products they sold.
CafePress and Ford will work together to clarify and resolve any future issues.
The Black Mustang Club and other Ford enthusiast clubs are encouraged to take pictures of their own vehicles for use in calendars or other materials as long as they don't use Ford trademarks in products that will be sold. Clubs or enthusiasts who have questions regarding this should contact Ford by emailing branduse@ford.com, we are happy to help.
In fact, Ford is contributing to these types of enthusiast programs in forums, blogs and other social media platforms through our Social Media Press Releases at ford.digitalsnippets.com
I think it is great that the Black Mustang Club, and any other enthusiast club, would take pictures of their own vehicles for use in calendars or other materials.
I’m looking forward to purchasing a copy to hang in the garage next to my Mustang (even if mine isn’t black).
Sara Moufarrige-Doepke, PR Coordinator, CafePress:
1. We received a Cease and Desist from Ford several months ago. In
this document Ford asked that we remove (and continue to remove) user
created product images that feature Ford cars and logos. This included
current products, and future products.
2. In compliance with this request we remove images as they come
up, and then let the CafePress user (in this case BMC) know that they
have been removed or pended, and why (in this case a general Cease and
Desist from Ford).
3. Over the course of last week we spoke with Ford and reached an
agreement - Ford has revised their initial position making the photos of
individual's cars usable on CafePress merchandise.
To confirm, yes - we did receive a notification from Ford which covered
current and future user-created CafePress products featuring Ford cars
and logos. And no, this Cease and Desist was not directed specifically
at the BMC - however the BMC content in question was prohibited in the
general Cease and Desist we received several months ago.
I got some more info from the folks at cafepress and according to them, a law firm representing Ford contacted them saying that our calendar pics (and our club's event logos - anything with one of our cars in it) infringes on Ford's trademarks which include the use of images of THEIR vehicles. Also, Ford claims that all the images, logos and designs OUR graphics team made for the BMC events using Danni are theirs as well. Funny, I thought Danni's title had my name on it ... and I thought you guys owned your cars ... and, well ... I'm not even going to get into how wrong and unfair I feel this whole thing is as I'd be typing for hours, but I wholeheartedly echo everything you guys have been saying all afternoon. I'm not letting this go un-addressed and I'll keep you guys posted as I get to work on this.
Earlier this month, I blogged about The Black Mustang Club -- a fan-club for owners of Ford cars -- being told by CafePress that they weren't allowed to publish their calendar because Ford had contacted... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Jan 2008 | 8:59 am
By Andrew Liszewski Even though a lot of people were convinced the world would come to an end after Gizmodo’s TV-B-Gone stunt at CES, it seems the only real fallout will be security guards at future... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Jan 2008 | 8:56 am
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - The Universal Media Disc, a proprietary format for Sony's PlayStation Portable, may have failed as a movie format, but Sony's continued attempts to... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Jan 2008 | 8:32 am
A revision is blocked; it omitted retroactive immunity for firms sued for cooperating with the government. ... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 25 Jan 2008 | 8:00 am
Most have been children. At least 24 people have been hospitalized. California has 12 reported cases. ... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 25 Jan 2008 | 8:00 am
Meg Whitman, who raised funds for Romney, has been asking key Republicans about the possibilities, sources say. ... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 25 Jan 2008 | 8:00 am
Meg Whitman, who has been involving herself more deeply in the Republican Party, is said to be asking questions about the logistics of a run, sources say. ... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 25 Jan 2008 | 8:00 am
Federal prosecutors on Thursday identified Broadcom Corp. founders Henry T. Nicholas III and Henry Samueli as "unindicted potential co-conspirators" in an investigation into the illegal backdating of stock... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 25 Jan 2008 | 8:00 am
Today in my ongoing series of photos from my travels over the years: rows and rows of beautiful decorated papier maché skulls on sale on Venice Beach in Los Angeles.
Link
The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Stop The Spying campaign wants your help to send a message to Congress about granting immunity to telcos that broke the law and helped the NSA engage in indiscriminate mass surveillance of Americans. They're calling on US citizens to snap pictures of themselves holding anti-immunity signs that give city and state, and they're producing a gallery of these to present to Congress, to show the faces of the voters who believe in the Constitution.
# Get out your digital cameras, phone cameras, and webcams.
# Write your message on a piece of paper, and include your city and state.
# Take a photo of yourself holding your message. Be creative and make sure the message is readable.
Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel's spotted this feature on RoyalPingdom: "When data center cabling becomes art." My cabling tends to look more like an altar to The Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Link,
Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets)
The Secret Headquarters (my favorite comic store in LA) is finally selling their hilarious "God Save Stan Lee" tees online. My GSSL shirt has been just about my favorite garment for the past six months -- and now you can get one from anywhere.
Link
Interesting stuff afoot in the Congressional shuffle: "Hollywood" Howard Berman (who once proposed a law immunizing the entertainment industry for hacking innocent peoples' PCs while undertaking vigilante anti-piracy activities) looks set to leave the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property and chair the House Committee on Foreign Affairs (where the pork makes the money you get from entertainment giants look like small potatoes.
Likely to replace Berman is Rep Rick Boucher, who once proposed the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act (DMCRA), which would have reformed the DMCA to make it legal to break DRM in order to do lawful things. He's the closest thing to a copyfighter in Congress, and you can only imagine that putting him in charge of the House Committee that handles the Internet and copyright will certainly change the game.
God knows what Berman will do once he's running Foreign Affairs, though.
There's no guarantee yet that Boucher will get the job, and he and Berman still need to win their respective elections this fall, but even the prospect of a Boucher-controlled Internet and IP subcommittee in the House feels like an early Christmas present. As the Hollywood Reporter correctly notes, though, the full Committee is still chaired by John Conyers (D-MI), who comes from the Berman School of Thought on such issues.
Though happy about Sun Microsystems Inc.'s second-quarter results, investors remained wary about the server and software maker's ability to prosper under intensifying pressure from... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Jan 2008 | 7:11 am
Microsoft Corp. forecast a rosy 2008 _ despite broader economic worries _ after it blew by Wall Street's expectations for a second consecutive quarter. "We will be impacted just like... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Jan 2008 | 7:05 am
Etsy seller Takeahalliday's "Human Anatomy Science Patchwork T-Shirt" uses "different colored and textured fabric used in patchwork to represent the different human organs and rib cage." Lovely!
Link
(via Craft)
Walking-Things's Walking Chair looks like a chair, but it walks -- and you can't sit on it. And it costs €15,000 (which is like ten million American pesos). But the action of its motion (as documented on the site's unfortunately teeny videos) is pure incredibly awesomeness.
Link
(via Gizmodo)
El_Oscuro brings us a Washington Post update on the progress of Future Combat Systems, the U.S. Army's Linux-based operating environment that has been under development for several years. The project, which currently surpasses 63 million lines of code, has received criticism for having a scope greater than that which the Army can manage. Since the program's inception, integration of commercial applications has increased the amount of code, but has also saved the developers time and money. "Boeing and the Army said they chose not to use Microsoft's proprietary software because they didn't want to be beholden to the company. Instead, they chose to develop a Linux-based operating system based on publicly available code. Boeing's Schoen said that it is designing software so that if soldiers lose their connection, the software will automatically "heal itself," retrieving the information within seconds without rebooting."
Chris Harrison's "Visualizing the Bible" project maps every social relationship and cross-reference in the Bible, as compiled by Christoph Römhild.
Link
(via Kottke)
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the world on Thursday to put the looming crisis over water shortages at the top of the global agenda this year and take action to prevent... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Jan 2008 | 6:11 am
Microsoft Corp. forecast a rosy 2008 -- despite broader economic worries -- after it blew by Wall Street's expectations for a second consecutive quarter. Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 25 Jan 2008 | 5:16 am
Microsoft Corp. forecast a rosy 2008 -- despite broader economic worries -- after it blew by Wall Street's expectations for a second consecutive quarter. Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 25 Jan 2008 | 5:16 am
Microsoft Corp. forecast a rosy 2008 _ despite broader economic worries _ after it blew by Wall Street's expectations for a second consecutive quarter. "We will be impacted just like... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Jan 2008 | 5:10 am
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- WomensWallStreet.com has re-launched as DailyCents.com ( href="http://www.dailycents.com">http://www.dailycents.com ), a daily... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Jan 2008 | 5:00 am
Scientists have synthesised the complete DNA of a type of bacteria in another step in the quest to create artificial organisms. The experiment, published online by the... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Jan 2008 | 4:44 am
As_I_Please alerts us to the fact that a 20-year-old Estonian student has been fined for participating in DoS attacks against various Estonian political and governmental websites last May. The situation was notable because it escalated tensions between Estonia and Russia when the latter was accused of initiating the 'cyber-attack'. Quoting: "The fact that a single student was able to trigger such events is particularly ominous when you consider just how many potential flashpoints exist between various countries all over the world. The DoS attack against Estonia is an excellent example of how a cyberattack carried out by a 20-year-old student in response to real-life events further exacerbated an existing problem between two nations."
CAMBRIDGE, England and SAN FRANCISCO, California, January 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Autonomy Corporation plc (LSE: AU. or AU.L), a global leader in infrastructure... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Jan 2008 | 4:00 am
Christina Valencia points us to a Wired story about scientists who plan to use genetically modified mosquitoes to reduce the population of Dengue-carrying insects. The altered genes cause newly born mosquitoes to die before they are able to breed if they are not supplied with a crucial antibiotic. This is a more aggressive approach than the anti-Malaria work we discussed last year. From Wired: "Mosquitoes pass dengue fever to up to 100 million people each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Up to 5 million die. If the scientists can replicate their results in real field conditions, their technology could kill half of the next generation of dengue mosquitoes, which scientists say would significantly reduce the spread of the disease. If all goes well the company envisions releasing the insects in Malaysia on a large scale in three years."
Every imagine a clothing item which reads your vital signs, then beams that info to your computer? Smartex designs clothing that provides cover and style but also keeps its wearers healthy.
Clive Thompson takes a look at Cory Doctorow's novella, After the Siege -- a book, like most sci-fi's, are the only ones to tackle profound philosophical questions.
background image writes "According to Alan M Gershowitz, the doctrine of "search incident to arrest" may allow devices such as mobile phones, PDAs and laptops to be thoroughly searched without either probable cause or warrants [PDF download below abstract]. Incriminating evidence found in such searches may be used against you whether or not it is germane to the reason for the original arrest. He notes, 'Obviously, the framers of the Fourth Amendment could not have conceived of a handheld technological device like the iPhone, and courts have not yet been called upon to answer most of the difficult questions posed by such devices.' We've discussed similar search issues recently, as well as other privacy concerns related to modern technology.
Iddo Genuth writes "German scientists recently showed what many of us suspected but could not prove — some people just don't learn. The German researchers have found a genetic factor that affects our ability to learn from our errors. The scientists demonstrated that men carrying the A1 mutation are less successful at learning to avoid mistakes than men who do not carry this genetic mutation. This finding has the potential to improve our understanding of the causes of addictive and compulsive behaviors."
belmolis writes "If the CIA is right to attribute recent blackouts to cyberwarfare, cyberwarfare is no longer science fiction but reality. In a recent op-ed piece and a detailed scholarly paper, legal scholar Duncan Hollis raises the question of whether existing international law is adequate for regulating cyberwarfare. He concludes that it is not: 'Translating existing rules into the IO context produces extensive uncertainty, risking unintentional escalations of conflict where forces have differing interpretations of what is permissible. Alternatively, such uncertainty may discourage the use of IO even if it might produce less harm than traditional means of warfare. Beyond uncertainty, the existing legal framework is insufficient and overly complex. Existing rules have little to say about the non-state actors that will be at the center of future conflicts. And where the laws of war do not apply, even by analogy, an overwhelmingly complex set of other international and foreign law rules purport to govern IO.'"
hackingbear writes "Wired is reporting that researchers have created the longest synthetic genome to date by threading together four long strands of DNA. 'Leading synthetic biologists said with the new work, published Thursday in the journal Science, the first synthetic life could be just months away — if it hasn't been created already. [...] The ability to synthesize longer DNA strands for less money parallels the history of genetic sequencing, where the price of sequencing a human genome has dropped from hundreds of millions of dollars to about $10,000. Just a few years ago, synthesizing a piece of DNA with 5,000 rungs in its helix, known as base-pairs, was impossible. Venter's new synthetic genome is 582,000 base-pairs.' As a programmer, I'm most excited by the possibility of a new platform and the programming jobs that will be created by it."
A report penned by one of Microsoft's top security experts argues that Windows Vista had fewer known security flaws in its first year of release than other major industry operating systems. On the blogs, skeptics abound.
An anonymous reader writes "Via Daring Fireball, a post from design guru Edward Tufte's site discusses his views on the interface used by the Apple iPhone. The post includes a video presentation by Tufte on the subject of video resolution on the phone. His argument is primarily that while the iPhone does a lot of things very well, Apple hasn't quite realized the platform's full potential by making screen real estate all it could be. "
A 20-year-old man gets a modest fine for staging one of the denial-of-service attacks that had the Estonian government contemplating war on Russia. He lives in Estonia.
A new chip from Via Technologies, which supplies processors to ultraportables from OQO, Samsung, Packard Bell and others, promises to double the performance of the super-small computers in which it's embedded.
A new chip from Via Technologies, which supplies processors to ultraportables from OQO, Samsung, Packard Bell and others, promises to double the performance of the super-small computers in which it's embedded.
cheezitmike writes "ITworld.com uses the Wayback Machine to document the histories of five generic domain names: music.com, eat.com, car.com, meat.com, and milk.com. 'In this brave new Web 2.0 world, it's almost a badge of honor to have a Web site name that only hints at what the user will find there (see Flickr) or is so opaque as to offer no clue at all as to what the Web site is about (see del.icio.us). It's easy to forget the first Internet gold rush of the mid-to-late '90s, when dot-com domain names based on ordinary (and, investors hoped, marketable) nouns and verbs were snapped up by hopeful companies from the humble geeks who had purchased them (often ironically) in the early '90s.'"
An elite group of researchers wants to create a map of how your brain is wired. To do it, they've built a custom robot that peels 3-D brains like an apple, and pushes the resulting brain "tape" through an electron microscope.
Tesla's electric roadster will begin rolling off the assembly line in March -- with an "interim" transmission that will be replaced with an improved one, oh, sometime.
Illinois startup Coskata says it can make ethanol out of almost anything for under a buck a gallon. Environmentalists and energy experts are cautiously optimistic that the company may be on to something.
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A bookseller has to tell lies about books, and that gives him a distaste for them; still worse is the fact that he is constantly dusting them and hauling them to and fro. There was a time when I really did love books — loved the sight and smell and feel of them, I mean, at least if they were fifty or more years old. Nothing pleased me quite so much as to buy a job lot of them for a shilling at a country auction. There is a peculiar flavour about the battered unexpected books you pick up in that kind of collection: minor eighteenth-century poets, out-of-date gazeteers, odd volumes of forgotten novels, bound numbers of ladies’ magazines of the sixties. For casual reading — in your bath, for instance, or late at night when you are too tired to go to bed, or in the odd quarter of an hour before lunch — there is nothing to touch a back number of the Girl's Own Paper. But as soon as I went to work in the bookshop I stopped buying books. Seen in the mass, five or ten thousand at a time, books were boring and even slightly sickening. Nowadays I do buy one occasionally, but only if it is a book that I want to read and can't borrow, and I never buy junk. The sweet smell of decaying paper appeals to me no longer. It is too closely associated in my mind with paranoiac customers and dead bluebottles.
Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel's spotted this feature on RoyalPingdom: "When data center cabling becomes art." My cabling tends to look more like an altar to The Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Link,
Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets)
The Secret Headquarters (my favorite comic store in LA) is finally selling their hilarious "God Save Stan Lee" tees online. My GSSL shirt has been just about my favorite garment for the past six months -- and now you can get one from anywhere.
Link
Etsy seller Takeahalliday's "Human Anatomy Science Patchwork T-Shirt" uses "different colored and textured fabric used in patchwork to represent the different human organs and rib cage." Lovely!
Link
(via Craft)
Walking-Things's Walking Chair looks like a chair, but it walks -- and you can't sit on it. And it costs €15,000 (which is like ten million American pesos). But the action of its motion (as documented on the site's unfortunately teeny videos) is pure incredibly awesomeness.
Link
(via Gizmodo)
