Month: August 2006

Posted on

TechTV Redo with “Undo”

I’ve always had lots of respect for Leo Laporte, Kevin Rose, and Patrick Norton. They always struck me as some of the bright lights around a lot of dim bulbs at ZDTV/TechTV. They’ve certainly proven their commitment to technology, tech journalism, and technoculture. Almost immediately upon jumping the TechTV/G4 ship, as it was about to beach itself on the shores of MTV-land (or was it Frat House Island?), they began doing podcasts, both audio and video. Recently, they, and other TechTV alum, such as Chris Pirillo, have been talking about creating a sort of cut and paste network of their respective projects under one Web banner, i.e. the TechTV talent minus the network. (Talk about your post-broadcast television.) The results are UndoTV, or it will be, when the site actually launches. According to a short piece on Wired News:

“Pirillo and LaPorte hope to attract a sponsor and begin producing original content, but for now will let the site evolve from the ground up. Contributors will keep 100 percent control of the content they provide to the site, Pirillo wrote.”

Posted on

Kevin Kelly’s “Street Use”

Long-time Street Techies should know that we got our name from the William Gibson quote: “The street finds its own uses for things.” Street Tech patron muse Kevin Kelly, former Whole Earth editor, co-creator of Wired, and recently of Cool Tools, has a new site that was also inspired by the Gibson quote. Street Uses looks at the way that technology trickles down, gets used, abused, and hacked to neccessity. The caption for this entry reads:

” It would be hard to find a better example of “street use” than these hardened street trucks outfitted for desert war. A guy named Defensor Fortis, who was stationed in Iraq, posted some photos on Flickr of truck modifications performed by contractors. These are desperate attempt to protect a factory-issue truck from roadside bombs or enemy fire. They also boast their own artillery posts to return fire. When asked about the effectiveness of the jury-rigged armor Defensor said, “I have seen no proof, but I imagine they’re fairly safe from small arms fire and more than like fitted with “run flat” tires.”

[Via Boing Boing]

Posted on

Craft Zine Site Launched

We’ve been anxiously awaiting the premiere of Craft (Make’s sister pub) and its website, mainly so there won’t be all of those damn knitting projects on the Make blog anymore. We kid, we KID the needlepoint enthusiasts!

We actually are interested to see what O’Reilly does with the mag and what a slightly techophilic and geeky take on a crafts magazine might look like. I’ve also been writing for the mag, so I’m anxious for personal reasons.

While we wait for the appearance of the first issue of the mag, the blog has finally gotten under way (giving those needlpoint projects a *proper* home). There are also some projects up on the site and a sneak peek at the first issue of the magazine.

Posted on

Snowcrash Sees SecondLife

The early ’90s sci-fi novel Snowcrash, by Neal Stephenson, has found a second life, as a readable virtual book, in SecondLife (SL). The ground-breaking novel, with its Metaverse virtual world that mirrored the real one, was one of the inspirations for SecondLife, so it’s especially poignant to have it show up there as a virtual book. W. James Au, an “embedded journalist” working in SL, explains the book’s upcoming e-publication:

“The SL edition was created with the approval of Stephenson himself, then brought in-world by Fizik Baskerville of UK virtual world branding company Rivers Run Red, working with Penguin, Stephenson’s publisher.

“”We have only two hundred of them,’ Baskerville tells me, after offering an advance peek at the SL edition Snowcrash. ‘One is going in the Welcome Area. The others will be ‘lottery’ picks for discerning communities.’

“The SL edition, it should be said, only contains the book’s first forty pages, displayed on an accompanying HUD, with buttons to launch an hour of the book’s audio recording (or an ambient music channel for background reading music), and a button that launches a web browser, taking you straight to the Amazon page where you can buy the full version.”

James’s posting goes on to include a story about another Linden Labs employee’s encounter with Stephenson where he appeared dramatically under-enthused with the idea of a real-world answer to his fictional Metaverse. Worth checking out.

Posted on

Is “Clickless” Browsing in Your Future?

Those who are excited by (or are pushing) mouse-over content previewing, pre-fetching, and other strategies for so-called “click-free” or “clickless” navigation, claim that it’s the future of Web navigation. I don’t know about click-free, but I’m definitely down for some click less. The two tools on the forefront of this tech are Browster and Cooliris, both browser plug-ins. Both work with IE and Firefox. Cooliris works in Safari too.

Rafe Needleman of CNet recently talked with execs from both companies, about how their products work, and how they differ.

Posted on

Verizon to Host Free Game Servers

Interesting piece on Ars Technica about Verizon’s recent announcement that it will be offering free game server hosting as part of its PlayLinc service:

“PlayLinc was designed by Super Computer International, in which Verizon now owns a stake, and the client allows gamers to chat (using VoIP or AOL instant messaging), browse for game servers, manage teams, and launch games. But the real surprise is that the client also allows gamers to configure and launch their own servers for popular games—free of charge.”

They add:

“The servers can be made private or public, depending on whether you want to shoot at people you know or people you don’t know.”

Read the rest of the piece here.
Read the WSJ’s take here (paid sub required)

Posted on

It’s “BookTorrent” (Sorta)

Think of it as BitTorrent for books, or a free, dead-tree answer to Netflix. BookMooch is a community book exchange service where people send their unwanted books, real books, not electronic ones, to other BookMooch members. You can keep the books you receive, send them along to others, whatever you want. The books are free, but you have to pay for postage, and you have to be willing to give away some of your own books.

Unlike Lala (for CDs), PeerFlix (DVDs), and other services for exchanging unwanted media for wanted media, BookMooch does not charge for the transactions. The service itself is free. It IS a reputation system and there’s a maximum 5:1 ratio of books received to books sent out. The service just recently started and there are already some 1,500 registered members and 10,000 books in the community “library.”

[Via The Inquirer]

Posted on

If the Lo-Teks Held Workshops

For those of us who mourn the loss of Junkyard Wars, there’s now a traveling hands-on series of workshops called Scrapheap Challenge. The Challenge was created by a research fellow at MIT Media Lab Europe and an artist working with wearable computing and emergent communications infrastructures.

Each Scrapheap Challenge has a different theme (MIDI music devices, wearable electronics, DIY Urban, Street Hacking). There have been Challenges in Europe, the US, and Australia. There are a number of US events coming up later this year in California and Florida, so check the Events page on their site.

One of the things we love about this project, Make and the Maker Faires, Instructables, and a bunch of the other current DIY projects is the openess to people of different skill levels and ages and the willingness to teach those who have the interest but not the chops. A welcome change from the whole l33t h4x0r mentality.

[Thanks, Carl!]