Make’s open source gift guide
Our pals over at MAKE magazine have put together a fabulous list of open source gifts for geeks that encourage tinkering, riffing, remixing, building and tweaking:
There are hundreds of gift guides this holiday season filled with junk you can buy – but a lot of time you actually don’t own it, you can’t improve upon it, you can’t share it or make it better, you certainly can’t post the plans, schematics and source code either. We want to change that, we’ve put together our picks of interesting open source hardware projects, open source software, services and things that have the Maker-spirit of open source.
The list includes a DIY MP3 player, a wifi router running Linux, a high speed photography kit and even some open source beer (!). Make readers are adding to this one continuously, so be sure to add it to your holiday bookmarks.
Originally
from Lifehacker
reBlogged
by michael
on Nov 28, 2006, 12:00AM
The Second Life code performer
Second Life has been recently overwhelmed by a flood of “self-replicating” objects, dubbed “grey goo“, after the concept of out-of-control self-replicating nanotechnology.
It all started with gold rings that popped up in several areas of the virtual world. As users touched these rings, they starting replicating wildly and, eventually, the servers began creaking under the strain of the additional activity, forcing SL’s owners to block all logins but their own for 25 minutes. The event caused quite a stir in the blogosphere and at the Linden Lab HQ. Now, Grey Goo is also the name of a “code performance” by artist Gazira.
Gazira Babeli was born Second Life in March 2006. “Unlike other avatars,” explains curator and art critic Domenico Quaranta, “Gazira doesn’t pretend to be in a world made of objects and atoms, she’s aware to be in a world made of codes and to be part of the code herself.” Therefore it’s the essence of the 3-D virtual universe that she challenges with her “code performanceâ€. She manipulates codes and shares them with the public on her website, under a Creative Commons licence.
Back in April, she invaded Ars Virtua, a gallery located in the synthetic world of Second Life, with pizzas flying and dancing on the sound of O’ sole mio. The performance was called –who would have guessed?– Singing Pizza.
In November, Gazira was back at Ars Virtua, attending the opening of 13 Most Beautiful Avatars, a series of portraits of Second Life “stars” made by Eva and Franco Mattes. At some point, bananas were raining over the gallery space. Not any kind of bananas though. These ones were exact copies of the bright yellow fruit that graced the Velvet Underground cover in 1967. Was Gazira challenging the Mattes in a kind of “who’s the pop-est” war? Does it mean that she loves pop art? Not so sure. Last May, she paid another homage to Warhol with a Second Soup performance that saw her fighting a formidable giant Campbell soup can. Her sole comment: “You Love Pop Art – Pop Art Hates You”.
Over the past couple of years, i’ve been observing the way artists were embracing, manipulating and subverting virtual worlds. I still have a lot to learn and read and see before regarding myself as an expert worth listening to so i’ll just speak with my guts: watch out for that Gazira, she has only started to rock your virtual boat.
Gazira’s work will be presented at the Pescara Electronic Artist Meeting (pretty good programme this year!), Pescara (It), 6-10 December, 2006.
Big big thanks to Domenico Quaranta. I owe you one!
Originally
from we make money not art
by
reBlogged
by michael
on Nov 27, 2006, 2:57PM
Arcade Mosque
Polish artist Janek Simon subverts a muslim prayer rug by combining it with a old 70’s arcade game, thus creating, in his own words – “a new shopping item for the homecoming marines and the kid back home”.
related links
Dislocation: Janek
Originally
from sensoryimpact.com
by
reBlogged
by michael
on Nov 13, 2006, 5:12PM
Street cool – virtual ethnography in the blogosphere
For business trends Mr Evers has a network of spotters who rely on blogs covering business ideas. “Often those blogs are local, so especially our Japanese, Chinese and Brazilian contributors pick up stuff that may not pop up in mainstream US and British publications,” he says.
“We actively scan MySpace, Cyworld, Habbo Hotel, Flickr and YouTube, as one can keep a finger on the pulse of (youth) culture by reading what people are putting out there, what they do, what they like. It is the same for activities in virtual worlds like Second Life.
“Everything is available, everything can be found and observed, with millions more joining this space each year and contributing.
“Our role is becoming more of a curator as the average marketer just doesn’t have the time any more to track everything. We are also an adviser on what to actually do with these observations if you’re a brand. What we do is virtual anthropology.”
Read full article here.
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Originally
from core77.com's design blog
reBlogged
by michael
on Oct 2, 2006, 8:17AM
Living a second life [The Economist]
 |
“Second Life is not a game,” writes The Economist this week. “Admittedly, some residents—there were 747,263 as of late September, and the number is growing by about 20% every month—are there just for fun. They fly over islands, meander through castles and gawk at dragons. But increasing numbers use Second Life for things that are quite serious. They form support groups for cancer survivors. They rehearse responses to earthquakes and terrorist attacks. They build Buddhist retreats and meditate.”
“By emphasising creativity and communication, Second Life is different from other synthetic online worlds. Most ‘massively multi-player online role-playing games’, or MMORPGs (pronounced ‘morpegs’), offer players pre-fabricated or themed fantasy worlds. Second Life, by contrast, was designed from inception for a much deeper level of participation.” “Unlike other virtual worlds, which may allow players to combine artefacts found within them, Second Life provides its residents with the equivalent of atoms—small elements of virtual matter called ‘primitives’—so that they can build things from scratch.” “Because everything about Second Life is intended to make it an engine of creativity, Linden Lab, the San Francisco firm that launched Second Life commercially three years ago, early on decided that residents should own the intellectual property inherent in their creations. Second Life now allows creators to determine whether the stuff they conceive may be copied, modified or transferred. Thanks to these property rights, residents actively trade their creations.” Second Life’s total devotion to what is fashionably called ‘user-generated content’ now places it, unlike other MMORPGs, at the centre of a trend called Web 2.0. This term usually refers to free online services delivered through a web browser—for example, social networks in which users blog and share photos. Second Life is not delivered through a web browser but through its own software, which users need to install on their computers. In other respects, however, it is now often held up as the best example of Web 2.0.” “Second Life is also attracting the attention of corporations and advertisers from the real world hoping to attract the metaverse’s residents. Publishers now organise book launches and readings in Second Life. The BBC has rented an island, where it holds music festivals and parties. Sun Microsystems is preparing to hold in-world press conferences, featuring avatars of its top executives. Wells Fargo, an American bank, has built a branded ‘Stagecoach’ island, where avatars can pull Linden dollars out of a virtual cash machine and learn about personal finance. Starwood, a hotel and resort chain, is unveiling one of its new hotels in the virtual world.” “Toyota is the first carmaker to enter Second Life. It has been giving away free virtual vehicles of its Scion brand and, in October, will start selling all three Scion models. Toyota really hopes that an ‘aftermarket’ develops as avatars customise their cars and sell them on, thus spreading the brand ‘virally’. Toyota will be able to observe how avatars use the cars and might, conceivably, even get ideas for engineering modifications in the real world.” |
Originally
from Putting people first
by
reBlogged
by michael
to
on Oct 1, 2006, 8:48PM
