Category: douglas kastle
spock – Strike 1
I have been keeping an eye on the people search website spock for a while. It being part of the new wave of web 2.0 projects that is trying to tie down peoples online identities with there real life carbon based fat asses. Their goal is to index people from various source on the Internet including LinkedIn, XING, Myspace, Friendster and Wikipedia.
While they have said they are committed to the privacy of their users, I was surprised to receive an e-mail from them this morning, one of the first I have received since I signed up at their website. This is the body of the e-mail :
Hi,
As one of Spock’s newest users, I wanted to let you know about a cool search on Spock.
You can find out who Spock users think should be the top results for fun searches like Arrested for Drunk Driving.
Log onto Spock and check it out!
Have Fun!
The Spock Team
Now am I the only person that think it strange the one of the first communiques highlights such an invasion of privacy, drink driving while frowned upon is probably something that people would like to keep to them selves. While this search may be possible, for an emergent company like spock I would have thought they would stick with the warm and fuzzy functionality that is possible. A bit like the way bitTorrent is always sold as having legitimate applications (which it does, I downloaded Ubuntu 7.04 using it) the bulk of the applications would be considered illegitimate (That is an argument for the courts and the ISPs).
spock isn’t the only website getting in on the web 2.0 ability to connect with the real world. Another website to keep an eye on includes the sexual relationship database :
In an effort to better understand society’s interconnected nature, this database was created to serve as a repository for information regarding the sexual histories of individuals, across the world and throughout time.
which allows people to assign former sexual partners to any name they can find, though I am convinced that this is a hoax, though the company behind the website, world health optimization management or W.H.O.M. (?), only returns 4 hits on google… If it isn’t a hoax it will more than likely get spammed out of existence by warring teenagers making up who had sex with who (even though none of them are).
And finally polar rose, which I have covered before, that is developing facial image search technology so that individuals can be found all over the Internet. They however have been quite for a while and I’m still waiting to see the bulk of their work.
BitTorrent is evil – Obviously, I saw it in FF4
I have never been a great fan of the Fantastic Four, the recent movies haven’t been great entries into the super hero genre, but were at least successful enough to spawn one sequel.
As a movie property 20th Century Fox and Marvel have obviously lost billions through people downloading the movies using bitTorrent. Just this week the most recent movie in the franchise, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, has entered the top ten of Most Popular DVDrips on Bit-Torrent. So to stem this evil it has fallen to the comic book to present a social commentary on the perils and possible uses of such a vile technology as bitTorrent.
The picture to the right is taken from Fantastic Four Issue #549. In ways even I can’t understand evil master mind, the Wizard, managed to clone bad guy Klaw using an audio file that he downloaded from bitTorrent. I may not be up on my super hero world view any more, but it does prove, incontrovertibly, that bitTorrent is evil. Here endth the heavy handed lesson kids, stay in school.
What is unclear is what did all those other people who were downloading the same file that gave the Wizard such a fantastic upload speed.
Thanks to TorrentFreak for posting this.
Wikipedia trust coloring demo
I love wikipedia, it is a comfortable hole that I fall into a lot and find it very hard to get back out of. In many way like 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon, I seem to inexorably coming back to pages dealing with Star Trek or Nazi Germany, maybe that says more about the user rather than wikipedia.
Most of the time when reading pages I don’t feel there is any reason to doubt what I am reading (I have proof-read some Star Trek articles for quality and have yet to find an error). However there are some pages, politicians, Scientology etc. that you just know you cannot believe by faith alone. It is a problem and I have covered the issue of wikipedia reputation before. It is good to know that other people are working on solving this problem.
The tack that they have taken is similar to the idea that I proposed (even though it is probably self evident) which is to give a user a rating based on the work contributed, but also what survives edits. As a result words on a specific page are color coded based on the user who added it and their reputation. I like their color coding, it is a lot more subtle than I thought could be done and I think it works. If nothing else it is a very good way of highlighting what is contention and bringing eyes to bare to at least help resolve it. I can’t wait to see this deployed.
Wikipedia on the Go has arrived
Just two weeks ago I was predicting the arrival of downloadable wikipedia for smart phones. Well it has arrived. The Series 60 Weblog has made available a downloadable wikipedia that can be installed to any S60 platform enabled smartphone.
This is happening to me a lot recently, ideas that I come up with are been invented or created not long after I utter it. Either I am hyper-intune with the current internet connected world or Dilbert writer Scott Adams is onto something when he suggests we are nothing more than badly programmed computer generated holograms. There was even an argument for the latter recently stating that it is statistically more likely that we are computer constructs than living beings.
It kinda reminds me of the type of logic used in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Specifically the case where the population of the universe is reasoned to be zero:
Apple / Nokia – Blood in the water
“Comrades we sail into history”
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to look at a big event before it happened. It is very easy to look into the past and pick out when political or technological change occurred, it is much harder the other way around. However one of those nexus points of history is upon us.
Apple finally has a competitor that can compete with it, Nokia. Apple has all but dominated the mp3/mobile audio space since the launch of the iPod in 2001 (yes that long ago) but recently Steve Jobs and his skivvy wearing brethren had the temerity to move into the mobile phone space with the launch of the iPhone. Apple have been successful because the have made stylish music players never had any competition from the likes of Microsofts Zune or Creative MuVo.
Nokia, however, have been playing the stylish mobile device game even before Apple launched their iPod, they had the express-on covers for the Nokia 5110 that came out in 1998 (and my first mobile) and they knew it was just providing the technology but also the humanity, and they made a lot of money with the 5110 one of the most popular mobile phones ever.
So if you cast your net out on the internet today it should be no surprise that on the same day that there are rumours of Apple launching a wireless iPod and associated wireless iTunes, Nokia have launched their online music website.
Apple has dominated mobile music for a long time and seemed unassailable with the DRM lock in that allowed then to sign up the 5 major labels they did. However following Steve Jobs magic letter on DRM in February there is now a move away from DRM which lowers the barrier for entry for competitors into mobile music.
Nokia has tried and failed to enter different areas of the mobile space it didn’t belong, the N-Gage for example was a miscalculation, (however they have ported N-Gage games into the S60 platform so it wasn’t for nought). However they have maintained their dominance as they are never afraid to learn and adapt to the new models. As Nokia’s Executive VP & General Manager of Multimedia, Anssi Vanjoki ,said, said when images of a Nokia iPhone knock were released “If there is something good in the world then we copy with pride.” Nokia may not win the new mobile internet/music race but by jingo they will give Apple a run for their money if they don’t. Sit back and enjoy the ride.
Miss Teen USA – Perspective
The above clip of Lauren Caitlin Upton completely fluffing up a question at Miss Teen USA is currently doing the rounds of how stupid Americans can be. However on sober review it is obvious she didn’t listen to the question and was tying to trot out some rote answer she memorised, it reminds me of the wizards in school that would memorise some great piece of prepackaged prose and would attempt to turn any English essay topic to use that prose .
Standing in front of an audience can be a humbling experience and shouldn’t be knocked unless tried. Any one can tell a friend a joke however with that in mind I once a week will take the challenge at our local trivia night to jump on stage and compete against other people in a joke-off. What seems easy amongst friends is much much harder with a room full of people staring at you.
Apparently Lauren is taking it in her stride, she even came third at the event. People probably need to calm down and stop looking to Miss Teen USA for answers, but why oh why did she mention South Africa?. If google have got there act together they should sign up this chick to help promote google maps.
Check out the 2000 film Miss Congeniality for more beauty pageant absurdity.
Stan Fields: What is the one most important thing our society needs?
Gracie Hart: That would be… harsher punishment for parole violators, Stan.
[crowd is silent]
Gracie Hart: And world peace!
[crowd cheers ecstatically]
Life on Mars meets Camberwick Green
Even though Life on Mars has been around for 2 years I have only recently come across it, it being an English TV show and me living in Australia might have something to do with that. I have to say it is one of the best TV shows I have seen in a long time. A lot of it comes from all the unPC stuff that DCI Gene Hunt gets away. However the show makes interesting and unusual use of TV from the 70s, be it as the Doctors in 2006 communicating through the Open University programs on TV or the Test Card girl leaving her post and stalking time traveler/mental case Sam Tyler as Death personified.
It’s major appeal, I think, is that even when the show is serious it still knows how to be fun. I’m only up to the fifth episode of the second season, but I loved the Camberwick Green knock off. Check out the nonce waving to the camera as he is getting kicked in my Gene Hunt.
- Gene Hunt: I think you’ve forgotten who you’re talking to.
- Sam Tyler: An overweight, over-the-hill, nicotine-stained, borderline-alcoholic homophobe with a superiority complex and an unhealthy obsession with male bonding?
- Gene Hunt: You make that sound like a bad thing.
Update : I have had to relink to another youtube version of the video as the BBC are pursuing the copyright. Don’t be surprised if it also gets suppressed.
Bill Bailey is Merlin
Bill Bailey is a great comedian who is famous for his stand up routine and as put upon Manny in Black Books. If you even find it on DVD or television his “Part Troll” performance is an excellent watch and excellent laugh (though it is impossible to remember one joke). However in his routine he makes fun of people who make fun of him that say he looks like some kind of wizard. At first I thought it was just some self depreciating technique to gain the sympathy of the crowd. However as I was out wandering wikipedia during the week I came across the picture of Merlin as played by Nicol Williamson in John Boorman‘s movie Excaliber. Isn’t the resemblance uncanny.
Messa Love you – I Don’t, Die Jar Jar Die!
Apparently some damn fool geek took a perfectly good replica of the Han Solo in carbonite and replaced Han’s head with his own. Muppet! However it did get me thinking who I would like to see in carbonite, unsurprisingly Jar Jar comes to the top of that list. The internet is a wonderful thing and instead of having to imagine it with my mind, it turns out it has been done already and there are loads of images of the final fate of Jar Jar. To find more great Jar Jar in carbonite google is your friend.