Tag Archives: free culture

Street art debate

The “Top Ten Pictures”:http://toptenpictures.blogspot.com/ blog has posted a “discussion”:http://toptenpictures.blogspot.com/2007/04/writing-is-on-wall.html on the merits of street art (graffiti). Among some of the breath-taking art shown as examples, they also chose to use “one of my pictures”:http://flickr.com/photos/alexhrdr/478872286/ as an example of the movement. I encourage you to check out the Top Ten Pictures “post”:http://toptenpictures.blogspot.com/2007/04/writing-is-on-wall.html and weigh in on one of the more interesting debates going on in the art world today.
!http://farm1.static.flickr.com/190/478872286_573dcfa92d.jpg?v=0!

What Wikipedians Search For

http://tools.wikimedia.de/~leon/stats/wikicharts/index.php?lang=en&wiki=enwiki&ns=articles&limit=100&month=04%2F2007&mode=view continually calculates the most viewed pages on each of all the "Wikipedian projects":www.wikimedia.org offered. The above link is preset to view the top 100 articles viewed during April 2007 for "English Wikipedia":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page. In case you were wondering, 11% of the top viewed articles involved some sexual content and the number one searched definition in "English Wiktionary":http://wiktionary.org/ was "MILF":http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/MILF. Aren't you glad to know that one of the "most visited sites in the world":http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=global&lang=none is being put to good use.

The how-to video repository

http://sutree.com/ is an online collection of free tutorial videos. The videos are usually hosted elsewhere and the links contributed by users, but SuTree adds an element of ranking and community discussion, in addition to putting all of the videos in one search-able database. The subject of the videos is widely varied but with a little looking around you can learn such useful things as how to "grow your own potatoes":http://sutree.com/play.asp?s=fgxacpamoqtaanpapdfhs, "perform a perfect breast stroke":http://sutree.com/play.asp?s=fdlreasjuiicknczcngmf, "draw a horse":http://sutree.com/play.asp?s=yuyxgkttdrhlqxpnnbaww, or "fold a t-shirt":http://sutree.com/play.asp?s=hmqiqntueickhefrfusgh (super cool and embedded below).

Free, Personalized Ring Tones

http://money.cnn.com/2006/04/12/commentary/mediabiz/ be a $4.4 billion dollar a global year industry when you can get ring tones for free? All "Mobile17.com":http://www.mobile17.com requires from you is an e-mail address (don’t worry, they detest spam) and your phone model information (which they keep safe and don’t sell). With their easy-to-use site, you simply locate a song file you have on your computer, choose the start time of your ring tone, the duration of your ring tone, and you're set. For their free service, you’ll wait awhile before you’re sent a text message with straightforward instructions to get your ring tone. It’s quick, simple, and free. Caution: If you don’t have an internet phone plan, you’ll pay charges to your phone provider based on the size of your file. Check out this "discussion":http://www.10meters.com/manners--tips.html and these "tips":http://cellphones.about.com/cs/miscellaneous/ht/cell_etiquette.htm for proper cell phone etiquette.

Guerrilla Benches in London


The “Space Hijackers”:http://www.spacehijackers.org./html/welcome.html, self-described as “Trouble with an anti-capital ‘T’, have been part of a sustained “Guerrilla Benching”:http://www.spacehijackers.org./html/projects/guerrillabench/guerrilla.html campaign in the borough of Camden in London. Apparently the Borough Council has been removing benches and the people, at least according to this lot, are not going to take that sitting down.
Photo credit to the Space Hijackers and story via “Time Out”:http://www.timeout.com/london/features/1975/12.html#articleAfterMpu

Songbird, a hatchling open-source iTunes killer

Brought to you by the Pioneers of the Inevitable, the brain trust behind “Winamp”:http://www.winamp.com/ and the Yahoo! music engine, Songbird is a new open-source ‘web player’ capable of iTunes-like music and video support AND firefox-like web-browsing. Why put the two together? I’m not exactly sure, but even though it’s still in its infancy, Songbird can already do some things better than iTunes. For starters, Songbird can support extensions that, among other things, fully integrate posting to “Last.fm”:http://last.fm or shopping at any number of online music stores. It also natively supports global hotkeys adding the functionality of “SizzlingKeys”:http://duenos.net/article/119/killer-apps-for-mac-sizzlingkeys for iTunes without installing another program. What’s more is that like iTunes and Firefox, Songbird is cross-platform compatible and free. Download the beta at “Songbirdnest”:http://www.songbirdnest.com and explore the extensions being made for it at “Windjay”:http://windjay.com/.
Previously on Duenos: “Last.fm”:http://duenos.net/article/14/melodic-match-making-on-lastfm and “SizzlingKeys”:http://duenos.net/article/119/killer-apps-for-mac-sizzlingkeys/.

Thousands mob Victoria station in silent rave

A flash mob of 4,000 dancers clogged London’s Victoria Station yesterday evening. Silently listening to the club soundtrack on their mp3 players, the mob was finally dispersed by vans of police. Here are links to “Gridskipper”:http://gridskipper.com/travel/london/flash-mob-chokes-up-the-tube-250246.php, where I found about the party underground and to “this is London”:http://www.thisislondon.co.uk and their “original article”:http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23391632-details/4%2C000+flash+mob+dancers+startle+commuters+at+Victoria/.
Apparently there are some pretty cool pictures “out there”:http://flickr.com/search/?q=mobileclubbing+london+victoria&m=text.

Analog peer-to-peer

A few months ago I read about a service called “BookMooch”:http://bookmooch.com/ on “BoingBoing”:http://boingboing.net that offers users a community full of people wanting to exchange their old books for free. I’ve used the site extensively and have loved it. I was finally able to get rid of those old Tom Clancy novels and ‘trade up’ to the classier writings of Henry James. My conclusion: there aren’t enough phrases like “class 2 tactical op” in Henry James. Luckily I can always trade down again with BookMooch.
The idea of a non-monetary economy in which people share their goods and/or services sounds like wackiness, I know, but I just read an “article”:http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/start.html?pg=4 from Wired Online about more ‘analog peer-to-peer’ sites that promise just such a cashless utopia. Each one caters to a different type of media, but here’s a short summary taken from the article:
”
“PEERFLIX”:http://peerflix.com/
MEDIA: DVD
INVENTORY: 40,000 titles
PER-TRADE FEE: $1.50
“LA LA”:http://www.lala.com/
MEDIA: CD
INVENTORY: 1.8 million titles
PER-TRADE FEE: $1.75
“PAPERBACKSWAP”:http://www.paperbackswap.com/index.php
MEDIA: Take a guess …
INVENTORY: 30,000 titles
PER-TRADE FEE: $1.59
“GAMESWAP”:http://www.gameswap.com/
MEDIA: Videogame
INVENTORY: 1,102 games
PER-TRADE FEE: $1.99 “

Open-source Europe

The next time the French parliament opens its doors, they will be serving Linux. According to this “Business Week article”:http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/mar2007/gb20070312_042781.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily , 1,154 computers will be switching to Ubuntu Linux from Windows XP, including all of the MPs staff and personal PCs. France has had a long history of embracing open-source software like Open Office and Firefox, but this will be the first mass switch of operating systems.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1798381/posts article reports the Shadow chancellor George Osbourne's statement that Britain should support more open-source software in order to save the people 600 million pounds/year. That article features some other good examples of governments going open-source.