A list of free iOS and Android apps to scan Wi-Fi networks for connected devices like hidden video cameras. Use your iPhone or Android phone (Samsung Galaxy, Huawei, LG, etc…)
Technology
why exactly does my VCR blink 12:00?
Richard Branson Unveils Virgin Galactic Mothership – White Knight Two
The Machine is Us
My inner geek thinks this is seriously brilliant.
We’ll need to rethink a few things…
We’ll need to rethink copyright
We’ll need to rethink authorship
We’ll need to rethink identity
We’ll need to rethink ethics
We’ll need to rethink aesthetics
We’ll need to rethink rhetorics
We’ll need to rethink governance
We’ll need to rethink privacy
We’ll need to rethink commerce
We’ll need to rethink love
We’ll need to rethink family
We’ll need to rethink ourselves.
Kudos to Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University. You may also download the complete transcript or windows media version.
Do you own songs bought online? Well, sort of
In a recent article on Reuters, the author points out the limitations companies like Apple place on your online music downloads. Issues like limitation to Apple iPods, multiple computer use rights and CD burning.
Before people erroneously get the impression this issue is limited to Apple, there are a few points to consider:
You don’t own the songs on CD or the movies on DVD that you purchase from anywhere. You are purchasing the physical plastic disc and the Limited Right to listen to or watch but NOT reproduce what is recorded on it. In some cases, you are granted the right to make a single, personal, non-commercial backup/archival copy.
You’ve never been able to freely copy your vinyl, 8 tracks, cassettes or CDs for any purpose. The issue is that with digital products, publishers have more technical ability to make you obey the law.
This is also true of any books, photographs or paintings you buy. You are purchasing the paper they are printed on or the canvas and paint, but you are not purchasing the rights to reproduce them in any form beyond limited non-commercial Fair Use.
Microsoft WMA is another popular audio format. However, WMA files do not play on all (most) devices either and you have limited ability and rights on duplicating or burning copies of these songs.
Real Networks (the Real Audio people) also made a big public stink about their songs not playing on iPods. Interestingly enough, though, is that if a manufacturer doesn’t pay Real Networks a licensing fee, your songs from Real won’t play on that device. Creative’s music players, for instance, cannot play Real’s songs. Real has similar, but slightly more restrictive, backup/burning limitations than Apple.
Napster offers a flat monthly fee service for all the music you want to download. Miss a payment or cancel your account and all of your music will stop working. Want to put those songs on your portable player? Most don’t support them, but you’d have to pay Napster $5 per month for the privilege. If you want to burn a song to a CD, you’ll have to pay Napster 99 cents more.
I think a lot of the DRM (Digital Rights Management) issues are counter-productive. They have been statistically shown to not influence the behaviour of people who will copy music and not pay for it. Research has also shown that people who download or copy music are much more likely to purchase that music legally than any other music user. Simply put, downloaders buy more legal music than you do (generally, a lot more). None of this changes the fact that companies like Apple are legally following the rules our lawmakers created. If you want to complain about Apple’s DRM (or any music label or movie studio), the real target should be our country’s outdated and outmoded Intellectual Property laws of copyright, trademark and patent.
Did You Pay Your Internet Protection Payola?
Do you buy books online, use Google, or download to an Ipod? These activities will be hurt if Congress passes a radical law that gives giant corporations more control over the Internet.
Internet providers like AT&T and Verizon are lobbying Congress hard to gut Network Neutrality, the Internet’s First Amendment. Net Neutrality prevents AT&T from choosing which websites open most easily for you based on which site pays AT&T more. Amazon.com doesn’t have to outbid Barnes & Noble for the right to work more properly on your computer. This is the equivalent of a protection racket of money paid so that organized crime leaves your business alone.
Politicians don’t think we are paying attention to this issue. Many of them take campaign checks from big telecom companies and are on the verge of selling out to people like AT&T’s CEO, who openly says, “The internet can’t be free.”
How will you be affected?
- Nonprofits–A charity’s website could open at snail-speed, and online contributions could grind to a halt, if nonprofits can’t pay dominant Internet providers for access to “the fast lane” of Internet service.
- Google users–Another search engine could pay dominant Internet providers like AT&T to guarantee the competing search engine opens faster than Google on your computer.
- Innovators with the “next big idea”–Startups and entrepreneurs will be muscled out of the marketplace by big corporations that pay Internet providers for dominant placing on the Web. The little guy will be left in the “slow lane” with inferior Internet service, unable to compete.
- Ipod listeners–A company like Comcast could slow access to iTunes, steering you to a higher-priced music service that it owned.
- Online purchasers–Companies could pay Internet providers to guarantee their online sales process faster than competitors with lower prices–distorting your choice as a consumer.
- Small businesses and tele-commuters–When Internet companies like AT&T favor their own services, you won’t be able to choose more affordable providers for online video, teleconferencing, Internet phone calls, and software that connects your home computer to your office.
- Parents and retirees–Your choices as a consumer could be controlled by your Internet provider, steering you to their preferred services for online banking, health care information, sending photos, planning vacations, etc.
- Bloggers–Costs will skyrocket to post and share video and audio clips–silencing citizen journalists and putting more power in the hands of a few corporate-owned media outlets.
- Advocacy groups like MoveOn–Political organizing could be slowed by a handful of dominant Internet providers who ask advocacy groups to pay “protection money” for their websites and online features to work correctly.
The free and open Internet is under seige–can you sign this petition letting your member of Congress know you support preserving Network Neutrality? Act Now to Save The Internet
First Google China, now Google Mars
Google Mars is up with some amazing pictures of the Martian landscape from NASA. The pictures are available in three ways: an ‘elevation’ topographic model, a visual satellite image, or an infrared satellite image. It is the same interface as Google Maps and includes indexed maps of the highlights, like mountains, canyons, and craters.
If you know the name of a particular landmark, there’s the ubiquitous search box to help you along. I tried searching for Taco Bell and the post office, but, alas, nothing came up. Maybe in version 2.
Basecamp saved my life. really.
In case you haven’t seen it, Basecamp is a website for project management, but more to the point, it is quite possibly the best collaborative organizational tool ever. Create a project, add the people involved and then share to-do lists, milestones/goals, post messages with files and write on virtual whiteboards, all while assigning everything to specific individuals and keeping everyone current by email notifications and RSS news feeds.
and almost everything is completely free…
The key is in the perfection of its user interface and deceptively constrained feature list. It doesn’t have 4076 buttons, options and gantt charts that you’ll never use. It just has exactly what you need to collaborate beautifully.
C’est brilliant,
Discover New Music – Pandora
Need help discovering new music? The creators of the Music Genome Project have the answer in Pandora. By analyzing the elements of your favourite artists’ songs, like instrumentation, tonality, phrasing and the general aesthetic, it can suggest similar songs and artists. It will read your mind.
I think the $36 is pretty fair, but if you need to reset your 10 hour limit or want to skip past more songs than it wants to let you, here’s some helpful info. Resetting your cache or clearing cookies won’t help because the Pandora player is flash-based and uses Local Shared Objects (basically Flash cookies). In your Flash Player preferences folder, just delete v2_Machine.sol and v2_PerfComp.sol and you will reset your 10 hour limit and all your stations/artists. Or you could just give them the $36 bucks like I did.
Does Google Know Me?
How many of your website’s pages are listed on Google? Simply type site:ethannonsequitur.com inurl:ethannonsequitur.com into Google’s searchbox after changing ethannonsequitur.com to your own site’s URL and you’ll see exactly what pages are listed by Google. In the upper right of your screen, you will see “Results 1-50 of Gazillions” to show you the total pages indexed. (Results may vary based on your own popularity =) Enjoy!
Tags: Google | Search Engine
Microsoft Previews Its Google Start Page
Now available, Start.com is Microsoft’s answer to the Google Start Page. While the page doesn’t have any Microsoft identification besides the copyright, it is an obvious copy of the Google page, from the layout to the DOM / CSS / Javascript coding. As an incubator project, it is probably just a pet project idea of a couple of unpaid interns, until, of course, Microsoft likes it and then takes it from them and runs with it. Imitation is such flattery…
Hewlett-Packard stops reselling iPods
CNN Money is reporting that Hewlett-Packard is discontuing its relationship with Apple in selling dual-branded HP | Apple iPods. According to Apple spokeswoman Katie Cotton, “[HP] decided that reselling iPods doesn’t fit with their company’s current digital media strategy.”
The partnership was announced at a January 2004 CES show. Hewlett-Packard will immediately phase-out all sales of iPods according to The Wall Street Journal‘s online edition.