What ever happened to "safe harbor"?

There is something very wrong in Italy's recent conviction of three Google ex-employees for taking down footage of a boy getting beaten up back in 2006. They were charged with "criminal defamation and a failure to comply with the Italian privacy code." Google wrote this blog post assuring that they plan to appeal this decision.

I'm not versed in Italian privacy laws but, just like Google's statement includes, it's common sense within today's technological savvy that these men did not own or distribute the footage - it was the girl who uploaded the video. How do these men get charged?

I believe that they were involved in taking down said video and helping the police identify the bullies, I'm assuming, through their Google accounts and IP addresses.

If using technology for a positive purpose (with information that is readily available - Google's access to the girl's information) is an invasion of privacy, isn't it fair to say that these people opted and ACCEPTED the fact that computers and browsers record IP addresses? Let alone incorporate a lot of personal information on social networks or their Google accounts?

However one might position themselves in respect to this issue, consider that we live in a very public technological society where privacy is an option that is not usually chosen.

Source: Official Google Blog: Serious threat to the web in Italy

Electronic Book, Out Of Stock?!?!

A Judgement In Stone (Electronic book text) By (author) Ruth Rendell ISBN 13: 9781409067863 at The Book Depository

Jaw officially dropped. I was looking for Ruth Rendell's "A Judgement in Stone" as an eBook or online text I could legally use for one of my classes, and just when I click a link to access it, the book is described as 'Out of Stock.' What is the point of an eBook then???

Tube fail.

GreenPost - Inkless Printer: Finally a step forward!

Japan has come up with a really good contraption that could save us from wasting crazy amounts of paper for a bunch of thousands of bucks! So even if you're not using up a lot of paper, you're paying for all the paper you aren't gonna use. For about $5,517 you can get a Prepeat printer for your office, and the reusable paper can be bought by the thousand for $3,300.




I do think this kind of technology is going in the right direction as far as reducing pollution and waste, following recycling/upcycling trends that have taken over most of the world. However, the pricing is a bit ridiculous. I might wait until it goes on sale at BestBuy at Union Square.

The Pipettes & Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

I once took a film course on American cinema and saw the camp classic, "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls." There's a party scene within the movie that is directly represented in the music video "Pull Shapes" by The Pipettes. I had never made the connection between them until I saw BtVotD again last night with Ryan - it basically made me love the Pipettes even more! If you can make it happen, get your hands on BtVotD. It's ridiculously hilarious and you WILL find yourself quoting it more often than not.

Click here for the "Pull Shapes" music video on YouTube.

Post-Winter Recess

2010 is definitely looking up and after my long winter break I think it's time to get back on the saddle of this blogging hobby of mine. Technology is always booming and I'm VERY SURE the new year has a lot of exciting new trends and techs to share with consumers!

Once my final semester starts and I'm back in an actual time schedule, I'll be rackin' up the posts and actually reconnect to the Internet.

Today I'm going to see The Princess and the Frog with my Children's Literature class (it's a two-week winter intensive). It's Disney's first classic animation-princess film since Mulan in 1998. Let's see how that ends up - I'm being positive but skeptical.

[Update: The movie wasn't as terrible as I thought it would be. If you love Disney movies, this is certainly a contemporary Disney princess film. Without giving too much away, Tiana's character is a very  positive role model for girls everywhere and never much of a damsel-in-distress. Disney gets a cookie.)

REmixed - Oops! I Did It Again

Found footage project I made a couple years ago. Gnarly.

REmixed - The Fender Element

Awesome mash up of The Fifth Element and Futurama.

©opyright Final Project - "Can' Stop It"

"Can't Stop It" by Gabriela Maestre & Sophie Shah is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

Yey! After terrible rendering mishaps and failed exports, I was finally able to upload my Copyright final project. It was a group effort concocted by me and the wonderful Ms. Sophie Shah.

The video depicts remix culture at a very rudimentary level. We collected all of the footage from archive.org, a huge collection of licensable media that works closely with Creative Commons. Because the licensing is free and asks you to comply with easy requirements, we were able to legally remix other works and create a new one. We found "Frequencies Coming" by Blowz on jamendo.com, another site that concentrates on licensing music.

Thank You Internet! or Cyriak, My New Favorite on YouTube

Cyriak makes insane, WTF, animated shorts that just blow my mind. [Note to self: learn motion graphics.] In this interview a couple years ago, he makes a comment on how even though he is a loner, he would probably be in his apartment watching his shorts if there was no Internet. Thanks to the unlimited system of tubes, he gets thousands of hits on his growing list of videos.  Check out his channel here. Below is one of his newest videos called "Meow."

Why Would I Want A Record Player?

I really, really, really want a record player, just a basic turntable I can hook up to my Mac and speakers and listen to music. Considering that physical data storage devices (i.e. - records, cassettes, CDs) are becoming an outdated medium, it is interesting that people actually still buy vinyl records.

When I went to preschool, we would always have Sing & Dance time. The teacher would put some dainty music on and we would gather and dance in a circle. This was all circa 1990. Cassette tapes were still very much in use but my teacher would pull out vinyl records and play them for use to dance to. I can't even remember what songs were played, but yeah, they were played right off of vinyl records.

So what's the fascination with records? There's that understood debate that vinyl records have the best playback quality. I think even though quality is very important with music, the portability aspect is the biggest downfall of the record, and subsequently the CD. I know DJs use records but there is s much music engineering technology that most just hook up their computers to digital turntables and jam away.

I think this limitation in music portability is what made records, tapes and CDs so valuable. Think about it. It's the 90s. You're getting ready for a 5 hour flight, and you only have enough room for a couple CDs. You're gonna pick your favorite CDs or that new CD that you really want to listen to. I think we appreciated the CDs we kept with us more by not having all of our music with us all at once.

[Update: Probably won't get a turntable until I have my own apartment.]

Final Paper Topic

So finals are busting my butt, hence the lack of posts but I'm sure the holidays will bring many more fun internet stuff. In the mean time, I'm currently working on my Digital Media final paper due tomorrow around noon. Here's my topic, which will end up being a lot narrower once I write the paper:

Internet Phenomena and Remix Culture

    My final paper will consist of 3 main topics: Internet Phenomena (viral videos and memes), how and why they become viral in the first place; the Internet, how it serves as a platform for many forms of media – especially audio and video; finally, Remix Culture, how current society is obsessed with the reuse of original content, legalities over copyright infringement, and how the Internet and Internet phenomena correlate to the “procreation” of Remix Culture.
     Internet phenomena are very much present when any user surfs the web. But what is it about these videos or memes that attract Internet users? What causes a video or media in general to become viral? How has this affected communication, in the news and in advertising for example?
     The Internet has become a very large part of technology, especially in the advent of Web 3.0 and the still-present Web 2.0. What is Web 3.0? Why has it shifted from professional content to user content? What makes the Internet different from other media and communication platforms?
     Remix Culture has pretty much taken over all media industries, and continues to be massively produced throughout different mediums. What is the cultural significance of amateur media production? What are the implications of digital media for copyright? Can this movement exist without the Internet?

My final paper will be posted tomorrow (hopefully)!

[UPDATE: Thought it was a bit compromising if I posted an essay here but I did get a B on it!]

Internet Vices

Epic explanations of contemporary social media.

Got My Google Wave Invite!

FINALLY! About a month ago, I applied to receive a Google Wave preview account after watching Google's nearly 90 minute spiel of its new, open sourced, online software in development. As per Google,

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

Even though I only have a preview account, the software still allows me to fiddle around with most of the basic  perks of using waves instead of emails. The first time I saw Google Wave I thought it was Email 2.0. Wrong. If anything, a wave is absolutely not an email, at least, not necessarily. Like Gmail, it records conversations, one after another. Unlike Gmail, these messages can be edited at any time as well as add text, pictures or video to any part of the message. For example, say you're "waving" about a group project and you're brainstorming how to attack your topics; "wavers" (Google Wave users) can add onto other's messages similar to Facebook's Comment feature instantly. So instead of replying and forwarding an email back and forth to different people, creating different versions of it, Google Wave is one, live host of messages where you can add people to access it. Since it's currently in preview, you only get to forward 8 invites and the functionality is still rocky but it's awesome - updates to come once I play around with it more.

Below is the Google I/O Demo Presentation of Google Wave:

Google Chrome OS = Yum

Google released its Chrome web browser in 2008 for Windows, soon to be ported for Macs. It's been a year and this is just blowing my mind. Why hadn't anyone thought about this before?!

The Google Chrome Operating System seems like the logically next step for Google considering it has taken over the internet platform and has entered the mobile phone industry with Android and the recent Droid. Now, with Google Chrome OS, Google definitely raises the bar of what I reposted from Minimalism here. The video above makes a very good point of creating software that works more like the Internet - an internet operating system.

Below is a demo of Google Chrome OS = 11ish minutes of gold.

8bit "Thriller" Tribute

Ok, I know I mentioned I thought MJ has been overplayed, but this is awesome!