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23 NOV 09
'What's Twitter?' asks China following Obama revelation [The Guardian] SAVE
PEOPLE
" "If you look at the sites blocked now and those blocked five years ago, it's gone from web 1.0 to web 2.0 – it's social media," says Kaiser Kuo, a Beijing-based expert on internet use in China. "The authorities are not worried about people having access to what the rest of the world is saying, but about the ability of these tools to spread rumours very, very quickly.""TAGS
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Digital economy bill: A punishing future [The Guardian] SAVE
PEOPLE
"While Finland enshrines web access as a human right, this bill legislates plans to deprive users of access. It will force internet service providers to become copyright police, obliging them to provide lists of violations to copyright owners. After warnings, violators will have their service crippled, or even cut off. All this will drive up the costs of web access, by piling duties on providers. Add the more defensible surcharges to pay for next generation services, and Digital Britain risks becoming a land beset by an even deeper digital divide. Instead of building on a positive vision of Digital Britain, the government has capitulated to the fears of music and movie moguls struggling to defend their multimillion-pound businesses."TAGS
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22 NOV 09
Documentaries of bliss [The Guardian] SAVE
PEOPLE
"Godfrey Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi (a Hopi Indian word meaning "life out of balance"), made in 1982, is the classic of its kind: a compilation of ravishing footage of cities and natural wonders, seen at night and in the blaze of day, all drifting by in slow-mo or scooting past in hyper-time-lapse. Revered as a stoner classic – or ridiculed as an art-house companion to Dude, Where's My Car? – Koyaanisqatsi also enjoyed considerable commercial success"TAGS
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21 NOV 09
Span house comes out of woodwork [Building Design] SAVE
"Using a modular typology of timber and glass, Friend & Company has reinvented an Eric Lyons Span house in south-east London. What is remarkable about the 21st Century Span House, designed by Adrian Friend of Friend & Company, is the inventive use of timber and structural glass to re-fabricate and transform a 1950s Span house into a home for this century." Now if only they Span houses could be mass-manufactured all over the UK and RoW now.TAGS
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Picture Show: Breach [GOOD] SAVE
PEOPLE
"In the Spring of 2009, the photographer Richard Mosse traveled to Iraq, where he captured arresting images of U.S. soldiers working and living in what used to be palaces of Saddam Hussein. These visions of western soldiers at rest in imperial palaces are both intensely jarring and oddly playful, and they underscore the seemingly ineffable experience of downtime during a military occupation. The transformation of an imperial palace into a site of temporary housing also speaks to the notion that our histories are constantly being rewritten—architecturally, sociologically, globally, and locally. What follows is a selection from Richard Mosse’s “Breach"TAGS
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19 NOV 09
Lexington: Farmers v greens [The Economist] SAVE
PEOPLE
"The debate about climate change prods all sorts of cultural sore spots: liberal versus conservative, urban versus rural, the coasts against the heartland. To an urban locavore, pricey fuel does not sound so terrible. In his book “$20 per gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better”, Christopher Steiner, a journalist, rejoices that Americans will eventually give up driving and move to densely-packed cities where they can walk to the shops. To people like Mr Wright, that sounds like Hell. “It’d be like living in Beijing,” he gasps, gazing across an open plain to the mountains in the distance." Sigh.TAGS
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Video: the HALOsonic electric car sound system [guardian.co.uk] SAVE
PEOPLE
"Electric cars have a potentially deadly silence about them, but a new device hopes to combat all that – spaceship sound effects optional." Well, I wrote a bit about this issue a while back. This, sadly, isn't good enough.TAGS
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Music industry: How to sink pirates [The Economist] SAVE
PEOPLE
"All of this offers a lesson for other types of media, such as films and video games. Piracy thrives because it satisfies an unmet demand. The best way to discourage it is to offer a diverse range of attractive, legal alternatives. The music industry has taken a decade to work this out, but it has now done so. Other industries should benefit from its experience—and follow its example." Obvious, but no less true because of that. Add TV to that list of media.TAGS
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£3m Australian gum tree memorial completed [Building Design] SAVE
"Queensland practices m3architecture and Brian Hooper Architect have completed a £3 million memorial for a gum tree that played an important part in Australia’s history." Rather lovely.TAGS
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Links in Print: Story of a Beautiful Failure [iA] SAVE
PEOPLE
"In January 2009 we were invited to take part in a paid pitch for the print redesign for the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger. All in all five agencies took part in the pitch. We were the only UX oriented agency. The story of a beautiful failure. We put all eggs in one basket and worked for one month like mad men. We developed a pretty tight concept around the idea of usability, readability and cross media connection. Here is what we came up with" Worth reading Mario Garcia's reflections elsewhere too.TAGS