Telstra BigPond, which is Australia’s leading ISP with 1.43 million dial-up and broadband customers, has launched a new user-pays anti-virus and spam protection service for customers. If they’re making you pay for this, they are condoning, if not actively encouraging, spam
With Hurricane Isabel churning in the west Atlantic on Sunday, a 70-year-old woman hurled a knife at her husband because he chose to watch football instead of preparing for the storm
A desperate American recording industry is waging a fierce fight against digital copyright infringement seemingly oblivious to the fact that, for practical purposes, it lost the digital music sharing fight over five years ago… in Canada
A large number of people who walk into libraries don’t borrow a thing; they come in to use the space and read the newspapers or sit there. So what would a library of the future look like to cater for all of the people in the community? Julie Rae, Chief Executive of the Central Highlands Regional Library, thinks that parts of it would look like your lounge room, parts of it would look like the Qantas club… and that would include a bar as well, parts of it would look like a library with shelves of books and parts of it would look like a café… there might be virtual reality rooms
John Gruber, gracious host of Daring Fireball, shares his thoughts/observations on the new G5, IBM and Apple.
Apple has just released their new G4 powerbook range.
Nice little sub menu to navigate through the powerbook area, when you roll over each silver beast to the right, the screen flips up.
I guess this means we will have to wait a little while longer for G5 powerbooks…
People wearing headphones could easily hunt down a virtual insect, using only the echolocation sounds, in what is apparently a very intuitive process. Dean Waters, a bat expert at the University of Leeds, hopes that a similar system in the cockpit of fighter planes could allow pilots to track some controls using their hearing, freeing up their eyes for other tasks
In a move aimed squarely at rival Microsoft, Sun Microsystems has unveiled a suite of desktop software aimed at businesses that want to dump — or just can’t afford — the Windows operating system on their companies’ personal computers. The Sun Java Desktop system, which was previously code-named Mad Hatter, runs on the open-source Linux operating system and includes a variety of programs that replace Microsoft’s internet browser, productivity suite, and other parts of the Windows package
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.
Jamie Zawinski has written a perl script to convert blocks of normal text into text where letters excluding the first and last are scrambled, to prove the point that legibility is only marginally affected by altering spelling of words, provided that first and last letters are left intact.
VOA Special English is a simplified English language used by Voice of America in propaganda broadcasts into foreign territory. The news is read slowly and using a limited wordlist of about 1500 words. Charles Kay Ogden recommended radio news be given in Basic English with the appropriate Basic special radio vocabulary add-on. VOA Special English, although intended for telling news around the world, has the additional benefit of allowing English to be learned and for pronunciation to be polished.
Those windows that allow glare onto your computer screen can be useful, soon they will provide power to your computer, air conditioning and other useful necessities
Ever wanted a ball of Silly Putty as big as your head? Now you can make it at home. The University of Minnesota‘s Chemistry Department has instructions on how to make it, as well as other fun things like Slime
Lost or stolen mobile phones will be useless to anyone who tries to make calls on them, as a result of new federal regulations. They will be blocked on all mobile phone networks, rendering them virtually worthless because they can no longer be used
Westpac customers had millions of dollars removed from their accounts during the weekend because of a computer glitch
Could this man be the next Governor of California?
This site has some great mpegs and video. Need I say any more.
I’m a sucker for shiny things and mechanical contraptions. So I spent quite a while poring over Roger Woods wonderful creations at klockwerks.
Greg Brotherton is another sculptor who recycles junk into cool. His forté is turning retro-futuristic vacuum cleaners and other industrial detritus into breathtakingly cool, highly polished rayguns and robots. The movie advertising Brotron products is a masterpiece.
Remember the fad for Care Bears? Adorable little teddy bears that came in a multitude of colours, a clever marketing gimmick that manipulated children into bullying their parents into buying them the whole set.
Here’s a chance to go back to your childhood and kill the little bastards: Liquid Generations’ Evil Care Bears.
After you’ve finished happily slaughtering Care Bears with guns, you can have a shot at the quiz: Which Dysfunctional Care Bear Are You?
I seem to be Gay Bear — comfortable with myself, although the regular
Care Bears think I’m a deviant. And I have a crush on Grumpy.
Scientists’ efforts to realise the space elevator, as first described by Arthur C Clarke in his 1979 novel The Fountains of Paradise. Advances in materials science mean that a cable reaching up as far as 100,000km from the surface of the Earth is no longer an impossibility and 70 scientists and engineers are discussing the idea at a conference in Santa Fe
A WTO draft trade text issued at the organisation’s meeting in Cancun calls for an end to export subsidies on farm products of special interest to developing countries and their gradual elimination on other farm goods. Unfortunately, talks have fallen through, with developing nations angrily accused richer countries of pushing their own interests
Apple has released new iPods with 20, and 40Gb capacities. Apple has also managed sleekify and shrink these new portable beasts ever so slightly.
Along with the new models comes the new ads/imagery Apple has gone with to tantalise the general trendy public with disposable income. Vector silohuettes of young hip dudes and dudettes grooving out with their prized iPods against one of five trendy vibrant colours. The American Apple site actually lets you switch and choose between a banana cadmium, must-have-magenta, terminally hip turquoise, livid lime and of course (& my favourite,) a gorgeously violently vibrant violet, depending on which particular shade of funk you feel like. Bastards didn’t do so for the Australian site.
The vector work is really nice, with a good balance of solid simple form and finer intricate lines for curly hair for example. The design of the iPod itself lends itself incredibly well to this sort of illustration style. Bright white pods and headphone cords add just the right contrast, while reminding us these ads are meant to sell iPods not funk*.
I like ’em and if I wasn’t already the proud recipient of an iPod implant myself, I’d probably feel as though I’d really need to buy one now. Yes that’s right, I’m in the 18-30 demo, and a designer. These ads were tailor made for moi.
BTW Apple has also upgraded the flat panel iMacs to 1 and 1.25GHz.
* Funk is an optional extra at no charge — Yet. The level of funk may vary between individuals.
With the popularity of case modding, Wired have a round-up of some more extreme mods; from a V8 engine to a shiny Aluminium box
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