matt's blog
Vienna becomes a little less of an Open Source City
open source green windows Vista
In the same month that folly and Soundnetwork's micro-festival of open source technology, art and culture is launched in Liverpool, Vienna, a city much more advanced than almost any city in the UK, has undergone a regrettable back-slide to using (and paying through the nose for) proprietaryi systems, in this case, Windows Vista.
Celestia - the heavens on your laptop
open source software
I'm moved to write about a particularly impressive piece of open sourcei and free software that I've just come across: it's called Celestia, and it is a fully immersive 3D model of the known universe for your computer. Unlike many planetarium programs, it is not limited to viewing the night sky from Earth.
IT in schools is rapidly growing - is it a good thing?
Schoolsa remote school on a Scottish island decided to buy every child and teacher a laptop, they found over £20,000 worth of savings from photocopying alone.
European Greens Launch Pro-Filesharing Campaign
The Greens EFA group in the European Parliament have launched a pro-filesharing campaign named “I Wouldn’t Steal”. Their goal is to counter the anti-piracy propaganda put forward
by the entertainment industry, and encourage people to download and share.
In collaboration with RåFILM the parties created a short clip for the campaign. which they made available on BitTorrent by uploading it to The Pirate Bay.
Nuclear deterrent in safe hands
A new TV advert for the Royal Navy reveals the amazing technical know-how behind the computer systems controlling Her Majesty's fleet of Trident submarines, each of which is capable of launching 48 thermonuclear warheads.
"If the server goes down, I can't just call in some bloke to fix it," says the IT technician featured in the new TV ad. "But to be honest," our naval hero concludes, "sometimes I just switch it off and on again."
Well, we can all sleep easy in our beds now, then.
Citizen journalism and digital networking in extreme circumstances
The Climate Camp at Heathrow was a surprisingly good example of citizen journalism, as well as media savvyness and "off-grid" networking.
As well as the largest number of press cameras I have ever seen (kept outside the entrance except by invitation from the camp volunteer media team) there were a lot of Sony V1s, Sony Z1s and Sony PD170s, the V1 and Z1 being fairly new HDVi camcorders; the V1 being new this year. At under £3000 these camcorders are more than suitable for TV: in fact being HDV they surpass current British broadcasting resolution, and everything else about the camera makes it suitable for broadcast, including professional audio inputs/processing.
Reverse publishing
Ironically, the quintessential "reverse publishing" site Wikipedia does not yet have an article about it!
The Changing Face of TV
On Tuesday the 17th of July I went to a suppertime debate on 2007 at the Circle Club, Barton Arcade, Manchester.
The panel was Dr Gareth Palmer, Associate Head of Enterprise - School of Media and Performance Salford University, Mark Collins Head of Production at the Gate Films www.thegatefilms.com and Adam Webster, Head of Interactive also at the Gate.
Mark claimed the Public Service ethic is being destroyed and niche broadcasting is on the rise. A new generation simply does not see "public service broadcasting" the same way.
How important is online networking to business?
A fascinating article which highlights - to me - how important online networking is, and how much some people have taken it to its natural - if extreme conclustion
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6260210.stm
Matt,
folly Comms Manager
