There are those points in every interactive designer’s career when he becomes fed up with producing the same set of graphics all over again for every website he designs. It could be the social network icons or gallery arrows. Similar for interactive developers that have to slice the same GIFs and PNGs each time the art director asks them to. Until now. Just Be Nice Studio came up with a typeface that includes frequently used iconographics and symbols. Although, the idea is not unique — Webdings and Windings have been around for quite some time — all of them have a lot of unnecessary symbols.
Web Symbols is a set of vector html-compliant typefaces, so it might be used in any size, color and browser (okay, mostly — but IE7 for sure).
posted by netbros
on Nov 18, 2011 -
37 comments
Mining the Mother of all Data Dumps We now have a relatively massive haul of digital data from the OBL strike. There are several forensic toolkits in use by the private
(commercially available) and
public sector as well as
open-source.
Best practices include inventorying all the sources, cloning the sources so as to not damage pristine data, recovering any partial or damaged content, making the cloned sources read-only, adhering to legally-admissible tools standards, and documenting everything. There is an excellent source titled Digital Forensics and Born-Digital Content from the Council on Library and Information Resources [
pdf,
Resource Shelf]. But what to do next*?
[more inside]
posted by rzklkng
on May 4, 2011 -
40 comments
"
On GChat, I type many things – sincere and not – that I would never say in person because it’s easy, when typing certain things into a box, to forget whom you are typing to." From
Thought Catalog, writer Caroline Bankoff lists 45 things she thinks about when she thinks about google's chat service.
[more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue
on Jan 6, 2011 -
34 comments
The
Haystack application aims to use
steganography to hide
samizdat-type data within a larger stream of innocuous network traffic. Thus, civilians in Iran, for example, could more easily evade Iranian censors and provide the world with an
unfiltered report on events within the country. Haystack earned its creator
Austin Heap a great deal of positive coverage from the media during the 2009 Iranian election protests. The BBC described Heap as
"on the front lines" of the protesters' "Twitter revolution", while The Guardian called him an
Innovator of the Year. Despite the laudatory coverage, however, the media were never given a copy of the software to examine. Indeed, not much is known about the software or its inner workings. Specialists in network encryption security were not allowed to perform an independent evaluation of Haystack, despite its distribution to and use by a small number of Iranians, possibly at some risk. As interest in the project
widens and criticisms of the media coverage and software continue to
mount, Heap has currently asked users to
cease using Haystack until a security review can be performed.
posted by Blazecock Pileon
on Sep 13, 2010 -
31 comments
"Facebook's popularity is based on the reality that human beings are social creatures. Staying connected with people we know is innate to us. But maintaining separate social groups that we don't want to clash is also innate."
The Five Stages of Facebook Grief.
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Jul 18, 2010 -
87 comments
Cybersyn (or Synco, in Spanish) was computer network constructed in 1970 by an English/Chilean team headed by cyberneticist
Stafford Beer (his
papers). Cybersyn was an electronic nervous system for the Chilean economy, linking together mines, factories and so on, to better manage production and give workers a clear idea of what was in demand and where. The network was destroyed by the army after the 1973 coup. Later that year Stafford Beer drew upon the lessons of Cybersyn to write
Fanfare for Effective Freedom, a eulogy for Allende and Cybersyn, and
Designing Freedom, a series of six lectures he gave for CBC, outlining his ideas. Besides the first link in this post, the best place to start is
this Guardian article from 2003. If you want to go more in-depth, read Eden Medina's
Designing Freedom, Regulating a Nation: Socialist Cybernetics in Allende’s Chile. And if nothing else, just take a look at the amazing
Cybersyn control room.
posted by Kattullus
on Mar 21, 2010 -
32 comments
Wanna test if your ISP (or company or university) is blocking or throttling BitTorrent traffic? Want some tools to diagnose network problems in your "last mile" connection? Google to the rescue:
M-Lab! Predictably, with the recent
announcement and
publicity, the servers are now getting hammered. So post this?
You can help: Host a Glasnost server (tests for BitTorrent). *Results so far. Coming soon are apps to "Determine whether an ISP is giving some traffic a lower priority than other traffic" and "Determine whether an ISP is degrading the performance of a certain subset of users, applications, or destinations". Power to the People, bay-bee!
posted by spock
on Jan 29, 2009 -
58 comments
Snail mail isn't that slow,
unless you use real snails.... As part of a "
slow art"
project, Vicki Isley and Paul Smith of Bournemouth University have attached radio frequency identification chips (RFID's) to three gastropods, Austin, Cecil and Muriel. The RFID's will pick up your mail as the carriers amble past an electronic reader and deliver it when (in just a few days! ...or weeks ...or months....) they slip past a second reader....
RealSnailMail!
[more inside]
posted by Kronos_to_Earth
on Jun 21, 2008 -
15 comments
Some fancy security for 6 to 14-year-old girls Anne's Diary is a Canadian social network for 6 to 14-year-old girls (I read about it on
the CBC's Spark blog). It has two interesting security features to fend off child molesters and the like. To sign up for the service, kids need to get a non-parental adult professional as a 'sponsor' who validates their identity and age (much like applying for a passport). Secondly, you get a USB fingerprint scanner with your initial package, and I gather the kids use this to log in to the service. And yes, that's Anne with an 'e'. No Prince Edward Island gable was ever this secure.
[more inside]
posted by dbarefoot
on Dec 6, 2007 -
31 comments
Decentralized social network: "...build your social network in one place and have other NoseRub clients connect to it instead of you having to build multiple networks on multiple social networks. The best part is NoseRub is released under the open source MIT license." via
eHub.
Previously related.
posted by yoga
on Oct 4, 2007 -
23 comments
Soldiers may no longer use MySpace to communicate with family. The Defense Department will begin "worldwide" blocking access, as of today, to
YouTube,
Metacafe,
IFilm,
StupidVideos,
FileCabi,
MySpace,
BlackPlanet, Hi5,
Pandora,
MTV,
1.fm,
live365, and
Photobucket on its computers and networks, according to a memo sent Friday by Gen. B.B. Bell, the U.S. Forces Korea commander. Note that most soldiers deployed in war zones don't have access to any network outside of the military network.
posted by dejah420
on May 14, 2007 -
76 comments
Dandelife. Q: "Why would I want to keep my biography on the Internet?"
A: "Stories are best shared, don't you think?" [from the
about page]
Dandelife.com describes itself as a "social biography network." It allows you to construct an annotated timeline of your life, add photographs (it works with Flickr, with which is shares design elements) and links. Example
here; via
anh-minh.com.
posted by jokeefe
on Nov 2, 2006 -
12 comments
Dapper: The Data Mapper A
recently launched service that allows users to extract data from any website into XML, and transform or build applications and mashups with that data.
Described by it's creators as a way to, "easily build an API for any website... through a visual and intuitive process". Plagiarism Today, meanwhile, has
cause for concern, "Dapper is a scraper. Nothing more... now the technologically impaired can scrape content from any site... the potential danger [is] very, very real".
posted by MetaMonkey
on Sep 5, 2006 -
31 comments
It's F'ing Dethklok! Also known as Death Klok Metacolpyse, this cartoon from the creator of Home Movies will debut 20 episodes on Cartoon Network in August. It's been called "Spinal Tap meets Scooby Doo meets Norway, and will feature guest appearances by metal superstars. It'll be months before the high decibel violence and comedy commences, meanwhile comedy and metal nerds can see this 82 second leak.
posted by Blingo
on Apr 16, 2006 -
23 comments
Google and Wal-Mart to launch the Google Computer [GoogleFilter] - Rumor-merchants around the industry are abuzz with speculation that Google is about to launch a no-frills, $200 networked computer via (ahem) Wal-Mart. They will also announce Google Cubes, media and home automation control devices. Will this be a watershed event or an infamous folly? Film at 11.
posted by LondonYank
on Jan 3, 2006 -
61 comments
