MetaFilter posts tagged with internet

Club Internet

carsonb — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:54:22 -0800

Club Internet, curated by Harm van den Dorpel

Google answers data transparency concerns with Dashboard

zarq — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:18:56 -0800

This morning, Google launched a new feature called "Google Dashboard" that lets users view (and in some cases control,) what data is being stored on a range of more than 20 Google services, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Web History, Orkut, YouTube, Picasa, Talk, Reader, Alerts and Latitude. Services not currently included -- Analytics, AdWords, AdSense, and Book Search among others -- will be added in later versions. This new service may help address privacy concerns that have been raised over the years regarding various Google services. More from: * The Unofficial Google Blog * TechCrunch * The New York Times * CNET

'Lo world

starman — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:26:48 -0800

Forty years ago today, Leonard Kleinrock and a team of engineers at UCLA connected to Stanford Research Institute and typed (an incomplete) message between the first two nodes of the Internet: "lo." Kleinrock tells the story. The first router. On packet switching. (All YouTube) Kleinrock interviewed by CNN, LA Times. Sign outside the historic room at UCLA. History of the Internet.

Reddit founders depart

khafra — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:14:46 -0800

Reddit founders Kn0thing and Spez have left the building. The social media juggernaut's founders Alexis (Kn0thing) and Steve (Spez) have declined to renew their contracts, prompting much discussion and speculation on reddit itself, and the incubator that helped it start up, Ycombinator.

Web page? Is that something a duck walks on?

lazaruslong — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:43:15 -0800

On your mark! Get set! We're riding on the Internet! Cyberspace! Sex-free! Hello virtual reality! Slightly NSFW

Math Overflow

escabeche — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 12:28:26 -0800

Math Overflow is the first attempt to use the Stack Exchange platform, already popular with programmers, as a scientific research tool. Founded this month by a group of young mathematicians, including Scott Morrison and Ben Webster of the Secret Blogging Seminar, the site is already wrestling with hundreds of questions, ranging from the technical ("When is a map given by a word surjective?") to the historical ("Most interesting mathematics mistake?")

How To Save Media

reenum — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:56:09 -0800

How To Save Media Jason Ponti from Technology Review offers some suggestions as to how traditional print publishers might save themselves from becoming irrelevant.

Rot wins the internet

sleslie — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 20:04:52 -0800

The internet has declared Rot, a 36 year old British Man, to be the winner of a long and torturous decade long search for the ultimate meme. [NSFW] By posting a Youtube video blending otaku-ism, a cellar, skin, hip dance moves, disco music, mimicry, a balding head, lip-synching, sexual tension, suggested drug abuse, commercial-ism, nipple-play, a bare ass, some kungfu-like moves, some masturbation moves, game reviews, expressions of lust, contempt, love, and fanaticism, Rot has won one billion internet points. The body of work that started in the 60s known as the internet has now been completed. We can all start building solar panels and wind turbines now.

The Virtual Museum of Iraq

homunculus — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 09:55:43 -0800

The Virtual Museum of Iraq.

Google Asks: "What Would Email Look Like, If It Were Invented Today?"

zarq — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 07:45:13 -0800

Google began inviting volunteers to a public preview test of their new Wave web-based collaborative email and document communications platform yesterday, which enables users to "communicate and work together in real time." Initial reviews this past May seemed positive. (Previously) Features include real-time collaboration, (including concurrent editing and control of each "wave" thread,) natural language tools and a variety of APIs which users can use to embed content in other sites. Google Wave Developer Preview at Google I/O 2009 (80min video -- an abridged 10 minute version is here. Wave login page is here. Google Wave Federation Protocol is an open source project for developers. The WSJ reports that invites are now for sale on EBay. Something similar happened when Google launched GMail in 2004.

Are polymathy and general knowledge in decline?

Kattullus — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:20:04 -0800

Two articles from The Economist's Intelligent Life magazine about changes in knowledge production and acquisition, The Last Days of the Polymath by Edward Carr and Is Google Killing General Knowledge? by Brian Cathcart. The first deals with the implications of increasing specialization in all field of human activity and the second with whether people are not committing facts to memory because they are so easy to look up on the internet.

Tehran Bureau

homunculus — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:03:36 -0800

Tehran Bureau, the independent Iran news website which became indispensable during the post-election protests in June, has found a new home at PBS's Frontline, which is taking them under its wing by financing and hosting the Web site and providing editorial support. [Via]

I took your purse and felt a connection.

miss lynnster — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:33:03 -0800

The 20 most bizarre Craigslist posts of all time.

One giant leap for Chinese Internet Censorship

allkindsoftime — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 05:18:05 -0800

Chinese news site dispense with user anonymity. Includes an updated list of sites China actively blocks, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International (?!? - both links work only outside of China). prev

Graphic Sexual Horror, a documentary

Stochastic Jack — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 11:01:26 -0800

A new documentary chronicles the rise and fall of Insex.com, one of the early websites. (NSFW) Co-directors Anna Lorentzon and Barbara Bell look at Insex, the people behind it, and the forces that ultimately brought it down. The stuff that Insex did tends to make even hardcore kinksters flinch a bit. However, as one reviewer points out, they at least put the activities into context, showing the performers both in the scenes (which include drowning and suffocation--some of this stuff may really hit some triggers for some people), as opposed to the notorious anti-porn documentary, The Price of Pleasure, which showed sex and kink without exploration of the performers' lives offscreen. One of the most interesting aspects of the film is that they ultimately were shut down not by obscenity laws, but by federal authorities who used the PATRIOT Act to claim that hardcore porn funded terrorism.

College for $99 a month

cogneuro — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 20:38:05 -0800

Will universities go the way of newspapers and the music industry? Says so right here. ITTET will students continue to pay huge tuition for college when they can get the same education on-line at a fraction of the cost? Quality inexpensive on-line courses are here (previously 1, 2, 3 and others). A learner can pay the big tuition bucks and take Psych 101 in a classroom with 300 other people and an overworked contract lecturer, or DIY on-line. Article argues that on-line courses will undermine the business model for universities, with potentially "catastrophic" results. Virtual beer pong extra.

"Jia Junpeng, your mom is calling you to come home and eat."

tapeguy — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 12:28:11 -0800

China's latest Internet obsession began with an anonymous post on a computer gaming forum: "Jia Junpeng, your mom is calling you to come home and eat." After attracting more than 17,000 replies in six hours, the original message went on to appear in All Your Base-style photoshops and on t-shirts amid claims by internet marketing experts that they invented the whole thing. Why did the joke travel so fast and so wide? Childhood memories, according to China Daily. Or maybe it was because of a team of secret viral "internet promoters". See also: Toyota's co-opting of the Leeroy Jenkins World of Warcraft video, Russia's Preved! bear and all your memes.

Web browser history detection

homunculus — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 09:06:25 -0800

What the Internet knows about you. "This project was started by a small group of Web developers and security researchers in order to highlight the problem of Web browser history detection -- a problem which can dramatically affect the Web and hurt many people, if not solved quickly. Our direct goal is to educate the mainstream public and show them the direct consequences of allowing this aspect of Web browser behavior, as well as provide some solutions which mitigate the problem. However, since there are no existing satisfactory solutions, our other objective is to point the attention of browser developers to this issue and strongly encourage them to implement the necessary and long-overdue fixes." [Via]

"The YouTube Reader"

Holly — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:47:52 -0800

From the publisher's website: "The YouTube Reader is the first full-length book to explore YouTube as an industry, an archive and a cultural form." Features some seasoned commentators, among them film analyst Thomas Elsaesser, and an online exhibition. Looks interesting.

Wikipedia vs. Predator

alzi — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 06:38:11 -0800

A red-billed blue magpie doesn't have anything on Predator. The 2005-2006 South-West Indian Ocean cyclone season, on the other hand, would blow that intergalactic hunter out of the water (literally).

Where and _why

bitdamaged — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 16:30:41 -0800

In programming, as in life, you find those who's turn a mundane task and turns it into art. In the Ruby world one of those people goes by the psuedonym of why the lucky stiff or simply _why. _why's Poignant Guide To Ruby [PDF - large, and still worth a look] is an almost transcendent look at what a programming book can be, full of cartoon foxes and wizards and even a soundtrack. _why didn't really care about making a mint off of his work instead deciding he wanted to get kids excited about programming, in a way that they could understand, teaching them by "fated appointment only" [Vid Link, 30 mins and fun]. He created a whole framework designed to make it easy for kids to get into programming called Hackety Hack. Today for some reason _why's online presence, sites and code have disappeared from the inter tubes and nobody knows _why. Though some believe its because someone pierced the veil and found his real name but many wonder if he didn't get hacked

I get a lot of giraffes

Potomac Avenue — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 11:59:48 -0800

One Million Giraffes At this point it's just fun to see people all over the world turning off their TVs, putting their computers away and sitting down to drawing giraffes. From the expert, to the cute, to the inventive, to the...um...idk, One Million Giraffes is may actually make their goal, given that they got 12,000 pictures yesterday.

Top things the < 18 set looks for on internets

ShadePlant — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 10:49:34 -0800

Top 100 search terms of the <18 crowd during summer. If you're Glenn Quagmire, don't read this. All others, continue! An article with at least superficial credibility (they admit kids search for porn, etc.) about what kids, tweens and teens search for online. Randomness includes Megan Fox, Walmart, Youtube and Naked Girls. (And Craigslist. What the hell do kids need on Craigslist?)

An ingenious device for avoiding thought...

smoke — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 05:56:20 -0800

The brain's plasticity has some neuroscientists worried about what the internet will do to reading - and to humanity. But teenagers - the very demographic you would expect to suffer most from the google-induced inability to focus and critique - are in fact reading more than ever. Or are they? Young adult fiction might be selling, but who's doing the reading?

Fewer Twitters with caffeine jitters?

Shepherd — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 10:36:43 -0800

According to the Wall Street Journal, coffee shops in New York are starting to cut back on laptops -- by reducing WiFi privileges, removing outlets, or banning the machines outright. This article has spawned a vast number of spin-off pieces and conversations across the Web. Meanwhile, the quest for a place to lounge in the glow of unlimited Internet use continues to be a beacon... even here on MetaFilter.