Technology - Ryan Thomas, an airman in the Air Force Honor Guard, bought some DVDs on the Internet using his debit card. It was a $20 payment made from his account, which had about $900.
Technology - Themobilenetwork condemns a law firm for sending letters to alleged illegal downloaders, including its own customers.
Technology - Swearing kids and boobie jokes may be the secret to the success of their videos, admitted Funny or Die's CEO Dick Glover and creative director Andrew Steele at SXSW this past weekend, but the smart business model behind them may hold a few secrets to the future of entertainment. Originally launched as a "hot or not" video site for comedy in 2007, Funny or Die has grown into a multi-media, cross-platform comedy hub with a thriving Web portal and production company--the HBO series, Funny or Die Presents, debuted in February. The next stop is film, starting this summer when the comedy duo Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim of the cult Adult Swim show Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! start production on their first feature.In fact, there is no platform or joke that Funny or Die won't try, said Steele. There's just one rule: It has to be funny.Thanks to its famous founders Will Ferrell, Adam McKay and Chris Henchy, that hasn't been a problem. Funny or Die's built-in orbit of talent spans from Zach Galifianakis to Lindsay Lohan to Buzz Aldrin (being directed by Snoop Dogg) to Henry Winkler who brings the site ideas. "It works because everyone wants to be there," said Steele, who came from a head writer position on Saturday Night Live.
Technology - An innovative folding plug for UK sockets is named as the overall winner at this year's Brit Insurance Design Awards
Technology - SXSW Interactive this year was all about ethonomics, orsocial mediafor social change. "How do we create a future we want to live in?" Danah Boyd asked in her keynote on "Privacy and Publicity in the Digital Age," based on her career's worth of astute invigations into young people's use of social media. She asked important quions about how changing norms of privacy (such as the Google Buzz "privacy fail") might affect an undocumented immigrant, a gay member of the military, or a woman fleeing a battered husband. Can online communities improve representation for marginalized groups and protect them at the same time? Valerie Casey's keynote challenged the tech world to address sustainability through a systems thinking approach. (Jon Kolko of Frog Design is starting the Austin Center for Design to teach just that). Ev Williams talked about Twitter partnering with 65 different cell-phone carriers to serve as an SMS news feed for the developing world, saying, "We've always held it important to make Twitter reach the weak signals," and saying Twitter's number one goal was to "be a force for good" (hmm, sounds familiar!). There was practically an entire Haiti track featuring Cameron Sinclair of Architecture of Humanity and Andy Carvin of NPR, who talked about
Technology - The globaleconomyformobileapplications will explode over the next two years into a $17.5bn industry, a study finds.
Technology - Meeting the people living behind the digital divide
Technology - Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski's strategy for extending broadband Internet access to rural communities [" Behind on broadband ," op-ed, March 14] echoed the Obama administration's efforts in its stimulus package while avoiding the quick solution.
Technology - Among the dozens of policy recommendations in the Federal Communications Commission's national broadband plan, the impact on consumers varies. The following are answers to some of the top quions we've been asked about how the broadband manifo affects individuals.
Technology - Networks blur the divide between public and private
Technology - How deeply a container ship cuts through the water just off of a port. A pri's homilies invoking the unemployed. The line at Starbucks. Even a casual reader of The Upswing knows that we are fairly obsessed with uncommon economic indicators. So imagine how psyched we were to come across this piece about just that, which aired on the Seattle and Tacoma NPR affiliate KPLU yerday. The story begins with a reporter asking 1,200 residents of Oregon, Washington and Idaho to complete the same sentence: Indicators for me that theeconomyis getting better or worse is when I see or hear ____ (blank). Happily, it sounds as if most of those polled saw signs of a healthier economy of late. Or, at least, most of those who made it on the air. My favorite answer comes from a woman who lives near the Columbia River and can watch container ships coming and going. In the piece she "deduces how many of the containers on deck are empty or full by how low a ship rides in the water." These days she is seeing less ship, more water. Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikebaird/ / CC BY 2.0