Teh Internets
Friday, November 6, 2009
Tech / Teh Internets What Does Google Know About You?
Posted by Anthony Hecht on Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 3:54 PM
More and more, people use several Google products every day to do all kinds of routine things - email, chat, shopping, documents, kitten videos, RSS, Waving, on and on. It's easy to forget how much information you're handing off.
Well, Google is now providing a new service that lets you see what's happening on all of their other services. It's called Google Dashboard, and it summarizes all the stuff you're storing on Google's servers and gives you access to various settings.
It can be a little unnerving to see all this info laid out on one page, but the intention is good—Google is making it easy to find what they're storing about you, and easy to change your settings if it gets too creepy.
Participation is mandatory.
Film / Teh Internets "My Whole Life I've Dreamed of Being a Slumdog Millionaire!"
Posted by David Schmader on Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 8:58 AM
An entrancing collection of movie scenes in which a character says the title of the movie, with greater and lesser degrees of klutziness, brought to the world by the mighty Videogum.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
TV / Teh Internets My Favorite TV Blog
Posted by Paul Constant on Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 4:14 PM
The internet has completely swallowed up all the time that I used to spend watching television, and for the most part, I don't feel bad about it. Why bother watching the entire, painful 90 minutes of Saturday Night Live when you can just catch the occasional honestly funny five minute bit on the internet the next morning? I watch some series—Breaking Bad, The Office—on DVD*, but I don't regret my choice to not upgrade to digital broadcasting.
Except for one thing: I used to be totally addicted to America's Next Top Model. Season two, in which Shandi was robbed of the title, was one of the only non-Joss-Whedon-related TV shows that I was actually eager to watch every week. But ANTM quickly declined in the quality department, and I stopped watching it. But recently, I discovered the pleasures of reading fourfour's weekly blog recaps of each episode of ANTM.
This week's edition of ANTM on fourfour covers the Blackface Challenge on last week's episode, and it's illustrated with many of the same awkward screencaps and hilarious animated GIFs that it delivers every week. The commentary is often laugh-out-loud funny and more thoughtful than ANTM deserves. I quickly realized that I enjoy reading fourfour's roundup more than I ever enjoyed actually watching America's Next Top Model in the first place. I suggest that you go back and read the archives; like me, you'll be dying to find out who wins just for the pleasure of hearing fourfour's opinion about the winner. It's damn fine television blogging.
* There is a timely reason that I'm thinking about television: I'm intrigued about tonight's premiere episode of V, the ABC relaunch of the old sci-fi television miniseries. I'll watch the first episode and get back to you here on Slog soon after.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Arts / Teh Internets Now Here's A Dead Body Exhibit I Can Appreciate
Posted by David Schmader on Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 9:30 AM
Friday, October 30, 2009
Film / Teh Internets / Drunk What Are You Doing Tonight?
Posted by Lindy West on Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 3:06 PM
Want to come hang out with me in Kirkland and drink beer and watch videos of monsters and ghouls and spiders crawling on people's stupid faces and stuff? Because you can! At BrüTübe!
Ranging from thought-provoking to thought-revoking, BrüTübe will feature six curators, each presenting a 15 minute set of videos revolving around the evening's theme, "Fear Factor/Beer Attractor." This Halloween-inspired theme will focus on and around the phenomenon of fear and the resulting cultural responses. Presentations will be projected to a large screen while you enjoy beverages and snacks in café-style seating. There will also be a Halloween raffle & costume contest! Don't miss it!This free event will be held in the Kirkland Arts Center Gallery during the current exhibition, Changes, on view through November 19.
BrüTübe Cürators:
Blood Squad (Improv Horror Comedy Troupe)
Gretchen Bennett (Artist)
Ben Kasulke (Filmmaker - Humpday)
Paul D. Natkin (Artist)
Emily Pothast (Artist, Musician)
Lindy West (Film Editor - The Stranger)
You should come to there! Come be by me! Starts at 7:30 pm!
Here is a video I will NOT be showing tonight:
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Books / Teh Internets / Nerd Nerds Find, Surf Google Wave
Posted by Paul Constant on Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 2:34 PM
Slog reader Jesse sent me an invite to Google Wave a few weeks ago, and I feel guilty that I haven't written anything about it. (Thanks for thinking of me, Jesse!)
But here's the thing: I don't really understand what Google Wave is for, and I've watched all the videos and tested all the different features. I like the way you can watch your fellow Google Wave participants type in real time. I like the widgets you can insert into a conversation. In fact, Google Wave is a great interface for chat—I bet that ultimately Google Wave will replace Google Chat on Gmail—but it simply doesn't deserve to survive on its own. There's nothing there that I can't replicate (a little more messily) in online chat sessions. I forget that Google Wave exists for days at a time, and I use chat in Facebook and Gmail quite a few times a week. But those features are additions to the standard web browsing experience, not a destination like Google Wave is.
...when I finally got my Google Wave invite and did a bit of poking around, I wasn't the least bit surprised to quickly discover a handful of Wave-based roleplaying games already in progress, and many more in various stages of planning. In the past few days, I've watched games from the sideline and talked to some Game Masters and gamers—there seems to be an emerging consensus that Google Wave has as much RPG potential as any platform since the venerable and proverbial tabletop.
This blog has more information about it, too:
Google Wave is a hybrid medium. It is both real-time and correspondence, when you choose for it to be. Google Wave is like a chat room with email-style archival, document-style accessible, immediate editing, and even forum-style multiplicity of threads and folders for organizing your material, that every player can quickly access and organize. Play-By-Posters and Play-By-Chatters will find in Google Wave everything their mediums used to do, and everything the other one did as well....So what is the literary style of a Wave RPG? Whatever you want. This is what’s quite brilliant about it. From the most verbose freeform RPG to the most dialog-starved combat-heavy story-less RPG, you can have it here on the Wave. No problem.
I haven't played any sort of role playing game since I was in high school, so this news doesn't really affect me at all, but it's good to see that Google is doing something for the geeks.
Politics / Teh Internets Google Announces Its Support of Referendum 71
Posted by David Schmader on Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 1:09 PM
Yesterday the powers that be at Google released a statement in support of Washington State's domestic-partnership-rights-protecting Referendum 71, which was featured in full on Techflash.com:
Google has a reputation for actively participating in policy debates surrounding information access, technology and energy. However, we do not generally take positions on social, legal or political issues that arise beyond our normal, day-to-day business. With that said, there are issues that are so important and so clear cut that we feel compelled to lend our voice. Supporting Referendum 71 is one of those issues.To be clear, we respect the strongly-held beliefs that people have on both sides of this argument. Nevertheless, we see this debate as one that comes down to equality, plain and simple. If we believe in equal protection under the law we must, in our view, support a man or woman's right to enjoy the legal benefits of domestic partnerships — no matter whom they love.
For the residents of Washington who want for themselves or their children the right to engage in domestic partnerships, we urge the voters of this state to APPROVE Referendum 71.
Good for Google, whose statement of support is heartening.
Nevertheless, talk is cheap, and since Microsoft backed up their support with $100,000, I'm sticking with Bing for the time being.
Speaking of which: Happy birthday to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates!
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Religion / Teh Internets At Last! We Have Invented the Afterlife!
Posted by Paul Constant on Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 4:58 PM
And it is on Facebook:
We understand how difficult it can be for people to be reminded of those who are no longer with them, which is why it's important when someone passes away that their friends or family contact Facebook to request that a profile be memorialized. For instance, just last week, we introduced new types of Suggestions that appear on the right-hand side of the home page and remind people to take actions with friends who need help on Facebook. By memorializing the account of someone who has passed away, people will no longer see that person appear in their Suggestions.When an account is memorialized, we also set privacy so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or locate it in search. We try to protect the deceased's privacy by removing sensitive information such as contact information and status updates. Memorializing an account also prevents anyone from logging into it in the future, while still enabling friends and family to leave posts on the profile Wall in remembrance.
Forget about My Death Space; Facebook has just ensured that we won't be haunted by phantoms from the past. They have also made it so the dead will make no new friends. They have rendered impermeable the gates of heaven. Facebook is forever.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
News / Teh Internets Government Denies Stealing Baby, Provides Evidence
Posted by Anthony Hecht on Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 5:00 PM
A few days ago, a blogger named Nic on the site My Bottle's Up (I don't know what that means, but judging from the header graphic, it has something to do with drinking and parenting, which perhaps explains what follows) posted a long and dramatic story about how TSA Agents Took Her Son.
Excerpts:
As I sit and write this post, 24 hours after this event took place, my hands still shake… with rage and with terror...My son was taken from me.
Taken.
...
I handed him my son and he walked away with my child.
My eyes welled up with tears, I stood up from my chair and I asked the female TSA agent, “Where is he going? Where is he taking my child? Why is he leaving?”
And so on. She describes a harrowing ordeal that "felt like hours... days even," during which her son was "out of eye sight," and that she called her husband, her mother, and nearly blacked out from panic.
Interestingly, it turns out those TSA checkpoints are pretty heavily monitored, and it also turns out that the TSA has a blog, and is feeling a little more push-back-y and transparent these days.
The same day as Nic's post, a TSA blogger posted a video of the woman's time in the screening area.
After watching the video footage, you'll see the video clearly shows that this individual was never separated from her baby by TSA. You'll also see that a lot of the other claims are also unfounded.
In response to her non-apology a few days later, in which she asked herself some tough questions about the situation ("am i a dramatic writer? most definitely. did my son and i suffer a traumatic experience? absolutely. was my post written when i was extremely emotional? yes.") but still didn't really cop to making the whole thing up, the TSA posted the complete video sequence from 9 different camera angles. TSA FTW.
What a weird story.
Teh Internets Re: Bing to Eat and Regurgitate Twitter, Facebook in Real Time
Posted by Grant Brissey on Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 4:00 PM
Didn't take Google long to catch up:
Google has announced a pact to feed Twitter's Web2.0rhea straight into its search engine, hours after Microsoft unveiled a similar deal."We are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results," reads a blog post from Googirl Marisa Mayer.
"We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months."
h/t: the Register
Also, speaking of headlines that would have made no sense 15 years ago, how about this one: Facebook Users Spend 8 Billion Minutes/Day on the Site
Music / Money / Teh Internets Is Google Getting into the Music Business?
Posted by Grant Brissey on Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 1:09 PM
Unsubstantiated rumors and conjecture next door on Line Out.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Teh Internets Will Someone Please Give Rainn Wilson a Place to Speak in Seattle?
Posted by Megan Seling on Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 4:03 PM
According to a recent Twitter message from Rainn Wilson (AKA Dwight from The Office, AKA UW graduate, AKA founder of Soul Pancake): The UW Alumni Group will not be sponsoring his speaking engagement at the school on November 6th so now he needs "a hall to bring my magic to my alma mater!"
Will some PLEASE give this man a hall!? He's interesting and hilarious and I would like to see him and I highly doubt he'd take me up on an invitation to speak at my house to me and my cat.
UPDATE: Mr. Wilson just Tweeted the good news; he found a venue. He'll be speaking November 6th, 6:30 pm, at Kane Hall.
Tech / The Ladies / Teh Internets Chinese Men Look for Lesbians, Break Internet
Posted by Anthony Hecht on Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 10:37 AM
What happens when a Chinese news agency invents a story about a secret city of 25,000 lesbians in northern Sweden? Two things.
1. Millions and millions of Chinese men swamp Sweden's ISPs, slowing the whole country's Internet service to a crawl.
2. Someone buys the domain chakopaul.com (Chako Paul was the made-up name of the made-up girl-on-girl metropolis), puts a crappy site up, and sells t-shirts for $30.
The original Chinese article, as dug up by Shanghaiist.
In Sweden, there is a place that is respectful of women’s love, but with a rule that men cannot enter. This is Chako Paul City. The town holds around 25,000 women, all from around Europe. If men transgress into the forbidden city, they will be beaten half to death. The citizens of Chako Paul are mostly engaged in the forest industry, because of such many of the women wear thick belts full of woodworking equipment. Some go into nearby cities to work and return to Chako Paul by night. Chako Paul’s tourism industry is increasingly prosperous, with hotels and restaurants everywhere that cater specifically to women around the world.
Thanks to Slog tipper Sarah
Monday, October 19, 2009
Tech / Teh Internets Today in Google Voice Kerfuffles
Posted by Anthony Hecht on Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 10:44 AM
Reports are flying around the Internet this morning that transcriptions and audio of some people's Google Voice messages are turning up in public search results.
Try this search query, for example.
The thing is, there are only 35 results. If Google were actually indexing GV voicemails, there would be zillions of them, right?
So what's the real story?
Well, it's still not 100% clear, and I'm sure a more emphatic statement from Google will be coming very soon, but on the Google Voice support board, a Google employee explains (poorly) that these are voicemails that people have posted to the web voluntarily, and so Google indexed them, as is their habit. He also says they've changed the system so these will not be indexed in the future without explicit permission from the embedding site's owner.
Since the initial idea behind posting a voicemail, was precisely to share it with others, we did not restrict crawling of those messages that users post on the web, but we can certainly understand that users would want to make them public on their sites but not necessarily searchable directly outside of their own website. We made a change to prevent those to be crawled so only the site owner can decide to index them.
Stand down. Nothing to see here.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Animals / Teh Internets Thank You, Internet
Posted by David Schmader on Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 3:32 PM
Sarah McLachlan speaks out, soulfully, about internet cruelty to animals.
Bless you, writer/producer/director Crystal Delahanty.
(Also, the pug in the toilet totally wins.)
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Life / Teh Internets Ain't Too Proud to Bing
Posted by David Schmader on Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 12:51 PM
As Dominic Holden first reported last week on Slog, Microsoft recently donated $100,000 to the campaign to approve Referendum 71, the ballot measure that would secure full domestic-partnership rights for Washington State's same-sex couples.
This was a very nice thing for Microsoft to do, and to show my gratitude, I am going to spend the next ten days using Bing, that new goddamn search engine Microsoft's been trying to ram down my throat for the past few months.
I have reset my home page from Google to Bing. What's more, all verbal references to Google will be changed to Bing; if a friend doubts my claim that Mariska Hargitay has a foundation that takes rape survivors swimming with dolphins, I'll say, "Bing it and see!" If I see a googly-eyed baby, I will compliment its bingy eyes.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Books / Teh Internets Twitter to "Write" the Next Neil Gaiman Story
Posted by Paul Constant on Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 2:24 PM
Oh, fuck: Galleycat says that Neil Gaiman will collaborate with the entire fucking internet on his next audiobook script.
The whole project starts on this Twitter page at 12 EST tomorrow (October 13). Gaiman will tweet the first line of a story, and the Twittersphere will add the next sentences, continuing the story in a round-robin style. To be included in the mix, your addition to the story must be tagged #bbcawdio and be sent to the correct Twitter page.
The story will reportedly be "edited." I would like to nominate that poor, nameless wretch of an editor for the next Nobel Prize in Literature if this thing winds up even halfway comprehensible.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Teh Internets Surf Into Your Weekend on a Wave of Oprah Pee!
Posted by David Schmader on Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 5:16 PM
From The Color Purple. Oprah Winfrey pees for ten minutes.
Thank you, Videogum, where Zayin_451 has the gold-star comment to date:
I find it most disturbing that she is peeing bumble bees.
Life / Teh Internets In Some Ways, This Is the Most Disturbing Video I've Ever Seen
Posted by David Schmader on Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 10:55 AM
And it's safe for work, if your employer doesn't mind the occasional close-up of tongue-wrasslin'.
Thank you, Everything is Terrible.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Crime / Teh Internets This Does Not Bode Well For National Security
Posted by Grant Brissey on Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 1:55 PM
This is sort of troubling. Now he's giving speeches on cybercrime?
FBI Director Robert Mueller was in San Francisco on Wednesday to advocate public vigilance against cybercrime. Speaking to the non-profit public affairs org, the Commonwealth Club of California, Mueller admitted that he himself barely dodged a con from the oldest trick in the cyber-criminal handbook.Mueller recalled how, not long ago, he received an email purportedly from his bank that looked "perfectly legitimate." The email requested he verify some personal information, and Mueller obliged with the instructions before realizing "this might not be such a good idea."
The FBI chief said he quickly changed all his passwords and tried to pass the incident off to his wife as a "teachable moment." But she replied: "It is not my teachable moment. However, it is our money. No more internet banking for you!"
When one anonymous questioner wrote "I'm not worried about a teenage hacker reading my email. I'm worried about you reading it."
Mueller responded that the questioner should in fact worry about the teenager "so much more" than the FBI. The G-man general said while preventing internet crime is incredibly difficult, the US government has struck "a pretty good balance" between respecting civil liberties and stewarding national security.
h/t: the Register
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Teh Internets Thinking About Twittering?
Posted by Paul Constant on Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 11:48 AM
You should probably know that it could get you fired...
A Hollywood waiter is claiming an encounter with "Hung" star Jane Adams cost him his job at a popular eatery.
...or get you arrested:
The man, Elliot Madison, 41, a social worker who has described himself as an anarchist, had been arrested in Pittsburgh on Sept. 24 and charged with hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possession of instruments of crime. The Pennsylvania State Police said he was found in a hotel room with computers and police scanners while using the social-networking site Twitter to spread information about police movements. He has denied wrongdoing.
Also: There is no conclusive proof that Twittering can get you laid.
(Many thanks to Slog Tipper Margi for the New York Times link.)
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Chow / The Ladies / Teh Internets Do I Look Fat in This?
Posted by Paul Constant on Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 5:55 PM
Ralph Lauren responded by declaring that Boing Boing's use of the ad was an infringement and demanded that Boing Boing take down the image. The thing is that Cory Doctorow is the co-editor of Boing Boing and he's an author who is thoroughly versed in matters of copyright.
And so now, thanks to their dumb legal action, even more people have seen the awful Ralph Lauren ad to the left. I hope you'll think about that ad before the next time you consider buying Ralph Lauren clothing; they clearly don't have any idea what the human body is supposed to look like, which is certainly not a quality that I like in my clothing designers.
Teh Internets To Catch a Polanski
Posted by David Schmader on Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 3:08 PM
An inevitable mash-up made valuable by Polanski's actual answers (culled from a 1987 Diane Sawyer interview).
Thanks for the heads-up, MovieLine.
Teh Internets It's Harder Than You Think
Posted by David Schmader on Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 11:07 AM
Monday, October 5, 2009
Teh Internets / Insomnia Are We Happy?
Posted by Grant Brissey on Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 4:50 PM
This shit is just getting creepy.
Facebook is even more omniscient than you thought: it can now chart the world's collective hopes and dreams and highs and lows—sort of, at least.The company's data team on Monday launched a trippy new application called the "Gross National Happiness Index." Taking a similar format to its "Lexicon" trend-tracking product, the "GNH" currently displays a graph of data tabulated over the course of the past few years to track the "happiness" of Facebook users based on words picked up in their status messages.
- Facebook's Gross National Happiness Index (Click to Enlarge)
Gross National Negativity:
- Gross Negativity Since Oct. 2007 (Click to Enlarge)
h/t: Cnet
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