CopyFraud

Undergroundfilm.org - Independent Movie Distribution

Alex Cohen was talking about the underground film site that enables film makers to publish their stuff online for free. Be sure to check out the "Steal this disc".
Link

Ski jumping in San Francisco streets

Mark Twain once said: “The coldest winter was the summer in San Francisco”.
It rarely gets over 25 degrees in the city. Today was the rare occasion when the whole bay area enjoyed warm weather. Perfect day to have ski jumping competition on one of crazy steep streets of San Francisco.

Neighbours are not too happy about the event organisers dragging two blocks of snow and bunch of ski and snowboard bums to their street. The people who lived there protested and torpedoed the event once. Too bad the event was on Thursday in the middle of the day.

 

Be sure to check out the video Link

Spoof Ads

Adbusters is a magazine that I found while waiting in Berkeley Bowl line. NO Ads in the paper. They have created some great spoof ads on their site. My favourite are the Absolut ads.

Link: Adbusters : Spoof Ads.

Nice beer ad

You can sing, sing, sing along;
It's a big ad...
Expensive ad...
This ad better sell some bloooody beer.
Link via Erno Polukka

To the barricades

Next Tuesday at 13:00 there will be a major demonstration outside the Parliament house against the new copyright law. The demonstation is supported by all party youth chapters and EFFI. Be there and hear the latest excuses from members of parliament and maybe aven from the miss culture minister itself. Bring banderols, musical instruments and mp3 players and let the music play. Lets show that the citizen response wasn't machinated by Sanoma WSOY or by Jyrki Kasvi but by we the citizens. Spread the word!
Could someone make a podcast of the event?
More info here

Update: There is a let the music play parade at Oulu main library on monday 3.10.05 at 4:30 pm. more info at [email protected].

Google Maps and MSN Virtual Earth on your mobile phone!

This is sort of natural think to come out next:  Mobile GMaps - Google Maps and MSN Virtual Earth on your mobile phone!. Only one problem remains to be solved: the price of data transfer to mobile devices. Can you say Wifi? Can you say Wifi when you are lost?

I wonder how much money people would pay to know their way. I bought a navigation system to my car after getting lost too many times. Having a Female domina in my car telling what to do is sort of nice. She speaks even Finnish. And the best thing; when I get bored with her, I can shove her into the glove compartment.

Having just a map in my pocket simply isnt enough if I dont where I am... or maybe i could stop bitching and walk to a street corner and type those two streets to my mobile!

Mobile phones have a color display and new models have speaker phone that can shout instructions. Think about a service where you could reprogramme your navigator to have personalized instructions. "Stupiiid! You should have taken the previous left turn."

A thing I learned today 1

People learn new stuff every day. When you are young you might learn to walk or that dont mess with bigger kids. The learning never stops. I added a new category to the blog "thing I learned today". I will promise to post at least four things a week. Small posts because new there is no need to take major steps to keep learning. The thing I learned today? Homecoming is an event where old student come back to campus. There is usually a football game and events like class re-unions held during the homecoming weekend. Berkeley's homecoming is on coming weekend. Ice cream or american media? Tough choise.

11 a.m.–noon

The State of the American Media Bechtel Engineering Center, Sibley Auditorium American media is in a state of great upheaval. From media conglomerations to online blogs, the media landscape is rapidly changing. Dean Schell hosts a discussion on the reassessment of American media: examining where it is weak and where it is strong, asking what is wrong with today's media, and forecasting where it might be headed.

11 a.m.–1 p.m.

Fentons Ice Cream Giveaway Homecoming Headquarters, Student Tent Fentons is giving away FREE ice cream scoops! This is an exciting opportunity to meet fellow Cal alumni, parents, and students. A delicious Student Homecoming and Berkeley tradition for the entire Cal community. Stop by the Student Tent at Homecoming Headquarters near South Hall to pick up your treat and mingle with other Bears!

Iran Defence Forum - Female Soldiers from around the world

How to combine two cool things; weapons and beautiful woman?   Iran Defence Forum - Female Soldiers from around the world site has a the answer. I think the first canadian picture is in fact a picture of soldier in Finnish army uniform.

Participatory Media Class

I am attending a participatory media class taught by Howard Rheingold and Xiao Qiang.

We are going to do case studies of: USA 2004 elections, emergency communications, Chines blogging, smart mobs, Korean Ohmynews effect on korean elections.

While Howard was talking how the many to many blogosphere developed I remembered yesterdays IBM session. Dan McGrath talked about distributed resources and division of labour. Open source community has managed to create tools that support their common goals; Building software that works. What is the goal of participatory media.

The whole question of participatory has to be defined.
1. It doesnt have to be a community but it has to to be group of people not just one.
2. The group must contribute not just consume the media in order to participate.

Could participatory media be continium to association? It enables communication about common interests without formal ties into group.

Dan McGrath: Open source corporate strategy IBM

Director, corporate strategy

Open source corporate strategy IBM

History
McGrath stated his talk by referring to Carlota Perez "technological revolutions and Financial capital"
Dan said that found a remark "Tech revolutions force changes that have patterns"  Perez made true. The patterns are:
1) Hype, over investment
2) Bubble and crash.
3) 20-30 years of implementation of the technology or so called gold age.

Business strategy implications

Most of the industry leaders are thinking: "I have inherited a business that is built on industry revolution." Shared global pools of resources including labor, capital and shared digital infrastructure impact the way we can do business.The division of labor has improved because the digital tools enable new kind of efficiency. Inventing collaboration conducts is necessary to get the spread resources working toward common goal. It is not only businesses that need to rethink the way they work. Other institutions are also affected by the disruptive changes created by technology. Adaptive change in laws and institutions takes a long time.

Companies are looking what to out source, how to adapt procedures and ways to remove inefficiencies with new technology. Removing the inefficiencies means a business opportunities.

Out sourcing is only one possibility. Think of who could do the job the best? They don't have to work for you. They might be part of a group of people who have the similar goals than you.

IBM open source strategy

Ownership don't matter for IBM. Client value is what matters. After IBM moved to support software built on Apache their application server share had arise from 10-50%.

Solution integrators Li & Fung limited, IBM
Platform architects SAP
Module Specialist FedEx, Flextronics

IBM spends about 100 million dollars on Linux development. The amount isn't big compared to money they spend (500 millions) to competing platform.

The trick is that industry co-operates to get costs down to create more value to buyers.
"GPL helps us to invest 100 million and rely that we get the benefit from the other players who invest over 1 billion dollars annually."

"We are so deep in the open source world that the company would have to completely fail before going back to old way of doing business."

Old software that doesn't serve to have developers working on it, has to still be supported. Chopping it to modules help us to push it to open source world.

Our patents come mostly from our customer relationships not from research facilities. They come and tell that they have a problem they want us to solve. IP for IBM means strategy not just a work to IPR lawyers. We are looking at our patent portfolio. We are proud of it and have invested in to it. How do we use those? Traditional model; being sole provider of the product

1.) Traditional model of having a  (5%)
2.) Licensing (5-10%)
3.) Cross licensing (vast bulk 75-80%)
4.) Give a patent to 'public domain' (patent pledges and patent commons)

"Patent trolls and IP consentrated companies are threat to innovation. We are really in favor for patent challenging. This would help to eliminate bad patents from the market."