Ian Magee was sick of people speeding past his house at double the speed limit, so he installed this fake speed camera in a really conspicuous spot on his property.
What’s really clever, is that Magee didn’t just put up a dummy speed camera, he made it into a real working bird feeder, allowing the critters to get in where the lens would normally be.
via Fake speed camera birdhouse slows cars, pisses off authorities | DVICE.
Google and Mozilla are developing new processes that will make it easy for developers to enable people to use the functionality of one web app inside another web app. For example, a photo hosting site could make it so that people can use any favourite photo editor within their site. Sites won’t even have to know about each other, and it takes only a few lines of code.
via Google and Mozilla working on interoperable web apps | News | .net magazine.
I-Programmer first reported the introduction of free online courses at Stanford at the beginning of August, and since that time, over 100,000 prospective students have signed up. There’s even been a study group formed at reddit. Free courses include:
via Maximum PC | Study Computer Science Online at Stanford for Free.
These creepy bowling balls are part of an advertising campaign for 13th Street (a murder mystery television channel). The art direction was done by RUOK and spray painting art by Oliver Paass.
It didn’t escape their notice that South Park aired on Comedy Central, which was owned by Viacom, the massive media conglomerate which was suing YouTube for $1 billion dollars over… displaying Viacom content without payment. “It is unreasonable for those same corporations to treat the Internet as a bottomless well from which it [sic] can endlessly draw content without permission, payment, or even acknowledgment of the original artists,” said Brownmark in a press release (PDF) announcing the litigation. “Brownmark Films is taking a stand against these corporations’ continued reliance on double-standards, a decision made all the more difficult by Brownmark Films’ respect for South Park and its brand of humor.”
South Park had licensed the music and lyrics, but had paid nothing to the guys who created the video, even though that video was clearly the basis for the one in the episode. Was this copyright infringement? Brownmark said yes; South Park claimed that it was a fair use parody of the whole viral video phenomenon.
via How “What What (In the Butt)” unintentionally bolstered “fair use”.
Facebook has sent notes of apology and is changing automated systems that blocked environmental activists and other people from posting on like-minded Facebook pages.
The activists weren’t victims of censorship, but rather an anti-spam computer algorithm that was impersonally doing what it was designed to do.
via Facebook’s spam program catches activists – Technology & science – Tech and gadgets – msnbc.com.
This highlights the importance of building your own space, and not relying on mega companies to look after your interests. -JA
For the past few months, Facebook has been testing several home page redesigns that add a second, real-time news feed to the right of the central Top News feed. In the latest tested design, Facebook has removed the Most Recent tab of the news feed and replaced it with a real-time activity feed that is displayed at the top of the Chat sidebar.
via Facebook Tries Replacing “Most Recent” with a “Ticker” Real-Time Feed Atop the Chat Sidebar.
So why does Mozilla want to ditch the version number? In the words of Asa Dotzler, director of Firefox, “we’re moving to a more web-like convention where it’s simply not important what version you’re using as long as it’s the latest version. We have a goal to make version numbers irrelevant to our consumer audience.”
via Firefox: The Emperor Wears No Versions | Webmonkey | Wired.com.
Does not seem entirely rational. -JA
The microwave has been redesigned to fit in a kitchen like a regular drawer, thus freeing up the work surface.
via Innowave – Microwave Redesign by Anoush Mortazavi » Yanko Design.
Pretty cool! -JA
As we mentioned then, it’s been possible to watch videos with friends since the beginning of Google+, through a more complicated manual process that must be initiated in Google+. But this new button allowing you to initiate hangouts from YouTube with a couple of clicks makes it considerably easier.