"1) We strive to
a) identify only those people who will be interested in a
particular marketing message,
b) deliver the message to them in a way that makes it an
enjoyable or valuable experience,
c) provide it in a manner that encourages them to share it
with others..."
...thus effectively invalidating any token effort made in a),
of course.
- "Manifesto" of the new Viral + Buzz Marketing Association
http://www.vbma.net/mission.html
>> HARD NEWS <<
persistent "number twos"
Currently residing in the "Where Are They Now?" file: WEB
2.0 was a convention with a disturbing meld of the usual
suspects and the usual convicts. Spruced geeks failed to
recognise each other with trimmed hair and proper non-T
shirts. Previously dapper VCs and analysts either dressed
down, or were still living in their 2001 suit. Either way,
they're not aging well - and these Golden Oldie
Nostalgiafests can't be helping. In the end, gentle shock at
how long it's been seemed to be the only reason for being
here. The geeks, in their hearts, know there's no real
money-making plan in what they're planning next. The VCs,
deep in their blackened coal-pit guts, know the same. Still,
didn't stop anyone on the old "Web 1.0", did it? We can't
quite believe the entrepreneurs will be able to pull *another*
blinder on the investing public, but stranger things have
happened. And there is some hope in all of this: if you
thought that hell would freeze over before the rich kids of
tech would pay even lip-service to open licenses, fair use,
and publicly stabbing Hollywood in the eye over the
Internet, let alone using their *actual money* to do so, do
bring a woolly jumper to Web 3.0: Yet More Hell On Earth.
http://www.transmitmedia.com/svr/vault/polese/
- what the rigour of ten years hard work do: Polese then
http://www.gsinstitute.org/about/directors.shtml
- now. Dave Winer, however, remains scarily well preserved.
http://www.bowblog.com/archives/000872.html
- over here: a bit like they wanted to sell you timeshares
Cyberspace used to be "where you are when you're on the
phone". Now it appears to be "where your data is when it
gets handed over to the FBI". When Rackspace, a US company,
voluntarily handed over Indymedia's UK webserver to the US
FBI, they were, it appears, indirectly obeying an Italian
prosecutor's instructions. And if you think that sounds like
one of those Babelfish chain-of-translation exercises, you'd
be right: the latest rumour seems to be that the prosecutor
was just asking for information, and the FBI got the wrong
end of the big, globalised stick. It's still fuzzy though:
We're still waiting to hear from the Swiss, the FBI
themselves, the EFF (who are now pursuing the case in the
US, due to its similarity to the Steve Jackson deal that
started the EFF off, as it were), Rackspace, and every other
mediated body that could possibly be involved in this mess.
We bet the anti-terrorist people are wishing they had the
clout of the British Phonographic Industry, and could just get
the ISPs to hand over names and addresses of people to round up.
http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/WhoTookAhimsa
- shields up! logs to /dev/null!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/14/bpi_wins_p2p_court_order/
- hey, maybe we can find out where all the leechers live, too!
>> EVENT QUEUE <<
GOTOs considered non-harmful
So, it looks like the "Spot The Fed" contest will have
greater-than-usual resonance at the Indymedia fringe spinoff
to this weekend's EUROPEAN SOCIAL FORUM festivities (from
yesterday until Sunday 2004-10-17, various venues around
London including Alexandra Palace, Bloomsbury and the
Millennium Dome, though the Indymedia/ "Communications Rights
and Tactical Media Production" bit is at the Camden Centre,
London WC1, and is free but "donations encouraged"). Equally
opposed to the spectres of war, globalisation, racism etc -
but tackling them via an ingenious mix of PHP scripts and SQL
queries are shadowy social-software funders MYSOCIETY who,
along with acclaimed democracy-scrapers PublicWhip.org.uk and
TheyWorkForYou.com, are hoping to recruit further "volunteers"
at their London drinks evening the Thursday after next (Thu
2004-10-28, Old Queen's Head, Essex Road, London N1, free but
you must RSVP them to find out when it actually starts).
Annoyingly, this is the same night as the inaugural CLUB LE
STRANGE, a "hastily thrown together" evening of music and
performance curated by the "New New Romantic" comedy throwback
Gary Le Strange (8pm, Thu 2004-10-28, The Albany, 240 Great
Portland St, London W1, UKP7), though rest assured that there
should be a lot less naive 1980s-style idealism about the
social impact of technology... at the Gary Le Strange show.
http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/ImcUkEsfCamdenFlyer
- vs http://www.fse-esf.org/en/
http://www.mysociety.org/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/OctoberEvent
- we are warriors, woh-o-oh, and webpages are our weapons!
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/kate.darby/page9.html
- influence on new Robbie Williams single is plain to hear
http://www.dorkbot.org/dorkbotlondon/
- "Turbo Twins" robots at Dorkbot London this Wednesday
http://www.ifiwatch.tv/
- plus Gavin, who runs exequo.org, who stream - radical movies!
>> ANTI-MEMES <<
there's smoke, flames, http://dohthehumanity.com/
ultra-enticing job ad - also, between 10pm and 7am you will
sleep in a cold dank cell with 15 of your fellow developers:
http://www.freelancers.net/freelance-jobs-creative/200410/9596.html
... retroactive BBC Reeve censorship - "View cache" on:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22foetuses+being+delivered+to+Reeve%22
- vs http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/weblog/archive/0403.shtml now
... http://qwer.org/AvatarIsOnTheRight.html imitates UK
Resistance: http://qwer.org/ScrollDownOrSearchForTron.html ...
Apple owners - smarter than the average loser who buys a PC:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86816 ... token
stationery double-URLtendre roundup: http://penisland.net/ ,
http://www.fukhing.com.hk/ ... spirit of experimentation alive
at: http://www.ica.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=13566 ... damned
when he talks: http://bush.carlcarter.com/ - and when he
doesn't: http://www.looptvandfilm.com/client/bush/bush.html
... "Little Britain" fansites really getting into the
characters' back-stories: http://www.emilyhoward.com/ ...
>> TRACKING <<
sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering
Kids today have it easy. In our day, when you wanted to send
a monochrome picture of your hastily-sketched out superhero
idea to 2000AD, you had to do it yourself, with a black biro
and some scrap paper. These days, all you need is the
INKULATOR9000, a GPLed degree project that takes polygonal
meshes and turns them into seemingly amateurishly inked
illustrations. Yeah, yeah, we know that non-photorealistic
rendering is old hat, but there's something in particular
about the combination of fan-constructed fantasy 3D models
and a program that simulates what those fans would have done
before Poser that just seems... right.
http://inkulator.sourceforge.net/
- "heh heh"
http://www.red3d.com/cwr/npr/#sketching
- if you want to get fancy
>> GEEK MEDIA <<
get out less
TV>> the self-consciously inept movie parodies of FRENCH AND
SAUNDERS (9pm, Fri, BBC1) are firmly - but politely - shown
the door by the new maestro of "alternative mainsteam", in AN
AUDIENCE WITH HARRY HILL (9.10pm, Sat, ITV), shortly before
his triumphant return to a primetime slot with HARRY HILL'S TV
BURP (5.30pm, next Sat, ITV)... and, as we said before, J-Lo
discovers the nightmarish inner thoughts of a serial killer
resemble nothing so much as "bad 1980s pop videos" in daft VR
knockoff THE CELL (10.15pm, Sat, C4)... "spacecraft explode
with muffled thuds, not the usual ka-booms that, in the real
world, the vacuum of space would render impossible" notes The
Independent re the new BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (8pm, Mon, Sky1)
http://news.independent.co.uk/media/story.jsp?story=571071 ...
the new series of LITTLE BRITAIN (9pm, Tue, BBC3) remains the
only thing BBC3 seems likely to be remembered for, while MY
LIFE IN FILM (9.30pm, Tue, BBC3) combines the tiresome media-
referencing of "Spaced" with the ongoing life-commentary of
"Dream On" - and not in a good way... we must admit to having
a soft spot for Zeppotron's hilariously old-lady-fronted
nudity roundup BAN THIS FILTH (11.05pm, Tue, C4)... terrorist-
myth-exposing docu THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES (9pm, Wed, BBC2)
may just make you more worried about what unsubstantiated
anxiety-inducing nonsense the media are going to perpetrate
next... and, with the Cassini Huygens probe heading for Titan
on December 25th, HORIZON (9pm, Thu, BBC2) asks: have we
learned nothing from the "Beagle 2" debacle - that delicate
planetary manoeuvres and Christmas celebrations don't mix?...
FILM>> Dreamworks' CGI division "jumps the shark" with an
upsetting CGI caricature of Will Smith and a "Finding Nemo"
knockoff that *doesn't even look like it's underwater* in
SHARK TALE ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/sharktale.htm :
game violence, including eating of live characters; body
exudate/ function humor; Lenny didn't [have] a "girlfriend"
and showed no interest in the opposite gender; implications of
diverse lifestyle)... sadly, they haven't used the popular
headline pun for overviews of the field of cellular automata
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22it+all+about+Alife%3F%22 to
update the theme tune of Jude Law talking-to-camera remake
ALFIE ( http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ : Contains strong language and
moderate nudity and sex references)... though also out next
week is the inevitable "whoever wins - cinemagoers lose"
franchise-flogging of comic/game adaptation ALIEN VS PREDATOR
( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/alienvspredator.htm :
many alien attacks, some quite graphic; two uses of the most
foul of the foul words which is likely the reason for the PG-
13 rating, none of which were needed in any way; only one
sacrificial suicide) - it's hardly going to have the laughs of
http://alienlovespredator.com/ , is it?...
BONERS: CORRECTIONS, CLARIFICATIONS, AND "INCORRECTLY REGARDED
AS GOOFS">> "ATDT www.ntk.net: Hey, this is your old Hayes
Modem talking", began one of the reader emails that we've
never fully understood, before continuing "Yeah, the one you
threw away to get a USR V.42bis so you could zmodem Ultima IV
in a mere day", and concluding: "This is almost as much fun as
the times we used to turn Tradewars movies into N0rp with The
Draw instead of hax0ring your WWWIV BBS that nobody visited.
Keep up the good work ATH0"... on a similar note, TONY FINCH
suggested the obvious approach to the Amstrad E3 stinging you
for making data calls down your own phone line [NTK 2004-09-
17], asking "What happens if you unplug it overnight?". Well,
the bad news is: they've thought of that, Tony - it stops
working if it can't communicate with the Amstrad number coded
into the hardware (also the only reason you can't currently
use it outside the UK)... in other updates, we'll omit the
identity of the reader who pointed out that the Westminster
Council gimp [also NTK 2004-09-17] also has "his own
animation, which us lucky people who work for the council were
forwarded in one of many spam e-mails from our 'internal
communications' team", leading him to suspect that some of
them "are clearly on drugs of some kind". You can "enjoy" the
full gimp-abusing Flash toon at http://www.rubber-trouble.com/
- our source particularly relished the slightly sinister
"...sometimes too efficient!" at the end... and just to close
on our traditionally unsavoury note, comiserations to the
(again unnamed) individual who emailed breathlessly comparing
two celebrities' genitalia to "a button mushroom" and "a
baby's arm holding an orange", shortly followed by another
message announcing: "Gnngh. You're not Popbitch. Please ignore
previous email, obviously"...
>> SMALL PRINT <<
Need to Know is a useful and interesting UK digest of things that
happened last week or might happen next week. You can read it
on Friday afternoon or print it out then take it home if you have
nothing better to do. It is compiled by NTK from stuff they get sent.
Registered at the Post Office as
"proud sponsors of Tygerberg College Rugby squad"
http://special.time.net.my/cobra/team-tygerberg.cfm
NEED TO KNOW
THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
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