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NTK now with added t-shirt menaces |
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NTK 2007 2006-09-29 Mini NTK #32 Muttley's top games, dastardly ID cards 2006-07-14 #373 Techa Kucha culture, Steve "Coast to" Coast 2006-06-09 #372 Dorking Burn-Bot, You Propose It To Them 2006-05-05 #371 Bruce Sterling, 5 (count 'em!) things happening outside London 2006-04-01 #370 Still valid if you're on California time 2006-03-17 #369 All the events, all the time 2006-02-17 #368 Plugs, more plugs, and intelligent mains 2006-01-13 #367 Web 2.0, mail from 2004 NTK 2005 NTK 2004 NTK 2003 NTK 2002 NTK 2001 NTK 2000 NTK 1999 NTK 1998 NTK 1997 |
_ _ _____ _ __ <*the* week^H^H^H^Hnow-monthly tech update for the uk> | \ | |_ _| |/ / _ __ __2006-07-14_ o join! sign up at | \| | | | | ' / | '_ \ / _ \ \ /\ / / o http://lists.ntk.net/ | |\ | | | | . \ | | | | (_) \ v v / o website (+ archive) lives at: |_| \_| |_| |_|\_\|_| |_|\___/ \_/\_/ o http://www.ntk.net/ Tips, news & gossip to tips@spesh.com - with NTK in subject line, cheers. >> HARD NEWS << bring your kazoos Almost a year from its inception, that old OPEN RIGHTS GROUP has made a few news reports, a logo, a wiki, and some sort of progress in transforming a somewhat technical range of issues into something more relevant and interesting to a wider audience. Still, if you're curious as to where they might be headed next, the UK receives its annual opportunity to interrogate Svengali-like puppetmaster Danny O'Brien at this weekend's LONDON COPYFIGHTERS' DRUNKEN BRUNCH AND TALKING SHOP, meeting up at the Mason's Arms for "brunch" (12noon-2pm Sun 2006-07-16, 51 Upper Berkeley Street, Marble Arch, W1H 7PP, free but RSVP on the wiki so they know how much food to get), then (optionally) pitching up to bemuse the tourists at Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park. Or, if you can't make it to London, Danny's also promising a "focused discussion" at next weekend's LUGRADIO LIVE 2006 (from about 10.30am, Sat and Sun 2006-07-22/23, Wolverhampton University Students' Union, Wulfruna Street, WV1 1LY, UKP5), amid a lineup that includes Mark "Ubuntu" Shuttleworth, Simon "Whatchoo talking about" Willison and Sarah "PS2 Linux" Ewen (all on the "Main stage" and all, incidentally, also billed to appear last year). The "Beard" Room plays host to the likes of John "Everyone Loves Eric Raymond" Leach, while headlining the "Chin" stream is inescapable Pipexian Timelord Bill Thompson - also emphasising the "focused" nature of his session we notice, as opposed to the surrealistic ramblings that LugRadio listeners may otherwise presume. http://www.lugradio.org/live/2006/index.php/Main_Page - oh and Steve "OpenStreetMap" Coast, of whom more later http://openrightsgroup.org/category/org-events/ - indoors if wet >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering We've always seen the Free Software Movement as a quixotic crusade to stamp out the piracy of Microsoft products. But sadly, no matter how much you peer through meatforge or the ubuntu/hypertimetransmetroverse, sometimes "borrowing" a copy of Visio/OmniGraffle for five minutes is all you can do. Until... *drumroll* now. GLIFFY is a web app written with the Flash-done-right OpenLaszlo engine aimed at drawing flowcharty stuff. It does the 90% of Visio you need, in a genuinely pleasant in-browser interface. Being a Web 2.0ish site, it also lets you share documents publicly, and collaborate as easily as Vichy did (only with your co-workers, not their historical precedents). Thankfully, unlike most web-hosted apps, it also does decent export - including SVG, standards fans. So when the money runs out and they try to switch to charging, you'll have all the code you need to import it all back into Dia. http://www.gliffy.com/ - still a pleasure to write reviews they'll never link to on their homepage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertime - Hypertime: the difference between what you were told about Ubuntu, and the grim Frank Miller install gorefest you find yourself in now >> ANTI-MEMES << there's smoke, flames, http://dohthehumanity.com/ ah, the heady days when clicking on a "No frames" option did something: http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/Artweb.html ... the "abstract illustration" school splits in 2 directions: http://telecoms.com/itmgcontent/tcoms/news/articles/20017362761.html vs "You'll be dealing warez - in 3D-rendered cyber-prison from now on!": http://slyck.com/news.php?story=1065 ... cosmic Google goofs: http://google.com/search?q=unchartered+universe http://google.com/search?q=%22christ+anderson%22+%22long+tail%22 http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22eternal+javascript%22 , http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22house+of+worhip%22 , http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22manly+thanks+to%22 - and don't be intimidated by the holier-than-thou spelling of "sanctimonious": http://google.com/search?q=sacramonious ... http://greendesign.co.uk/?page=webdesignagency&town=Anne+Widdecombe ... all-new excuse as to why NTK is a bit late this month: http://www.channel4.com/games/review.jsp?id=1382 ... >> EVENT QUEUE << GOTOs considered non-harmful We consider it the height of professionalism when a speaker spends as much time actually delivering their presentation as they did fiddling with the video projector beforehand. Imagine our anticipation, therefore, on learning that TECHA KUCHA (7pm, Tue 2006-07-25, what looks like the "New Cavendish Street campus" of Westminster University, London W1W 6UW, free) attempts to meld the "20 [pre-submitted] slides for 20 seconds each" format known by designers as "Pecha Kucha" to the kind of subject-matter you might meet at Dorkbot, EuroFOO or the Greater London Linux User Group. All your usual favourites - Yoz "Ning" Grahame, Simon Willison (again), and is that Ben "PLAN" Russell? - should be speaking, plus organiser Steve Coast, clearly on some record-breaking bid to appear at every tech conference there is, including next week's FUTURESONIC in Manchester (UKP45), and - we imagine - a semi-secretive O'Reilly Euro "Foo Camp" just before their big Brussels Open Source Convention in mid-September. http://www.asklater.com/steve/blog/?p=56 - 20 slides x 20 seconds = approximately 6.66 minutes each http://10.futuresonic.com/urban_play/social_technologies_summit/ - on the same bill as Toshio "Electroplankton" Iwai http://conferences.oreillynet.com/euos2006/ - cue to dust off all those "Bar Camp UK" wikis from last year http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Past_Events - you have been busy indeed, User:Steve http://www.freethisweek.net/ - hope he keeps this up though (and adds a swap facility?) >> SMALL PRINT << Need to Know is a useful and interesting UK digest of things that happened last month or might happen next month. 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 "a springboard for everything to technological" http://hayleyshollers.blogspot.com/2006/03/mailing-lists.html NEED TO KNOW THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK. Archive - http://www.ntk.net/ Unsubscribe or subscribe at http://lists.ntk.net/ NTK now is supported by UNFORTU.NET, and by you: http://www.ntkmart.com/ (K) 2006 Special Projects. Copying is fine, but include URL: http://www.ntk.net/ Full license at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0 Tips, news and gossip to tips@spesh.com - with NTK in the subject, cheers. All communication is for publication, unless you beg. Remember: Your work email may be monitored if sending sensitive material. Sending >500KB attachments is forbidden by the Geneva Convention. Your country may be at risk if you fail to comply. |