>> 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.
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