Danish High Court orders ISPs to block access to the thepiratebay.org, Google, Youtube, Yahoo

Access to thepiratebay.org has been blocked here in Denmark. Soon also Google, Yahoo, Youtube and other prominent search engines will be blocked, the court´s ruling suggests, because they are also linking to copyright infringing materials.

Well it is actually only thepiratebay.org. My point is that although the issue of indexing and distribution of copyrighted content might well be the issue of the decade in some circles the decision to ban a website based on an indexing service is very very controversial. The problem is complex and a one web site ban will not solve the problem.

Barack Obama Inauguration and CNN use of Photosynth

And so it seems that the day Barack Obama sworn in as the 44th president of the United States CNN decided to use a spectacular new technology to show a 3D image of the moment he was sworn in  (Photosynth anybody?). The image promises to mix and merge pictures taken by people attending the event (Photosynth for sure!), and also show an image taken by a satellite. Lets see what they will do exactly, but clearly new Social Navigation Systems are moving fast.

UPDATE: and there you go! It was a rather banal application of Photosynth, the special occasion and world wide distribution of the picture will sure make this picture a favorite among the examples of scholars that will flock on the subject. Collective Image Making it is, one more reason to read my article -teaser- and the final article (which is way more juicy then the teaser) about the evolution and the implications of these new forms of Image Making

this is the link to “the moment”

UPDATE 24/1/09
Well there is another picture circulating that is also quite interesting, and actually nicer to navigate. Conceptually is not as interesting as the CNN “The moment” coproduction, but visually quite intriguing and based on a similar digital merge here it is LINK (Photo David Bergman)

Francesco Lapenta, 2008, “Mapping the World. A Brief Essay on the Changing Staus of Digital Photography. Google maps, Photosynth, Flickr, iPhoto 2009 and the Digital Merging of Collective Image Production.”, www.visualstudies.eu

 Full Essay LINK

Remindfull of a technology that Ridley Scott created for Rick Deckard to use in his 2019 Los Angeles (Ridley Scott, Blade Runner 1982). As it happens reality has exceeded the fantasy allowing us to seamlessly move from one image into another in a virtual continuum of increasingly global spatial representations. As the map of the Empire that the cartographers continued to grow with increasing levels of detail, the virtual map of the world is acquiring a scale and scope that further exceeds their ambition. This virtual map deserves attention, because it is different both in its genetic nature and in its multiple evolution. It combines elements (Image, Text and Sound) that never before could be combined so seamlessly together. The map is built by the cooperation of two entities. On the one hand we have the (soon to be interconnected) platforms that are offered for its growth, we could say this is the equivalent of the kind of “surface” that is offered for the renditions of the map (in our case Google Earth, Google Maps, Photosynth, QuickTime VR, iPhoto 2009 etc, etc). And on the other hand we have the new generation of cartographers comprised by all the individuals  around the world that contribute with pieces of representation of the world to the enormous puzzle of the virtual map.
Read the rest of the essay here

Preferred Reference System:
Francesco Lapenta, 2008, “Mapping the World. A Brief Essay on the Changing Staus of Digital Photography. Google maps, Photosynth, Flickr, iPhoto 2009 and the Digital Merging of Collective Image Production.”, www.visualstudies.eu

President elect Barack Obama and the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

This is really an interesting move, and one that is going to give a lot of momentum to the Creative Commons License system. President elect Barack Obama new governmental website  www.change.gov is now registered under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. This is interesting news on more then one level, and certainly one that is keeping me interested in what the new administration might do for the power´s balance over the Internet.

WEB 2.0 the thrill is gone. or should it be?

A really interesting article written by Gry Hasselbalch about the new found consciousness required for the wise use of the ever present social networking websites/tools:

From the year of ME to the year of OOOPS

excerpt: “Ok, so 2006 was the year of “me”, the year when we the ”I” generation took the media and used it to its very limits to express ourselves. The public debate was rolling over its own borders of excitement over all the new possibilities that we suddenly had to express ourselves with:

Blogging, moblogging, youtube, SecondLife, myspace, Linkedin…uuhh nice….and twitter and jaikuu!!! and and and….

And then came 2008, the hang over year, the year of “OOPS” when ”me” the average person suddenly realise what I actually put out there. Organisations, media and even politicians start talking about the responsible media use and user, about how we should think about what we put out there. Campaigns, regulations, codes of conduct, guidelines, recommendations….”