From Saturday the 17th until Sunday the 25th of October I will be participating together with CMD Breda at the Dutch Design Week Eindhoven. You can find me, showing off my project motion, at stand 24 in the “Klokgebouw”.
For more information you can visit the website for the Dutch Design Week.
Yesterday Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of profilepage facebook, announced that users are getting the possibility to vote on policy decisions. After a few mistakes in the past, regarding the privacy of their users personal data, facebook made a big step in the right direction.
Facebook decided that all new policies are presented to the users first. Then the user gets to speak out and tell what they think about it. When 7000 users don’t agree on a proposal then there is going to be a vote. When 30% or more votes against the new policy, it won’t happen. 7000 users may seem like a lot of users, but keep in mind that facebook got around 160.000.000 users. Zuckerberg explained :
“History tells us that systems are most fairly governed when there is an open and transparent dialogue between the people who make decisions and those who are affected by them. We believe history will one day show that this principle holds true for companies as well, and we’re looking to moving in this direction with you.”
I think its great that a big company like facebook decided that its good to get there decision making more transparent. And I hope more companies will follow their example.
Iif you’re interested about this subject I can recommend my thesis in which I name transparency as a possible way to protect our right to privacy. Also that companies will be forced to make there day to day business more transparent because they are getting more and more dependant on user data. At the moment its only available in Dutch.
Also the book “The transparent society” from author David Brin gives a fresh view on the subject of privacy.
On August 4 2006 Internet company AOL (America Online) accidently leaked data of 650.000 AOL search engine users. It cost AOL 3 days to discover the leak and by then the data was already spread around the Internet.
Graphic designer Sander Plug and dutch television director Lernert Engelberts worked together on the documentary I love Alaska, in which they use search history data to tell the story of user #711391.
“I love Alaska tells the story of one of those AOL users. We get to know a religious middle-aged woman from Houston, Texas, who spends her days at home behind her TV and computer. Her unique style of phrasing combined with her putting her ideas, convictions and obsessions into AOL’s search engine, turn her personal story into a disconcerting novel of sorts.
Over a period of three months, a portrait of a woman emerges who is diligently searching for likeminded souls. The list of her search queries read aloud by a voice-over reads like a revealing character study of a somewhat obese middle-aged lady in her menopause, who is looking for a way to rejuvenate her sex life. In the end, when she cheats on her husband with a man she met online, her life seems to crumble around her. She regrets her deceit, admits to her Internet addiction and dreams of a new life in Alaska.”
I found this incredible photography panorama from Photographer Simon Høgsberg. During 20 days Simon captured pictures of 178 people on the same spot, a bridge, in Berlin. He put all the pictures together in one big flash panorama, making it look like one big picture. Also I really like the title.
While designing my new website I decided to use a special font for the titles. Previously, when I wanted to use a non-web font, I would use images or sIFR. But because of the dynamic content of this website the use of images wasn’t an option. sIFR would have worked, but I think it is relatively hard to implement. Also the refresh that would happen during the page loading is, I think, really annoying. But because I really wanted to use a different font than the standard web fonts I decided to search for an alternative.
I found Facelift Image Replacement or Flir. Flir is an image replacement script that uses PHP to generate an image file. It is really easy to implement and works great. Be sure to check it out.
Got to see some great lectures last Thursday at the playground festival. There where two lectures that made a great impression on me. The first one was from Paul Prudence. A visual artist who uses different kinds of methods for creating dynamic visual art. Most of which is responding directly to music of other input. The talk inspired me for some interesting ideas for my own project “motion”.
The second one was Roel Wouters. A dutch designer who is not afraid of using all kinds of media. I already saw the “jubilator” once at Lowlands, but he’s showed off a lot off other cool projects. Be sure to watch the video “Grip” Roel made for the band zZz. Made during a live performance in the “Stedelijk museum ‘s Hertogenbosch”.
