Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category

Every now and then something comes around that really makes you wonder and puts things in perspective. For example, we all know how quickly the Internet has become THE most important communication medium. But what does that really mean? Is it just a fad? Is it all going to be completely different in 2 years? 5 years? 10 years? These are questions that most of us wouldn’t even think to ask, and would rather just go with the flow.

Do yourself a favour and spend the next 10 minutes watching the video below. I say 10 minutes, because you will want to see it at least twice, just to make sure your eyes are not deceiving you (and secondly because the soundtrack is Fat Boy Slim’s “Right Here, Right Now”)

Impressive, no? If you want even more, I have another one for you, this one came out just recently:

Well, it’s official – the new Facebook design is a go. No, not that one from a few months ago — this is brand new:

The new design, click to expand

Like it or not, Facebook could really care less. There is already a group of 1.6 million users that wants to petition against it, but if history has thought us anything is that Facebook could care less of what its users think – it’s not like they will leave (even if they wanted to, they can only “deactivate” their account). More ranting after the break

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Art comes in all shapes and forms. ImprovEverywhere is a new type of “performance art” with anywhere from 20 to 700+ performers. Their stage: The streets of the concrete jungle. Based in New York City, the group has grown exponentially and now sees supporters in many of the world’s major cities. But what do they do exactly? Basically anything out of the ordinary. For example, if you see someone on the subway with no pants you will think they are crazy — especially in the winter. But what about 700 people? What if all the workers at a food court started singing the same song together while you were eating? 

Those public events include synchronized fountain swimming, shopping shirtless at Abercrombie & Fitch, the Subway mirror, and many many more organized events. The most notorious one that even made the news several times is the Frozen Grand Central where 200+ people “froze” in time for 5 minutes, amuzing everyone around them:

This is a prime example of what Web 2.0 has to offer in ways other than intended. The group is getting world-popular and new events are organized all the time. For more information check out their site.

View the original IE blog or check out the YouTube channel

Welcome to a new time-waster of mine: Whenever I see something ridiculously cool on YouTube, I will post it on my blog for all of you to enjoy.

In the first part of this series, SomethingUnreal has created something truly cool out of the most uncool sounds on a computer – Windows Sounds.

Bravo! Now for the video:

Never out of surprises, Google has made a new announcement on Monday – it will block all music videos for the UK on its popular YouTube site.

The reason is that negotiations with it and the PRS for Music, a British entity that holds royalties for over 50,000 composers, have failed. 

Google claims that PRS asked for “many, many times” more money than a previous agreement and that ”The costs are simply prohibitive for us — under PRS’s proposed terms, we would lose significant amounts of money with every playback”

PRS has a different story to tell though, apperantly Google walked out in the middle of negotiations - ”We were shocked and disappointed to receive a call late this afternoon informing us of Google’s drastic action,” the PRS for Music CEO Steve Porter said. According to the company, Google wants to pay “significantly less than at present to the writers of the music on which their service relies, despite the massive increase in YouTube viewing.”

Who is right is not clear yet, but one thing is for sure – labels want another outlet for making profits after seeing CD sales have taken a plunge. Enough is never enough.

Source: Reuters

Yesterday Barack Obama chose Vivek Kundra for the post of Federal CIO, entrusting him with the task of overseeing the IT architecture of the federal government. Kundra is very fond of Google and what it has to offer.  ’Why should I spend millions on enterprise apps when I can do it [with Google] at one-tenth cost and ten times the speed? It’s a win-win for me,’ he says.

This is one of the many ways the new administration is catching up with technology and its commitment to be a more open government with larger public involvement through available Web 2.0 tools.

The only question is, isn’t this too much power for one company, especially for Google, which has its hand on almost anything that’s on the Internet? You can also catch the announcement of the DC-Google Partnership a few days ago on YouTube:

Being as cool as they are, it comes as no surprise that most Germans aged 19-29 would ditch their girlfriend or boyfriend, and even their car in a heartbeat if they had to choose between them or an Internet connection. Over 84% of the 1000 people surveyed shared that opinion. If that is not enough, 97% of them wouldn’t know how to live without a mobile phone too.