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Daily Mail: Big brother is not only watching you – now he is barkinging orders too

September 19, 2006 By Leave a Comment

According to an article in the Daily Mail, the Closed Circuit TV in Middlesbrough now features a number of loudspeakers, so control room operators can publicly berate bad behaviour and shame offenders into acting more responsibly. 

‘This isn’t about keeping tabs on people, it’s about making the streets safer for the law-abiding majority and helping to change the attitudes of those who cause trouble. It challenges unacceptable behaviour and makes people think twice.’

Ray Bonner, manager of CCTV at the City of Middlesbrough, in Daily Mail, September 16, 2006

Not sure if the clocks are striking thirteen yet (some would probably argue they already did when CCTV was introduced). It’s a debatable innovation and use of security technology but in today’s world, it’s hardly surprising. Let’s see if more cities in the UK will adopt this idea.

Filed Under: Innovation, Transatlantic

Evoke 2006 demoparty and computer festival in Cologne

August 11, 2006 By Leave a Comment

Great festival across the ocean: Evoke 2006 is starting today in Cologne, Germany.  Programmers, graphic artists and musicians are coming together to show off their skills in a number of categories. Demoscene.tv will be broadcasting live from the party.

(via heise.de)

Filed Under: Great stuff, Technology, Transatlantic

More mobile messaging

August 8, 2006 By Leave a Comment

Research firm M:Metrics says picture messaging is on the rise because more people own camera phones these days. Jupiter Research comments that ”the growth in MMS (multimedia message service) has still been very very slow compared to what mobile phone operators had hoped for” and that “a growth in uptake of camera phones has been fuelled by the fact that there are decreasingly small amounts of non-camera phones available in the market place” (via BBC News - Technology).

Well, I didn’t buy my phone because of the camera. But now that it is there, I have started to use it. For example when I ended up in the middle of a World Cup party.

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Maybe new mobile software will help drive growth for multimedia messaging. The findings by M:Metrics should be an encouraging sign for software developers such as Toronto-based Ambient Vector who build new kinds of social networking offerings to be used with camera phones.

When I was in Europe in June I was surprised how much text and picture messaging is used by people of all ages. I have sent and received way more messages on my cell phone in those few weeks over there than in the last 18 months in Canada.

The roaming worked perfectly with my Fido phone for both voice communication and text messaging. But now that I am back in Canada, I get error messages (did my phone overdose on SMS in Europe?) Need to get that fixed.

Filed Under: Technology, Transatlantic

It’s World Cup time!

June 13, 2006 By Leave a Comment

 

I am on vacation in Germany to watch the soccer World Cup. Back in July.

Filed Under: Events, Transatlantic

Today is World Information Society Day

May 17, 2006 By Leave a Comment

World Telecommunications Day is now World Information Society Day “to help raise awareness, on an annual basis, on the enormous possibilities that ICTs can bring to all economies and societies and explore ways to bridge the digital divide”.

“ICT can change the face of the poor dramatically. ICT can be visualized as Aladdin’s Lamp in the hands of a poor woman. A digital genie can leverage her energy and creativity to lift her out of poverty at the fastest speed.”

Professor Muhammad Yunus, Managing Director of Grameen Bank, Bangladesh, and recipient of the 2006 ITU World Information Society Award.

More on the ITU website

Filed Under: Events, Transatlantic

Don’t be afraid, upgrade to simplicity! – Ars Electronica 2006

April 21, 2006 By Leave a Comment

Simplicity is the theme of this year’s Festival Ars Electronica which is held from August 31 to September 5 in Linz, Austria. A blog about the festival program will be launched in May. Last year’s festival featured 450 particpating artists and scientists from around the world, and 33,000 vistors came.

The challenge of the future will be to make complexity comprehensible and manageable. Thus, simplicity in a positive sense means developing intelligent strategies to facilitate access to technologies, to make them more convenient, and to enable users to see what actually happens with the information moving through them.

Gerfried Stocker, artistic director, Ars Electronica

Filed Under: Events, Transatlantic

Want to build an online community? Start the printing press

March 26, 2006 By Leave a Comment

OpinioI like what my German hometown paper NGZ is doing. They have embraced blogging and are taking it a step further in a  back-to-the-future kind of way. NGZ and sister publication Rheinische Post launched a “reader-to-reader” portal called Opinio in early 2005. Readers can post their own articles about a broad range of topics. More than a year later, they have contributed 14,000 articles.

The kicker is that editors select the best articles and publish them once a week in the print edition of the newspapers and every two weeks in a dedicated magazine supplement. The prospect of having their own words and photos appear in print seems to appeal to many people, and is an additional incentive to join the Opinio online community.

Opinio was developed by Boogie Medien for Rheinische Post. If you know of other newspapers with similar ideas let me know. Here in Canada, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star and the National Post all do something or other with blogs on their sites now, and all three employ journalists who have started personal weblogs related to their beat. But it would be interesting to see a Canadian newspaper launch a blog-to-print portal like Opinio.  

 

Filed Under: English, Media, Transatlantic
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