Mottr.am

Lytro

2011-10-27T18:13:55Z

Unlike a conventional camera that captures a single plane of light, the Lytro camera captures the entire light field, which is all the light traveling in every direction in every point in space.

Which means you can focus after taking a picture. Some example images, which you can click to re-focus.

Own Label

2011-10-03T21:27:59Z

Sainsbury’s Own Label biscuit assortment, 1967. Lovely.

From Fuel’s history of Sainsbury’s design studio, Own Label. More at Creative Review.

Pinboard Slash Fandom

2011-09-30T23:06:39Z

Apparently, Delicious (née del.icio.us) was awfully popular with fandom types, especially the ones who enjoy slash fiction.

So, when the men who invented YouTube completely and utterly ruined the once-great service, breaking tags with a / in them in the process, the fandom people jumped ship–no pun intended–to Pinboard, a superior bookmarking service.

Next, the fandom people set up a Google Doc so they could collaborate on feature requests. Maciej, the bloke who made Pinboard, joined in, answering questions and offering tips.

Impressed, one of the fandom people wrote a piece of slash fiction about an anthropomorphised Pinboard lothario shagging an anthropomorphised fandom community, making an anthropomorphised Delicious jealous. Amazing.

This is such a perfect storm of arcane web culture, pervy strangeness and general nerdery that I almost don’t care that Pinboard’s ‘popular’ page is now completely swamped with links to cringeworthy short stories about, I dunno, Dumbledore inappropriately touching Wesley Crusher.

Walrus

2011-09-26T22:42:51Z

A new Oyster-style travel card from Merseytravel, coming to buses, trains and the ferry over the next couple of years.

Mastergram

2011-09-07T15:08:42Z

Tenement Penthouse, 1941 by Weegee, filtered through Instagram. From Mastergram, a site devoted to ‘remarkable photos made better (or worse) using Instagram’. Horrifying.

Forty Year Old 3D Computer Graphics

2011-09-03T11:52:47Z

Please click through to the website to view this video.

More info here.

Sean Young

2011-05-27T16:55:00Z

Taken while making Blade Runner.

Via blech. More here.

Birkenhead Shopping Precinct, 1986

2011-05-17T15:22:00Z

From [D-block GB-328000-387000][1] of the [Domesday Project][2], now available online, after years languishing on LV-ROM discs that could only be read by a [BBC Master][3] and a bespoke laserdisc player.

Update: For the next few days, you can listen to Radio 4’s [history of the Domesday Project][4], and the digital archeology required to rescue it. [1]: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday/dblock/GB-328000-387000 [2]: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday/ [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Master [4]: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0112913

Full Moon

2011-05-09T15:27:53Z

Please click through to the website to view this video.

Via MeFi. Album available at the Death Grips website.

Not From The Internet

2011-05-04T15:36:32Z

One thing I will be doing from time to time this week is pulling down random books from my shelves and writing about them, under the belief that the internet is better when not all of it comes from the internet.

Tim Carmody

Crouching Bison

2011-05-02T23:45:47Z

Were there traveling artists, migrant or traveling artists, who would go from cave to cave, with some of the patterns in their pockets, recreating the bison?

Herzog, interviewed in the Paris Review

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

2011-04-29T16:36:14Z

The trailer for Adam Curtis’ forthcoming documentary. Forty-three tantalising seconds.

Subway Depot 29

2011-04-19T17:02:59Z

By Ben Cooper. Via Paul Mison.

BNP Membership List Legal Threat, Part II

2011-04-16T12:37:07Z

Another day, another legal threat from… well, I’m not sure who exactly, but someone who is very, very keen to scrub any traces of the leaked BNP membership list from the web.

You can read the text of the second email here–it’s interesting reading, going into more detail than the earlier threat about the legality or otherwise of linking to something that can’t be published according to a court injunction.

Since my correspondent strikes me as the type to make my life difficult, I’ve temporarily taken the link to the BNP proximity search down, pending proper legal advice. If I’m advised that I’m legally in the clear, the link will be reinstated.

I should also point out that, while I despise the BNP, I support the court injunction prohibiting the publication of its membership list and of course believe that mouth-breathing racists have the same right to privacy as anyone else.

What I do object to is intimidation and threats, and to the idea that a hyperlink and accompanying text to can be considered against the law.

I don’t want to get all poncey about journalistic freedoms when we’re talking about a single link and a line of snarky commentary, but I should be able to freely report on the existence of something I find on the web.

BNP Membership List Legal Threat

2011-04-15T12:10:54Z

I received an interesting email today, from someone who will remain anonymous (because Google tells me there’s quite a few folk with the same name):

To the proprietor of the website http://submitresponse.co.uk/weblog/2008/11/23/todays-links-231108/ Identified here as Mr Jack Mottram of Glasgow or any other relevant person in control of the entries identified in the above link and its connected pages.

URGENT, do not ignore.

You have linked to the British National Party (BNP) membership list which is prohibited from being published in the UK by a High Court injunction in 2008 (still in force).

Breach of an injunction can result in committal proceedings for contempt of court, which is punishable by a fine, imprisonment or the seizure of assets.

This list was obtained illegally in breach of the Data Protection Act 1998 section 55 and it lists the private details and postcodes of individuals. It breaches UK misuse of Private Information laws (Campbell v MGN, Mosley v NGN)¹, breaches UK confidentiality laws (Coco v A N Clark), breaches the European Convention on Human Rights Article 8, right to privacy, and the person who originally leaked the list (Matthew Single) was prosecuted and convicted of a criminal offence in Nottingham Magistrates Court UK on September 1st 2009.

People listed on this have been subject to violence and attacks. Please remove this link and any other similar immediately from your location.

If these links are not removed forthwith you will not be notified before further action is taken.

Please do not ignore this message.

If you look at the web page in question, you’ll see that I linked to the ‘BNP Member Proximity Search’, a handy service which lets you enter your Post Code and find out if any BNP members live in your neighbourhood.

It seems this BNP activist can’t tell the difference between linking and publishing², but it’ll be interesting to see what the threatened ‘further action’ might be.

If you’ve received a similar mail, I’d love to hear about it

Update: Regulation 17 of The Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002 appears to give a full defense in England and Wales for linking to another site’s content–to borrow the regulation’s rather nice phrase, by linking to another site I am acting as a ‘mere conduit’.

Update II: More info here.

EDU

2011-04-01T10:15:02Z

Eames Desk Unit.

Images from the Secret STASI Archives

2011-02-09T13:53:02Z

One of a selection by Simon Menner.

The Web is a Customer Service Medium

2011-01-06T21:19:15Z

“Why wasn’t I consulted,” which I abbreviate as WWIC, is the fundamental question of the web. It is the rule from which other rules are derived. Humans have a fundamental need to be consulted, engaged, to exercise their knowledge (and thus power), and no other medium that came before has been able to tap into that as effectively.

Wicked Leaks

2010-12-18T12:56:37Z

Bradley Manning, the intelligence analyst who is alleged to have leaked the thousands of state department cables, has often been compared to Daniel Ellsberg who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971. But I have stumbled on a film in the archives that tells the story of another leaker in America who tried to do the same thing, but even earlier.

Open Bookmarks

2010-10-22T17:05:53Z

Imagine a future where instead of lending someone a book, you lend them your bookmarks. Where your notes, annotations and references are synchronised across platforms and applications. Where your bookmarks belong to you, and a record of every book you read is saved and stored securely, no matter how or where you read it.