How will smart mobs play out?

Business Week Online conducts a short newsmaker q&a with Howard Rheingold. How Will "Smart Mobs" Play Out? Tech trend-spotter Rheingold says these fluid, Net/cell-phone communities have still-unmet entrepreneurial promise

'Hollywood magic' for home video

I don't generally run press releases for new products, but I'm a big fan of multimedia software that encourages personal creativity. I think we'll see an explosion in home moviemaking over the next five years. So this may be a little ahead of the curve, but perhaps there's already a market for licensed soundtrack music for homemade film shorts and family videos.

Richard Manfredi, PR director for SmartSound Software, passes along word that this week SmartSound released five new music CDs in its Movie Music library. Says Richard:

These tracks are designed for use with SmartSound's Movie Maestro soundtrack creation software, and feature moods and styles that are a great fit for any home video creator who wants a Hollywood soundtrack for their projects. Movie Maestro is an ingenious software product that creates soundtracks that exactly fit any length of video footage, with the user needing to be a music expert.

Geek eye for the Luddite guys

Fortune magazine (and gotta love this headline): Geek eye for the Luddite guys. Can three tech experts deliver digital happiness to a small part of America? Fortune footed the bill to install practical, easy to use products in the home of the most typically tech-less family we could find in an attempt to create digital nirvana.

What is long distance?

John Patrick, president of Attitude LLC and former vice president of Internet technology at IBM, ordered his Packet8 VoIP system last week and got it Friday. What is long distance, anyway? he asks.

A telephone revolution at Dartmouth

Yesterday I mentioned that I signed up for Packet8, a Voice Over IP service. Today the NY Times has a look at an innovative experiment on the Dartmouth campus. The college is venturing into the world of VoIP, which essentially turns a computer into a telephone. (I'm adding two more urls to the same story to compare how long it lasts in the free news universe, so here's the Dartmouth VoIP story in the Userland RSS workaround, and the same story through the Google Advanced News Search.)

Taking the VoIP plunge with Packet8

I'll be busy making phone calls over the next three weeks for a report on online newspaper registration practices I'm writing for the Newspaper Association of America.

So, a minute ago I took the plunge and ordered a Voice Over IP service. I followed the advice of my friends Buzz and Dan (who wrote about it here) and ordered a $19.95/month monthly service from 8x8's Packet8. Since I've got a cable modem, it allows me to call anyone in the United States or Canada for essentially free, even if they don't have Packet8.

I'll let you know how it goes.

The network-smashing future of television

From the October issue of Wired: The Fast-Forward, On-Demand, Network-Smashing Future of Television. What happens when digital video recorders give viewers control of the TV schedule, the content, and the ads? The whole world is watching.

On a related subject, Forbes has this: ZAP! The Day May Finally Be Near When Digital Technology Eviscerates a $60 Billion Ad Business. The networks could probably survive TiVo, but will they be able to survive the inexpensive DVR features of cable and satellite services?

Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointers.

Why the Web will kill RSS

Vin Crosbie: Why the Web will kill RSS. Spam is just one of a dozen reasons he cites.

Not sure I agree with Vin's bottom line, but he's a smart guy on all matters new media.

Radio tag set to debut

Wired News: Radio Tag Debut Set for This Week. Interesting story about RFID tags and the Electronic Code Product Network, which will allow retailers and suppliers to track not only product codes -- something bar codes already do -- but serial numbers for each individual item. Some of the tags can also send out signals when perishables reach their expiration dates.

For anyone who has ever worked in supply chain (for retail or ecommerce), this is akin to a gift from the heavens. But the EFF and others are right to address the privacy issues involved. "The activists say new laws may be needed to prevent organizations from tracking individuals through the radio signals emanating from the things they purchase."

Something to keep an eye on.

Beyond Google as an Internet archive

Register UK: The politics of archiving, or why Google is not the only archive we'll ever need.

Million TiVo March

Variety: TiVo, the reigning brand leader in the nascent digital video recording market, announced plans Friday to cut its retail price to just under $200 in an effort to spur holiday sales and stave off an inevitable price war with cable operators starting to roll out their own cut-price DVR combo boxes.

Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.

Reporter + Photo Phone = Moblog

Speaking of E-Media Tidbits, Steve Outing has this today:

... Louie Villalobos of The Sun in Yuma, Arizona, has been writing and photographing for a "moblog" when he is out and about covering a portion of the Arizona border with Mexico. Called The Border: Where Two Worlds Meet, the blog includes photos taken by Villalobos along with a brief description for each. The items most often cover drug smuggling and immigration news. Recent photos have included a truckload of marijuana seized by federal agents, and a citizens group guarding a group of illegal immigrants. ...

A device to jam camera phones

CNET News.com: A product now in testing could automatically switch off camera phones to protect industrial secrets and private areas.

A videophone Dick Tracy would love

AP story: A new attachment for Nintendo's Game Boy Advance will allow the handheld to operate as a videophone, displaying live video of gamers on both ends of a telephone line. For now, the add-on will only be available in Japan.

Comic strips via RSS

I had missed this over at Dead Parrot: Comic strips via RSS. Cool!

Make robots, not war

Village Voice: As American warfare has shifted from draftees to drones, science and the military in the United States have become inseparable. But some scientists are refusing to let their robots grow up to be killers.

Manhattan flash mob meets its maker

Wired News: "Bill," the man who started the flash mob phenomenon earlier this summer, stages the final impromptu gathering in New York City. Time for the mob to move on, he says.

Nutch: An open source search engine

John Battelle, former publisher of the Industry Standard and author of an upcoming book about search, has an article on SearchEngineWatch.com: The open-source engine Nutch could rewrite the rules of search development -- especially with an impressive roster of Internet luminaries now lining up behind it. (I can't access Nutch right now ... server getting slammed?)

BN.com drops e-books

TeleRead: Barnes & Noble drops e-books -- as Amazon revs up.

Mobile news photos and mobile photo news

Steve Outing in E-Media Tidbits today has this:

Paper Publishes Its 1st Cell-Phone News Photo

G–teborgs-Posten, Scandinavia's second-largest morning newspaper, today published on its website its first news photo taken by a mobile phone. Johan Bostr–m of the Swedish paper's news desk tells me that after a collision between a tram and a truck in central G–teborg, reporter Ralph K”llstr–m reached the scene and filed a brief report to the news desk. Then he used his mobile phone to snap some pictures, picking the best and e-mailing it (via the phone) to the news desk, which added it to the web version of the story. ... But the story's not over. According to Bostr–m, "20 minutes later a photographer from G-P arrived. The pictures he delivered to the news desk an hour later were technically of higher quality but did not compete in news quality." While in the print edition the photographer's photos will be used, on the website they're sticking with the reporter's photo-phone shots.

That's a great example of why news organizations should be replacing all reporters' mobile phones with photo phones.

Meantime, on the online news site, Vin Crosbie points out that worldwide sales of camera-equipped mobile phones now exceed sales of digital cameras. He writes:

Thirty percent of all mobile phones in Japan already have built-in cameras. Cameras will soon become an integral part of all mobile handsets.

In the May edition of The Digital Photojournalist, Evan Nisselson, a photo editor who is now a photojournalism business consultant, wrote about what it's to shoot events with a Sony mobile phone rather than a Nikon F1.

A telephone directory aggregator

New on Gary Price's Resource Shelf:

Telephone Directories: Aggregate Results from Multiple U.S. Phone Directories and So Much More With Argali White & Yellow.

Argali is a web application (you'll need to download, 5.9MB, Windows only) that allows you to search and aggregate results from several web-based phone directories. I've been using Argali for a couple of weeks and have found it to be a real time saver. That's not all, Argali offers many other directory searches.

Even better is that this application is free to download and use. Its developer, Boris Katz, has assured me that NO spyware is associated with Argali. ...

The South hasn't plugged into the Net

MSNBC.com: When it comes to U.S. Internet use, the East Coast and West Coast dominate, while fewer than half of all Southerners go online, says a new study of online habits.

Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.

Freedom's dark side

Bruce Sterling in Wired mag: The iron fist, the invisible hand, and the battle for the soul of open source. On cybercapitalism and free information.

Push to talk: instant messaging for voice

In today's San Jose Merc, Mike Langberg looks at the hot new thing in telecom: Push-to-talk service, a sort of instant messaging for voice. This could be a potent weapon in Buzz's hands.

Spyware: ads that snoop

The Wall Street Journal looks at spyware: A New Battleground In Web Privacy War -- Ads That Can Snoop. For non-subscribers, the article is available here.

RSS offers alternative to e-mail

Steve Outing in E&P: E-mail -- long touted as the "killer app" of the Internet and the best online channel for publishers -- is rapidly being decimated by spammers and virus writers. It's time to move on to something that's spam-proof: RSS.

All about flash mobs

Slate's Rob Walker looks at flash mobs in yesterday's Sunday New York Times. Cheesebikini claims to be a flash mob central for the movement.

Former dot-commers adjust, painfully

NY Times: Chapter 2 of the Great Dot-Com Bust of 2000 has begun, the part in which former employees of Internet start-ups try to re-acclimate to the corporate world. While they were gone, they tasted what it was like to introduce products without multilayered approvals, to set their own hours, to party hard as well as work hard, and often, to own a sizable stake in the company. And they have seen what the Internet can and cannot do.

The quiet war over open source

Washington Post: The Quiet War Over Open Source

Cloaking your email address to fight spam

Aaron Schaap, a developer at Holland Sentinel, offers a tip on the online-news list that I just have to share. Aaron wrote in response to queries about masking one's email address from viruses, but it also should be handy in fighting spam:

Hiveware.com has a great solution that most webloggers have been using. I personally use it on all projects.

The Enkoder Form will encrypt your Email address and convert the result to a self evaluating JavaScript, hiding it from Email-harvesting robots which crawl the web looking for exposed addresses. Your address will be displayed correctly by web-browsers, but will be virtually indecipherable to Email harvesting robots.

If you have Mac OSX you can download the app here.

So aschaap@sentinelnet.com would turn into:

[script type="text/javascript"]
//[![CDATA[
[!--
var x="function f(x){var i,o=\"\",l=x.length;for(i=0;i {if(i+1 r,i=o\\\"\\\"o,=l.xelgnhtl,o=;lhwli(e.xhcraoCedtAl(1/)3=!29{)rt{y+xx=l;=+;"
+
"lc}tahce({)}}of(r=i-l;1>i0=i;--{)+ox=c.ahAr(t)i};erutnro
s.buts(r,0lo;)f}\\" + "\"(0),5\\\"\\\\27\\\\03\\\\03\\\\\\\\21\\\\00\\\\00\\\\\\\\\\\\n1\\\\03\\\\
" + "\\\\nG\\\\\\\\30\\\\0N\\\\BM16\\\\0k\\\\s{~pptylfscTpslxl})2yVfifn#Wnl7r03\
\"+ "\\\\\\\\\\<\\\\\\\\7\\\\02\\\\\\\\23\\\\00\\\\03\\\\\\\\25\\\\02\\\\)T6I02\
\"+ "\\\\\\36\\\\05\\\\00\\\\\\\\31\\\\03\\\\03\\\\\\\\ON6000\\\\\\\\05\\\\0n\\\
\"+ "\\\\\\\\3F02\\\\\\\\03\\\\03\\\\01\\\\\\\\10\\\\06\\\\00\\\\\\\\14\\\\00\\\
\"+ "01\\\\\\\\24\\\\01\\\\.;34\\\\0+\\\\8;404% " +
"JLN24\\\\0M\\\\RV@[\\\\W\\\\\\\\V\\\\\\\"\\\\f(;}
ornture;}))++(y)^(iAtdeCo" + "archx.e(odrChamCro.fngriSt+=;o27=1y%){++;i " +
"\"=\\\",o iar{vy)x,f(n ioctun\\\"f)\")"
;
while(x=eval(x));
//--]
//]]]
[/script]

(Some of the carats were changed to brackets to make them display here.)

Amazing. I just did this for one of my pages (see the "Contact JD" line at bottom, and view the page source). Now, a couple of thousand more pages to go. I just created an ActiveWord to sub in the script.

Gizmo stories in Slate

Recently by Paul Boutin in Slate:

• Does Your Car Have a Black Box? If so, your car's computer might squeal if you were speeding before a crash. (Today)

• The Little Engine That Could. Why Mazda's RX-8 is the sports car for nerds.

• Home generators: They're not just for Y2K weirdos anymore.

Retooling the iPod

Buzz wrote an essay: Retooling The iPod As an Example of End User Innovation.

In search of a universal jukebox

One of the powerful ideas I'm pursuing in my book is the notion of a universal jukebox for movies, music, television and other media.

In some sense, it's what Netflix aspires to as a legitimate movie rental service. It's what Napster came close to achieving, and what clones like Kazaa strive for. And it's a path the iTunes Music Store clearly wants to take.

While I'm in agreement with the glowing reviews Apple has received for its service, my experience has been a less satisfactory one. I'm fairly sure this is due to lack of licensing agreements with smaller labels, but I've been disappointed in the offerings in the iTunes Store when I search out obscure, exotic or foreign titles.

My routine, I'll admit, is fairly unorthodox. I subscribe to MusicMatch, and often come upon off-the-beaten-track titles in categories like World music. When I hear a song I like, I jot the song title or band's name down. Then I wander over to the iTunes Store to buy it.

My success rate today was about 10 percent. True, these artists will never pull Britney-type numbers, but shouldn't an online store provide a selection that's both deep and wide?

Someone ought to make up a game with the oddball alternative spellings Apple comes up with. Search for Chico Cesar and Apple will ask, "Did you mean Choice Clear?" Search for Maui Morning and it asks, "Maxi Fortang?" A search for Yves Deruyter elicited this: "Ives Drummer?" Dissidenten yielded "Dissident?"

No returns at all for Juno Reactor, King Chango, Drakinbald, Ruisort, Peatbog Faeries, Boy Ge Mendes or Sasha.

So, my options appears to be limited: trek down to the record store and hope Tower carries some of the bands' CDs (not entirely likely), search for them at an online store (again, be forced to buy the entire CD), or try my luck on a file-sharing service.

I keep hoping they'll build that universal jukebox soon.

Discover compromising documents

You, too, can uncover compromising and deleted documents on the Web.

Liking Netflix

OK, so a million folks have beaten us to the party, but my wife and I finally signed up for Netflix earlier this month. For 20 bucks a month, we'll be getting our 7th, 8th and 9th DVDs this month sometime tomorrow or Wednesday.

The service is remarkable and convenient, with amazing turn-around times and a graphically pleasing site, though the recommendation technology has a little ways to go. Best of all, we're able to find obscure films not available at the local Blockbuster or Hollywood Video. I'm surprised, though, that Netflix's catalog of classic films isn't as robust as I'd expected. Farewell, My Lovely; Hitchcock's The Wrong Man; The Innocents; The Last Tycoon; The Osterman Weekend; Public Access; Repulsion; Fat Girl; Kiss or Kill -- all of these have made the top 100 films list of some movie critics, but none are to be found at Netflix.

We're all geeks now

Hiawatha Bray in the Boston Globe: We're all geeks now.

Texting blamed for summer movie flops

Britain's Independent: Texting Blamed for Summer Movie Flops.

Photo blogging the blackout

Wired News: Phoning in Photos for Posterity.

News that comes to you

It's catch-up day here at New Media Musings.

For those who missed Dan's Sunday column in the Merc, "New wave of newsreader software makes sense of the Web," check it out.

And if you're not up to speed on the benefits of RSS news readers, I wrote a piece on the subject.

Laid low by an old-fashioned blackout

Amy Harmon in Monday's NY Times: The Bits Are Willing, but the Batteries Are Weak. For many Internet addicts, the blackout was a rude reminder of how decisively the vaunted digital lifestyle can be laid low by a disruption in 19th-century electrons.

Flash mobs taking off

Amy Harmon in the Sunday NY Times: Flash Mobs: Guess Some People Don't Have Anything Better to Do. Excerpt:

Since the first one in mid-June in New York, hundreds of strangers in more than a dozen cities have engaged in such gatherings. The mob in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park last weekend played duck-duck-goose. Last Wednesday, in S“o Paulo, Brazil, people took off their shoes and banged them on the street. In one of New York's six flash mobs, the crowd dutifully followed instructions to mimic bird calls in Central Park for 20 seconds.

Inspired by dozens of media reports and many more Web log postings, enthusiasts in Portland, Ore., Tempe, Ariz., and Toledo, Ohio, are planning their own flash mobs.

But the flash mob juggernaut has now run into a flash mob backlash that may be spreading faster than the fad itself. The collision has ignited a decidedly Internet-style debate on the nature of social connection in the digital age.

Anti-mobbers lump the flash mobs in the prank tradition of phone-booth stuffing, streaking, flagpole sitting and goldfish-swallowing. E-mail lists like "antimob" and "slashmob" have sprung up, as did a Web site warning that "flashmuggers" are bound to show up "wherever there's groups of young, naÔve, wealthy, bored fashionistas to be found." And a new definition was circulated last week on several Web sites: "flash mob, noun: An impromptu gathering, organized by means of electronic communication, of the unemployed."

Flash mobbers make no apologies for their lack of political mission, but stake a claim to significance nonetheless. They invoke Dada, the Yippies and "smart mobs," a term coined by the author Howard Rheingold, to describe the use of digital technology to mobilize people quickly for spontaneous creative gatherings. ...

Schools keep vigil for Internet2

The NY Times takes a look at Internet2 and schools.

Just how fast is Internet2? Recently, scientists transferred 6.7 gigabytes of data, the equivalent of two feature-length DVD movies, across 6,800 miles in less than one minute. That is more than 3,500 times faster than a typical home broadband connection. ...

Only about 7,100 of the nation's public elementary and secondary schools, about 8 percent, are now connected to Internet2. (The Education Department says that 99 percent of the nation's schools now have Internet connections.) As more schools are linked to Abilene through statewide education networks, however, the challenge for teachers will be to learn how to take advantage of the technological advances that are useful to them ...

On campus, 'blitzing' replaces phoning

Katie Hafner in Thursday's NY Times:

SOON after Bill Brawley arrived at Dartmouth College eight years ago to work for the campus computing services, something about his new office struck him as odd. At first he had trouble putting his finger on it. All seemed normal enough. He had been supplied with the usual accouterments - a desk, a computer and, of course, a phone.

Then he figured it out: the phone never rang. In fact, nobody's phone rang much at all.

That's because everyone on campus was busy blitzing.

For nearly 20 years, the 13,000-odd students, faculty and staff members of Dartmouth have communicated by using Blitzmail. Strictly speaking, Blitzmail is a campuswide e-mail system, but it is so fast that it qualifies as instant messaging. And as instant messaging becomes a fixture on college campuses, Blitzmail serves as a signpost for what others might come to expect when most communication on campus is accomplished by way of keyboards. ...

iView for photo organizing

I've been trying to carve out time to try some apps that my friends have been telling me about. Since I haven't had time, I'll pass along a tip from one of them now. Buzz has been raving about NewsGator and his ability to use Outlook as his news reader ... but that's not it.

A couple of weeks ago Doc Searls passed along this tidbit:

On a Mac, I much prefer iView Media and iView Media Pro to iPhoto. Much faster, more flexible, other virtues. And works fine with various Mac programs like iDVD.

Download the trial. Drag a directory full of pix into the window. Save as an HTML gallery. Create image icons. Open with any tool you like. Rearrange at will. Change names of files in the directory. View attributes. Also runs on most flavors of Windows.

I've got both a PC and Mac, so I'll be playing with this -- probably on my PC. The Mac's iPhoto is a jealous mistress.

Bloglines and news feeds

This looks interesting: Bloglines is a free service that makes it easy to keep up with your favorite blogs and newsfeeds. With Bloglines, you can subscribe to the RSS feeds of your favorite blogs, and Bloglines will monitor updates to those sites. You can read the latest entries easily within Bloglines.

Thanks to Dave M. for the pointer.

New NPR show on new technologies

Speaking of Xeni Jardin, who will himself be speaking at PopTech in two months, he points to a new show on National Public Radio called Day To Day, hosted by Alex Chadwick. The show as only been on the air for a few weeks, but Jardin says, "they're doing some really interesting coverage on blogs, emerging technology, and how the geek world impacts pop culture in general. It's a great program so far, and I'm looking forward to watching how it grows." Jardin appeared on the show Tuesday to talk about the rising popularity of Friendster and similar social networking services.

Texting, pictures and video blogging

Xeni Jardin is guest-blogging on Textually.org, an interesting-looking site about texting, SMS and MMS. Its sister site, picturephoning.com, looks at the world of picture sharing and video blogging.

Google adds a calculator

What will those kids at the Googleplex think up next? Now they've come up with an online calculator. And, if you didn't know it, a phone book and dictionary.

The right price point for wi-fi

On the wi-fi front:

• Glenn Fleishman had an article in Monday's NY Times on Wi-Fi hot spots.

• Another friend, Paul Boutin, has a short piece in the latest Wired concluding that Wi-Fi isn't a luxury or even a commodity -- it's a condiment.

Streaming Video, Cheap and Easy

From yesterday's Wired News:

As if the recording industry didn't already have its hands full suing music file traders, pretty soon anyone will be able to wirelessly stream high-quality, uninterrupted video and audio from their PCs to their TVs.

All they need is a pair of dongles, and voila -- the movie they've downloaded from the Internet appears on their TV screen.

"Typically, people will want to take MP3 files or music downloads and be able to play them through their stereo, which is a much better system than listening to music on a PC," said Ian McPherson, principal analyst at Wireless Data Research Group. "And as we get more bandwidth and more capabilities, we will see more streaming video applications that will be served by the PC in the home. But you still want to watch it on your television." ...

Keeping the Net Neutral

Salon: A coalition of big-name tech companies -- Microsoft, Amazon, eBay and others -- wants the feds to make sure that cable companies don't ruin the broadband Internet. Excerpt:

... Many of the people who've come to the defense of the cable industry in this fight are, like Thierer, of the libertarian school of telecom policy -- folks who believe that all regulations are bad regulations, certain to do more harm than good. Indeed, the cable industry's main argument is a paean to a live-and-let-live broadband marketplace -- a world in which regular market forces prevent cable company mischief. We won't do anything terrible, the cable firms say, because our customers would leave us if we did.

Can we trust your cable company -- and the free market -- to let us do what we want on the Internet? So far, there's no reason not to. But Gerry Waldron points out that the cable firms have both the technical capability and the financial incentive to block some things on the Internet and to feature others. And at least for now, the broadband world does not resemble a very free market; if customers get sick of their cable firm, most people have little choice to go elsewhere. ...

Hack your neighbor's fridge

New Scientist: Many Bluetooth gadgets open to wireless snooping.

Dublin Flash Mob

The Dublin Flash Mob in action.

Attack of the Trojans

More Trojan intruders have stopped by during the past two weeks. This time, I'll publish their probable locations (using Geobytes) rather than their specific IP addresses:

Toronto, Canada
Garden Grove, Calif.
Alden, NY
Monrovia, Calif.
Vancouver, Wash.
Karachi, Pakistan
Henry, Tenn.
Baltimore, Md.
Pensacola, Fla.
Westminster, Calif.
Minden, Germany
Portland, Maine
Grundy, Va.
Toronto, Canada
Taipei, Taiwan

Google synonym search

Kpaul's J-Log carries this bit of news:

For all you Googlephiles out there, the search engine company recently added a new operator that it recognizes ~ the tilda character. Basically, you can do searches like: ~master -master and get results like MASTA and mastering. Very nifty.

Microdoc News mentions some advice on using the new feature by Andy Baio at waxy.org.

Writes Andy:

Curious about what synonyms Google is using for its new synonym operator? Try searching for your synonym keyword and then exclude the same keyword from results, like so:

~help -help = guide, manual, faq, support, tutorial, helping, tips, problems
~search -search = finder, listings, searcher, database
~blog -blog = log, weblog, blogger
~rss -rss = xml, rdf
~tivo -tivo = directv, replaytv, replay, pvr, video recorder
~idiot -idiot = stupid

Also, from posters on Andy's site:

~love = romantic, marriage, lovers, compatibility.

~Scottish = Scotland, Celtic, Edinburgh, BBC (?!), Gaelic and Glasgow. No Aberdeen, Dundee, Stirling or Inverness (the other of Scotland 6 cities) and thankfully no kilts haggis or bagpipes

Cool. Of course, producing more results isn't necessarily what I want from a search engine. But this will come in handy.

Consumer photo blogging

Doc points to: Smart Moblogging: Raped at the Pump, a consumer photo blog of outrageous gas prices. It comes via TextAmerica.

I gotta get me one of these babies one of these days.

Flash mobs go global

This from Martha Stone today in E-Media Tidbits (alas, they still lack permalinks):

Combine the interactive nature of the Internet and e-mail, and the instant communication capability of the mobile phone, and you have the ability to create a mob fervor. Here in Berlin, and around the world in major cities, seemingly "conventional" adults are organizing "flash mobs" -- often for a lack of purpose -- via mobile phones, e-mail lists, and websites like cheesebikini.com and flashmob.info. They might agree to meet in front of a washing machine display, eat a banana and leave, according to the International Herald Tribune earlier this week.

On Saturday, a flash mob gathered in front of the highly fortified American Embassy in Berlin, protesting Iraqi policies, wearing silly hats, waving flags, popping champagne, and toasting "here's to Natasha" before vanishing, according to the IHT. I missed that one. I was busy in another, more conventional mob scene at Berlin's airport. One of the first reported flash mobs was reported at Macy's in New York, where people spontaneously gathered in the rug department looking for a "love rug" for their suburban commune.

Here's that story in the IHT she mentioned.

Digital CD decks challenge vinyl

BBC News: The success of a digital system that allows CDs to be scratched and mixed in the same way as 12-inch records could mean the death end of DJs using vinyl, a top DJ and record producer says.

101 Uses for Apple IChat

Wired News: People are finding many versatile uses for Apple's iChat AV software, like sharing video across town or finding dates. Thing is, they're not using it much for video conferencing yet, the task for which it was built.

Marc Zeedar has found a novel use for Apple Computer's new iChat video-conferencing software -- broadcasting pay-per-view soccer games to his brother across town.

Zeedar, a designer, programmer and writer from Santa Cruz, California, discovered he can use his camcorder to connect his TiVo digital video recorder to his Mac.

The camcorder has analog video-in jacks, which let it import video from just about any source, including a VCR or a TiVo. It also has a FireWire port, which makes it compatible with iChat AV.

When it is hooked to his Mac, Zeedar can use the camcorder as a webcam for video conferencing. But when his TiVo is plugged into the camera, Zeedar can broadcast pay-per-view soccer games to others.

"It's very cool," said Zeedar. "He can watch my soccer channels from his home. Or anywhere, really." ...

The Salam Pax photo blog

Good gosh. You know photoblogging is real when Salam Pax begins a photo blog showing street scenes of Iraq.

Thanks to BoingBoing for the pointer.