test - exaroom

http://exaroom.com/ has some cool new features. This is more of what I was looking for when I first found flickr, getting a WHOLE LOT CLOSER to useful!

check out the full entry for a widget into the shared files...

Sharing Files With Your Network

I've been asking for this for YEARS! From the first days of Groove, Grouper, Friendster, etc... All I want is to be able to share my music and videos with a few friends and family...

now, we are getting CLOSER!

Exaroom Launches Profile Pages, File Sharing for MySpace - Mashable!

As Peter says on Mashable:

""
San Francisco-based Exaroom began as a service for sharing files from your PC - today they’ve added profile pages and widgets, turning Exaroom into a file-sharing site crossed with a social network. At the core of the idea is Ground Control, a download for Windows users (no Mac support yet) that lets you select files and folders to be shared with your friends - this allows them to view your photos, play your music and download files to their own machines. The social networking element adds a new twist: you can create a profile page with a choice of themes, upload photos to a gallery (via a web interface or the Ground Control software), insert YouTube videos, add some info about yourself and write a blog.

So how does the social network connect to the file sharing? Well, any friends you add on the network are given access to the shared files on your computer. After clicking a widget on your profile that looks like a computer monitor, your friends will be taken to a page that displays all your files in a tree structure.
""

TheOneMillionMasterpiece - media philanthropy

Much cooler take on the million dollar homepage idea, give it all to charity and at the same time cause a lot of people to play with their self-expression and creativity.

"'
HELP CREATE A PIECE OF GLOBAL ART

AND BECOME AN OFFICIAL WORLD RECORD BREAKER!

No artistic ability required, just a passion to support international charity work and a favourite doodle or sketch
""

The One Million Masterpiece : The world's largest ever artistic collaboration.

HELP CREATE A PIECE OF GLOBAL ART

AND BECOME AN OFFICIAL WORLD RECORD BREAKER!

No artistic ability required, just a passion to support international charity work and a favourite doodle or sketch

DNA art - unique and personalized

DNA 11 - From Life Comes Art. DNA art, DNA portraits, personalized art, fingerprint art

Read more about it right here (cause I copied it from their site):

The Concept

You don’t need an artistic eye to appreciate the unique beauty and simple intricacies of DNA imaging. The co-founders of DNA 11 were quick to realize that by adding a color and visually enhancing this scientific data it could be transformed into extraordinary, one-of-a-kind abstract artwork with deep-rooted personal significance.

It was just a matter of finding the best method of capturing these complex biological images. After several months of experimenting with various ways of presenting unique DNA fingerprints; they finally discovered the process that best displays the organic beauty of our DNA.

Excited over their discovery and eager to explore the possibilities, the co-founders were soon collecting their own DNA and creating sample artwork. Friends, family and just about everyone that saw the samples were overwhelmingly impressed, and were quick to request pieces of their own, and so began DNA 11.

The popularity of their DNA Portraits™ led DNA 11 to look at what other natural artistic expressions the human body had to offer, and there is no more iconic identity of individualism than fingerprints. By blowing-up a section of one’s fingerprint, with or without the addition of color, an absolutely mesmerizing art piece was born—FingerPrints™.

DNA 11 strives to create the world’s most personalized and customized art made by the customer for the customer. Art has always been extremely personal, and DNA 11 has made this even truer.

The Art

DNA 11 creates unique, personalized art from DNA. Using a simple method of collection, as easy as wiping the inside of your mouth with a swab, the company harvests a sample of your DNA to capture the genetic fingerprint and transform it into an artistic representation of a person's life code. A DNA Portrait is the ultimate conversation piece in any home, office or gallery.

ABSOLUT VODKA was so impressed when they were introduced to the art, that they commissioned a piece featuring the DNA of several fruits used in ABSOLUT products. This piece, unveiled at the DNA 11 official art launch, is the company's first commissioned art for a commercial client and truly showcases the uniqueness of the artwork.

DNA 11 art can been found in many of the world’s trendiest restaurants and lounges, and in the private homes of celebrities, art collectors, trendsetter's, corporate CEO's and others who recognize the uniqueness of these works of art, and who want to own a truly one-of-a-kind representation of who they are to have for a lifetime.

This art form transcends national boundaries with clients in over 30 countries. From its roots in Los Angeles to New York, Australia, Japan, and all across Europe, DNA 11 masterpieces speak to all humanity with its brilliant art, born from within.

Click here to begin creating your very own personalized art piece

World's Languages - Now On the Interweb

How engineers tamed the internet's Tower of Babel | Technology | Guardian Unlimited Technology

COPIED IN WHOLE FROM GUARDIAN:

How engineers tamed the internet's Tower of Babel

New standards mean that all the world's languages can now finally be used on the world wide web

Kieren McCarthy
Thursday November 23, 2006
The Guardian

At a United Nations meeting last month, a bespectacled Swede made a small, barely noticed announcement that nevertheless represented a pivotal moment in the history of the internet.

"Regarding the technical implementation for the world wide web, we are done," Patrik Fältström told the Internet Governance Forum. By "we are done", he meant that following a decade of hard work by a global consortium of engineers and linguists, they had finally decided on a document that will enable all the world's languages to be fully represented on the internet. People will be able to type in addresses in their own language, search in their own language and move around the internet in their own language.

Article continues
The challenge was every bit as immense as it sounds. The internet was designed to work with the English alphabet - a to z, and the numbers 1 through 9. Useful symbols rapidly made their way into the system - plus, minus, dash, and so on - each represented with a particular code (or, as internet engineers insist on calling it, an "identifier"). Agreeing on identifiers was easy at first, but as internet use spread across the globe, people started asking for more to be added to fit other languages, whether an accent on a letter, or an entirely different alphabet.

Global balancing act

As languages have spread and developed, some elements have changed and some stayed the same. Some have grown to have different meanings. Some look identical and are anything but.

One thing is for certain: everyone is unshakeable in their belief that their language is as valid as any other. No matter how wonderful the internet is, it does not override culture and history. The result has been a very careful balance. "No script and no person will be happy with the definition of identifiers," explained Fältström. "Everyone will be unhappy. We just have to find a standard that makes people the least unhappy as possible."

It can be difficult for an English speaker to grasp the problem. For example, the small dots over the "a" and "o" in Fältström's surname carry significance and meaning. Because it is a western language, we are able to view it as an "a" and an "o" with some dots. Not so with different alphabets. Fortunately, there is a real-world example that makes this global balancing act more understandable.

Richard Haigh is a web designer from the exotic climes of Nottingham and the proud owner of "£.com". He has decided he wants to use the site to cover the debate over Britain's possible future adoption of the euro. "When it does kick off, I want to provide somewhere where people can voice their concerns," he explains. Despite having "no personal belief either way", he thinks that he's on to something unique with his pound-symbol domain name.

But Haigh doesn't actually own "£.com". He owns "xn--9a.com" - the identifier used to represent the pound symbol. In fact, £.com doesn't (strictly speaking) exist. Why? Ask John Klensin, who is, along with Fältström, the person most responsible for unusual additions to the internet's domain name system. He is blunt about Haigh's web address: "The £.com domain shouldn't exist - it has been prohibited all along," he explains. When told it clearly does exist, he is unremitting: "If [the web address] resolves, it is probably another bug. Somehow it has been sneaked through."

Haphazard nature

In fact, when you type £.com into your browser you are in fact entering the £ sign's identifier, xn--9a. Your browser translates the £ sign as its identifier, goes to xn--9a.com and is then redirected to the more palatable poundsymbol.com.

How? Because "£" is just another identifier. For computers, £ is dealt with in exactly the same way as ö. But since £ isn't a part of a language, it is one of the identifiers that has not made it through the process. There is a good reason why, Klemsin explains: "For some, 'pound' means the hash symbol [#], for others it is the pound sterling symbol [£], and others refer to the hash/pound symbol as the 'number sign'. It is a communications nightmare."

But £.com does exist, thanks to the haphazard way the internet was created. If something takes off, it rapidly becomes part of the system; if it doesn't, it is left to wither on the vine. But no one is discourteous enough to remove the failed experiments on the way.

There is a long and often complex procedure that arrives at a set of standards, recognised officially, that ensures something will be accessible right across the internet. After a very long, often difficult process, that standard for including the world's languages has now been put forward to the one organisation that can formally enter it into the internet - the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), based in California.

Icann has put out a formal request for comments as a final precaution. And once that process is finished, then everyone has to figure out how to actually make the standards work with the existing internet infrastructure - another daunting task already under way. The truly global internet is on its way.

· What's in a name?

English-speaking web users have traditionally been very blase about the non-English internet. That changed last year when researchers set up a fake Paypal website using a Cyrillic А to replace the first a of www.paypal.com. To the average user, the URL looked the same, except the second site said simply "Meeow". It didn't take a genius to realise the criminal possibilities and suddenly a previously unnoticed area of internet development was given some much-needed attention.

Participatory Media is a gateway drug to civic engagement?

Smart Mobs: Veek the Vote: young people smartmoblog the USA election

howard is so on the money with this one... why didnt we think of this already?? duh! what would I do without SmartMobs.com!!??

Veek the Vote: young people smartmoblog the USA election
Shibuya Epiphany, Smart Mobs and the Power of the Mobile Many

""""
November 22, 2006
* by Howard Rheingold

Youthnoise, a "youth-based social network for social change," bills itself as "an activist haven, a socially conscious sanctuary." During the recent US election, Youthnoise teamed up with Veeker, a mobile video and photo website/service, to "Veek the Vote" -- young citizen journalists were asked to ask people why they voted, capture their answers via the video cameras in their telephones, and email the videos to "vote@veeker.com." Within minutes, the videos were online for inspection and discussion. As I've been suspecting lately, participatory media might be a great way to introduce young people to the pleasures and powers of civic engagement.

Control of Congress is at stake in this year’s elections and YN wants to know what issues brought young voters to the polls and we also want to make sure that there are no problems with the electoral process – long lives of disenfranchised voters in Ohio or hanging chads in Florida. So YN and Veeker have gotten together to make it easy for NMers to share their videos and photos of the election.

Citizen Journalists – CitiJos – will be out Veeking (video + peek) the vote at polling places across the country on Election Day. We’d like for you to join them – all you need is a mobile phone with video capability. Then head for the polls and Veek away. Interview voters, take live exit polls, record your own opinions—the possibilities are endless. Problems at polling places – Veek it! Be funny, be serious, be satirical—whatever; just be sure to be on topic! Anything regarding the
2006 elections is up for game. Veek the Vote and we’ll broadcast your Veeks as part of our Election Day coverage.
""""

RIPMobile - recycle cell phones

"
RIPMobile helps you transform your drawer full of unused cell phones more useful, like electronic gift certificates from TerraPass! Think of this as a discount towards the offset of the carbon footprint of your automobile or your home or business. Your TerraPass funds clean energy projects that reduce industrial carbon dioxide emissions, balancing out carbon emissions by funding innovative energy projects that will speed our transition from oil to clean, renewable energy.
"

RipMobile. How It Works

Anagram Fun

Internet Anagram Server: Anagrams for mark seidman roth

I gotta figure out how to filter these down to words I might want to play with, soooo many possibilities! (just "mark roth" returns none!)

some that stood out from the list:

MARATHON SMIRKED
SHAMAN DORK TIMER
A DASHER TRIM MONK
A MARKED SHIT NORM
A MASKED NORTH RIM
RADAR MIKES MONTH
MAMA DRINKS OTHER
KARMA MODERN SHIT
KARMA RED MOSH TIN
KARMA DISH RENT OM
KARMA DO HERS MINT
MANTRA DIM KOSHER
MANTRA DO HER SKIM
MANTRA DORM SHEIK
MAIMED SHARK TORN
MERMAID STAR HONK
ARMORED TANK SHIM
ARMORED HAM KNITS
DREAM ARMS HONK IT
DREAMS AT HONK RIM

participatory culture - academic research

Take directly from Smart Mobs posting in whole...

Communities Dominate Brands: Henry Jenkins et al on participatory culture and media literacy

""""

Henry Jenkins et al on participatory culture and media literacy
Technologies of Cooperation