Monthly Archives: October 2009

Augmenting your way through walls (and other applications)

Charlotte Hendriks | 31 October 2009, 11:35 pm

Our world today becomes more and more penetrated by screens. Wherever we go, information is made available through dynamic surfaces, which can adapt to whichever piece of information that is relevant at that specific time and place. More than static objects like posters, these interactive screens can deliver information in real time and allow their users to be fully up…


Snapping Profile Snaps

Simeona Petkova | 31 October 2009, 6:04 pm | tags: , , , , ,

Recently, checking my RSS reader I came across this: Profile Snaps. TechCrunch was serious about it: 

Recently launched Profile  Snaps allows for additional context for content on news websites and blogs, by providing in-text profiles that gives the reader a snapshot of information about a public figure…….So if you clicked on Barack Obama’s Profile Snap,…


“Frames of War” meets Games of War

Thomas Wielemaker | 31 October 2009, 2:34 pm | 1 comment | tags: , , , ,

In Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?, Judith Butler posits that modern warfare is waged both on the battlefield and in the media. As this is nothing new to propaganda studies, Butler qualifies her views by propounding that…


Social Signifiers on Social Networking Sites

Thomas Wielemaker | 31 October 2009, 2:10 pm | 2 comments | tags: , ,

The days when ‘fellas’ in high school gave their gals their class rings to establish their relationships are long gone and in its place dudes are getting away with simply changing their relationships statuses on Facebook or MySpace when they “bag a chick.” Today, Joe Schmoe likes to…


Mapping politics through art. Is it effective?

Susana Zaragoza | 31 October 2009, 1:48 pm | tags: , , , ,

When the french philosopher Alain Badiou presented his essay “Fifteen Thesis on Contemporary Art” published in 2004, he took an artwork by Mark Lombardi, as an illustration of his talk. This artwork was a map. It was more exactly a pencil diagram, entitled as “George W. Bush, Harken Energy and Jackson Stephens, ca 1979-90″,…


A Wiki Noob

Kimberley Spreeuwenberg | 30 October 2009, 7:36 pm | 1 comment | tags: , , , ,

Posting a new entry on Wikipedia is not very difficult, but keeping it online is an impossible mission. These were the first lines of this post when I started writing it a couple of weeks ago. By now I changed my mind… I did it! I have a post on Wikipedia!


Contesting our Cultural Heritage

Albert Cornelissen | 30 October 2009, 3:47 pm | tags: , , ,

There has always been fear towards new technologies that create new ways of recording and sharing cultural products. The videotape made owners of these products extremely nervous, because it allowed viewers stay at home to record and share what was on the television. This fight has been replayed by users and producers ever since mechanical reproduction made it possible to…


The Public Library as Instigator of a Modern Public Sphere

Rutger van den Berg | 30 October 2009, 2:30 pm | 1 comment | tags: , , , ,

The digitalization of information has been a hot topic ever since the arrival of the computer. The internet must be the world’s biggest library by now. The classical role of the library is becoming old fashioned and maybe even redundant. The reading-room and lending desk, the definitions of a classic library, are becoming less important to the visitors. What elements of a public library can still draw people to a library?


Paranoid of the Proprietary: To Skype or Not to Skype

John Haltiwanger | 29 October 2009, 11:36 pm | tags: , , ,

Today at the eComm conference, Sten Tamkivi presented an informative range of statistics of Skype use. Some 8% of all telecom “minutes” are routed by Skype as of last year. This is a huge portion of the total for any one telecom to be responsible for, especially as Skype is not technically a telecom. Sten mentioned the amount of…


RjDj and the rise of ‘reactive’ music.

Marc Stumpel | 29 October 2009, 8:42 pm | 3 comments | tags: , , , , , ,

As our daily interactions are increasingly affected by the use of mobile wireless devices and technologies, new media seems to become more reactive to our actual environment. Is there an attributable value of our environment to the means of cultural production, consumption and distribution through the use of new media technologies?

The futuristic thought by critical media thinker and researcher…