Morning Linkage (Nov 16)

Transportation

Nov 1909. World record bro­ken. 200+ km/hr. Really. The Lightning Benz. It’s pret­ty too.

I first found ‘lapin barcelona’ on Urban Sketchers and then again a cou­ple of days ago on Wrench Monkees. Sweet Flickr set of two wheelers.

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Technology

There’s no way to make a sim­ple moral judg­men­tal about the use of cell phone tech­nol­o­gy as a tool to help ille­gal immi­grants cross the US-Mexico bor­der. That said, lives will be saved and there are so many oth­er places that this sim­ple cell phone based, GPS, com­pass, ser­vice loca­tion set­up could be used… (Follow the link at the bot­tom of the Boing-Boing arti­cle to learn more about the cre­ator and his long stand­ing role in “elec­tron­ic civ­il disobedience”)

A year ago the plug was pulled on the moth­er of spam gen­er­a­tors —  McColo. What it took to make it hap­pen and what some of the con­se­quences have been are dis­cussed by Brian Krebs. I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly intrigued by the cre­ation of “IP ghet­tos” as a result of IP blacklisting.

The fight to pre­serve a trade­mark is a game of chick­en. Too lax and you’ll find your­self accused of hav­ing aban­doned your trade­mark and you’ll lose it. Too zeal­ous and you’ll get swat­ted with counter-suits and drown in legal fees. Or you could just end up look­ing down the bar­rel of the clown can­non. Edge Games (UK) has been aggres­sive­ly — and most­ly suc­cess­ful­ly — going after any oth­er game that uses the term ‘edge’ in it’s title. It all went most­ly their way until they went after indie game mak­er Mobigame, get­ting Apple to remove their wild­ly pop­u­lar EDGE game from the App Store. Oh dear, those are some pissed off clowns…

Google crows about it’s new Locking SafeSearch.“Even from across the room, the col­ored balls give par­ents and teach­ers a clear visu­al cue that SafeSearch is still locked. And if you don’t see them, it’s quick and easy to ver­i­fy and re-lock SafeSearch.” I esti­mate that it will take exact­ly 48 sec­onds for some tyke with a screen cap­ture and paint pro­gram to fix that.

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Art Images and Design

The short­list for the 2009 Digital Camera Photographer of the Year award have been announced (and post­ed.) 10 Categories.

Alice picks 30 of the above.

1920s Chicago. The CTA com­mis­sioned a series of posters high­light­ing the places you could go on Chicago Transit. Deco images, lush col­ors, nos­tal­gic locations.

Locally, Roq La Rue has Brian Despain paint­ings hang­ing. Mostly sold — sigh.

Ryohei Hase paints in Tokyo. Weird, sur­re­al, night­mar­ish and total­ly fas­ci­nat­ing.

Considerably less fright­en­ing are the mon­sters of Bobby Chui of Imaginism Studios

I have no idea what is going to hap­pen with the charm­ing char­ac­ter designs by Jaime Anderson. Something about the chil­drens and YA mar­ket. I was­n’t read­ing the words, just look­ing at the people.

Video of the day. Balancing a tow­er of toys and then send­ing in the windups to knock it over. Because he can, why else?

Happy Monday my lovelies.