Public access group challenges Smithsonian over copyrights:
Grabbing pictures of iconic Smithsonian Institution artifacts just got a whole lot easier.

Before, if you wanted to get a picture of the Wright Brothers’ plane, you could go to the Smithsonian Images Web site and pay for a print or high-resolution image after clicking through several warnings about copyrights and other restrictions — and only if you were a student, teacher or someone pledging not to use it to make money.

Now, you can just go to the free photo-sharing Web site flickr.com.

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Carl Malamud and his group are doing some good work on freeing and sustaining the freedom of access to public resources

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hehehehe

and

chicken

FT.com / Companies / Media & internet – Google’s goal: to organise your daily life:
“The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?’ ”

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scary.. i don’t want google to make such advice.

Everything Is Fake – Google Video:
R!ot Manhattan shows you how everything you see is fake.

International Prize of Digital Literature:
Submissions are now open for the annual Ciutat de Vinaros International Prize of Digital Literature, with a deadline of 14th September 2007. Works may be submitted in French, Spanish or Catalan, Italian or Portuguese, as well as in English. The two main prizes are in “Digital Narrative” and “Digital Poetry”, each offering a large purse of 2,500 euros to the winner (about £1,700). Works must be unpublished, have a high quality as interactive design and as literature, and should “explore and use the possibilities of the computer as a space for creation”.

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great.. we need more of these.

Spy Chips:
This book will make you look at every store-bought item you own or debate owning with a curious skepticism that — after reading the book — won’t seem too unwarranted. It was published two years ago (a cheap paperback came out in the fall), but if you’ve yet to explore the fascinating, potentially paranoia-inducing, world of RFID and you want the cautionary, consumer-advocate perspective about the Radio Frequency Identification tracking being proposed — and used! — by certain companies (for instance, Gillette, Procter & Gamble and Wal-Mart)

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this could be an interesting book.

“New” Internet to Be Built by Original Designer:
Arguably, BBN has more Internet experience than any other company. In 1969 it led the effort to connect computers at four universities, a linkage that became ARPAnet, the original backbone of today’s Internet.
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yes.. and then bill joy fixed it so it actually worked fairly quickly.