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The friendship Machine

What if you can climb up a huge Coke machine and get 2 coke bottles for the price of one?

The Hug Machine

The Coca-Cola Hug Machine. You hug it, it returns the favour with a Coke. Because vending machines have feelings too. #hugmecoke

Color Forecast shows you in real time what colors people are wearing in the fashion capitals Paris & Milan & Antwerp...

check color forecast

Does the internet actually inhibit, not encourage democracy? In this new RSA Animate adapted from a talk given in 2009, Evgeny Morozov presents an alternative take on 'cyber-utopianism' - the seductive idea that the internet plays a largely emancipatory role in global politics.

Exposing some idealistic myths about freedom and technology (during Iran's 'twitter revolution' fewer than 20,000 Twitter users actually took part), Evgeny argues for some realism about the actual uses and abuses of the internet.

A provocative thought....

The smallest IKEA in the world

Ikea is entering a brave new world: home entertainment systems. The company unveiled its UPPLEVA line today with a smart YouTube ad (embedded after the jump). The video spot quickly explains that the UPPLEVA line is the savior to living rooms everywhere with hidden cable tracks, integrated wireless components and a customizable cabinet design.

Argue all you want, but a HDTV is a glorified monitor. It should not be the primary point of focus when designing a home theater system. The new UPPLEVA line completely disrupts the big box store’s HDTV buying process with a high-dose injection of Ikea genius.

Like with everything else Ikea sells, the UPPLEVA system is completely customizable with a range of TV sizes and cabinet designs. 

Ikea now even can provide you with the house that goes along with the entertainment system. IKEA is now also in real estate development.

Buyers probably still have to piece them together using those dumb keys, though.

(source: Techcrunch, Youtube and ikea.com)

There was a time when you could censor without spying. When Britain banned the publication of James Joyce's Ulysses in the 1920s and 1930s, the ban took the form on a prohibition on the sale of copies of the books. Theoretically, this entailed opening some imported parcels, and it certainly imposed a constraint on publishers and booksellers. It was undoubtedly awful. But we've got it worse today.

Jump forward 80 years. Imagine that you want to ban www.jamesjoycesulysses.com due to a copyright claim from the Joyce estate. Thanks to the Digital Economy Act and the provision it makes for a national British copyright firewall, we're headed for a system where entertainment companies can specify URLs that have "infringing" websites, and a national censorwall will block everyone in the country from visiting those sites.

In order to stop you from visiting www.jamesjoycesulysses.com, the national censorwall must intercept all your outgoing internet requests and examine them to determine whether they are for the banned website. That's the difference between the old days of censorship and our new digital censorship world. Today, censorship is inseparable from surveillance.

source: cory doctorows craphound