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Study: Not Enough Democracy on the Internet

The Internet has not led to the democratization of the public sphere that it ought to! That is the conclusion of a study carried out by Center for Media and Democracy in Copenhagen.

»The Internet has often been described as a giant buffet where ordinary citizens can follow his or her own taste. But our study shows that in general the menu is still planned by relatively few chefs and consists of relatively few courses,« says professor Klaus Bruhn Jensen who conducted the study.

According to Bruhn Jensen to much web communication is still going from top to bottom and not enough websites truly want users to join in on the communication.

The study has been carried out by analyzing 200 websites from Denmark and abroad.

Via: DR-nyheder

Technorati tag: Internet|Politics

Stop Being Flashy

Flash - is it evil or good? I love the user friendly and intuitive tools that can be created with the software from Macromedia. But searching for a product at a Danish furniture site last night once again reminded me of the pitfalls of creativity that seems to come bundled with the program. Flash's infinite possibilities for integrating animation, video and sound often make designers go overboard.

How wonderful that colors change on screen and music fades in and out, but honestly... I just want to find the product get the specifics and get on with my life. Most people are NOT on-line to see colors and listen to sounds.

Actually I thought flashy sites were a thing of the past but my visit to these furniture sites proved me wrong. There still is no end to the swirling and twirling...

Right now I think Flickr is a prime example of a site, where Flash is used in a totally non-flashy and impressively helpful way.

Stop being flashy. Start being usable.

Technorati tag: Internet|Design

Teach computers commonsense

MIT has launched the Open Mind Commonsense project. An attempt to make computers smarter and friendlier by endowing them with the kind of ordinary knowledge we know as commonsense. Now what exactly is commonsense to MIT? you might ask, well the project website states that commonsense for instance constitutes knowing that:

- every person is younger than their mother
- you can push something with a straight stick
- one hundred dollars is a lot to pay for a sandwich
- snow is cold and is made of millions of snowflakes
- a week is longer than an minute
- computers need a source of power to operate
- most birds can fly, except for penguins and birds with broken wings

You can help teaching all of the above plus your own unique kind of commonsense to the computers of the future. Just drop by the MIT database.

Technorati tag: Computers

The evil hot spot

Nothing is truly private at a wireless hot spot. That is the message from Richard Rushing, a wireless expert with security firm Air Defense. This "ethical hacker" shows us what many already knew: Wireless access makes our digital transactions appallingly public. Intercepting the content of other peoples private mail via a hot spot is fairly easy, Rushing states.

What I didn't know (maybe because I live in "innocent" little Denmark) is that hackers are setting up fake hot spots, so called evil twins. These are wireless spots that look legitimate and even offers people a chance to sign up for service. But if you log on, the hacker will have complete access to your computer.

No doubt, security experts like Rushing will be even more in demand in the future. But history has shown us that the tighter the tech security the smarter the hackers. The race is on and there can be no winner - well, except for the security experts of course ;-)

Technorati tag: Internet

Fat from the future

Gotta love the onion! The latest issue is a visit from the future where the magazine celebrates its 300th anniversary in the year  2056! The top story bears the headline: "Democratic Middle Eastern Union Votes to invade the US." Other headlines are: "62 dead in latest school lasering" and "Abraham Lincolns DNA Now Available Over The Counter". Also the website from the future announces: "Fat Britney Chosen For New Holostamps".

Go see it >

Technorati tag: Internet

Trusting the net

In the future the web will have to employ some sort of reputation management as trusting the sources we meet on-line become ever more important to our understanding of the world. That is the opinion of Catarina Fake from Flickr:
- Going forward, trust will be the thing that makes the Internet possible. Reputation management will be more and more important, she says til CNET news.com.

To be quite honest I don't see why technology should be able to solve the problem of on-line trustworthiness. Ultimately any technologically conceived credibility-gizmo can be altered, copied or faked by evil-doers. No, I think web users have to employ the one tool most of us already rely on today: common sense. At the same time the sender of information has to be openly fair, accurate and thorough in his or her account. Credibility is namely a matter of person to person relations.

Link: Trust thy Internet neighbor (CNET News.com

Technorati tag: Internet

Billboards on the moon

Full moon in the future. Beautiful... and full of bright and colorful billboards praising products like Coca Cola, Marlboro and Swiss Miss. According to Danish radio show Harddisken American aviation authorities are currently seeking to prohibit advertising in space. The reason? Today lasers are strong enough to target the moon and this means it's probably just a matter of time before corporations will try to beam an ad to the face of our neighboring planet. Might be a small step for the corporate world but what a giant leap towards crapping up space with more of the same junk we've crammed into nature here on earth.

Technorati tag: Marketing

Expensive city

For a long time now I've been wondering about the price of things. Why do I have to pay about 8 dollars for a draft beer when I go out? Why does a loaf of bread at the bakers cost me 4 bucks and where the heck is the big awful hole that swallows the rest of my salary every single month?

Now the answer is in: I'm not overspending. No, I live in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

According to Mercer Human Consulting Copenhagen is in fact more expensive than both Hong Kong and New York. My dear home town makes it to number eight on the list of the 144 most expensive cities in the world.

The Mercer consultants list Tokyo as the most expensive city. New York is number 13 and Hong Kong number nine on the list.

Danish source: http://www.dr.dk/nyheder/penge/article.jhtml?articleID=260070

Technorati tag: Economics

40 million card numbers!!

"In what could be the largest data security breach to date, MasterCard International on Friday said information on more than 40 million credit cards may have been stolen," news.com writes today.

Hmm... Might be a good idea to eye that bank statement a little longer when it arrives.

Green light for podcasts?

For six months podcast DJ Brian Ibboot has been talking to the RIAA about making the process of getting green light for using licensed music in his programming easier:

"It's looking like they're in the progress of developing something. I have no idea what shape it's going to take. But it is definitely moving towards something," says Brian Ibbott to News.com

My take: Sounds Great. But why would the RIAA give in that easily? I think that podcasters in some way or other will have to pay to be able to include licensed music in their shows. That's simply the way that the RIAA works! I can't imagine another scenario ;-)

Link: Hopes for legal music podcasts rise