Enjoy history and modern technology? Then prepare to get yourself time-sucked into the virtual world of wars and conflicts. Recently I have discover a website that clearly illustrates how isolated battles overlap and entwine into a never-ending strand of conflict.
Conflict History is a very interesting mash up that combines information from various different websites. Made in Flash, the site…
‘Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.’ (Barlow, 1996)
David Cameron’s reaction to the…
Making art out of spam, pop-up X, adverts and bugs is the daily work of the French artist Michaël Borras aka Systaime. This video designer and graphic artist is a real enthusiast of e-junkfood and spends all of his time in remixing web images:
“I work mostly on image embezzlement, pixel art, image de-construction and at the end I try
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Ever since I was young I was fascinated by media and in particular the way advertising, when executed well, could influence people. After finishing my high school the promise of someday working in the advertising business got me to sign up for the bachelor Communications science at the University of Amsterdam. Though not my initial motivation for choosing this study, while I was learning more about the different media I found myself, at the backdrop of a quickly changing media landscape, more and more pulled to new media.
Inspiration is the basis to a lot of creative processes. If it’s writing, composing music, painting, blogging or even finding a good subject for your thesis. Inspiration is needed for getting new and innovative ideas. So, as an electronic musician I’m constantly looking for new music, pieces of art or interesting stories that can give me a new and fresh…
Sometimes the results of a search on Google, Bing or Yahoo are not really satisfying. If you search for specific terms sometimes the search results are very limited. Often only the first three search results give usable information. The search engines often only offer general information and less specific and academic content. Keeping in mind that search engines are not…
How much are you willing to disclose online? Do you post your phone number? Do you have embarassing pictures on Facebook? Do you Tweet your current location? I think it’s fair to say most people have boundaries when it comes to posting personal information online. However, this blog post explores the infamous /b/ forum on the image board
It’s been a week now since the New Media Master 2010-2011 started. The first thing that stroke me while looking around at my fellow students in the lecture room on Monday morning was the enormous diversity of backgrounds, nationalities and cultures in this Master’s program. There are students from Poland, Romania, The UK, The USA and even a student from…
A patent war is the latest problem that has hit the Internet culture and it’s innovation. There have been a lot of statements and press releases about the subject in the media. Hardware giants like Apple and Samsung have been battling each other in courts all over the world. The main problem is about the technology involving…
The White House recently announced the development of a new platform: We The People. Obama is quoted in the introduction explaining why: “I pledged to make government more open and accountable to its citizens. That’s what the new We the People feature on WhiteHouse.gov is all about”. It is an appealing project in several ways, and especially for a New Media…
Twenty-plus kilograms suitcase in hand, tackling what seemed to be the longest staircase that had ever been placed in a train station that featured four platforms and no elevators, I started thinking: when did I but all this stuff?
Being in a situation where, for the second time in my life, I had to “relocate” to a new country for…
Phone hacking dominated British headlines during the summer months this year and the revelations were so detrimental to Murdoch’s empire that he thought it was best to shut down The News of the World – believing it had let down its readers. Whether this was in fact an elaborate ‘brush it under the carpet’ operation we might never know- not…
Every month 2.5 billion pictures are being uploaded on Facebook by their users. The social networking website is referring to itself as the ‘largest photo-sharing site’ on the web. The instant access of information and data means that servers containing this information always need to be up and running for people to retrieve whatever they desire. This includes pictures on…
I will never forget the look in Ladan’s eyes as she grabbed my Tamagotchi, without asking, and brutally pressed all the buttons at the same time. ‘Well, I really don’t get this stupid thing. It’s just stupid.’, she said, leaving my Tamagotchi to die a sudden death and my heart shattered to pieces.
Since Ladan was considered ‘one of the…
The recent case of Jack the Cat that went missing on an American Airlines flight has seen its fair share of attention in New Media and form there on to the traditional media. But what are the reasons behind AA’s relentless efforts to cope with digital activism?
It started when American…
As a professional journalist and newbie blogger I had never thought about a question whether online news sites and citizen journalists are undermining journalistic profession until I was assigned to write an essay on this issue as part of an entry exam for one of the Universities I had applied for. As I started writing my essay I got a…
Giving away free content is nothing new. It has been around as part of business strategies for centuries. However, many online businesses are using free digital content as a means of getting attention and building their reputation. How far can you go by giving away free digital content? What are the most used business models and can these models be changed in favour of a model in which all digital content is free?
An interview with an average net user about the role of the virtual in her life.
There is an uncertainty aura around the act of downloading illegally distributed content: no matter how versed one is in the matter, one can’t always be completely sure of its precedence, which directly impacts its expected quality, relevancy, and legitimacy. Now, opposed to Heisenberg’s concept, this uncertainty can and is resolved as one actually downloads the…
There’s something remarkable about the interaction between man and machine (and vice versa). Marshall McLuhan and Raymond Williams both had their own view in this classic debate about the social shaping of technology versus the technological shaping of society. Beyond man, new media technologies have showed a major influence on the concept of everything physical around us.
Train of thought…