Faraway, So Close … blogging, the drug of the nation…

Did you know that the font known as Arial just a cheap knock-off of Helvetica? True story.

Give this 55 minute video at least 5 minutes of your attention and you’ll either be hooked or bored, at which time you can shut it off or keep watching:

Direct link - via http://educationaltechnology.ca/couros/880

The new, revamped version of Delicious (formerly del.icio.us) is up and out in the wild: “delicious blog » Oh happy day — the new Delicious is here.”

I’m quite happy that they went out and got the actual delicious.com domain name as it’s much easier to remember how to spell and therefore, easier to use. Old del.icio.us URLs will still work of course. Check out the what’s new page for all the details.

YouTube - Bert & Ernie tries Gangsta-Rap.

Let this be a lesson to you all to not do what I did. If you think you have a great idea that couldn’t possibly have been taken already, just double check google once more before committing to the idea.

Last night while we were eating we were discussing keeping a food diary to help us eat healthier. I thought that you could do that in a neat way using twitter and even came up with a great domain name - www.tweetwhatieat.com (has a nice ring to it, no?) - which, to my surprise, was still available. Here’s where I should have taken a few extra moments to double check google for other food diary/twitter sites but instead I rushed ahead to quickly register the domain, lest there be some other genius out there about to have the same idea as me! Luckily, Carlos saved me from spending too much more time/money on this brilliant idea with this tweet:

Sigh. It turns out http://tweetwhatyoueat.com/ is already a fully functioning version of my idea. That’s the internet for you. Dreams created and crushed in 10 minutes for the cost of $10.

For now, ww.tweetwhatieat.com will redirect to http://tweetwhatyoueat.com/. Anyone want to buy a slightly used domain name?

Picturesque (link to download here) is a simple little program that allows you to add some basic, yet powerful effects to your photos/images very easily. Initially I thought it was free, but it turns out there’s a $34.95 price tag - still not a bad deal for what it does. In addition to the effects/cropping that it does, it can also do batch processing of images. So you can take a whole folder of images you need changed and drop it on the app and walk away.

Original:

Obviously you wouldn’t have the picturesque logo on top if you purchased the software.

Yes, that Donald Miller.

You can follow him here as he bikes across America.

I’m just reposting from boingboing.net here because this is such an important issue going on right now in Canadian politics. Visit this page to find out how to contact your local MP and voice your thoughts on Bill C-61.

Michael Geist continues his ongoing series on activities that will be illegal under Canada’s new copyright act, the so-called Canadian DMCA (Bill C-61). Today, backing up DVDs and scanning school photos:
Diane, who is four years old, is a huge fan of the popular TV character Dora the Explorer. For her birthday, she received four Dora DVDs. Given Diane’s habit of scratching them, her dad has begun to create backup versions. That day, Diane brings home her kindergarten class photo, which was taken by a local photographer. Josee digitizes the photo and sends a copy to Diane’s grandmother.
If Industry Minister Jim Prentice’s Bill C-61 becomes law, all of these copying activities arguably violate the law.

Bill C-61 does not allow users to make backup copies of DVDs. The act of backing up the DVD is an infringement. Moreover, in order to make the backup copy, users must typically circumvent the copy-protection on the DVD, also an act of infringement.

For decades, Canadian copyright law has vested copyright in commissioned photographs – like school photographs – in the person who commissions the photo. Bill C-61 reverses that practice so that copyright now belongs to the photographer. (repeal of Section 13.2) Assuming the photograph came with an all rights reserved restriction, the act of distributing the digitized photo to Diane’s grandmother now violates the law. (Section 29.21 (1)(e))

I’m pretty sure that every Canadian reading Boing Boing knows about this law and what’s wrong with it, and I hope you’ve all contacted your MPs. But the point of these posts is to help you communicate to your less tech-savvy friends about these issues. Did you email your grandmother a photo of your kids’ kindergarten photos? Call her up and tell her that you won’t be able to do it again with the grade one pics next year unless she calls up her MP and puts him on notice that he’d better oppose the CDMCA or lose her vote. Did your brother back up his DVDs to his laptop when he went away to university? Call him now and let him know that he’ll be a criminal next year unless he calls and writes to his MP and lets her know what he thinks of Bill C-61

Firefox 3 is now available. If you go download it today from one of the links below, you could be helping to set a Guinness World record. The main website, http://www.spreadfirefox.com/ is down and probably getting hammered pretty hard today.

• Mac OS X: link
• Linux: link
• Windows: link

I think this video (or something like it) should be required viewing for North Americans before we head out each day to go buy/build/use/dispose of stuff around us. But really, it’s one of those things that makes you think a bit but then how much do you actually change the way you live? I’ve only watched the first half of this, but you start to feel powerless against the massive corporations in control of so much of the world that it seems like you can’t make a difference.

But I think you still have to try because even if the only difference you make is in your life, that still has a lasting impact on the world however small it may be.

There’s my cheesy plea for the world and environment for the week. Now I can go back to using one of my 8 iPods on one of the 5 computers we own in the house that’s way too big for the 3 of us.

Link via Matthew