Batman The Dark Knight Rises - Batwing Filming

Here is a short video of the filming of a chase scene between Batman, in his Batwing, in pursuit of a yet unknown (to me) bad guy! Interesting, one can assume that the scene will be accelerated and there will be a bunch of "touch ups" but it's pretty interesting to see the work in progress.

The End of Facebook?

Anonymous has posted an interesting message to the world that they plan to take down Facebook on November 5th, 2011.

Interestingly, November 5th is also Guy Fawkes Day. "Wintour introduced Fawkes to Robert Catesby, who planned to assassinate King James I and restore a Catholic monarch to the throne. The plotters secured the lease to an undercroft beneath the House of Lords, and Fawkes was placed in charge of the gunpowder they stockpiled there. Prompted by the receipt of an anonymous letter, the authorities searched Westminster Palace during the early hours of 5 November, and found Fawkes guarding the explosives. Over the next few days, he was questioned and tortured, and eventually he broke. Immediately before his execution on 31 January, Fawkes jumped from the scaffold where he was to be hanged and broke his neck, thus avoiding the agony of the drawing and quartering that followed.

Fawkes became synonymous with the Gunpowder Plot, which has been commemorated in England since 5 November 1605. His effigy is burned on a bonfire, often accompanied by a firework display." (wikipedia)

Is The Internet Changing Our Memory?

A recent study by Columbia University professor, Dr Betsy Sparrow, suggests that we are relying less on our memory of a subject and more on our memory of where to find the subject matter. "I don't think Google is making us stupid - we're just changing the way that we're remembering things... If you can find stuff online even while you're walking down the street these days, then the skill to have, the thing to remember, is where to go to find the information. It's just like it would be with people - the skill to have is to remember who to go see about [particular topics]." says Dr. Sparrow.


I'd argue that we've been doing this since we've been able to read and write. We may have faster access to information these days but prior to the internet there were libraries, filing cabinets, and subject matter experts. Don't you agree? Am I missing something here?


Source: bbc.co.uk

Google+ Project - A Rival To Facebook?

Ever since Google announced that it was shutting down Wave there has been a lot of speculation over it's plans to release a Facebook rival. For a very lucky few, in Google tradition, the wait may be over.

Google has announced The Google+ project which aims to allow us to get social but in a more orderly fashion. Google+ seems to provide users with a mechanism for categorizing friends into logical groups via "circles". The idea being to put up walls, as we do in real life, and share certain information with certain groups (circles) of friends.

“In real life, we have walls and windows and I can speak to you knowing who’s in the room, but in the online world, you get to a ‘Share’ box and you share with the whole world,” Bradley Horowitz, a vice president for product management at Google is quoted as saying by the NYtimes.

There is a lot of "who cares?" discussion out there but this is one blogger who is anxiously awaiting a Facebook alternative. I've never really embraced Facebook, though I do have an account and have maintained a quiet presence there. Living a more controlled existence is very appealing to me. I've got better things to do than play Farmville or to know what achievement you've unlocked, thank you.

Anxiously awaiting my invite.

FBI Targets Hosting Company In Seizure

A hosting company based in Switzerland, with servers in Reston Virginia, found itself the target of an FBI seizure which left a number of clients looking for answers. According to a story in the NYtimes, DigitalOne's chief executive, Sergej Ostroumow, said in an email to one of it's clients that “This problem is caused by the F.B.I., not our company. In the night F.B.I. has taken 3 enclosures with equipment plugged into them, possibly including your server — we cannot check it.”


Speculation is that the seizure is in relationship to an investigation into the hacking group Lulzsec (Lulz Security group) but no one from the FBI would comment. Sites affected by the seizure include Curbed Network, bookmarking services Instapaper, and pinboard. There is no reason to believe that these sites where the target of the raid and Lockhart Steele, Curbed Networks' President told the news paper that “Our servers happened to be in with some naughty servers,”

Google's Search By Image

Not too long ago I wrote a blog post for Webbeat.tv entitled Website of the day: Tineye which describes the service that allows you to provide an image or image url and tells you where else on the web the image is being used. Tineye will even detect altered images.

It appears as though Google has recently released a similar tool via it's Google Image search. If you navigate to http://images.google.com/ you'll now see a camera icon in the search field, mouse over the image and the tooltip says "Search By Image". Clicking the icon provides a new search field with the options to upload your own image or provide an image url.

I'm a fan of the Tineye service though one has to believe that Google will quickly out perform Tineye with it's capability to crawl websites and gather data more quickly. In either case this is a very useful tool which I am apt to use frequently.

Steve Jobs Pitches Cupertino City Council Re: New Apple Campus

Here's a video shot yesterday (6/7/11) of Steve Jobs making a pitch to the City of Cupertino regarding Apple's desire / plans to build a new Apple Campus. The campus would occupy 150 acres and house 12,000 - 13,000 people in a single round building.

The Mothership has Landed

McDonald's Creates Interactive Billboard Game

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Using a large interactive billboard and patron's smartphones McDonald's Stockholm created a location based game of paddle ball called Pick n' Play that allowed users to choose a reward and play the game by logging into picknplay.se. Steer the paddle on the digital display using your touch device, last 30 seconds, and the reward you chose was yours. The site provides winners with an e-coupon that was redeemable at McDonald's restaurants.

Expect to see more of this kind of marketing...

Google Serves Notice... Upgrade Your Browser

In order to push the agenda on HTML5 and cloud computing, Google has decided that it will no longer support older versions of your favourite browser, what ever that may be. In a statement on The Official gmail blog Venkat Panchapakesan, Vice President of Engineering at Google, said yesterday that "...Google Apps will only support modern browsers. Beginning August 1st, we’ll support the current and prior major release of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari on a rolling basis."

This, in my opinion, is a good thing. Hopefully it will encourage internet users to stay up to date with their software updates and provide developers with a stable road map upon which to plan the development and support of their applications. Of course it also pushes the Google agenda but I've seen far to many users out there still running IE 6!

Google Helps Plan Your Flights

Google's Inside Search blog has revealed a new search feature that can help make your travel plans a whole lot easier. With Google's new flight schedule feature you need only enter your query into Google search and, if your airport is covered, will be rewarded with the available flights covering your departure and arrival locations. For example, enter "flights from Halifax to Boston" in the Google search field and you'll be presented with the following:

Expand the results and you'll see:

It works very well for major regional airports but less so for smaller local centers where there are fewer direct flights. I think the key here is that it is selecting nonstop flights and not considering connecting flights, at least at the moment. Even so, a quick search can provide you with a lot of visibility into what is available and a few queries strung together will likely give you what you need for planning purposes. Of course seat availability and pricing information is not provided but I'd suggest googling before you hit your favorite travel site so you'll at least know your options of times and carriers.