this is the page you receive should you try to access YouTube whilst in Turkey. at first I thought it was a problem with the hotel internet connection in Istanbul, but I could (almost) read / understand some of the text of the message. and I googled it and found many articles about it from 2007. and there's an updated 2008 wikipedia entry saying this is the second ban.

I love watching the TED Talks. it's great they publish the videos as it's REALLY expensive to attend the conference. tonight I've watched a few :

Sir Ken Robinson : Creativity and Education
his talk was very entertaining - he's quite funny!, and he raised some good points and examples of how modern education system is designed towards getting people jobs, since it was formed since the introduction of industrialisation. as we don't know what will happen in the future, how can we educate children correctly to prepare for the future. and how creativity has a lesser importance in the education system of today. I liked a couple of comments he raised - listed below. the full transcript is on the TED blog page

"creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status"

...

MOBILE LIFE CONFERENCES and EXHIBITIONS

New Submission Deadline: 2 June 2008

-- mSOCIETY 2008 -- The 1st International Conference on Mobile Society
-- EURO mGOV 2008 -- The 3rd European Conference on Mobile Government

15 -19 September 2008, Sheraton Voyager, Antalya, Turkey
http://www.mgovernment.org/events/index.html
mlife@mgovernment.org

mLife Events Organization decided to extended the submission deadline
to June 2nd, both to respond to various requests for extension and to
organize the special sessions better.

Electronic submissions are open and can be accessed via
http://www.mgovernment.org/confadmin/

Please see the confenence brief below and more information on the
conferences, program highlights, topics, organisers and supporters can
be found at the http://www.mgovernment.org/events/

Cheers
Kushchu, General Chair

---- Please feel free to forward

MOBILE LIFE CONFERENCES and EXHIBITIONS

Netaudio, the Offline Festival for Online Music comes back to London after a great festival in Berlin in 2007

Netaudio'08 will take place from 22nd to 25th October 2008 at Shunt, a extensive labyrinth of tunnels underneath London Bridge Station.

Over four nights we will celebrate the creative output of networked musicians and online communities with talks, workshops, showcases and performances. Parts of Netaudio'08 will be programmed through an open call for entries. With this call we would like to give you the chance to put our attention to your creative activities related to the festival theme.

Call for entries runs in 3 strands: performance, installation and conference. For more information and to download the entry forms please visit: http://www.netaudiolondon.cc/blog/137/call-for-entries

Saturday May 10, 2008
2 PM PDT, 5 PM EDT, 11 PM CEDT

As part of the 4th Annual Open Space Victoria Voice++ Festival
the AVATAR ORCHESTRA METAVERSE will perform two new mixed reality compositions: XAANADRuuL by Canadian composer Jeremy Owen Turner, and The Heart of Tones (mixed reality version) by American composer Pauline Oliveros.

The performance will take place on Second Life, on site at Open
Space in Victoria, BC, Canada, and will be audio streamed live on the web. For
updates and listening urls, go to http://avatarorchestra.blogspot.com/
or see web stream urls at the bottom of this post.

Audio Web Stream urls:

Shoutcast server 1
http://d-oo-b.cc:8034
Listening url server 1
http://d-oo-b.cc:8034/listen.pls

Shoutcast server 2
http://d-oo-b.cc:8036
Listening url server 2
http://d-oo-b.cc:8036/listen.pls

Shoutcast server 3 (reserve)
http://d-oo-b.cc:8038
Listening url server 3
http://d-oo-b.cc:8038/listen.pls

--

PROGRAM

I was checking out the NZ Audio Foundation website again today and came across a link from an email on the AF-l about funding from Damian from Frey. it's an interesting argument. I think Australia is similar to New Zealand in this way, but also at a glance I think New Zealanders have the creative support advantage over the Australians, or so it seemed to me at least, as they have MANY! support organisations helping the artists. will have to do some more research to see if my assumptions are founded.

The SALA-MANCA GROUP is a group of independent Jerusalem-based artists that creates in different fields: performance, video, installation & new media since 2000. Sala-manca's works deal with poetics of translation (cultural, mediatic and social), with textual, urban and net contexts and with the tensions between low tech and high tech aesthetics, as well as social and political issues.

The Actv website (actv.co.il) is an independent digital content library , offering video footage on a variety of subjects: Civil and Social issues including: human rights, animal rights, video activism, environmental issues etc; Cultural content e.g.: music videos, short movies, documentaries, independent VJ shows, theatre footage, animated shorts , dance, art, poetry readings and independent films.

The Israeli Center for Digital Art (Digital Art Lab) was established in order to promote and exhibit New Media and video art and undertakes to reflect the cultural and technological influences on the visual art. In the center, changing exhibitions are held by Israeli as well as international artists, that give current approach to net.art, video art, photography, animation and interactive sound. For those involved in the contemporary artistic field, the Center is used for research, creation and projects’ counseling.

no-org.net is a Jerusalem art network, launched in December 2003. It serves a platform for experimental projects in the area of netbased and digital art and for the exchange of independent information on contemporary art.

Art, Music, Culture in Jerusalem today - event listings and what's happening around Jerusalem

TechGnosis maillist website
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
-Philip K. Dick-
VISIT TECHGNOSIS AT: http://techgnosis.info
SUBSCRIBE to TechGnosis List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TechGnosis/join

http://www.maybelogic.org
http://www.maybelogic.net

http://edge.org/

http://www.techgnosis.com - Erik Davis' site

http://www.undergrowth.org

http://www.barrelfullofmonkeys.org

http://www.entheo.net/ - entheogenesis Australia 2007 conference

http://www.docquan.com/lib_dead.html - an online collection / library of interesting books

Last November I took part in NaVloPoMo - videoblog posting month. it was a lot of fun and was a good way to remember to do something creative in between working. I know a lot of people can't help but be creative all the time, but I find sometimes I get so tired from work that I become passive and tend to watch more than do. so this was a good reminder to get into the habit.

in 2008, Semanal is happening - similar to NaVloPoMo but posting one video a week instead of one each day. this is much more manageable for me at least as I can usually make one on the weekend. the hardest part then becomes finding time to watch everyone else's videos!

back in the mid 90s or so I used to hang out on a couple of moos with some of the outlook crowd. I found one of my old notebooks on the bookshelf during this trip home and it has some of my notes on how to connect and lists the urls etc also. I used to use the name Alia back then though the name became too popular so a few years later I added the K for Kath/Kathy and became AliaK. one of the pages has my notes on how to request my name.

here's some of the notebook pages. I used to make the notebooks out of old 5.25" floppy disks and recycled paper from work - these disks weren't being used as often by this stage.. amazing how times change!!

I remember making a hammock that swung softly when someone sat in it and a room called blacony - nothing too flash compared to what the others were doing but it all worked ok! one day I'll have to go through some old disks and see if I can find any files from back then, that's if the disks even spin up at all..

"In the early 90s a group of people were attracted to each other because of their shared interest in the idea of time, and in the idea of responsibility for the future. This group of people came to call themselves the Long Now Foundation."

"We felt that there was a need to create some new form of human thinking about Time. We were all aware that everything was getting faster."

"We were also aware as we looked around that most of the ambitions and objectives of people in corporations and in government, even in education had become closer and closer in terms of time so corporations were living in fear of their quarterly results and politicians were living in fear of the next opinion poll. There seemed to be an ever - decreasing horizon into the future and very little encouragement from people in any direction to lay long term plans. No politician wants to start on a plan that doesn't yield results pretty quickly at least within his or her term of office. The worst thing of all is if it yields results in the opposition's term of office and of course the media don't help this by always focusing on things that seem like blue sky projects and criticising them as being stupidly idealistic and pointless."

"We thought that there was first of all the need for an organisation that would celebrate that kind of thinking, that would ally with it, that would support it, that would encourage it and in fact would try to do it itself."

-- Brian Eno from Brian Eno Seminar on The Long Now

YouTube CEO Chad Hurley is being questioned at the US Congressional Future of Video Hearing - Box Elder has posted videos from the Hearing on The 463 - Inside Tech Policy blog.. let's see what the outcome will be..

There's also videos about Net Neutrality also

I've been reading the Nomadology book and blog posts lately. it's an interesting concept. I've found myself travelling more in the last few years but I'm not sure that my mode of travel could be classed as nomadic.

eg from Encyclopedia Britannica - searching on nomad / nomadism
http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9373574

or nomadism on wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomadism

currently I'm a cross between Perpetual Traveller, expat or perhaps even a touch technomad. for the moment I have given up the sedentary lifestyle. living in different place whilst on work projects gives you a great opportunity to see how other people live and to realise how little you actually need to be happy and to live a good life yourself. it definitely makes you appreciate the life we lead in Australia.

there's a whole other world out there and some people are taking advantage of it. in doing a couple of quick html hops whilst googling nomadism, I came across microship.com the website of Steven Roberts who left suburbia behind to travel in teched up vehicles such as Winnebiko and BEHEMOTH. Now he's decking out a catamaran to do some more leisurely and comfortable sailing. but wow! what an adventure. his site mentions he's had help from numerous people on places to stay and go. there'd be a few books worth of stories to tell!

PixelPress' intent is to encourage documentary photographers, writers, filmmakers, artists, human rights workers and students to explore the world in ways that take advantage of the new possibilities provided by digital media. They seek a new paradigm of journalism, one that encourages an active dialogue between the author and reader and, also, the subject.

I'm getting into Second Life. I tried to use it a couple of years ago when I first heard of it but my old laptop graphics card wasn't up to spec so I couldn't actually logon :( since getting the macbook I no longer have this problem! so my second life name is Alia Kiama, I haven't bought any land yet but I'm going to try make some objects.. once I work out all the new terminology. it's similar to the old compuserve worlds away and active worlds avatar based systems but seem to be more popular. the main difference is that when you build something you are allowed to keep your IP. people are making their living in RL (real life) creating objects in the world. you can buy and sell Linden $ (the inworld currency) on websites, and for US$.

(I'll post SL articles using my second life name, Alia Kiama)

some links whilst researching second life stuff :
(read more)