Noonsolar's Fall collection of solar-charger cowhide shoulderbags makes all those other ugly solar backpacks look like conference giveaways. The bags will fully charge a phone or MP3 player in about 6 hours -- but I expect you'd use it to maintain the charge on these devices as you moved around during the day. The manufacturer suggests leaving it in a window when you get to work. Link (via Engadget)

The Internet Governance Forum in Rio has released an Internet Bill of Rights that enshrines a bunch of really kick-ass values, and it's already been endorsed by Italy (wait, weren't they planning on forcing bloggers to get a license?) and Brazil:

Privacy, data protection, freedom of expression, universal accessibility, network neutrability, interoperability, use of format and open standards, free access to information and knowledge, right to innovation and a fair and competitive market and consumers safeguard.

On these principles the Internet Bill of Rights will have to be set up, an idea produced by our country and supported by the Italian delegation, led by the Communications’ Undersecretary, Luigi Vimercati, during the UN internet Governance Forum concluded today in Rio de Janeiro.

Link (via Beyond the Beyond)

Southwest Airlines's Spirit Magazine ran a great, positive article on fanfic -- and managed not to mention sex or copyright even once.

But despite the proliferation of ridiculous premises and terrible grammar, I quickly grew fond of fan fiction. Sure, I found plenty of duds, but also uncovered some gems. These fanfics took me to new places, expanding the author’s universe in ways the original material couldn’t. Take, for example, the novel-length story that brought characters and plots from Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising series to the setting of Harry Potter, putting an inventive spin on both works. Or the fanfic that refashioned the entire Heroes universe into a fairy tale, complete with its own physics, mythology, and ancient origin text. Instead of passively consuming the novels and TV show, these fans took an active role, using their imagination to push the material in plot, form, and character.

Link (via Vitanuova)

See also:
How fanfic makes kids into better writers (and copyright victims)
Private Infringer: fanfic based on Captain Copyright
Larry Lessig fanfic
California got its name from fanfic
Cash prizes for Triffid fanfic
Harry Potter fanfic we'd rather not see
In Praise of Fan Fiction: Cory's latest Locus Magazine editorial
Why fan fiction is so important
Scooby Doo/Cthulhu crossover fan fiction

Kevin Kelly: Harry Plotters and the Prophesies of the Hive Mind

Wired's Chris Baker has a great little story about the original Futurama, the grandfather of dark rides, which premiered at the 1939 World's Fair. It was a football-field-sized diorama of a city of tomorrow, through which armchairs rode on tracks, playing synchronized soundtracks piped up from hundreds of turntables in the basement. I've been fascinated by the Futurama since I read about it in the old Journal of Ride Theory.

"Detailed miniatures are always compelling," says Dan Howland, editor of the Journal of Ride Theory. "It doesn't matter whether they are doll houses or model trains or it's Legoland, something about them just sucks you in. The 1939 Futurama had two other factors that compounded the fascination: first, a promise of personal car ownership (and after the Great Depression that sounded pretty good), and second, a grand vision of the future. Up until the Futurama, manufacturers had exhibited at fairs to show how they made their products, and then the Futurama came along and said, Here is how the future will feel. The 1939 audience wasn't used to having a company selling optimism, and it made their hearts sing."

GM's ride presented a utopia forged by urban planning. Sophisticated highways ran through rural farmland and eventually moved into carefully ordered futuristic cities. "You have to understand that the audience had never even considered a future like this," says Howland. "There wasn't an interstate freeway system in 1939. Not many people owned a car. They staggered out of the fair like a cargo cult and built an imperfect version of this incredible vision."

Link

See also: Journal of Ride Theory amazing zine is now an amazing book

My latest Information Week column is "How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook" -- in which I explain why Facebook and all the other social networking services live in a boom-and-bust cycle because they get crufted up with people you don't want to add to your friends list, but have to for social reasons.

You'd think that Facebook would be the perfect tool for handling all this. It's not. For every long-lost chum who reaches out to me on Facebook, there's a guy who beat me up on a weekly basis through the whole seventh grade but now wants to be my buddy; or the crazy person who was fun in college but is now kind of sad; or the creepy ex-co-worker who I'd cross the street to avoid but who now wants to know, "Am I your friend?" yes or no, this instant, please.

It's not just Facebook and it's not just me. Every "social networking service" has had this problem and every user I've spoken to has been frustrated by it. I think that's why these services are so volatile: why we're so willing to flee from Friendster and into MySpace's loving arms; from MySpace to Facebook. It's socially awkward to refuse to add someone to your friends list -- but removing someone from your friend-list is practically a declaration of war. The least-awkward way to get back to a friends list with nothing but friends on it is to reboot: create a new identity on a new system and send out some invites (of course, chances are at least one of those invites will go to someone who'll groan and wonder why we're dumb enough to think that we're pals).

Link

Adam sez,

As reported on Boing Boing last week, MoveOn.org started a Facebook group and petition protesting Facebook's new feature that makes private purchases on other websites public on Facebook. (Group and petition linked to at www.MoveOn.org) Big news today, reported at CNET: Leaked screenshots of Facebook's original Beacon feature for corporate advertisers -- made public at TechCrunch.com earlier this month -- reveal that Facebook originally planned to give its users the ability to permanently opt out of having their private purchases made public on Facebook. Facebook evidently removed that option just before launching the new privacy-invading feature. Facebook users who are aware that their private purchases on other websites are being made public on Facebook must now opt out site by site, week by week, month by month. There is no permanent opt-out option -- let alone an opt-in policy.

"Facebook should explain why they chose at the last minute to put the wish lists of corporate advertisers ahead of the privacy interests of their users," said Adam Green, a spokesperson for MoveOn.org Civic Action. "Facebook has the potential to revolutionize how we communicate with each other and organize around issues together in a 21st century democracy. But to succeed, they need the trust of their users. The fact that Facebook pro-actively chose to make it harder for their users to keep private information from being made public will rub a lot of Facebook users the wrong way. The ultimate act of good faith would be to switch to an opt-in policy."

Link (Thanks, Adam!)

The woman who reads the London Underground next stop announcements has been fired for keeping a blog where she records and posts her own funny fake announcements, like "We'd like to remind our American tourist friends that you are almost certainly talking too loud" and "Would the passenger in the red shirt pretending to read a paper, but is actually staring at that woman's chest, please stop. You are not fooling anyone. You filthy pervert" and "Residents of London are reminded that there are other places in Britain outside your stinking shithole of a city, and if you removed your heads from your arses for just a couple of minutes, you may realise that the M25 is not the edge of the Earth" and "Here we are again, crammed into a sweaty tube carriage. And today's Wednesday - only two more days until you can binge drink yourself into a state of denial about the mediocrity of you life. Oh, for Goodness sake, if you're female smile at the bloke next to you and make his day. He probably hasn't had sex for months." Link (Thanks, Mark!)

Nathan sez, "SpaceWesterns.com just announced the winners of a Space Western Limerick contest. The contest was judged by Jane Espenson (Firefly, Battlestar Gallactica), Keith R.A. DeCandido (novelizations for Serenity, Star Trek, etc.), and Gary Trainer (song-writer for the Jet Black Berries 'Sundown in Venus' album, and The Atomic Swindlers)."

There once was a cowboy whose horse,
Had the power to leap with great force,
Into space she would jump,
Then the cowboy would slump,
As he died in the vacuum, of course.
-- Larry Hodges

Lament of the Alien Dance Hall Girl

A barmaid from Nerus Omega
once mourned in her sea-swamped bodega,
"If we fishfolk had feet
my life might be complete --
I'd cancan from Rigel to Vega"
-- Marcie Lynn Tentchoff

Link

Ivan sez, "Greenpeace is about to use the community to name a new whale. The choices are all bad, except one: 'Mister Splashy Pants.' Guess who is in the lead?" Link (Thanks, Ivan!)

Paul sez, "Lingro lets you enter any webpage and make every word clickable for a translation (Boing Boing for example). There's a bookmarklet for handy access, and a simple search-as-you-type dictionary that is faster than any multilingual web dictionary out there.

"It works with English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Polish (with more on the way) and if you find a missing word, you can add a definition.

"Our goal is to make the coolest language learning tools, build community, and build open content dictionaries that anyone (even our competitors) can use in their projects (licensed under the FDL and Creative Commons licenses)."

The use-case here is people who are pretty good at reading another language, but get stuck on the occasional word (I'm this way with Spanish), but more importantly, the project builds on and releases free and open multi-lingual dictionaries, which are long overdue. Link (Thanks, Paul!)

This little engraved MP5K is a machinenpistol produced in 1976, "designed at the request of HK South American sales rep, who saw a market for dignitary protection and increased firepower in a small package." It comes with its own leather "briefcase" carry-case that allows for fast, machine-gun-kelly-style blasts from within the bag. As Matt sez, "The juxtaposition of the work of skilled craftsmen with a mass-produced machine-stamped weapon like this one produces palpable waves of cognitive dissonance." Link (Thanks, Matt!)

For the next several weeks, I'm going to post my favorite entries from Boing Boing this year. Here are some from January 2007:

• Video of many car crashes on icy Portland road (Welcome to a world without friction.)

• Having low expectations makes you happier (Danes don't expect good things to happen to them, and when something good does happen, they're thrilled.)

• Canadian spy coins a "mistake" (Defense Security Service unable to substantiate the claim that coins had eavesdropping bugs in them.)

• Man tasered for wearing baseball cap at city council meeting (“It means more than just a hat,” he said. “It’s like my crown. It’s like asking a king to remove his crown.”)

• Every issue of MAD on one DVD-ROM (That's over 600 issues -- 17,500 pages)

Do no evil. Link to screengrab (source, thanks Gweeds!)

"A homeless contractor known as the "mole man" dug a multi-room 200-square foot home underground in Fresno that surprised police when they recently stumbled upon a hidden entrance." Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
• John Hodgman's Mole Men / Cavalcade of Hobos
• Mole Men imagined by Ape Lad

Today on Boing Boing Gadgets we looked at soy milk makers, including the Soyabella model seen here, a monitor for the colorblind, software to turn your cameraphone into a webcam, a 1,000+ horsepower biofueled supercar, perhaps the worst Hello Kitty-branded product of all time, a chunky way to play old Famicom carts on a DS, a business card-sized disposable microscope, a game watch that isn't real, a phone with a place to stash your Bluetooth headset, LED jackets on the backs of pop rockers, office blinds for offices with no windows, possible upcoming varities of Mountain Dew, personalized Sharpies, a solar toothbrush being tested, and an umbrella with a flask inside. And a rather nice collection of deals. (Turns out this "Cyber Monday" fake holiday actually brought out some good bargains this year.)

Also, I am looking for an intern. If you are in NYC, have a few hours free to work on various projects, and would like to experience the sexy and stimulating world of consumer electronics blogging and journalism, drop me a paragraph about your favorite—or least favorite—gadget. (joel@b*b*.net)

Matt West of CNN's "Pop Digital" produced a piece about Boing Boing tv, and here it is: Video Link.

Judging by this 1964 video, it seems like it would be easy to write an ELIZA-style AI program to simulate Andy Warhol. It would answer all questions by saying either "yes," "no," or "I haven't thought about it." Link

Oobject has a fascinating collection of radioactive products, most of which are no longer for sale.

(Given a choice between Gladstone’s Report Wizard for Microsoft Access or radioactive condom for Christmas, which one would you take?) Link

A benefit will be held in San Francisco this Saturday night for Todd Blair, the machine artist who suffered a major head injury after a Survival Research Laboratories performance in Amsterdam in September. The benefit, called The Blue And Green Ball, will take place at the SOMArts gallery from 8pm to 1am. The event will feature live music, performances, a shopping bazaar, and an auction of cool services and art, including an actual SRL machine. Admission is $10.

Link to The Blue And Green Ball, Link to track Todd's progress and donate directly

Previously on BB:
• SRL crew member injured in post-show accident Link
• SRL: update on injured crew member Link

WIRED SCIENCE, the joint Wired Mag / PBS project, has wrapped up production for a bit -- but the show's still airing Wednesdays at 8pm through December 26. They're also posting some extra little clips of goodness on YouTube. Up today, a short piece in which show host Chris Hardwick (who's also half of the alt-comic duo "Hard 'n' Phirm") and Office worker Rainn Wilson (recently christened by People mag as one of the "Sexiest Men Alive") explore what's inside various common household products. It's plenty fun, but the clip's title in YouTube -- "What's Inside Rainn Wilson" -- suggests even greater enigmas. Video Link. Incidentally, Hard 'n' Phirm are on stage Decemer 5 in LA: Link.

Photographer Richard Barnes works closely with museums around the world, documenting their collections, renovations, and behind-the-scenes activities. His 2004 exhibition, Animal Logic, explores the collecting and display of animals, from "exploded" animal skulls to the construction of dioramas. The locales include the Museum of Comparative Anatomy in Paris, the Peabody Museum at Yale University, the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, and the Smithsonian. Link to Animal Logic show, Link to 2004 exhibit information

Andrew says: "It seems a team of clockmakers broke into the Pantheon in Paris in September 2005 and spent a year fixing the historic and neglected clock, which had been abandoned by the authorities. They were prosecuted for breaking in, but have just been cleared of the charges in court. The group, "Untergunther" have a catalogue of subterranean lo-jinks to their name."

Klausmann and his crew are connaisseurs of the Parisian underworld. Since the 1990s they have restored crypts, staged readings and plays in monuments at night, and organised rock concerts in quarries. The network was unknown to the authorities until 2004, when the police discovered an underground cinema, complete with bar and restaurant, under the Seine. They have tried to track them down ever since.

But the UX, the name of Untergunther's parent organisation, is a finely tuned organisation. It has around 150 members and is divided into separate groups, which specialise in different activities ranging from getting into buildings after dark to setting up cultural events. Untergunther is the restoration cell of the network.

Link | More at greg.org | London Times on UX's Untergunther

Coudal Partners has posted part one of a five-part documentary about the famous "Black Hole" surplus store in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Todd Lappin visits The Black Hole of Los Alamos
• Net-Funded A-Bomb Article Offers High-Yield ROI

Happy holidays from the friendly folks at Microsoft! Why not warm your friend's heart by giving them something from the Microsoft "Office Online Gift Guide 2007." I promise you they won't forget it.

* Traditional calendars for Excel, $7.50

* Time planning and reporting from inside Outlook, $35

* MyFax Internet faxing, 30% off

* 6 must-have tools Excel pros use, $49

* Create and convert PDF forms in Word, $14.50

* Make Flash presentations in PowerPoint

* Buy one get one free: Three dozen Outlook add-ins

* Professional backgrounds for PowerPoint for only $199

* Create and manage projects more effectively with Project Mentor Lite, $29

* Build lists of leads from any Internet source

* Automate your company's document creation, $24

* Make flowcharts a breeze, $19.95

* Import data from Access into Excel easily and quickly

* Gladstone’s Report Wizard for Microsoft Access, $42.50

Link

Juan-Raul Rodriges: says: "I love making this full screen and watching it for hours with my own mp3 selection playing over the top. Just gorgeous!"

Passing By presents two films that piece together brief segments from many different journeys into ever growing sequences of sights-seen-along-the-way, while looking out of the window of a car, a train, a plane or even just pushing a shopping trolley around the local super market.

The creators of the site are seeking video submissions. Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Screensaver displays security cam images

Amy Stewart says: "A scientist at the University of Illinois received a cup of compost from a friend; he put it under the microscope and created a very cool composite image of all the creatures living in that one cup of decay." Link

Ancient Middle Eastern texts suggest that more than 3,300 years ago the Hittites may have sent rams infected with a brutal bacterial infection to their enemies as a form of biological warfare. According to researcher Siro Trevisanato, the disease Tularemia, also known as rabbit fever, jumps between species via insects. Form New Scientist:

He believes tularemia is to blame for a deadly epidemic dubbed the "Hittite plague" which raged through the Middle East in the 14th century BC. Around 1335 BC, letters to the Egyptian king Akhenaten reported a pestilence in Simyra, a Phoenician city near what is now the border between Lebanon and Syria.

The (letters from 1335 BCE to the Egyptian king Akhenaten) describe a terrible illness causing disabilities and death. Most tellingly, they mention that, because of the plague, donkeys were banned from being used in caravans.

According to Trevisanato, this indicates that the people living in the city were hit by tularemia. The disease can infect donkeys and the insects that they carry, so preventing the use of donkeys for transport may have been an attempt to quell its spread.

Link

Were our ancestors water apes, hairless bipeds that lived an aquatic existence? Did Canadian inventor Troy Hurtubise really build an "Angel Light" that makes any object transparent when bathed in its glow? How come fish sometimes fall from the sky? Can pets actually predict earthquakes? These are some of the questions that scientists throughout history have seriously examined. For two years, Mark Pilkington, the fantastic Fortean behind Strange Attractor Journal, explored these weird experiments, scientific failures, and downright kookiness in his column Far Out that appeared in The Guardian's science supplement. Now, he's compiled those columns into a fantastic small book, Far Out: 101 Strange Tales from Science's Outer Edge. Each short entry tackles a single anomalous report or invention from science's cabinet of curiosity: electronic voice phenomena, The Cerebrophone, the memory of water, Skinner's Box, plant sentience, just to name a few. My only complaint about this terrific text is that it's not much, much longer. Link

The fabled Ark of the Covenant may not be in some nondescript crate in a massive US government warehouse but rather in the small Ethiopian town of Aksum where it is guarded by a virgin monk who can never leave the chapel where it sits. And nobody else can see it either. Smithsonian magazine sent Paul Raffaele to investigate. From Smithsonian:

I asked (His Holiness Abuna Paulos, patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church) if the ark in Ethiopia resembles the one described in the Bible: almost four feet long, just over two feet high and wide, surmounted by two winged cherubs facing each other across its heavy lid, forming the "mercy seat," or footstool for the throne of God. Paulos shrugged. "Can you believe that even though I'm head of the Ethiopian church, I'm still forbidden from seeing it?" he said. "The guardian of the ark is the only person on earth who has that peerless honor..."

(We) made our way toward the office of the Neburq-ed, Aksum's high priest, who works out of a tin shed at a seminary close by the ark chapel. As the church administrator in Aksum, he would be able to tell us more about the guardian of the ark.

"We've had the guardian tradition from the beginning," the high priest told us. "He prays constantly by the ark, day and night, burning incense before it and paying tribute to God. Only he can see it; all others are forbidden to lay eyes on it or even go close to it." Over the centuries, a few Western travelers have claimed to have seen it; their descriptions are of tablets like those described in the Book of Exodus. But the Ethiopians say that is inconceivable-—the visitors must have been shown fakes.

Link

Previously on BB:
• DIY Ark of the Covenant Link
• Raiding the Lost Ark Link

British researchers are recommending that cops drop the practice of circulating police sketches of suspects in favor of crazy, amusement-pier-style caricatures that "over-emphasise prominent features."

A study at the University of Central Lancashire found that over-emphasising prominent features on people's faces made them twice as easy to identify than before.

The researchers used computer software to alter the faces of 18 celebrities which had been created using three standard photofit techniques. The faces were then turned into caricatures by exaggerating certain features, such as the size of a person's ears, forehead or nose, by as much as 50%.

Link

(Image credit: Dad, a Creative Commons Attribution licensed picture from PhylB's Flickr photostream)

The Discovery Channel is casting for a reality show called "Super Rubes," in which the contestants will build elaborate Rube Goldberg machines.

Super Rubes is a weekly one-hour show that follows a band of talented creators as they design, build, and set off a massive Chain Reaction Machine in front of a cheering crowd. The point of a Chain Reaction Machine is to do something very simple, like turn on a light bulb, using as many steps as possible. This is an opportunity for engineers to let their creative hair down and have some fun building a giant Chain Reaction Machine. Our team will take on impossible challenges (i.e. "Can you crack an egg with a human hair?") in a race against the clock.

Link