Moved!

I moved the blog over to a self hosted Wordpress installation. The main reason is that Blogger does not support trackbacks.

Priorities of the American voter

Treehugger (and Environmental Economics, Matthew Yglesias) has a story about a poll made by American Environics which concerns American's main priorities (the title is "Energy Attitudes") and gives us a hint how good the candidates match with the mainstream.


The study's objection is to show how the perception of the issue of global warming and general awareness of the environment is changing in the minds of the American public. The result is, that there is a change; but a slow one. Old Christian values still dominate the voters priority list, so it is not surprising, that the most important issue is gay marriage.

A comparison of issues voters deem "very important" between 2006 and 2007 show almost no improvement or even a deterioration for "Environment" and "Global warming". About half of the people asked (56%) think the environment is an important issue though.

The preoccupying sorrows of the American still seem to be about terrorism and all-time runners like taxes or the economy. It will still be a long time until people open up to issues, which are not or don't seem imminent to them. Sadly the horizon of many doesn't reach farther than their own backyard. Let us hope that we can tackle the problems we face, before it is not possible to ignore them anymore.

To obtain more facts and numbers you can read the full report here. (PDF) A short summary of the main points (copied from the PDF):

• The public overwhelmingly believes global warming is occurring and demands action.
• Global warming remains a relatively low priority for voters, despite high-profile and extensive media attention in 2006 and 2007.
• Both the cost of energy and energy independence are higher priority concerns than global warming.
• Voters strongly support large investments into clean energy sources to achieve energy independence and deal with global warming.
• Voters say they would pay more for energy in the abstract, but vote against it in the concrete.
• There is less concern about taxes and the size of government today than in the mid-1990s

Amazing image resizing

This image resizing technique is absolutely amazing. It is actually not only a technique to resize images, but also makes it possible to make objects (or people) in a picture disappear. What it does is basically take out parts of the image which it thinks are not important. The real difficulty obviously lies in finding the right part of the image to take out.
Once again an image (this time a video) is worth more than a thousand words. Check it out. Your jaw will drop.

You can find more on the technology here: http://www.faculty.idc.ac.il/arik/

iPhone software unlocks everywhere!

The iPhone has been unlocked for quite some time now, but as Engadget (and everyone else) reports, there are now several software unlocks out. Most likely these websites, which all charge you for unlocking, have based their software on the research the dev team has published and have paid one of the other hacker teams to accomplish the task.
Many people are looking to the dev team now, because they have yet to succeed and are not too responsive in terms of progress updates. Sadly these people forget, that the devs have done a lot of work which made many things, like 3rd party software, possible. Also they will release their version FOR FREE when they are done with it. Gizmodo sums it up pretty well, together with a call for donations for the dev team. I think we should continue our support for the dev team. It won't be long until a software unlock that is free for everyone will be released.

To donate to the dev team, send money over PayPal to this email address: iphone.devteam@googlemail.com.

Reaction to the Facebook code leakage: Protect your site!

Nik Cubrilovic, occasional writer for Techcrunch, has published a good article concerning source code security in response to the Facebook code leakage I hope none of you missed.
Short summary:

• Use mod_security
• Put all of your code except index.php outside of your web root
• Change the default file type in the Apache (or whatever you use) configuration
• Use 'Deny all' to prevent access to folders outside the web root

For more in-depth information and guidelines how to implement these security measures check out Nik's blog.

Brilliant Ecko ad spotted

This is clearly one of the best ads I have ever seen. ecko unltd., the company which some of you may know for selling clothing mainly targeted at the hip hop demographic, is responsible for this billboard which allows the viewer to put his own graffiti up on the LCD screen of which the ad consists. It works over Bluetooth and is supposed to show the founder's (Mark Ecko) roots in the graffiti scene.
It is really a great idea in my opinion especially because it will force hordes of people to stand in front of the companies advertisement for a far longer time than they would with a normal ad.
No information on where to find this. If you happen to find it, please leave a comment.

Edited Apple Commercial on Google Video

Hi folks!

I just watched this version of the 1984 Apple Macintosh Superbowl commercial on Google Video and while looking closer at it, I discovered that someone has edited an iPod into the video. The "Apple Girl" is wearing it.


Interesting and well done...

Learning French in Nice

Hey folks! I just wanted to let you know, that I'm in Nice right now to improve my French. As you can see on the picture, Nice is actually really very nice...
I know bad joke.

Some links on (or a little off) the topic:

• Dictionary French - German - English - Spanish (one of the best sites on the web anyway...)
• Pictures of Nice on Flickr
  

Read you next time!