Good morning to all you Saturday surfers :). Today I’d like to bring some attention to this troubling article from yesterday’s Globe and Mail - Faceless no more: Social networking comes with a price.

The basic premise is one we are familiar with: “Young Canadians share too much information online and they don’t understand the risks involved - or care about their privacy.”

“During a two month-long investigation, The Globe and Mail tracked more than a dozen Canadians through their open social networking profiles, and used freely available web tools to build detailed profiles of each individual user.”

This not just a speculative moral panic, the Globe actually went and stalked some young Canadians, all in the name of privacy? Whatever sells your paper, right?

The real problem however is not the data-mining (although as far as I am concerned that’s pretty creepy), it’s how the gender of the youth providing the data is framed. Let’s call it the “the naive sex kitten” versus “wild party animal” bias.

(more inside…)

Because it’s Friday, and because I have a big old crush on Eddie Izzard, here’s some YouTube therapy for when your relationship with technology gets that ‘not so fresh’ feeling:

Or it would be if I was doing it on a Curta Mechanical Calculator.
(Damned newfangled electronic calculators have no personality.)

Summary description of the Curta from Dark Roasted Blend:

* Entirely mechanical, no electricity or batteries involved.
* Designed by Curt Herzstark in 1938 and perfected inside a concentration camp.
* Considered to be the most efficient portable calculator (until electronic calculators came in the 70s)
* Simply a thing of beauty, stunning piece of engineering art.

Click the link for more backstory, or watch the Curta do its thing (brace yourself for enthusiastic voiceover action):

I want it I want it I want it. The end.

Drupal Chart in a Sock Heel (emmajane.net)

I’ve been building this site for the upcoming Pan-Canadian Young Feminist Gathering, Waves of Resistance/Toujours Rebelles, using “brand new to me” Drupal. In less techie terms, Drupal is an open source content management system (CMS), with the benefit being that non-professionals can learn to use this tool to build dynamic websites that they have full control over and can allow others to access the process with them.

It has definitely been a steep learning curve for all those involved (even me who has been working on-and-off in the internet world for a number of years), but working with an open-source project has been most rewarding. And now my love of Drupal has turned into a need to show my Drupal pride, especially since only 7% of Drupal users are women (we have our own support group over at Drupal Groups). So as soon as I can breathe a sigh of relief that the Rebelles2008 website is fully functioning I will cast these on: Drupal Socks and a Drupal .ico hat. Maybe soon I can too call myself a Drupal Ninja!

The iTunes franchise has quietly launched a totally free new section in their store, nestled between Podcasts and iPod Games.

It’s called iTunes U, and it contains (free) video and (free) audio courtesy of major universities, PBS and cultural institutions (like MoMA), effectively allowing you to sit in on classes and conferences all over the US. University of California Berkeley in particular has a huge selection of lectures posted.

Meet iTunes U.

It might be the robber baron business model, but for now I’m giving them three gold stars.

Have you tried it? Is iTunes U the new Wikipedia for time suckage?

So this is a new charitable organization called Little Geeks: “Little Geeks is a philanthropic organization and registered Canadian charity that collects, refurbishes and re-distributes donated home computers to children in need.” How about that graphic design - like Toys R’Us on poppers. I feel like Joe Matt must have done the illustrations since no-one has eyeballs. Seriously though, “Little Geeks”? I can’t say I like it.

Though it may seem harsh to take shots at a good-hearted enterprise, I strongly believe that people from the corporate sector, (and take a look at the board of directors if you want to know who’s backing this project) need as much educating about social change as people who barter for used monitors need educating about interest rates and borrowing to save.

(more inside…)

Until I get off (on?) my ass and see some movies, I really should get myself removed from the Film Friday rotation.

For popcorny movies I have a big backlog of last-in-a-series movies to see. Like the most recent Bourne Identity and the most recent Bond. Then there’s the new stuff that I’ve been waiting for, like Kung Fu Panda and Wall-E (hello? Short Circuit? Anyone?).

When I do want to curl up (who am I kidding) lie flat and drooling on the couch at the end of a long day, I put in something short and/or episodic from the private stash.

Recently, that has meant watching my mini-library of Siggraph Animation Theater Program DVDs.
(more inside…)

This is one day late for Wired Wednesday, maybe we can call it post-Thursday? For all you Electro fans out there, check out toneShared, it’s a library of ringtones by Electro artists available for free. Yeah that’s right, dump Rihanna and go for Caribou, or if you’re feeling experimental maybe Chris Herbert?

The Save Our Net coalition and Campaign for Democratic Media are hosting an event this weekend to discuss net neutrality and to strategize ways to prevent the internet from being tightly controlled by telecommunications corps, which are trying to limit what information we can access online.

Steve Anderson, national co-ordinator of the Campaign For Democratic Media, will speak about the issues, including: how these companies have already been caught throttling or slowing internet traffic to businesses and consumers, blocking access to websites that criticized them for doing so, and crippling consumer devices and applications.

Details:
Sunday, June 22
5:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m.
Windward Co-op, 34 Little Norway Crescent Lake-view room (one block west of Queen’s Quay)
BYOB, vegetarian refreshments provided
RSVP: saveournetcanada at gmail.com