thelump.net

This Week in Lumps
#4 [12/06 - 18/06]

· As this blog is focused on interesting news and stories revolving around the weird and colourful world of the Internet, you’ll be glad (and relieved) to understand I downright refuse to lower myself to the level of the moronic, drooling, mascara-plastered masses of the glossy, ‘oh look it fits in my handbag, how nifty’ magazine reader, whose weekly literature involves covering stories on WAGS weddings, spoilt brats in jail, and the worst of the worst; Big Brother. So let that be the final word said on the matter. However, on occasion I may have to make references to this foreign world; if only to use it as a comparison on how lucky we are to have missed that boat, marooned on Geek Island, with nothing but toothpaste for dinner and diggnation podcasts to keep us amused. Well, this week is one of those occasions.

Social Networking newsite Mashable recently talked about ‘Stalking 2.0‘, regarding websites, especially those that fall under the 2.0 bracket, tracking everything you do on the internet (after your consent of course):

So, you don’t mind being followed and tracked? You don’t care if your friends can see what websites you’ve been to lately, what software you’ve been running, or even what music you’ve been listening to? Then you’ll love the web’s trend towards extreme openness: sharing everything you do on your computer. Sometimes referred to as sharing your ‘attention’ data, this is a growing market.

They go on to list sites that fall under this bracket, it turns out a few of them I use, or have used, or have considered using in the past. Which got me thinking: Okay, so there are certain sites that record what you do for everyone else to see. What about sites that may not promote this openly to everyone and their dog, but secretly allow its users to have their own mini-Big Brother at their fingertips, so others can be stalkers? The first one I’m going to talk about is one I’ve discussed on here before; Last.fm.

I’m a self confessed last.fm fanboy, mainly because it gives me something back. After I’ve downloaded its application, and listen to a few music tracks, I have my own personal radio station at my disposal that I can play whenever I like, and tweak and edit as much as I like. Admittedly, yes, it does track every single thing I listen to through my laptop, and admittedly yes, it does tells all my friends what I was listening to last Tuesday, or what band I was obsessed with last summer. But that’s alright with me, I have a music taste I don’t mind showing off. It does bring up a moral dilemma; do you hold it against your friends that you’ve caught them listening to Barry Manilow? Do you disown them because their top artist is Robbie Williams? The answer is… of course you do. After you’ve signed up and subscribed, you find that last.fm have taken spying 2.0 to a whole new level. Your icon turns blue, and all of a sudden you have the ability to see which of your friends have been reading your listening habits. A step too far, or a nice feature to have? Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

I can’t really neglect the social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter; the former not only tells all of your friends every minute change you make to your profile, who you add as friends, and what groups you join, but it also has a status bar to keep your friends up to date with everything (and I do mean everything) that you’re doing; ie: Andy is eating your goldfish, Andy is gravedigging, and so on. The latter, well, I was scared of the latter, mainly because of it’s tagline: ‘What are you doing?’ which to me crosses the line of obsession. As much as I love my friends, I really really don’t care at all when they brush their teeth, or what colour pants they have on, therefore I don’t care for a site that promotes this as its main reason for signing up. I mean, is that really what friendship has become? A level of voyeurism, a plateau of obsession not only with finding out this information, but with telling your friends this information as well, whether they wanted to know or not. Remember, its not just your friends who read the information you post; when was the last time you googled your name/screenname? The results may surprise you.

There are certain sites I’m still at a ‘beta’ stage with, sites such as del.icio.us (bookmarking), flickr (photos) and Wakoopa (software), all three of which I’m sure will reappear in the news (and of course, on this blog) in the not-so-distant future. Then there’s also justin.tv, which has taken The Trueman Show, and made it a reality. But the final question is this: What’s next in this Big Brother-like progression of the Internet? Do we all get kicks out of telling our friends everything? Do we enjoy promoting our own lives like the 9 o’clock news? The popularity of web 2.0 mirrors the popularity of Big Brother, therefore suggesting we do.

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· Everyone’s favourite actor (and if he’s not, he really should be) Kevin Spacey has admitted he no longer cares about his movie career, and would prefer to focus on his role as artistic director of London’s Old Vic theater, a position he has held since 2003. He announced to London Tonight:

“I don’t care about my personal acting career any more. I’m done with it, after 10 years of making movies and doing better than I ever could have imagined, I sort of had to ask myself: What am I supposed to do with all of this success that I have had? Am I just going to keep making movie after movie and be concerned with all of that ‘Are you up, are you down, are you hot, are you not?’, and I don’t really care.”

Two-time Academy Award-winning Spacey, who announced last year his plans to stay on as artistic director of the Old Vic for another nine years, is currently attached to two future movies; Fred Clause and 21, the first being an average sounding made-for-kids Christmas movie, set for release later this year, and the second being a much better sounding effort set for release in 2008. However what I found more intriguing was looking for any news on Spacey appearing in the rumoured sequel to Superman Returns, due to his brilliant role as the menacing Lex Luthor, where he outshined the other actors involved in the 2006 film.
In a complete change from last week, I’m now blogging about an actor who does has the ability to act people off the screen, and make a good film great, and a great film a classic. just looking at some of Kevins filmography reads like a film buffs top 10: Se7en, The Usual Suspects, American Beauty, L.A. Confidential, KPAX, all great great films, and now it seems we wont be getting anything to add to that list. Maybe that’s a good thing though; like bands, it’s always best to remember them for how good they were in their short life (Lamb), then bands who were good once, but just wont stop, and go on and on releasing average albums (see REM, or the Chili Peppers) so maybe the lack of future films from Kevin will mean we will love the others even more, if that’s possible. The final word in my opinion, is that Kevin is one of the best actors of the last decade, maybe even the last two, and I’m glad he’s chosen something higher in his eyes than fame.

“And.. pff, just like that, he’s gone…“

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· Every now and then I catch myself checking my email on my mobile phone. There’s no extra cost to this, it just seems redundant because I work at a computer between 9am and 5pm anyway. Yet something in my brain tells me that something important might be sitting there, that needs urgent attention, when that’s rarely the case. However, now it seems I’m not alone with this horrible affliction, as this BBC article titled ‘Half of Britons ‘e-mail addicts” assures me its only going to get worse once I pass 30. Or turn female. Those living in Wales have nothing to worry about, as it appears email hasn’t quite reached all of you just yet; 34% of the Welsh said it was vital.

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· A quick note about Apple releasing Safari for Windows; admittedly this was last Mondays news, however it was announced too late for me to add it to last weeks entry, so it can’t really be mentioned here. However, if you’ve missed this news, don’t worry, it seems to be all smoke and no fire. Even though Steve Jobs plugged Safari 3′s speed as one of its most appealing features, tests by Wired News show that the windows version is actually slower than both IE 7 and Firefox 2 when accessing specific web applications. I’ve just read Leander Kahney’s article on this where he writes:

“…the initiative seems to rely on a domino theory fuelled by infatuation. Apple is hoping there are Windows users so in love with their iPods and iTunes that they will also download Safari. Then they’ll fall in love with that, and the next thing you know they’ll be down at the Apple Store fishing for their credit cards.”

One final point; anyone not running Mozilla Firefox really should be, its much faster and more secure than IE, and thanks to the wonderful Lifehacker, you can modify Firefox to add all of Safari’s best features (you might even want to check this out too, to get the best out of FF). So no need to bandwagon jump just yet.

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That was the week in lumps, a week in which: Cavemen had sex for fun too, Half the electricity in PCs is wasted, Google and Intel back a scheme to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and I learnt how to whistle with my hands.

And I leave you with this fabulous picture, of the suns movement at one set time every day throughout the year.

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