As we moved to new URL, with new layout and RSS feed, I want to announce upcoming events for the next 2 weeks very briefly, as a trailer, more info’s in the days to come. I will talk at the 7th International Science conference at University of Belgrade about open access, digital literacy and e-resources in Web 2.0 world. This year academics  will gather to discuss following topics: electronic libraries in all its aspects, digital repositories, e-services, online databases, the usage of web 2.0 technologies, open access, digital literacy, SNS,  and ipso facto their larger positive impact on the scientific and pedagogical work in Serbia.  I’ll write more about this next week, but some valuable information of the programe is here.

You know that every year (now would be for the third time) in October is festival of new communications called B-LINK. The topic of 2008 B-LINK will be “Virtual me”. You will find out soon what is going on there. I am working on presentation with my co-author Aleksandar on different aspects of [our work] ID/Entity. I expect official program soon.

BlogOpen (4-5th of October) is South East, a regional friendly and professional meeting of bloggers which has, since last fall, been on the calendar of regular annual meetings of all the participants in blogosphere: authors, readers, IT workers and mainstream media. I will write more about BlogOpen and programme very soon, as I am listed as one of the speakers.

Since Blink and BlogOpen are happening on the same day, I was wondering how to be present at two conferences same day, same time, different geo-spots, on both i’m having gigs?! Astral projections and cloning are not the option so I’ve decided since the ‘Virtual me’ event is dealing with digital identities in this space, I will use available social media techs and appear virtually, as for those who are coming to BlogOpen – I will be present in my physical entity.

Stay tuned…

Radiohead just released a new video for its song “House of Cards” from the album “In Rainbows”.

No cameras or lights were used. Instead two technologies were used to capture 3D images: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes.

Watch the making-of video to learn about how the video was made and the various technologies that were used to capture and render 3D data.

For more information on data visualization (and how you can download it),  you can click on Google code page. It is interesting that this video is published under the mixture of copyrights/lefts: the code is open source licenced to Aaron Koblin, and the data (not the music)  used to produce the House of Cards music video is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

I hope that this wonderful Radiohead song and the video will inspire and gather other visual artists and IT people to use various technologies in making something innovative in the future.

Month of May, month of May -everything is lovely and gay. Culture in Serbia is meeting cold turkey (heard today one landed in Belgrade right from Ireland?!?) and more in preEuroTrash called Eurovision (contest for the best EuroSong). It’s not the fact that the official web site for Eurovision Belgrade 2008 is quite hideous but also the words of ignorance I came across yesterday of P. Schofield (British Broadcasting Corporation) at this Facebook group, where the creator is contemplating EuroSong contest “in Elbonia or wherever it is this year” (even more hideous for someone working in media, no?). Anyway, as I’ve missed this years Belgrade’s Design Week and lectures I wanted to attend ( Ascan Mergenthaler, CH, Herzog & de Meuron – Flowing into Landscape and Daniel Libeskind, US, The Architecture of Memories). But, what I won’t miss is the 5th Museum night (last year was organized through whole Serbia, and this year will be the same) and early drawings of Picasso, Air and Space Museum, History of computers exhibition, video installation, computer animation in Jewish Museum, Italian design in Superspace, Museum of Science&Technology and many other places through the city. Over 63 spots on May 17th from 6pm until the dawn, check the program and enjoy! I’m coming to take you to the Museum: )

Radiohead released today a video broadcasting globally, which aims to raise awareness of human trafficking. The lead singer, Thom Yorke, and his bandmates produced a music video together with MTV EXIT (End Exploitation and Trafficking) for “All I Need,” a song from their In Rainbows album. The video was filmed in Australia by Oscar-winning cinematographer John Seale and director Steve Rogers.

The United Nations’ International Labour Organization estimates that there are around 2.5 million people in the world who have been trafficked.

“They’ve produced a video of two parallel stories running, one of a little boy in the West and one of a little boy in a sweatshop in the East, and the boy [in the West] ends up buying the shoes from the sweatshop. It’s actually quite powerful,” Yorke said. “It’s the sort of images I have in my head anyway. Sometimes when you’re walking down High Street and you’re looking at the incredibly cheap [sneakers], you sort of think, ‘Hmmm, well how did they manage to make that so cheaply?’ It sort of reminds me of one of my preoccupations, so I’m touched that the music goes with that. I think it’s great.”

& once again Thom

“I think it’s important for everyone in the West or on High Street to understand the consequences of our economic activity. You must be aware of the level of exploitation that’s going on,” Yorke said. “It’s part of our Western life, and one we should accept responsibility for. There’s no such thing as a free lunch or a free ticket to another country.”

I hope this is just beginning of raising the awareness of this issue around the world and involving more people in the campaign against human trafficking.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=cdrCalO5BDs]

I don’t use Russian language, but I really liked what global advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi (Moscow) created for Google. Their promo video for Gmail suppose to attract more Russian people to use Gmail. This is how looks local version for global web service. Share & enjoy!

And now something completely different that made my day! Howard Rheingold in his Vlog series on digital culture and social media, now presents hilarious video from his archive (1976) posing as Howard K. Martian, extraterrestrial anthropologist. In this cyberpunkerish eposiode with elements of Monty Python & Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, equipped with a radiomike, Howard roamed the streets of the San Francisco examining the automobile cult.

[blip.tv ?posts_id=658063&dest=-1]

The Library of Congress began last year first collaboration with Flickr and now has launched its pilot project called The Commons. Yesterday they announced a partnership that will put photos from the LoC’s collection online in a social environment and users to interact with them. LoC started organizing historical photograph collections through Flickr offering 3000 photos (so far): two sets of digitized photos from the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information and photos from the George Grantham Bain News Service. “The key goals of this pilot project are to firstly give you a taste of the hidden treasures in the huge Library of Congress collection, and secondly to how your input of a tag or two can make the collection even richer.” By tagging or commenting.  From official web site Library of Congress you can find more information about this project, as well as on the blog of LoC.

Also interesting additional information on new tagging initiative – The Commons  says that these photographs from the Library “represent materials for which the Library is not the intellectual property owner. Flickr is working with the Library of Congress to provide an appropriate statement for these materials. It’s called “no known copyright restrictions.”