Factory Joe

‘The Corporation’ released on BitTorrent for free

Now here’s something clearly to be thankful for.

Sundance award-winning documentary The Corporation has been released for free on BitTorrent.

TorrentFreak has the details:

The new torrent download includes a high-quality rip of the master DVD and a 40 minute interview with Joel Bakan, the author of the book and writer of the film. Mark Achbar actually dedicated a computer in his garage to do nothing but seed.

Although the torrent download is free, the filmmakers encourage people to donate a small fee if they like what they see. We asked Mark Achbar how the first round of donations went. He said, “since my initial torrent launch of The Corporation at the end of August, there have been $635.00 in contributions. They ranged from $2 to three very generous gifts of $100 each. All are very much appreciated.”

The makers of “The Corporation just launched a Campaign for Corporate Harm Reduction (C4CHR) in collaboration with Hellocoolworld.com. The purpose of this campaign is to collect stories about the impact of the film, asking people what they did, or something they’ve heard happened as a result of the film.

“We want to create a feedback loop on the “what you can do” front, and perhaps turn it into a book. The torrent is a great way to stay in touch with people about our current activities Achbar” Achbar explained.

He added, “my only regret is that I didn’t put up my own torrent sooner.”

Download the official torrent (DivX or iPod formats available) and start seeding!

Bonus: ChomskyTorrents has a bunch of other awesome mind-freeing stuff to check out! Definitely fodder for CitiCinema.

Skype + eBay + Google Local, Base and Payments, oh my!

Had a meeting with our advisor Don Thorson today (who’s currently at Jajah) and found it interesting to see that Google is strongly moving to make good on the deal they inked with eBay in August into the voice communications area.

First, they started talking about giving away ad-supported cell phones, then they added Skype to the Google Pack and now they’ve gone and made the most obvious play by adding click-to-call dialing to Google Local, executing on part of the original agreement.

With Skype adding SMS capabilities it’s curious to watch Google and Skype fight a pitched battle into telephony systems while the rest seem to be waiting and watching.

I mean, doesn’t this have an obvious end point?

I mean, take eBay listings, take Google Base, take Adwords as it spins out into radio and print, take Skype and take free click-to-calls where Google aka Skype foots the bill… add free cell phones… free wifi. And now give Google the tools to monetize the whole lot of the transactions flowing over its servers, airwaves and cell towers… and the ability to know who you are, what you’re up to, what you like, and how much you’re worth to advertisers.

If I were a farming man, I’d be a tad concerned about these Google silos cropping up along the horizon. But that’s just me.

Skype adds SMS capabilities

With the latest beta of Skype for Mac, they’ve added some pretty slick SMS integration.

Om Malik adds:

In addition, the company announced a deal with FON and SMC. SMC will sell a Skype enabled WiFi for for 139 Euros, and buyers will get a La Fonera router from FON and 500 SkypeOut minutes.

Update: Note that this beta seems to lose your bookmarked chats — and they don’t reappear until someone in the bookmarked channel sends out a message!

OS X Leopard mauls Little Snitch

Check it out. Looks like Apple’s at it again, this time ripping off independent Mac developer Obdev and their excellent Little Snitch firewall app in Leopard, Apple’s next version of its OS X operating system.

I mean, does it get any more blatant than this? Even over-simplification can’t save you from the fact that you’re clearly pushing out derivative work without crediting sources…

With Coverflow, hey, you guys did the right thing. You bought all the IP and, if I’m not mistaken, gave the guy a job. I don’t know the full story here, but if Obdev contributed to your thinking here, a little hat tip seems apropos.

Microformats + Flash: Who knew?

One aspect of microformats that’s not been widely discussed or perhaps even considered is their interaction with Flash apps like YourMinis… you might be guffawing there, but fer real — it’s not just shiny shiny!

Ok, so check this out. Go grab the YourMinis extension (recently updated!) and install it in Firefox. Restart, as usual, and now, whenever you’re on a page with microformatted content, you can launch the extension to “suck out” the data and toss it into your app of choice…

It only gets better from here as YourMinis can be used to unify your experience across sites… So if you thought that semantic web is only good for HTML, well, guess again… especially with the Adobe-Mozilla deal in place, expect more very interesting developments in the microformats-slash-rich-interface department very soon.

ConceptShare nearing launch…

Our friends from the great white north are nearing the launch of ConceptShare — a collaborative design product that looks very complementary to apps like Basecamp and Bugzilla (if only I had this when I was at Flock!). They’ve finally released a video tour of how it works — and it’s looking awesome. Oh — and don’t forget to wish Scotty Brooks a happy birthday (Nov 13)!

The end of Web Two Dot Oh (drink!)

With the New York Times calling the beginning of Web 3.0 (not so much, say the trademark holders) and one of the few interesting diggers in the valley getting canned (see meme — did Winer really break this one?) in favor of dollars and cents over T & A, I have to wonder whether the short period of Web 2.0-ness that began with the launch of IE7 has already come haltingly to an end.

I mean, when the personality assassin of Silicon Valley wants to go after the “audience with less interest about trivial scandals and far more interested in the financial impact Silicon Valley has on the world”, I guess, well, we all have to realize that it’s no longer about us, but about them. And about the money. And about the same boring drivel that made the last bubble so disgusting and soulless.

So, whatever, we’re not in a bubble. We’re just in a fucking hamster wheel, racing against time in perpetual beta, waiting for someone to unhook the wheel and let us escape to freedom. Or something.

Bon chance, Darling Nickie-boy!

Synergy for iTunes will add Audioscrobbler support

Based on a bug I submitted nearly a year ago, Wincent is finally adding support for Audioscrobbler reporting, one of the primary features that was attracting me to rival iTunes controller Menuet.

As a great mood indicator and part of my micro-presence attention stream, my Last.fm listening stream gives quite a bit of insight into where my head’s at. Not having to run a separate app to send this information to last is certainly a nice addition to an already indispensable tool.

Tasty Spam No. 12

From:: Christopher Hancock <farfallahiz@spicegirls.zzn.com>
Subject:: Greenbacks Today
Body:: Hey, pretensiveness monostich
Mary drew a map.
Contact us right away if you would like to earn upto 2 thousand.
exterraneous flowerist
They sent him a package.
8O0.538.6704 barebacked dharana
That lawyer carries a suitcase.
Sincerely, shrewish
Christopher Hancock dioestrous
I make him some coffee. She is polite. Those managers washed clothes.
They call him a taxi. Those students set an alarm clock. I fried an
egg.

Pieces of me: disintegrating online micro-presence

…Just came upon Jaiku, the latest in micro-presence aggregation apps, thanks to ex-roommate Andy Smith, who’s now working with them — in one of his first gigs post Flock.

They recently went through a redesign and I have to admit, it looks pretty good.

It makes you wonder though, just because you can pull in the pieces of your multi-faceted identity into one place, should you? (With more variants of this idea popping up regularly, there’s clearly a trend here.)

I mean, in theory, horizontal integration may lead to a fuller picture of you, but the reality is that folks might only be interested in certain verticals of your life, and not the whole kaboodle.

And even when I was sketching out Rhyzomatic to solve my own problem of decentralized identity, my thinking was along the lines of bringing together links to the original sources, and letting people choose which pieces interest them most. Admittedly, I’ve merged in a few Flickr updates here and there with daily Ma.gnolia updates, but that’s as far as I’ve gone (even then I asked permission and some folks derided my choice — though I can’t find the post now).

So I’ve got Twitter, I’ve got Plazes, I’ve got my blog (more than one), Flickr, YouTube, and on and on. I should be better about maintaining it, but I’ve got ClaimID pointing to these and other sources as well. Along comes Jaiku and allows me to bring these things all together into one river, and well, I like it, but without the original context, how does it represent me? This may be a case where the sum is not greater than the parts — and that, for online identities to work, you have to allow people to break off the pieces of people that actually interest them most.

This is curious to me, and perhaps to other side of single sign-on and unified identity. Maybe you like my screenshots but find my blog boring. Should I force you to consume all of it just because I think it’s interesting? Somehow that flies contrary to the best aspects (pun intended) of this, the modern web.