Month: August 2006

Steal This Film

Weird Al Yankovic may have written a song about filesharing (which you can download) but what about a whole film about the same topic? You can get that, too.

Steal This Film is a documentary about the peer-to-peer organisation and the filesharing movement. As they write about the documentary (part 1) on their website:

There have been a few documentaries by ‘old-media’ crews who don’t understand the net and see peer-to-peer organisation as a threat to their livelyhoods. They have no reason to represent the filesharing movement positively, and no capacity to represent it lucidly.

We wanted to make a film that would explore this huge popular movemet in a way that excited us, engaged us, and most importantly, focused on what we know to be the positive and optimistic vision that many filesharers and artists (they are often one) hva for the future of creativity.

The film is possible to download in several formats. I’ve done it now, and am going to burn it to DVD and watch it.

Don’t download this song

What do you do with a song that in the title of the song itself specifically ask you not to download it? Well – you download it, of course… Weird Al has written and performs a song about file sharing, how you’d not want to mess with the R-I-double-A, because they’d treat you like the hardened, evil criminal you are, no matter what age. And so on. So head over to DontDownloadThisSong.com — and download it.

Free 4GB iPod Nano?

I got a little begging mail from a friend myself, to visit a site and fill in what it said, and we’d both get a free iPod Nano. Well – I thought I should bite this time and try, after all what did I have to lose?

Well – it turned out it was a bit more for me to do to achieve the prize: I have to refer five more people myself that will have to register and take up one offer themselves. How? Well – I could send them an email, or by instand messaging, or even post a link to my blog. As you suspect, I’m writing this entry to post the link – those of you who want to give it a shot and try to get a free iPod Nano yourself may want to try it.

Get a FREE iPod Nano! (Offer is for all countries, but it seems Americans — or should that be USers? 😉 — will have an easier time at the moment…)

I will update the post (or write in the comments) if it works. As long as I actually refer 5 people who go the line out, that is… (What is there to lose?)

Aliens prefer Firefox

I have it from respectable sources that the various crop circles are proof that aliens exist, because many of the geometrical patterns that are made are too complicated for humans to make in such a short time span as is used it many cases. Logically, it follows that aliens prefer Firefox.

They probably havent discovered Opera yet, or the Opera logo is too simple to make a crop circle of – who would it impress? 😉

Greatest widget?

Artist's SketchbookIf you use Opera, you may use many of its features on a daily basis. If you research stuff, you may use the built in notebook to jot down information you find (or copy it directly from the pages), or maybe write down ideas for some creative writing. But if you’re an artist and get ideas for drawings or paintings while you’re browsing, what do you do? Put the computer aside and find a sketchbook? Fire up Photoshop? Well – here comes widgets to the rescue!

The author of Artist’s Sketchbook recently won a MacBook in the competition in the Opera Community – and well deserved. This widget is – as the name suggests – a sketchbook. You get an idea while browsing? Just open the widget and start drawing and painting with different tools and brushes, while the idea is fresh. When finished, just export and save your mastepiece, and continue surfing the web, ready for any new idea at any time.

Now that’s one widget I’ll keep installed!

On Piracy

Whew. I just finished watching a documentary, On Piracy, about DRM, music, Walmart and stuff. A very interesting 1 hour 44 minutes, with interviews with several people in the Canadian music industry and its consumers, and it brought forward the different views on what it’s all about.

There are known information in the film, and things I didn’t know. There are stuff I find horrific and silly – the standard claim that making a copy of something so that two persons have their own copy is the same as stealing something so that one person lose it while the other get it is there. But no matter who you agree with and what view you have, this is a balanced documentary. Go see it on Google video.

If you want – you can also download it – this prerelease is released under Creative Commons.