The Buz'

EepyBird’s Sticky Note experiment

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:12:58 +0800

EepyBird’s Sticky Note experiment

Our Wonderful Nature I recommend clicking on the video to open...

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 14:41:00 +0800

Our Wonderful Nature

I recommend clicking on the video to open it up on it’s original page in higher quality

History of the Internet

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 23:08:33 +0800

History of the Internet

Lost Generation (via metroamv)

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 20:02:16 +0800

Lost Generation (via metroamv)

The secret lives of invisible magnetic fields…

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 12:22:50 +0800

The secret lives of invisible magnetic fields…

Wishing you a fun and fashionable end of 2008!

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 06:04:25 +0800

Wishing you a fun and fashionable end of 2008!

LeWeb '08 Love in Paris

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 06:05:16 +0800

LeWeb '08 Love in Paris:

The fifth edition of LeWeb starts tomorrow in Paris. Look out for Jinnan who can’t wait to hear one of his favourite authors, Paulo Coelho speak about this year’s theme of Love.

Picture of the week! (via okaythen)

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:58:16 +0800

Picture of the week! (via okaythen)

A Round of New Buttons

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:51:55 +0800

You may have noticed some new buttons appearing in the past week or two, one of them being a new browser extension for Internet Explorer. If you’re using Internet Explorer, you can now download and install a plug-in to get a blue Buzka Button for your browser. Click on the Buzka Button link under the Home tab to get it now!

If you’re using Firefox, we’ve also updated our Firefox extension for Buzka. It only takes a few seconds to download it again from our Buzka Button page.

You can also now post comments and discuss your favorites with friends. Just look for the “Discuss” link when you hover over a saved favorite.

Last but not least, we’ve introduced Groups (in beta) to help you discover and explore common interests with other Buzka members. Look for the world icon under the Everyone tab.

We’ll let you know more about commenting and groups in upcoming posts!

Edit: Click here for the HD version. Apparently Vimeo, only...

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 11:31:00 +0800

Edit: Click here for the HD version. Apparently Vimeo, only allows HD on their own sites…. which is fair enough I guess.

Edit 2: This video seems to have been taken down. I’m assuming this is a copyright issue (which I personally would find to be a discusting abuse of power by NBC), but I’m waiting to hear back from the person who put up the vid. If anybody else has source for a web based HD version, then please tell us in the comments.

Edit 3: It seems it’s Vimeo that’s to blame for this. They have very restrictive “guidelines” which as it turns out are not guidelines at all, they are “rules”. The phrase “manditory guidelines” exists for a reason, but I guess that didn’t sound friendly enough. I miss Stage 6.

—-

When this speech was first released the only place I could find a high quality version was on the various torrent trackers, which personally I find quite sad. A speech like this doesn’t deserve to have the ~~YouTube~~ EewhTube compression applied to it. It’s a bit late, but finally (thanks David) there’s a good quality version on the web. You would think that Obama’s people would have had this up all across the net minutes after the speech was given.

Side note: We’re not associated with Vimeo, but have been REALLY impressed by the site a lot lately. So expect to see a lot more Vimeo links if they keep pumping out quality like they have been. (Reminds me a lot of Stage 6 when it was still running)

Gerry

All your internets are belong to Stephen Conroy [sic]

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 04:24:00 +0800

Edit: You know what… forget my entire blog post, watch this instead:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXSvzvQC5v0

The Australian Government, or rather Stephen Conroy (Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy), is planning to make Internet censorship compulsory and will ban controversial websites on topics which it deems to be illegal.

There is already a protest organised for today (1st Nov 08) at 12 noon outside parliament house in all capital cities: Australia wide: No Clean Feed Protest

I sent an invite to this out to most of my friends in Australa and got an great response. I was amazed how many non IT people understood how serious this issue is, however I did have one friend ask me “all for the sake of fast internet access??”. I rattled off many of the main points in as few words as possible and after I had finished she changed her mind on the issue and asked me about the details for the protest. I then figured there are probably a lot of others out there thinking the same thing and just not asking me. For this reason I’m going to break it down here as much as possible so that everybody can see how bad this really is.

There are so many other problems, but really it comes down to two things….
1. It will not do what the Stephen Conroy is claiming
2. It will only make things worse in every way

1. It will not do what the Stephen Conroy is claiming:

From all the articles I have read on this issue Minister Conroy is claiming that these filters will help in two ways. He claims that it will stop kids from accessing unsuitable material and adults from accessing illegal material. Now of course no reasonable person would have a problem with his the general intent of the blocks as long as the term “illegal material” is changed to specific material that is widely accepted to be immoral (ex. CP).

However the problem is that it won’t block this content to anybody who doesn’t allow themselves to be blocked. Anybody who wants to access a filtered site already has so many options available to them for getting around filters, using a secure web proxy to fetch the data probably being the easiest. Proxy servers and similar technologies are already widely used of by the two groups that this filter is targeted at. Combine that with the fact that the filter can’t stop peer to peer traffic which account for 60% of all Australian traffic and you have a system that is so ridiculously broken that you have to wonder how the idea got this far and who needs to be fired.

2. It will make things worse in every way

The Australian government has already wasted $88 million creating software filters that were cracked within minutes by a 16 year old kid and which nobody downloaded anyway.

However now they are making a huge mistake by investing tens of millions more in testing this ridiculous filter, which even somebody with moderate knowledge of how the Internet works could tell is already broken.

Worst of all however is that Australia is investing 4.7 billion in a new fiber optic cable network, headed by non other than Stephen Conroy himself, to increase broadband speeds in order to keep Austral competitive with the rest of the world. However the insanity of this is that these new filters could completely nullify and speed gains and could even dramatically slow Internet access. It’s like this; you can have the fastest freeway in the world, but if you decided to stop everybody who uses it for a breath test, then your freeway is going to be backed up all the way to China.

I’m not even going to touch on the oppressive nature of the filter, I’ll leave it just at the fact that it is an awful business decision which needs to be stopped now. Can we really afford to be throwing away hundreds of millions of dollars right now on technologies that we can already show are systemically flawed and which could jeopardise another project worth 4.7 billion?

… OK gloves off

I was amazed when I heard about this plan for net filtering, at first I was upset for civil liberty reasons, but then after reading more about it I became really angry for a completely different reason. I looked at it from the side of the government and listened to their logic and wondered, how the hell could anybody in charge of the department of “Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy” come up with a plan that was so technically flawed in every way! Then I started to read some of the quotes on various news sites from Mr. Conroy himself and it became pretty clear, pretty quick. The guy wasn’t just politician stupid about technology, he was actually about as ignorant as somebody could get on the subject.

Now I can look at a quote of his where he complains about having his plan compared to “The Great Wall Of China”, when in fact he should have said to said “The Great Firewall of China”; but they guy doesn’t actually understand the play on words because he doesn’t know what a Firewall actually is. However I never found a quote that that I could show to somebody outside the tech industry and have it be obvious that the Emperor was naked….. till now that is…

Right near the end of typing up this blog post I stumbled across this beauty where Stephen Conroy seems to be of the belief that increased Internet speed, under the new $4.7B plan, will lead more cyber-bullying and other bad behaviour online:

“With the development and roll-out of Labor’s national broadband scheme, we expect that there will be an increased opportunity for bad behaviour,”

“So it’s very important that we try and not wait till the horse has bolted.”

— http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23787118-421,00.html

As if to say bullies were typing up nasty emails to their victims faster than it was possible to send them. Funny right… until you remember that this guy is in charge of Billions of dollars of Australian tax payer money and he is making deals huge deals with Telstra and other big companies, who do know their industry and will use his ignorance against him. How did somebody like him ever get into a position like this? Doesn’t the government actually check to see that somebody knows something about a particular department before they put them in charge of all it’s decisions and budget? If Conroy isn’t replaced soon he is going to end up doing a lot of damage.

Anyway, I’ve said all I can. I’ll protest later today and do my best to keep fighting this, but if there is still anybody out there who still believes there is some merit to the filter, then I leave those people with this quote.

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
- Benjamin Franklin

The protest is being held at 12 Noon today (1st Nov 08), outside parliament house in all capital cities.

Edit: My first blog post, so I just discovered that there are no comments enabled on Tumblr without making a hack! I currently don’t have full access to this account, so for now if you wish to make a comment you will have to visit my personal blog where I’ve duplicated the post. Seriously, what good is a blog if people can’t tell you how wrong you are?

Gerry

add your comment

We’ve recently made some tweaks to the interface so that...

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:43:00 +0800

We’ve recently made some tweaks to the interface so that all your Buzka favorites fit snug as a bug on the iPhone. You can give it a shot simply by going to www.buzka.com.

Don’t forget the buzka.com/http://url.com shortcut if you want to share with Buzka on your iPhone.

Do you surf the web with another mobile device? We’d love to hear from you so that we can develop a mobile-friendly interface for you too!

"I really believe that brown rice is one small way of helping us to love one another."

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:07:57 +0800

“I really believe that brown rice is one small way of helping us to love one another.”

- Philippe Starck

Some things are made to be shared. Sit back, turn up the sound...

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0800

Some things are made to be shared. Sit back, turn up the sound and enjoy this stop-motion animation by Carlos Lascano (thanks Brodie). We think this beautifully crafted story is a great reason to share something warm and fuzzy with your friends.

We wish to thank everyone who has shared valuable feedback with...

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0800

We wish to thank everyone who has shared valuable feedback with us this past week, you’ve all certainly kept us busy!

Here’s a quick tip for our members who Buzka on the go, to share a favorite without a button all you have to do is type buzka.com/ before the URL you want to share and press enter. It’s exactly the same as clicking your Buzka Button.

It’s a great way to share (and save) favorites from any computer.

Buzka has lost its spots!

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0800

After many months of hard work and lots of accumulated sleep debt, we are happy to present the newest version of Buzka.

In this latest release we wanted to give our users the easiest sharing experience by simplifying and removing many unnecessary obstacles and features. Buzka now has a fresh blue look (which is easier on the eye) and a simple to use tabbed navigation.

All your Buzka Spots have also been converted into folders which you’ll find listed under the Faves tab. We believe that bringing together all your favorites in one place is a much better way to organize and share.

The new Buzka is a lot more social. When you share a new favorite, you can immediately send it to your friends at the same time. The new Friends tab is great way to browse all your friends’ favorites right from your own account.

We’ve also upgraded our server infrastructure and rolled-in some award-winning technology to help you explore and search favorites. These changes will also help us develop new features for you in the near future.

What you’ll need to do next is sign in with your new password (if you haven’t already) and update your Buzka Button. If you encounter any trouble at all, get in touch so we can help you get back into the swing of things.

Many thanks to our members and friends for being a part of Buzka’s re-launch. Now it’s your turn to share!

Launch! See more great photos from the 2006 Albuquerque...

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0800

Launch! See more great photos from the 2006 Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta