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Ze Frank debates value of Creative Commons

The Institute for the Future, a Palo Alto based nonprofit research group, held a day long research exchange yesterday titled “The Future of Video.” During the Q&A of the “Authorship, Appropriation, and Control” panel, creative genius Ze Frank responds critically to the utility of Creative Commons for guys like him. Ze feels that others rip off his work, make lesser quality derivative works and profit from them at his expense. Panelist David Pescovitz of BoingBoing and IFTF, argues for CC with counter examples and panelist Alexander Cohen, Professor of Film Studies at UC Berkeley, also argues for the utility of CC for remixing & critiquing society. Leprechauns enter the story as well.

Here’s Ze earlier in the day laying the groundwork responding to Mimi Ito at an earlier panel, on the “fundamental split” he sees between how amateur and professional content creators contextualize their work.

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Live Streaming Hillary Clinton Town Hall in Santo Domingo

I’m in another exotic locale again, this time in Santo Domingo, the capitol city of the Dominican Republic. I’m here working for Howcast, helping them to live stream a townhall that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is conducting on the eve of the Fifth Summit of the Americas. The Townhall takes place here on Friday and you can submit questions to Clinton in advance. The live stream will have two feeds, one in English and the other translated in Spanish, both will be viewable on the State Department’s townhall.america.gov landing page. I know, I didn’t know there was an america.gov site either! I think it needs a bit more google juice. Maybe this event will help with that. Follow me on Twitter to catch the inside goodness as it happens.

UPDATE: The archive of the the Town Hall is now online:

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Timothy Leary videos on Archive.org

Timothy Leary lives on the Internet

Last week, I popped by a party for the launch of Timothy Leary‘s digital video archive on Archive.org. Leary, who passed away in 1996, had always wanted to be immortal in “cyberspace”. Now with an extensive video archive available to anyone with an Internet connection and an ongoing project by his estate to digitize all his physical assets, he’s close to achieving that goal.

Timothy Leary lives on the Internet

Timothy Leary lives on the Internet

San Francisco’s historical tripper elite were in attendance including John Perry Barlow, John Gilmore, Joi Ito, Brewster Kahle as well as a long time friend and collaborator of Leary’s from Harvard, Ralph Metzner. Here’s some more photos I took from the party:

Do check out the video archive, there’s tons of fun stuff to be distracted by.

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Burning Man on the bay

This is freaking pimp. The White Holly, a boat normally used for research did a bit of Burning Man style research on the high bay waters off Sausalito this past weekend. Fire art, blinky lights, a pulse jet, Dan Das Mann sculptures, fireworks, a loud ass Victory Siren and an upside down Telsa coil! From Megavolt2‘s description of the video below.

On Saturday December 13, 2008 the former navy ship White Holly, now a privately operated scientific research vessel run by Captain Vince Backen, was entered into The Sausalito Yacht Club “Parade of Lights” held in Sausalito, California in the San Francisco Bay. Boat parades will never be the same… the event was organized by Dan Das Mann and Karen Cusolito in collaboration with Jack Schroll and Black Rock FX (El Diablo – jet engine fire effect, Chrysler air raid siren, smoke generator and methanol mines,) John Behrens and Omega Recoil, (upside down Tesla Coil,) Epiphany by Dan Das Mann, Karen Cusolito and Pyrokinetics (Danya Parkinson and Jo Bard,) Headless Point Studio, American Steel Studios, Flaming Lotus Girls (Mini Mega Junior – fire poofer,) Camron “Teiwaz” Assadi and The Crucible of Oakland California (flame cannons on the upper poop- deck,) Bonefire Bob and over 150 others! All of this so they could have a good time for approximately two minutes…

Burning Man long ago escaped the playa, so it’s no surprise to see some of the best stuff make it out the serene waters of the bay. I hope I don’t need to buy tickets next year.

You need to watch the above video in HD. Then check out this other great video of the action. Geeked.info has some more info and links to other videos and photos.

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Santarchy in San Francisco

The annual rite of passage known as Santacon or Santarchy took place in cities all around the world yesterday. San Francisco, being the epicenter of freakdom and home of too many Santa suits, represented quite well. I suited up and joined the red massive on the ‘Klassic’ route which started in the tourist area of Fisherman’s Wharf. Here’s the photos I took.

Santacon SF 2008

Santacon SF 2008

Santacon SF 2008

Update: I finally got this video edited. Check it!


Santacon 2008 in Santarchy Francisco from ekai on Vimeo.

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Soup.io is good for the soul

Soup.io is good for the soul

So I was just turned onto Soup a week ago and in a weird twist of San Francisco-Vienna convergence, Soup is now where Pownce users are going to not die. Soup is like Tumblr but with an easier interface, also it seems to plug into just about every social network or web service out there. Try it, friend me. It’s good for your soul.

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RoboVox speaks your mind

RoboVox lives

RoboVox stands proudly in front of the Museumsquartier, greeting visitors to Roboexotica. RoboVox is no ordinary 25 foot retro deco happy robot. If you look closely, you’ll notice those two big black circles on his chest are speakers. If you send an SMS text message to +43 681 10679782, RoboVox will speak your message loudly in his best robo-synthesized voice. RoboVox was conceived by prolific Slovenian artist and all around good guy Martin Bricelj, who is also an artist-in-residence here.