DeviantArt member Laovaan creates all kinds of beautifully shaded watercolors. In this video he fields viewer questions as he spends five hours creating a watercolor of Link from The Legend of Zelda. Read the rest
I'm at SXSW, having just done the panel introducing Edward Snowden's first live address to the USA. He will be appearing momentarily. The livestream is provisioned for 1M simultaneous sessions -- watch above. Read the rest
Yesterday would have been Andy Warhol's 85th birthday. To mark the occasion, the Warhol Museum and @EarthCam are livestreaming footage of his gravesite. The broadcast is the work of Madelyn Roehrig, a part of her Asking Andy anything project.
Some passers-by wave at the camera. Some talk on their cellphones, apparently unaware of the countless invisible observers. One man, dressed in a kilt, spent many hours at the graveside, playing “Happy Birthday” on a horn and chatting with other Warhol pilgrims. Finally, alone in the dark, he lit up cigarette and took a closer look at Warhol's grave.
The live stream continues today, and visitors still file in and out of the frame to pay their respects—often for 15 minutes or so. Warhol would be amused. Read the rest
The cost of genome sequencing is starting to sink into the affordable range. (In comparison to its previous cost. We're talking "within reach" the same way Design Within Reach uses the phrase.)
Companies are starting to claim that a $1000 personal genome sequence is on the horizon. But what does that mean for you? Should you save up and get one? Can it really tell you anything meaningful at all? Who is going to sift through all the information your genome represents — and how will they do it?
Tonight, starting at 7:00 Eastern, Science Online New York City is hosting a round-table to discuss these issues, especially the problems associated with collecting, making sense of, and protecting a massive new stream of personal data. The live event is sold out, but you can watch whole thing streaming online.
Panelists: Ronald Crystal, the Chairman of the Department of Genetic Medicine at Weill-Cornell Medical College, who has had his genome sequenced and analyzed it himself. Virginia Hughes, a freelance author who has written about her experience with the 23andMe genotyping service. Manish Ponda of Rockefeller University, who has experimented with other -omic type analyses.
Via Lou Woodley
Livestream video link. Do you know what I'm going to do this weekend? Sit here and watch ALL OF THE KITTENS, for ALL OF THE WEEKEND. Sometimes the mommy cat is there, sometimes not. The cute little squeaky kitten sounds are the best part. (thanks, Antinous!) Read the rest
Webcaster Tim Pool of "The Other 99."
In recent weeks, one source of live news coverage for the Occupy Wall Street movement stood out above all others. Not a cable news network, not a newspaper, but a 25-year-old guy named Tim Pool. He packs a smartphone with unlimited data, a copy of Ustream's mobile video streaming app, and a battery pack to keep it all going — which he has for 21 hours straight, on big news days. Soon, Tim and team plan to have have their own hacker-made flying camera-drones, to provide aerial footage TV news chopppers can't. The guerrilla web stream "The Other 99" has reached more than 2 million unique viewers over the last two months, and become a source of eyes on the ground unmatched by big media. The project runs solely on donations. Is The Other 99's webcast the start of a new news normal, and could Pool be one of many DIY backpack broadcasters to come? I tracked him down in New York between streams to find out what he thinks, and how and why he does what he does. — XJ
Xeni Jardin: Break down your current gear setup for us, would you?
Tim Pool: The backpack I use is just a regular backpack. My gear is a Samsung GALAXY S II (on Sprint, because they offer unlimited data) and an Energizer XPAL 18000, and I literally slide the external battery into my back pocket and I plug my phone into it. Read the rest
