Links voor 14 december 2013

Google Adds to Its Menagerie of Robots – NYTimes.com
Google confirmed on Friday that it had completed the acquisition of Boston Dynamics, an engineering company that has designed mobile research robots for the Pentagon. The company, based in Waltham, Mass., has gained an international reputation for machines that walk with an uncanny sense of balance and even — cheetahlike — run faster than the fastest humans.

earth: wind
De wind op aarde. In real time. Klik op "earth" onderaan links voor opties.

Fientje en de mediamannen » Apache.be
Fientje Moerman heeft met haar brief op bijzonder zere mediatenen getrapt. Het volstaat om de talrijke analyses die er intussen over bij elkaar werden gepend na te lezen. Allemaal beweren ze hetzelfde, allemaal gebruiken ze dezelfde argumenten en allemaal serveren ze de kritiek integraal af. Want Fientje is mediageil. Fientje wil gewoon een plaats op de lijst. Fientje is ei zo na zot. En wij, mediamannen hebben wel ernstigere dingen te doen, ook al blazen we de brief dan eigenhandig op tot de waan van de dag.

A million first steps – Digital scholarship blog
We have released over a million images onto Flickr Commons for anyone to use, remix and repurpose. These images were taken from the pages of 17th, 18th and 19th century books digitised by Microsoft who then generously gifted the scanned images to us, allowing us to release them back into the Public Domain. The images themselves cover a startling mix of subjects: There are maps, geological diagrams, beautiful illustrations, comical satire, illuminated and decorative letters, colourful illustrations, landscapes, wall-paintings and so much more that even we are not aware of.

Gmail blows up e-mail marketing by caching all images on Google servers | Ars Technica
Unless you click on a link, marketers will have no idea the e-mail has been seen. While this means improved privacy from e-mail marketers, Google will now be digging deeper than ever into your e-mails and literally modifying the contents. If you were worried about e-mail scanning, this may take things a step further.