Captured by the Phoenix Mars Lander a few days ago. Love it. [Click for full size.]

On other news, today I watched the panel discussion on the future of the web [Tetherless World Research Constellation]. Very informative, but no comments for now, as I’m still compiling a good part of it in my head.

As you may have already noticed through my twine feed, the IDC 2008 final competing teams have been selected, and the application demos are now available to watch through the IDC website. Similar to previous years: 5 teams, 5 fantastic demos, and 1 heck of a dilemma when it comes to voting, which you can do as of the end of June. =) The competing teams this year are Cocoon, Fairlight & TBL, MFX, Inque and Still.
As for how I feel about the demos, well, I really can’t tell yet. I’ve watched each demo 3 times so far but I still have quite a few more rounds to go. But so far, I can say this, Still always has a way of making me glad I watched the demo [hence the pic!], and to top that, they brought in the duckie again! =D
I have to add that the demos are not available for downloading as of yet, but I will let you know as soon as they are. So for now, go watch some demos and enjoy!

P.S.: Does the “fat guy” in Cocoon’s demo remind any of you of “Baron Vladimir Harkonnen” of Frank Herbert’s “Dune”? Cause that’s who he reminds me of somehow! =)

UPDATE: Well, I think Optimus’ comment just confirmed my suspicion. The application demos are almost all parts of previously released demos, except for some reason [I could be very well wrong about this] the Fairlight & TBL demo seems newish! So lets just wait and see if there will be other demos popping up.

A lot has happened and I’ve been way too busy to post, and lets confess, the small little bits of time that I usually find here and there to do some blogging and similar stuff, have recently been all eaten up by Twine. =P [Yes, blame it aaallllll on Twine! =D] Oh by the way, apparently I have a new set of Twine invitations. If anybody wants to be invited, let me know. [if you “really” want it though!]

So last Sunday we watched the entire broadcasting of Phoenix’s landing on Mars via the NASA JPL website. I have to admit, it was incredibly exciting. In those last 7 minutes my heart just about exploded out of my chest, and when it finally landed and sent through the “ok” signal, I had tears in my eyes. Since then I’ve been constantly on the watch for new pictures and data received from the lander. A large number of pictures taken by the lander can be found here. Do check it out! =)

Today’s share of LOLz =D :

To be quite honest, I’ve never liked delicious very much, instead I prefer the link directory in my own website. I don’t use Flickr in any serious manner, never have, and I just post my photos in my own little private self built online photo gallery. I find Twitter quite useless, and I have an official dislike for MySpace and similar services. I guess one of my major issues is that I don’t like to sign up for 292384 different services, and have 292384 different profile pages, and 292384 accounts, to do 292384 different tasks for me [and often even repetitious tasks!]. I find that my friends and family, as well as all other people that I know and care about, tend to find it quite comfortable to just go to my website, read my blog, have a look at my new links, news, pictures and everything else as it’s all in one place. I get the feeling that I’m not a fan of disconnected / decentralized / all over the place data, which is one major reason why I like the whole set of ideas behind DataPortability [hence the “I Support” logo].
Of course I have a Facebook account which I was pretty much forced into signing up for, given that some folks I know only keep in touch that way. But well, I only log into it every once in a blue moon. I have a passionate dislike for what they do [or don’t… when it comes to things like Google Friend Connect] with your personal info [yeah… “those”].
In general there are a lot of things that I don’t like about current social networking websites. The constant competition among users to add to their popularity scores by going around and randomly adding people they don’t know, have no interest in ever getting to know and have no common interests with, bothers me. Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy it very much when somebody adds me to their network because of… well… “something”, anything other than being just another face in the list. I enjoy getting to know people who like to share something with me very much. But I’m sick and tired of constantly receiving add requests from people who don’t even read my profile before pressing the “add” button. What royally boils my noodles though, are the people who send you rude messages if you don’t accept their add request. Fancy that! There’s also the spam, the chain messages, the conspiracies and cyber bullying that result in people committing suicide and tons of other annoyances. Interestingly enough, yesterday I came across this article that summarizes the best of what bothers me. So instead of writing it all down again, I just direct you to the article.
So, with all of the above reasons, the only social networking capable websites that I seriously use, are the very few very special ones that I find worth it. If you Google my nickname [Aasemoon] you’ll see that I’ve given a try to almost everything that’s out there, including some very recent social networking / bookmarking websites like Zigtag, Mento and Myrl, but out of all of that, here’s what I actually use:
Shelfari – Although I have had my share of disappointments with it, as I receive too many really annoying spammy messages in there, and therefore I have cut out of all social networking capabilities of the website and I’m just using the shelf [and for that, it’s the best].
last.fm – I love this one… just love it… absolutely nothing else like it for the purpose.
And of course, the most recent addition is twine. This one has impressed the heavens out of me so far. =) I didn’t just come across twine. I was Googling for something with the capabilities that twine has, and that’s how I found out about it and eventually joined the beta. So far, I love it. I have to confess, my approach to twine has been a very self centred one. Ever since I joined the beta I’ve been mainly playing with different features trying to find out exactly what twine can be for me. I also have to mention that sometimes I have a way of using tools in ways that I find beneficial for me, even if how I use that tool isn’t exactly the intended purpose of the tool [as long as I don’t bother anyone else, that is!]. So that’s exactly what I’ve been doing with twine, and here’s the result: I’m now using twine as my ultimate social bookmarking tool, my 1 line blog, my image blog, my twitter, my interest profiling tool and a whole load of other things, and in time I’m sure I’ll find more uses.
I have created a few twines related to my interests where I and other interested people post relevant links, pictures and all sort of data. That’s very cool because I get a chance to have a look at what other people with similar interests are looking into, and I’ve ended up learning a lot that way. I’ve also created a public personal twine, where again I and others post all sorts of things… anything that any of the members of the twine might find cool. That’s also where I post images, thoughts, notes…. it’s very multi purpose. I also have a personal personal twine, that only I can see or post stuff to, and I mainly use it for testing twine related stuff or collecting articles to read later.
Another thing I like about twine is how alive it seems to be. I constantly see changes, improvements, new features and new ideas. I guess a large part of that has to do with the fact that the developers of twine are very open to suggestions from users. I know that there’s a lot more that needs to be done before twine goes public, a lot that the users and developers want to have before they can call it ready. But even as it is right now… I’m really enjoying it, and honestly I’m a little surprised with a few articles I’ve read here and there on the web talking about people’s disappointments with using twine. Hey, it’s beta after all… come on! I’m only hoping that the day twine goes public, the spam protection capabilities will be fully “there”. Other than that… I just want it to go public so that I can show off with my twines. =D 😉

This video isn’t thaaaat new, but I came across it today while looking for videos relevant to this article that has to do with Phoenix lander’s mission to land on Mars. It’s a simulation that was created last year, but I hadn’t seen it before and I fell in love with it instantly. Good music for the purpose too by the way. And if you don’t understand Spanish don’t worry, just wait for the actual video to start.

This video amazed and impressed the heavens out of me. In a way it’s sort of like a wild demo. The animation has been created out of paintings on public walls. Do check it out. =)

Earlier I had posted a few lines in regards to ASIMO’s conduction of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra performing “Impossible Dream”. Today I received an email from a good friend of mine notifying me that the video for the performance has just been released and it’s currently available on blip.tv. So, here it is, and it’s profoundly cute. =D Enjoy!

Happy Mothers Day to all the moms of the world and specially my beloved mom. =)

As probably obvious by the title, I’m currently somewhat confused and you could even call it somewhat ticked off. Last night a Persian speaker friend of mine sent me a link to an article in a Persian weblog that he found amusing. Well honestly the article itself didn’t take as much of my attention as the little banner on the corner of the page did. Yes, it’s similar to the one I’ve posted here. I had a feeling that I had seen the same banner before on possibly another Persian weblog. I clicked on the banner and was directed to THIS website, where I got a bit of an explanation as to what’s cooking, and I also found the link to THIS OTHER website, where I got the complete and full version story.
So, as far as my understanding is, this is what’s going on. The 2nd website is the homepage for an Iranian government organization who’s name translates to something in lines of “The Iranian Website Classification Organization”. To make the long story short, this organization’s soul purpose is to classify and register all the websites or weblogs owned by Iranians, so that [obviously] they can take their nasty acts of censorship and harassment of the Iranian internet users to it’s next, simpler step. The organization’s expectation is for every single Iranian domain owner to go ahead and hand them all information about their websites, weblogs and whatever other sort of online identity that they have, which in turn will make it a lot simpler for the Iranian government to either annihilate whatever online content they don’t find to their liking, or make them inaccessible from Iran. How bloody bizarre is that? I wonder who’s unholy idea this is, to take away the smallest peace of freedom of speech that may be left through the internet, using this new, enhanced and completely idiotic tactic? And I really do mean idiotic: what on earth makes them fancy that people will just go through with this? Hence the first website I mentioned, and the banner…. that’s the big “NO” for the answer. Thank you very much!
But you know what bakes my noodles even more? Just out of pure curiosity I had a look around the organization’s website and came across their website registration form. And guess what. It’s applicable to Iranians everywhere, not just in Iran [you can select whatever country you’re in]. Yeah. Bloody right. I wonder how far they think they’re going to get with that one….