Tags: crowd

Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction

A fascinating crowdsourced project. You can read the backstory in this article in Wired magazine.

Kissa. Book. Launch. — Roden Explorers Archive

Own. Your. Nook. There’s power in owning your nook of the ‘net — your domain name, your design, your archives — and it’s easier than ever to do so, and run a crowdfunding campaign at the same time.

Open Prioritization by Igalia

An experiment to crowdfund the implementation of web standards in browsers.

I’m not sure how I feel about this.

The ‘Future Book’ Is Here, but It’s Not What We Expected | WIRED

Craig writes about reading and publishing, from the memex and the dynabook to the Kindle, the iPhone, and the iPad, all the way back around to plain ol’ email and good old-fashioned physical books.

We were looking for the Future Book in the wrong place. It’s not the form, necessarily, that needed to evolve—I think we can agree that, in an age of infinite distraction, one of the strongest assets of a “book” as a book is its singular, sustained, distraction-free, blissfully immutable voice. Instead, technology changed everything that enables a book, fomenting a quiet revolution. Funding, printing, fulfillment, community-building—everything leading up to and supporting a book has shifted meaningfully, even if the containers haven’t. Perhaps the form and interactivity of what we consider a “standard book” will change in the future, as screens become as cheap and durable as paper. But the books made today, held in our hands, digital or print, are Future Books, unfuturistic and inert may they seem.

Three Readings and a Festival | Unbound

More on that event with Brian Aldiss I was reminiscing about: that was the first time that Kate unveiled part of her Purple People book:

Jeremy insisted this would be an excellent opportunity for me to read an excerpt from Purple People, and so invited me onto the stage with those illustrious, wordy wizards to share an early indigo excerpt. I was quite literally shaking that night (even more than a talking tree, ho ho), but all was jolly. I read my piece without falling off the stage, and afterwards, folk made some ace and encouraging comments.

Now the book is being crowdfunded for publication and you can take part. It’s currently 59% funded …come on, people, let’s make this happen!

Purple People by Kate Bulpitt: Unbound

Kate’s book—a “jolly dystopia”—will get published if enough of us pledge to back it. So let’s get pledging!

There’s a curiously coloured scheme afoot in Blighty. In an effort to tackle dispiriting, spiralling levels of crime and anti-social behaviour, the government has a new solution: to dye offenders purple.

Building Inspector by NYPL Labs

A wonderful Zooniverse-like project from the New York Public Library:

Help unlock New York City’s past by identifying buildings and other details on beautiful old maps.

Describe Me

A great Zooniverse-style project for the website of Australia’s Museum Victoria that allows you to provide descriptions for blind and low-vision people.

SETILive

This is not only the single most important human endeavour that you can participate in, it is also ridiculously gorgeous.

Science!

Star Wars Uncut: Director’s Cut - YouTube

The final amalgam of Star Wars Uncut is an absolute joy to behold. I enjoyed every single moment of this.

Ancient Lives | Help us to Transcribe Papyri

The Zooniverse boffins have done it again! This time you can help to transcribe ancient Egyptian texts. Brilliant!

Bletchley Park and History Hackday Request | Amplified

Let’s make the Bletchley Park data machine-readable so we can start mining the stories they contain (like Old Weather).

Bletchley Park need help to catalogue and create a proper archive of these decrypts.

I want in!

The Milky Way Project

The latest Zooniverse project is a beauty: you can help spot bubbles in infra-red images of nebulae.

This, That and the Other Thing | the human network

Mark Pesce's closing keynote from Web Directions South 2008. Great stuff, as always.

.CSV » group think

Emergence, network theory, behavioural science ...these things have been occupying my mind a lot lately.

YouTube - Anti-Piracy Ad from The IT Crowd

This is absolutely brilliant. I've often wondered what luckless ad agency was suckered into doing those ridiculous anti-piracy films so wonderfully lampooned here.

YouTube - Liverpool Street mobile-clubbing.com flashmob, October 11th

This looks crazy! Everyone is dancing to the beat of a different drum... I mean, iPod.