NetArt: Tips (II)

Thomas Dreher

Auf Deutsch

Short tips:

• Short tips in alphabetical order: Part of the website NetArt: Tips (I).
• Short tips in chronological order:

• Douglas Davis: The World´s First Collaborative Sentence, 1994: The classic of net projects for collaborative writing adds the contributions one after another like an exquisit corpse. Davis resists prescriptions except the rule that contributions have to close without point. Inventive users knocked out the program safeguarding the compliance with that rule. The ca. 200.000 contributions are divided in pages (in August 2003: 21 pages) (3/2003. Message 6/2007: network timeout. Documentation in the Internet Archive 10/2010).



• Michael Joyce: Twelve Blue, 1996: The hyperfiction was programmed with Storyspace (Joyce developed the software with Pascal). The multilinear narration presents "8 bars" as horizontal textual lines which are segmented vertically in "12 threads". (12 x 8) textual segments are connected by 169 links. In the segments of the hyperfiction return metaphorical expressions for water and color ("blue") in 12 months ("12 threads" from December to November). These "threads" create a linear progression in the multilinear narration: Joyce´s segments offer progressive action lines (Heibach, Christiane: Literatur im Internet. Theorie und Praxis einer kooperativen Ästhetik. Thesis Universität Heidelberg 2000, p.260-266. 3/2003).



• Olia Lialina: My boyfriend came back from the war, 1996: The page appears first divided into two frames. On the left side appears a frame with two picture fragments (a window and a pair) without click functions. The right frame shows Lialina´s portrait and then divides itself from click to click into further frames with textual and illustrated fragments. Finally a lot of black frames are shown, except two frames on the left and right side. The first frame on the left side remains unchanged and the bottom of the right side presents Lialina´s name with a mailto-link. A classic of the frames application (3/2003).



• John Simon Jr: Every Icon, 1996/97: When starting the system begins to generate all variants of the possible combinations of black and white squares in a grid with 32 x 32 squares. The system (programmed in Java) will generate all variants in "several hundred trillion years" until all squares will be black. The processor of the computer conditions the project, not the web connectivity. The classic of computer art exists in variants for the Internet, Powerbook Monitor and Palm Pilot (Java. 3/2003).



• Florian Cramer: Permutationen, Frühjahr 1996-1998: Cramer offers word combination machines, proteus lyrics and other literary chance operations in net reconstructions which allow to proceed playing with chances. It is possible to explore for example the "Systema Infinitum" (Anonymous, 1717) and Raymond Queneau´s «Cent mille milliards de poèmes» via game actions in Cramer´s web versions meanwhile Tristan Tzara´s instruction «pour faire un poème dadaiste» is executable with the help of a selection of newspapers, inscriptions of URL-addresses or inscriptions in a textual field. In "Here comes everybody" letters have to be chosen before syllables will be offered by a textual automat. Furthermore it presents syllable combinations in response to selected syllables and offered a procedure to invent words. James Joyce´s "Finnegans Wake" serves as a source for the construction of port manteau words (Perl, free software: GNU GPL. 3/2003).



• Jim Andrews: Seattle Drift, 1997: The DHTML-poetry describes its own drift away. The drift can be stopped or refreshed, but it can´t be influenced. Andrews´ comments are integrated into the source code (3/2003).



• Heath Bunting: _readme.html, own, be owned or remain invisible, 1997: The text source is an article on Bunting written by James Flint and published in The Daily Telegraph. Bunting uses the article´s words xyz as links to URL-addresses http://www.xyz.com. Since 1997 more and more of these constructed links connect to used web addresses. A classic project of NetArt (3/2003).



• Lisa Jevbratt/C5: 1:1(2), 1999/2001-2002: The first version of the database "1:1" was realized in 1999. It used IP (Internet Protocol) addresses which have been found with the help of crawlers. The database was actualized in 2001-2002 in the field of the IP addresses of 1999. The address research didn´t notice the kinds of accesses to sites. Five interfaces allow different entrances to both databases. The interface "migration" demonstrates the changes of IP addresses from 1999 (red) to 2001 (green) (3/2003).



• Andrew C. Bulhak: The Postmodernism Generator, 2000: The "Postmodernism Generator" produced 887238 articles from 2/25/2000 to 8/18/2003. Each call causes the processing of a new text. Bulhak uses his Dada Engine in a version modified by Joash Larios to execute chance operations in syntactic recursions. The "Generator" and its travesty of postmodern theory allows a comprehension as a kind of consequence of the postmodern pastiche which suggests a transgression of the framework `postmodernism´ (3/2003).



• Frédéric Durieu: Oeil complex, 2000: In moving their cursors users are able to explore the surprising constellations of 3D eyes in «oeil complex», the most interesting work of the project-set oeil pour oeil pour oeil (Director). Durieu tells he needed one day to write the source code of that example of an "algorithmic poetry" with the function 1/ (a+bi) (Interview with Jim Andrews, Paris Connection. 3/2003).



• Ben Fry: Anemone, 2000: The web installation of "Anemone´s" "toy version integrates the user logs in its reconstruction of the website with projects of The Aesthetics + Computation Group (ACG, MIT Media Laboratory, Leitung: John Maeda). The two-dimensional visualization exemplifies the concept of the Organic Information Design: Its growing ramification follows a "reproduction rule" and the relocatable branches are coordinated by a "movement rule". The project "Anemone" simplifies the oberservers´ orientation in complex structured websites with constant alterations. The thickness of white connections signifies the frequency of requests meanwhile orange lines present the obervers´ routes in the site of ACG. Clicks on branches and lines open the indicated URL-addresses (C++, OpenGL, Java. 6/2007).



• Simon Biggs: Babel, 2001: 3D number projections of the Dewey Decimal Classification System (used in libraries) are modifiable by click operations – and appear modified because the operations of other users are observable. Clicks on numbers open windows to ca. 1000 Websites which Biggs coordinated with numbers. These sites are subordinated to the hierarchical classification system of libraries. The flow of number projections demonstrates the non-observable plurality of available data and makes it possible at the same time to dive into thematically arranged websites. "Babel" creates a data space as well as an imagination area between the impossibility of an overview and arranged varieties (3/2003).



• Jonathan Feinberg/Marek Walczak/Martin Wattenberg: Apartment, 2001: Typed words with semantic fields of habitation are assigned to twelve categories for types of housing spaces. This coordination is the basis material for the generation of storable ground plans showing the categories of the housing spaces´ types and the typed terms. Some typed terms are presented on the ground plans as animated loops. Stored flats can be recalled with the help of maps ("cities") in configurations based on plan characteristics. Web search engines find pictures using the typed terms for the generation of three-dimensional elements. Observers are able to move through the VRML-elements and listen to the typed words via text-to-speech software (Java, VRML files f.e. you can construct files of the three-dimensional version with FreeWRL or Cortona and open the constructed WRL file in Firefox. 6/2007).



• Nullpointer (Tom Betts): WebTracer, version 1, 2001/version 2, 2003: The second version of the browser visualizes the links between pages of a website in a three-dimensional diagram: The graphic formation of lines between balls in different sizes and colours indicate the positions of webpages within the structure of a site. This formation is rotable with the arrow keys and it is scalable as well as diminishable. It indicates the names of the websites´ files in the case of crossing them with the cursor. The first vision allowed to open these files with a click meanwhile this function is eliminated in the second version. You can enter an URL address of a website in the second version to produce files with data about internal links for the "visualizer" and its construction of the site´s diagram (only for PC. OPENGL, DirectX, C++. 6/2007).



• Martin Wattenberg: A Net Art Idea Line, 2001: Fan-shaped lines are combined with designations for types of NetArt. The width of the lines increases in accordance with the quantity of examples. Cursor actions over lines widen the interspaces and the titles appear together with popups which include short descriptions of net projects of a certain type in a chronological order. Links connect users with the projects. Java webdesign of a NetArt chronology. (3/2003).



• Josh On & The Futurefarmers: They Rule, 2001/2004: Several diagrams demonstrate power relations as the result of the distribution of places in supervisory boards of companies. The map "Pepsi urs Coke" of the first version (2001) allowed to recognize such connections particularly easy. The second version (2004) allows to request personal connections between corporations, f.e. you can request the personal connections between "PepsiCo" and "Coca-Cola". The data of the adjustable icons for supervisory boards appear in popups. Members of the activist group The Futurefarmers collected the data for the project enabling them (and us) to recognize relations of economic power and to use that knowledge in actions. In 2004 the maps were actualized (Flash, PSP, MySQL. 3/2003, 6/2007).



• Ian Andrews: Ether-1, 2002: The index to audiovisual Flash-Animations simulates the radio´s frequency search system. The radio scale of the wave frequency is substituted by a vertical scale of the files´ seizes in kBytes. The animations deal with characteristics of the literary, musical and artistic avant-gardes. The interface refers to the mass medium radio which was predominant together with newspaper and film in the beginning of these avant-gardes. The graduation within the vertical kB-scale from the left to the right side presents the needs of the microprocessor´s capacities to reproduce the animated time without delay (Flash. 3/2003).



• Michael Aschauer, Josef Deinhöfer, Maia Gusberti, Nik Thönen: ./logicaland, 2002: The world model with statistics started in the "first run" with dates of the year 2000, ready for the users´ manipulations. Single users can´t produce recognizable visual changes because the system can solely register common modifications (free software: GNU GPL. 3/2003).



• Babel: Turnbaby, 2002: The experimental studies of Thomas Alva Edison (two films, end of 19th century) and a video of b´toch bet are presented in short sequences and stills. Moving pictures, video sequences and simultaneous presentations with possibilities for changes via click operations constitute net configurations of the photographic and filmic montage. The historicizing element is reduced to a short form of the relations between cultures of body movements and the history of media. In 2002, "Turnbaby" constituted an exemplary actualization of the visual net possibilities (HTML, Flash, Real Audio, JavaScript, Image. 3/2003).



• Büro Destruct/CUE/Humantools: Los Logos, 2002: The site "Los Logos" is open for mails with photos of found logos and signets. The participation of users constitutes an archive which includes logos of corporations as well as signets of minor firms and shops. A lot of these signs disappear as a consequence of the concentration on a few corporations with many branches. The users´ contributions are integrated into a 3D logo-city together with references to the found locations. The simulation of an urban context with illustrations of more and more extincted real logos and signets serves the project to reconstruct the vanishing local refractions of urbanity which included elements of a former logo culture (JavaScript, Director). A logo memory game enriches the design oriented site (JavaScript, Flash. 3/2003).



• Nicolas Clauss: Le Cri, 2002: Users are able to determine the performance of Stéphane Copin´s actions and the music ("Piano Phenstec" with music of Karlheinz Stockhausen) by faster or slower click sequences...as if the click operations cause sounds and cries, as if the performer Copin reacts to faster click sequences and louder sounds with faster head movements, as if an increasing pain forces him to act (Director, JavaScript. 3/2003, 6/2007).



• Pauline Masurel: Blue Hyacinth, 2002: Four short novels appear in different blue tones. Two squares are partitioned in four fields in different tones which offer click surfaces for the call of the texts. Each of the texts is segmented in 30 pieces. Cursor movements over the selected text provokes integrations of textual pieces in other colors. In the source code Masurel explains the integration of numbered textual pieces in "slices" (Stir Fry Indices based on the DHTML inner HTML method). It is possible to generate 1.152.921.504.606.846.976 texts (3/2003).



• W. Bradford Paley: TextArc, 2002: Relations between words of literary texts (exemplary realized in Shakespeare´s "Hamlet" and in Lewis Carroll´s "Alice´s Adventures in Wonderland", other cases offer the texts of the Project Gutenberg) are plotted by lines in an oval. Example "Hamlet": The frequency of the occurrence of the words is related to the brightness of their presentations. The verbal surroundings (the contexts in which words reoccur) are represented by grey straight lines. The function "Pairwise Associations" shows the sequence of word occurrences via lilac-coloured curved lines. The repeated uses of word pairs are presented as straight lines in colors from orange to red. Relations between groups of words with a common origin can be called up under "show concordance" (also over the Alt key or per double click) and are shown as straight orange lines (Java. 3/2003).



• Cory Arcangel: Data Diaries, 2003: The daily dates of Arcangel´s RAM in January 2003 are translated with Quicktime in colour and b/w-animations. The conversion of data with ready-made software fulfills anti-artistic intentions. Arcangel´s RAM-videos are discussed in controversies (Quicktime. 3/2003).



• Ralf Chille: Capture the Map, 2003: A player tries to win in games against the computer or another player. For both sides 64 blue or orange pins are hold available to be located on the world map following the terms typed by the players or chosen by the computer (on the left side for the blue party and on the right side for the orange adversary). Terms are assigned to places using the NetGeo-database of the Cooperative Association for Internet Data. The winner was able to place all pins faster than the adversary. If the game will be finished before the winner located all pins then the achieved points will be the measure for the ascertainment of the winner (The points are designated as "sticks" and if the amount of "sticks" achieved by both parties is the same then it will be critical which adversary has occupied and secured more "squares" respectively "fields" (on "saved fields": see the "introduction". Flash. 6/2007. 10/2009 not available in the net).



• Dan Albritton/Marcos Weskamp: Newsmap, 2004: The algorithm for visualizations provided by the program Treemap (Ben Shneiderman u.a., Human Computer Interaction Lab, University of Maryland, since 1990) is implemented in "Newsmap" for the mapping of Google News. News with many "related articles" receive wider rectangles with integrated links to one of the messages collected by Google News. The hierarchical structure from big rectangles above left to small rectangles bottom right originates from "Treemap" and serves in "Newsmap" for the indication of the amount of news about the same event. The colours of rectangles mark types of news like "business", "technology" and "sports". After the choice of countries (and languages, see the bar above), the type of the news and the date (bottom) it is possible to open submaps (Treemap, Flash. 6/2007).



• René Bauer/Beat Suter: Apple in Space, 2004: The project recreates Reinhard Döhl´s Apfelgedicht of 1965 and Johannes Auer´s worm applepie for doehl (1997). The apple of the poems is modified in "Apple in Space" into a contour drawing with lines connecting numbered points. The actual search entries in Fireball´s Live Search (Fireball Livesuche, German search engine with a live search permanently reloaded) `stream´ with Streamfishing from the left side to the right side. Clicks on words open the Fireball´s search results and the clicked words are presented in blue letters within the stream of words meanwhile words in red letters are "potential worms" (René Bauer): If these words appear within the apple´s contour then they are `enriched´ with terms out of the words´ context in the database, storing files of Reinhard Döhl´s website (the context: 30 signs in the text of the database to the left direction and from there 60 signs to the right side). If the apple is filled then it lets escape the catched words and the catching of words starts again (Java. The flicker on PCs disappears on Macs. 6/2007).



• Mary Flanagan: [six.circles], 2004: Two players move triangles above other triangles and build hexagons. Three triangles per hexagon have to be infected with a red "x" before they can be closed with an element constituted by two chain links. Closed hexagons appear yellow. Green Greek crosses can be used for the healing of hexagons infected with too much red crosses. The player with the higher amount of points will be the winner of the game. It was developed for the Wooloo Organization´s "Thank you" show to collect money for a HIV Education Center in Khayelitsha/South Africa (Flash. 6/2007).



• Carlos Katastrofsky: Area Research, 2004: After Neighbourhood Research (2004) presented only two IP addresses in the neighbourhood of a chosen URL-address, now "Area Research" offers twenty surrounding IP and URL-addresses. Not few of these links to digital neighbours lead to webpages with "forbidden" access (6/2007).



• Mauricio Arango: Vanishing Point, 2005: Messages with daily news are stored in a news database if the events are reported in one or two daily newspapers of the seven largest countries in the world. A world map ("Peter´s Projection Map") demonstrates in grayscale how much messages on events per country are stored in the database within the last 50 days. RSS Feeds of the daily newspapers offer short versions of the news and can be requested after selections of countries (PHP scripts, Flash. 6/2007. 10/2009 not available in the net).



• Guerillamarketing.it/molleindustria.it: where-next.com, 2005: The winner foresees the place of the next terrorist attack more precise than others: The players click the chosen location on a world map with an aerial view and choose one of the six attack types on the form below the map. The player with the most precise preview wins if within 48 hours ten or more civilian lives will be reported to be victims of attacks in non warring regions (decisive: the selection of the attack type and the precision of the localization). Winners receive yellow T-shirts with imprints informing on place and time as well as presenting a photo of the attack combined with the sentence "I predicated it". "Political correctness" is set at defiance for the goal to reduce to absurdity the capitalistic logic of the "profits regardless of morale" and the means of the entertaining industry like the combination of game, spectacle and violence in a precarious case: The real victims are ignored in the game like for example the arms manufacturers and the computer games industry disregard the consequences (6/2007).



• Torre, Roxana: Personal World Map, 2005: On a world map presenting the continents as grey areas it is possible to relocate capital cities of the world into the center of the map via clicks on the localizations´ yellow marks. On the top of the map appears a list for the choice of the flight duration and the tickets´ prizes. The results are presented in the form of maps with concentric circles indicating the distances of accessible places ("anamorphic mapping"). It is possible to choose time or money as parameters of the circles, too. If the accessible places are contacted with the cursor then the ticket´s prize and the flight´s duration appear (Flash, Python. 6/2007).



• UBERMORGEN.COM/Paolo Cirio/Alessandro Ludovico: GWEI – Google Will Eat Itself, 2005: The holders of websites receive transfers from Google to their accounts for the activation of windows usable by the AdSense program to insert text ads and GWEI uses theis procedure to earn as much money as possible and to invest it in Google shares. The shares are handed over to the GTTP Ltd. (Google To The People Public Company) to distribute them back to the public of net participants. The goal of the investments is to buy Google with nothing else than with the profits derived from Google: The index page of gwei.org presents the actual amount of shares, its worth and the time needed for the ownership of Google if the actual speed of profits and investments remains constant. The procedure to multiplicate clicks within a network of websites by a series of robots has caused the legal department of Google Germany to direct Hans Bernhard´s attention in a certified mail to the prohibition of such a procedure in the general terms and conditions of AdSense Online and to inform him about their will to prosecute infringements but no indictment followed. Furthermore, Google excluded the sites installed (for the use as "decoy accounts") by members of GWEI for the textual ads from its AdSense program without being able to endanger the progress of the project (7/2007).



• Mario Klingemann/Oleg Marakov: Islands of Consciousness, 2006: An index on the right side displays thumbnails of pictures downloaded from Flickr.com and presented as a stream of pictures in big size. The selection of the photos is not completely at random: At least one property has to be a common part of two consecutive pictures. But the visual effects are the results of chance operations. The music is generated with elements of a database with audiofiles (40 MB). This soundtrack influences the sequences of repeated photos and the visual effects. The film is generated on the computers of the observers in real time with the consequence that obervers on different computers never see the same field (Flash, Flashr. 6/2007).



• Michael Mandiberg: Oil Standard, 2006; Real Costs, 2007: The plug-in "Oil Standard" for the Firefox browser changes the prices indicated on webpages from U.S. dollar to raw oil prices (in "barrel"). The prizes of goods are changed in real time in "barrel" following the changing raw oil prices. In 2007, Mandiberg develops the plug-in further in "Real Costs": It substitutes the flight data on the websites of airline companies like Orbitz.com, United.com and Delta.com by calculations of the CO2 emissions. The CO2 emissions of airplanes are compared with the air pollution of trains or busses at travels covering the same distances (Firefox Extension Greasemonkey. 6/2007).



• Dan, Phiffer/Mushon Zer-Aviv: ShiftSpace, 2006: After the installation of the Greasemonkey Firefox Extension, the ShiftSpace application (version 09, 14/6/2007) and the registration, it is possible to annotate webpages as an offer to other readers to open the annotations on the annotated page. The console can be activated with the shift and space keys. The annotations of participants appear on the annotated web page underneath the sign "§". A list of actual annotations is presented on the homepage of the project under the headline "latest shifted sites": A shift menu with its buttons for different functions can be opened beside the cursor by hitting the shift key. The "notes space" function allows to write annotations meanwhile the "image swap" function can be used to substitute images by other images stored for example in Flickr.com, and "source shift" serves to change the source code (Firefox Extension Greasemonkey, Javascript, PHP, SQLite, free software: GNU GPL. 6/2007).



• Thayer, Páll: On Everything, 2006: The project combines the two sources: photos from Flickr.com and texts from the RSS feeds of Blogger.com. Perl scripts choose the sources and interprete them with the assistance of further scripts (in Perl and as Pure Data patches). Creations of drawings with coloured planes as transformations of photos from the database of Flickr, text productions using the source of the feeds and texts interpreted auditive with Speech Synthesis (MP3 streaming) are three observable cords of the infinitely continuable generations (Image Magick, Autotrace, Pure Data, Perl, Processing, Java a.o. Open Source. 6/2007).



• Wayne Clements: logo_wiki, 2007: Virgil Griffith´s WikiScanner (2007) supplies the data for logo_wiki: If the IP-adresses of anonymous authors changing articles in Wikipedia can be traced back by WikiScanner to servers of armies, governments and corporations then logo_wiki indicates in real time the present activities and replaces the Wikipedia logo by the logo of the company or institution being the writer´s employer (Perl. 10/2009).



• Jonathan Harris: Universe, 2007: The project enables observers to jump in an associative manner between the daily news of different newspapers. The messages of the American news aggregator Daylife can be called up with typed keywords. A Java applet offers several possibilities to relate the found messages with contexts. For example, in "shapes" appear keywords, as if the letters are representations of the firmament´s star constellations. After a click on one of the keywords, the found messages circulate around a centre where, after the next click, the chosen message appears, and then the following click on this message recalls messages suitable to the title (used as keyword) within the chosen timeframe ("past day/past month/past year"). Links lead to "Daylife" and its sources (Java, Processing. 6/2007).

  

• Trevor Paglen/The Institute for Applied Autonomy (IAA): terminalAir, 2007: On a world map, the project presents the air traffic of the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency, U.S.A.) between commercial airports and military bases. These flights are part of the CIA´s "extraordinary rendition program" and are a constitutive element of illegal kidnappings for the misuse of suspects by inquisition methods of torture. The "torture taxi data" are selectable via the chronological scale below the globe. The data will be actualized (Flash. 6/2007).



• Jason Rohrer: Passage, 2007: Players find their "passage" of life in the preset time limit of five minutes. Two characters and the playground are presented in an 8 bit visualisation. The game can be played with one or two characters. At the beginning appears a narrow horizontal path. It opens to a maze if the player uses the arrow keys for vertical moves. The male character can leave the path to the maze before or after his meeting with a female character being his companion in the game course. Whatever the player does: S/he can´t prevent the dying of the female and the male character one after the other (with mtPaint and SDL Library. Application with 4,9 MB for download, available for Windows, Mac, Linux and iPhone. 10/2009).



• Beasley, Mark: reply-all.org, 2008/Version II, 2009: The mailing list accompanies the writing of emails by proposing alternatives generated with the texts of the archived mails as source material. The list.serv/mailing-list software selects some authors of former emails as receivers of a new mail by the system´s criteria (similarity of mailed texts "based on factors of length, content, and similar word frequency"). The alternative propositions and the addressing are modified by the growing amount of stored mails. The texts of archived mails are changed by the system and the changes are marked with square brackets. A bot uses the mail archive to generate entries for Twitter: see reply_all (Python, Javascript. 10/2009).



• Brucker-Cohen, Jonah: Google Alert Loop, 2008: Google News and web search results can be received via Google Alert as emails in an automated selection following criteria installed by users. Brucker-Cohen forwards these messages to a blog on Blogger.com (owned by Google). The message repeated in Google Alert is repeated in the blog and can be repeated again in Google Alert (using only Google services as resources) and in the blog. Google´s strategy to sustain the distribution of many messages is shown in its consequences: infinite loops of messages (10/2009).



• Tiffany Holmes: World Offset, 2008: The project stimulates participants to reduce their production of carbon (CO2). A list of possible carbon reductions offers participants a chance to indicate (anonymous or with usernames) their plans respectively "promises". Statistics and a map (Google API) show the present state of reductions – if the promises have real consequences. The project helps participants to instruct themselves. They decide if the boundary between the data world and the ecological practice will be transgressed (10/2009).



• Steve Lambert: Add-Art, 2008: The plugin based on the Firefox Extension Adblock Plus (2006) substitutes advertisements by illustrations of artists. They are actualised every two weeks. The browser presents a red ADB logo at the top of the right. A click on the logo opens a menu allowing users to block Add-Art elements (Perl, JavaScript, Open Source. 10/2009).



• Molleindustria: Free Culture Game, 2008: This open-ending game encircles figures representing participants of an open source culture by agents seeking ways to use copyright and patent laws for profits. The tactical game procedures stand as representatives for the real activistic strategies to prohibit a dominating commercialization of the copyright and the patent laws (Flash. 10/2009).



• Eduardo Navas: Traceblog, 2008: Daniel C. Howe and Helen Nissenbaum developed TrackMeNot (2006) to conduct ad absurdum data-mining for the detection of private preferences: The Firefox extension produces an abundance of search requests at Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL. The users´ real preferences remain unacknowledged with the embedding of their real logs into the overloads. Navas publishes in Traceblog protocols of the logs produced by his TrackMeNot application beginning with the start of his Firefox browser. The protocols are presented in a way not easy to read "to reference the actual form in which the logs would be stored in a database." TrackMeNot helps to generate in a Blogger application an automatised blog contrary to the mass of blogs presenting opinions. Blogger is owned by Google whose search engine is flooded with requests useless for data-mining and its use for Google Ads and other Google services (10/2009).



• Nick Knouf: MAICGregator, 2009: The Firefox Extension substitutes links and illustrations of academic websites (universities and colleges) via data mining by external links and illustrations indicating connections to the military-industrial-complex. Furthermore the search for informations on trustees is supported ("Current Alternative News"). The website is receivable without alterations by a click on the refresh button (Free Software: GNU GPL V3 with modifications. 10/2009).



• Use All Five: Social Weather Mapping | Smalltalk, 2009: "Smalltalk" visualises Twitter entries with the predicates "sunny rainy snowy windy foggy" (as well as its variants as nouns or verbs) signifying weather conditions. Circles with planes in different colours for the (terms for) weather conditions are located geographically at identifiable places of the entries´ writers. The map is not constituted by geographical characteristics but by the names of cities presented in geographical distances. Clicks on circles show the usernames. Further clicks lead to the current remarks with links to their origins on Twitter. A live feed under the map reveals the last (above) and the second to the last (below) entry (Twitter search API, JavaScript. 10/2009).