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Posts with tag london

The Telectroscope - A Steampunk Web Cam

by Terrence O'Brien, posted May 23rd 2008 at 12:18PM

The Telectroscope - A Steampunk Web Cam
British-born artist Paul St. George has brought to life the vision of his fictional great grandfather, Alexander Stanhope St. George, the Telectroscope. What is it? The Telectroscope is a giant, telescope-like optical tube that runs under the Atlantic allowing people in London to stare at people in Brooklyn, and visa-versa.

In reality, the Telectroscope is a giant art project mixing fictional tales of a century of underground drilling under the ocean to create the tunnel and a complex back story of unrealized genius, family ties, and plausible-sounding Victorian-era technology. The giant steampunk-styled fixtures are actually HD webcams that allow people to check out what is happening on the other side of the world, 24/7 in real time. Visitors will be able to stand in front of the giant lenses and stare at, wave to, or flip off a person on the other side of the world via broadband Internet connection.

The Telectroscope opened to the public on May 22 and will be open until June 15. The instillation can be found on the south shore of the Thames River in London near the Tower Bridge, and at the Fulton Ferry Landing under the Brooklyn Bridge. [Source: Tiscali via: CNN]

Gallery: Telectroscope

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London Lamp Posts Padded to Protect Distracted Texters

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Mar 6th 2008 at 1:19PM

Lamp Posts in London Padded to Protect Walk'n'Text-ers
We live in a dangerous world filled with murderers, terrorists, and lamp posts. That's right: lamp posts. Don't play coy with us. We know on at least one occasion you've been walking down the street texting away on your mobile phone and walked right into a lamp post or telephone pole.

British telephone directory service 118 118 is out to save Londoners from themselves and has started wrapping lampposts in thick padding. Apparently serious injuries from people paying less attention to where they were going and more to their tiny cell phone screen has inspired the company (along with charity Living Streets) to take action. The company will poll pedestrians in the area of the pilot program and if all goes well, Birmingam, Manchester, and Liverpool are next.

The best part about the 118 118 program is that there is simply nothing we can do to make it any funnier. Once in a while something comes along that is so perfectly hilarious we are forced to just let the story mock itself. If this was April we would have written this off immediately.

And for those of you who don't believe us:

From Engadget, Yahoo News, Metro, and Daily Mail

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Shy Londoners Flirt Via Cell Phone at Bars with New Service

by Tim Stevens, posted Dec 5th 2007 at 1:32PM

Introverted Londoners Flirt Via TextIn the U.K., cell phones and bars go together like -- alcohol and bars. Just a few weeks ago a few English pubs introduced the ability to order drinks via text message, and now a new service has shy British bar hoppers talking to each other, or at least making contact, via cell phone.

The service, called Ice Brkr, lets you create an online persona with a picture. You then indicate which bar(s) you're in and when. Others who are in the same locations as you at the right time can look you up (by your picture) and send you creepy text messages like "I just love to watch you laugh."

Like most dating schemes, creating a profile and putting your information online is free. It's only when you want to contact someone that you get billed. The first four messages are free, after that you can buy ten-packs of messages for £10 (about $20), or 25 messages for £20 (about $40). Not too bad if the thought of talking to a real girl gives you the willies.

From textually.org

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Public Audio Surveillance Hits London

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Oct 23rd 2007 at 7:25AM

London Police Love Their Surveillance
Everyday this Big Brother stuff gets scarier and scarier. Pretty soon the only place you'll be safe is in your own home, in your bed room, under the blanket. We posted before about experts declaring that by 2057 there will be roughly one million sensors and recorders for every U.K. resident. It looks like London is wasting no time rushing towards that goal.

We're well aware of the security cameras already all over the city, but it looks like Londoners will also have to brace themselves for audio surveillance, too. In order to break up gangs, London police have begun a program using audio bugs placed in public places.

Currently, the listening devices have only been deployed in Lambeth, in south London, where youth gangs are particularly prevalent, and where gun crime has risen 10 percent in the last six months. The hope is that the intelligence gathered will help authorities identify key figures in the tight-knit, but loosely organized groups, which will better allow police to disrupt their activities.

Public eavesdropping, sans warrants, by law enforcement is sure to rankle some privacy advocates. Authorities are hoping a drop in crime will quell the inevitable uproar. We shall see.

Would you approve of audio eavesdropping if it reduced crime in your area?

From The BBC

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Surveillance Cams Don't Reduce Crime, Study Finds

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Sep 21st 2007 at 1:30PM

Surveillance Cameras Not Effective at Solving CrimesStatistics obtained by the British Liberal Democrats Party through the Freedom of Information Act (yes, they have one, too) show that even with over 10,000 cameras in various London boroughs, 80 percent of all crimes still go unsolved. In fact, when broken down by borough, there is no correlation between the number of cameras and the percent of crimes solved.

  • There are now 10,524 CCTV cameras in 32 London boroughs funded with Home Office grants totaling about £200million.
  • Hackney has the most cameras -- 1,484 -- and has a better-than-average "clear up rate" of 22.2 per cent.
  • Wandsworth has 993 cameras, Tower Hamlets, 824, Greenwich, 747 and Lewisham 730, but police in all four boroughs fail to reach the average 21 percent clear-up rate.
  • By contrast, boroughs such as Kensington and Chelsea, Sutton and Waltham Forest have fewer than 100 cameras each, yet they still have clear-up rates of around 20 per cent.
  • Police in Sutton have one of the highest clear-ups with 25 per cent.
  • Brent police have the highest clear-up rate, with 25.9 per cent of crimes solved in 2006-07, even though the borough has only 164 cameras.

After 10 years and £200 million of tax payer money, groups like the criminal justice charity Narco are questioning whether the money would have been better spent on more street lights, which can cut crime by up to 20 percent.

Even the scariest of stories about government and police surveillance usually end with the good guys catching the bad guys, which makes the "Big Brother" theories a little less ominous. We don't mean to burst your bubble or anything, but as this story shows, that doesn't always happen.

From thisislondon

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Surveillance Devices to Eventually Record Entire Lives

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Aug 30th 2007 at 4:33PM

Surveillance Devices to Eventually Record Entire LivesTrue Big Brother 24/7, 365 surveillance is not here just yet, but if Martin Sadler, a senior scientist at Hewlett Packard is to be believed, it's not too far off. By 2057, he says there will be roughly one million sensors and recorders for every U.K. resident. Sadler has warned that the amount of information being collected from such a network of devices will lead to important ethical dilemmas.

Though New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg recently suggested a video surveillance program for downtown Manhattan, public surveillance is much more prevalent in the U.K. than it is here in the states. Its effectiveness as an anti-terror tool was most famously demonstrated in 2005 in the wake of the London bus bombings when video of the suspects was immediately made available to the media.

Today, the average Londoner is captured on surveillance at least 300 times a day, a number that's on the rise. Many uses of the technology are "innocent and harmless," but the shear wealth of information being collected may lead to dangers that we're only now beginning to understand. Sadler's eerie vision of the future isn't limited to one in which advertisements are targeted at people based on where they were earlier in the day -- though, that will certainly happen. He envisions a future in which there are sensors so small, they'll be able to permeate our bodies to collect personal data.

Sadler says, "We have some real choices that we can make over the next few years about how much we benefit from all this information ... or how much it presents some sort of dark future for us." As we recently reported, the South Koreans are currently conducting a similar self-audit to determine the future dangers of developing technology, only the Koreans are focused on robots instead of surveillance.

From The BBC

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