Entries Tagged 'internet' ↓

At Las penas del Agente Smith I read that the guys that run El Manifestómetro [1] have launched Lo prometido es deuda, a wiki to track politicians’ electoral promises. The initiative has already made it into the mainstream media: El Pais has published an article about it.

A wiki containing quotes from politicians’ promises, with accompanying evidence, searchable by campaign and candidate name seems an interesting way to engage citizenship in an attempt to hold politicians responsible for their promises. I can imagine plenty of interesting ways of using the data: computing politicians with the most un-fulfilled promises, politicians that promise the most, trends in the kinds of things being promised, etc.

As the site becomes more mainstream, the amount of spamming and “improving” of entries will give the editors a hard time keeping the wiki honest. So if you are Spanish-speaking, and have some minutes to spare, have a look at the suggested tasks for editors, and sign up!

–
[1] El Manifestómetro tracks participation in Spanish demonstrations, to keep politician’s “improved” participation numbers in check.

I wanted to make a short break from work, so I decided to fool around on the internet a bit. The result: I ended up trying out Google Co-op, and creating Google Teleco, a custom search engine to search everything related to the ETSI Telecomunicacion UPM.

I included 25 web sites to search: the official site, the SlashDAT! site, all department sites I could find, and all student association sites that I could find and did not reside already under the below the etsit.upm.es domain. If you think I missed a site, you are welcome to add it yourself by clicking on the “Volunteer to contribute” link on the Google Teleco page. You can also add it to any page by including the code provided in the Add this search engine to your webpage link.

Take Google Teleco for a spin!

Now, how weird is this: Heatseek just launched. It is a browser for porn. Yes, exactly, an internet browser designed for the sole purpose of surfing for porn. Apparently it has a ‘panic button’, lets you create ‘playlists’, and encrypts everything you download.

It is Internet Explorer-based, and runs only on Windows. No safe porn surfing for Mac users.

From TechCrunch.

Google Mars is totally cool. Geeks rejoice!

Now I am waiting for the local Mars business search.

Diego has cast the “five weird habits” meme on me. The problem is, I don’t know which of my habits are strange. They all look perfectly normal to me. I’d better go and ask someone that can judge my habits objectively. Just give me a sec.

Ok, I’m back. This is what I got:

1. I ask ‘What?’ often even if I did understand what was said to me.
2. I am indecisive about parking spaces, so I take too long to choose a spot to park.
3. I scratch myself.
4. I don’ like The Beatles. (This is not a habit, though. And I consider it pure common sense, nothing strange about it.)
5. I get upset when people call me Russian, even though I look and sound Russian. (This is inaccurate, as I do not get upset. I merely get surprised. And the thing about me sounding Russian apparently only happens when I speak English, so it is not entirely true either.)

So there you have my five supposedly weird habits. Nothing strange about them, in my opinion. Now let’s see who should I damn with this curse… mmm… Ok, I would like to know five strange habits from the following people: Tatus, Helga and Fer.