A new media law has been proposed in Venezuela which several people in Venezuela see as aimed at having the media self-restrain from publishing "harmful" materials, as they could face 6 months to 4 years of imprisonment for it. Interestingly enough a leftist parliament member mentioned that "this new law corresponds to the era of Mussolini, Pinoche, Hitler and other Argentinian military, but never to our revolutionary process" (link in Spanish)

Also yesterday (Saturday August 1st) the government has taken 34 radio stations off the air (more at El Universal), which based on comments I received seemed to be a targeted attack to the stations that re-transmitted several opinion programs criticized before by the government as opposition centric. Nevertheless the argument presented is that these stations did not manage to submit a necessary paperwork on time. El Universal (link in Spanish) mentions that out of the 656 existing AM and FM ration stations, 360 are at risk of being closed, that's a whooping 55%.

Chavez insists that the radio stations were not closed but "recovered" (link in Spanish) and the Minister in charge of doing this said that "almost all of these circuits had to do with illegal actions that allowed a family or group to take ownership of 10 and even 15 stations" (link also in Spanish).

Interestingly enough the Venezuelan community took twitter by assault and vented their opinions using the #FreeMediaVe hashtag which apparently made it to the top 10 topics in twitter and made the "Bolivarian News Agency" post an information accusing opposition tweeters of this with an article titled "Ultra-right media campaign has repercussions on social networks in Internet" (link in Spanish).

I am intrigued at how twitter with its short posting has played a central role lately in allowing communities to share their opinions and views, thus allowing the global community to get a glimpse of what is happening on the ground of the events.

Labels: news, Venezuela

Microsoft has announced a motion controller which reconigses your hand gestures, your facial expressions and your tone of voice, and you can use it all to control the games.�It might be a technology in its infancy and it will take some time for it to be ready for mass usage, nevertheless I think it's an amazing step forward and one that will open many opportunities in the near future.

Labels: game, news, technology

We?re used to the future turning out differently than we expected; it happens all the time. When the past turns out differently, though, it can get really upsetting, and because people don?t like that kind of upset, we?re at risk of finding new reasons to believe false things, rather than revising our sense of what actually happened. (The Failure of #amazonfail)

On a related note, the tag options for these nomadlife posts are out of control. I vote for jesse to summarize them with thrice an option, in portanol.

Labels: news

I am sure that there will be thousands of images going around from yesterday's historical day, but here are some that I have found to be very interesting:

• Geoeye satellite took an aerial picture of it and it is definitely worth a look. Follow the link and you can even download the high resolution from it
• Cnet has a couple of zoomed images from the original. It's make me wonder as these are pictures taken 423 miles up in the sky by a satellite traveling at 17,000 miles per hour
• The New York Times as a zoomable photo showing the president addressing the crowd. Just hover over the crowd and you will get some help identifying the attendees.
• CNN has 360-degree panorama with the stand before the ceremony
• CNN-Microsoft put together a commemorative 3D portrait of the presidential inauguration using Microsoft's Photosynth Technology and it should be a really interesting view (I have not seen it yet as I cannot install it at work), via PCWorld
• Reuters has put together an Audio Slideshow with the Best of the inauguration and Obama's speech

Enjoy them and share any other good and interesting ones you find.

Labels: news, photography, politics

BBC Reports "An Australian woman has appeared in court in Adelaide charged with murdering her husband by setting fire to his penis." She apparently only wanted to burn his "member" so that it could belong only to her. So she doused her husband, covered "it" in flamable liquid and set it on fire; the poor guy jumped out, knocked out the bottle and died from the burns.

I thought that after Lorena Bobbitt these kind of incidents would be avoided by choosing carefully your partner, or avoiding cheating; but then again people never learn right?

Let's predict (just for fun) that Chastity Belts will become fashion once more, but this time for males and for protection. Anyone willing to store a small fire stinguisher close your personal parts? It might come handy

Labels: news

Labels: news

"UK tourist visas are often denied to would-be visitors because they "plan a holiday for no particular purpose other than sightseeing", a report says.

Others were turned down because they had never previously taken any foreign travel or could not speak English. The "ridiculous reasons" for rejecting visas were set out in a report by the independent monitor of UK visas.

Linda Costelloe Baker's report said that despite such flaws there had been "significant improvement in quality." But she said entry clearance officers could use "some ridiculous reasons when refusing visa for tourist visits". She said a common reason for refusal was "you wish to go to the UK for a holiday. You have never previously undertaken any foreign travel before and I can see little reason for this trip". (...)" (BBC News)

More here

Labels: news, Travel, WTF

The son of an immigrant is now the President of France.

Labels: news

Bumped into this by chance and since then couldn't stop reading. Journalism of very high quality and to the point. May be you like it too?

>> http://www.project-syndicate.org/ <<

Project Syndicate is an international association of quality newspapers devoted to:

• bringing distinguished voices from across the world to local audiences everywhere;
• strengthening the independence of printed media in transition and developing countries;
• upgrading their journalistic, editorial, and business capacities.

(nope, I'm not working for those guys.. ;))

Enjoy!

Labels: news