Category Archives: technology

Phones for Fearless!

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Originally posted by UncleWeed over at the Fearless City site. The image was done by Kris Krug and posted on Flickr. This is our campaign announcement for the Phones for Fearless drive. And don’t forget about us after Christmas, while you’re all bonding with your shiny new iPhones! The campaign continues into early January.
And lookie! We’ve got WIDGETS!!!


Donate phones to Fearless to help Vancouver downtown eastside artists and residentsDonate your old mobile phones to help DTES artists share stories, and tap into life, jobs & family

How can you help?
  1. Your used mobile phones – preferably with video, camera, wi-fi
  2. Cash donations (* tax deductible) or new phone donations
  3. Conversation – tell your friends on your blog, twitter, etc. – post a badge
Action Plan:
First, Gather phones!
Collect all the unused mobile phones at your office and home – dig into your boxes of stuff, ask you friends! Digital cameras gratefully accepted too.

Next, Arrange Pick-up:

  • Let us know via Twitter: Fearless City, email: info (at) fearlessmedia (dot) ca, Phone/SMS: 604.644.4349, Voice mail: 604.682.3269 xt 8320
  • We’ll come by on purple Yahoo bikes on Tues. Dec. 23rd & 30th to collect your devices
  • We’ll take your photo, bring treats, and thank you publicly with a link

Or, Drop-off (after Tuesday, 23rd) at:

Want to be a drop-off point? Let us know.

Even send by Postal Mail to:
Fearless City
c/o DTES CAN
PO Box 88023
418 Main St
Vancouver, BC V6A 4A4

Notes:

  • Remove your chip, and clear your contacts before donating (all phones will be completely cleared before released).
  • Please include chargers and accessories – used digital cameras also welcome
  • Unusable phones will be donated to FreeGeek for reuse and recycling

Who is Fearless?

Fearless is a Vancouver Non-Profit group providing tools, resources, and cultural outreach to artists and residents in the improverished Downtown Eastside neighbourhood. Fearless is a project of the DTES Community Arts Network (CAN)
More:

Thank you for your support!
Post a graphic on your site with this handy code snippet (and thanks to Hummingbird604 for help with the very fiddly code):

<a href=”http://www.fearlesscity.ca&#8221; target=”_blank”><img src=”http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3194/3121575464_8a062db061_m_d.jpg&#8221; /></a><br />
<br />
<a href=”http://www.fearlesscity.ca&#8221; target=”_blank”>Donate used mobile phones to help DTES residents and artists at fearlesscity.ca</a>

If it doesn’t work, check your quotation marks. They have a tendency to go haywire when you paste things into your widgets.

Fearless City Mobile at the Heart of the City and mobile online!

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cross-posted from FearlessCity, just so you know what I’ve been doing with all my copious spare time recently. And a damn good thing, too, because with all the extra exposure that site is up and down like a toilet seat.

As most of our readers know, Fearless City Mobile was all over the Heart of the City Festival this past weekend, streaming live video interviews and interacting with people all over the Downtown Eastside, incorporating their texted questions into the interviews as they came in.

As some of you also know, interest in our coverage of the closing gala was so intense that it temporarily overwhelmed our servers and our site had to go for a little “time out.” While that’s flattering, it’s also a bit of a problem.

Fortunately, because the internet IS, in fact, a web and not just a series of straight lines, we were able to work around it.

I was at home on Twitter, bouncing between the FearlessCity account and my own (because I have no life) and Irwin was in Ottawa and on Facebook when the site went down.

Irwin had used his phone to take a video of OUR streaming videos on his laptop, and he posted it to Facebook and put that news out on his Twitter stream.

I saw that and immediately emailed him, telling him to put it on YouTube (yes, I know the quality sucks, but at least YouTube is wide open to the public, whereas Facebook is restricted). He did, and once it was posted I put the news out on the Fearless City Twitter stream. Then I signed out, signed into my raincoaster Twitter stream, and re-tweeted it (don’t laugh, that’s what it’s called!) and Irwin put the news out on his stream as well. That makes a total of about 400 people who got the news within a half-hour of the whole thing happening.

The video became, if memory serves, the 68th most viewed Canadian video in the Arts & Activism category, but it only has two comments, so what are you waiting for?

And here it is:

Three scenes captured with Nokia N77 mobile devices streaming to the Mobile Muse 3 platform and projected on a live screen at the Closing Gala of the Heart of the City Festival in the Downtown Eastside. Also streamed to http://live.fearlessmedia.ca/ and archived on fearlesscity.ca.
At the live screen people were able to send txt msgs to the 3 interviewed subjects.
(The audio on this video switches between all three channels.)
Nov 9, 2008

Mobile Swarm by Fearless City: the transcript

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Fearless City LogoMobile SWARM.

So.

So, the idea is: SWARM is a night when a large group of artist-run Vancouver galleries cooperate for once and have openings and parties on the same night, featuring local artists. Pictures on Flickr here.

So. Here in Zone Two, otherwise known as the Downtown EastSide, we had 13 galleries participating, and the Fearless City project sent teams out to each of the galleries to capture people’s reactions to the art and post them via SMS to a Twitter clone called SIFT which civilians can think of as just a place where all the text messages got filed one after the others.

You text your reactions to art: simple.

Oh yeah, and we had a repurposed shopping cart roving the streets packed to the gills with high-tech batteries, powering in order of importance a laptop which was managing the anarchy insofar as it could be managed AND a 48″ screen on which were displayed all of the messages as they came in unfiltered and in real time or as real as text messaging can get.

For realz.

The # codes are codes for which gallery the message originated from. From which the message originated.

Whatever.

Will link these up later if I’m not too lazy.

  • #ac = access gallery
  • #as = artspeak
  • #cw = cineworks although I don’t think anyone got there, as it is nowhere near the DTES actually. Perhaps they were only there in class solidarity
  • #cc = clackclack empire
  • #gg = gallery gachet
  • # hp = helen pitt gallery
  • # iu = interurban gallery
  • #lg = les gallery
  • #na = 221a (one of my team’s)
  • # og = orr gallery
  • # pg = plank gallery (one of my team’s)
  • #sg = shudder gallery (one of my team’s)
  • #uv = UVic 2nd Year (nobody went there, just too far away practically in Hastings Sunrise.

And now, to the transcript in REVERSE chronological order, as I am too lazy to flip this all around. And this is what it looked like, entirely unfiltered.

#as Reagan, please!
— Fri, 09/05/2008 – 23:42 by Anonymous
#

Horse pussy is much tighter than female
— Fri, 09/05/2008 – 23:35 by Anonymous
#

#pg muse needs more interesting projects. Andrew salgado rocks.
— Fri, 09/05/2008 – 23:30 by Anonymous
#

Wheres the graveyard party at sorry!
— Fri, 09/05/2008 – 23:16 by Anonymous
#

You are the best – don’t stop ‘011
— Fri, 09/05/2008 – 23:10 by Anonymous
#

I lub you artists- keep doing your thang! DTES Forever – masala mario
— Fri, 09/05/2008 – 23:06 by Anonymous
#

Oh yea
— Fri, 09/05/2008 – 23:04 by Anonymous
#

Lotussss
— Fri, 09/05/2008 – 23:03 by Anonymous
#

Where is the party at ??
— Fri, 09/05/2008 – 23:03 by Anonymous
#

I have never felt so embowered
— Fri, 09/05/2008 – 23:03 by Anonymous
#

Hey did I’d keel
— Fri, 09/05/2008 – 23:03 by Anonymous
#

Swarmmmmmmmmmm
— Fri, 09/05/2008 – 23:03 by Anonymous
#

This is addictive!!!!
— Fri, 09/05/2008 – 23:02 by Anonymous
#

Mobile swarmin till the morn
— Fri, 09/05/2008 – 23:01 by Anonymous
#

I came, i saw, then i came again.
— Fri, 09/05/2008 – 23:00 by Anonymous
#
— Fri, 09/05/2008 – 23:00 by Anonymous
#

#gg just let it out. Whatever that means to you.
— Fri, 09/05/2008 – 23:00 by Anonymous
#

I love my thumbs!!!!!
— Fri, 09/05/2008 – 22:56 by Anonymous
#

Best thing I’ve seen tonight!!!
— Fri, 09/05/2008 – 22:56 by Anonymous
#

Big sad faces and empty spaces….what does that say about us?
— Fri, 09/05/2008 – 22:56 by Anonymous
#

#as what’s happening at the after party?
— Fri, 09/05/2008 – 22:55 by Anonymous
#

J Dilla never sounded better
— Fri, 09/05/2008 – 22:48 by Anonymous
#

Yay gachet!
— Fri, 09/05/2008 – 22:47 by Anonymous
#

You are in the middle of the opus, right now.
— Fri, 09/05/2008 – 22:46 by Anonymous
#

#gg We are the barbarians and our love for art and culture can’t hide that
— Fri, 09/05/2008 – 22:44 by Anonymous
#

#iu why should i care?
— Fri, 09/05/2008 – 22:41 by Anonymous
#

Ac
— Fri, 09/05/2008 – 22:39 by Anonymous
#

#gg I am standing right behind u
— Fri, 09/05/2008 – 22:34 by Anonymous
#
Continue reading →

Mobile SWARM: Live Art Project Tonight

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Mobile SWARM at Fearless CityFearless City Logo

Mobile SWARM is tonight. Since the backstage section of the project started thirty seconds ago, I don’t really have time to explain. The project itself starts at 7pm Pacific Time and goes till 10. You can see it live here:

Mobile Swarm

And if any of you technical genii know how to hook that up to a Prologue themed blog on an independent install using WordPress technology, or push it to a blog at Fearless City via RSS or something (that one’s Drupal), or hook it up with a Twitter feed (either mine or a brand new one) please put the details in the comments here.

August Blogging Courses

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Blog!

Blogging for Beginners: four hours, start from scratch and learn to post text, video, audio, and images. Basic copyright and blog etiquette, intro to sidebar widgets, categories, custom headers and design, and what on Earth to put IN the blog. Also where to find technical help.
This one is running August 2nd, ie this Saturday, 10-2, $150 pre-registered, and only eight four three spaces left. I’ll be running it again on the 23rd.

To register, please pre-pay via the Paypal button in the top right-hand corner of the blog. Paypal will give you a receipt and I will email you one as well. If you are registering for the August 2nd course, please email bloggingclasses AT gmail DOT com in advance to make sure the class is not sold out.

Pimp My Blog is practical tips and tools for increasing your readership and influence, and applies to any blogging platform (with the exception of Tumblr, which is really only good for talking to the voices inside your head in my opinion). It includes a very basic intro to social media like Facebook and Myspace for promotion. I’ll be teaching this one on Saturday, August 9th. This is a $150 course, also from 10-2. There are only eight places in each session.

Last: Vacation Blogging (I should have done this in June!). Covers what to do with all those photos and all those memories to keep them fresh forever. It’s basically Blogging for Beginners, with added talk about mobile posting and internet cafes and photoblogging issues. FYI it’s also $150, and runs Saturday, August 16th. Six spaces, because this is going to be more personal.