Oblomovka

Locust Technologies are a UK group working on WiFi gargoyle tech – webcam, audio and more in luggable backpacks that can communicate with other nodes to form a portable mesh network. Great for armies of independent reporters. Or just armies, if you want to look at it like that.

This stuff has been long awaited; from NTK, 1999-01-15:

Nice to see Librettos being put to better use than as portable Quake-stations: last Monday, RODDY MANSFIELD and his associates from the video newszine UNDERCURRENTS barricaded themselves into Shell's London offices to protest the company's mistreatment of the citizens of the Niger Delta. Hours later they were forcibly expelled by police, who smashed through partition walls to arrest them. Despite Shell cutting off light and electricity, the team managed to issue press releases and photos via the 133Mhz Tosh, a cellular modem and digital camera. It's a hack that could have wider applications. As previous Undercurrents docs have shown, Police officers at protests have taken to arresting legitimate videojournalists. After being released without charge, their tapes are returned too late for mainstream news programmes to use. In some cases, the police actively erase footage. Now, hardware hacker that you are, you'll realise that a handheld videocam feeding into a digitiser, broadcasting via a line o' sight link (2500MHz? 1900MHz?) to a mobile archive centre would provide these impromptu censors - and us eager Max Headroom fans - with... well, must-see TV. Think you'd like to help develop such a monster? Give our operators a bleep. <a href="mailto:stef@spesh.com">mailto:stef@spesh.com</a> - unconnected with undercurrents, we hasten to add <a href="http://www.kemptown.org/shell/pictures.html">http://www.kemptown.org/shell/pictures.html</a> - but, you know, if we do come up with anything

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Nice to see Librettos being put to better use than as portable Quake-stations: last Monday, RODDY MANSFIELD and his associates from the video newszine UNDERCURRENTS barricaded themselves into Shell's London offices to protest the company's mistreatment of the citizens of the Niger Delta. Hours later they were forcibly expelled by police, who smashed through partition walls to arrest them. Despite Shell cutting off light and electricity, the team managed to issue press releases and photos via the 133Mhz Tosh, a cellular modem and digital camera. It's a hack that could have wider applications. As previous Undercurrents docs have shown, Police officers at protests have taken to arresting legitimate videojournalists. After being released without charge, their tapes are returned too late for mainstream news programmes to use. In some cases, the police actively erase footage. Now, hardware hacker that you are, you'll realise that a handheld videocam feeding into a digitiser, broadcasting via a line o' sight link (2500MHz? 1900MHz?) to a mobile archive centre would provide these impromptu censors - and us eager Max Headroom fans - with... well, must-see TV. Think you'd like to help develop such a monster? Give our operators a bleep. <a href="mailto:stef@spesh.com">mailto:stef@spesh.com</a>        - unconnected with undercurrents, we hasten to add <a href="http://www.kemptown.org/shell/pictures.html">http://www.kemptown.org/shell/pictures.html</a>       - but, you know, if we do come up with anything

2.5Ghz? So close…

Phil Wolff asked if I had an RSS feed for Oblomovka. Well, I guess I have now. I tried to work out what current practice was, and it seems to be “stuff the entire entry into the <description> tag, so that’s what I’m doing for now. 48K of RDF, though: I have a bad feeling about this.

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