September 3, 2018

Connected Wi-Fi birdhouses attract singing birds

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 3:50 pm

Berlin-based Dutch artist Albert Raven has created a smart birdhouse that is connected to the entire world by Wi-Fi. An Internet Of Things (IoT) artwork, the Birdhouse needs to be installed indoors, and an algorithm determines which house the bird will visit. You’ll never see the bird, but you will hear it.

Raven (fitting name) believes IoT is an “Internet without people, an experimental playing field where time and space come together as never before”. There are currently 26 of his birdhouses in locations around the world, and surely more to come. The Birdhouse is perfect for a house without house pets or for anyone who thinks the idea behind the artwork is cool. A birdhouse costs 395 euro or you can support the project by buying bird seed or a T-shirt from the artist.

Find out more about the Birdhouse here:

(Link: bright.nl, Photo of Iago Sparrow by Hans Zwitzer, some rights reserved)

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August 19, 2014

Protesting free Wi-Fi that doesn’t even work

Filed under: Sports,Technology by Orangemaster @ 3:04 pm

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With a banner that probably made international news because it featured the word ‘fuck’ on it and was written in English, PSV Eindhoven supporters were recently sporting a banner at a game that read “Fuck Wi-Fi, support the team”.

After paying good money to attend a football game, the last thing many fans would be caught doing is staring at their mobile phones. The thing is, free Wi-Fi is great because you can take pictures and post them to social media about all the fun you’re having. You can also throw the score up on Twitter and check if the media has more news on the player they just carried off the field than you would get at the stadium.

Omroep Brabant has claimed that the Wi-Fi connection is crap, which is not good advertising for a tech region made famous by brands like Philips and ASML.

However, many of us in the Netherlands can just turn on 4G and ride the interwebs. Banning something that is free and doesn’t even work seems like a waste of time, but we do get the point that it’s about joining in and not being a douche with your phone.

(Link: www.omroepbrabant.nl, Photo of Football by Bramus, some rights reserved)

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July 26, 2014

Dutch Rail may not block porn on free Wi-Fi in trains

Filed under: Technology by Branko Collin @ 5:27 pm

free-wifi-on-trainTech mag PCM has discovered that Dutch Rail is blocking certain porn sites on their free Wi-Fi network on the train.

The Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (formerly OPTA), which polices Internet access providers, has confirmed that blocking porn on the train is illegal. Dutch Rail appeared unaware what exactly it was they’re blocking: “We’ve taken over the system from T-Mobile, the company that managed our network until March 2014. At the time of the transition they determined for us what filters were needed to keep the network functioning smoothly.” Dutch Rail promised yesterday that it will look into the situation.

As we wrote earlier, Dutch Rail is allowed to block certain services to keep their network running smoothly. PCM points out that the way the train company does this for sites like YouTube is by only blocking the videos, but you can still view the comments. Porn sites however have been blocked entirely, PCM writes. Sites such as TorrentFreak have been blocked as well. Contrary to what the name suggests, TorrentFreak only offers written news articles.

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January 1, 2014

Dutch railways leans on net neutrality law to block sites

Filed under: IT,Online by Orangemaster @ 8:00 am

The Dutch Authority for Consumers & Markets has approved Dutch railways’ move to block YouTube and Spotify which use a lot of bandwidth in order to provide better quality Wi-Fi in some of their trains. Even though the Wi-Fi is free, the net neutrality law force ISPs and telecom operators to ensure access to all types of content, services or applications available on the network.

Much in the same way as Christian Internet access providers let clients filter the Internet to respect religious beliefs, the Dutch railways has blocked certain ‘data-heavy sites’ to avoid Wi-Fi congestion in trains. As long as the blocking is not selective, it is allowed, although one could easily argue that it is selective, as blocking YouTube and Spotify but leaving out Daily Motion and Deezer is indeed making a selection.

A lot of people in the Netherlands already use Internet mobile on their phones and computers and don’t really need the free service, the service is quite slow and probably won’t improve dramatically, and when something is free, many people don’t expect much of it anyways. However, watchdogs are worried about telecoms like T-Mobile who run the Wi-Fi in trains trying getting around the law to suit its purposes. After all, it’s companies like them who tried to up their prices when they started losing major ground to Skype and WhatsApp, and led to pushing through net neutrality laws in the first place.

The Netherlands made international headlines after being the second country in the world and the first European country to embrace net neutrality. The idea of companies chipping away at it will surely be watched very closely.

(Links: www.nieuws.nl, webwereld.nl, www.acm.nl)

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