I just gathered some interesting news from Mister Wong:

Zattoo is a RIA [Uhm, just call it a program] that let’s you watch TV on your Compu without extra hardware [PCI tv-card] or a subscription to a commercial service. Zattoo is currently focussed on European channels and licensed content, and it’s completely free.

I was disappointed when I realized that I can’ watch BBC2 or Canal+, because my IP address is recognised as being German, and legal regulations prevent us to watch programs we probably haven’t payed broadcasting fees for. Maybe you can bypass this limitation using an Open Proxy Service, see the link below.

On the other hand, it’s just as simple as switching on the Telly.

Zatto is based on peer-to-peer technology, just like Hobnox, Pando, Joost: or Miro. In a Peer-to-Peer TV system, each user is simultaneously downloading the program to watch it, but also uploading the video stream to other users. This way, all users contribute to the overall bandwidth of the service. The streams are usually slightly delayed to the original sources. But the video quality is better if there are more users, which makes powerful servers farms needless.

Zattoo itself provides very smooth streaming quality and might be considered the service experts were waiting for - due to it’s simplicity.

Check the links for more information:

• Open proxy Services
• Quick summary on popular TV streaming services on ReadWriteWeb
• Interviewing zattoo.com’s co-founders

Zattoo delivers live TV legally, just like a cable network. Presently Zattoo doesn’t create its own channel from archival contents, nor do we yet carry user-generated content. Instead, we work with broadcasters to re-distribute their content simultaneous, unaltered, and unabridged. Compared to Joost, we provide live TV viewing instead of archival content delivered on-demand.

Sugih Jamin, Chairman and Co-founder of Zattoo

Standing in one of the moss and dirt covered tunnels in Leeds, England, Paul Curtis, “Moose” as he calls himself, saw marks on the wall where the shoulders of unsteady drunks and the fingertips of curious children had exposed the shiny white tile. And with only a pair of socks as his tool, reverse graffiti was born.
No paint. No defacing. Moose makes his art by cleaning; removing the ills of dirt and pollution by de-defacing- wiping away dirt into large type and shapes, leaving nothing behind but a beautiful work of “green art.”

This is what it is:

This is how it’s done:

• The Projects Website is here: reversegraffiti.com
• via Martin Willms

Melt!, the Indie & Electro Festival organised by Intro Magazine, now uses widget marketing, just like Daft Punk did in October last year. Widget Marketing might come in disguise of a microsite that is embeddable by a simple HTML code snippet.

The Melt! widget looks like that:

Cool stuff.

• Short definition of widget marketing
• Blog me widgets are powered by french multimedia agency Ibernatus

Why is it so effective and widespread within the new web landscape?
1. This form of viral marketing provides an extremely good ROI based on the resources available. Your embedders become your marketing team.
2. Widgets may take time and manpower to develop, but the deployment and embedding cost nothing.

Boy Friends 010 - Donkey Kong from Team Genius on Vimeo.

via Webmove.org

The May 2008 issue of german PAGE magazin focussed on interactive information design. It’s the cover story, therefore the topic gets highlighted quite accurate.
The bottom line is: A change in the way we perceive information is happening right now, and the reason is web. I do emphasize this: With the help of accessible, structured databases and visualizing tools like Actionscript and Processing, there is more to charts then a bar graph.

Never before there was so much data to absorb and manage as it is today. Jens Franke talks about a generation of fresh designers who encounter the flood of information and the rising urge for knowlegde, using new, interactive media.

A few cool links from this essay:

British History Timeline The history of Britain broken down into bite-size chunks. Flash tool by which you can browse historical events or take a guided tour on topics such as Slavery or Technology.	Marumushis Newsmap Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator.
Relation Browser: Visualization Toolbox for creating your own visual context system - based on a planetary design, ergo: circular shaped icons. This geographical demo was created in order to demonstrate the visualizations’s capabilities by displaying the CIA world factbook information about countries, continents and oceans.	Well-formed data | Elastic lists Example of the elastic list principle for browsing multi-facetted data structures, based on a Noble prize winners dataset.Elastic lists enhance traditional facet browsing approaches by visualizing relative proportions of metadata values by size and by brightness.

Unfortunately the essay is not yet available online.
You have to wait or order the printed issue here: PAGE magazine
The .PDF for download will be available around July 2008.