CamelCamelCamel: “ This site allows you to track price history and has price drop and price watch alerts. Ever since I discovered it a few weeks ago, I’ve looked at it before I bought anything on Amazon just to make sure I was at or near a historical low. The price charts are intuitive, and allow you to see highs and lows for the past year, 6 months, 3 months, 1 month. You can set your tracker to include just Amazon.com, 3rd party sellers, or Used. The best part? It’s absolutely free.

If you need something immediately, there’s not a whole lot this can do for you. But, for example, I’ve had my eye on the MEElectronics M9P headphones. It’s currently $15. Hopping on CamelCamelCamel, I can see that historically, it has run at about $23 until early December, took a dive to $15, a dip all the way down to $10 earlier this month, then popped back up to $15. I don’t want to pay 50% more than what it was a few weeks ago, so I’ll set up the Tracker to notify me by e-mail when it gets back down to $10.

While I’ve found some bugs, such as hours-behind updating, and while I wish it incorporated shipping costs, it’s still allowed me to save cash. More than that, I learned a long time ago I get a great deal of satisfaction from knowing I got a great deal.

CamelCamelCamel give me the data I need. If used car salesmen could hand you data-rich, neutral third-party charts like this every time they told you you were getting a steal, it’d go a long way to negating that sleazy image.

Alas, we can only dream, as it only covers Amazon.com and Newegg, BestBuy, BackCountry and Zzounds.com through sister-sites.

— Doug Wong

CamelCamelCamel

http://camelcamelcamel.com/

Don’t forget to comment over at Cool Tools. And remember to submit a tool!

“

Microsoft switches off privacy for Hotmail users in war-torn and repressive states: “For reasons unknown, Microsoft has changed the settings on Hotmail to disable HTTPS for users in several countries including Bahrain, Morocco, Algeria, Syria, Sudan, Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Congo, Myanmar, Nigeria, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Hotmail users in those countries can now be readily spied upon by ISPs and their governments. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has some good perspective:

Microsoft debuted the always-use-HTTPS feature for Hotmail in December of 2010, in order to give users the option of always encrypting their webmail traffic and protecting their sensitive communications from malicious hackers using tools such as Firesheep, and hostile governments eavesdropping on journalists and activists. For Microsoft to take such an enormous step backwards– undermining the security of Hotmail users in countries where freedom of expression is under attack and secure communication is especially important–is deeply disturbing. We hope that this counterproductive and potentially dangerous move is merely an error that Microsoft will swiftly correct.

The good news is that the fix is very easy. Hotmail users in the affected countries can turn the always-use-HTTPS feature back on by changing the country in their profile to any of the countries in which this feature has not been disabled, such as the United States, Germany, France, Israel, or Turkey. Hotmail users who browse the web with Firefox may force the use of HTTPS by default–while using any Hotmail location setting–by installing the HTTPS Everywhere Firefox plug-in.

Microsoft Shuts off HTTPS in Hotmail for Over a Dozen Countries

“

Incredible video of Aurora Borealis: “

Norwegian landscape photographer Terje Sorgjerd spent one week around Kirkenes and the Norway-Russia border, in -25 Celsius temperature, to make this magnificent time-lapse video of the Aurora Borealis.

“

“Tsuchinoko” by Gaka (dir., rakudasan / music video): “

[Video Link]

Boing Boing reader Ayahiko, who is a member of a visual design team in Japan called rakudasan, writes in with word of this cool music video they created for a band called Gaka:

Gaka is a unique 16-piece band working in Japan and growing more and more popular. Now, as you know, we are in a critical situation here in Japan after the earthquake.

But we think that one thing we can do now is to get more positive attention for Japan and Japanese creativity. We need positive news to get energetic power, because we are showered with negative news.

This music video is called pantomime music video created with a help of
performer called maimuima. Theme of this song is man powered techno music, so we decided to use pantomime to make fun of man-powered expression.

We shot with a fixed camera and angle. Performer themselves’ movement change angles, speed and distance. Without using wire and CG, we succeeded shooting action scenes.

Rakudasan does VJ in an unique style called Surrealistic Synchronization. It is the style that we select unrelated movie with music, but this makes unique and unusual togetherness and atmosphere in clubs. Gaka’s jam music and pantomime are not related, but we combined them to create this music video. This is our style.

Credits:

Gaka (家) Official Website

Performer： maimuima　

Director： rakuda-san (らくださん)　

Photographer： Atsuhiro Shirahata

Special thanks to Yusuke Nomiyama

Editor’s note: As an aside, note that the video was created and published on March 3. The theme of running/escape evidenced in the first portion of the video was not a reaction to the March 11 disaster, though it does sort of strike a resonant chord now, in hindsight.

“

Reluctant witness refuses to admit he knows what a photocopier is: “In this transcript from an Ohio Supreme Court Case, a Cuyahoga County office worker refuses to answer a simple question: ‘has the Recorder’s office had photocopying machines?’ The worker mainains (for ten pages!) that he doesn’t know what a photocopying machine is, and can’t say whether his office has one:

Marburger: How about this: Have you ever heard the term ‘photocopier’ or ‘photocopy’ used in the Recorder’s office by anybody?

Patterson: Photocopy? I’m sure in the time I’ve been there someone has used the term.

Marburger: And have you ever heard them use it in referencing a particular device or machine within the Recorder’s office? By way of example, ‘can you photocopy that for me?’ That’s an example of office parlance.

Patterson: That particular terminology I’ve not witnessed.

Marburger: What was the context that you’ve heard the term ‘photocopy’ used in the Recorder’s office?

Patterson: I’m sure it’s been used. I didn’t say I remembered a specific instance.

Marburger: All right. But you have a general understanding that people have used the term ‘photocopy’ within the Recorder’s office in terms of something that could be done there; is that true?

Patterson: I’m sure it’s been used. I don’t remember a specific instance or how it was used. I’m sure it’s been used.

Marburger: And is it fair to say that it’s been used in terms of being able to copy one piece of paper onto another piece of paper using a machine? No? Not sure of that?

Identifying photocopy machine poses problem for Cuyahoga County official

(Thanks, Micah!)

“

David Ellis’s “True Value (paint fukette)” kinetic sound sculpture: “

[video link]

I really enjoyed the rhythmic weirdness of David Ellis’s ‘True Value (Paint Fukette),’ recently installed at Joshua Liner Gallery. Roberto Carlos Lange composed the percussive ‘score.’ David Ellis: PULSE (Thanks, Greg Long!)

“

Taimane Gardner plays Bach’s Toccata on ukulele: “

[Video Link] From her Circus Freak show, Taimane Gardner plays Bach’s Toccata on ukulele.

Previously: Taimane plays Eleanor Rigby on ukulele

“

US military launches Operation Sock Puppet, pays contractor $2.76m to generate phony Facebook, Twitter psyops accounts: “From the Your Tax Dollars at Work file, news that the US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) has awarded a $2.7 million contract to Ntrepid, a newly-formed Los Angeles-based startup, to create fake online ‘personae’ for the purpose of manipulating online conversations and spreading pro-American, pro-military propaganda. In other words, our government is building a multi-million-dollar sock puppet army for Twitter and Facebook.

The ‘online persona management service’ called for in the contract would permit one US serviceman or woman to manage up to 10 separate identities. Good thing this is nothing at all like what the Chinese government does, in attempting to control free speech online. Nothing at all. From The Guardian’s article today:

The Centcom contract stipulates that each fake online persona must have a convincing background, history and supporting details, and that up to 50 US-based controllers should be able to operate false identities from their workstations ‘without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries’.

Centcom spokesman Commander Bill Speaks said: ‘The technology supports classified blogging activities on foreign-language websites to enable Centcom to counter violent extremist and enemy propaganda outside the US.’

He said none of the interventions would be in English, as it would be unlawful to ‘address US audiences’ with such technology, and any English-language use of social media by Centcom was always clearly attributed. The languages in which the interventions are conducted include Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Pashto.

Once developed, the software could allow US service personnel, working around the clock in one location, to respond to emerging online conversations with any number of co-ordinated Facebook messages, blogposts, tweets, retweets, chatroom posts and other interventions. Details of the contract suggest this location would be MacDill air force base near Tampa, Florida, home of US Special Operations Command.

Centcom’s contract requires for each controller the provision of one ‘virtual private server’ located in the United States and others appearing to be outside the US to give the impression the fake personas are real people located in different parts of the world.

It also calls for ‘traffic mixing’, blending the persona controllers’ internet usage with the usage of people outside Centcom in a manner that must offer ‘excellent cover and powerful deniability’.

The multiple persona contract is thought to have been awarded as part of a programme called Operation Earnest Voice (OEV), which was first developed in Iraq as a psychological warfare weapon against the online presence of al-Qaida supporters and others ranged against coalition forces. Since then, OEV is reported to have expanded into a $200m programme and is thought to have been used against jihadists across Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East.

Read the whole article in the Guardian: ‘Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media‘

“

Sphere of tentacles: “

‘Octopussy’ is just one of several splendid spheroid sculptures from artist Nir Adhar. It’s full of tentatcly goodness!

Octopussy

(via JWZ)

“

Recompose: an actuated surface controlled by gestures: “

This remarkable gesture-controlled, actuated surface was created by Anthony DeVincenzi and others at MIT. Perhaps Mio I-zawa, creator of pulsating mechanical brains and cuddly elastic cells, could stretch a skinlike membrane over it to create a Oiuja board for David Cronenberg.

Recompose [MIT via Creative Applications]

“