Last week I got a notice from my Rogers, my internet service provider, informing me of changes they’re making to “better serve” my online needs. The big change, of course, is putting a cap on my “usage allowance,” which means they can charge me more for my internet use, depending on how much I download. Bell is also limiting the amount of content Sympatico subscribers can download.

This isn’t just a corporate ploy to get people to pay more for their connections – this is part of a disturbing move by ISPs to change the way the internet works. What we have come to know and depend on as a space for the seemingly-free flow of information, connecting people around the world, is beginning to reflect the stronghold media conglomerates have around other means of communication, including newspapers and broadcasting, which means the kind of content we can access online, just like the kind of content we can access from the mainstream media, will be limited.

(Of course, the internet is not a perfect place: access is limited to those who can afford it, and the most highly-trafficked sites are still those owned by bottom-line driven major corporations. Still, the potential the internet holds for democratizing communication is critical).

This latest move is part of the struggle over neutrality, which has become a big issue for media activists in the United States.

Here in Canada, the Campaign for Democratic Media is leading the charge in trying to stop what they call “the throttling of the Internet and the strangling of our choice.” They argue that internet service providers have the potential to fundamentally change how we are able to use the internet if their efforts at limiting downloads aren’t stopped.

As the Campaign writes in a statement:

Using the… ‘traffic shaping’ principle, the companies can steer subscribers to their own content, or content produced by affiliated companies, and away from that offered by competitors — including the public broadcaster. For example, some Internet users who recently tried to download CBC’s The Next Greatest Prime Minister on Bittorrent were told it would take hours to do so.

Apart from public broadcasters, this could one day have serious implications for alternative and independent media, such as this blog you’re reading.

You can get involved in the campaign here or join the Facebook group here. Also, check out this insightful article on the issue.

…or putting in a little extra.

We all know now that just about any image of a woman on a poster, ad, billboard, or album cover has been (heavily) manipulated. Smoothed and cloned and lifted and trimmed.

But it’s refreshing to know it in a tangible “look at that right there” way as opposed to a more hand-wavy ephemeral way.

To that end, I give you Photoshop Disasters.

It’s a site dedicated to posting and mocking any and all public Photoshop screw-ups. But there are so many reworked images of women to choose from that they currently make up the bulk of the posts. Women remade in the texture of rubber, moded to look like anime, or, more comically, given extra hands:

“Sir Lancelot gazed fondly into the soft blue pools of Lady Guinevere’s eyes and gently held her mutant third hand. Wait, what?”

Yes, this is my third post regarding a movie starring Ellen Page, but stay with me on this.

The Tracey Fragments has a fairly simple premise: take a fifteen-year-old girl who’s tormented at school, shackled with an ineffectual psychiatrist, and living with a family barely held together with emotional duct tape. Then rip the tape off and see what happens. One day, Tracey’s kid brother goes missing, and like all teenagers teetering on the brink of emotional collapse, she takes the one action that makes sense: she runs away from home and towards Winnipeg in the hopes that she’ll find her brother. From that basic foundation, McDonald spins a complex multi-tracked narrative, told largely through an almost-literal kaleidoscope of images that serves as the film’s calling card. Nearly every scene in the film consists of multiple video images, arranged and re-arranged in often-hasty compositions designed to put the viewer inside Tracey’s cluttered, mile-a-minute mind.

(more inside…)

Hey team — inaugural Wired Wednesday post. w00t!

And I’m kicking it off with the hugely sexy topic of… hi-def optical disc formats!

No, come on, it’s gonna be good. I know, I should do all the shiny this week — when robots fall and Rock Band and Google 411 in Canada. And we’ll get there, I promise.

For this week though, we’re going practical. Because there’s nothing more Shameless than walking into a tech store and knowing your stuff.

I figured that if someone reasonably geeky, like myself, used to wonder WTF was the difference between Blu-ray and DVD and HD DVD, someone else was probably wondering too (though possibly with less profanity). And in the interests of spreading tech-savvyness amongst teh ladehs, I’ve written up below the cliffs notes to hi-def discs. What they are. What battle Blu-ray just “won”. And what to do with all your DVDs (<-keep them). Etc.

But first something from xkcd that has absolutely nothing to do with that:

Ahem, so, without further distractions: WTF is Blu-ray

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Our very own Nicole Cohen is quoted over at Utne in a Science and Technology blog piece titled “Beauty and The Blogs:”

“Access to information and tech knowledge carries with it great political, economic and social weight,” Cohen writes. “If women are left out of the discourse about information technology and new media, you can bet we’re left out of the production and sharing of social and economic power, too.”

Read the whole article here.

During Women’s History Month, help make women’s voices heard.

WVWV is honoring those women that have utilized the internet to amplify their voices. Nominate your favorite blogger by March 21, then check back to vote for your favorite among our top 10 women bloggers.

Remember to visit WVWV.org later in the month to vote for your favorite in the first round.

The other day I noticed that Shameless’ “Geek Chic” category is sadly underrepresented. Tech is important to me. I <3 tech. Poor little tech, not getting the love.

Sometimes the line is blurry between the personal interests of one young feminist (<-me), and what might be interesting to young feminists everywhere.

But when you get a great lead on some new (or overlooked) tech hawtness, one of the first things you do is share it with all your geeky buddies. So that's what I'm going to start doing here, extended circle of geeky buddies: expect some more regular excited blathering from me about videogames, operating systems, gizmos, hacks, all the things a growing tech-savvy girl needs.

Playing catch-up, here are few bits and pieces I owe you, Shameless ladies:

Nokia’s Morph nanotechnology concept ad

PicLens

PicLens is a swishy new picture viewing plug-in for Windows or Mac (and for just about any browser, though you’re all using Firefox right?)

Check out the preview. Shiny.

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I’m not sure how many of you own or play on an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3, but if you’re a rabid console gamer you’ve probably heard of Assassin’s Creed. For everyone else, here’s the scoop: Assassin’s Creed is a video game that has you playing a medieval assassin tasked with eliminating nine people associated with the Crusades. Assassin’s Creed is one of the biggest games this holiday season, with a big marketing push from publisher Ubisoft following months of hype. The game is projected to sell over a million copies in the next two months, an amazing feat considering only eleven Xbox 360 games have ever sold more than a million copies.

So why should you care if you’re not into video games? Well, if you’re a Shameless reader, you probably care about how women are faring in traditionally male-dominated industries, and guess what? The producer of Assassin’s Creed is Jade Raymond, a woman. Female game developers are nothing new; a lot of classics were conceived and designed by women. But Raymond’s profile is far higher than any woman before her, mainly because she’s been the public face of the game at a time when the video game audience is larger than ever before. This is both a blessing and a curse; while Raymond is easily the most visible woman in game development today, there’s a suspicion that Raymond’s been asked to promote the game so much because, well, look:

Jade Raymond, producer of Assassin’s Creed.

Which brings me to the utterly bizarre way video game audiences—especially younger male gamers—handle attractive women playing and developing video games. Everyone knows the stereotype of the nerd gamer with no social skills who quakes in fear of women. The truth, however, is just a bit creepier. Something about the intersection of “hot women” and “plays video games” creates in some gamers a strange emotional supernova that produces equal parts nerdish adoration, wanton sexual desire, and hateful bile.

(more inside…)

Do Shakira’s hips lie? I’m confused.

A Friday Funny (though this could also fall under the category of a Friday Cry-y): Women sway their hips the most when they’re least fertile, according to Queen’s University study.

Scientists at Queen’s are apparently blowing the minds of current zoology, claiming that women, contrary to a popular belief, make themselves less, not more, attractive when they’re “fertile.”

The study got 40 women (my goodness! 40 whole women!!) to wear clothes with special markers on them so that computers could track their movements, and then asked the women to walk up and down in a 6-metre area.

I keep on trying to come up with a clever critique of this study, but honestly I’m speechless. How and who came up with the idea for this study? Why is the degree of swayiness of my hips considered important? What is humanity supposed to do with this breakthrough information? And when are they gonna do a study on the boys, so I know when my man is most virile? Vomit!!