90 Ans Après la Grande Guerre
Published on 20 November 2008

The popular French news site LeMonde.fr published a phenomenal collection of news and multimedia related to World War I at the start of this month in remembrance of the 90th anniversary of the Great War. The édition spéciale, which corresponds to a print publication in France, compiles stories, photographs, audio and video associated with the war nearly a century ago.

One such video is a shot documentary highlighting the works of Jacques Grison who, as a child, played in the countryside of Verdun without even realizing that 300,000 men died there in 1916. Now a photographer, Grison has documented the landscape of Verdun, capturing a world that looks as if the war ended only days ago. Even if you don't understand a single word of Français, the six minute long video is worth watching.

Flickr Find: The Destruction of Nagasaki
Published on 13 November 2008

Though most Americans learn about the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in standard history classes, very few actually seem to realize the significance of this event. Many dark moments in history are preserved and remembered by photographs of destruction and despair, but very few images of the atomic bomb's sheer power exist. As stated in this article on Design Observer, the U.S. Government imposed a strict code of censorship with regards to Japan's destruction just over a month after their surrender. This was obviously put in place to lessen the realization of America's pure destructive power, and to lessen the human side of the conflict. Fortunately, some photographs survived.

Flickr user afigallo posted a comment on the previously aforementioned article, bringing to light a series of photographs taken by the user's grandfather just after the bomb dropped. These photographs, found in this Flickr set, were "smuggled" via shoe boxes, as the images were not meant to be leaked at the time. And thanks to Flickr's services decades later, these photographs can be shown to the world.

Nagasaki, victim of the world's second atomic bomb attack, was destroyed on August 9, 1945 at 11:02am. The American strike resulted in 73,884 fatalities, as well as another 74,909 injured and several hundred thousand diseased and dying as a result of radiation. Another 140,000 were killed in the attack on Hiroshima. The vast majority of these deaths were civilian casualties, as well as Allied POWs, Korean and Chinese laborers, students, and Japanese American citizens. Though defenders of the attack claim that the death toll of the war would have been much higher had an invasion been planned, opponents consider this claim illogical and the attack inherently immoral.

The Big Picture: Storm-battered Yemen
Published on 11 November 2008

Silt and mud cover the land around damaged homes following two days of storms in the eastern Yemeni province of Hadramaut on October 25, 2008. (KHALED FAZAA/AFP/Getty Images)

The Big Picture, by far the best blog for photojournalism geeks, posted some photographs of the recent flooding in the country of Yemen. In case you don't know, the Republic of Yemen (الجمهورية اليمنية) is an Arab country located on the south-west corner of the Arabian Peninsula. The floods started on October 23rd, and were a result of the 2008 Yemen Cyclone, aka Deep Depression ARB 02/2008. At least 1,700 homes were reported destroyed, along with 180 deaths and over $1 billion USD in damages.

The ancient city of Shibam is seen in this aerial photograph in the southeastern Yemeni province of Hadramaut, October 28, 2008. (REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah)

The mystical city photographed here is the ancient city of Shibam (شبام‎), famous for its mud brick tower houses which are between 5 and 11 stories high. Known as the "Manhattan of the desert," the town was threatened by the major flooding, though it remains largely intact with the exception of a few houses which unfortunately toppled over.

Photographs courtesy of The Big Picture, posted without commercial intent.

Free Calls via WiFi on Nokia Phones
Published on 8 November 2008

If you own a Nokia S60 based cell phone with built-in WiFi (such as the N95, E71, etc), you may be able to get free worldwide calling to/from any US number just by connecting to a wireless hotspot. This service works by combining the phone number forwarding and management service GrandCentral with the SIP internet telephone service Gizmo5. It is extremely simple to set up, though there are a few issues upfront.

First, GrandCentral seems to have stopped giving out invites for their service. Because it is currently in beta, there's no telling when signups will be available again. For now, I'd recommend reserving a number on their main page. If you already have a GrandCentral account from a random forgotten night when you came across an invite, signed up, told yourself you would use the number as your professional work line, then almost entirely forgot about it, you're set.

Second, the settings on compatible Nokia phones may not be exactly the same. What worked for me on my E71 will probably work on similar phones, but the process might not be identical. There is a definite degree of flexibility in this tutorial.

That being said, here is how you go about setting up all these services:

1) Sign up for a GrandCentral (if possible) and Gizmo5 account. The Gizmo5 sign up procedure is fairly self explanatory. After you create an account, you'll be presented with your SIP number. Though it may look like a normal phone number, "real" phones cannot actually call it. Keep this number handy, as you'll use it in the next step.

2) Sign in to GrandCentral, go to the "Settings" tab, then click on "Add/Edit Number" in the Phones category. In the drop-down menu, select "Gizmo" as the phone type, then input your SIP number from the previous step in the applicable box. Next, name this phone, and press save. Finally, make sure the check box for "All Callers" is selected under your newly added Gizmo phone.

3) Now that you've linked your GrandCentral number to your Gizmo5 account, the next step is to set up Gizmo on your Nokia phone. Navigate to the "Connectivity" folder on your S60 device, and select "Internet tel." The screenshots below show the process on my old N95. Here's where things may be inconsistent. On my E71, the "Discovering services" dialogue would lead to an icon directly for setting up a Gizmo Project number. From there, you simply enter your account information, select whether or not you want it to use network data, and you're set. On my N95, however, this icon never appeared. It might have been a mere fluke, as I see no reason as to why this handy setup application wouldn't appear on all compatible phones. If this is the case, the manual instructions posted here should suffice. (Note: In the manual instructions, all the smilies are actually :p, as in "3.Proxy Server: sip:proxy01.sipphone.com")

4) Once Gizmo is successfully configured on your device, you can now receive any call dialed to your GrandCentral number absolutely free. If you want to dial out of your phone to US numbers for free, this requires a little more work.

One of the great features of GrandCentral is its built in address book. Within this address book, you can click on a "Call" button next to a contact, which will make GrandCentral call your phone (in this case, your Gizmo number), then it will call the contact, connecting the two to make a call. First, I would suggest adding important phone numbers through GrandCentral's web interface. All you do is go to the "Address Book" tab, then click on the "Add" button under "Add a Contact."

Once your contacts are added, you can access this address book through a mobile interface on your phone. I would suggest bookmarking "http://grandcentral.com/mobile/contacts" in your phone's browser bookmarks. Once you sign in on the mobile site and go to the "Contact" section, you can click on a contact and then click on the "Call" link. This duplicates the same function as the full site's call button, and GrandCentral will call your SIP number, connecting the call.

Because Nokia allows your Gizmo number to be integrated into the device as if it were any normal number, the call from GrandCentral will come in like a regular call. The only difference is that your GrandCentral number will be followed by an "@ip.address." If you configure your GrandCentral account to display the caller ID as itself, and not the number calling in, you can add GrandCentral to your default phone address book and have it appear when a call is made. Note that the icon in the top right of the status bar (with a phone and a globe) is the icon that indicates the SIP service is running.

Though it may not be streamlined and refined, this system works great for free calls from anywhere in the world. Though GrandCentral has hinted that it may charge for the call-out feature once it goes out of beta, the service is absolutely free for the time being. Users have also made a GrandCentral dialer application for Nokia Internet Tablets. Though the tablets run a variant of Linux, this application appears to be built on Python. If someone ported this program (on Python) to S60 devices, then Nokia Smartphones may become the best internet telephone devices on the market.

If you have any questions, or need any clarification, feel free to ask your questions in the comments below.

Dubai’s Hidden Workforce
Published on 8 November 2008

One month ago, guardian.co.uk posted a story about the human labor behind the massive construction in the UAE's favorite larger-than-life province. Dubai is known as the home to many recently broken world records involving architecture. It also happens to host the most construction cranes in the world. Sandy deserts surrounding the main city have "forced" city planners to build upwards (and into the ocean, but that's a whole different story). While most tourists and travelers to the city awe at the architecture, nearly all fail to notice the sprawling labor camps set up on the city's outskirts. Kept away from the eyes of the public, these workers come from every corner of the Middle East and India. As The Guardian states, "Like hundreds of thousands of migrant workers, they each paid more than £1,000 to employment agents in India and Pakistan. They were promised double the wages they are actually getting, plus plane tickets to visit their families once a year, but none of the men in the room had actually read their contract. Only two of them knew how to read."

The profound photographs attached to The Guardian's investigative article open a portal into this unknown world, where countless individuals work for little pay in a world governed by the wealthy. Their passports are seized by the labor companies, and they are prevented access to even the most basic of healthcare. Though Dubai might host some of the world's most phenomenal sights, the untold story behind these wonders is one of sorrow and despair. Things may be changing, as conditions have actually improved in recent years, though not by much. You can read the entire article here.

Exploring The Hippie Trail on Flickr
Published on 7 November 2008

Sometimes I come across photos on Flickr that I just can't help but write about. These photographs, posted by Flickr user rorymac, were taken by traveler/photographer Daniel Smaller whilst traversing the Asia Overland Hippie Trail in 1977. The Hippie Trail, popular in the late Sixties and Seventies, was an overland route from Europe to Kathmandu which passed through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nepal. The goal was to travel as cheaply as possible, often taking anywhere from a few months to a half a year to do so. Some even chose to settle in India and Nepal, living on a low budget for a matter of years. Travel was often by private (albeit run-down) private buses, hitchhiking, and trains.

Erik Pontoppidan has a great article about this overland route posted here. The sights and sounds encountered along this trail seem virtually unmatchable. Travelers, who at that time faced very little need for security, were presented with cultures that were still fairly unknown to the outside world. They found themselves traversing large expanses of desert, steep mountain passes, and snow covered hills. It was the golden age of backpack traveling, and helped to launch the movement so beloved by young folk today. This joy would be short lived, however, as American and Soviet fueled political tension in the Middle East quickly made the trail dangerous to navigate. Once peaceful and geographically gorgeous countries were turned into war zones overnight, and travel in the region all but disappeared. Though some pioneered routes that avoided areas of conflict, the trail would never quite be the same.

Though it was a hub for the adventuresome and new-age crowd, some operators did try to commercialize the trail in the mid-1970s. The most recent company to revitalize the trail is Ozbus, which navigates the route across 20 countries from London to Sydney in 13 weeks for a mere £3850. Though the service looks incredible, part of me would still rather do it the traditional way. Granted, I highly doubt I'll one day even get the opportunity to navigate this historic route. Regardless, I can still add it to my list.