12.24.05
Posted in Social Media at 7:54 pm by
I think I mentioned this last year but the 8bits of Christmas is such an incredible album that I think I’ll make it a mutednoise holiday staple.
Featuring the sounds of Yerzmyey on the Spectrum, Nullsleep on the NES, Vim on the VIC20, Paul Slocum on the Atari 2600, Bit Shifter on the GameBoy, Goto80 on the C64, Dma-Sc on the Atari ST, and Hally on the X68000, there is only one way to celebrate the holidays right this year, and this is it.
Enjoy the video game Christmas tunes and Happy Holidays everyone!
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Posted in miscellaneous at 2:27 pm by
Sheesh. I’m away on vacation for all of one day and I notice that somebody swooped in and created a bunch of bogus account ids. No big deal, right? Wrong – they’re using the website link to connect back to some online casino.
Phpbb has a neat little mod for it called ‘Hide Zero Posters’ that will remove anyone from the member list with 0 post without removing their ability to post. It should handle the situation nicely but until I can get back to ‘proper’ MySQL DB admin tools, I’ll be deleting these by hand.
Anywho – if you notice anything suspicious going on with the forum please mention it. Multiple pairs of eyes are much better than my lonesome four-eyed peepers. 
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12.22.05
Posted in miscellaneous at 5:52 pm by
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Krazy Kwanza, Happy Hanukkah, etc – may each and every one of you find some peace and solice this holiday season. I’ll be heading home to the northern wilds of South Dakota tomorrow. Internet access will be sparse but I should be around intermittantly. However, in case I don’t get a chance to post again see you in 2006! Yippe!
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Posted in Social Media at 5:45 pm by
Well… only sorta. Disney has consistantly been one of the biggest copyright abusers over the past 20 years. They understand that Mickey Mouse is they’re bread and butter and once he slips into public domain they’ll have to … shudder… come up with new ideas. Its much easier just extending the current length of copyright (which they’ve done several times).
That’s what’s makes today’s announcement that they’re allowing people to create their own stuff both exciting and disappointing. On one side the teamup with Zazzle (think another CafePress) is pretty exciting. On the other side you still can’t mix the image of Mickey Mouse to create derivative works – a mickey mouse head on a might mouse body, or vice versa.
It is an important first step however. It will be interesting to see how long it takes others to open up their vaults of characters for use on customized t’s…
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Posted in Social Media at 5:36 pm by
Deep from within the bowels of prelaunch hype comes news of SongBird, a web based music player. Borrowing heavily from the Mozilla Firefox browser project, the SongBird player is supposed to allow music fans the ability to browse music throughout the web.
While the chops of the people on board is impressive (Internet Music Underground, the original Napster, Yahoo Music Engine launch) what is most notable is the soundbytes they’re throwing out. The hyperbole includes:
Apple’s iTunes is “like Internet Explorer, if Internet Explorer could only browse Microsoft.com,”
Oh, and the team behind it is humbly called ‘Pioneers of the Inevitable’.
Its always good for a new project to get a little buzz going to help raise interest for a beta. I, myself, am very curious about the project. However, throwing around claims like that is likely to bring down the wrath of Jobs.
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Posted in Social Media at 5:23 pm by
The Creative Commons foundation is in their last week (or so) of fundraising for the new year. They’ve raised around $100,000 for new initiatives – but ironically enough, one of the biggest reasons they need to fundraise is they need to demonstrate to the federal government that they have ’support’. By having support, they can keep their non-profit status (I guess this must be because of all those that get a non-profit status and then claim all their personal expenses as tax deductible?).
It doesn’t have to just be straight up cash – they’ve also got a nice selection of hoodies and t’s. I myself might just pick up a shirt:
http://creativecommons.org/images/support/cafepress-bigblue.jpg
Anyhoo – not a bad institution to support in this season of giving! 
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Posted in Social Media at 5:13 pm by
I’ve mentiond how a new law in France would make the nation one of the worst open software backwaters on the planet. It was a nasty, draconian law so bad that supporters had to hold the meetings on it December 22/23 (because nobody would be around to protest it).
Now, apparently, activists from the other side have forced through a resolution that would make P2P file sharing legal. From BoingBoing:
The French govt has been captured and is on the way to passing a terrible French copyright law that will implement the provisions in the EUCD (the Directive that was given rise to through accession to the WIPO Copyright Treaty, the same treaty that created the US DMCA). The French EUCD is really bad: bans open source, requires mandatory universal wiretapping, etc. Making matters worse, the govt called its hearings on this for Dec 22/23, when no one would be around to make a stink.
So the French Parliament has retaliated by passing this legalize-P2P bill, which still needs govt approval. The message appears to be: if you create this dumbass copyright law, we’ll respond by legalizing P2P, so just back off, all right?
Ah… how you say… comment magnifique?
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12.20.05
Posted in Social Media at 10:42 am by
While I’m still on a Windows OS most of the time (I do have an Ubuntu Linux box at work) several of my day-to-day apps are from the open source community – Foobar 2000 for music playback, Azureus for BitTorrent use, VLC Media Player for streaming net video and videa podcasts, Bugzilla for bug tracking, Subversion for code version control, Firefox for web browsing, Thunderbird for email composing/reading/rss feeds, GAIM for instant messaging, and on and on and on. It’s not hard to believe Om Malik that open source is now bigger than ever:
MySQL now has 33% of the market. Linux share of the server business continues to grow at double digit rates. Interestingly, 42% of the survey participants had open source portals and content management systems that supported a single function. Some 16% used open source customer relationship management systems, a percentage that will double in the next three years. Oh that must be good news for SugarCRM.
What open source software are you using? What couldn’t you live without?
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Posted in Social Media at 10:32 am by
It’s a bold assumption and probably greatly overstated. However, over at Gizmodo they speculate that remix culture is changing product design as we know it:
As end-users have greater access to creative tools and continue to generate more of their own content, the role of product design is not to structure the experience but to open it up. Our remix culture aggressively alters its wares: a Unix hack of the Nano enables video play; installation of a hard drive in an Xbox permits a user to save games; and the PSP homebrew movement transforms a mobile gaming gadget into a communication and creation platform.
Creating smart convergent products is well within the designer’s purview, but imagining “off-label” uses requires new thinking. Designers need to imagine the relationships across, among, and between products, and recognize their use—not form—creates meaning: for example, thinking about how a podcast can re-shape perception of a museum exhibit by exposing non-sanctioned content, envisioning how a group text message can spawn a political action, or planning the way a wireless hub can create community among modern-day nomads.
The fundamental notion of the (closed) design object is defunct: the “thingness” of a product no longer determines its value.
It’s not really a new idea. The personal computer was such a revelation because it was meant to have its functionality remixed – a knowledgable person could either right their own software or install other’s software and have a new feature set that the hardware creator may not of envisioned. Having designers create devices like this with user’s in mind, however, is very exciting.
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12.17.05
Posted in Social Media at 10:39 pm by
I’ve posted a mashup link or two in my time. But where do you go when you need your daily fix of creative hijinks?
I’ve recently come across Get Your Bootleg On – make sure to listen to the list of their recommended tracks on the front page. They’ve also got an RSS feed to constantly keep up with things.
Also make sure to periodically check out Go Home Productions – some of the finest mashups and usually the ones used as examples of the genre. Of particular interest is the available Superchunk mix set (almost an hour of music).
Again, these mashup artists make nothing from this work. The mashups certainly don’t take the place of the songs – if anything, they revitalize backcatalogs and promote current work. Check ‘em out when you get a chance!
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!
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