05.31.06
Posted in Social Media at 12:04 pm by
Network Neutrality has stirred up quite a bit of opposition from all kinds of places. However, it is the bill that won’t die. It’s now out of committee and on its way to a vote on the floor. Estimates claim that Telcos and Cable Companies are spending $1 million a week to fight network neutrality legislation.
Of course, there are passionate pleas from companies like eBay for members to write their representatives. Can doing the right thing actually win?
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Posted in Social Media at 11:53 am by
The Smithsonian is a world reknown repository for American culture. It has some of the largest keystones of our heritage. And it just sold the rights to those assets to CBS’s Showtime Network….for 30 years… for only $6 Million.
Cut to the outrage:
Instead, the Smithsonian has locked its holdings up for thirty years with a single company–CBS/Showtime–and for what? The right to make six programs per year outside the agreement, a 10% stake in the Smithsonian On Demand service, and guaranteed payments of $500,000 a year, plus some unknown percentage of future profits or revenues.
At even the most conservative calculations, the present value of those $500,000 payments is around $7.9 million. At a more typical discount rate (the historical risk-free rate of 8%), Showtime sews up 30 years of exclusive use of the Smithsonian’s resources for a freakin’ $6 million.
So not only did Smithsonian executives sell out America’s patrimony to a single, giant media corporation, they sold it for practically nothing.
Ouch.
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05.26.06
Posted in Social Media at 10:29 am by
I know I’ve been a bit incognito this week. I’ve been trenching my backyard for a spinkler system and that’s been eating time like a large man at a buffet.
I have a question – I have a software presentation that I need to record but don’t know of any software to do it with. Ideally, I’d record whatever what was on the computer screen and whatever was coming across the mike at the same time.
Anybody know of any free (or nearly free) solutions?
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05.22.06
Posted in Social Media at 10:05 am by
Things have been so incredibly busy here lately that I haven’t had time to post proper. However, in leau of real news, here’s the latest movie mashup trailer from YouTube! (Work warning – slight F-Bomb toward the end, but its worth it):
Moses as done by John Hughes
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05.18.06
Posted in Social Media at 9:16 am by
We’ve previously looked at net neutrality. It was a term coined in response to telecome providers wanting to provide preferential treatment for companies willing to pay. Given that this would pretty much go against the very foundation of what the Internet was created to do some people are very concerned.
Its not just tech geeks who have their glasses in a twist over this. Even online cartoonists are speaking out. Scott Kurtz, creator of PVPonline.com had this to say:
I want to encourage everyone who reads PvP to learn as much as possible about the concept of Network Neutrality and about the new Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act (COPE) which is widely anticipated as being passed by congress. And I want to encourage you to act (see the bottom of this article for links on how you can act).
The basic shorthand of the situation is this: the internet currently benefits from network neutrality. The telecom companies, Internet service providers and cable companies can not discriminate against any data, traffic or programs running on their network. Everyone gets a fair shake and no preferential treatment. End users can reach all websites without interference from their provider. It allows the playing field to be level and encourages innovation. It’s what allows the little guy to make his dreams reality.
But the telecom companies, and some in congress, want to change this. the new COPE act cuts out net neutrality. If the act passes, then the people who connect you to the internet get to decide which websites you see or don’t see. They control which programs you can use over the net. They can determine how fast you get to certain websites. They control what the end user does and doesn’t get to do on the internet.
It’s a scary situation. Except when one is poking fun, of course:
http://pvponline.com/archive/2006/pvp20060515.gif
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05.16.06
Posted in Social Media at 12:49 pm by
Negativland are legends in the areas of mashup, remixing, and cultural expectation defying. Their work is highly experimental and sometimes controversial – they’ve been sued by Saint Bono and his U2 bandmates! Now Mark Hosler talks about Negativland’s approach to copyright in a great interview.
One of the most refreshing things is that Mark discusses what he believes is wrong with Creative Commons. With so much focus about how broken the current copyright system is hearing potential pitfalls of the Creative Commons approach is also good.
The gist? If you release anything you do not get control over what happens to it. Regardless of the law it will be quoted, parsed, remixed, sampled, mashed up, reworked, edited, and repurposed for something else. That is the nature of culture.
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Posted in Social Media at 12:32 pm by
There’s been breathless coverage of how Google Earth may just be repurposed as a virtual world. Google Earth, as it currently exists, is a collection of satellite photos and topographical information wrapped into a slick package. So, for example, you can take virtual fly-bys of Mount Rushmore. So how to we get the ultimate pop-up book implementation of our planet to a virtual world?
According to Chris Taylor’s CNN article:
At the end of April the company released, for free, a popular 3-D modeling program it bought called SketchUp. Google is encouraging developers to use SketchUp to build 3-D layers on top of Google Earth. There’s even a website Google provides called 3-D Warehouse, where you can demonstrate what you’ve built in Sketch Up.
So while virtual worlds like Second Life may be very intimidating for someone like your mom Google Earth would seem like an approachable gateway. But just layering created objects onto an existing framework seems to be a pretty poor ‘world’. While their is a brief aside about avatars there is little discussion about how people are supposed to interact. After all, the Google Earth software is downloaded to individual’s computers; there doesn’t seem to be any shared space between them. And without something to do – whether that’s killing monsters or conducting business – very few will attempt to become ‘citizens’ of such a world.
There is a growing number of smart people looking at the hype around 3D and asking ‘why’? This just seems like another vapid attempt to grab some press by recycling the buzzwords of the moment.
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Posted in Social Media at 12:21 pm by
At work we been on a recent hiring tear. As an attempt to save some budget volunteers for using Open Office instead of Microsoft’s office sweet are being asked for. Figuring this was as good of time as any to give the free software a try, I jumped.
Anybody have any experience with the software? Any pitfalls to be wary of?
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Posted in miscellaneous at 12:35 am by
Dear KMFDM,
How can you release so much music that’s good? You even dumped your name and released an album with the rediculous MDFMK name, and even that was good! Here I go and list Hau Ruck as one of the best things to come out of 2005 – its a stunning piece of work; the hooks, the grind, the bleeps, the snarls, the diva, and on and on and on. The album is still in heavy car rotation.
But what have you done? You’ve released another set of tracks – Ruck Zuck!. YOU ARE THE BESTEST BAND EVAR! OMG IT IS SO OVER BETWEEN ME AND TRENT! LOL!
So, um… thanks for the new album. I know what’s going on the new MP3 player.
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Posted in Social Media at 12:12 am by
The number of blogs, sites, and boutique software spots springing up to feed the MySpace meme is incredible. It’s into this environment that AOL launches AIM pages. So how can a new upstart compete with one of the most highly trafficed sites on the internet? By making their structure completely open. Pete Cashmore likes it (or its at least less lame than he thought it would be):
…companies that feed the MySpace beast are building an eco-system around the MySpace audience. Now AOL is taking that to the next level, stating from the outset that AIMPages is a platform, not a venue. They even let you include MySpace widgets in your page! Look at all the modular ajax start pages out there and imagine how much more appealing theyÂ’d be when connected to a social network. ItÂ’s like Ziki for teens. On the surface it seems ironic that AOL is attempting to tear down a walled garden, but increasingly they seem to be surrounding themselves with the right people (Marc Canter, for instance).
AOL building an open platform? Somewhere a tiny bit of hell has just frozen over. Do I forgive them for all the CD spam? It’s going to take a heck of a lot more than a social networking site for that to happen.
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