unmediated

Downtown network for the Arts

downtown network for the arts | about From the site: Location One has developed a package of hardware, software and support services that enables artists and cultural organizations to take full advantage of Internet-based technologies for creative interchange, program creation,...

Why Al Gore's TV Venture Matters

As has been in the news since Sofia Sideshow's January 2003 scoop, Al Gore has indeed bought a cable TV network, as reported in today's New York Observer. With the launch of Air America, it's easy to confuse Gore's move as liberal reaction to the popularity and solidarity of conservative media voices. The truth is, VTV (as is the rumored name of the new network, once referred to as the Indie Channel and Link TV) is simply the first well-funded venture to attempt decentralized TV production: arming kids with cameras and laptop edits. Just the other day, Jeff Jarvis brought up his version of this, called Reality News.

Take a bunch of citizen reporters -- moms, grandpas, students, poor people, immigrants, ugly people, webloggers... people who would never otherwise get on TV except on American Idol or Survivor -- and send them out on the stories they want to cover to get the answers to the questions they want to ask with camera crews and trucks with big network letters on the side -- and dare the powerful to turn them away.

Good thing we're developing the tools that make decentralized TV production possible! Otherwise Gore and Jarvis would have 1000s of so-so tapes to fast-forward through...

Wrapping it all up...

ffmpegX a VCD, SVCD, CVD, VOB, DivX, XviD encoder for Mac OSX Wraps all those nice Open Source audio and video encoders and players for MacOS X. From the site: ffmpegX is a Mac OS X graphic user interface designed...

Fighting for LPFM (Low Power FM) in the Cities

About the Prometheus Radio Project! What is Prometheus all about: To serve as a microradio resource center offering legal, technical, and organizational support for the non-commercial community broadcasters To research and develop technical resources in anticipation of legalized micro-radio. Upon...

Lessig's new book, Free Culture

== Free Culture == From the site: All creative works - books, movies, records, software, and so on - are a compromise between what can be imagined and what is possible - technologically and legally. For more than two hundred...

Voluntary Collective Licensing--Got the Picture?

My EFF colleague Ren Bucholz has created a picture that easily beats a thousand words for explaining how a voluntary collective licensing system such as the one we propose might work. The best part is that it's meant to serve as a virtual whiteboard of sorts--courtesy of a Creative Commons license, you can feel free to wipe away bit and pieces, add others, and repost at will. Or as Wendy Seltzer puts it, "Don't think sampling will work? Add a few 'bugs' to the picture.
Like hardware levies? Add them in. Then, please share what you rip-mix-burn."

Very, very cool. Thanks, Ren.

Journalism's 'Epochal Transformation'

Journalism is in the midst of an "epochal transformation," says a new study from the Project for Excellence in Journalism. The Associated Press reports that the study paints "a picture of a business going through fragmentation and convergence at the same time. For example, Americans are turning to more and different sources for news, yet outlets are increasingly owned by a few giant companies. More people are competing to tell stories but, as witnessed by the repetition of cable news networks, fewer stories are actually being told."

The study goes on to identify eight trends, including these: "Much (...)

Entry continued...

Moblogs emerging as tool of the citizen reporter

Writing in the Columbia News Service, Neil Katz says, 'Most people use the service as a high-tech photo album, but increasingly the technology is finding more serious outlets.' It looks like citizen reporters are beginning to recognize the value of camera phones.

Panasonicís New Portable DVD Super Multi Drive

Panasonicís New Portable DVD Super Multi Drive Panasonic Japan will begin sales of its new DVD Super Multi Drive LF-P667C on March 20th. The LF-P667C will be compatible with Microsoft Windows ME/2000/XP. The writing speed of the drive is as...

New Slim Portable Toshiba DLP Projector

New Slim Portable Toshiba DLP Projector Toshiba Japan will begin sales of its new portable DLP projector called the TDP-P6(J) on March 22. The outer dimensions of the TDP-P6 are 247.7x93.7x52.1mm with a weight of 0.9kg. The projector OEM unit...

The first music video shot entirely on a Nokia 3650

The first music video shot entirely on a Nokia 3650 is available at a Textamerica moblog. (Thanks Shawn!) [Smart Mobs]...

Losing Control of Your TV

The latest anti-piracy move will prevent you from making high-quality copies of broadcast TV programs. And the new broadcast flag technology enables all manner of other restrictions. Source [Technology Review Feed v2.1]...

Rise of the decentralized content

I have talked about this before, and have been one of the strongest opponents of the Disney-Comcast deal. I might be wrong, however when I read Mike Walsh, I know its not all that bad.

The console wars are ultimately about a gradual consumer drift from broadcast media to decentralized content networks. US television network executives were recently sent into a wild panic when ratings appeared to show that males aged 18 to 34 had unceremoniously switched off from television. Despite the possibility that a large proportion of this demographic were probably too busy chasing Saddam around the desert to watch sitcoms, CEO of Sony America Howard Stringer had an alternative theory. According to Stringer, young adults were spending most of their time consuming content on his devices and spending 20 hours a week playing online subscription games such as Everquest.

Creative Capital 2004 Grants in Visual Arts and Film/Video

"For the 2004-05 grant round, Creative Capital will be awarding grants to individual artists in the fields of Visual Arts and Film/Video."

OhMyNews Korean "Citizen Journalists"

From their credo: "Every citizen's a reporter. Journalists aren't some exotic species, they're everyone who seeks to take new developments, put them into writing, and share them with others. "

The Worst of Both Worlds

The DC Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned significant
portions of the FCC's Triennial Review order from last year.  So,
essentially, we now have FCC Chairman Powell's policies for today's
networks, and Commissioner Kevin Martin's policies for
tomorrow's.  This makes things even worse than before.



The best argument one could make for the majority's decision was that
UNE-P would foster some competitive entry in the absence of
line-sharing (which Powell wanted to keep) and open fiber
networks.  The best argument for Powell's view (which I
reluctantly supported) was that the broadband fight was what really
mattered, so we can afford to let UNE-P die.  For now, at least,
the DC Circuit has given us the worst of both worlds.

Browse Top Level > Moving Images > Open Source Movies

The Internet Archive's collection of open source (free to redistribute/recontextualize/watch) movies. This would make great source (forgive me) material for testing xmltv schtuff.

One chip fits all

The growing popularity of new features such as inbuilt cameras, digital music players, messaging clients and stream video playback software, the demands of the processors inside the handsets have never been higher. Till recently the guts of a handset were made-up of two core processors, the digital signal processor (DSP), [which performs signal processing functions], and the microprocessor [which handles call processing.]

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On becoming the local media

Jonathan Peterson: Become the Local Media. Yeah baby, yeah! I see big opportunities there. The cost of blogging is practically zero and there's got to be people who like to follow what happens locally and wouldn't mind writing about it....

Pew Survey highlights

Summary of findings from the latest Pew Internet & American Life project survey, this one focused on user creation of content.