unmediated

Wow! Japan copyright laws worse than ours..

Japanese website closed after screenshot-related arrest - Ferrago From the story:

Reports this morning inform us of the rather troubling news from Japan that the owner and Editor of popular online gaming site Gamesonline, one of Japan's most popular news sites, has been arrested for alleged breach of copyright concerning screenshots used on his website.

View on e-journal evolution

Jeanne Galvin, The Next Step in Scholarly Communication: Is the Traditional Journal Dead?, Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship, v.5 no.1 (Spring 2004). Galvin reviews the development of electronic journals and the open access movement and considers the acceptance of both by scholarly communities. She points out disadvantages of traditional journals and how these are countered by e-publication, OA and institutional repositories. Furthermore, Galvin discusses new concepts in scholarly publishing: "David Rodgers has suggested that the structure of publication will change from one marked by discrete milestones, such as peer review and acceptance, to a continuum more closely resembling the scholarly process. He proposes that the unit of transaction should be the idea, rather than the article. Smith recommends a 'deconstructed journal' which does not need a publisher and is based on subject focal points." However, combatting academic inertia is viewed as the biggest obstacle to changes in publishing. (Source: Peter Scott's Library Blog)

Tom Mangan Talks About News Instablogs, His Blog "Retirement" and PR

As noted earlier, Prints the Chaff blogger Tom Mangan of the San Jose Mercury News has announced he is retiring from frequent blogging.

"I haven't given up on blogging altogether... just a certain variant of it which obliges a take-over-one's-life timesink. My homepage at tommangan.net will still have occasional postings," Tom explained to me today in an email.

"I thought I wanted to be the Romenesko of newspaper editors but my heart wasn't in it for the long haul. But it was fun till it wasn't, which is always the best time to bail. Plus there are tons of editors blogs out there now so I don't feel like there's this big unmet need."

I conducted an email interview with Tom earlier this month and was waiting for the right moment to post it. In homage to Tom, I can't think of a better time than today to do so. Tom, we will miss your regular rants. Every time I fix a spelling error or cut a comma I will always think of your postings and how they made me laugh and think. Keep in touch.

(Read the rest of this post at Micro Persuasion)

Anti-piracy built into new films

Couldn't help but notice while watching The Day After Tomorrow, Memorial Day's cheesy $100 million hit, that an anti-piracy code is built into the movie. You can see the brown stripe whiz by on-screen just before the Soviet ship enters flooded Manhattan. This way, studios can track where a bootleg print came from.

BBS in China

I know c.c. function of email can be counted as "social software." What about BBS? It certainly can function as many-to-many. Anyway, the reason I say this here is because BBS is the most politically active place in Chinese cyberspace. The number of Chinese Internet users is quickly reaching 90 million. (Already surpassing the number of members of the Chinese Communist Party. ) About one-fifth of Chinese netizens regularly make use of BBS (Bulletin Board Systems). These BBSs can be run by individuals, commercial companies such as sina.com, or government agencies. At any given time, there are literally tens of thousands of users active in these BBS and forums, reading news, searching for information, and debating current affairs. Even on official Web sites such as People's Daily, its popular BBS, Strong Nation Forum, has more than 280,000 registered members and more than 12,000 posts per day. Together with e-mail listservs, chat rooms, instant message services, wireless short text messaging, and an emerging Weblogging community, the BBSs have provided unprecedented opportunities for Chinese netizens to engage in public affairs. I chaired a round table discussion on this subject in Berkeley last month. Here is the webcast link.

The Way the Music Died

The Frontline special on the music industry covered a lot of ground, perhaps too much for just an hour. The main theme of the show was that music hasn't fared too well as an industry. Media companies, including the big five record labels and the radio station chains, have lost touch with their customers, marketing what will sell instead of providing a good product. Big media blames the industry downturn on free music availability on the Internet, but as Michael "Blue" Williams, Outkast's manager, puts it, the labels have gotten lazy and are pushing out crap; he says if the labels "started putting out good records, quality records, the public will buy".

How To Convert Any Web Site Into An RSS Feed

Lockergnome's RSS & Atom Tips: How To Convert Any Web Site Into An RSS Feed. "Creating a Generic Site-To-RSS Tool. While this is certainly not breaking news, it maybe something that you have not had the opportunity to learn more about until now. Authored by Roy Osherove this in-depth article provides you with all of the technical information, examples and references you need to taste the flavour of true site scraping. (Not for the tech-shy or RSS novice.) By Robin.Good@masternewmedia.org (Robin Good). "

File-sharing undented, Kazaa traffic plummets

Looking at two ends of the same elephant.

First from JD's NewMedia Musings: The threat of legal action and hefty fines has done little to stop internet users around the world trading music and video files, according to a new study of network traffic.

"There's been no decline in the number of people file-sharing," says Chris Colman, European managing director for Sandvine.

Next from p2pnet: Kazaa file sharing traffic has dropped from 90% of the total to just 20% in North America, and from 70% to 20% in Europe, says a study.

Creative Commons: Metadata Tuneup

Upgrading to one of our version 2.0 licenses or selecting one for the first time? Consider providing optional metadata about your work via the choose license process.

Make Every PC a Server

"JXTA provides us speed and flexibility because the physical network will no longer be a bottleneck in our design and applications. It will also allow us to do things that the designers of the network don''t want us to do or can''t do. By bypassing these constraints, we might actually do something cool along the way. The power of JXTA is at the network level, not the application level...." More

Video Playlists

Lucas Gonze has an interesting post on broadcatching with video playlists (On the topic of broadcatching). He points to the Webjay video playlists of Brett Singer: Playlists by webjaybs. According to Lucas:

Since I don't have a television in Montreal, I watched the news last night via his [Brett's] compilation of BBC and NY1 clips. It was embryonic and crude, but also mind blowing.

TV viewers don't just watch TV

Duh. A new study found 59 percent of TV viewers regularly or occasionally spend time online while watching primetime TV. The researchers say that's just one more reason for advertisers to question why TV is still demanding premium ad rates.

Auto-focusing camera for phones

Atsana Semiconductor and the briefly-named 1 have formed a partnership to deliver auto-focus-capable cameras to mobile phone manufacturers.

The new camera technology, dubbed "Helimorph", is able to function within the confined space of a mobile phone because it differs from traditional focus technology. Most auto-focus cameras use electromagnetic transducers, which are bulky and power-hungry. The Helimorph, by contrast, is an actuator made out of a new piezoelectric ceramic material called PZT that changes shape when voltage is applied. That material is shaped into a helical structure, so that a small change in shape gets magnified into a large movement. That movement realigns the camera lens for optimal focus.

Illegal film downloads on increase

Following a number of months where the average number of film download files had been on the decline, the number files and their average size increased in April, according to digital tracking firm BayTSP.

The firm suggests that this means that although people are still happily downloading video content over peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa, a smaller number of them are sharing those files.

BayTSP said that 2.9m people a day made use of such services in April, and that the most popular download for the month was Mel Gibsonís The Passion of the Christ.

Iranian Blog Meetup

Hoder sends word of a Weblog Festival in Tehran, Iran on June 8-10 (damn, don't you wish you could be there?). Here's a photo from the last big gathering of bloggers there at Hoder's photoblog. Iit was Hoder's photos from that session -- just folks, just eating lunch -- that first impressed upon me how blogs and the Internet can connect folks across any boundaries; this, too, is why I'm so glad to see photos showing up on Iraqi blogs. Here's Hoder's blog post on the event. And the official Weblog Festival site: "Our goal is to improve the quality of such Persian media and to improve their quantity as well." (That sounds just like the mission of the Citizens' Media Center I've been hoping to put together here.)

It's being put together by Persian Blog and the National Youth Organization of Iran -- which, mind you, is a government organization. Think about that: This is a nation that has arrested bloggers and still cuts off Internet access and yet a government organization is sponsoring a blog event and bloggers -- who write at some risk -- will come. A land of ironies.

BBC to use Creative Commons licenses

Digital Lifestyles is reporting that Larry Lessig has been named to a BBC advisory board and that the BBC's Creative Archive project (which aims to put the BBC's archives online for non-commercial re-use) will use Creative Commons licenses:

Professor Lawrence Lessig, chair of the Creative Commons project was clearly excited: "The announcement by the BBC of its intent to develop a Creative Archive has been the single most important event in getting people to understand the potential for digital creativity, and to see how such potential actually supports artists and artistic creativity." He went to enthuse "If the vision proves a reality, Britain will become a centre for digital creativity, and will drive the many markets in broadband deployment and technology that digital creativity will support."

US & the 3G plans

The Wall Street Journal reports that Cingular Wireless will be testing a third-generation mobile network based on the UMTS standard, beginning in Atlanta this summer, although a rollout is not expected until 2006 or 2007. AT&T Wireless Services will offer a UMTS services in four US cities by the end of 2004. Seems like Verizon's decision to go with EV-DO and its plans to roll out the service in major metros in coming months is proving to be a catalyst for the wireless data market. Nextel, as you all know is flirting with Flarion, while Sprint is still thinking.

A few months ago I asked the question: what happens when say about 2 million subscribers opt for this Verizon service? And I got some really good answers on what are the problems with EV-DO service.

Martin said: It goes totally titsup. Because the reverse link isn't really CDMA. And it was slow to start off with. And the channel grab and release is slow. And it takes a lot of spectrum. And it scales REALLY BADLY. But it looks great in a demo to the telco execs, and the bits per hertz figures for the downlink look good, so who cares, right?

Charlie added: That is to say, the way QCOM boosted the speed on DO, is to limit the complete channel to only ONE user at a time. One step forward, 47 steps back. So as the load increases the latency dies and throughput can really drop.

How Bloggers Force Changes in Big Media

OJR's Mark Glaser has a story on how bloggers are forcing changes in big media outlets.

Communities Tied to One Technology (Seb Paquet)

For the most part, members of online communities usually rely on one dominant communication channel - be it a mailing list, a forum, weblogs, a wiki, or IRC - even when alternate channels would be helpful for certain purposes. Communities like open source development networks and the international, never-sleeping Joi Ito posse, who use multiple modes, are the exception rather than the norm.

I've been wondering about the factors that somehow work to inhibit or facilitate the use of multiple communication channels, and the interplay between those channels. Now there's a discussion underway on that topic over at the lively Community Wiki, on the page Community Tied to One Technology. Among the potential explanations that are brought up for sticking to one channel: inertia, lack of technical acumen, the fragmentation/critical mass problem, and the lack of integration between modes.

My hunch is that as the “software that does less, well - pattern and the concomitant "mix and match tools" user philosophy that we've seen develop in social software become dominant, we'll see multiple modes become relatively widespread relatively quickly.

(I should point out that the incredibly prolific Dave Pollard touched upon this topic a while ago.)

When consumers are creators

Jan Schaffer, executive director of J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism (and a friend), had this last month, which I had missed: Convergent Audiences: When Consumers are Creators.

[Convergence] puts the focus not on the consumer, our audiences, but on the supplier, the news organizations. It becomes an exercise in Us vs. Them.

I think we are focusing on the wrong "C" word. Rather than focus on convergence, we should be focusing on connections and how new digital tools can help us build all kinds of innovative, new connections with our audiences. The potential of new media is not simply more noise but more meaningful interaction and hopefully more meaningful learning.

Haier's wireless UltraWideband digital camcorder

Haier has been showing off a prototye of a digital camcorder which uses Ultra Wideband (you'll be hearing a ton about UWB soon - it's basically a way to connect things together wirelessly like Bluetooth, except that it's much, much faster) to wirelessly beam a live 20Mbps video stream back to a plasma TV.

[Via The Unofficial Bluetooth Weblog]

Homer on citizens media

Just watched Sunday's season finale of The Simpsons on our TiVo. Homer has this to say about all the residents of Springfield starting their own newspapers: "Instead of one big-shot controlling all the media, now there's a thousand freaks Xeroxing their worthless opinions." Ah, citizens media.

;) -kc.

SMaL Camera Technologies Introduces Ultra-Pocket 5 RDK

"SMaL Camera Technologies, a developer of digital imaging solutions and enabler of award-winning super-thin digital still cameras, announced today its new Ultra-PocketÆ 5 rapid development kit for 3-megapixel credit card cameras with color TFT display. The Ultra-Pocket 5 kit enables manufacturers and brands to rapidly enter the heart of the mass consumer market ñ 3-megapixel ñ with unparalleled thinness, style, wide dynamic range, and worry-free battery life, in the sub-$129 retail price range."

Japanese Broadcast Flag -- welcome to the crappy future of TV

The Japanese Broadcast Flag has gone into effect. Like its American cousin, this is a technology mandate that restricts how you can use the shows that show up on your own television, on the grounds that you might be some kinda eyepatch-wearing-pirate. 'Course, the broadcast flag doesn't really stop you from capturing analog signals and putting their programming online; no, this is a measure that is 100% ineffective at stopping "piracy" and 100% effective at stopping new tech like VCRs from being invented without the permission of the movie studios.

Because programs that have been copied once cannot be duplicated or edited digitally, editing the programs via a personal computer has become impossible.

In addition, the broadcasters' move has made it necessary for viewers to insert a special user identification card, known as a B-CAS card, into their digital TV sets to watch programs.

These duplication controls are being applied to digital TV programs aired by both digital terrestrial and satellite broadcasters.

In the week after the measure was implemented, NHK and the grouping of private broadcasters received more than 15,000 inquiries and complaints about the scheme.

AD:TECH - Broadband Advertising Moves From Theory to Practical Application

Monday's first Media Matters Session, Leveraging Interactive and Broadcast and Aggregating TV Audiences Online was led by moderator Matt Wasserlauf, President and CEO of Broadband Enterprises. The panel included ESPN Motion Director and General Manager Ed Davis, CNET Networks VP Business Development Chas Edwards and AtomShockwave CEO Mika Salmi.

The theme of the panel rested with broadband's ability to deliver television quality video over the web. CNET's Edwards said research has shown that television-style ads viewed online are far less annoying than the same ads viewed on television. He cited Yankelovich research stating 64 percent of consumers are "pummeled" by ads and 77 percent of TiVo users skip commercials yielding an "opt-out culture." which calls for the more opt-nature of the web. Edwards reviewed CNET's Instream ads and how the site has plans to replace most of its images with video.

AtomShockwave's Salmi jumped in and explained his AtomFilms and Shockwave offerings which he described as "pre-roll" and claims use of these technologies has delivered click throughs from nine to eleven percent.

ESPN Motion's Davis said his company (as did Salmi's) decided to design ESPN Motion as a downloadable, rather than streaming, application to insure the quality of video delivery and so that the company can better manage resources by controlling the download process. Davis hinted at a soon to be released "send to a friend" feature which will allow ESPN Motion users to forward videos to those that do not yet have ESPN Motion installed.

None of the three speakers did a great job at tying their technologies back to advertiser's needs. Sure there were some examples but other than the knowledge that television commercials can now be placed on the web, not much else was offered.

StreamSage's Campaign Search

StreamSage has rolled out CampaignSearch- an audio/video search engine for content from political sources like C-Span, PBS, WhiteHouse, Washington Post, BBC, NPR, AP, Bush and Kerry's respective campaign websites, etc... The search functionality is excellent. And it's easy to link within the stream because StreamSage provides both a link to a relevant excerpt as well as the whole file. For example, I searched for "mccain vice president." Here's the relevant audio (link: Real Media Audio File). Here's what StreamSage says about their system- from CampaignSearch.com:

How does it work?

StreamSage's Audio/Video Search Engine listens to and watches the audio/video content to determine what topics are discussed and where they are discussed within the media file. By automatically understanding the information presented in the audio/video content, StreamSage's Audio/Video Search Engine is able to automatically generate "Relevance Intervals" that encapsulate all of the contextually relevant information about a given topic in the audio/video content. Additionally, by employing contextual understanding, StreamSage's Audio/Video Search Engine ranks search results according to the degree of relevance to the search term. This contextual relevance ranking allows users faster access to relevant information.

Tuesday: Sony Cell development bears watching

One of the things I took away from almost 30 years in TV news was a deep respect for Sony. If you want TV stuff that works, you'll rarely go wrong with this company. That said, this news item from Reuters caught my attention.

In an interview with the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Sony Chief Executive Nobuyuki Idei said it would use Cell to power its next-generation game console as well as a network television that will offer functions similar to a personal computer.

The Cell processor will be up to 10 times more powerful than conventional chips and able to shepherd large chunks of information through a high-speed Internet network.

Sony has said Cell ó due to start test production in early 2005 ó will power the next-generation PlayStation game console, which will probably double as a home server, as well as other digital home electronics.

Convergence isn't just a word anymore; it's an increasing reality. Sony's Cell will enable broadband TV, and its next-generation game console will double as a home server. What will it "serve?" Probably anything video.

A TV client wondered out loud the other day, "I'm just trying to figure out where all of this is going." Think digital video on demand. Think your signal as a part of the Internet. Think media center. Think your network doesn't need you anymore to distribute its programs.

And that leads to local programming for survival, regardless of how it's delivered.

Fujitsu Announces Cheap, Flexible Touchscreens

Fujitsu has announced the availability of thin and lightweight plastic touch panel technologies that will make it easier and cheaper for gadget companies to offer touchscreen capabilities to even the lowest-end devices. Instead of the more expensive and fragile film-glass technologies, the new Film-Film and Film-Film-Plastic (Go Go Happy Punk Rock!) use a plastic backer that is more durable and flexible and should add only about $5 and $11, respectively, to the cost of gadgets that take advantage of the technology.

CNN developing broadband channel

CNN's NewsStream Live is scheduled to launch in the first quarter of next year, reports CableNewser. "It will not suck as much as ABC News Live," joked a source. CNN is just beginning full-scale development on the 24/7 broadband news channel. "Your ISP will pay for your subscription just like your cable operator pays to carry CNN," the source says. Thoughts?

The wireless pill camera

From Given Imaging, a new wireless version of their M2A swallowable pill camera with a low-power transmitter built-in that can beam photos of your insides to a special receiver you wear on your belt. Normally with these sorts of pill cameras you have to, um, evacuate them in order to get the photos, so having a wireless trasmitter built-in means no more waiting!

(More interesting than practical tool, but hey -- you never know. -kc.)

TelefÛnica MÛviles launches commercial 3G

Spanish mobile operator TelefÛnica MÛviles EspaÒa has launched its consumer 3G services.

Currently video conferencing over the network and mobile gaming is available in the two largest cities of Madrid and Barcelona. Two handsets currently available can access the service, the Sony Ericsson Z1010 and Motorolaís A835, and another three are to be added to the range in the coming weeks.

DMusic supports Creative Commons and embeds MP3 files

DMusic, the oldest independent digital online music community now supports Creative Commons in their upload process. More importantly though, DMusic is providing the first web-based application to embed Creative Commons license information into ID3 tags of MP3 files. Now, when you upload your MP3 file to DMusic and choose a Creative Commons license, DMusic will put the license into the MP3 file for you. When people download your file, or share it on a file-sharing network, there will always be a way to detect the Creative Commons license.

Citizen Lab

Citizen Lab is an interdisciplinary laboratory based in Toronto, Canada, looking at the intersection of digital media and civic activism. Functioning something as a DARPA for digital freedom, Citizen Lab serves as a seed-bed for a variety of very cool and interesting projects focusing on identifying, analyzing, and resisting efforts to censor and lock down information networks. Citizen Lab is the umbrella for a couple of other ongoing projects, Infowar Monitor and the OpenNet Initiative. Infowar Monitor, run in cooperation with the Cambridge Programme for Security in International Society, is a good resource if you're interested in ongoing developments in information and network-centric warfare; OpenNet Initiative, run with CPSIS and with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, looks more closely at censorship and surveillance.

The main site is a blog-like listing of updates about net surveillance, censorship, and the like, pulled from both mainstream and niche sources, along with links to its various projects. Aside from Infowar Monitor and OpenNet Initiative, Citizen Lab is also working on a project called "Rhizome," which will "remotely interrogate the networks of censoring countries and securely transfer the results to a database node network for analysis and storage" (responding to the fact that most filter systems, both commercial and governmental, keep the lists of what they censor secret), and a project called "Psiphon," a distributed proxy project to allow computer users in controlled regions to surf the web freely. If this latter one sounds familiar, it's because another project, Peek-a-Booty, took a similar approach. Peek-a-booty, unfortunately, appears to be dead; its site hasn't been updated since December, 2003.

For an infowar and sousveillance geek like me, the Citizen Lab site provides hours of fascinating reading. But one of the most powerful Citizen Lab-supported efforts linked from the site has little to do with computer networks, and will be compelling stuff for many WorldChanging readers. The Kandahar Chronicles tell the story of the day-to-day life of a MÈdicins Sans FrontiËres worker in Kandahar, Afghanistan, from August 2003 through February 2004. Good stuff.

The Worldwide Conversation

I've been working on my final Shorenstein Center paper for a few weeks now. I wrote a draft, showed it to a few people, got their comments, decided to add and change a bunch of stuff, rewrote it, and now have a new draft. I think it's finally ready to share more broadly for more feedback and comments. It's called "The Worldwide Conversation." Please let me know what you think, and if it makes any sense. It is meant for a broad audience that includes people unfamiliar with the workings of weblogs, so for those of you who are already steeped in the blogosphere, feel free to skim through the explanations of blogging tools and processes.

Mobile customers want streaming video

A growing minority of wireless users want to watch video, finds a new study....

"A recent In-Stat/MDR survey of wireless consumers found that 13.2 percent of them are extremely interested or very interested in buying video services for their cell phones. Additionally, the company found that Sprint PCS customers are likely to be early adopters and are the most likely, among those surveyed, to be interested in mobile video services."

A lockbox for digital radio

Mindjack has just published a piece I pulled together, culled from research for my upcoming book Darknet. Will digital radio be Napsterized? looks at a new proposal by the Recording Industry Association of America for the FCC to impose new regulations mandating the adoption of a broadcast flag standard for audio.

What does this mean for you?

Where today you can tape anything you want over the free analog radio airwaves, that may not be true tomorrow. Want to record the digital broadcast of Don Imus, Rush Limbaugh, or Terry Gross on your PC and listen to it in your car? Or tape a cool new digital radio station you discovered and play it for friends at a party?

Your device may well tell you: I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

(Read the rest of this post over at JD's New Media Musings)

Peerflix - Legal P2P DVD sharing

Here's a great example of piggybacking on what works to create something useful. Peerflix is a decentralized version of Netflix. It's all about 'movies I have,' and 'movies I want.' Watch a movie and send it on to the next peer. Read an overview of the service here.

TDK claims to bring P2P into Bluetooth phones

This device is not any different from a regular Bluetooth dongle. But TDK is marketing it with a different spin-probably targetting an audience that has never used BT on their phones and PC's. What TDK's Free Styla really is: a PC Bluetooth USB dongle with a bundled application to transfer mobile goodies downloaded from the Web across to your mobile.

This is another sign that P2P will definitely arrive to mobile devices and lots of companies already want to capitalize on the idea.

More evidence of video based networks turning to Flash

Streamingmedia.com: Flash Powers Comcast.net's Innovative Video Browser The interface is a bit funky but the review is glowing. Sounds a lot like what a dot bomb company I was working for a few years back was trying to develop. I would like to see Flash open up a bit more and see some better authoring tools but it does seem as though they got some things right with the video streaming. All in all, pretty interesting, too bad it is the same content that can be found on TV.

Survey Indicates Public Journalism Progress, But...

Fewer journalists today see the press as too cynical. And, compared with five years ago, fewer also see journalists as out of touch with their audiences.... Both of these are areas that reform movements such as public journalism--which was concerned with trying to reconnect journalists and the public--focused on.

That's a direct quote from commentary addressing the Journalist Survey conducted for the Project for Excellence in Journalism's State of the News Media 2004 report. More than 500 national and local reporters, editors and executives were surveyed.

(Read the rest of this post over at PJNet Today)

Rise of TelcoTV

With more telcos expected to add digital TV to their services, and equipment suppliers reporting increased activity, In-Stat/MDR expects over 100% growth in telco TV subscribers in 2004. The delivery of digital TV service over high speed networks is now a reality, especially in Asia and Europe where a number of new players have started offering these services. Yahoo Broadband in Japan is one such example. The popularity of TelcoTV is increased because of improvements in the data rates and reach of DSL, and advances in video compression.

"Competitive threats and fixed line revenue pressures are encouraging telcos to become active in offering digital TV to their subscribers. The possibility of gaining an additional $60 per month in revenue, while becoming less likely to lose $30 a month to your competition, is an important factor in the business case," says Michelle Abraham, a Senior Analyst with In-Stat/MDR.

In 2005, advanced video compression will allow telcos to reach more homes in their territory or expand the number of video streams delivered. The delivery of high definition streams over DSL will be much easier, as each stream will only need about 8 Mbps rather than 15.

2014: TV without schedules

"TGIF" and "Must See Thursday" won't mean a thing in 10 years. We'll be watching HDTV on demand, and storing the shows we want on home terabyte servers. And not far behind: holographic TV that doesn't require a screen.

Roll your own reruns

Last week's season finale of The West Wing was on smack dab in the middle of game 6 of the Timberwolves/Kings series. I opted to watch the game instead of the Wing. Of course, since NBC wants to make their media artificially scarce, the episode wasn't replayed later in the evening nor will it until later in the summer (if you haven't seen it, it's new to you!). This weekend, I found a torrent for the finale...without commercials and in letterbox no less. A couple hours of downloading later and voila, my own personal rerun.

Sony portable broadband TV to ship this autumn

The LocationFree TV will offer wireless broadband television, without interference from microwaves or cordless phones.

The LocationFree TVs can deliver your personal video contents from the Base Station via secured device authentication and encryption technology to the wireless monitor in wi-fi hot-spots and Ethernet ports found in hotels, airports and other locations. This means the TV monitor is no longer confined to a living room.

Review of Sony Ericsson's Z1010 3G video phone

Geekzone checks out a phone that we definitely won't be seeing over here ( -- This part just totally broke my heart. -kc.), the Z1010, Sony Ericsson's new 3G video phone which comes with not one, but two built-in digital cameras, an external one for taking still shots and recording video clips, and then another internal one for making video calls.

Weblogs and authority

This week I'll be presenting a paper at the International Communication Association Conference in New Orleans titled Audience, Structure and Authority in the Weblog Community. The paper is an analysis of two different metrics for measuring authority within weblogs; the first uses blogroll links, a proxy to popularity, and the second uses permalinks, a proxy to influence.

(Visit overstated for the rest of this post.) Link to full paper: Audience, Structure and Authority in the Weblog Community (pdf 228k)

(thx: buzzmachine)

GPS meets Audioblog.com

Looks like Eric's playing and experimenting with GPS Audioblogging today. Coolio!!

Eric Rice: My GPS Location 10:50 AM. 37d 58.586' N 122d 02.043' W

The Media Revolt Manifesto

Just came across this from David Neiwert, a pretty sharp freelance journalist up in Seattle: Media Revolt: A Manifesto. Excerpt:

Blogs can and should play the role of central clearing-house for information in the Media Revolt. As the general public realizes that blogs can provide them with vital information they're not getting anywhere else, the audience will build. This includes the whole gamut of information: the factual news about the world, as well as reports on who's misbehaving or committing political atrocities or simply being incompetent; analysis of this information that would be suppressed in mainstream reports; information about planned actions to protest misbehavior; and action and funds needed to enact the needed legislative and structural reforms.

Blogs, in other words, can and should play the role abdicated by the mainstream media both in monitoring their own behavior and ethics, and in providing enough diversity that a wealth of viewpoints are given fair treatment, as in any healthy democratic society, and the public properly served.

BBC launches WAP news content for kids

Headlines from the UK state broadcaster's long-running news and current affairs show for kids, Newsround, are to made available via WAP.

"Our research reflects that children are becoming increasingly technologically aware, with the rise in internet use and mobile, and we are simply reacting to the demands of that audience, offering approved, relevant content across easily accessible platforms," said Ashley Highfield, BBC director of new media and technology.

The service will allow children to access the latest news headlines from the Newsround programme via the mobile internet.

Techie: Next step, Audio/Graphic Rich Media Blog Posting Object

What is an Audio/Graphic Rich Media Blog Posting Object you say? And why would one want one? It'll be easier to see what it is and where I'm going with this idea once I post the first basic Flash rendering of the foundation here in the next week.

After thinking about some new Audio/Rich Media object ideas during the week I finally decided yesterday I needed to learn some basic Flash to build a simple Rich Media MP3 Audio/Graphic posting blog player/viewer to move beyond just thinking about it. The reason for using Flash in the first place was mainly for it's clean browser integration and the reach it enables. Coupling that fact with using MP3 as the audio format in my opinion gives the object the most flexible audio building blocks that a Internet available child audio media object needs for integration and inheritance into other Internet based parent Rich Media objects. Without a doubt I will be looking at my past thoughts and ideas around SAM to supply the content DNA of the object.

Stay tuned as I take my first steps in learning how to build something like this or anything at all in Flash.

Rip-Mix-Burning DVD players

Copyfight has an interesting post on the discrepancy in congress over ClearPlay DVD players. The players automatically remove scenes that would be offensive to sensitive viewers, but do so in the comfort of one's own home while playing standard movies on DVD. Some politicians oppose it because individuals are creating derivative works and they also see it as opening the door to "recipe hacking", which would be like producing the Grey Album by purchasing two legal records (the original Beatles' White Album and Jay-Z's Black Album) and combining them at home to produce a derivative work (if DJ Dangermouse produced software that could create his mixes).

On top of all that, since the motivation behind ClearPlay technology is largely religious, it turns the argument on its ear to many participants and observers. It's not hard to find folks that loved the Grey Album but see ClearPlay technology as something to be frowned upon, but the underlying technology and law is largely the same. It's an interesting case and hopefully does open the doors to all sorts of creative uses of derivative works.

Toshiba's new Digital Media Servers

Toshiba announced new products today, including two TiVo based DVD recorders, in 120Gb ($599) and 160Gb ($699) sizes. They're set for an August release and will be the only competitor to Pioneer's line of DVD recording TiVo boxes, which have gotten rave reviews. The Toshiba units also include a DV plug on the front, to make it easy to convert digital camcorder video directly to DVD.

Make a Film; Get Free Worldwide Distribution

This from the BBC: One-Minute Movies is your chance to make a short film that we'll publish on the web for the world to see. You have up to 60 seconds in which to make a film, and we'll do our best to give you tips and advice.

It reminds me of the recent IBM white paper in which it listed new audience types by 2010, which apparently are here now, including:

Authors ñ (who) will utilize Web tools to tailor content to business or personal interests, seeking self-expression or control. Media companies will provide affordable advanced tools to this growing slice of active users, such as special blog (Web log) sites, multiplayer online games, user-group ìtheatersî or conference centers and downloadable production components ñ music, cinema and TV samples, streaming video or digital photo illustrations. Users who contribute or interact as producers of their own programming or authors of content will not cease to enjoy passive consumption; they will add new skills and redefine the amount of time they spend enjoying media passively.

Watch some of the one-minute movies and see the possibilities.

BBC Reaches Kids via Phone Headlines

Dot Journalism reports: The BBC has launched a new mobile phone service for children that will deliver headlines from Newsround, the current affairs programme for children.

"Our research reflects that children are becoming increasingly technologically aware, and we are simply reacting to the demands of that audience, offering approved, relevant content across easily accessible platforms," said Ashley Highfield, BBC director of new media and technology.

Other interesting fact:
new research by mobileYouth that shows that under 25 year-olds spend around five times as much on mobile phone services than on music.

Thanks to editorsweblog.org for the pointer.

Pssst...wanna download a TV show?

File sharing of prime time TV shows is exploding. Spot check: on Wednesday, 20,000 episodes of The Simpsons, Alias, Frasier, Friends and other series were available via Web sites like TV Torrents, eDonkey, and BuckTV.

Radio.blog Club

Radio.blog Club: "Radio.blog is the first stand-alone player to let you stream sound on your website."

Multimedia From the Road

I heard Naka Nathaniel of NYTimes.com speak at an online journalism conference a few weeks ago, and it was apparent that's he's a fast-rising star in the field of multimedia journalism. Check out his latest work, "Six Questions for Iran," which is a multimedia feature accompanying the New York Times' Nicholas Kristof's latest column, "Nuts With Nukes." Nathaniel frequently travels with Kristof, taking photos, recording audio, and producing the online features. The duo is redefining state of the art practice for column-writing. In the case of Nathaniel, he's a new breed of multimedia foreign correspondent.

Buzzmachine: Two posts on net audio

Can you hear me?
: I'm starting to see/hear more good audio work from audio amateurs on the web.

Jay Rosen's independent study student, Linda Blake, has an audio blog with stories about and from people affected by AIDS. I listened to some of it (downloaded on my iPod) and it's very good.

It's very much in the style of Ira Glass on NPR's This American Life: Let people narrate their own stories but make sure it is told as a story (not a ramble).

Transom.org -- which features Glass right now -- does a good job of telling you and me how we can create such online radio ourselves. And it has some of the radio that has resulted; I listened to a report about a German rider lawnmower race, also good.

Now that I have my iPod, I was hoping to hear more Chris Lydon interviews but, unfortunately, his work is now streamed instead of downloadable. Which leads me to a minor rant....

Read the rest of this post at BuzzMachine.

100% Open Source Helix Player 'Alpha' Available

"Helix Player 1.0 and RealPlayer 10 Alpha are now available. The Helix Player is 100% open source, and includes support for Ogg Vorbis and Theora, as well as SMIL 2.0 so that you can combine Theora videos with JPEG, GIF, or PNG images and RealText. The RealPlayer 10 alpha is a superset of the Helix Player alpha, and adds support for RealAudio, RealVideo, MP3, and Flash. See the release notes to find out about the rest of the enhancements and give the players a whirl. We love your feedback and comments as always, so use any avenue you are comfortable with (forums, email, bugzilla) and let us know what you think! The team has tried hard to get all the bad bugs out, but remember that it's alpha and constantly improving with your feedback and help. Enjoy the player!"

Film-streaming website exploits copyright loophole

To circumvent copyright legally, Rotterdam-based website Dvdstream.nl asks subscribers to ëbuy' the streamed film from Dvdstream.nl for a fictitious price, and then to ësell' it back for the same price - in effect, using Dutch copyright law to gain access to unlimited film downloads for the price of a monthly subscription.

OLEDs Finally Get Big

They used to max out at about 7-inch but today Samsung announced they'll offer a 17-inch OLED monitor next year. The monitor will be about 1/3 as thick as an LCD monitor and consumes less power too. We wish it were a widescreen, but instead Samsung is sticking with a high resolution standard format 1600 x 1200 resolution.
Not to be outdone, ">Seiko Epson showed off a 40-inch OLED screen at a press conference today. Just when we finally had our hearts set on Philips' 40-inch LCOS HD TV, isn't it a gadget junky's curse to learn something even more trick is coming along? It all depends on how long you can wait. Philips' LCOS model should be in stores this year (the 60-inch model is already on sale), but should Seiko Epson deign to grace us with this display, it probably won't be available until 2007.

Digital Technologies for Deliberative Democracy

A project at Columbia's Center on Organizational Innovation is looking at how technology has or hasn't been used to enable participatory democracy in the rebuilding of the WTC:

"New digital technologies have figured critically in the process of deciding the future of Lower Manhattan after September 11th, not only supplying the infrastructure for soliciting public input but also opening new channels of communication between citizens, designers, advocacy groups, and decision-makers..."

"By compiling an archive of all the websites devoted to Lower Manhattan redevelopment issues and tracking changes in the form and structure of the websites over time, the project will examine how old and new advocacy groups are adapting to a political landscape in which new deliberative technologies may be challenging traditional mechanisms of citizen participation"...."Analysis of the website database will chart whether and how architects and urban planners are capitalizing on new digital technologies to involve residents more directly in design." (project outline in .pdf)

Full speed ahead with iDTV - Belgacom

Belgian incumbent telco Belgacom announced yesterday that its number one priority for the future is the development of Belgian interactive digital television and the provision of iDTV and video-on-demand.

AlwaysOn starts video blogs; First blog post on outsourcing.

Tony Perkins launches video blog over at AlwaysOn. I've been thinking about video blogs since Jeremy started playing with them months ago. is there a need for them? Is there a business in video blogs?

In AO's first video Tony talks about outsourcing ("a good thing"), Google's IPO and video blogs.

The total video time: 4:38.

Total value I got from it? Zero.

I'm not sold on video blogs. Writers and people who are interesting to watch on TV are two very different things 90% of the time.

Community Site for VJs by VJs - VJCentral.com

"Welcome to VJCentral.com, a community site for VJs by VJs intended for newbies who want to learn how to create live visuals as well as for experienced VJs looking for inspiration, advanced tips and or other fellow VJs."

T.V for the mobile by 2005

In Japan, terrestrial digital TV broadcasting for the mobile phone, is scheduled to launch in 2005 after an agreement with MPEG LA, a US organization managing MPEG-related patent licensing, over the licensing fee payments for H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC)-video coding, NE Asia online reports.

Terrestrial Digital Broadcasting for Cell Phones to Debut from Autumn 2005

While

KDDI Develops Prototype of Cell Phone Capable of Receiving Terrestrial Digital TV Broadcasting

Congress wants to restrict P2P software distribution to minors

Last week's P2P child pornography crackdown is helping Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) to search support for his bill that restricts P2P software distribution. The bill, called Protecting Children from Peer-to-Peer Pornography (P4) Act would require the Federal Trade Commission to regulate peer-to-peer networks and take steps to ensure that children aren't accidentally coming across porn. Pitt praised the action but he thinks the Feds are just being reactive:

Friday's announcement is a disturbing confirmation that Peer-to-Peer programs are being manipulated. They are becoming an ever more dangerous platform used by child predators -- some convicted child molesters to attack kids.

Why Google Will Merge Orkut and Blogger

Veronis and Suhler Stevenson (VSS) sees a day fast approaching when we will be over-saturated in media, according to this TelevisionWeek report. I believe it. If there's one thing problematic with the Information Age it is that there's just too much to take in!

Currently I subscribe to about 350 "real" news and blog feeds using FeedDemon and Bloglines. Many of these, particularly the blogs, are filled with thousands of pearls of wisdom. Despite these powerful aggregation tools, I find it impossible to read all these feeds and end up scanning probably about half (at most) on a daily basis. The problem is going to only escalate as online publishing becomes cheaper and easier. I find new blogs to read almost every day.

Thankfully, despite the gloomy VSS predictions, Google will again free us from information clutter, just as they have done time and again. They will eventually merge their Orkut social networking site and Blogger Web publishing system to establish communities of "trusted bloggers." A unified Blogger/Orkut platform will make it easier for us to identify the most credible/valuable bloggers who write about the subjects that matter to us. The system will be even better than the tools we use now to measure influence, such as Technorati. Some are already experimenting with such a model, but Google will prevail.

You can already see the early beginnings of this in Blogger's recent relaunch. Google is grouping bloggers into discrete communities. Orkut has an eerily similar community system. I can easily envision a day when Google will realize the tremendous power of merging these platforms into a single entity that facilitates information publishing/sharing and retrieval -- if they haven't already.

IMHO, this will all make our job - reaching online influencers - just a little bit easier.

DIY ringtone software panics record labels

make your own ringtones from MP3s with Xingtone, user/pass

Xingtone's desktop software is easy-to-use, legal, and allows you to create mobile phone ringtones using digital audio files on your computer - music clips, sound effects, your child's laugh, your dogís bark, or any sound you like!

Pixagogo supports Creative Commons

Pixagogo, an online photo site, now offers Creative Commons licenses to its contributing photographers. Pixagogo allows you to upload and share photos via its web site. They also let you purchase prints. Check out their toolbar, that includes an option to choose Creative Commons.

I, T-shirt: wearable movie trailers at NextFest

In The Hollywood Reporter today, an item about t-shirts that display movie trailers -- as seen at both E3 and NextFest last week.

Coming soon to a T-shirt near you: trailers for "I, Robot," starring Will Smith. In the never-ending search to capture the attention of consumers bombarded by commercials, billboards and a massive array of other advertisements, 20th Century Fox debuted an innovative new guerilla marketing tactic at E3 last week -- T-shirts embedded with video screens that played "I, Robot" trailers.

The two women who wore the video T-shirts as they walked around E3 drew crowds and TV news crews on hand to cover the gaming conference at the Los Angeles Convention Center. 20th Century Fox is the first studio -- or business of any kind -- to use the video T-shirt marketing tactic developed by San Francisco-based Brand Marketers.

Fallows: End of the Info Middlemen?

In the yesterday's New York Times, James Fallows explores how the rise of the Internet is transforming the business of content by making it possible to eliminate "info middlemen." In particular, he discusses journals that publish professional, scientific, and medical papers -- which complain of being undermined by free online clearinghouses such as the U.S. National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central site. He also ponders the fate of services that historically have repackaged and delivered data and content produced with taxpayer funds, such as AccuWeather.

This conundrum also challenges the news media. Says Fallows, "Publishers can theorize about (...)

Entry continued...

Japanese Trend: Millions Get News Via Their Phones

I had dinner last week with Shayne Bowman as we planned for the Exploring the Fusion Power of Public and Participatory Journalism Conference on Aug. 3 in Toronto. We were talking about the potential of wireless, and he said pay attention to Smart Mobs because its founder Howard Reinghold says look to what is happening around the world. Eventually it will happen here in the USA.

So here is what is happening in Japan, according to a comprehensive Japan Media Review article:

In a July 2003 survey, Tokyo-based mobile ad agency D2 Communications, a joint venture between mobile carrier NTT DoCoMo and advertising giant Dentsu, found that about 84 percent of i-mode users subscribed to some form of mobile news service. As of late March there were just over 41 million i-mode users in Japan (out of a total population of more than 127 million), implying that a staggering 34.7 million i-moders are now receiving news via mobile technology. And that's just among NTT DoCoMo customers; competitors KDDI and Vodafone have millions more mobile Internet users.

Mobile media users are also generating strong profits for at least some media houses, primarily those that have opted to create subscription news channels. The Asahi Shimbun is making well over $1 million per month on wireless content and others are trying hard to catch up.

Blog reader survey

Over at Blogads, Henry Copeland has posted a 22-question online survey to help improve the service. By getting a snapshot of blog readers, he says, the aggregate data could be good PR for blog advertising.

Henry, who is writing about the survey on the Blogads blog, also points out that of 6,000 responses so far, 80% have come from men. "This shocks me, but the percentage has been true since the first 10 responses came in, and fluctuates nary an 0.1% as different blogs dump their readers into the pot. If anyone blogs this fact, will we see a higher proportion of women respond?"

Blogbuzz

In today's New York Times James Fallows has an article titled "The Twilight of the Information Middlemen": As he introduces blogs to a readership not necessarily familiar with him, he writes: "the Internet's most fascinating impact has been on those who have decided not to charge for their work."

Fallows grasps a key point about weblogs, one worth emphasizing as this medium grows more mainstream: blogging was born out of the desire for free expression and the desire to share one's self-expression freely and easily with others... not out of the desire for profit.

Bill Moyers is also a blog fan. At the very end of his recent Fresh Air Interview he says: "I think the internet, the blogging, is the closest we've come in a long time to the history of the American media in the beginning. You know in the 1820's, 1830's all you needed to be a journalist was to buy a press. That's why they called them inkstained wretches. Because they operated their own hand presses. For a little bit of money, like Tom Payne and others, you could have your own press........ After the revolution independent journalists, printers they called themselves, sprung up all over the country ... they were partisan by the way, vociferously. They attacked the others politics. but it was a healthy period of bombast in america in which people could sort out the information. I think the bloggers, then the websites, come closest to the spirit of cacophany, to that democratic expression, that we had in the early part of this country's history."

TV over IM

My dream of distributing couch potato behavior has been realized by Simon Thornton: Sending Live Television Via iChat. Simon says:

However, if you just so happen to be someone that has purchased an analogue video -> DV (firewire) converter box in the past, such as the Formac Studio, you might be suprised to learn that when it's plugged in it is presented to the Mac (and specifically the iChat application) as a perfectly valid firewire input device. In other, shorter, easier, words: you can use your converter box to stream live video from something - oooh, let's just say your Sky Digibox for example - to someone else using iChat anywhere else in the world. If you happened to have one of the outputs of your Sky box (it has two) connected up to the inputs of your converter box, you might see how this could work.

Opera Sings RSS' Praises

Opera (last week) introduced a new browser that integrates RSS reading capabilities. Users can subscribe to feeds and have new items arrive regularly as individual messages in Opera's mail client, which is packaged with the browser.

AP says "The decision by a major browser maker to include RSS is a sign of the technology's rapid adoption."

RSS has clearly passed the tipping point. Everyone I show it to leaves with their mouths open wide. However, it still needs to get a lot easier to use before it becomes a technology a grandma can love. How much longer will it be before Microsoft buys and dumbs down Newsgator or Feeddemon and integrates the technology into XPSP3 or Longhorn? Or before AOL, Google or Yahoo! buys Bloglines and throws ads into the mix? Not long.

XVID 1.0 Released

"The 1.0 version of XVID codec is available. XviD is an ISO MPEG-4 compliant video codec like DIVX codec. It's an open source project which is developed and maintained by lots of people from all over the world. On the 31st December, Doom9 has made a codec comparison and XVID was at this time, one of the best codecs."

"Koreans will Kill TV"...

...with broadband. That's what George Guilder recently said in Seoul.

jMax, Max for Java

freesoftware@ircam A new version of jMax was recently released. For those of you who don't know, jMax is a version of the Max family of sofware (Max/MSP, PD and so on) that uses a Java front end. From the site:

jMax is a visual programming environment for building interactive real-time music and multimedia applications. jMax is a new implementation of the MAX software written originally by Miller Puckette at Ircam. The name MAX is an homage to Max Matthews, one of the fathers of computer music.

'First free VOD channel' launches

RipeTV is debuting with 11 shows (with commercials) via video-on-demand.

American Idol voting 'seriously flawed'

Only a relative few votes get recorded, reports a Broadcasting & Cable investigation. Tens of millions haven't gotten through because no phone system can handle the volume of calls. Exception: AT&T's text messages, which are transmitted digitally and cost callers 10¢ a piece.

Eye-contact-sensing goggles

Connor Dickie, a student at Queen's University's Human Media Lab, has developed these video-shooting glasses with an eye-contact sensor, and a companion app called eyeBlog that allows the wearer to videoblog her/his PoV.

NTT's home IP videophone

Fusty old Japanese telecoms monopoly NTT is straining to go all cool and IP as its conventional phone and dialup businesses wane, and it's come up with its vision for the home phone of the future: a touch-panel VoIP videophone that hooks up to a DSL or fibre connection. The only shortcoming, apart from an unfashionable lack of portability, is the price; about US$600. Too expensive for PC-less grannies and PC'd-up young bloods alike, we don't see this one taking off (we'll settle for a webcam, thanks). NTT deserves some kudos for developing it with what seems like remarkable speed, though this vision of the future goes on the market to NTT broadband subscribers in June.

O'Reilly Open Books Project

"Over the years, O'Reilly Media has published a number of "Open Books"--books with various forms of "open" copyright".... In addition to the books (with their various open licenses) listed here, O'Reilly has adopted the Creative Commons Founders' Copyright, which we'll apply to hundreds of out-of-print and current titles, pending author approval.

Samsung's satellite TV phone

Sams