unmediated

IBM's On Demand Lab.

IBM has opened a laboratory to let customers experiment with technology to make computing systems more flexible and efficient, the company announced Monday. The on-demand technology center near Washington, D.C., lets customers simulate their own equipment under the control of IBM's Tivoli Intelligent Orchestrator.

The technology addresses a hot area of technological development called "provisioning," which controls the software running on a group of servers to make sure important jobs get the resources they need.

Is 'Transitional Fair Use' The Wave Of The Future?

All Your TV has a great piece running now called Is 'Transitional Fair Use' The Wave Of The Future?. In it, they touch on HBO's recent moves to curtail the consumer rights on recordings, where recorded episodes can't be saved forever, and will have a mandated delete date. I'm guessing HBO thinks a large drive TiVo with a whole season of Six Feet Under would cut into DVD sales of that season, but I tend to view shows on DVD for the extras so I think they're overdoing it if that's the case.

The phrase "transitional fair use" is one to watch because it sounds like an acceptable compromise between viewers and networks when in reality networks would like to roll back the basic freedoms you legally enjoy today. What if you go on vacation for a couple weeks in the summer? What if you're busy at work for a few weeks before you can tend to the backlog of HBO shows saved?  It'll be interesting to watch HBO try and balance the needs of their business while at the same time keeping viewers happy. It's a disturbing trend for those of us that just want to enjoy TV on our own time and it's a shame to see HBO leading the way down this dark path [thanks, Steve]

Bit Torrent Comment: Engadget, NPR, and CBC

Three examples of informative listening about Bit Torrent:

• Engadget’s Podcast number 17
• NPR’s Joel Rose comments on the future of Bit Torrent
• CBC on why Bit Torrent makes Bid Media sad (this link is the MP3 file)

NewsBluntly Debuts, Tracks Broadcast Journalism Industry

The NewsMarket, an online platform PR pros use to deliver broadcast-standard news video to television journalists, launched a blog for the media community called NewsBluntly. The blog features original content by for broadcast-news staffers with succinct, riffs on major - and not so major -- "inside-the-newsroom" stories. Naturally, in addition to posts and relevant links to other media blogs and useful sites, NewsBluntly also links to the latest VNRs and B-roll provided by The NewsMarket. A sound bite from the press release

"With NewsBluntly, we're addressing television newscasters' unique social network and embracing the concept of participatory journalism," said Shoba Purushothaman, The NewsMarket's CEO and co-founder.

Chilean Indymedia group leaves the network

The Santiago, Chile-based segment of Indymedia, santiago.indymedia.org, announced its departure from the Indymedia network on Saturday, citing differences in opinion on various topics. It seems that the Santiago group's hardline beliefs apparently don't mesh with the core Indymedia standards or values.

WiFi Planet Expo: November 30 - December 2: San Jose, CA.

The Wi-Fi PLANET Conference & Expo takes place Nov. 30 through Dec. 2 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center.

The three-day event features nearly 50 cutting-edge sessions with a pre-conference workshop on November 30 followed by two days of intensive sessions within the following tracks on December 1-2: Building the Network; Technical Topics; Wi-Fi Outdoors; Hotspot Central; RFID; Securing the WLAN; Wi-Fi Telephony & Convergence; and Special Interest.

Solar Cell Doubles as Battery

Technology Review reports that scientists from Toin University of Yokohama have designed a single device that can both convert solar energy to electricity and store the electricity. The photocapacitor can also capture energy from weak light sources like sunlight on cloudy or rainy days and indoor lighting.

The light-driven, self-charging capacitor could eventually be used to power phones, cameras, and PDAs. "Users can just bring the device anywhere and expose it to indoor and outdoor ambient light whether they need power or not [then] release the stored electricity anytime they want," explains Tsutomu Miyasaka, a researcher at the University.

Wireless Cities

If cities evolve, what will shape their evolution over the next few decades?

Salon has an interesting article today about the use of wireless technologies as the drivers for urban change. "Urban Renewal, the Wireless Way" (subscription or brief advertisement required) looks at the realization that embedding networked technologies in urban spaces isn't dehumanizing, doesn't "eliminate geography," but can be enriching both socially and economically. Cities have long been home to dense social and information networks -- in the ethnic and artistic subcultures, in the patterns of business and commerce, in the every day communication of millions of people -- and digital tools make these networks both more accessible and more powerful.

(Continued at WorldChanging)

Korea: Ohmynews' first figures released

We have already written about the Korean news website Ohmynews a few times on the Editors' weblog, but until now we didn't know the precise figures concerning this website. "According to Min, director of international development, OhmyNews is generating almost US$500,000 a month in advertising revenue."We broke even last year and since then kept generating a monthly profit of about $27,000," The website is ranked in the top 15 in South Korea. According to a website message from the founder, Oh Yeon-ho, after three years OhmyNews was breaking even, with 2004 anticipated to yield a modest profit. According to OhmyNews sources, only 20% of the site's copy each day is written by staff journalists. The balance is totally dependent on outside contributors, including professors, police officers, students, housewives, business people - everyone. "OhmyNews citizen-reporters are paid from US$20 to as little as $5, depending on the place [each article] is assigned by our editors," Min said. The site was recently recognized at the fifth World Forum on E-Democracy hosted by PoliticsOnline, in a ceremony in France, as one of the global players instrumental in changing the world of the Internet and politics.

Nintendo DS gets some hacker loving

You knew it would happen. The Nintendo DS has so many features, it’s a hackers dream come true. Sure, Nintendo is notorious for dodging hacks but when they added Wi-Fi to their repertoire, they were just asking for that special attention. The beginning of the process starts here. It’s nothing too sexy; just a method to capture Pictochat sessions. But it will lead to bigger things. Sexy things. The kinds of things that will have you plunking down 200 bucks so you can join the DS frenzy.

Samsung Anycall Theater

It's great to be back in New York. Every time I leave, I come back to a city that is a little bit more my home than before. Since I've got a lot of catching up to do today (not nearly as much if Brendan Koerner hadn't kept things in check last week, though!) expect quite a few short clean up posts. I'm sure you'll be able to live without my erudite insights into the latest leather cell phone case or whatever.

Inaugurally, this Samsung 'Anycall Theater' is a speaker dock designed to let you use your Samsung phone as a stereo (practical) or television (arrr, squinty).

Samsung "Anycall Theater" [Slashphone]

Avid MetaSync

As long as a file type or process can be represented in the appropriate XML format, it can now be imported into Avid editing systems using the MetaSync feature and synchronized with video and audio. In the timeline, pointers to the original file can be positioned, trimmed and edited just like video and audio clips. The file can then be launched in its original format from directly within the Avid system to be viewed or updated, and any changes made are instantly reflected in the timeline and bin

Researchers Invent Clear, Flexible Transistors

The Japan Science and Technology Agency have invented a clear, flexible transistor that can be used to make clear, flexible electronic gadgets. Has anyone seen my cell phone?

Man shoots cell phones into Swedish prison

This is one of the stranger stories to come along.

According to WKRC.com, authorities in Sweden arrested a man who shot mobile phones into the yard of a high-security prison with a bow and arrows, police said Saturday.

"The 25-year-old man is charged with planning to aid a prison escape and could get up to a year in jail, police said.

The suspect, whose name was not released, taped two cell phones and a battery charger to three arrows, and fired them over the 12-foot wall into Mariefred prison outside Stockholm on Friday night."

Buddybuzz

From Howard Rheingold on TheFeature.com.

Ross Mayfield on Many 2 Many writes about an experiment from Stanford's Persuasive Technologies Lab: Buddybuzz:

"It helps you find the most interesting articles to read, based upon your friend's ratings -- and allows you to read 300 to 800 words per minute from your mobile phone.

Reading works by having a single word blinked at you at a rate you control, similar to other experiences on the web, but it simply makes more sense with mobile form factor and lifestyle".

How to explode TV news in four easy steps

Try this:

1. Slice.

Cut up your shows into stories and put them all online.

After you air a story, it's fishwrap. Nobody can see it. If they missed it, well, that's tough for them. Is that any way to treat your public? Well, you don't have to anymore.

You should put up every story you do -- and not just as a stream but as files that the people can distribute on their own.

You can still make money on this -- in fact, you'll make new money: Put ads on the video; track those ads; and tack on a Creative Commons license that says people can distribute the video but cannnot muck with it. And you'll find something magical will happen: Your audience will market your product for you and distribute it for you and it won't cost you anything more. It's free money, damnit. Tell that to your stockholders.

And while you're at it, take your script for the segment and associate it with the video as meta data (that is, post it on a blog with a link to the video) so people can find your stories on search engines and then watch them.

This means that people who really want to see your stories and are interested in them can now do so. We're no longer captive to your schedule and your selection; we can watch what interests us. We are in control.

The result: You will get a more interested and involved audience. You will get a bigger audience. You will get more people who will like what you do and start watching your old-fashioned shows. You will benefit. We will benefit.

If you really care about informing the public -- which, of course, you do -- then this is the first step to doing it a new and better way.

Unlicensed Spectrum: The Sum of Fears

"The UK regulator, Ofcom, has decided that managing spectrum is a drag, and there are other people around that might do a better job. It is going to open up 73 percent of the radio spectrum to market forces, and make it technology-neutral and tradeable. So if one technology gets superseded, another one can get rolled out instead (subject to broadcast power limits) without Ofcom having to define what spectrum it should use.

Radio was first regulated here 100 years ago this year, and a new regime is needed to fit new radio technology. Ofcom is quite proud to be ahead of the US on this one, because we have a recent Communications Act, and the FCC is 'hamstrung' by old laws - at least that's what the head of research at Ofcom said."

1. Allow the market to decide the best use for new spectrum allocations.
2. Allow licence holders to trade spectrum in an open market and change the use they make of spectrum rights to develop new technologies and offer different services to customers (also known as liberalisation).
3. Clearly define the rights of spectrum users, giving them the confidence to plan for the future.
4. Increase the amount of licence-exempt spectrum which allows businesses to develop and bring to market new technologies and services without the need for a licence.

In the United States, Nextel, Sprint and Clearwire own most of the 2.5-2.7 GHz band (MMDS). Nextel expects to make a decision on next generation technology in January and is reportedly looking for an alliance with a cable operator.

(Continued at DailyWireless)

SolarPC Annouces the $100 Personal Computer. Linux. Solar. Education

Linux PR: SolarPC Announces the $100 Personal Computer talks about the latest PC - perhaps a response to Microsoft's Steve Ballmer's request to build a $100 PC.

Burning only 10 Watts, an aluminium case with a 20 year warranty, a lead free motherboard.

Down side: You need to order 100,000 units to get one, apparently.

JVC Camcorders with Hard Drives

You know I like to tell you about stuff that will change the way we do business.  Here are the first consumer camcorders that use Hard Drives instead of Videotape.  What with Moore's law and cost per gigabyte getting so cheap, you'd think that this is a natural, "the passing of the magnetic-tape era," proclaimed the New York Times.  Well, not exactly - but the news is still wonderful.

The new Everio GZ-MC100, top, and GZ-MC200 are JVC camcorders that store video onto a tiny removable hard drive.

The hard drives are 4GB, that's .7 GB less than a current recordable DVD.  The camcorders will cost somewhere around $1,200 and the hard drives will cost about $200 each.

Good news, bad news.  The good news is that these little guys mark the beginning of the way video should be acquired - IF you're going to edit!  Yes, if you are going to edit, this is the only way to fly.  No encoding time, just hook the camera or drive up to your computer and start to edit.  If, on the other hand, you are shooting for archival purposes or you just never edit your stuff, this is a terrible idea.  You'll fill up 4GB in about a nanosecond and then you will be forced to transfer the contents to your computer for storage or to a DVD recorder or to tape, you get the point.

(Continued at EmmyAdvancedMedia)

Should XML disappear into the background?

I agree with Dave Winer on this one. Even with the disclaimers about newsreaders and such, there's still a pretty good chance that the reader will wonder why there are two versions of the blog homepage. At the opposite end are the readers who "think the link is broken" when they see all those angle brackets. Here's my claim: it's okay, people will figure out that all those angle brackets make their life better and will eventually forget about them. That is, they will disappear into the background, but not because we went out of our way to hide them.

Before dismissing me as technology-elite, take a listen to this talk by Malcolm Gladwell at IT Converations. He talks about peoples' reactions to new products and ideas. Quote:

The Blogosphere By the Numbers

According to David Sifry, Technorati 's chief executive, the current number of blogs is now over 8 times bigger than the 500,000 blogs it measured in June, 2003.

The company tracked 3 million blogs as of the first week of July, and has added over 1 million blogs to its stable since then. Meanwhile, Pew Internet & American Life reports a new weblog is created every 5.8 seconds. That roughly translates into 15,000 new blogs every day.

Blog traffic - Weblog Posts / Day

go to ClickZ for a full report

How-to: Podcasting by Phone with Audioblog.com

So you want to podcast by phone using Audioblog.com?

MovableType users with MTEnclosures installed are able to deliver a podcast, simply by having a link to a media file, such as an MP3, available in their blog. The MTEnclosure plug-in, written by Brandon Fuller, handles the rest.

Here's what you need to do with your Audioblog.com preferences. First, select the preferences tab and choose the blog which will be your podcast....

(Continued at Audioblog.com News)

Carrier-centric versus Device-centric

In my view [Jan Michael Hess], the carrier-centric model for managing the mobile economy is better suited to deliver mobile data services that consumers pay for than the device-centric model - favoured by Nokia - which is still dominant in Europe. This is a key reason why Japan leads the pack and it is also the main reason why Vodafone adopted the carrier-centric model on a global scale.

1. the cost of GSM, GPRS and 3G data traffic has to go down severely
2. third parties need to get a bigger share of the end user price (like in Japan where the third party gets between 88 to 91%)
3. the carriers have to work in cooperation-competition (price strategy for the mobile internet, communication towards the user, open standards)
   or as a less good alternative - there should be only a small number of european carriers

New blog on media law

Robert J. Ambrogi, an attorney in Rockport, Mass., has started a new blog, Media Law. Says Robert: "I will track news relating to the First Amendment, access to public records, open meetings laws, journalist shield laws, libel and other legal issues relating to news reporting, with an emphasis on Massachusetts." Robert is a lawyer and former editor in chief of the National Law Journal and Lawyers Weekly USA. He's also executive director of the Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association -- a rare combination. HIs other blog is LawSites. I'll be stopping by regularly.

Blog and RSS news

Steve Rubel has a good roundup of recent news developments about blogs and RSS.

The beginning and the future of Internet radio

In November of 1994, WXYC-FM, the college radio station at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, began the first live Internet simulcast of radio programming on the Internet. The station staff just celebrated this decade of Webcasting with a panel discussion featuring some of the folks who made it happen.



[Today], November 24, they will get together again to discuss the history and current state of Internet radio on The State of Things, a feature program of WUNC-FM, the Chapel Hill NPR affiliate. Naturally, the program will be simulcast via the Internet and archived for later listening on the WUNC.org site.

Paul Jones is the originator and director of Sunsite -- now ibiblio.org and the UNC administrator who midwifed the webcast project. He's got this to add about the program:

Three of the participants from the WXYC Webcasting Panel will be on WUNC s State of Things tomorrow (Wednesday) at noon-ish. We ll plenty to say about the old days when we invented Internet radio and more to say about new developments such as podcasting, Internet2 streaming, and p2p radio as well as about legal hurtles created by the monopolists. I m sure we ll also mention bands that allow their live concerts to be taped and shared, McGuinn and others who use the Internet for distribution, and Koleman Strumpf s study that showed no effect on sales caused by file trading.

Tune in and call in. We will be bigger than Janet Jackson and there are three of us! The three being Michael Shoffner, David McConville and me.

15 Megs of Fame | Artists and Fans unite!

In a nutshell, 15 Megs of Fame serves two purposes. The first is giving listeners a free way of discovering and acquiring new music online. Not only do they get to discover the music, they have the opportunity to leave comments for the artists on their tracks, and score the music they're listening to from 0-5. Each listener also will pick their 'Preferred Genres', and fill out a short multiple-answer survey which will help us better understand the type of music they're looking for. All of this data is used in our robust recommendations engine that will sort through the site's content, and make appropriate recommendations of new music for the listeners. Listeners can also search the site a number of different way to discover new music.

Low Income Housing Connection

Last week, developers of 18 affordable-housing projects in Oregon were awarded federal grants to install high-speed Internet connections in more than 450 apartments. Many are offering tenants free or subsidized monthly Internet service.

The government program known as E-rate helped subsidize the wiring of schools and public libraries, while recent government efforts have focused on proving broadband to rural areas. Yet a significant digital divide based on income persists, largely affecting the urban poor. Oregon now requires builders of affordable housing to install DSL, cable broadband or wireless access if they get federal dollars administered by the state.

(Continued at Daily Wireless)

Introducing, ConvergSense (Om Malik)

Folks, starting today, I am going to be writing a new column on convergence for the Business 2.0 online. This is a bi-weekly column that is going to alternate with my Telecom Report column. I hope you can sign-up for this column to have it delivered in your In-Box. You can read the debut column, here. Here are excerpts…

Though a slow starter, a new era of convergence is upon us, and it is the driving force of change and growth for the entire electronics industry. We’re no longer talking about the PC vs. TV debate, mind you …… Folks are buying new music by virtual truckloads from Apple’s iTunes store, while companies like Vodafone (VOD) are offering television streams on their 3G cell-phone networks. TiVo has entered the popular vernacular, if not the annals of profitability, as it streams cable programming and, soon, Internet programming throughout the home. Radio is leaving its terrestrial roots and is being replaced by signals from the big birds in the sky. Video-on-demand, long an expense item for adventurous cable chief executives, is now as commonplace as a cable set-top box.

CNET News.com Now Supports TrackBack and Pingback

CNET News.com, which previously had been quietly testing trackbacks and pingbacks, today announced they are officially supporting them to help readers see the broader context and commentary around stories they report. For example, here's a list of bloggers who are talking about this particular news story. I applaud them. This is a major sign that mass media and social media are indeed converging.

NASA develops secret speech aid

NASA engineers are developing a technology that picks up and translates throat signals into words before they're even spoken.

According to neuroengineer Chuck Jorgensen , when you're reading, sometimes you find that your tongue or your lips are moving but you're not making an audible sound. An electronic signal is being sent to produce that speech but you're intercepting it so it doesn't really say it out loud. That's subvocal speech.

Electrodes cling below Jorgensen's chin picking up electronic signals that the body sends to vocal chords. He amplifies the signals and uses neural network software to decipher word patterns.

Those sounds create waves that electrodes pick up and funnel into a neural net which recognizes the pattern and the label or word that Jorgensen assigns to that pattern. Over time, word repetition and processing enable the introduction of new patterns or words.



During a demo before a wide screen, Jorgensen can direct a simulated Mars rover over Martian terrain. It dips, falls, climbs over craters and turns abruptly to the left and right, all at Jorgensen's prompting, all without him uttering a sound.

Of course, conversational speech is very different from uttering a word and it's unclear how well the system would recognize subvocal speech during conversation.

(Continued at we-make-money-not-art)

Interesting study on fast-forwarding

CBS is about to release a study showing that DVR users have better retention of commercial messages than people viewing ads at regular speed. They claim a recall rate of 23% for DVR fast forwarders, but don't mention what lower rate regular TV folks recall ads at.

It's kind of weird on the surface, but makes sense for a few reasons. One is that people using FF are concentrating at 100%, waiting to see the show come back so they can stop, while most folks stuck in 30-second ad jail can let their mind wander or take off to the kitchen for other things. Ads also have a tendency to repeat often (repeat often...often...), and I know when I'm watching shows I can spot that same damn weight loss pill ad for serious dieters and that same ad for Chili's that comes on at each break. I also suspect we're used to decades of ads displaying images at a certain rate and a certain pace, and I wouldn't be surprised if a psychologist would say the super quick cuts seen during FF would be more jarring and memorable in the end. [via MarketingVox and Mike] 

South Asia: from cross border journalism to cross border journalism

Very interesting meeting in Lahore, Pakistan, of the South Asia Free Media Assocation (SAFMA) headed by Imtiaz Alam. There were more than 200 editors from India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan to give birth to what they call "cross border journalism". These editors want to avoid patriotic bias in the different conflicts of the region, especially in Kashmir, Sri Lanka and Nepal. It is the reason why editors try to set up a network which allows to exchange articles and columns and to cross the border. For instance, in October 2004, Pakistani journalists made a first trip to "Indian Kashmir" since 1947! And next week, Indian journalists will come to "Azad Kashmir" (liberated Kashmir according to the official Pakistani wordind) with the agreement of President Musharraf.

If I compare to efforts made in the Balkans and in Central America for peace and reconciliation process, the initiative of South Asia Free Media Assocation is very efficient: in South Asia, editors have a leading role in transforming their public opinion attitudes!

Related website: South Asia Free Media Assocation

(It's good to remember that unmediating is sometimes little more than a simple handshake. -kc.)

Amazon Japan Cell Phone Fancypants Service

Keitai Watch reports that as part of a renewal of their site, Amazon Japan has introduced a flattering new feature called "Amazon Scan Search." After users download an application to their cell phone free of charge, they can scan barcodes of ordinary products, which in turn enables them to search the cell phone version of Amazon.co.jp for the respective product. Once they get a result on their search, they can then choose to purchase the item right from their phone. Obviously, there's quite a bit of overhead associated with this — like needing a phone with a camera, needing to use i-Mode, and needing to, you know, be in Japan — but I'm willing to ignore that for now.

Amazon Japan of course intends the service be used for on-the-spot price comparisons, as well as "finding out what sort of products are sold should you want something that your friend has." I'd say I await Amazon in America to introduce a similar service, but I will probably be waiting for all eternity.

Amazon Mobile [Amazon.co.jp via Keitai Watch]

North Korean authorities and cellphones

In North Korea: "Mobile phones have become a weapon in antigovernment movements"

In the spring,the North Korean authorities banned most cellphones.
Some residents have contacts with people in neighboring countries by hiding mobile phones in places with good reception, like tall buildings and hilltops," said a North Korean document photographed by a Japanese aid group that calls itself "Rescue the North Korean People Urgent Action Network."

On Sunday, the Kyodo news agency of Japan reported that North Korea was cracking down on people in border cities who helped pass letters to foreigners or used cellphones to communicate with the outside world.

read the full article in the International Herald Tribune.

By way of the Carp !

When TV Meets the Web

The Secretary of State for Media, Medy van der Laan, has issued a recommendation that the three channels of the Dutch public broadcaster should be distributed live over the Internet, and other plans include those of ISP Wanadoo: like its mother company France Telecom through its MaLigneTV service, (...)

Entry continued...

VIDEO: BloggerCon3 (in little pieces)

Click the photo to see my video from BloggerCon3 in Palo Alto. It's taken me over two weeks to get it up here. My fellow videobloggers will laugh at me....but I was thinking about it way too much. Honestly, I was just overwhelmed. BloggerCon was a full day of talking in classrooms. It was like the cool college courses I never got to take.

But how do you videoblog that? Recording and posting video really shows me what works and what doesnt. Since I really didnt know anyone there, I just couldnt really catch my snap. But I think I got it. Here is a 9 minute video of the different voices and faces present.

(Continued at Momentshowing)

Submit AEJMC Mid-Winter Paper Proposals Now

You have just one month to get in paper or panel proposals for the mid-winter conference. Leonard Witt be hosting the conference at Kennesaw State University. Submissions can address any aspect of civic, or public, journalism, which now extends into citizen and participatory journalism. Yes, that includes blogs too.

(Continued at PJNet Today)

reBlog 1.0 Launched!

Eyebeam R&D has teamed up with the UI wizards at Stamen Design to release reBlog 1.0. Check it out at www.reblog.org. It more fun and easier to install and use than ever.

Most notable is the new super-sexy online RSS/Atom Aggregator/Reader called reFeed (demo reFeed here).

We've also improved the Movable Type plugin to import del.icio.us-style categories from reFeed, and added a plugin for WordPress. And if you're a reBlog beta user, we tried as hard as we could to smooth the upgrade paths, and we think you'll appreciate the effort.

If you're into blogs, feeds, personal publishing, and/or syndication, we think it's worth your time to check out www.reblog.org and reFeed, and maybe even install and try using the software.

Distributed reporting

Finally catching up with email and read a neat notion from Jay Rosen. He noted that Josh Marshall was getting his readers to call their representatives to see whether they had voted for the DeLay Rule since (a) the votes weren't recorded and (b) the reps would be more likely to level with voters than with reporters. "Great example of blogging doing journalism one better," says Jay. Right. It's distributed reporting: The people do the digging.

I can imagine a score of stories where this would work: You ask your readers to call their congressmen to find out a stance and put together a chart (a wiki would work better for this than blog comments, by the way). You have your fellow bloggers each tell you whether the newspapers and TV and radio stations in their town covered a story you think is important and even have them all call the papers' editors to ask why not. I think a lot of our open-space tax dollars are wasted on space nobody'd want anyway, so I could ask people to take pictures of stupid open space purchases near them. But it's not restricted to bloggers alone: A smart reporter could start a blog and ask readers what's happening in the communities they cover.

Mobile document imaging technology

Mobile document imaging technology has been developed by Scientists at the Xerox Research Centre Europe in Grenoble, France, for mobile phones that will evolve them into portable document scanners and could, ultimately, turn them into effective document service devices.

KCRA reporter goes IM to Air from courtroom

Via Lost Remote: What a great idea. During the Scott Peterson verdict -- where no cameras where allowed -- KCRA reporter Edie Lambert sat in the WiFi-enabled courtroom with her laptop and sent IMs straight on the air.

Online Lecture: "Rip, Mix, Burn, Sue: Technology, Politics, and the Fight to Control Digital Media"

The video of my Princeton President's Lecture, "Rip, Mix, Burn, Sue: Technology, Politics, and the Fight to Control Digital Media" is now online. The lecture, which lasts about an hour, is a layperson's introduction to the technology/copyright wars. I gave it on October 12. The first six minutes of the video consists entirely of introductions, which can safely be skipped.

(RealPlayer 56K; RealPlayer 350K; WinMedia 56K; WinMedia 350K)

Will web media be bought out by traditional media giants?

Wired News ponders the question of possible acquisitions of online media by traditional media giants following last week's purchase of MarketWatch by Dow Jones. Analyzing the market trends, which have seen online advertisements grow in times of mediocre performance of the print media, it might actually be worthwhile for media giants to add online media to their assets. Adam L. Penenberg of Wired News, argues, "even though it's beginning to feel like the internet boom days of old, you likely won't see real-world companies paying ridiculous sums to buy their way into cyberspace." The acquisition of MarketWatch by Dow Jones is explained by Jeff Jarvis, president of Advance.net, "Dow Jones has been leaving ad dollars on the table because it's a paid site. Now it could increase subscriptions and advertising revenue at the same time through MarketWatch. It works pretty well when you can have a paid site and a larger free site." According to Sam Whitmore, editor of Sam Whitmore's Media Survey, over the next 12 to 24 months you will probably see big media companies scarf up these cult destinations, where a growing number of people are going for opinions, analysis and community. "Look at what happened politically," Whitmore said, when blogs hit the big time during the presidential campaign. "The same thing will happen in business, because people know they don't need to head to branded sites for good information. Bloggers can be trusted to be independent and people will turn to self-published experts for information."

Rolling (Electronic) Paper

"Flexible displays are a staple of science fiction. Imagine unrolling an electronic newspaper that’s automatically updated via the wireless Web. Or unfurling a screen stored in your location-enhanced mobile device so you can consult a digital map without squinting. These kinds of applications -- promised for more than a decade -- have almost become clichés of futurist hype. Indeed, as one reader of TheFeature points out in response to a flexible screen announcement by Philips, “Every industrial design student has some (mock-up) PDA with a roll-out display in their portfolio.” So why the hell can’t you buy one?"

Remote-control hunting

Live-Shot already lets people practise shooting at targets via the internet and plans to them them use a remote-controlled rifle to shoot down deers, mouflon sheeps, antelopes and wild pigs as they roam around a 133-hectare Texas ranch.



John Underwood got the idea a year ago when he was watching deer via a webcam on another net site, "We were looking at a beautiful white-tail buck and my friend said 'If you just had a gun for that'. A little light bulb went off in my head."

Each remote hunting session will cost $150 with additional fees for meat processing and taxidermy work.

Mike Berger, wildlife director of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, said current hunting statutes did not cover net or remote hunting. Besides, the law only covers "regulated animals" and there's thus nothing to stop Mr Underwood letting people hunt "unregulated" imported animals.

Via BBC News.

Thursday: Shall we license journalists?

Unfortunately, there is no federal statute that supports the rights of journalists to protect confidential sources. The law provides confidentiality for psychotherapists, lawyers and doctors. It is high time journalists were added to the list. If sources can't be assured of confidentiality, they will be reluctant to come forward to the press. And if they don't confide in the press, wrongdoing could remain undisclosed.

87% of Americans participate in online communities

Personal Democracy Forum (see previous post) reports on a new survey by ACNeilsen:

87 percent of all Americans say they are a part of an online community, and while shared personal interests, hobbies and health-related communities rank very high, 49 percent of Americans also say they participate in public issue sites. That's more than who say they belong to professional groups (37%) and school volunteer groups (30%). Online community members are also about four times as likely as offline community members to say they interact with each other on a daily basis.

I want My MPEG4 TV

Build your own MPEG4 Player in Java, with some tips from author and Java developer Sing Li as he shows you how to use an applet to create a download-on-demand MPEG-4 player, and how to prepare the content for delivery.

Revolution will not be TiVo-ed

There was a time, when a small company made everyone on Madison Avenue sweat. It gave consumers powers to skip through commercials and record television shows, freeing them from the tyranny of a time-bound television experience. It was TiVo, the Che Guevara of the consumer electronics. It started a revolution, which forced companies big and small, from Comcast to Microsoft, to change their digital media plans. It inspired copy cats, and for the first time created a “user defined” technology experience.

It never made money…. infact, it lost money…. tons of it. Still, the TiVoted never stopped loving the cute TV with Antenna ears. Till today. In a desperate bid to stay alive, TiVo which was born out of scorn for commercials sold its soul for a few pieces of silver.

The company is going to insert interactive banner ads when you fast forward through recored television shows. So what they are saying essentially: our ads are better than “networks” ads. Which is baloney. I had been contemplating buying a TiVo this weekend, but I guess my money is going to Microsoft when I do decide to buy a DVR.

TV of the people, by the people, for the people

Journalism isn't a profession, but an activity. And it's an activity that technology is putting within the reach of many more Americans. That's bad news if you're Dan Rather, but it's good news for the rest of us.

Get Three College Credits for Blogging

Next fall Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis will offer a three credit course in blogging. That bit of information was taken from a nice introductory story about blogging in the Indianapolis Star.

Story by Abe Aamidor says, "The medium is gaining so much popularity that the School of Journalism at IUPUI will offer a course on blogging next fall that will be worth three credits."

CES posts "Camera Phone Code of Conduct"

From News.com I learned the Consumer Electrionics Association (CEA) has posted "Camera Phone Rules of Conduct."   The CEA also has published "Novel Uses for Your Camera Phone."

Seven camera phone rules

"1.  Camera phones should not be used where photographic equipment is typically banned, for example:  museums, movie theaters, and live performances.  Users should look for signs in public places which indicate whether photographic equipment is banned.

"2.  Camera phones should not be used in public areas considered "private" by those who use them, for example:  bathrooms, changing rooms, and gym locker rooms.

"3.  Camera phones should not be used without authorization to record and/or transfer confidential information.  This may apply within a corporate, government or educational environment.

"4.  Camera phones should not be used to take photos of individuals without their knowledge and consent.

"5.  Discretion is advised when using your camera phone to take photos of individuals under the age of 18.

"6.  Safety is paramount when operating a motor vehicle.  Users should refrain from using the camera or video function of a wireless phone when driving.

"7.  Camera phone users should always respect the privacy of others.  Photography of individuals without their consent, when and where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy, may be prohibited by law."

WM Recorder - a PVR for streaming media

WM Recorder sounds like a pretty cool new product that lets you capture streaming windows media to a file. Seems like they'll be on shaky legal ground as many pay-only audio and video services use the windows media format solely to get around people doing this. More details on the software in their press release today.

(Check out this page for more apps to capture RTSP files. -kc.)

A Five Point Roadmap to the Future of Podcasting

Tod Maffin proposes a five-point road map to the future of podcasting. Among his recommendations is a call to the big media companies to get on board...

Some big broadcaster (a real, over-the-air broadcaster) needs to embrace the podcast ethos and soon. Natural players would be a public radio network like Canada's CBC Radio, Australia's ABC, England's BBC Radio, etc. It will lend immediate credibility to the trend.

Augmented reality handshake

Developed at the Media Lab Europe (Dublin), iBand is a wearable device that allows the exchange of information via a simple handshake.



The bracelet (still a prototype) stores and exchanges information about you and the persons you meet. The data gathered is reflected on the bracelet itself and can serve as a reminder or as an ice breaker for further conversation.

The circuit board and battery lay under the wrist and an infrared transceiver is positioned near the back of the thumb. A handshake is detected via IR transceiver alignment combined with hand/wrist orientation and gesture recognition.



To use it, you first have to enter personal information into a kiosk, which stores it and assigns a unique ID number to your iBand. When you shake hands with another iBand wearer, ID numbers are exchanged and stored. When you return to the kiosk, you can read a list of new contacts collected in the database.

(Continued at we-make-money-not-art)

You've Come A Long Way, Baby: Electronic Arts Starts a Music Label

So here I am wondering why there was no mention of this at the company meeting a few weeks ago. The New York Times is reporting (FRR) that Electronic Arts is partnering with Cherry Lane Music Publishing to form Next Level Music (get it? It's a clever pun based on the fact that it's music from videogames, but also implying that the music is better than the competition!). Apparently, the genesis of this idea came when Universal Pictures approached Electronic Arts to ask about using the orchestral theme from the Metal of Honor series in a trailer for Seabiscuit.

There are a couple of EA videogame soundtracks floating around out there, including some rather rare ones, like the vinyl promo singles from the NHL game that came out a few years ago. There's a copy of that one tacked to a wall near the sports bar downstairs from where I sit.

What this likely means is that, in the future, EA will probably try to secure exclusive tracks from artists it puts on a game soundtrack, and then release soundtrack albums on its own label. Like a movie studio, really. Nevertheless, I will quietly hold out for The Best of Archon b/w Theme from Pinball Construction Set.

How content aggregators change navigation and control of content

An important article from Joshua Porter, Digital Web on how aggregators already change the content presentation (read the end of the article with graphs) :"Site designs will move toward more flexible aggregation systems. Instead of a rigid navigation system that gives users a pre-defined hierarchy of choices, we’ll see many more user-driven systems. Faceted classification systems are an example of this. These are essentially a special kind of aggregation system that lets users aggregate content according to the facets inherent in it. In contrast to a one-hierarchy-fits-all approach, faceted systems let the users choose the navigation scheme that fits them best. The overall effect of “distributed navigation” brought upon by content aggregators is that we’re witnessing the control of content shift from designers to users. Users are finding new, highly effective aggregators much to their liking, and in doing so are bypassing much of what we’ve built for them. In one sense it’s scary, because we won’t be able to control the user experience as much. In another sense it’s rather exciting.We’re becoming caretakers of content, creating quality Web pages to be judged on their own merit in an ever-aggregating world."

Source: Digital Web

Copyright Mashup Remains a Threat

The good people at Public Knowledge have one-stop shopping for learning about and taking steps to oppose the copyright mashup bill that may once again be on the verge of passing.

Michael Grebb @ Wired:

Several lobbying camps from different industries and ideologies are joining forces to fight an overhaul of copyright law, which they say would radically shift in favor of Hollywood and the record companies and which Congress might try to push through during a lame-duck session that begins this week.

The Senate might vote on HR2391, the Intellectual Property Protection Act, a comprehensive bill that opponents charge could make many users of peer-to-peer networks, digital-music players and other products criminally liable for copyright infringement. The bill would also undo centuries of "fair use" -- the principle that gives Americans the right to use small samples of the works of others without having to ask permission or pay.

Another source of free indy music

Another source of free indy music... ic-musicmedia.com - is there any end to the amount of entertainment out there?

John Cleese sets his own media

John Cleese is now performing at his ranch in California via his website which charges $50 a year for the privilege (though some of the content are free.)

Fed up with television executives, travels and studios, the Monty Python star set up the website as a vehicle for his humour and personal philosophy. He updates the site every day with new sketches, pictures of his home life and biographical information.

"It's like having a tiny TV station or a magazine. The simplicity is delightful," said Cleese last week.

Via The Times.

The FCC Censorship Machine

Jeff Jarvis: Censorship by the tyranny of the few. With not much original reporting, I discovered that the latest big fine by the FCC against a TV network -- a record $1.2 million against Fox for its "sexually suggestive" Married by America -- was brought about by a mere three people who actually composed letters of complaint. Yes, just three people.

On the Roots of Copyright Activism

Mr. Vaidhyanathan came to his academic career in copyright not through an interest in law but as a fan of hip-hop music. In college he loved how rappers used samples of recorded music to form the backbones of their songs, which brought new meaning to both the rap lyrics and the sampled, looped tune.

Despite poor grades, he slipped into graduate school -- also at Austin -- and took a course on American music. At the time, hip-hop was getting "bum rushed," he recalls. Established songwriters were threatening rappers with copyright lawsuits, effectively stripping a whole creative element out of the music.

"I decided I had to read everything I could on copyright," says Mr. Vaidhyanathan. "I went looking for a clearly written book for laypeople to read, and I found that there wasn't one. I thought I should probably write one."

Make your own hologram

"Everything you need to make real 3D laser holograms. It's so simple, you could be making your first hologram in about an hour. Best of all, with the Litiholo "Instant Hologram" Film Plates, you spend all your time making holograms, not developing them."

The FCC says it has power over anything that can receive and play a digital file

We don't much like how the Broadcast Flag forces companies like TiVo to get government approval before they can add new features to their products, but Susan Crawford writes that what's even scarier is how the FCC is using it as part of a power grab to wield control over everything that can receive a digital file. In a brief filed in a suit brought against the Broadcast Flag by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and PublicKnowlegde, the FCC argues that not only do they have the right to regulate that all digital TVs, settop boxes, digital video recorders, satellite receivers, DVD recorders, etc. only be able to receive authorized content, that they also have regulatory power over “all instrumentalities, facilities, and apparatus ‘associated with the overall circuit of messages sent and received’ via all interstate radio and wire communication.” And yes, that also means your PC, your cellphone, or basically anything else that is capable of receiving a digital file and engages in some sort of communication.

[Via BoingBoing]

How to never miss an episode with BitTorrent and RSS

There's a great new app floating around that automatically downloads and saves your favorite programs via bittorrent. I haven't used TVtorrent before so I'm not sure how complete it is, I bet you'd have to stick to fairly popular shows if you really wanted to get every episode.

People have been building apps with bittorrent and rss before, but this is the first automated app I've heard of that combines the two to grab just the shows you want. Sounds a lot like the app wished for here.

Engadget audio show gets text descriptions right

The latest Engadget Podcast'ers are doing something smart: they put text links into their audio. I can scan the text, see if they are talking about anything interesting to me. They show the times too, so if only a certain section of the audio show sounds interesting, you can go forward right to that section.

This is something that I wish every podcaster would do. In fact, Adam and Dave, is there any way to include such information in the "last 100 podcasts" site? That would be most helpful. There's too much audio to listen to (I can only do one or two hours a day) and having great text descriptions really helps everyone!

DVD to Mobile

Now you can convert your DVDs to your Nokia, Siemens and other brand mobile phone and watch them in great quality, with excellent sound and in full screen landscape mode*. A memorycard as small as 128 Mb is sufficient to store a full length feature film, up to a hundred minutes. Take your DVDs on the plane, train or automobile, watch them on vacation, at work or at school. With only two clicks, this PC software converts the content of your DVD to a super small movie file, which will play on any Symbian Series 60 device, such as Nokia 6600/7610/6630/6260, Siemens SX-1, Sendo X, etc. on a postage stamp size memory card. You can use a headset or the built-in speaker to listen to the sound. Subtitled and foreign language DVDs are also supported. You wil have to see the quality to believe it, using supreme MPEG4 encoding, feature films look crisp and sharp on your cellular phone and still fit on a relatively small multimediacard.

Forbes.com Columnist Sees Potential in Multimedia Blogging

Arik Hesseldahl from Forbes.com plugs into moblogging and audio blogging and sees potential...

Businesses are looking at blogging for crafting of unique marketing messages. Say you're promoting some new musical performer and want to reach audiences over the Web while the artist is touring? What's easier than snapping a few backstage pictures and getting the artist to make a few phone calls to record a message, and maybe play a bar or two of a new song they're working on?

News organizations are also experimenting with the blog format. Newspapers, once bound by the printed page, long ago figured out that they can work on a 24-hour news cycle using the Web and more recently that blogs can, for certain kinds of stories and subject matter, make that easier. Photos and audio content can help fill out a complicated story.

I like blogs, and I like blogging, and I find the ability of instantly posting pictures and audio to have tremendous potential for creative people. But I'm not yet sold on the blogging revolution, because it hasn't yet evolved much beyond blah, blah, blah.

Quick update on ourmedia

Here's a quick update on ourmedia:

We're opened up our developer wiki, so a log-in and password are no longer required. Feel free to stop by or to  invite anyone you know in the tech, education, library and law fields to check it out and see if they want to help build the global home for grassroots media in conjunction with the Internet Archive.

If you're interested, stop by on IRC for a chat tomorrow (Sunday) at 3 pm Eastern, noon Pacific time, to discuss the project, including conversations about the site's UI, metadata tagging, the upload tool and more. Instructions here.

Podcasting from Mac OS X - A Recipe

Ingredients:
1 - Macintosh OS X computer
1 - Griffin iMic (for machines without a line-in input)
1 - Microphone
1 - Set of earphones or headphones
1 - copy each of the following pieces of software installed:
Audacity
Soundflower
Soundflowerbed
LineIn
Sound Source

Directions:

1. Open Audacity. Using its preferences, set sound input source to Soundflower (2 ch).
2. Use SoundSource (headphone icon in the menu bar) to set "Output" to Soundflower (2 ch). Set "System" to built-in audio if not already set there.
3. Open LineIn and set it to input from your microphone source (Built-in audio if using internal microphone or a line-in, the USB sound source if using an iMic or USB microphone) and output to Soundflower (2 ch). If you make any changes, click the checkbox to disable and re-enable to make them effective.
4. Open Soundflowerbed. Set the Soundflower 2 Ch monitor to "Built-in Audio." At this point, you should be able to hear in your headphones the sound from the microphone.
5. Open any media player programs you will be using - iTunes, Quicktime, etc. For any player program that was open before you began and for which you are not hearing output, close and restart it. Some programs (like Quicktime) only set their outputs at startup. iTunes, on the other hand, happily changes outputs while it is still running.
6. Begin recording in Audacity. You should be able to see the waveforms of the recorded sound from your microphone, et al. Try playing sound from other sources. You should both see them recording in Audacity and hear them in your headphones.
7. At this point, you are set up. Let your creativity be your guide. When done recording, always save your audio files before editing. Audacity is not crash free, and you don't want to lose your copy of the original by editing before you save it (says the voice of experience.)
8. Shutting down is not to order dependent. Be sure to use SoundSource to set sources back to their proper locations.

(Continued at Evil Genius Chronicles)

RSS has a great potential in mobile phones

From Sony Ericsson position paper - Mobile Web Initiative Workshop

Mobile Web use cases #2: information updates
To further address the issue of how to get users online, and their reluctance to browse the Web in the traditional meaning, we look at another major trend.

Push services are on the rise on the Internet, based on the de facto standard RSS. We believe that RSS has a great potential in mobile phones, as a technology to automatically provide updated content to users - accessing the Web without browsing.

CC Mixter - The remix family tree

This is a community music sharing site featuring songs licensed under Creative Commons. To get this project started, we've dedicated the space to WIRED Magazine's November 2004 Issue, which featured 16 songs licensed under the Sampling Licenses. If you're into music, browse the remixes below that have already been contributed below each track from the WIRED CD. If you're into sampling, mashups, and remixing, we have the full tracks and loops in a ready to mix format.

View a quick tutorial on how to contribute remixes to the pool.

The Bloggers Should Be TIME's People of the Year

Each year around this time going all the way back to 1927 the editors of TIME magazine sit down to debate and select their Person or People of the Year. Last year, if you recall, they selected the American soldier. In prior years they have selected everyone from Charles Lindbergh (1927) to The Computer (1982), Andy Grove (1997), Jeff Bezos (1999), George W. Bush (2000), Rudy Giuliani (2001), the Whistle Blowers (2002) and many more luminaries.

The Person of the Year is defined as folllows:

"Person of the Year is an annual issue of TIME magazine that features a profile on the man, woman, couple, group, idea, place, or machine that "for better or worse, has most influenced events in the preceding year"

For 2004, I cannot think of a single person or persons that had a greater influence on society than the bloggers. Let's remind them by making our voice heard. If you think about American politics, media, business - no one, no one had a greater influence for better or worse than the bloggers. Not Osama Bin Laden. Not Sadaam Hussein. Not John Kerry. No one. The bloggers absolutely deserve to be this year's People of the Year.

(Continued at Micro Persuasion)

Low Power TV r us : SF Bay Area Indymedia

Free Radio Berkeley's engineering staff has managed to design and develop low power VHF and UHF transmitters by the creative use of off-the-shelf technology. So far, design and engineering efforts have yielded TV transmitters capable of reaching a distance of 4-5 miles. Estimated cost for a VHF transmitter and antenna system with an effective radiated power of 75 watts is about $500, $700 to $800 for a system with an effective radiated power of 400 watts. For an UHF system, add about $300 to the above amounts. Coverage pattern is 220 degrees, not fully omni-directional. Further work is continuing on the development of antenna systems.

TV broadcasting kits will be made available starting in mid November. The transmitters accept any composite video source with line level audio. Typically, the video source will be a multiple disk DVD player or a computer with video files stored on a large capacity hard drive. Live broadcasts are certainly a possibility. This would require several video cameras and a video switcher/mixer. A 200 disk DVD juke box style player would hold almost two weeks worth of program material, assuming two hours per DVD. Considering the quantity of video material available, most of which will never be seen on either broadcast TV or cable/satellite feeds, there should not be any problem providing audiences with an exciting and compelling selection of material.

Magic Coloring Wall

This installation is inspired by kids' magic coloring books, those with a "special" marker that reveals the pages colors when using it on the book's paper. TwoThingsDotOne, a collaboration between TwoDotOne and TwoThings, allows the public to do the same on a much wider surface and to show everybody in the audience.


The control user (me) marks an area in the camera view (in our case the red brush used by the interacting user), user then starts moving the brush on a projection of an outline-only draw. An object follows the tracked image of the brush, and paints on an image object's mask, revealing the image's content and overlaying it to the outline image. this creates an effect of revealing the image on the projection, thus giving the illusion to be "magic painting".

Not too easy to understand? Have a look at the video.

Receiver

The new issue of Vodafone s RECEIVER has been released. Content:
* Erkki Huhtamo: Hidden histories of mobile media * Tim Clark: Mobile communications and the wireless internet the Japanese experience * Amparo Lasen: Affective technologies emotions and mobile phones * Mike Butcher: Rewind -fast forward-play mobile Napsterisation * Barry Wellman: The mobile-ized society communication modes and social networks * Drew Hemment: The telephone exchange * Adam Greenfield: Along the fault lines designing for deception, dishonesty, and other happy facts of human nature * Cory Doctorow: Eastern Standard Tribe a story about love, death and cellular telephony * John Chasey: The future of mobile gaming multiplayer games.

4.9GHz Gets FCC Approval

The FCC (pdf), revised technical specifications in the 4.9 GHz band yesterday to allow manufacturers to adapt technologies that are being used in adjacent spectrum bands, such as the 5.4 GHz Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure (U-NII) unlicensed band and the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) band (at 5.9 GHz).

Specifically, the Commission adopted two emission masks limiting interference potential for the band, one for low-power and one for high-power operations. These changes will allow public safety licensees to leverage commercial off-the-shelf technologies available for the U-NII and ITS frequency bands.

The Commission envisioned that, by leveraging technology already developed for adjacent bands, public safety licensees could use a single, low-cost device to access the 4.9 GHz band, the U-NII band, and the ITS band, allowing them to enjoy savings that are typically limited to the high-volume commercial market.

(Continued at Daily Wireless)

Engadget on Microsoft's Media Center

Engadget has a great op-ed piece today, titled "How Microsoft's Media Center Will Save Television."

I'm not sure if Windows Media Center 2005 will take off and revolutionize the space as the piece suggests, but they do offer a much more flexible platform than a simple TiVo box in your home. With a Media Center PC and a handheld "extender" to play video and audio, you can watch TV and hear music from any computer in the house and also have the ability to take them on the road with you. I hope MS does encourage competition in this area, as I'd love to see TiVo launch TiVoToGo and maybe enable small video player handhelds to also take part.

SMS Guerilla Projector

The SMS Guerilla Projector takes messages sent to it via SMS and projects them onto any surface. Built from a cellphone, a camera, and slide projector by the London-based collective 'Troika,' the idea is to shoot messages onto surfaces that might engender a reaction from surprised drivers, causing them to take wrong turns, veer off the road, or walk to hilarious effect into the bathroom of the opposite gender. Or maybe it's for art or something, I don't know.

Qzoxy, first true Skype value add

If all the apps for Skype are going to be as interesting as Qzoxy, then we got something. Stuart has an elaborate post which outlines the benefits of Qzoxy.

Do you Two-Way?

No it is not some hip-hop slang, but a call to arms from gurus who want ISPs to focus on boosting the uplink speeds as well. I agree - the uplink is the biggest problem for all new applications I am writing about in the next fantastic issue of Business 2.0

Announcing the Future of Digital Media Series

I am happy to announce the launching of a series of interviews I am conducting for Corante called the Future of Digital Media:

The Future of Digital Media is a two-month series, sponsored by Orb, that explores how the empowerment of the consumer over his or her media experience, coupled with the technological innovation that's broadly democratizing media creation, is leading to a revolution in the way people access, consume, share and remake content.

Through interviews with leading commentators and cutting edge practioners, the Future of Digital Media examines the social, legal and economic impacts of this disruptive and revolutionary change.

Jay Rosen on BloggerCon III

Jay Rosen has one of the best wrapups of BloggerCon III.

The state of media

This week, I'm seeing the state of media from many different perspectives:

From the top of the heap, I've been at the Foursquare conference, which is packed with the heads of damned near every major media business in the country. It's off-the-record and so I can't blog what I hear, but I will blog about what it inspires.

From the front line of turning online into a business, I've been at the Ad:Tech conference, where I've heard advertisers, agencies, online publishers, and the odd blogger in the crowd about following the money.

And Wednesday night I head to a very grassroots session about changing media from the bottom up.

If I have any brain left, I'll blog about conclusions from all this on the train ride back from D.C. at the end of the week....

I don't care who delivers the pipe as long as its fast and symmetrical

Andy nails it! Give me a fast (10Mbps or faster), symmetrical broadband pipe and I will be happy. And this won't happen if the telcos are allowed to become a monopoly provider for television over IP.

From VoIP Watch: So You Have Too Much In Your Market? Pulver Could Hold The Answer:

When cable companies get too big, or control too much of the cable markets the FCC and DOJ step in and say--sell off parts of your territory.

So now that the Telcos are trying to become television delivery networks why not apply the same rule.

Can you see those folks at Verizon and SBC when someone says "time to break up" to them, and this time they mean all of their holdings. To me pipe is pipe. It doesn't matter if its FTTH, DSL, Copper, Wireless or by osmosis, if the telco delivers the signal it likely can deliver a better, and competitive with cable type of service, by building out the network sooner, faster, etc.

Somehow the RBOC's will argue that they are only in trials...and trials lead to rollouts and rollouts lead to national coverage and national coverage becomes monopoly.

Andy says, apply the same rules to all, or throw away the rule book. My guess is we're heading towards a major rewrite of the entire FCC Telecom Act. One that takes into consideration that technology evolution cannot be bound by prior era thoughts, laws or practices.

RSS enclosures are a fish with legs

1. The playlist header contains an atom:modified element.
2. Each playlist entry contains an atom:id element, an atom:modified element, and an atom:issued element.

Breaking International News

Though it insults our vanity to say so, TV is the most important medium on the planet. Most people get the images, impressions and ideas which shape their worldviews from television. How TV covers international news, then, has an enormous impact on our ability to act as global citizens, to understand and respond clearly to global crises and opportunities.

So it really isn't helping things that TV coverage of international news really sucks.

Report after report has been written, showing the percentage of time spent on international news dropping pretty steadily from a high in the mid-70s to today, across the developed world. Europeans do a somewhat better job than Americans, but essentially neither cover any news of substance in the developing world. Take away wars, climate disasters and train wrecks, and the developing world essentially fades completely from our sight.....

Can we do better?

(Continued at WorldChanging)

Attention Scarcity and Podcasting/Broadcatching

As excited as I am about podcasting (and broadcatching) (and, heck, I podcast myself and will be doing even more in the near future), I think it is important to note one of the significant limitations of the medium.

I can read dozens, if not more, blogs every morning (thank you, aggregator!). Depending on their length, I can only listen to a handful of audio shows everyday. This means that my attention is much more scarce with regard to podcasts than blogging. This, I believe, is going to have important effects with regard to the audience and producers of podcasting.

This attention scarcity is particularly true for the talk shows (such as IT Conversations), as opposed to music shows. The reason is that talk shows really demand attention. It is very difficult to read or perform work while listening to a talk show, whereas music goes really well in the background.

What are some of the likely effects of this? Here are some of my initial speculations, there are probably more differences and I will most likely be quite wrong on some of them:

(Continued at The Importance of...)

Interview with Chuck about Blogumentary

The Twin Cities' City Pages has always been a very blog-friendly publication, and now they've got an Interview with Chuck Olsen about his Blogumentary documentary about weblogs, which premieres tonight.

FCC places regulatory shield around VoIP

The Federal Communications Commission ruled, as expected, that Voice-over-IP communications should be treated the same (Word document) as other applications on the Internet. This ruling basically preempts attempts of state and local regulation of VoIP service and puts all regulation under a federal umbrella.

Koders - Source Code Search Engine

Koders is a search engine for source code. It enables developers to easily search and browse source code in thousands of projects hosted at hundreds of open source repositories.

F-Origin Iris

Good golly, internet friends. You send a lot of email. I expect it will take all day just to catch up with the juicy bits sent in over the weekend, so we might as well get started. For the record, though, Boston is a nice town, but entirely too clean. I almost felt bad heaving quality Belgian beers all over their historic buildings.

Like check out this >'IRIS' technology from F-Origin, which uses a built-in accelerometer to track the movement of a PDA or phone display, making it easier to view larger pages of content (although in the demo, it looks like a sort of a fidelity-reducing angle). Still, it would be a very slick way to do a start-up screen or launch menu or something like that, and accelerometers have to be pretty cheap, right? Plus think of all the cool tilt-and-scroll tricks that could be done with one. I vote Accelerometers in '05.

Yo Four Play

Damon Darlin at his wicked best:

Verizon and SBC are getting ready to compete against the cable companies. The Wall Street Journal (Reminder: the WSJ is free all this week.) looks at that and attempts to answer a number of related questions, like whether telecom is too late for TV and can cable companies succeed in the phone business. This free-for-all is a reaction to the discovery that consumers would indded prefer to have all their services —Internet, phone, TV, wireless—in one package.

Reuters Thinks I Won't Get Sued

There's a Reuters story out today claiming that bit torrent makes up over 1/3rd of global internet traffic. This is all a prelude to the MPAA announcing that they are set to follow in the RIAA's footsteps and begin suing filesharers. I guess they've decided the success the music industry is having is worth imatating(10). Thankfully, the article also discusses the legal uses for bit torrent.

"Almost any software that makes it easy to swap copyrighted files is ripe for a crackdown BitTorrent's turn at bat will definitely happen," said Harvard University associate law professor Jonathan Zittrain. "At least under U.S. law, it's a bit more difficult to find the makers liable as long as the software is capable of being used for innocent uses, which I think (BitTorrent) surely is."

Included, even, is a mention of Torrentocracy (though I'm only hosting the presidential debate audio, not the video). It's nice to have that in my back pocket once the lawsuits start flying. Keep it legal, keep it clean and you'll keep the old-world distributionistas scratching their heads. Just like Kerry (or was it Bush ... or is it both), they're an ostrich with their head in the sand. Come on guys, be the eagle. BE THE EAGLE.

TheirFi

This is cool, but it's in such a silo'd market. All these closed systems... XM, Sirius, iTunes/iPhoto/iPod, DishTV, DirecTV, Outlook, Exchange, AIM, MSN... feel to me like jails that compete with other jails on furnishings and amenities. Much as I do enjoy hanging out in some of them, it still galls me that they are, fundamentally, closed and private corporate dominions.

GNEE offers free storage of camera phone videos, with 150K limit

Marc of GNEE (Global News & Entertainment Exchange) in Oxford, England was nice enough to alert me that his site (see below) has just gone up and is accepting videos of up to 150K from camera phone users.



GNEE will accept videos in 3GP, 3G2 and MP4 formats and played via Quicktime.  The site is new so there isn't much up yet and Marc is soliciting contributions.

(Continued at Reiter's Camera Phone Report)

Publishing RSS feeds without permission

Robin Good has begun a fascinating dialogue centered on this: Can I Publish Your Content In RSS (without your permission, if you don't have an RSS feed)?

Grass Roots Documentaries

What now? The event that drove traffic, the presidential election, will quickly fade into history. How are these sites hoping to hold onto the gains made in the last four months? Harrison says iFilm will soon launch an action sports channel, hoping to capture the grassroots enthusiasm surrounding activities such as skateboarding and motocross. Atom Film s O Neill says her company has learned a valuable lesson from its recent success: go topical.

Userradio

Userradio, by Californai-based August Black, is a set of tools allowing people to make their own collaborative radio productions over the web. An unlimited number of people can mix multiple channels of audio simultaneously and together from anywhere on-line using a standard flash-capable browser.

It means that you are able to create radio programmes with friends, colleagues, etc. who are living in the same street or at the other end of the world.

Sentient Clothing

As we continue to move towards ubiquity in sensing:
"...The British company Eleksen has developed a technology that makes it possible to manufacture sensors and switches from textiles. This means that electronic components can be integrated into clothing...

The fabric is a combination of conductive fibers and conventional textile fibers. It consists of two external, electrically conductive nylon layers. Between these two layers is a layer of insulating material, into which are woven individual conductive fibers. On the outer layers there is a low measuring voltage supplied by a battery. If the user exerts pressure on the outer layers with a finger, for example the voltage changes. The sensor detects this change and can thereby precisely determine the amount of pressure exerted and its position. The thin sensor layers are capable of withstanding enormous strain..."
Via PhysOrg

Citizen journalist at a murder scene

Ken Smith points us to the latest episode of citizens journalism -- yesterday's publication of a photo of a murdered Dutch filmmaker taken by a passer-by with a camera phone who arrived at the scene before the professional photographers. He had the only photo taken before the body was covered.

Reuters has an article about this episode on ZDNet UK.

Newspapers and other media are starting to tap into the rich vein of information that can be provided by a public increasingly armed with camera-equipped phones

Twice in one month the biggest Dutch newspaper has published front-page pictures shot by amateur photographers using their mobile phones, showing how advances in technology can assist traditional media in gathering news.

The De Telegraaf daily newspaper, with a circulation of close to 800,000 copies, on Wednesday published a picture of the dead filmmaker and columnist Theo van Gogh, whom police say was probably killed by an Islamic militant.

Passerby Aron Boskma took a picture with his mobile phone at the scene of the crime in Amsterdam. News photographers arrived only after the body had been covered, leaving Boskma's picture the only one showing knives plunged into van Gogh's body.

"This picture was the story. There was a discussion if we should use it, but everyone who would have had this picture would have published it," Telegraaf pictures editor Peter Schoonen said. ...

VIDEO: "Fresh in CA"

Jay travels to Palo Alto for BloggerCon to infiltrate the geek community.

Leaving the safety of Manhattan, he freaks a little and confesses in a bathroom mirror.

Tomorrow, he meets many of the people he has read and listened to the last 4 months.
We'll see what these folks got going on.

(Can't wait to see his post-BloggerCon follow-up. -kc.)

A 10x10 View of the News

David Krane from Google points to a killer new site called 10x10 that every hour scans the RSS feeds of several leading international news sources and performs an elaborate process of weighted linguistic analysis on the text contained in their top news stories. The result is a conclusion about the hour's most important words. The top 100 words are chosen, along with 100 corresponding images, culled from  the source news stories. At the end of each day, month, and year, 10x10 looks back through its archives to conclude the top 100 words for the given time period. In this way, a constantly evolving record is formed, based on prominent world events, all without any human input.

Sounds cool, right? Here's what's even cooler. David says this should be integrated into Google News. Maybe this is a sign of RSS things to come?

study: dramatics good for mathematics

According to ic Newcastle, Acting up pays off:

Dr Fleming said: "Most people agree that drama has considerable value in the primary curriculum. It enriches pupils' lives, teaches important skills and develops personal qualities. Despite this, teachers know they will be largely judged by their pupils' progress in basic numeracy and literacy. Many teachers worry that, despite all the other benefits, devoting teaching time to such activities as classroom drama, the school play and links with theatre companies may detract from progress in the basics. Our research showed that far from being a distraction, pupils' work in drama actually improved their performance in other subjects, including mathematics."

Technologies of Cooperation: Simple, General Principles?

Can y'all help me come up with a list of simple, general principles that enable technologies of cooperation to work? The Web, distributed computing, mesh networks, open source production, blogs, wikis, the lazy web, all enable individuals to act in their own self-interest in ways that add up to a public good that benefits all. I've been attempting to inductively develop a list of simple, general principles. Here's what I have so far. Suggestions? Critiques? Digressions? Comments welcome!

A powerful cooperation tool is:

Simple: HTML, blogs, wikis are all simple enough to be used right away, by a large population this stimulates frequent use and makes it easier to achieve a critical mass of users quickly.

Linkable: It connects individual efforts to an aggregate whole available to everybody. Putting up a web page with links to others, multiplied by millions of users, adds up to the web.

Open: Tim Berners-Lee did not have to ask for permission or rewire the Internet to disseminate the Web. Open source production is powerful because the source code is available to anyone, and anyone who has a contribution to make can tinker.

Is a lever for self interest: No individual thinks "I am helping Google engineer better searches," rather, each is simply trying to choose the best and most appropriate link for a web page. Google's PageRank algorithm is based on the emergent collective intelligence of many people's links.

Self-teaching through imitation: Most of the early web was built quickly by people who used "view source" built into the structure of the web to inspect and copy other people's work. Wiki syntax becomes visible when editing a wiki page.

(Continued at SmartMobs)

No longer do the news elite decide

At PressThink, Sacramento Bee political columnist Daniel Weintraub has an essay: No Longer Do the Newsies Decide. "If our world is changing, we simply have to change with it. We have to engage more with our readers, become more a part of the conversation and less of a lecturer. We have to reconsider the way we think about scoops and competition, and think more about "open-source" journalism..."

Journalism by the People for the People

An fascinating article out of British Columbia demonstrates how open media sites like Wikipedia may represent the future of citizen journalism...

On the morning of September 1, 2004, a small armed force captured a school in western Russian town of Beslan, taking hundreds of students hostage.

One day later, a small article describing the event appeared on Wikipedia.org, an open-source encyclopedia. Over the next 24 hours, Wikipedia users compiled the information from other news reports together into one article, revising and expanding it 46 times.

People coming to the article from Wikipedia's "Current Events" page could read a concise summary of the event, with links to the history of the region and the ongoing war. This was old school, just-the-facts reporting.

MetaData Rethinking

Ramesh Jain believes we need to rethink meta data if we want to escape the tyranny of digital content which will clog our hard drives. Making sense of it all is the next big business opportunity. “Text is effectively one dimensional – though it is organized on a two-dimensional surface for practical reasons.  Currently, most meta data is also inserted using textual approaches. When we try to assign tags to other media, things start getting a bit problematic due to the nature of media and the fact that current methods to assign tags are textual.” Pay attention: Jain is bringing up some serious issues here.

Participatory media: Democracy's killer app

There were some interesting shifts in the internet and politics brewing in 2000 and 2002 election cycles. This year, many of these shifts have turned past tense: Lessons learned. Some are nearly de-facto rules of political engagement. These new shifts are in play in 2004, and there are plenty of predictions for 2008.

As Dan Gillmor wrote in his book on participatory journalism, We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People, “A safe prediction: Net-savvy campaigning will be the rule by 2008, and it will be lower-level candidates who do the next wave of innovating.”

We thought we’d take this opportunity on Election Day to reflect on observations about the 2004 election season and the role of participatory media.

(Continued at Hypergene MediaBlog)

New version of iPodder

We released a new version of iPodder today. Here's the announcement on the ipodder-dev mail list.

yellowarrow: sms, location, and psychogeography

From YellowArrow.org: YellowArrows are stickers placed throughout the world. Using the text message (SMS) service on your mobile phone, you can add and ask for messages referencing the unique code on each arrow sticker, as explained in stages at right. The system is currently compatible with all phones and service providers in the US as well as internationally with those networks under the GSM standard. Text messaging incurs a charge through your service provider.

The YellowArrow is coming to Boston!
Friday, Nov. 5: Public Art Installation and Party
9:30 pm and on, 33 Restaurant, 33 Stanhope St


The YellowArrow will create a one-night public art installation in and around 33 Restaurant in the Back Bay/South End. On a brick wall nearby, viewers will encounter a video projection of the images, texts and maps of all arrows placed in Boston.


Saturday, Nov. 6: Urban AdvenTour
10:30 am departure from Cambridge Bicycle (259 Mass Ave)
1:30 pm departure from Boston Bicycle (842 Beacon St)


For more info, go to yellowarrow.org. (Via Mauro Cherubini's weblog)

DEAF04- participatory locative sound imaging hoedown

Dutch Electronic Art Festival (DEAF) is a biennial international festival for electronic art, presented by V2_, Institute for the Unstable Media, in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

TRAMJAM V.03- ROTTERDAM RUSHHOUR by Mumbai Streaming Attack is a multi-track- multi-driver mix hub streaming jam session of Rotterdam city vibe, orchestrated in sync with the city's tramlines' routing schedule. Play along November 12 if you're in Rotterdam. Mumbai Streaming Attack is a networked performance study group currently based at SNM/HGKZ in Zurich.

Also at DEAF04 (and simultaneously in New York, Brisbane, Linz, and Singapore) is media artist Zhang Ga's public art project The Peoples' Portrait, where five photo-capturing kiosks, including the location in the Times Square Alliance Information Center at 150 7th Avenue in New York City, are set up globally to capture a diverse range of people in their unique environments. Every few seconds, a central server will retrieve the portraits and display them first in time stamped order, then randomly from the archive.

Savannah: children learn better while moving

NESTA Futurelab's Savannah is a strategy-based adventure game where a virtual space is mapped directly onto a real space. Children ‘play’ at being lions in a savannah, navigating the augmented environments with a mobile handheld device. By using aspects of game play, Savannah challenges children to explore and survive in the augmented space. To do this they must successfully adopt strategies used by lions.

Most interesting is the project's findings:

The project has demonstrated that mobile technology games can generate high degrees of engagement and enthusiasm in children – the children consistently rated the experience above both traditional school activities and computer games play. This process of learning while moving around outside seemed to contribute to children’s ability to remember spatially organised information. The combination of play and planning within the game enabled children to explore knowledge from a number of different perspectives: through experience; through reflection on experience; and through research and discussion.

In respect of the role of games in education, Savannah has identified that the main motivating feature of games is likely not to be complex graphics, but the establishment of appropriate and authentic challenges. Alongside this, the trials have demonstrated that in order for games technologies to prove effective in education, we need to develop new learning environments in which children are given high degrees of control over how they manage their time and their information resources. After the first set of trials, we refined the challenges and redesigned the learning environment to enable more specific challenges and greater learner control, and were rewarded by children who spent three hours working ‘on task’ in the game.

Guerrilla News: The Day After... Tomorrow

On the heels of the election, Stephen Marshall (GNN co-founder and co-author of True Lies) reminds us that the campaign for citizen mindshare doesn't end on election day:

If ever there was a time for a progressive media ®evolution, it is now. We must challenge independent media organizations to break out of arcane and ineffective techniques and look objectively at the barricades we have erected across our own paths to self-realization. If the leaders of this movement are happy to lecture the choir who have already congregated around the message, then so be it. But count us out. In our media ®evolution, we want to reach the widest possible demographic. And to do that, we understand that we have something to learn from the corporate media institutions we have defined as our nemeses.

There is a stark divide between the rhetorical evaluation of corporate media’s entrenched monopolistic power and the tactical strategies being offered to combat it. Of course, they possess economic and network superiority, but true ®evolutionaries know the battle is not controlled by those who wield the largest army or hold the most gold. It is won by those who tap the deepest instincts, ideals and prejudices of the public mind. These are values that cannot be manufactured. We simply need to find a way to pierce the illusion of lies and deception being cast by the mainstream media. Instead of being marginalized by our disadvantage, we must adopt the tactics of guerrillas, who wage war against an all-powerful totalitarian opponent by using its power against it. The independent media must shift beyond the cloister of irrelevancy, seize the new tools of production and work to create a spectacle that rivals that of the mainstream media.

Chastity belts for the wireless world

Interactive designer Theo Humphries, from the Royal College of Arts in London, is working on the "under(a)wareables" project that features new kinds of chastity belts.

The devices are intended to be worn by people who are aware of their function, some would also allow clandestine surveillance by paranoid partners.

- the where(a)ware undergarments are aware of their geographical position and they can only be safely removed in certain locations, otherwise the underwear sends a text message to alert the jaleous lover when the wearer has left it and is not where s/he's supposed to be.

Watch where(a)wear video (2 min)

- time(a)ware undergarments are aware of the amount of time that they have been pulled down or off. If this time exceeds the length of the average toilet trip, an alert is sent to the partner (video)



- snap(a)ware undergarments are reactive to light and location: they take a photo just before they are removed (video)

- the narc(a)ware ones are aware of chemical instances and levels of toxic substances in the blood, sweat and bodily fluids of their users, if these levels rise too high - ALERT! (video)

Via sexblo.gs.

The Economist on the Music Industry

Music's brighter future [via Pho] [pdf]

According to an internal study done by one of the majors, between two-thirds and three-quarters of the drop in sales in America had nothing to do with internet piracy. No-one knows how much weight to assign to each of the other explanations: rising physical CD piracy, shrinking retail space, competition from other media, and the quality of the music itself. But creativity doubtless plays an important part.

Judging the overall quality of the music being sold by the four major record labels is, of course, subjective. But there are some objective measures. A successful touring career of live performances is one indication that a singer or band has lasting talent. Another is how many albums an artist puts out. Many recent singers have toured less and have often faded quickly from sight.

Music bosses agree that the majors have a creative problem. Alain Levy, chairman and chief executive of EMI Music, told Billboard magazine this year that too many recent acts have been one-hit wonders and that the industry is not developing durable artists. The days of watching a band develop slowly over time with live performances are over, says Tom Calderone, executive vice-president of music and talent for MTV, Viacom’s music channel. Even Wall Street analysts are questioning quality. If CD sales have shrunk, one reason could be that people are less excited by the industry’s product. A poll by Rolling Stone magazine found that fans, at least, believe that relatively few “great” albums have been produced recently

The Revolution Will Be Posted

Every four years, by journalistic if not political tradition, the presidential election must be accompanied by a "revolution." So what transformed politics this time around? The rise of the Web log, or blog. The commentary of bloggers - individuals or groups posting daily, hourly or second-by-second observations of and opinions on the campaign on their own Web sites - helped shape the 2004 race. The Op-Ed page asked bloggers from all points on the political spectrum to say what they thought was the most important event or moment of the campaign that, we hope, comes to an end today....

Networks of Influence: a new study

A new investigative study titled "Networks of Influence" by The Center for Public Integrity reveals that the communications industry has spent $1.1 billion since 1998 to affect election outcomes and influence legislation before Congress and the White House. According to the study, from 1998 through June 2004 — during a period of increasingly intense battles over ownership rules - the broadcast industry spent more than $222 million lobbying the federal government. Additional findings showed that lobbying expenditures by the broadcast industry have risen 74 percent since 1998- from nearly $26 million to more than $45 million during 2003. (via Broadcast Engineering)

Telepocalypse: FLASH-OFDM is disruptive mobile internet technology

Hmmm. Definitely one to watch!

From Telepocalypse: One to watch:

According to The Feature, Siemens are working with Flarion to deploy FLASH-OFDM technology in the 450Mhz range. I've written previously about Flarion and why it’s a significant technology.

This announcement is interesting because it very much follows a "disruptive innovation" trendline. The frequency band in question isn't universally available around the world, so isn't attractive to high-end business customers who travel internationally. But the lower frequency means much better in-building signal penetration, as well as lower cell site density (as the article notes). The spectrum is also pretty cheap. This means more attractive economics than traditional 3G services in achieving acceptable coverage. The average user couldn't care less about megabit throughputs on a mobile handset, so the lower frequency and peak throughput isn't a big deal. Plus Flarion's FLASH-OFDM is highly spectrally efficient when measured by total system throughput (rather than peak throughput for any one handset).

Where's the meta data? What's wrong with Podcasting.

....[snip]...I've also had this burning, bubbling feeling in my stomach that something was desperately wrong with Podcasting -- and I think I know what that is.

Where's the meta-data?

Most of my frustration over the state of RSS subscriptions has been around the lack of standards for new kinds of micro-content. It's shame that we lose the structures of events, reviews and listings - inside of an RSS feed. We know how to solve this technical challenge, but it's about standards and people working together - that the work is needed.

So I totally love the direction of Podcasting but I pray to the LORD of Technology - please oh Lord, please give us structure.

I mean how hard can it be to collect all these podcasts and store them somewhere and index them via the structured data that accompanies them and...

Oh right - there is no accompanying data. Ouch.

(Continued at Marc's Voice)

(unmediated to Marc: go check out audvidsyn! Andreas made a bunch of noise and Lucas carved out a space for us. We're working on it! -kc.)

"Risk Management System" Wireless LAN Camera Helmet

SGI Japan, Daimei Corporation, and IP Techno Service have debuted two varieties of their "Risk Management System" products, which will be released in December. Both use a camera attached to a helmet for video and microphone to record audio, but the difference lies in the output. The "Risk Recorder" can store up to 2 hours of video locally (though up to 8 hours with CompactFlash card), and the "Risk Ranger" transmits signals via PHS or wireless LAN. The business-card sized unit is also a WWW server, and can transmit video using either Motion JPEG or MPEG-4 codecs.

(It's like a black box for expendable members of the away team. I think I'm gonna outfit Jay Dedman with one of these. -kc.)

TV makes us smarter

It's just me trying to marshal all the evidence I can to persuade the reader of a single long-term trend: that popular culture on average has been steadily growing more complex and cognitively challenging over the past thirty years. The dumbing-down, instant gratification society assumption has it completely wrong. Popular entertainment is making us smarter and more engaged, not catering to our base instincts.