unmediated

So apparently those crafty cats up at BarCampVancouver were chattin’ up an open source alternative to YouTube, smartly backed by Amazon’s S3 mass-storage service.

Serve the files with Drupal, passing the media files into the open source Flow Player or aptly-named Flash Video Player, and you’re nine-tenths to bein’ illegal (as they say).

Now, that’s pretty hawt, if I do say so myself.

But, here’s what I pitched to the Flock guys last night at their SF meetup: why isn’t there an extension for browsers that takes any media file (I’m primarily referring to video, but audio support tends to be flakey too), sends it off to some server-side transcoding service and re-embeds a Flash file in place of the original media — that’ll play no matter what system you’re on?

I mean, this would be better than just distributing a player with the browsers… it would actually solve the cross-platform issue entirely (okay, so the Linux folks still need an up-to-date Flash player).

I’ve never been a big fan of Flash (for a number of reasons) but as it’s clearly the most cross-platform compatible format for sending out video and it’s not always possible for producers to generate Flash video, this solution would reside on the client-side, perhaps as a subscription-based service (owing the costs of licensing the all the codecs and so on).

I mean, until we get wide-spread adoption of open source video codecs and formats that are as good as the proprietary ones, this seems like a good stop gap solution. Don’t it?

UK musician and activist Billy Bragg questions the role of social networking sites in today’s MediaGuardian. He argues that in the old days, artists had to sign with labels to get into record shops and to get paid. They usually kept only 10-15 percent of takings, with record companies covering manufacturing, marketing and distribution from the rest.
In an age of much simpler distribution, Bragg says that artists still receive only 10-15 percent of the record company share of sales on platforms like iTunes. Even taking into account the cost of ‘breaking’ an artist, Bragg questions whether artists need to sign away rights to record companies when they can promote and sell their own work directly online and retain their own copyright.
Social networking sites have a big part to play in this because artists “no longer wait to be discovered”. Bragg says the vast majority have no contractual agreements with everybody and that is in the spirit of the internet.
But he is critical of some social net sites that are making claims of ownership on this content and singles out MTV Flux: he claims a close reading of its terms hand MTV rights to transmit material “in perpetuity and gratis”, as well as commercially exploit, distribute, edit… without payment. “Such terms are unprecedented in the music industry and could have serious long-term implications.” Will social net sites allow artists to circumvent the record labels, he asks, or will they become a new way for them to keep their monopoly on copyright and earnings?
Plus, coincidentally, more on MySpace jumpstarting music careers on Variety. TV director and gig venue owner Peter O’Fallon: “The great thing about the Web is that there are no gatekeepers - no lawyers, managers, A&R people.”
Related: Audio Interview: MTV’s New User-Gen TV Service Flux

Motion DSP is creating a simple web based interface that will significantly enhance low resolution camera phone video into surprisingly high quality stuff. It started off in 1998 as a U.S. military funded project at UC Santa Cruz. In January 2005, Professor Peyman Milanfar, the primary researcher behind the technology, co-founded Motion DSP.

The company compares multiple frames in a video to find and replace lost pixels in a given frame, significantly enhancing the experience with little increase in overall file size after compression. The service works best when a video is not moving rapidly or in a jerking fashion, but tends to improve just about any low quality video. To see a demonstration, check out this page on the site that contains three different before and after video shots.

The service will go into consumer beta sometime this year, CEO and co-founder Sean Varah told us. The service will be free and will allow users to upload a video and download an enhanced version. But he also stressed that the focus will be on getting deals done with the large online video sites, such as YouTube, to enhance user-uploaded videos.

Motion DSP is headquartered in San Mateo, California and outsource large parts of software development to Serbia. They’ve raised a $500,000 angel round and are currently pitching a Series A round of financing.

Tags: military, video, youtube, techcrunch, web2.0, web_2.0

Mejan Labs has just opened Art & Activism, an exhibition featuring artists and organizations using technology to communicate a political message.

The works presented include:

vaticano.org, by 0100101110101101.ORG. In december 1998 the net artists published a spoof version of the official Vatican web site. At the time most visitors didn't know that the Vatican, being legally a state, owns its own national domain name extension ".va", and therefore many of them digited the ".org" one that the net artists had bought. The copy site was aesthetically identical to the real one but with slightly modified contents (for example, they added lyrics from pop music groups.) For 12 months, thousand of people visited the vaticano.org without realising the prank. At the expiring of the first year of contract, Network Solutions prevented the renewing of it.

Feral Trade where Kate Rich trades coffee over social networks. The project operates largely outside commercial channels and makes a direct intervention into the business of grocery running, using the surplus freight capacity of commuter, vacation, migration, cultural and other social movements for the underground distribution of goods. The Feral Trade Courier is an online database that helps organise shipping information, facilitate communications between suppliers, couriers and buyers, and assemble documentary product-packaging which report on the origins, transport and social connections of the feral trade product.

The artists group C6 will show Want & Need, a project where the audience can SMS their wants and needs, which will be screened in the gallery. The work asks if people aren’t mixing up they actual needs with what they want to have.

Glyphiti, by Andy Deck, is an online collaborative drawing project. Visitors are invited to edit and add graphical units or 'glyphs', which compose the image, in real time.

Emails with false reviews, press releases etc sent by Heath Bunting as part of a net art action.

The show runs until October 8 at Mejan Labs, Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm Sweden.

Vial Spectre.

Wap Review writes:

My fellow mobilist and host of this weeks Carnival of the Mobilists, Daniel Taylor at Mobile Enterprise Weblog has posted an interesting piece on mobile web usability or lack there of. Daniel's article, Who Designs This Stuff? describes the difficulties and frustrations that he experienced trying to accomplish something on the mobile web that should have been easy - getting the arrival time of a airline flight.

el experienced are typical of the frustration that many users experience when they first try to use the mobile web. The good news is that the causes of some of these difficulties are relatively easy to fix.

ZDNet.com writes:

The service creates a dedicated retail environment that anyone can use to sell stuff in the Amazon catalog.
...
Everyone has something they want to recommend to others, and a lot of folks want to find ways to display their Amazon Wish List without looking too much like they are addicted to the idea of maintaining a permanent wedding registry—it's so unseemly to always be telling people what you want from them. The system was easy to understand and the product, a multi-page store with a front door consisting of feature products to which I was able to add my own descriptions, much more inviting than the typical list of Amazon links a blogger or Web site might display.

Originally from digg / Technology, ReBlogged by Paddy Johnson on Aug 30, 2006 at 06:29 PM

About as sexy as an eye exam, but damn, this technology is difficult to get right. So yesterday Google announced the open sourcing of Tesseract OCR, character/text-recognition software it developed back in the 80’s that it claims is better than most of the open source alternatives (I’d believe that) but not quite as good as some of the commercially available technologies (I’d buy that too).

But hmm, isn’t there a lot that could be done with this? Personally, can’t wait until we see this make it’s way into OpenOffice among other places.

Former broadcast industry executive Tore Nordahl recently published some predictions on the AVCHD format in the professional and broadcast space. He believes that AVC will replace HDV, and in the very near future. In a recent essay entitled "Will Panasonic lead the professional HD camcorder market with AVC in 2007?", Nordahl opens with the bold statement "HDV is in trouble."

"Panasonic never joined the "HDV club" choosing to tough it out with the HVX200 DVCPRO-HD P2 camcorder (with success) while developing its AVC technology. Panasonic's decision not to spend on HDV R&D will pay off big in 2007, when I expect to see several Panasonic AVC-based HD camcorders both for semi-pro and pro use."

(Continued at FresHDV)

Scott Adams recounts an anecdote illustrating the ‘illusion of control’ and how important it is to many people - even to the extent that it is the single defining characteristic of mankind which one might use to explain human behaviour to aliens:

“The maintenance man is moving the thermostat in our office today. I started talking with him about the “Thermostat Wars” [from Dilbert comics]. He told me about one office with 30 women where they could never get the temperature to an agreeable level. At his suggestion they installed 20 dummy thermostats around the office. Everyone was told that each thermostat controlled the zone around itself.

Problem solved. Now that everyone has “control” of their own thermostat there is no problem.”

To what extent is the illusion of control, rather than real control, what most people really want in their products?

Do they care that their personal data may be encrypted and held to ransom by a software company, so long as they feel ‘in control’ in everyday use (e.g. the ability to change the colour scheme)?

And how should designers respond to this issue? Are there any examples of products (other than, say, children’s toys) deliberately designed with fake controls to make the user feel in charge even though he/she isn’t? (Fake solar cell calculators are interesting, but not quite the same issue)

P.S. On the other hand, it’s worth considering the opinion expressed by the Audi A2 owner, that she didn’t find it a disadvantage having to take her Audi to a ’specialist’ in order to open the bonnet (hood). Is even that basic level of control (being able to see the engine) too much for some people? Is it because, say, a thermostat affects people personally (temperature) whereas a car engine is something dirty, difficult, complex, for someone else to worry about?

When Google is not trying to eclipse the sun, they want to educate the masses (and its surprisingly not propaganda). The search giant has upped their "Project Gutenberg" efforts and are making hundreds of thousands of out-of-copyright books, which were previously available only for online searching and viewing, available to DOWNLOAD as a PDF, which you can then print and read at your leisure.

As a little tidbit, since we are all learning here, books are generally copyrighted for 70 years after an author's death, so a vast majority of children's classics will be available for the future generations.

Future of news

David Weinberger boswells a chunky discussion of the future of news at Foocamp.

Adrian Holovaty from the WashingtonPost.com is interested in optimizing information collection. How do we get journalists to collect information in ways that machines can reuse it. Newspapers are a collection of information desperate for a framework, while Wikipedia is a framework desperate for information, he says. . . . Adrian says that the categorization onus should be on the reporter. All the info in it ought to be categorized so, if it’s a report on a mayor’s speech, we can see all the speeches by the mayor, all speeches about the same topic, etc.

The journalist’s responsibility as a citizen

When I used to call bloggers et al “citizen journalists,” many professional journalists objected: “We’re citizens, too.” Absolutely, you are, and that raises questions about your responsibility as citizens. Consider these three illustrations involving The New York Times:

Sunday’s Times carries a most eloquent essay by Michael Wines on covering the world’s poorest and sometimes intervening to help them.

How to respond to it is a moral dilemma that lurks in the background of many interviews. Reputable journalists are indoctrinated with the notion that they are observers — that their job is to tell a story, not to influence it. So what to do when an anguished girl tells a compelling story about her young brother, lying emaciated on a reed mat, dying for lack of money to by anti-AIDS drugs? Is it moral to take the story and leave when a comparatively small gift of money would keep him alive? If morality compels a gift, what about the dying mother in the hut next door who missed out on an interview by pure chance? Or the three huts down the dirt path where, a nurse says, residents are dying for lack of drugs? Why are they less deserving?

nalism, paying for information is a cardinal sin, the notion being that a source who will talk only for money is likely to say anything to earn his payment. So what to do when a penniless father asks why he should open his life free to an outsider when he needs money for food? How to react to the headmistress who says that white people come to her school only to satisfy their own needs, and refuses to talk without a contribution toward new classrooms? Is that so different from interviewing a Washington political consultant over a restaurant lunch on my expense account?

If it is, which is more ethical?

The same question was raised during Katrina, as journalists saw people in need and had to help. I think it is insane to argue that as journalists, they should not act. As citizens of the world, as neighbors, as compassionate people, the canons of their profession should not stop them. At the same time, though, as Wines points out, you can’t help everyone — and sometimes your reporting will bring help.

Now hear Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald on On the Media this week talking about turning child porn sites he finds in the course of his reporting over to the authorities. Last year, in a much-discussed case, Eichenwald, convinced one of his youthful subjects to testify against the pornographers. Now, in a new series, he reveals, with admirable transparency, that he turned in sites because it is the law:

Covering this story raised legal issues. United States law makes it a crime to purchase, download or view child pornography, unless the images are promptly reported to authorities and no images are copied or retained. The Times complied with the law, disclosing what it found to appropriate authorities.

What extraordinary intervention! The analogies aren’t perfect, but imagine a Times reporter encountering an 18-year-old who had been thrust into the illicit drug business at 13 as a consequence of his neglectful family and unscrupulous dealers? Would he help the young man leave the drug trade and find him a lawyer at a Washington firm who is “a former federal prosecutor,” as Eichenwald did Berry? Not likely. Would a Times reporter extend similar assistance to an 18-year-old female prostitute? An 18-year-old fence? A seller of illegal guns? No way.

But why the hell not? Shafer argues that this puts the next reporter in a risky position: Will sources trust him or see him an an agent of the law? I think the reporter who does not follow Eichenwald’s lead is in a riskier position: of allowing and thus even abetting crimes to be committed. And what does that tell the public about our role in our communities? What kind of citizens are we then?

Now to the third, inevitable illustration. I wish that On the Media had asked Eichenwald about Judy Miller and related cases, for the parallels are clear. She knew a crime had been committed and she went to jail not to reveal the criminal. Now, of course, the counterargument is, once again, that sources — especially if those sources are the ones performing the criminal act — will not trust reporters and reveal information that should be revealed if they believe those reporters will not protect them and will hand them over to the authorities. But what if the crime is even clearer than revealing classified information? What if it is child molestation or murder?

Where is the line? Especially in a time when any citizen can perform an act of journalism, can there be a line between being a citizen and a journalist?

: LATER: Jeremy Wagstaff disagrees and says journalists aren’t built to be citizens.

Cellular Giants Win Big in Spectrum Auction

"Of the $13.3 billion in bids registered thus far, $2.2 billion has come from the cable providers, bidding together in a consortium with Sprint, the third-largest cellular carrier. But about 60 percent of the total bids have come from Cingular, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile, the first-, second- and fourth-largest cell phone companies. T-Mobile has bid nearly $4 billion, mostly for licenses in major metropolitan areas, while Cingular and Verizon have sought licenses that cover broader regions."

A Virtual Chamber of Commerce Takes Shape

Second Life resident Chili Carson is launching what could be a great boon for SL’s business owners as well as their customers: a Chamber of Commerce for the virtual world. While news of the venture first surfaced at the Second Life Community Convention and on New World Notes, 3pointD has some fresh details from Chili as she builds out the concept and seeks to garner support in the virtual world. The question now is whether the chamber can withstand the slings and arrows of the Second Life community.

While Chili (otherwise known as Arlene Ciroula, chief operating officer of Baltimore-area CPA and consulting firm KAWG&F) is still in the process of hashing out details with a small planning committee, she hopes to launch the Chamber as soon as possible, perhaps sometime next month. A second introductory presentation will be held Sunday, September 10th at 1:00 PM SLT (IM her to RSVP or to be put on the mailing list for announcements) to discuss recent developments. Other SL residents involved in the planning process so far include Lou Tones, Sudane Erato, Gwyneth Llewelyn and Bean Wollongong.

At the moment, the planning committee is working on hashing out the application process through which businesses would join the organization. Initial plans are to form a membership committee which would review applications and then accept or reject businesses based on a set of standards, also under development. A board of directors would be elected by members. A framework for presentation to prospective members is currently being drawn up, and an election for board seats will be held after a first round of businesses join the organization. Members will pay a small fee, and have access to information, support and promotion for doing business in Second Life. Some of those resources will be available to non-members as well.

The shape of the venture has been well thought out by someone who seems to have a great deal of experience fostering business growth in the real world. Among the benefits to members that are envisioned by the chamber are a business directory and newsletter, chamber-sponsored workshops and seminars, industry-specific expos and conventions, member-to-member discounts, and an executive dialogue program, among others.

The chamber will also provide a repository of information about SL businesses to the broader community, and some assistance for real-world companies coming into SL, as well as guidance on how to integrate themselves into the world “in a positive fashion.”

The chamber will also see to lobby on issues affecting the Second Life business community, to advocate for sound business practices in Second Life, and to set standards to assure commercial transactions are conducted “with the highest possible level of professional conduct and ethics.”

As with many past ventures in the SL business community, the chamber will stand or fall based not simply on its soundness, but also on its resolve. One without the other will not be enough. Though 250,000 avatars log into SL on a regular basis, it’s still a small community, and many residents tend to bristle at any attempt to build structure of any sort atop the individual efforts at work on the Grid. Most people simply give up when they do not get wide buy-in immediately.

But that doesn’t mean a chamber of commerce can’t fly in Second Life. If it does its work well and is willing to invest a lot of time in slowly garnering members and building a helpful reputation, it will eventually benefit from the network effects of the growing SL business community and see its subscribers take off. The hard part is hanging in there long enough to see this start to happen. Competitors will crop up and naysayers will criticize the organization for being elitist and for running against the prevailing currents of Web 2.0 and the 3pointD world.

But the timing just may be right. With more and more people streaming into Second Life, there is currently a real need for more and better business information on the Grid. Even a simple shopping directory (one more useful than the SL search function) would be a great boon to SL businesses and shoppers alike. If the chamber of commerce emerges as a source of useful information, it could catch on fast.

The one thing that could trump it is a more 2.0 version of the same idea. But Web-based community sites for SL — things like SLProfiles and Web-based retail markets like SLBoutique and SLExchange — have trouble catching on. Word of mouth still seems to be the best way to get one’s message out in Second Life. That may change once the API is more open and truly useful Web tools begin to be built, but it hasn’t happened yet. The best way forward for a chamber of commerce is probably just to build it and try to get people to come. If it works, though, it could easily become a great resource. We wish Chili and her crew the best of luck.

Getting Business Efficiencies from the Metaverse

Add terrorism and politics to the list of world-historical factors now driving people into the metaverse. Several links in this VRoot post discuss “how travel restrictions have given a boost to telepresence and effective visual collaboration as alternatives to physical travel.” Add to that high fuel prices that may simply make it cheaper to hold a meeting at your desk, rather than at someone else’s desk across town, and even environmental concerns about the pollution you’re pushing into the atmosphere to get there.

As IT Week executive editor Martin Veitch puts it, “The old model of business collaboration is broken.” Of course, that doesn’t mean a 3D virtual world is the perfect place for every meeting. But it does mean that people are increasingly looking for alternatives to physical meetings that might more efficiently be held elsewhere. Seek and ye shall find.

Does this mean there’s a new model of business collaboration in the works? Most likely, though it may take some time. When it comes, it will rely for its foundation on the simple 3D structure of virtual places, but that won’t be enough: you’ll need robust 3pointD capabilities to make your metaversal business meetings truly efficient. That means 3D collaborative spaces that are fully interfaced with the 2D Web, and which support robust interpersonal interaction in a variety of modes, from voice to social networking, information sharing and more. This kind of thing is already happening (viz. the communal writeboard made by Second Life resident angrybeth Shortbread). Better hooks to the Web are coming as well. With Business 2.0 flagging global startups that are increasingly taking advantage of distributed processing power and collaboration tools, significant new kinds of collaborative business models may not be all that far off. It’s certainly not too soon to start exploring the possibilities.

Muni Wireless Censorship

Culver City, California, the first Los Angeles municipality to offer the public free WiFi, has now installed a program to filter illegal and problematic content from their network, notes GovTech and Broadband Reports.

The city added Audible Magic's CopySense Network Appliance to filter illegal and "problematic content" from their network. Three major movie studios call Culver City home.

According to John Richo, Director of Information Technology for Culver City, the city was concerned with taxpayer dollars funding such activity. "This type of content defeats the purpose of the wireless hotspot".

Culver City is home to nearly 40,000 residents. Their public Wi-Fi system covers ten square blocks in the city's newly renovated Town Plaza. They used a Firetide Wireless Mesh Network with three HotPoint 1000R outdoor mesh routers mounted atop city and privately owned buildings. It was installed by Wireless Hotspot, Inc. The city's redevelopment agency spent around $20,000 putting the network together to entice more "foot traffic" to the downtown area with free WiFi access.

Audible's Copysense device inspects all network traffic looking for legitimate audio or video fingerprints in an effort to weed out copyrighted files based on a master database. The device can also throttle back p2p bandwidth, or prevent p2p altogether. However, notes Broadband Reports, the latest Bit Torrent clients, such as Azureus, can defeat the device since they have incorporated encryption that also helps get around the traffic shaping and copyright filtering.

For NSA-grade surveillence, cities might bring in Booz Allen for a consultation. Applied Signal Technology has voice channel processors and other Wireless Signal Processing gear. With GimmerGlass optical switches, Culver City might contract it out to India.

Pay attention to Dave's newest thing

Dave Winer has come up with a way to make mobile news feeds easy to access and read on portable media devices. He calls it "NewsRiver" and uses the device's browser instead of an RSS aggregator. He's using OPML technology to create a web page that's readable in his River of News style (scrolling through text instead of clicking on headlines).

While this has been available for several months, it has moved to the front burner with Dave, because he recently purchased a Blackberry and is discovering what he likes and doesn't like about the device.

A lot of people are going to say, "Big deal. We can already read news on a PDA." But let's all remember that this is Dave Winer, and when Dave gets excited about something, it's time to stop what you're doing and pay attention.

I wouldn't be blogging if it wasn't for Dave, and I think that's true for most. I wouldn't have an RSS feed if it wasn't for Dave. Podcasting wouldn't exist today if Dave hadn't given his mind to it.

He has a unique way of getting downstream, having an "a-ha" moment, and bringing it back to the rest of us. We look at it and think he's nuts, but that only lasts for a moment.

This discovery has pretty profound ramifications for local media companies, especially those who are currently paying outsider providers to do something similar for them. These companies will likely see their business model disrupted by this simple application.

I love Dave Winer.

All you wanted to know about green Wi-Fi

(Via Stephen Downes)

All you wanted to know about green Wi-Fi:

Green WiFi has a simple goal: provide people with stable and reliable internet access from a renewable resource for developing nations. Many readers probably know that this sounds easier than it is. The thing is, Green WiFi has a solution that looks like it will work easily.

I recently spoke with Marc Pomerleau, one of the founders of Green WiFi, and we had a very interesting conversation talking about both the Green and WiFi part of Green WiFI. Their approach to providing internet access is novel in that it is simple, low-cost, and can be quickly setup.

Essentially, they’ve designed a system that uses a solar panel, a charge controller, a battery, and a generic router to create nodes that cost around $200. This system is comprised of stand-alone units that can talk to each other over a mesh network that can also heal itself. The system was designed primarily by Bruce Balkie, the other founder of Green WIFI, and the prototype node tested on his roof without a complete power loss.

Bruce and Marc were working at Sun Microsystems when the idea to use their knowledge to make the world better came to mind. They had always wanted to do something “with meaning” and they figured out what to do.

findability in the long tail

Fireside Chat: The Long Tail - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals): a great discussion about findability in the long tail.

The ABC of social innovation

In July, we guest-blogged for the Belgian These Days Blogs, creating a dictionary of terms related to the process of social innovation, which now increasingly takes place, ‘outside the corporate form’.

It was published in 3 parts: one, two, and three.

For more information, and more concepts, see our P2P Business section.

A useful add-on are the 10 Laws of Innovation, posted by John Thackara:

Power Law 1: Don’t think “new product” - think social value.

Power Law 2: Think social value before “tech”.

Power Law 3: Enable human agency. Design people into situations, not out of them.

Power Law 4: Use, not own. Possession is old paradigm.

Power Law 5: Think P2P, not point-to-mass.

Power Law 6: Don’t think faster, think closer.

Power Law 7: Don’t start from zero. Re-mix what’s already out there.

Power Law 8: Connect the big and the small.

Power Law 9: Think whole systems (and new business models, too).

Power Law 10: Think open systems, not closed ones.

Sony Pictures Buys Video Sharing Site Grouper For $65 Million

The rumors were true: Sony Pictures has made its first Internet acquisition in a long long time, and officially enters into the social media arena: it has bought video sharing site Grouper, for $65 million. The company had about $5.25 million in funding, from T-Ventures, T-Online's investment arm, and Duff, Ackerman, Goodrich.
Grouper was started about two years ago, by Josh Felser and Dave Samuel, previously founder of Spinner.com, which was sold to AOL for $320 million in 1999. The company started as a P2P file sharing client, and then morphed into a video sharing site last year…it has had some success, though nowhere near YouTube in terms if usage (not that anyone else is near).
So the valuation is not really based on traffic…what it does have is a solid management and technical team (CTO Aviv Eyal founder Friskit, for those of you who remember from the late 90s). And user tools which build upon basic sharing, with ability to download any video to iPod, PSP and others portable devices, video commenting and other features. It also has a simple video editing program built in called "Groovie".
FT: Grouper has just 8 million unique users last month (internal company figures for last month…ComScore says 542,000 unqiyes last month, compared to 16 million for YouTube…Grouper disputes the numbers, says WSJ)). Michael Lynton, CEO of Sony Pictures, said the studio saw a number of possible uses for Grouper, from distributing and promoting its films and TV programs on the internet to serving as a pipeline of new ideas and creative talent. He also argued that Grouper overlaps with Sony Pictures' consumer electronics parent company. Visitors to the site, for example, frequently use Sony cameras and computers to help create and edit their videos.
Release: No immediate changes are planned for the site. Over time, Lynton said there is potential for development of ad-supported and premium content businesses.
Some points: It's about Sony realizing they don't have to invent everything, and trying to prove they can bring in good people and let them do something solid. Secondly, this probably signifies the start of a shakeup in the video sharing space, where other also-rans are struggling to find their footing against the YouTube juggernaut. So you'll probably see similar buyouts in the next few months…others in the line: Revver, Guba, Blip.tv, Veoh, Break.com, PureVideo and countless others.
Related:
– Video Sharing Firm Grouper Gets $1.75 Million Funding
– Top Ten Video Sharing Websites

Amazon, Now Offering Computing On Demand

Holy Smokes - Amazon is offering computing on demand. They have a new service called Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and the company page describes it as a “web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.” This in tandem with the Amazon storage service, S3, makes the cost of development for web-based applications even lower. More thoughts to follow…

YouTube’s Ads Blur Lines

YouTube today introduced a new campaign that casts a “pro” as one of its users. Paris Hilton, famous for being famous, has a pop album. YouTube is giving her a “brand channel,” where Hilton appears in a choppy video welcoming visitors and asking them to leave a comment. It’s like real-time reality television; when I visited, she had logged on two minutes before. Hilton comes off as strikingly similar to the 20-something amateur YouTube ladies who primp and pontificate in front of their webcams (in some cases, for the benefit of large fanbases).

As part of the campaign, YouTube is selling ads for Fox’s Prison Break and sharing some of that revenue with Hilton’s label, Warner. Selling ads on ads — strong work! But instead of dealing with making money from amateur material (and potentially sharing ad dollars with the amateur creators), YouTube seems to be creating a new kind of amateur. Since Paris Hilton already blurs that line, by choosing her YouTube seems to reassure us it’s in on the joke. Who next — Puck from Real World or Survivor’s Richard Hatch?

Everyone wants to know if YouTube can profit on its potential. This is an interesting tweak, but it’s not going to bring the revenue pouring in. As many are pointing out, the campaign doesn’t apply to the vast majority of YouTube’s videos. Still, it’s good to see YouTube try before cashing out. A similar new initiative, an ad for the movie Pulse that users can rate, share, and comment on just like any other YouTube content, has been viewed nearly a million times in four days, according to Reuters.

YouTube, it seems, is “charging [Fox and other advertisers] based on the number of users regardless of whether the consumers actually watch the videos,” according to the Wall Street Journal. I assume this means the number of visitors to a “brand channel’s” page, or the home page when the brand is featured, not YouTube’s total visitors (11 million per week and counting)…but it’s not clear. The WSJ also reports YouTube wants to turn this into an AdSense-like program, brokering video ads for other sites. That’s a good business, but Google would clearly have the edge on syndicated video ads if push came to shove.

Getting this many users for a free service was a mix of smarts and luck. Working out how to make money off them? That’s tough.

Reality Check: Blogs, Pods, RSS

While marketing prognosticators and technophiles rush into the future, raving about the next big content delivery system or ad model, the fact is most Americans -- notably adults with steady incomes -- still get their content the old-fashioned way, from TV, print and Internet ads, Advertising Age reports.

According to Jupiter Research, 7% of American adults write blogs and 22% read them; about 8% listen to podcasts and 5% use RSS feeds. According to a separate study by WorkPlace Print Media, 88% of the at-work audience doesn't even know what RSS is. And recent data from word-of-mouth research group Keller Fay indicate 92% of brand conversations were taking place offline -- far more than the commonly assumed rate of 80%.

Control Ableton Live Wirelessly with a Sony PSP: Now Available for Download, Free

We saw wireless MIDI and mouse control via the Sony PSP, the creation of media artist and hacker Rob King. Now Rob writes to say he’s finished the first release of his software for controlling Ableton Live directly from PSP, and it’s available as a free download.

PLAYLIVE IS HERE [Rob King’s E-mu.org]

The Ableton Live interface is neatly recreated in miniature right on the PSP screen. Features:

1. Wireless control — MIDI sans wires
2. 8 tracks
3. 12 clips per track for clip triggering
4. 4 X/Y pads for joystick-style control (though for touch-X/Y, it’s still all about the Nintendo DS)

ulation is under discussion, but then you wouldn’t be able to use the clip triggers to send MIDI notes. Currently available as a free Windows download, with a Mac version on the way. But even in its current form, this should demonstrate to the folks at Ableton the real breadth of possibilities for controlling their software. Sure, you could have another generic plastic controller and slap an Ableton logo on it, but — Live users can’t be underestimated in their devotion to unique and personal solutions.

Now, we just need wireless MIDI for Nintendo DS. That or else I should take this as a sign that I can justify buying a PSP. Thanks, Rob!

Anyone got a PSP who wants to write up a review of this, let me know!

p://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/createdigitalmusic?a=w4fTwf">

Generation Vlog article

From the Star-Ledger in New Jersey, Generation Vlog: A new breed of filmmaker has emerged from the computer monitor (and even the iPod) onto the big screen as part of a breakthrough digital film series

I wish I could see the newspaper version which probably has pretty pictures. They talk about the Vloggers Unite! series @ The Pionner Theater, especially LOL and Charlene Rule's Scratchvideo.tv. Here's my blurb:

The value of blogs comes into question on Wednesday with "Blogumentary," a doc that takes a hard look at the ways in which blogs affect our politics (think Joe Lieberman), our media (Huffington Post) and our relationships (MySpace and Friendster).

MTV the Next MySpace?

An interesting article in MediaWeek wonders whether MTV Networks might have plans to build a MySpace-like social network out of various properties it’s acquired lately, including things like Xfire and Neopets. While MTV’s still-in-alpha Virtual Laguna Beach isn’t mentioned by name in the article, it can only lend more weight to the theory, despite the fact that it doesn’t have much of a social-networking component — yet.

The MediaWeek writer doesn’t seem to be reading 3pointD, or he might have made more of the following, which is buried toward the end of the piece: “Rumors persist that Viacom is cooking up a social networking play of its own—perhaps melding that trend with the virtual reality phenomenon. [MTV Networks president Michael] Wolf wouldn’t get specific, but hinted something was in the works using avatars (virtual representations of people).” Taking Virtual Laguna Beach into the social networking space could be quite interesting. That’s one feature Second Life and other virtual worlds could benefit from, if you ask us.

Communal Writeboard in Second Life

This in-world collaboration tool for the virtual world of Second Life has been around for a couple of months at least, but 3pointD contributor Chip Poutine just flagged it to me, and it looks so cool I thought I’d flag it here. Its name is self-explanatory: “communal writeboard.” Created by SL resident angrybeth Shortbread and described on her blog, “the main ideas behind its design are to have a slideshow presenter that anyone can add or remove pictures from, plus a range of overlay tools that can be used to annotate or point to areas of interest within an image. These overlay tools can also be used to create simple mindmaps or visual polling events.” (See a shot of the overlay tools after the jump.)

I haven’t checked it out yet, but I’m probably going to put one on my land in Louise at some point, just for kicks. If you want to check it out for yourself, the writeboard is available for L$1 at angrybeth’s Metalab, at Gourdneck (204, 180, 724)” [< -- SL link]. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who's been using this. I'd also love to see a text-based wiki in Second Life, perhaps one that was editable by a list of people. I've been having some fun working on a project on a Schtuff wiki lately with a friend, and it would be cool to be able to bring that into Second Life.

Zooomr includes audio with pics

Zooomr, a worldly social photo hosting site, had added the ability to attach audio files to pics. I tested it out and you can see me here...

I think it’s a really cool idea. Still video anyone? I’ve been thinking of "video" that involves stills with accompanying narrative. Not slide shows. No. Just one image, persistantly still, with audio overlaid. Zooomr allows this capability with what they call Zoomrtations (and unfortunate name, if you ask me). It’s an audio player off to the side of the image that you can listen to as you view the image.

Sadly, there doesn’t appear to be any way in which to blog the results. Can’t seem to find any RSS feeds either.

Nevertheless, I think I’ll be doing some experiments there in the near future...as soon as I get my audio woes remedied.

- Anne

Ex-Googler starts Webwag, new personalized start page

Webwag is a new personalized start page set to be released at the end of this month. According to E-consultancy.com, it's the latest creation of ex-Google France chief Franck Poisson - who says it "will move out of beta on August 28" and be officially announced in early September. More from E-Consultancy.com:

"According to Poisson, Webwag will shortly launch a toolbar, allowing users to import bookmarks and other sites into widgets on their home page, as well as to search their chosen sites or the web as a whole. For the latter, it has inked a partnership with a “big search company”, which Poisson won’t name."

What's more, Poisson is talking up the chances of the independent start pages - such as Pageflakes, Netvibes and now Webwag. He thinks the big companies - Microsoft, Google and Yahoo - won't capture more than 50% of the market:

"According to Poisson, Webwag’s revenue streams will include affiliate marketing – something Netvibes is doing via Kelkoo - and B2B deals, an as yet unexplored area. Chris previously suggested that white labelling this technology is one key revenue opportunity for these firms to consider.

Poisson said: "As Web 2.0 develops over the next three three to five years, two things will remain. Firstly, everyone will have their own blog, and over 75% of people will have their own personalised start pages.

"My belief is the big search portals (My Yahoo etc) will get 50% of that market, and 50% will be taken by three to four independents.”"

Personally I think that 50% figure for independents is too ambitious. I also question his claim that 75% of people will have a start page in 3-5 years, unless you count the likes of Yahoo.com as a 'personalized start page' (actually I suspect the distinction will be moot in 5 years time).

In any case I do believe there is very viable market for the 'independents' - particularly in white labelling and B2B deals. Personalized start pages are one of the more inventive areas of Web technology at the moment, with action aplenty from Internet giants and small startups alike. It'll be interesting to see what Webwag has to offer - currently the link above is password-protected.

A-List Vloggers, Long Tails and Fairness

I happened upon a post on Nicholas Carr’s Blog this morning called The Great Unread. Although it’s about written blogs, specifically, I think the gist of it carries over into the videoblogging realm quite nicely.

As the Yahoo Videoblogging Group has grown, there have been repeated complaints about A-list vloggers - vloggers that get the hype, the views, the links, the magazine articles (also known as the usual suspects). This has led to some acrimonious debates over fairness in group dynamics.

Do A-listers exist in the vlogosphere? Is it a clique? An attention grab? Is it a question of who speaks the loudest and most often or is does it have to do with who came into the scene first?

Nic Carr calls the idea of a democratic and egalitarian blogosphere an "innocent fraud":

An innocent fraud is a lie, but it’s a lie that’s more white than black. It’s a lie that makes most everyone happy. It suits the purposes of the powerful because it masks the full extent of their power, and it suits the purposes of the powerless because it masks the full extent of their powerlessness.

elves about the blogosphere - that it’s open and democratic and egalitarian, that it stands in contrast and in opposition to the controlled and controlling mass media - is an innocent fraud.

The post goes on to explain why he feels that is,

and ends with an tale of A-listers merging with big media moguls while "blog peasants" look on.

There are a great many comments following the post, some in agreement and some railing against it’s perceived hyperboly. The gem that I found within it, however, is a link to an article written in 2003, considered an important document on the matter.

Clay Shirky’s Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality attempts to offer an objective view of a growing gap between popular blogs and what Nic refers to as The Great Unread.

In 2003, the most popular blog was Instapundit, blogging was still fairly young but growing quickly…much as videoblogging is today. I think some of the parallels are striking and would help to explain the growing disparity.

Rather than using a loaded term such as Innocent Fraud, Shirky refers to something called Power Law Distribution and how small historical moments are writ large over time as more and more people enter the arena.

A few people begin vlogging. They link to each other. Soon, others arrive on the scene and create their own vlogs. Their links reflect the vlogrolls of their predecessors with a few additions. As each new vlogger arrives, their vlogrolls are more inclined to include vlogs that have been linked to by the majority of the participants and less inclined to include the vlogs that are only linked to by a few. Oddly enough, the greater the number of options, rather than flattening the plane of attention, the results become more skewed toward the favorited vlogs.

In the section, Freedom of Choice Makes Stars Inevitable, Shirky writes:

Note that this model is absolutely mute as to why one blog might be preferred over another. Perhaps some writing is simply better than average (a preference for quality), perhaps people want the recommendations of others (a preference for marketing), perhaps there is value in reading the same blogs as your friends (a preference for "solidarity goods", things best enjoyed by a group). It could be all three, or some other effect entirely, and it could be different for different readers and different writers. What matters is that any tendency towards agreement in diverse and free systems, however small and for whatever reason, can create power law distributions.

1. there is no threshold for having a weblog
2. good blogs stay on top because they continue blogging (a difficult accomplishment in and of itself! It’s hard work!)
3. This one is important, in my opinion so I’ll quote directly:

the stars exist not because of some cliquish preference for one another, but because of the preference of hundreds of others pointing to them. Their popularity is a result of the kind of distributed approval it would be hard to fake.

Once a blog (or vlog) becomes popular, will the content creator become part of an elite clique that predominantly links to and associates with other popular creators or is it a question of numbers?

…as a blogger’s audience grows large, more people read her work than she can possibly read, she can’t link to everyone who wants her attention, and she can’t answer all her incoming mail or follow up to the comments on her site.

Video’s visual component also might ask the question, is it who is the most attractive or the most engaging/entertaining on camera?

I don’t think there are any direct answers to these questions.

Shirky asks and answers a couple of questions of his own that are worth considering:

Are there people who are as talented or deserving as the current stars, but who are not getting anything like the traffic? Doubtless. Will this problem get worse in the future? Yes.

- Anne

The Privacy Ceiling

Scott Craver of the University of Binghamton has a very interesting post summarising the concept of a ‘privacy ceiling':

"This is an economic limit on privacy violation by companies, owing to the liability of having too much information about (or control over) users."

It's the "control over users" that immediately makes this something especially relevant for designers and technologists to consider: that control is designed, consciously, into products and systems, but how much thought is given to the extremes of how it might be exercised, especially in conjunction with the wealth of information that is gathered on users?

"Liability can come from various sources... [including]

Vicarious infringement liability.

Imagine: you write a music player (like iTunes) that can check the Internet when I place a CD in my computer. You decide to collect this data for market research. Now the RIAA discovers that this data can also identify unauthorized copies. Can they compel you to hand over data on user listening habits?

Your company is liable for vicarious infringement if (1) infringement happens, (2) you benefit from it, and (3) you had the power to do something about it—which I assume includes reporting the infringement. So now you are possibly liable because you have damning information about your users. This also applies to DRM technologies that let you restrict users.

Note that you can't solve this problem simply by adopting a policy of only keeping the data for 1 month, or being gentle and consumer-friendly with your DRM. The fact is, you have the architecture for monitoring and/or control, and you may not get to choose how you use it.

Other sources of liability described include: being drawn into criminal investigations based on certain data which a company or other organisation may have - or be compelled to obtain - on its users; customers suing in relation to the leaking of supposedly private data (as in the AOL débâcle); and "random incompetence", e.g. an employee accidentally releasing data or arbitrarily exercising some designed-in control with undesirable consequences.

Scott goes on:

"Okay, so there is a penalty to having too much knowledge or too much control over customers. What should companies do to stay beneath this ceiling?

1. Design an architecture for your business/software that naturally prevents this problem.

It is much easier for someone to compel you to violate users' privacy if it's just a matter of using capabilities you already have. Mind, you have to convince a judge, not a software engineer, that adding monitoring or control is difficult. But you have a better shot in court if you must drastically alter your product in order to give in to demands.

...

2. Assume you will monitor and control to the full extent of your architecture. In fact, don't just assume this, but go to the trouble to monitor or control your users.

Why? Because in an infringement lawsuit you don't want to appear to be acting in bad faith... if you have the ability to monitor users and refuse to use it, you're giving ammunition to a copyright holder who accuses you of inducement and complicity.

...

But ... the real message is that you should go back to design principle 1. If you want to protect users, think about the architecture; don't just assume you can take a principled stand not to abuse your own power.

The third principle is really a restatement of the first two, but deserves restating:

3. Do not attempt to strike a balance.

Do not bother to design a system or business model that balances user privacy with copyright holder demands. All this does is insert an architecture of monitoring or control, for later abuse. In other words, design an architecture for privacy alone. Anything you put in there, under rule #2, will one day be used to its full extent.

I have seen many many papers over the years, in watermarking tracks, proposing an end-to-end media distribution system balancing DRM with privacy. Usually, the approach is that watermarks are embedded in music/movies/images by a trusted third party, the marks are kept secret from the copyright holder, and personal information is revealed only under specific circumstances in which infringement is clear. This idea is basically BS. Your trusted third party does not have the legal authority to decide when to reveal information. What will likely happen instead: if a copyright holder feels infringement is happening, the trusted third party will be liable for vicarious infringement."

Summing it up: any capability you design into a product or system will be used at some point - even if you are forced to use it against the best interests of your business. So it is better to design deliberately to avoid being drawn into this: design systems not to have the ability to monitor or control users, and that will keep you much safer from liability issues.

The privacy ceiling concept - which Scott is going to present in a paper along with Lorrie Cranor and Janice Tsai at the ACM DRM 2006 workshop - really does seem to have a significant implications for many of the architectures of control examples I've looked at on this site.

For example, the Car Insurance Black Boxes mostly record mileage and time data to allow insurance to be charged according to risk factors that interest the insurance company; but the boxes clearly also record speed, and whether that information would be released to, say, law enforcement authorities, if requested, is an immediate issue of interest/concern.

Looking further, though, the patent covering the box used by a major insurer mentions an enormous number of possible types of data that could be monitored and reported by the device, including exact position, weights of occupants, driving styles, use of brakes, what radio station is tuned in, and so on. Whether any insurance company would ever implement them, of course, is another question, and it would require a lot tighter integration into a vehicle's systems; nevertheless, as Scott makes clear, whatever possibilities are designed into the architecture, will be exploited at some point, whether through pressure (external or internal) or incompetence.

I look forward to reading the full paper when it is available.

SL Reverse Engineering Effort Gets Imprimatur

libsecondlife, the reverse-engineering effort by a group of talented Second Life residents (which has caused no small consternation among some users of the virtual world) got a welcome imprimatur from Linden Lab chief technology officer Cory Ondrejka in his closing talk at Saturday’s sessions of the Second Life Community Convention in San Francisco. Ondrejka also gave a look at changes being made to the code-base, changes that should make building Web-based SL mashups easier for everyone, whether or not you know enough to pick apart the platform to build something like libsecondlife.

“The official position of Linden Lab on libsecondlife is, we like libSL, you guys rock,” Ondrejka said. “We are blown away by what you’ve accomplished, and we’re very excited to see you do more, so do not stop. But everything you’ve reverse engineered is changing, and for that I do apologize.” libsecondlife hackers that 3pointD spoke with at the convention remained unconcerned, however, as the changes Cory described will no doubt be slow in coming.

Among the upcoming changes:

• the internal messaging system over which various parts of the SL platform communicate is being moved to well defined XML
• the user interface is being refactored (more or less a fancy word for cleaned up), and also moved to XML
• the system will move to a “capabilities-based permissions structure”
• as much data as possible is going to be exposed in representational-state transfer (REST) interfaces, which will allow it to be much more easily accessed from Web-based applications.

“You’ll be able to hit things with browsers and with RSS,” Ondrejka said. “We want you guys to be able to get at the data, to be able to do things like build own Web-based parcel manager for parcels. Long-term, our goal is open, discoverable APIs for as much of the sytem as we possibly can. You guys are doing incredible things, we want you to be able to do more.”

Some Second Life residents had become concerned about the libSL effort after it was revealed that proprietary textures could be stolen using the tool, and a crude version of “god mode” could be entered that might give users access to data that normally wouldn’t be available. But the presence of the tool has not caused any widespread problems for SL residents. And Linden Lab itself clearly has no problem with the effort.

The changes Cory described may make libsecondlife obsolete, but they will open up broad new potential for SL residents to write Web-based apps that interact more closely with the virtual world. It will no doubt be some time, however, before the company can accomplish such a deep overhaul of its code. For now, look to the hackers.

Use of RFID in DRM

Via Dave Farber's Interesting People, a brief New Scientist article outlines Sony's continuing obsession with restricting and controlling its customers (the last one didn't go too well):

"A patent filed by Sony last week suggests it may once again be considering preventing consumers making "too many" back-up copies of its CDs...

Sony's latest idea is to place a piece of monitoring hardware inside the CD. Its patent suggests embedding a radio-frequency ID chip that could be interrogated wirelessly by a PC or CD player. The chip would record the number of times the disc was copied and prevent further recordings once it reached the limit. The device could also be fitted to DVDs. Whether Sony will turn the patent idea into reality remains to be seen."

Of course this will require new CD players and CD-ROM drives with the ability to read, write to and act on the signal from the RFID chip - which means its impact may not be very significant.

It's not clear whether the "permitted" copies have to be made onto "chipped" Sony-authorised discs (otherwise the technology seems rather pointless, as people will just make copies of the un-protected copies instead of repeated copies of the original) - if this is the case, then is this not just a sly "razor blade model" or "PRM" (in Ed Felten's phrase) attempt to make Sony CD-writers require the purchase of Sony chipped blank CDs in order to copy music?

And would this break the Orange Book standard for CD-Rs?

Future User Interface

"The future of user interfaces for computer technology looks fascinating and full of amazing surprises. After having showcased the eery magic of seeing images displayed into thin air, user interface researcher Jeff Han guides you to see how amazing will be working with computers once we will have gotten rid of mouses and will begin to draw and manipulate screen objects directly with our fingers."

FTC: Against Neutrality?

Majoras said there has been no demonstrated harm to consumers, that normal market forces would likely prevent any problems, and that new laws would cause more problems than they solve.

Majoras' comments come as the Senate is considering a massive legislative proposal to rewrite telecommunications laws. In June, a Senate panel narrowly rejected an amendment that would have slapped strict regulations on broadband providers. Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, has said he'll try to block a floor vote on the measure unless that amendment is adopted.

The Federal Trade Commission has formed an "Internet Access Task Force" to examine Net neutrality, reports Network World.

Chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras Monday called on lawmakers to be cautious about passing a 'Net neutrality law, which could prohibit broadband providers such as AT&T and Comcast from giving their own Internet content top priority, or from charging Web sites additional fees for faster service. New legal mandates often have "unintended consequences," she said.

The FTC has published Promoting Competition, Protecting Consumers: A Plain English Guide to Antitrust Laws, to pitch its position.

Echoing the promises of FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and congressional Republicans, Majoras said that "if broadband providers engage in anticompetitive conduct, we will not hesitate to act using our existing authority."

But Net Neutrality is not a new thing. It's the law.

Telcos are currently required to share their twisted pair on a wholesale basis to competitors. That regulation will largely disappear in a few years as fiber and broadband to the home are installed.

Then it will be a level playing field. Net neutrality advocates fear it will enabling cable and telcos to charge whatever they can and encourage them to create "walled gardens" of controlled access.

Related DailyWireless stories include; Advance to the Rear, Net Neutrality: Not Dead, Wyden Blocks Telecom Vote, Net Neutrality: Bridge to Nowhere?, Cable/Sprint Pole Dance, and Dirty Tricks for Net Neutrality.

Blogging for Bucks

Business 2.0 says Michael Arrington is a partying kind of guy.

Arrington, a 36-year-old entrepreneur behind a long list of unrecognizable startups, has suddenly become one of the rising stars of Silicon Valley. Why? The answer lies in TechCrunch, Arrington's blog about new technologies and companies. In the year since he launched the site, he has amassed such a strong following that he's become a go-to person for VCs and tech execs looking to leak corporate tidbits or announce news.

More than 1.5 million readers regularly check out his site. But here's what gives Arrington real distinction: He's pulling in $60,000 in ad revenue every month. That's 10 times what the site was making earlier this year, which was when Arrington, convinced of the potentially monstrous riches ahead, quit his day job as president of a startup to blog full-time.

The monetization of blogging can trace its roots to late 2002, when Google (Charts) created a revolutionary system that allowed anyone with a website to run ads. The technology, called AdSense, matched ads with a site's content. Each time a visitor clicked on a linked ad, the site's owner got paid (a model now referred to as cost-per-click advertising). For the first time, anyone could be a real publisher with real advertisers, with no need for the big sales forces that magazines, newspapers, and other traditional media employ.

Don Dodge is less sanguine:

Blogs are like Open Source projects in that anyone can do them for free. There are literally tens of millions of blogs all available for free and produced by individuals with no investment. Why would you need $5M to write a blog when your investment is zero? What kind of return will VCs see from this investment?

Like Open Source, blogs will produce a few popular brand names that will attract 95% of all the attention and money. These blogs will attract advertisers and sponsorships. But, is there really enough upside to generate VC like returns? Perhaps in very rare cases, but it doesn't look like a very good sector bet.

Kevin Rose has the right attitude. Bullshit.

Of course Don Park and myself at DailyWireless are not crazy. We'd like DW to make money. We just haven't gotten around to it yet.

Top Ten Video Sharing Websites

Light Reading has done a comprehensive comparison of the online video sharing sites, and come up with a list, based on features. The full list of all sites they reviewed with table comparison is here. Their top-10 list is:
1) Blip.tv
2) VideoEgg
3) Dailymotion
4) YouTube
5) Veoh
6) Google Video
7) Grouper
8) Jumpcut
9) AOL
10) Eyespot
Lotsa other details, charts, tables etc…useful.

Blogumentary NYC Premiere, August 30

Watch the trailer

If you're in New York, or have friends there, come out to the Two Boots Pioneer Theater on August 30 for the theatrical premiere of Blogumentary. Please tell your friends! Buying tickets in advance is highly recommended. Buy tickets here.

BLOGUMENTARY playfully explores the many ways blogs are influencing our media, our politics, and our relationships. Personal political writing is the foundation of our democracy, but mass media has reduced us to passive consumers instead of active citizens. Blogs return us to our roots and reengage us in democracy.

Shot in candid first-person style by director Chuck Olsen, himself an avid blogger, the film features interviews with influential bloggers including Joe Trippi, Jeff Jarvis, Dan Gillmor, John Hinderaker, Jason Kottke and Meg Hourihan. From the rise of Howard Dean to the fall of Dan Rather, from love at first blog to a friend's suicidal blog post, "Blogumentary" is a fresh and compelling journey into our hyperconnected existence.

Also showing: episodes from "Minnesota Stories," the vlog edited by Olsen, featuring stories of the normal, the abnormal, and the paranormal in the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes.

Full time vlogger needed at Netscape

Say what you will about Jason Calacanis and the new Netscape, but he is one of the few people looking to actually pay people for work they love and I think that is wicked cool. (Personally, I think he is one step ahead of the internet and is not just talking about it either like most of us …but actually doing it.)

Basically, Netscape is looking for a full time New York based vlogger. Traveling, writing and developing online video and audio content for Netscape (both podcasts and video podcasts) is the basic job description. Specifics are as follows:

The Netscape anchor added a bit more If you think you fit the bill, send me an email (ck at newnetscape dot com) with subject line “Netscape Anchor / Preditor“, a cover letter, resume, and a link to both an online writing sample (your blog will do) and some online sample of your video work. Remember: we’re looking for a “one person band,” jack-of-all-trades who can do all this work without the benefit of a full film crew and staff.

Sounds like a heaven sent opportunity for the right vlogger. I’d run to this job in a New York minute, but alas…I live on the wrong side of the Atlantic.

More details here: Wicked cool vlogging at Netscape

Google "Showtimes" the UC Library System

The University of California's secret agreement with Google for book digitization promises to improve access to parts of its library collections, but the contractual restrictions UC has accepted may enrich Google's shareholders at public expense.

Digitizing the world's books, films, video, sound recordings, maps, and other cultural artifacts could, to quote Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle, provide "universal access to all human knowledge, within our lifetime." So it's troubling to see public institutions transfer cultural assets, accumulated with public funds, into private hands without disclosing the terms of the transaction.

Basic principles to govern mass digitization and safeguard the public interest have been developed by members of the American Library Association (forthcoming; see also http://litablog.org/?p=200), and by the Open Content Alliance. UC even signed on to the OCA principles (disclosure: I've worked for the OCA), which are designed to provide a baseline for digitization projects, in its scanning agreements with Yahoo and Microsoft. Transparency is a primary value to both the OCA, and the ALA.

So problem one is that the terms of the UC / Google agreement are secret, and were arrived at with no public input. As an institution that receives state and federal funding, UC should expect and welcome public comment if its inventory is effectively being privatized. The president's office says it expects that terms will only come out after it receives the equivalent of a FOIA request. Since when does it take a FOIA request to get information from the library?

But it isn't just the public that is excluded–it's the rest of the library community. Mass digitization is very complex (see Paul Courant's brilliant new article in First Monday). Librarians must grapple with new and unfamiliar issues that can only be resolved through dialog with peers. Google appears to be doing all it can to prevent this from happening, imposing NDAs on libraries at the start of discussions about mass digitization. By isolating librarians from each other, Google dramatically strengthens its negotiating position, and UC negates the goal of academic openness.

The second problem is more complex. Mass digitization is expensive. Public institutions that wish to digitize their holdings usually need to partner with private firms to get the work done. As described in Marketing Culture in the Digital Age, funded by the Mellon Foundation, and written by my colleague Peter Kaufman of Intelligent Television, commercial investment in digitization can be good for all concerned.

But private companies, at least profitable ones like Google, don't work for free. So the public institutions need to pay for those services. Typically, they can't pay in cash, so they pay in other ways, with labor, facilities, and some type of rights agreement. In other words, public use of and access to the digitized cultural works is usually limited in some way to benefit the private firm. This has to be done in the open.

The recent Smithsonian/Showtime agreement is a case in point that clearly shows what can go wrong in such a process. To recap, Showtime convinced the Smithsonian to sign a secret 170 page, 30 year agreement which gives Showtime control of the Smithsonian's film and video archive. This particular saga has been widely covered elsewhere, but the roots of catastrophe are in 1) secret negotiations 2) exclusivity 3) length of term.

UC's agreement is probably not explicitly exclusive. But as a practical matter, scanning doesn't happen twice; libraries learned this when their material was microfilmed (as an aside, the microfilming was sometimes done badly, and to this day microfilm users suffer from those quality problems). This deal will be costly for UC in staff time and other resources, and the chances that another vendor will come through and duplicate the work are slim.

In the absence of the text of the agreement, it's difficult to know what specific clauses may affect the ability of California citizens to read online the books now in their libraries. But there is a plausible nightmare scenario that UC needs to act now to prevent.

From the University of Michigan agreement (obtained only as a result of public records laws in Michigan, and despite Google's best efforts) it is clear there will be restrictions on what UC can do with the digital scans. This is a critical issue. If this deal follows the pattern at Michigan, there will be limits determined by Google on how UC may share its digital holdings with other libraries.

If the scanning process is made efficient at all the universities now in Google's orbit, a book already scanned at Harvard won't be rescanned at Berkeley. So Berkeley may not receive a copy, and because of the restrictions on sharing its holdings, won't have an easy time getting one from Harvard. The student of 2012 will have a choice: go to the complete digital library, owned by Google, or go to the partial digital library of his or her own university.

That extreme scenario may not come to pass, but there are many other questions about the Google / UC deal:

* What more might UC be able to do if its scanning project were funded by the legislature or foundations, rather than by Google?
* UC says the "digitized books will be searchable through Google Book Search." Can anyone else build services that access this data? Or is it another case of "Google can crawl everyone else's data, no one can crawl Google's data?"
* What quality assurances will Google provide? How can we ensure this won't be a repeat of the microfilm experience?
* Will UC have copies of the full, high quality scans, or will certain information, such as image positioning data needed for searching, be kept by Google alone?
* What restrictions will be placed on UC's use of those scans?
* What will be the different treatments for material in copyright, or orphaned, or in the public domain?
* Is it reasonable to ask the public to pay a second time (or watch ads) for material already purchased, simply because it's now necessary to convert the format in which it is stored?
* Why haven't the Regents appointed a panel of advisors on this matter?

Clearly, UC's high level goals are laudable. The Google people I've met believe in the company motto, "don't be evil." And it is not really in the public interest to side with the publishers who are the loudest voices now attacking Google, and a primary cause of the all the secrecy. Yet by acquiescing to Google's demands for secrecy, UC has compromised the public interest, and set a dangerous precedent for the rest of the academic community.

The TSA’s new crime fighting tool: Precognition

The Transportation Security Administration has been experimenting with a new anti-terror program: screening passengers’ faces for ‘evil intent.’

This is not a new concept, the TSA is taking this page from Israeli airport security. Dedicated agents will not look for bombs, guns or knives. Instead, the assignment is to find anyone with evil intent.

What is evil intent? Basically the agents look for telltale facial feature, and the approach and question the passenger who is emoting ‘odd’ behaviors.

Read More

YouTube making 'significant revenues'

So says YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley at a Bay Area conference. "We're in a good position," Hurley said. "We have the largest audience because we've created the largest library of content. When people make a decision to put content online, they want to get on YouTube to reach that large audience." Hurley said YouTube is looking at ways to extend its video to the mobile universe. And he blamed yesterday's site outage on a database problem. (Via PaidContent)

Social Media and the Networked Public Sphere

Improving Civic Participation

"Can social media increase and improve civic participation? If so, in what ways? There's a lot being said and written about the subject these days, but it is difficult to get a clear overview of the opinions. I attempt here to collect viewpoints both for and against the premise that social media is creating a better public sphere, and analyze them in the context of what constitutes a public and its antithesis, a mass. In presenting what are sometimes extreme positions within this debate (too idealistic v. too critical), my hope is to begin to understand the reality that lies in the middle, and come closer to understanding social media's potential (and limitations) as a tool to bring about social change.

At a general level, we could say that on one side of the debate are those who believe that social media can increase civic participation and shift the balance of power away from the institutions that currently stand in the way of change. On the other side are those who warn that social media can only offer a reduced form of participation, that it diminishes the value of individual contributions, and that it leaves social systems more prone to manipulation by lowering their intelligence to the minimum common denominator (i.e., stupidity or mediocrity).

Thus, the debate can be framed in terms of whether social media can engender democratic publics that embody an intelligence and capacity for action greater than the sum of its members, or whether it will merely continue to support the production of anti-democratic masses of disenfranchised and alienated consumers. Of course, social media is a big label encompassing many different technologies, and even the same technologies can be applied differently in various contexts. But while features and applications might differ, the people contributing to this debate are obviously focused on the aggregated impact that social media is having on our societies rather than on specific examples of applications." Continue reading Social Media and the Networked Public Sphere by Ulises Ali Mejias.

User generated content and gaming

"I love the fact that thanks to organizations like Valve, Maxis, and Bioware, user-generated content is attracting tremendous attention from industry and media alike. Still, coverage typically revolves around a single point of interest, i.e. "UGC makes games more interesting" or "UGC can help drive sales." So I thought I’d compile a (by no means exhaustive) list of the good business-y things about UGC in the context of games: "

follow-up: http://www.edery.org/2006/06/user-generated-content-the-list/

Street Use

Kevin Kelly the founding executive editor of Wired magazine and author, considered an expert in digital culture, has opened a new blog called Street Use. Fabulous. [via Smart Mobs]

This site features the ways in which people modify and re-create technology. Herein a collection of personal modifications, folk innovations, street customization, ad hoc alterations, wear-patterns, home-made versions and indigenous ingenuity. In short — stuff as it is actually used, and not how its creators planned on it being used. As William Gibson said, “The street finds its own uses for technology.” I welcome suggestions of links, and contributions from others to include in this compendium. — KK

Originally by emily from textually.org at August 16, 2006, 02:54, published by Marisa S. Olson

Live motion 3D video camera

O'Reilly's Radar has a brief write up of a "3D live motion video camera that uses LIDAR technology to get a range-finding for every pixel" - you could "scan" an area and put all the 3D data in to just about any application, wow! Link & full image.

Related:
Google video tech talk about the camera - Link.

Originally from MAKE Magazine, ReBlogged by admeyers on Aug 16, 2006 at 04:08 PM

Designing for Mobile

Bluefavour has a presentation "on the mobile ecosystem, some of the basic fundamentals as well as dispel myths and jargon common to the mobile industry."

ITJ Project Beta Released

Interactive Tele-Journalism
So.. I have finally released ITJ on SourceForge.net.

With support from Konscious and Manhattan Neighborhood Network we have packaged and uploaded the latest version and it can be downloaded at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/itv-ism/.

Record iChat Audio and Video

Ecamm Network: Conference Recorder - Record iChat AV Conferences - Save Audio and Video Memories
Nice..

From the site:
"Finally, an easy way to record your iChat audio and video chats. Conference Recorder is an add-on for iChat AV which automatically transforms your conference sessions into QuickTime movies. "

GarageBand 3 allows the recording of audio and snapshots from iChat conferences as well..

Wondering where I can find an API for iChat to develop these types of things myself...?

Why Videocommunication Didn't Catch On

WNYC's The Leonard Lopate Show: Why Videocommunication Didn't Catch On (July 25, 2006)
From the post:
Computer scientist Jaron Lanier looks at why—despite all the predictions—videocommunication never caught on.

Pretty interesting. Discussing the non-verbal cues that we are missing in video conferencing.

(I wish WNYC would have permalinks on their site for each of these segments. I would rather post on my own blog than on Delicious but for now I have to click on the Delicious link and copy the URL and so forth. - That's for you Brian, if you are listening)

Thanks Spencer..

Wednesday: The personal media revolution in action

MediaPost: User-generated content sites--venues for photo-sharing, video-sharing, and blogging--comprised five out of the top 10 fastest growing Web brands in July 2006, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

YouTube visualization of submission growth

Via randomwalks/dj

Appropriation & Annotation

The latest issue of Harper’s features an excellent roundtable discussion on how video games might be used to teach writing. Though most of it will be familiar to anyone who has followed recent debates about “serious games,” it is worth reading. Among the discussants, Raph Koster stood out as particularly insighful, and his comments about new forms of literacy really struck home:

What we mean by literacy is changing. If you look at books like The Da Vinci Code, a lot of what it does is appropriation–of a painting, or a historical text–and annotation, with this whole cottage industry of providing the footnotes: the TV specials, the books. … Appropriation and annotation are becoming our new forms of literacy.

Appropriation and annotation (or, to use the popular vernacular, remix and tagging) have been at the center of my interests for a while now, but it’s nice to see them being discussed in a high-profile forum like Harper’s.

Koster’s comments echo the views of my friend Dan Perkel, who has been investigating “copy and paste literacy” on MySpace. Many people focus on the “remix culture” of appropriation and annotation as if it is something new–but these practices have been around since the dawn of culture. What is new, as Koster and Dan indicate, is the general rise in people’s ability to recognize and engage in these practices: their literacy.

The discussion in Harper’s ends with a kind of lament that a population highly literate in appropriation and annotation will squeeze out the “great artist” by flooding our culture with lesser-quality niche productions. I agree with that conclusion but not the explanation. The era of the great artist will come to an end, not because of overcrowded cultural markets, but because a literate population will recognize appropriation and annotation at the heart of all creative production, and it will reject the myths of the solitary genius and the original creative act that have dominated for the last few centuries. The great artist will disappear, but there will continue to be great art.

Location awareness and rendezvousing

Dearman, D., Hawkey, K. and Inkpen, K.M. Rendezvousing with location-aware devices: Enhancing social coordination. Interacting with Computers 17, 5 (2005), 542-566.

A very interesting paper directly connected to my current research about the influence of location-awareness on collaboration. It examines how location awareness impacts social coordination when rendezvousing.

This paper presents a field study investigating the use of mobile location-aware devices for rendezvous activities. Participants took part in one of three mobile device conditions (a mobile phone, a location-aware handheld, or both a mobile phone and a location-aware handheld) and completed three rendezvousing scenarios. The results reveal key differences in communication patterns between the mediums, as well as the potential strengths and limitations of location-aware devices for social coordination.
(…)
close observation of the behavioural and communication differences demonstrates that the technology available significantly altered how the participants’ managed their social coordination

Results about the functions of location-awareness were quite pertinent too (as in my case, they also found detrimental effects of it):

Having access to location-awareness information has obvious benefits. Users can make more informed decisions and have a stronger sense of ambient virtual co-presence. The participants in our study made extensive use of location-awareness information as a background communication channel to monitor their partner’s location (as well as their own) in an unobtrusive manner.
(…)
we observed instances where location-awareness information was extremely beneficial and other instances where it was detrimental. It was beneficial because participants could see their partner’s location and track their progress in an unobtrusive manner. This arguably provided the waiting partner with enough information to wait contently. However, when their partner appeared to be lost or not making progress, it was very disconcerting to the waiting partner because they did not have enough information to determine what the problem was. This uncertainty was strong enough in some cases to actually draw the waiting partner away from the rendezvous location.

Why do I blog this? this goes straight to my literature review.

The Sustainable Route raises issues

The Seven Maps Project - the most recent videoblogging project to receive funding via Have Money Will Vlog is now over and it was, in my opinion, a success. But, more on that later when Daniel Liss, the intrepid traveller, has had some down time. I’m going to be interviewing him about the process, his expectations and his thoughts on the results.

The latest project on the HMWV funding block is The Sustainable Route - another travelling vlog series that raises some interesting questions.

The Sustainable Route, proposed by Ashley Hodson and her friend Megan, hopes to create a dialogue about sustainability by meeting up with people who are involved in the sustainability movement, educating themselves and their viewers during the journey.

For those of you who don’t know much about Have Money Will Vlog, the site was organized as a way to solicit funds for video projects. Chosen projects are promoted by the site which asks for donations using the model of Fundable.org (if the proposed amount is reached, the donations will be paid. If not, the donations are not collected).

There is a Google Group devoted to the site that anyone can join with the provision that those involved in choosing projects cannot apply for funding themselves in order to preserve objectivity and avoid favoritism. Group members are asked to bring forward projects they have knowledge of as well as go through independent proposals and engage in discussions over the merits of each one until an agreement is reached on who to fund.

As a member of this group, I have seen many proposals, some of which have been rejected or sent back to the author for further development. This is one project that seemed destined to be a "pick".

Ashley Hodson is Ryan Hodson’s sister and Ryan is one of the founders of Have Money Will Vlog. Is this, as suggested by MissBHavens in our own comments, nepotism? Does it conform to the basic tenets of HMWV as an objective choice?

It was a difficult position to be put in as a group member. On the one hand, a project about sustainable technology would be interesting (although Daryl Hannah is already doing it on her vlog!) but, on the other hand, is it really an arm’s length assessment when those making the final call are relatives that are, not only helping to promote the cause but, helped with the proposal itself?

Whether or not the group as a whole decided the project would be a go is questionable. No sooner had discussions begun, we were informed that the project would be a go. The intro video that group members asked to see first had not yet been posted:

hey all
just a little update on this

on having her preliminary proposal video done by the end of this week/weekend
so you can get a better idea of where she’s coming from/what she’s planning.

she’s also building a google map for the trip.

jay and i discussed posting this project after the second week of august
to give people some breathing room after the 2000 we raised for daniel
and to watch 7 maps unfold (should be happening the second week in Aug)

then we’ll move forward on this one…

cheers
-ry

After this post, conversation about the project ground to a halt. I’d like to say that I posted my concerns to the group but I didn’t. I was busy with Seven Maps and I saw no indication that the project was moving forward until it was already in the works.

I think that Have Money Will Vlog is a good idea but this latest project has me concerned. From MissBHaven’s comment, I can see I’m not the only one.

- Anne

Telco Settop Hacks

Broadband Reports says Verizon today unveiled a new option for those lucky enough to be within reach of FiosTV: the Motorola QIP6416 multi-room DVR, which will stream programming to up to three standard definition televisions. The unit, which features dual HD tuners and a 160gig hard-drive, is available to FiosTV subscribers for $20 a month, plus $3.95 for each TV you'll have connected to it.

The recorder is bundled with Media Manager, a new feature that lets customers easily access photos and music from their personal computer. Both functions are made possible by software and technology already built into the FiOS platform on Verizon's fiber-to-the-premises network.

The launch of Home Media DVR follows the June 1 introduction of FiOS TV Widgets, a free interactive feature that lets subscribers display text-based local weather and traffic information on their TV screens.

Verizon's DVR set-top box (the Motorola QIP6416) functions as the media hub, which records and streams the video, and its standard-definition set-top boxes (the Motorola QIP2500) are the remote terminals.

To watch recorded programs on the media hub and up to two remote terminals simultaneously, customers pull down the menu, click "recorded TV" to find and select their program, and then press "play." The media hub also functions as a dual-tuner DVR on which viewers can watch one program while recording another.

Home Media DVR is $19.95 per month, $7 more than the monthly fee for the FiOS TV DVR. Customers also need a $3.95-per-month standard-definition set-top box for each TV that will receive recorded video from the media hub.

Meanwhile, AT&T's U-verse also plans a high def Motorola set top box to replace all of their Tatung boxes. The Motorola VIP 1216 will be used for the main TV and the VIP 1200 for all other TVs. The 1216 will contain a 160GB hard drive with the capacity to record both SD and HD content encoded in H.264 format.

AT&T's Homezone users can also schedule and manage DVR recordings on their 2Wire set-tops while they are away from home. AT&T U-Verse TV service over "Project Lightspeed", in San Antonio gave customers only one DVR per customer. If a customer had a second (or third) TV, AT&T gave them another DVR as a receiver, but disabled the recording functionality.

Now Engadget and the U-Verse users website explore how customers were cracking open their systems to re-enable the DVR functionality. Calling this a "hack" seems generous - users simply have to apparently re-connect a hard-drive.

802.11n Delayed

While "pre-N" products based on the 1.0 draft of 802.11n are available in stores today, the MIMO-based high-speed Wi-Fi standard the IEEE has delayed their 2.0 draft for at least six months. Now it's January 2007 at the earliest.

Network World reports that the 802.11 Working Group has 12,000 comments to go through. These were in response to the release of the 1.0 draft. Half have been addressed — many are simple editorial changes to the written spec with many duplicates.

So far, one sticking point continues to be how 802.11n should combine 20MHz channels into a single 40MHz channel, doubling throughput of the Wi-Fi signal.

The ballot next January would need backing by 75% of the task group members to be accepted, a critical step because it would signal that the draft has reached a level of stability that could unleash a new wave of radio chipsets and products based on the draft standard. Final ratification of the standard might not occur until early 2008, though typically it is very rare for any changes to be made during that last stage, says Network World.

Airgo has had the market to itself until this year, when both Broadcom and Atheros began shipping silicon based on the draft 11n document. By the end of the second quarter, Broadcom had already shipped 1 million chipsets. In the same period, Atheros, which doesn't cite unit shipments, said its draft 11n chipset accounted for 13% of its second quarter revenue.

"Draft 1.0 really can't be used to build interoperability around," says Airgo's De Vegt. Of course Airgo really doesn't have a Draft 1.0 chipset, unlike Broadcom and Atheros.

Related DailyWireless articles include Broadcom Ships 802.11n Chips, RangeMax 240 Tested, MIMO USB, Intel Moves On UWB/USB & 802.11n, MIMO Reviews, Fast Track for Fast Wi-Fi, Merging UWB/802.11n?, Raising Ruckus, Airgo MIMO Goes Dual Band, MIMO Expanded, Finding MIMO, D-Link's MIMO, Netgear's MIMO, Belkin's MIMO and the Linksys MIMO, MIMO Reviews, AT&T's IPTV Pricing, Intelsat Does Home Delivery, AT&T's WiFi TV, NAB 2006, IPTV: Is It Soup Yet?, IPTV Networking, PBS + MovieBeam, WorldView, Cuban: Broadcasting Not Dead, Wireless IP-TV Box, IP-TV End Game and Cisco Buying Scientific Atlanta.

Networked journalism: Exposing earmarks

The Sunlight Foundation — in a coalition with Porkbusters, the Washington Examiner, and others — has a most cool project unleashing the citizenry to perform the very important act of journalism of digging up and exposing to the air the earmarks that our elected representatives throw into bills spending our money. Now that is what I call networked journalism.

: LATER: Jay Rosen on this as networked journalism, which is also the subject of my next Guardian column.

PodTube v1.0 - djodjodesign

Downloads and transcodes YouTube videos for your iPod

Jamie Boyle on the cognitive bias against open systems

(via boingboing)

Jamie Boyle, co-founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain, is always worth paying attention to (c.f., The Second Enclosure Movement). Now he's written about the cognitive bias he has detected against open systems. The periodic diatribes about Wikipedia, the conflation of collectivism and collective action, the war against net neutrality all reflect this mindset:

Studying intellectual property and the internet has convinced me that we have another cognitive bias. Call it the openness aversion. We are likely to undervalue the importance, viability and productive power of open systems, open networks and non-proprietary production. Test yourself on the following questions. In each case, it is 1991 and I have removed from you all knowledge of the past 15 years.

You have to design a global computer network. One group of scientists describes a system that is fundamentally open – open protocols and systems so anyone could connect to it and offer information or products to the world. Another group – scholars, businessmen, bureaucrats – points out the problems. Anyone could connect to it. They could do anything. There would be porn, piracy, viruses and spam. Terrorists could put up videos glorifying themselves. Your activist neighbour could compete with The New York Times in documenting the Iraq war. Better to have a well-managed system, in which official approval is required to put up a site; where only a few actions are permitted; where most of us are merely recipients of information; where spam, viruses, piracy (and innovation and anonymous speech) are impossible. Which would you have picked?

Readers are the new paparazzi

The IHT reports on the press' growing dependence on citizen reporters and how some celebrities are fighting back - citing human rights violations.

German Tabloid "Bild's "Leser-Reporter" feature, introduced during the World Cup, brought its readership daily shots of celebrities, politicians and soccer stars - taken from the cellphone cameras of quick-thinking passers-by.

The paper paid €500 to €1,000, or $638 to $1,270, for photos printed in the Reader-Reporter pages, and by the end of the World Cup soccer tournament, as many as 1,000 photos were streaming in daily.

... "The restriction in the private lives of celebrities is already at the point where you can talk about a human rights violation," said Christian Schertz, a lawyer to the stars.

... Lawyers like Schertz have the legal backing of the European Court of Human Rights in their quest to preserve the private lives of their clients.

Thomas Malaby: Stopping Play: A New Approach to Games

Games have intruded into popular awareness to an unprecedented level, and scholars, policy makers, and the media alike are beginning to consider how games might offer insight into fundamental questions about human society. But in the midst of this opportunity for their ideas to be heard, it is game scholars who are selling games short. In their rush to highlight games' importance, they have tended toward an unsustainable exceptionalism, seeing games as fundamentally set apart from everyday life. This view casts gaming as a subset of play, and therefore - like play - as an activity that is inherently separable, safe, and pleasurable. Before we can confront why games are important, and make use of them to pursue the aims of policy and knowledge, we must rescue games from this framework and develop an understanding of them unburdened by the category of play, one that will both accord with the experience of games by players themselves, and bear the weight of the new questions being asked about them and about society. To that end, I offer here an understanding of games that eschews exceptionalist, normatively-loaded approaches in favor of one that stresses them as a characterized by process. In short, I argue for seeing games as domains of contrived contingency, capable of generating emergent practices and interpretations. This approach enables us to understand how games are, rather than set apart from everyday life, instead intimately connected with it. With this approach in place, I conclude by discussing two key recent developments in games, persistence and complex, implicit contingency, that together may account for why some online games are now beginning to approach the texture of everyday life.

• Link here... (PDF)
• Associated discussion on Terra Nova...

How To See the New Google Video Interface

We mentioned that Google is testing out a new interface for watching videos in a post yesterday. Razvan Antonescu, emailed me with a tip on how to see the new interface for yourself. Google Blogoscoped also wrote about this.

To see it, view any video (like this one), then replace the URL with “javascript:setCookie(’np’,'old’);window.location.reload();” and hit enter. A yellow-highlighted option to “Try our new page layout” will appear in the top right. Click that and you’ll see the new layout.

The key differences seem to be a smaller, resizable video screen, more descriptive data and comments (a recent addition) below the video. Google is also showing related videos on this new screen and more ways to embed the video on other sites.

Old (top) and new interfaces are shown below:

Tags: video, techcrunch, youtube, web2.0, web_2.0

SIMVeillance

SIMVeillance: San Jose, by Katherine Isbister and Rainey Straus in collaboration with SIM consultant Chelsea Hash, uses surveillance cameras and the video game The Sims 2™ to re-present passersby within a game environment that mirrors a "real life" public space: the Fairmont Plaza in downtown San Jose. The SIMveillance game is inhabited by avatars of the people passing through the plaza who’ve been caught on camera. The virtual population grows throughout the duration of the exhibition.

Side-by-side monitors within the museum display contrasting images of the same scene: One shows passersby on the Fairmont Plaza as seen on surveillance cameras; the other shows the area using the computer game, with the strolling characters modeled from some of the people recorded by the cameras.

Straus conceded in an interview, "I think there's the potential for people to feel invaded." From the creators' standpoint, the uncertainty about how people will react is essential to the project's artistic value. "Part of what we're doing," Straus added, "is seeing what questions we raise and what people's answers are."

The work also explores the territory in which simulated-avatars co-mingle in the landscape with “the real” to produce a hybrid community with potentially unexpected results.

Further information in MercuryNews and Campus News.

Casual games taking place of daily activities | Tech News on ZDNet

A substantial minority of American adults would rather spend their free time playing casual games--such online diversions as "Bejeweled" and "TextTwist"--than watch television.

y by Harris Interactive set for release Monday found that 31 percent of the over-18 set preferred the games to TV for whiling away a spare hour. Watching movies at home fared better, with 21 percent choosing games instead, but going to the movie theater did slightly worse with 35 percent.

RealNetworks commissioned the study to understand its customers better, company senior vice president worldwide games Michael Schutzler said. He added that they were very surprised by some of the findings, particularly when the report broke out the numbers for women older than 40.

Nearly half (49 percent) would play casual games rather than go to the movie theater, 32 percent opted for them over movies at home, and 37 percent chose them over watching TV.

How news sites should leverage user-generated video

The mix of user-generated content with the newspaper’s professionalism and existing infrastructure should enable newspaper sites to quickly become the dominant player for local events, Kevin J. Mireles says.

Memo: 40,000 New Feeds

The Time When is a trial website in development for the BBC; it is a place to record and share memories of the important days in your life. The idea is that it might build, in the long run, into a collection of eyewitness accounts of historical events.

Rather than immediately develop a full, polished product, the team are piloting the idea to see what works; public betas are quite a novel approach 'round these parts. Not content with being clueful enough to develop a nice, lightweight prototype, the team (well, mostly a chap called Phil) have also made 40,000 new RSS feeds available.

There are feeds for all of the memories added to the site, feeds for individual users, feeds for their friends and most interestingly, feeds for each day from 1900 to today.

So, please - add your memories, test the site, and think of excellent things to do with the feeds. What other sources of time-sequenced information could you mix in with memories? What about visualising memories in Simile Timeline? Could you cross match memories with places?

As ever, let us know what you're up to by submitting prototypes, or joining the mailing list.

Just How Many People Live a Second Life?

Tony Walsh over at Clickable Culture flags a post on the new official blog of Linden Lab, makers of the virtual world of Second Life, that talks about the way LL reports the number of SL “residents,” i.e., people who are members of the service. This number has generated no small amount of contention in the past, and it turns out that much of the criticism has been well placed. “The number that is currently on our home page is a time-weighted average between “total number of signups ever” and “total number of logged in users over the last 60 days”,” writes LL employee Sally Linden. The problem has been that LL failed until now to indicate how the number was calculated anywhere on their Web site or within their world. Fortunately, the two numbers are being unwound. Starting sometime this week, LL plans to publish them separately on their Web site. As of last Friday, total signups ever stood at 493,563, and total log-ins over the last 60 days stood at 225,028. (I’m assuming this latter number is for unique log-ins, though Sally doesn’t make that clear.)

The issue of how to count virtual world populations is far from settled. Especially among game companies, a wide variety of accounting methods are used, very few of which take into account how much time members and/or subscribers actually spend in-world. But much of this is an open question. If I pay $15 a month to Blizzard for my World of Warcraft subscription but play the game only once every 30 days or so, I am certainly a subscriber, but am I a “resident” or any other kind of entity in the virtual world? Or is my presence there so rare as to be insignificant? At what point do I count as a resident? What metric is the right one to use in that calculation anyway? Hours logged in per month? Per day? What if I log in rarely and yet somehow account for a large portion of economic activity, perhaps by having created something that sells well? Am I then a resident? Where does one draw the line? There is also the issue of alts. I have an alt that has no payment information associated with it, and so is not attached to my main account, Walker Spaight. I’ve logged in as both over the last 60 days, so I was presumably counted as two residents. Given that, even the 60-day figure is inflated and thus not as useful as it could be.

In the comments thread of Sally’s post, SL resident (!) Baba Yamamoto suggests LL “just throw out an XML file and give us API keys.” This, of course, would be the best solution, but it’s highly unlikely to occur. Very few companies give out that kind of information. What’s most important is that LL be very transparent about what the numbers they offer do mean. That hasn’t been the case up to now, but it looks like that’s beginning to change.

In-line tagging at LibraryThing

Tim Spalding has taken discussion forums a big step forward over at LibraryThing. The concept is simple but could make a real difference because it allows forum msgs to be aggregated in multiple ways. When you’re entering a msg at a forum, you can put a title or author in brackets and LibraryThing will take a stab at identifying what you have in mind. Think of it as in-place tagging. You can thus easily find all the posts about a book. And all the references to a book or author will be lilsted on that book or author’s page.

Because LibraryThing knows which books you own (because you’ve told it), it can feed you msgs about any of them. And, as Tim points out, this unhiding of msgs will change the temporality of posts: Rather than msgs fading into obscurity a few days or weeks after they’re posted, they’ll be easily findable and reply-able.

Very cool.

Global Web Jam

Call for Solidarity

Saturday, August 12, 2006, 15:00 - 19:00 PM CEST [--> 16:00 - 20:00 EEST] ::
http://beirut.streamtime.org :: http://streamtime.org :: Live audio/video streaming transmission from Waag Society in Amsterdam, in direct connection with Beirut and surrounding localities. The event was initiated by Streamtime, a web support campaign for Iraqi bloggers.

After one month of violence and carnage, this Global Web Jam brings together live interviews and conversations, video clips, cartoons and blog blurbs, soundscapes, DJs and VJs, a lively mix of information, art, protest, party and reflection. We feature the voices, images stories, reports and initiatives from Lebanon and beyond, with participation of activists, artists, bloggers, journalists, musicians and many others.

This is a call for an immediate end to the violence and destruction, in defiance of war, and in search for solidarity.

With contributions and participation of: Wahid el-Solh, Mounira el-Solh, Sonya Knox, Naeem Mohaiemen, Kanj Hamadi, Jim Quilty, Randa Mirza, Mazen Kerbaj, Raed Yassin, Charbel Haber, Nathalie Fallaha, Henri Gemayel, Fadi Tufayli, Tariq Shadid, Peter Speetjens, Chalaan Charif, Martin Siepermann, Arjan El Fassed, Ruud Huurman, Kadir van Lohuizen, Thomas Burkhalter and Anna Trechsel, Beirut DC, Tarek Atoui and many others.

This Global Web Jam is an initiative of Jo van der Spek, Geert Lovink and Cecile Landman (from Streamtime), Nat Muller, Paul Keller and Denis Jaromil Rojo in Amsterdam; and Tarek Atoui and Rawya el-Chab in Beirut.

info: http://beirut.streamtime.org | mail: beirut[at]dischosting.nl

This project is supported by Waag Society, Novib (Dutch Oxfam) and X-Y
Solidarity Fund.

Snow Crash in SL: The Metaverse Comes Home

Virtual-world services company Rivers Run Red is busy these days. Having recently announced they’d be bringing hit pop band Duran Duran to the virtual world of Second Life, the news is now that they’re bringing the metaverse back home, so to speak, by working with publisher Penguin to create a virtual version of Neal Stephenson’s sci-fi novel, Snow Crash, to be distributed in Second Life, a world largely inspired by the book. Virtual copies of a portion of the book should be available starting next week.

Book publishing in Second Life, of course, has not been a smashing success. “Prim” books are unwieldy, hard to manipulate and often very difficult to read. But RRR and publisher Penguin seem savvy on this note, with the in-world version apparently offering only a sampler of portions of the text and excerpts from an audio version — with a special discount (presumably on paper-and-ink purchases) being offered to Second Life residents.

While it may only be a small step forward in virtual media technology, it’s a very cool undertaking nonetheless. Written in the years 1988 through 1991 (”as the author listened to a great deal of loud, relentless, depressing music”), Snow Crash foreshadows a Second Life-like metaverse (a term coined in the novel) with remarkable accuracy — especially given that even the Web browser was yet a few years out. Many of the emergent societal tropes that can be found today in Second Life were present 15 years ago in Snow Crash, from the ability to create one’s own fantasy assets (and the wide disparity between newbies and uber content creators in that regard), to the social pressure felt by residents whose avatars aren’t up to fashionable standards and even a feted inner core who enjoy special privileges not available to those standing outside the velvet rope of a virtual nightclub like the book’s Black Sun. Second Life creator Philip Rosedale has said, “Snow Crash has the closest practical resemblance to Second Life as it exists now: a parallel, immersive world which simulates an alternate universe, which thousands of people inhabit simultaneously for communication, play, and work, at various levels and variations of role-playing with their avatars.”

No word yet on whether this means a brand new print version of the book, but I’d assume that it does, since I think the current version of Snow Crash is in print from a division of Random House. Penguin’s involvement may mean only a new UK version. More details will presumably emerge soon. Meanwhile, 3pointD welcomes Stephenson and his seminal metaversal vision back to the metaverse. Good to have you.

DRM DVDs - in kiosks

Hollywood's DVD CCA, in charge of CSS and other forms of DRM, is trying to undo some of the damage it's done.

CSS is a kind of CC mechanism, CC being Consumer Control. And DRM is, of course, Digital Restrictions Management. But No, neither CSS nor DRM are being phased out.

Rather, "Commercial vendors and individual consumers can now look forward to being able to legally create certain types of protected DVDs, the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA) announced today," states a DVD CCA fluff release.

"Under rule changes now in the works, commercial vendors could create protected DVDs on kiosks and in small custom runs. Individual consumers could legally record a variety of selected content. Both would require special blank DVD discs that will use the Content Scramble System (CSS) for encryption and will be compatible with the millions of existing DVD players in the marketplace today."

Enter commercial kiosks, "where consumers could buy entertainment, custom-burned on the special discs" to allow, "unusual, historical or special content that is now unavailable on DVD because existing demand does not warrant the mass reproduction today’s market requires".

So what's it all about, Alfie?

The movie industry, "may be taking a page from their musical cousins, who have seen digital sales grow spectacularly in recent years, while CD sales remain flat," believes Ars Technica. "Most of this growth comes from the iTunes Music Store, which offered consumers the ability to burn music tracks to an unlimited number of CDs.

"Ironically, this was all possible because of the lack of copy protection on CDs in the first place. Given the much more stringent copy protection schemes being delivered with the new Blu-ray and HD DVD players and movies, it appears the movie industry still has some learning to do."

SWORDPLAY

There's been numerous attempts to create melee-based fighting games in Second Life, but up to now, they've been fairly chaotic and gameplay-weak, with limited control and combat moves, turning them into wacky "crash your avatar into the other guy more" demolition derbies. The combat action of Samurai Island (direct link here), by contrast, is the first credible melee game I've seen in action, swordplay and hand-to-hand fighting with an intuitive interface, an elegant heads-up display, and a wealth of offensive and defensive manuevers to choose from. Though a tad darker than I'd like, the above video hopefully conveys the variety of that gameplay. Second Life's lower frame rate actually seems to work to the game's advantage, slowing down the action just enough to give the players time to create and execute strategies-- and perhaps just as crucial, for an audience to enjoyably follow the fight.

In the YouTube demo, for example, you can clearly do a post-game analysis of the duel between purple-clad warrior Draconis Neurocam and black-caped ninja Ishmael Ren. In it, Ren constantly manuevers around (and over) Neurocam, waiting for an opening. Until, that is, Neurocam over-commits with a red-flame power attack-- which Ren dodges with a flying leap, wheeling around on his now-exposed opponent, going in for the quick kill.

KatanaBlade Anubis, Samurai Island proprietress

Samurai Island's combat is the brainchild of Esprite Xavier, Ayame Musashi, and Archanox Underthorn, who've created a complete gaming experience. (After you purchase the equipment, for example, you're given a laquered sword case, with a glass door that opens dramatically, when you're ready to begin your warrior's journey.) Unsurprisingly, the Island boasts hundreds of players, with clans based around competing dojos with different martial philosophies. (The game even boasts its own official website, here.)

All of which suits KatanaBlade Anubis, the island's statuesque co-owner, who generally lets the three developers go wild with their swordplay games. "I'm just the Hostess that has some say in the problem areas about the land," she tells me humbly, with a touch of den mother affection. "I just let them be creative and have fun-- as long as it doesn't kill the sim."

Note: Sound effects from the video all generated in-world by the Samurai Island combat system. Music soundtrack generously provided, of course and as usual, by Torley, from her fittingly entitled track, "Action Sequence". Torley posted an extended Beta preview of the game on her blog here.

CEA thinking about an E3 replacement

Filed under: Culture, E3, CES, Competitive Gaming, Business

/feeds.joystiq.com/~r/weblogsinc/joystiq/~4/11146417"/>

Two CJR online editors quit over budget cut

The managing editor and assistant managing editor of CJRdaily.org, the web component of the Columbia Journalism Review, have resigned, protesting the school’s decision to cut the site’s budget in half. From the NY Times: “(Columbia J-school Dean Nicholas) Lemann said he was faced with the same quandary confronting most news organizations today — how to pay for an online staff when the site is free to readers.” Suggestion, courtesy of the consulting arm: Kill the magazine and invest in the website. (Free reg. req)

Wizag, RSS and Attention

Techcrunch writes:

Here’s what’s cool about Wizag. The service’s semantic analysis pulls topics out of each post in the feeds you are subscribed to and lets you click to read all posts in your feeds related to the same topic. Most feed readers have a search function, but Wizag finds likely topics and lists the number of other items in subscriptions that discuss the same topic. It’s a smart automation of possible searches before they are even performed.

ent and vote on any item in your feeds. It’s a shame that this metadata stays inside Wizag, but item ranking, or determining the order that items appear in your reader, is done through an algorithm that incorporates the click-throughs, votes, comments and subscriptions you and other users have gestured with.

Videoblogger Speaks Out from Federal Prison

CNET News interviews videoblogger who has been jailed by the feds for refusing to provide footage he shot of a protest. Here are the story's first three paragraphs:

Josh Wolf, a 24-year-old freelance journalist, made headlines last week as the first known blogger to be thrown into federal prison for not cooperating with judiciary officials.

One of the Internet's earliest video bloggers, Wolf refused to testify before a U.S. grand jury and also refused to hand over unpublished video footage he shot during a clash between San Francisco police and anti-G8 protesters in July 2005.

Wolf might normally be protected by California's shield law. But federal prosecutors, who want to see if Wolf's footage shows a San Francisco police car being set on fire at the protest, say they have jurisdiction over the case because the car was paid for in part by federal dollars.

Here is what disturbs Wolfe, and me, the most:

First and foremost, this issue should be a state issue. The federal grand jury is investigating the alleged attempted damage to a San Francisco police vehicle. That is the subject of the investigation. If an S.F. police vehicle is considered federal property, then what isn't federal property? Your school? Even City Hall itself. I'm not sure that that extension is accurate, but it's not very much of a stretch and that is very disturbing.

Here is Wolf's videoblog.

On Bastard Apps

Duane Merrill over at IBM’s Developerworks just posted this good introductory overview Mashups: The new breed of Web app. He covers the various genres (as classified by tag here), the technologies including REST/SOAP, Ajax, RSS, RDF and screen scraping. And perhaps the most interesting part, the “Technical Challenges” section that looks at issues in data integration, data quality, and component model issues. There’s also a social challenges section with a quick look at licensing and commercialization issues.

Nicholas Carr followed-up on some of these issues in his post Bastard apps. He makes good points about data quality, reliability and consistency issues in what he calls Web 2.0’s truthiness problem.

Culture matters: designing for mobile and locative media

Technosocial Screens: Mobilities, Communities, Citizenships

screen, v. to show, or hide from view; to sift or separate; to shelter or protect

New interactive technologies promise to reconfigure relations between producers and consumers, public and private, physical and digital, local and global - and in these shifting scenarios the screen takes on a multitude of roles. Not only are screens changing size and resolution, some are becoming softer and more flexible, and others are disappearing entirely. Some screens offer a bird's-eye view of the world that we can hold in our hands, and others tell us where we are - or could be - at any given moment. Whatever the type of screen, we can be sure of one thing: people, places, objects and ideas are being screened at the same time.

Together we will explore some of the critical ways in which new media technologies shape, and are shaped by, our changing experiences and understandings of community and citizenship. What kind of shelter and hope can we expect from a world of everywhere and anywhere media? From what, and whom, are we protecting ourselves? How are these technological practices sorting our everyday social, cultural and creative relationships? What, and whom, gets hidden - or cannot hide? How can new media technologies explore different ways of belonging and being together? How can they encourage diverse and lively participation and representation around shared matters of concern?

robb monn: quality is a niche market

After yesterday's post, got this great email from good friend robb monn (you probably want to download his brilliant, creative commons-licensed album, hello mr. ohler), who has some thoughts about where Hollywood's going. I love some of the things in here, especially, "Quality is still after all this time a niche market," which is such a smart observation that it just kills me. Here's what robb sent in full:

Do you remember how in Life (Conway's Game of Life, that is) how the seeds grow and grow and then go black at the core and thenthe dead core expands too, catching the ring of vitality at some point and leaving only a few flitting bits oscillating?

My thinking is that the Empire is dying and it is dying right now when it is bigger than ever. As the core of the patterns die in Conway's Life the circumference of the whole life-explosion is still growing and until pretty late in the death of the colony it is larger, by pixel-count than ever even as it dying more and more quickly.

Hollywood is spending Spiderman II's money to make Spiderman III. It is what, three production cycles of total failure away from being broke? While there is more money than ever (or maybe not even that) if the apex of profits has been reached, or when it is reached, the fall will either be expected and very controlled or it will be profound and rapid, but either way I think that it will be a fall.

I don't feel like they know how to fix the system. The problem is the same as it has always been: they know how to promote just about anything that is unchallenging so that it stands a certain chance on the P&E, but they don't know how to make quality something that they can sell to consumers. Quality is still after all this time a niche market.... and seemingly it is more niche now than ever. The Third Man was a blockbuster. My grandparents (poor, 100% blue collar military family) dressed up in suit and party dress to go see each Hitchcock film when it came out. My other grandparents occasionally mentioned the 12 Angry Men with Peter Fonda that was produced for TV decades after it aired. While there has always been trash produced for TV and Hollywood that has done very well I think that there hasn't been a time previous to today when high quality programming (which is often relatively cheap when compared to The Rock or Triple X, say) is always considered to have at best an outside chance of getting made much less being financially successful. If Hitch were making films today I think his getting Strangers on a Train on theater screens would be considered by his peers as equivalent to his winning the lottery.

I think blockbuster, all-pro-all-biz Hollywood is a decadent mode that like all decadence is rotten at the core, unsalvageable.

Webshots to relaunch with a Web 2.0 look

There won’t be tagging, but CNet’s photosharing site Webshots is adding a number of features reminiscent of Flickr and getting a whole new look. The relaunch will occur some time in late August, but an alpha site is up here. The site currently looks straight out of the 90’s, it will be interesting to see how established users react to the redesign.

The Webshots team told Premium users in an email today that at relaunch Webshots users will be able to comment on each other’s photos. Premium users will have their accounts increased from 5,000 images total, with the limit being bumped up 500 images each month in the future future. Photo quality will be improved, information about the type of camera used for each photo will be included and advertising space will be decreased. Users will also be able to see aggregate stats and comments on their personal Webshots pages.

We last wrote about Webshots when they launched AllYouCanUpload, a bare bones service that has no limits or other frictions on photo uploading. A month prior, the company initiated its College Live section - a social networking feature for college students.

Webshots was purchased by CNet from Twofold Photos, Inc. in 2004 for approximately $70 million dollars. Webshots has approximately 19 million registered users posting almost a million images a day in online photo albums. A total of 400 million photos have been uploaded to date (compare to Flickr, a much younger service, with about 200 million photos). For comparison, Yahoo! Photos is reported to have 30 million users, Photobucket reports having 19 million users and Flickr approximately 2.5 million. It’s clear who’s the trendsetter here, though, and that’s liable to continue with innovations like Flickr’s rumored drag and drop geotagging in the works.

Tags: TechCrunch, Web2.0, , Webshots, Flickr, photos, photosharing

Media HTML

Jay Fienberg emailed these interesting comments on the MP3HTML file format I made up a couple weeks ago:

I've been thinking about your MP3 embedded in HTML experiment, and I keep meaning to write you about it. Mostly, I keep wanting to write and say "no", and then think "why not?", and get stuck--so, I guess it's an interesting experiment, and it got me thinking :-)

BTW, Why not just embed HTML and other stuff in MP3s?

Part of my bias against this kind of embedded approach is that, generally, I like the idea of decoupling data / information from files. The nice example, I think, is being able to put a URL in my browser and get back lots of files that represent a "web page"--the browser decides to load lots of images and supporting files to give me a page that is not just what's in the HTML. (And, generally, I think the browser / hypertext interaction can be pushed further, with the browser doing more / different things with various forms of links--all without me, the end-user. having to worry about what is or isn't in one file or another.)

Along these lines, I could imagine an HTML based media format, e.g., application/xhtml+mp3, that doesn't necessarily embed the media data inside the HTML, but media players would read this type and expect different / specific elements representing binary media files that they then would do something with / download / play.

In terms of the potential to exploit this using existing browsers with Javascript, I think it's maybe comparable with the embedded MP3 approach--the Javascript can download external mp3s via HttpRequest.

Anyway, I think there's something to what you've done--maybe embedding vs external is just a matter of options, the way it is generally. In other words, if we have a way to declare something a "media HTML" resource that should be played by a media player, in principle HTML allows binary data to be either embedded or linked, and either should work.

I actually think that is the bigger deal: suggesting that there might be a viable "media HTML" format that's not too much weirder than HTML itself.

An answer to one specific point:

Why not just embed HTML and other stuff in MP3s?

Because you wouldn't be able to get at the HTML and other stuff without knowledge specific to MP3. If nothing else, we should be able to get out of the problem where every user agent must understand every media format.

There is a secondary problem which isn't directly related to format design: to get anything done, we need a strategy for avoiding the need for client-side software.

One last thing -- I love the coinage Media HTML. It's the kind of name which evokes the thing being named without any explicit setup or explanation.

Ryan Shaw reply to Jay Fienberg

What Jay Fienberg describes is basically what life would be like if the Flash NetStream API (and some syntax for binding it to HTML-defined boxes) were standardized, available in the major browsers, and scriptable from JavaScript. In fact, it is available in the 98% of browsers that have a Flash plugin installed, and JavaScript <-> ActionScript bridges work pretty well these days--but obviously it sucks that Adobe controls the API and all implementations. It would be nice if IE adapted its HTML+TIME code to support a NetStream API, and Mozilla shipped media playback capability (perhaps based on VLC or GStreamer) and standardized on the same API. Until that happens, though, using MTASC and some JS<->AS hackery isn't a bad way to go.

The NetStream API is new to me, and since I like to provide some sort of explanation when a technology first appears on my blog, here's some documentation.

NetStream - Flash 8 ActionScript 2.0 Language Reference

The NetStream class provides methods and properties for playing Flash Video (FLV) files from the local file system or an HTTP address. You use a NetStream object to stream video through a NetConnection object. Playing external FLV files provides several advantages over embedding video in a Flash document, such as better performance and memory management, and independent video and Flash frame rates. This class provides a number of methods and properties you can use to track the progress of the file as it loads and plays, and to give the user control over playback (stopping, pausing, and so on).

What Ryan is picturing here is a Javascript-accessible library for media rendering in the browser. In Internet Explorer the library might be accessing the underlying COM API to Windows Media Player, while other browsers would be accessing Flash. In either case there would be a standard API between the Javascript and the media player.

ABC enhances ‘World News’ podcast

Some cool new features in ABC's World News webcast/podcast that appear when watching it on iTunes. First, you can skip ahead to index points in the video through a pull-down menu of topics (bottom right). Second, whenever there's a story that has expanded material online, a "click for more" icon appears over the window. Click it, and a browser window pops up. And third, ABC says it has reduced the download times by roughly two-thirds.

PRESS RELEASE — ABC's "World News" webcast/podcast has introduced several enhanced features that are now available via iTunes or any other RSS reader. The "World News" webcast – the first of its kind to be produced by a network news organization – now distinguishes itself with the following enhanced features:

* Table of Contents: Each day's podcast includes a pull-down table of contents that organizes the program's reports by chapter. Users can now easily move from one chapter to another, selecting what to view and when.

* "Click for More": A "Click for More" icon appears in the top corner of the screen at various times throughout the podcast, signaling to web viewers that additional information is just a mouse click away. Users who click on the video window are taken to an ABCNEWS.com page designed specifically for that day's reports. This feature provides additional articles, reporting, and video beyond the podcast.

Additionally, "World News" has decreased its download time. The podcast's file size has been reduced from approximately 100 MB to less than 70 MB. Download time is now roughly two-thirds what it has been.

"We led the way eight months ago with the launch of the webcast, sharing the resources of ‘World News' with an entirely new audience. The webcast continues to stay ahead of the pack with these latest enhancements — letting people move between stories and seek more information while they're watching," said executive producer Jon Banner. "As we move forward, ‘World News' is positioned to further engage its audience and to continue sharing the unmatched reporting of ABC News."

The "World News" webcast/podcast debuted in January 2006, marking the first time a network newscast produced a unique program for the Internet audience. It airs live at 3:00 p.m., ET and is available throughout the day at ABCNEWS.com , on ABC News Now, through the iTunes Music Store, via RSS readers, and on mobile phones.

(Oh, I get it. You mean features like Rocketboom's. -kc.)

First Major Blogging Conference for Africa

New Media Lab

to Dictionary.com, an indaba is "a council or meeting of indigenous peoples of southern Africa to discuss an important matter."

This indaba aims to bring bloggers, citizen journalists, media practitioners, industry experts, and representatives from civil society all under one roof. It will feature a diverse range of speakers and media professionals from across the globe.

The goal of the event is to "equip Africans with skills related to new media which empower them and the organizations they work for by creating a long-lasting and long-reaching digital voice." The conference also will tackle issues concerning Web 2.0, citizen journalism, intellectual property rights, online ethics and activism.

This indaba also aims to facilitate networking among fellow Africans in the hope of promoting further collaboration on the continent and build a strong online community.

Casting your votes for panels at SXSW

I’ve just cast my 10 votes for what panels I’d like to attend at SXSW.

Man!  What a line up.  173 panels were offered and I could have voted for about 25 of them, but they only allowed 10. 

So I opted out on all the ones I KNEW were gonna be there - like Matt Mullenweg’s panel on ’scaling communities’ or the almost required panel by Tantek on ‘the future of microformats’ - for these 10 (apologies if I didn;t vote for you or your panel!):

I’ll take Internet Standards for $1.966 Billion, Alex - I’ll raise yah an OPML and call your FOAF.

Social Networking in Real Life vs Cyberspace - yup!

ValleySpeak for the Rest of Us: Developing Apps Outside InternetVille - it’s all about International now - folks.  And non-English - too.

Designing for the Edge: Making Stuff in a Hackable, Hyperconnected World - we got a social network web service - so we’re all over this stuff!

Introduction to Web Kaizen - seems really interesting

Identity 2.x - by Jon Lebkowsky - one of my favorite people anywhere

Blogger Zero - I vote for Dave Winer, Justin Hall and Rebecca Eisenberg Smolar

Every Breath You Take: Identity, Attention, Presence, and Reputation Online - totally!

Shun VC! - yah gotta LOVE That title!  Says it all.  Congrats to Henry for hanging in there!

Connecting Social Networks Together - that’s mine, yah GOTTA vote for yourself!

Inside track on the future of free content licenses

If you want an inside track on the future of free content licenses you could hardly do better than watch or listen to recordings of two Wikimania sessions -- Lawrence Lessig on The Ethics of the Free Culture Movement (particularly the last twenty minutes) and Eben Moglen on Document Licenses and the Future of Free Culture, which also features Q&A with both Moglen and Lessig.

You'll recognize this discussion if you followed Lessig's series about the history and future of Creative Commons from the end of last year.

Mova and Digital Imaging

MercuryNews writes:

When it comes to creating realistic characters in video games, computer artists have made brilliant replicas but they still struggle with the last frontier: making a human face that acts like the real thing.

hat players see on the screen, and what they expect, is sometimes called "the uncanny valley." The subtleties of what makes faces appear human still confounds artists trying to replicate it in digital form.

Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Perlman believes his latest start-up, San Francisco-based Mova, has the answer. Paradoxically, he acknowledges that the closer artists get to making a precise digital replica of a face, the more weird it can appear if it doesn't move as if it were human.

What about voice?

I am not following voice-recognition and its potential applications but today I’ve been confronted to three papers about it in my daily scans. Even though it’s still R&D oriented, each papers delivered some promising messages about a technology that I am skeptical about (based on previous research project and research readings).

First there is this ACM Queue discussion by John Canny (University of California, Berkeley), which is actually a great piece about the future of HCI. Canny quote Jordan Cohen’s work (formerly of VoiceSignal, now of SRI International)

“The killer application is probably going to end up being some kind of interface with search, which seems to be the very hot topic in the world today; for mobile search especially, speech is a pretty reasonable interface, at least for the input side of it,”

This “search” concept is what I ran across this morning in a Business Week article by Steve Hamm, there is a presentation fo a curious application called TellMe about voice-driven Web information:

The idea is to create mobile search services that can make it easy for those on the go to find people, businesses, and information. That goes for any phone, but especially those equipped with browsers. A tourist might bark “restaurants,” “sushi,” and “downtown” into his cell phone and then see listings, read online reviews, make reservations, and retrieve a map with directions. “It has taken us six years to get to this point, but now we can really start to deliver on our original mission,” says McCue, TellMe’s CEO.
(…)
Skeptics point out that despite technology advances, voice recognition still turns off many consumers, who remember past glitches. But experts say that will change when systems combine voice, text messaging, and graphic info from Web pages. Each mode will be used for what it does best. “People will be using voice to launch into their search, and they’ll want to see the information on a screen,” says David Albright, executive director for marketing for Cingular Wireless, which is working with TellMe.

Yes, of course these last pointed I quoted are recurrent, but as presented in this Speech Technology Magazine Issues, there are others applications:

Use your telephone or cell phone to talk with Google—search the Web for answers to your questions, extract the information chunks you need, and listen to the results…Rather than struggling to find the answer to a specific question by chasing links across a Web site, you can simply click a button on the GUI screen and be connected to a human or artificial agent… instruct your oven through your cell phones…

Why do I blog this? don’t know whether it’s apophenia but I ran across those 3 articles today. So what? I am still dubious about speech technologies but there seems to be confidence in this avenue.

Viacom buys AtomFilms / Addicting Clips

Viacom is buying Atom Entertainment for an easy twenty million a cool 200 million adding to it’s holdings of online video distribution sites.

Atom Entertainment, which consists of AtomFilms, hosting site AddictingClips, AddictingGames and Shockwave, will now be owned by the same company that owns iFilm.

Viacom is a massive media conglomerate already in possession of CBS, Blockbuster, and Paramount Pictures.

- Anne

Introducing TypePad Mobile - Mobile Blog Posting

If you have the right type of cell phone (one that runs on Palm OS, Windows Mobile 5 or Symbian Series 60) you can download a mobile client to post to any TypePad Blog that you have access to, according to Sixapart.

You can also download the application directly to your mobile device at http://get.typepad.com/.

The problem is, many of us don't have the right type of mobile phone (mine is a SideKick III which is not one of the supported mobile phones). Many useful applications such as Google Maps with live transit data and now TypePad mobile client exist, but only for certain cell phones; hopefully, in the near future Google Maps and TypePad Mobile will run on most mobile phones.

Links: Sixapart, Techmeme

adario strange: the nothing special

Here's an enjoyable article about the whole online video stampede from Adario Strange: The 'Nothing' Special. Not a lot of new info, but a different, slightly more arch perspective than the many business articles coming out daily, and choice passages like this one:

When everyone, everywhere, has their own video show, can anyone’s video really be considered something special anymore?

As the rising tide of reality shows and navel-gazing weblogs have proven, there is [a] large market for recursive ephemera.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is: demand for the artistry needed to make big entertainments is not lagging, though it may be shifting for now from the multiplex to netflix, from the networks to the net. And we'll still need people with money to put up enough to pay the artists in advance until a profit can be made. It's the middle men -- the ones that own the infrastructure and marketing machines -- that are in trouble.

Rhizome 10th Anniversary Festival

Marisa Olson:

It is with tremendous excitement that Rhizome launches our Tenth Anniversary Festival of Art & Technology, this week. We’ve developed a seven-month season of diverse programs, in partnership with some fantastic organizations committed to supporting new media art.

You can check out the Festival, here: http://www.rhizome.org/events/tenyear/

Though this Festival is really about looking ahead, this is a good moment to reflect and say thanks. We’re proud of what Rhizome’s done and become, in the last ten years. The organization has grown from a mailing list to an active membership organization serving a wide audience with multiple programs. We have our community, especially our members, to thank for this.

Speaking of community, we also want to encourage you to participate in Keylines, the Festival’s collaborative writing project in which seed posts on the topics of new media histories & genres, feminism, the environment, politics, communities, and innovation have already been planted. We hope you’ll help these lines of discussion grow…

Other Festival highlights include Time Shares, a series of online exhibitions co-presented with the New Museum of Contemporary Art to emphasize our ongoing commitment to internet-based art, and a number of offline exhibitions, performances, panel discussions, book launches, and more.

A big thank-you to all the artists, writers, venues, and sponsors who’ve leant their support to the Festival.

We’ll be sending out individual announcements about programs as they come up on the calendar.

With thanks,
The Rhizome Team

+ + +

Marisa Olson
Editor & Curator
Rhizome.org at the
New Museum of Contemporary Art

Please reblog, cross-post, forward, and help us spread the exciting word! See you at Keylines, I hope…

Originally by Marisa Olson from Rhizome.org Raw at August 9, 2006, 10:18, published by Marisa S. Olson

Type announcement
Genre work, show, org
Keywords art world, conference, exhibition, archive, community

Podcast Interview with Sun's Tim Bray and Radia Perlman

Last night I published the first part of my interview with two senior Sun Microsystems engineers, Tim Bray (Director of Web Technologies) and Radia Perlman (Distinguished Engineer). The interview was to celebrate the 15th birthday of the Web this week.

Several commenters on the Slashdot thread about my post said they'd prefer to get the whole context, rather than just my write-up of it. So here now is the full interview as a podcast [37 minutes, 17MB]. The audio quality is not great at the start (due to a bad telephone connection), but it gets better after a couple of minutes. Note that this is instead of me doing a separate write-up of Part 2.

powered by ODEO

cussed

Some of the subjects discussed in the full interview podcast are:

• The past and future of the Web - and where Sun fits into the picture.
• Peer-to-Peer (P2P) and why Tim and Radia don't think it will be a major driver on the Web.
• Web-connected devices (music players, TV, games machines, etc) and the future of the browser.
• Web Office - do Tim and Radia think a browser-based office suite will ever be competitive with MS Office? Sun has StarOffice, which is a desktop alternative to MS Office. Will it go web-based?
• How does Sun fit into the Web 2.0 era we're currently in - e.g. social software, apps that leverage collective intelligence.
• How will RSS and ATOM be used going forward; and thoughts on Google's data format GData.
• Security on the Web
• Where will the Web be at in another 15 years?!

Key Quotes from Part 2

Some key quotes not featured in Part 1:

• Tim on media on the Web: "I do not expect the Internet to be a suitable medium for broadcast video, at any kind of acceptable level of quality that we've come to expect on our TV screen, any time soon. The architecture isn't built to do that and the bandwidth isn't there."
• Tim on Web Office: "Anything that can migrate onto the Web absolutely will."
• Radia on security on the Web and stopping the bad guys: "People ought to be trying to make it easy and cheap, rather than trying to make money out of security."

Hope you enjoy the podcast. I plan to interview more Web industry luminaries over the next few months.

900 Mashups

Continuing from yesterday’s note on 250 APIs here, this week also saw the mashup listings hit 900 entries. The overall distribution by type hasn’t changed all that much of late with mapping, photos, search, and shopping making-up the bulk of the listings. A couple of the more interesting new ones include:

• Clockr: Clockr uses random digit images from Flickr to display the current time. Click on a number to change the image, doubleclick it to view the full image. Use the mouse wheel to cycle through.
• Analyzing Air Traffic on Google Maps: 5 planes taking off one after the other from the same runway in Atlanta. Click on the numbered markers to see the sequence. Not sure if they are same or different.

Log On, Rez In, Drop Out: The 60s of Technology

Virtual snail race, or mere hallucination?

A week or two ago, I found myself describing the greater metaversapolitan area to a friend who had never heard of things like Second Life or There.com, virtual worlds or massively multiplayer online games, and who had only passing knowledge of apps like Google Earth and the concept of mirror worlds. I told her about the little business boomlet the sector seems to be experiencing these days, and the potential such places and applications hold for not only increasing our knowledge of the real world and the ways we connect there, but for making possible new modes of being and richer ways of interacting. A great place to get your fantasy on, and you can pull down six figures there, to boot, or so the marketing goes. Regardless, I said, it was exciting to be a part of it, to see this new thing unfold before my eyes, to be reporting on it from the front lines, so to speak, and to ride along and see just where it might go — even if it’s headed for a fiery crash, as some would argue, or a more mundane sputtering thud.

Her reaction was interesting: “It sounds like you’re living through the 1960s of technology,” quoth she. This strikes me as pretty spot on.

Now, as a point of disclosure / disclaimer, I should note here that I lived through only the last three and a half years of the 1960s, and have only patchy memories of the time. Of course, I share this last characteristic with a lot of people who lived through the entire decade, but in my case it isn’t because I was on drugs but because I was in diapers. That said, the era is by now pretty familiar to most of us, so I don’t mind commenting on it here. (And my parents were deep hippies at the time, so I have a lot of close knowledge through them.)

The more I think about it, the more I like my friend’s analogy. A lot of the concepts that are associated with 60s culture and counter-culture are also showing up in the metaversal sphere. Virtual worlds often create a hallucinatory landscape (giant snail races, anyone?) that would not be out of place in the most colorful acid trips of the decade in question. Virtual worlds are also being used as new avenues of personal realization and empowerment. There, you can be anything and anyone you want — or so it’s said. There’s something very akin to a sexual revolution in the offing, and many people are also exploring new approches to what we think of as “work.”

There is also an explosion of creativity. Much of the various forms and examples of art and creation that is coming out of the metaverse is truly new and exciting — though as much if not more is not very interesting at all, of course. But the moment has sparked a new flame under the broad class of people known somewhat clinically these days as “content creators,” and has in fact radically broadened that class by giving people new tools (even if they’re crude, as yet), which they are now using to pry open doors that hadn’t even been perceived before.

The metaverse at the moment is also a place where the received wisdom of established rights and laws is being challenged on a daily basis, and where people are struggling to find new ways to organize their society, as well as creating new kinds of communities that attempt to exist apart from those already established. And, as eventually happened to 60s culture, metaverse culture has now begun to be adopted by “the establishment,” much to many metaversal citizens’ chagrin.

Of course, many of the tropes that are kicked around about the 60s are in fact only partially true. Peace and love may have been the watchwords of the day, but the reality was somewhat more gritty than those words suggest. The same is true of the metaverse. A fantasy world where you can be anything, do anything and even make your living is only a very partial description of what’s going on in virtual worlds. The metaverse also sees its share of heartbreak, conflict and unfeeling bad governance, just as the 60s did.

The joyful uprising of the metaverse may also, arguably, have some ill effects going forward, just as could be argued of the joyful uprising of the 60s. Consider the fact that Linden Lab’s favorite management tool is known as the Love Machine, and their working philosophy is The Tao of Linden. Many SL residents would argue that the ill effects of these exactly match the analogous child-rearing practices that cropped up in the 60s, when kids were often left to their own devices because parents were afraid of corrupting their minds by providing too much authority. The reality was more mixed, with some people deriving great advantage from learning to be self-directed, while others floundered without guidance. The LL development process seems to suffer the same inconsistencies, if the complaints of residents are any judge.

The exciting thing is that the metaverse is happening at all, and for that much credit is due to the people at Linden Lab, There.com, ActiveWorlds, World of Warcraft, EVE Online, Google, MySpace, even Flickr and many other places. If nothing else, the 60s saw a radical shift in the way we approach culture and its creation, with many of the “gatekeepers” being swept aside in a move toward a more democratized and inclusive process (though not a fully democratized and inclusive one, to be sure). It could be argued, too (as John Markoff does in What the Dormouse Said), that this is part of what led to the development of the personal computer, and I’d further argue that the continued trend is part of what’s driving Web 2.0 apps — and the metaverse. Philip Rosedale’s original vision of Second Life seems to be of that place where you can be anything or anyone and do anything you like, a fantasyscape of dreams realized (or at least, virtualized). It’s a similar cultural shift, with technology now becoming a tool for personal expression in new and deeper modes, just as music, art and lifestyle were as a result of the changes of the 60s. You can now log on, rez in, and, if you like, drop out. It’s anyone’s guess as to how far-reaching the cultural effects of virtual-world and metaversal technologies will be, but it’s worth remembering that long hair and rock music was at one time thought to be a passing fad as well. Welcome to the 60s of technology.

Sony releasing a Linux based handheld

Linux powers Sony's new Mylo WiFi handheld
Would love to see a comparison between Nokia's 770 and this..

From the article:
"In September, Sony expects to ship a Linux- and Qtopia-based handheld device featuring WiFi connectivity, an Opera web browser, and a variety of text- and voice-messaging clients and media players. The Mylo -- short for "My Life Online" -- will be available in black or white, priced at $350.

Midnight in the Garden

This place is fantastic; it's like "Gone With The Wind" on mescaline. They walk imaginary pets here, Garland---on a fucking leash. And they're all heavily armed and drunk. New York is boring!
- Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

A "Blogmobile" plys the streets of New York City enabling the public to carry on Internet conversations with celebrities, reports TechWeb.

The van is equipped with several PCs for users who communicate with celebrities via blog portal. "We're proving the concept of mobile Wi-Fi," said Frank Matarazzo, president of Telkonet's Microwave Satellite unit, in an interview Thursday. "It's cost-prohibitive today, but it won't be in the future."

Subscribers utilize individual clouds as they move about the city. "The service 'hands-off' just like cell phone service," said Matarazzo. "We're proving a concept " that we can create citywide Wi-Fi from the rooftops of buildings." Interactive Wifi provides the wifi “hot zones.”

NuVisions created the wireless backhaul and Wi-Fi connections for the ChatWithAStar.com vehicle. "Celebrities" available for online chat range from athletes like Billy Wagner of the New York Mets and boxer Gerry Cooney to Ms. Universe Zuleyka Rivera. The celebrity interaction portal was founded by sports author Burton Rocks.

In related news, Poynter says Live Blogging is a Citizen Journalism Opportunity.

Maybe event coverage is a prime opportunity for news organizations and bloggers to collaborate.

Imagine there's a major festival or convention happening in your city. What if you found out which local bloggers were attending, and asked them to post live or wrap-up coverage (text, audio, photos, video, etc.).

If wifi isn't available in the event area, you could focus on mobile blogging from cell phones and pagers ("moblogging"). Also, you could publish a blog or wiki to aggregate this coverage -- so bloggers could post to their own blogs, but you could present it in an easy-to-find way.

Jeff Jarvis says, "Journalism will become more collaborative — because it can, thanks to new tools; because it must, thanks to new business realities; and because it should, to build a new and respectful relationship with the public. So our challenge is to find the ways to help this happen. Jarvis says Saving journalism (and killing the press) is manditory in the age of Craig Newmark.

NewAssignment.net is a new approach to networked journalism. And who better to get the ball rolling than Jay Rosen:

The site uses open source methods to develop good assignments and help bring them to completion; it employs professional journalists to carry the project home and set high standards so the work holds up. There are accountability and reputation systems built in that should make the system reliable. The betting is that (some) people will donate to works they can see are going to be great because the open source methods allow for that glimpse ahead.

Free Mobile Blog Software for mobile blogging, is available using Melodeo, Shozu, SplashBlog, VoiceIndigo, YouTube and Spodradio. Journalism resources are available at Columbia Journalism Review, Online Journalism Review, Poynter, Transom, This American Life, and The Media Giraffe Conference.

Related DailyWireless stories include Interactive Journalism Awards, Camphones for Journalists, Rebuilding Media, Newspaper Podcasts?, Portable Photostories, Global Blog, NY Times Blinkx, BBC's Mobile Video, CBS/Comcast Broadband, Handheld Tablets, Rollout e-Reader, Interactive TV News, The Feed Room, ABC News Now Looks to Future, Publishers Buy Online Content, Mobile TV Expands, Big Media Mobilizes, and U.S. Gets MobileTV via DVB-H.

As Ed put it:

“The answer, Dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
—William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

Walled Garden or Prison?

The walled garden approach, adopted by most wireline and mobile telecom providers, has a number of key shortcomings says a new report by Pyramid Research; Transforming Telcos With IMS: The Telco Silver Bullet for an Applications-Centric World.

Eventually, voice and data will converge around an IP transport. The IP Multimedia System (IMS) is the multimedia architecture that provides interoperability. "The walled garden approach remains the preferred option for telcos, for a simple core reason: control," comments Svetlana Issaeva, the report's author.

Using IMS, carriers can track, charge for or block subscriber access to Internet-based services. They will be able to charge extra for preferred handling of multimedia traffic, and allow preferential treatment for some services and websites over others.

For all the advantages that the walled garden approach has, says the report, it does not take the full measure of the challenges telcos are facing. Walled gardens have a number of key limitations. The cost and ultimate price of quality of service and service customization and also the restrictions to subscriber choices make this model inadequate for ultimate IMS rollout, says the report.

IMS is the foundation for next-generation fixed/mobile convergence based on IP. It allows, for example, a single video clip to be played on a cellphone, laptop or television set. It allows interoperable messaging, data exchange and billing across different platforms (like a WiFi/Cellphone).

Sprint's commitment to Mobile WiMAX yesterday also brings challenges. The Average Revenue Per User could be under attack if users dumped Sprint voice services and went with Skype. iSkoot allows Skype calling on regular cellphones, for example. WiFi or WiMAX might provide a (cheaper) alternative route to cable or cellular VoIP services, resulting in a net loss of revenue.

The next 12 months will be critical for the future of the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), as carriers begin to deploy IMS-specific systems and determine whether it can deliver on its promises, according to Heavy Reading analyst Graham Finnie.

Carrier vendors implement IMS around their own hardware and software:

• Motorola's IMS approach is based on their SoftSwitch platform for seamless mobility. Using their IMS core and MOTOwi4 wireless solution, Motorola provides IP-based voice, video, conferencing services, unified messaging, ringback tones and other SIP-based applications on multiple devices.
  
• Nokia's IP Multimedia Subsystem uses SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) to establish IP connections between terminals. The IP connection can then be used to carry any IP traffic, for example interactive game sessions or push to talk communication.
• Nortel's IMS system is likely to be a key piece of Microsoft's plans. It enables a subscriber to launch a video conference during a voice conversation, or access a personalized Video-on-Demand service subscription not just from their home TV, but online from a laptop, a hotel room or from a mobile phone.
• Ericsson's IMS system says it enables communication through various media, adapted to each individual's preference and provides a consistent experience across multiple access technologies.
• Lucent's IP Multi-Media Subsystem supports IP to IP session over wireline IP, 802.11, 802.15, CDMA, packet data along with GSM/EDGE/UMTS and other packet data applications.
• Hewlett-Packard has a a multimedia service to help carriers provide "triple-play" services of voice, video and data.

Control of the IP Multimedia Subsystem could become an thory issue. Consumers want "open" systems while cellular and cable operators prefer a closed "walled garden" approach.

Verizon, Cisco, Lucent, Motorola, Nortel and Qualcomm have collaborated over the last year to create A-IMS (Advances to IMS), meant to provide a foundation for the roll-out of both SIP- and non-SIP-based services in future networks, according to the companies.

The Sprint/Cable wireless partnership may have lots of tricky issues to resolve.

Consolidation in MobileTV?

The nascent mobile TV market in the U.S. cannot support the current number of players and is likely to undergo consolidation, according to Mobile TV: Analysis & Forecasts, a new report from Parks Associates.

The report specifically points to Crown Castle's Modeo and Aloha Partner's Hiwire as candidates for consolidation, with both companies planning to launch nationwide mobile TV networks using DVB-H technology.

Parks Associates cites several factors that make consolidation likely. In addition to DVB-H over Hiwire (700MHz) and Modeo (1.7 GHz), there's Qualcomm's proprietary MediaFLO (700MHz) and Sprint-Nextel's MobiTV over WiMAX (2.5 GHz), bringing the total to four.

This number is high by international standards, says Parks Associates, despite the fact that the U.S. has a relatively low cellular penetration rate. Italy and South Korea, by comparison, have just two networks each even though consumers in these countries show a stronger propensity for using mobile phones as multimedia platforms.

"If you do the math, there are four networks for four operators, and that isn't realistic because you lose all the advantages of network sharing," said John Barrett, director of research at Parks Associates. "Consolidation would be a win-win scenario for the industry. Hiwire needs a network, and Modeo needs a more favorable spectrum allocation. They are a natural fit, whereas Sprint-Nextel has a large subscriber base to support its network and Qualcomm is dedicated to promoting its technology and chipsets."

Related DailyWireless articles include; Sony's WiFi Mylo, Microsoft Plans Wireless Music Player, Zing Go the Strings, WiFi Gremlin Music Player, Mobile Shopping, WiFi TV, MediaFLO Gets Satellite Backbone, Mobile TV: The Battle is On, New Mobile TV Flavor: TDtv, Verizon Goes with FLO, Global Mobile Television, T/W, Cingular: On Demand, DVB-H Headend Software, Intel On DVB-H, U.S. Gets MobileTV via DVB-H, The 700 Mhz Club, 700 Mhz Worth $28B, The 700 Mhz FCC Auction, Winner of the Triple Play, Satphones Localize, TiVo on a Stick, Clear Channel Podcasting, Multicasting the Olympics, WiMax Handsets, Laptop Television, Sirius Portable Radio, U.S. Broadband Policy?, XM Buys 2.3GHz, Sprint Gets Sirius, MPEG-4: Satellite, Cable & Wireless, Satellite TV on Cell Phone?, Sprint Bundles EchoStar, Satellite WiFi, DirecWay Modem Shares Access, Satphones Get Giant Antennas, U.S. Cellsats and FCC Approves Big Mobile Sat.

Open Taxonomy

As noted below, I'm starting to think again about how open source scenario planning might work. First issue to look at is the question of what it means to be open.

Not all open systems are open in the same way. Although most uses of the term open as a modifier for a system (open source, open society, open bar) reflect open's broad meaning of "freely available for use," the details of how each of these kinds of open systems operate can vary considerably. This becomes a real issue when we encounter -- or create -- new jargon. When we speak of "open biology," for example, what kind of open do we mean? One in which anyone is free to participate? One in which anyone is free to receive the results of research? One in which all research is shared? More abstract variations, such as "open future," only confuse the issue further.

Experts and insiders may grimace at specialized terminology becoming common language, but it usually doesn't help to attempt to narrow the terminology only to its root meaning. In most cases, the democratizing of the term (if you will) happens because the word or phrase expresses something important or useful in a powerful or colorful way. Moreover, the version used in the broader vernacular gains its utility by having a direct link to the original meaning. If we describe something as a "black hole," for example, we probably don't mean that it's literally a body of such immense gravity that nothing can escape, but the popular meaning builds on that core definition.

With that preemptory defense in mind, here's a taxonomy of open systems, derived from the original, technical meanings, but with broader application:

Open Source:

Original version: a category of software in which the underlying programming instructions, or source code, is made available at no cost to interested developers, usually with the stipulation that derivative work should be equally freely shared. (Example: Linux)

OtF version: a system that allows you to reproduce at no cost the underlying design, methods and instructions, as well as the results of the system (if digital), and allows you to build upon either without significant restriction.

Open Access

Original version: a category of scientific publication in which articles are made available at no cost to the reader, who may also duplicate and share the material with others. (Example; PLoS)

OtF version: a system that allows you to reproduce its results or description freely, and to build upon these results without significant restriction.

Open Standard

Original version: a category of technical design made publicly available and implementable, in order to guarantee compatibility across components. (Example: HTML)

OtF version: a system that allows you to build upon its results, including building compatible systems, without significant restriction.

This taxonomy allows for a re-examination of the concept of "open source scenarios" (OSS).

In my original OSS concept, scenario creators would make freely available the scenario model (the key question, potentially the structure of divergent worlds), the scenario narratives (the stories and descriptions of each divergent world), and the scenario drivers (the various uncertainties, driving forces, and catalysts of change identified by the workshop participants). This falls squarely into the "open source" definition above. A number of scenario and foresight professionals responded to the OSS concept with the argument that even among the clients willing to see the scenario narratives published, few would want to open up the list of drivers, as these are most likely to illustrate where an organization sees internal vulnerabilities.

An open access model would be more comfortable, then, as it would omit the scenario "source code" -- the driving forces, uncertainties, and the like -- but still make the results freely available for examination.

The open standard approach would offer up the key questions and, perhaps, the scenario structure, allowing other scenario creators to consider the same basic set of divergences. This is probably the least useful form of open scenario planning, but might have some application as a learning tool.

Receiver #16

Social Networking the Mobile Way

Receiver #16 wants to spark off some ideas about social networking the mobile way: clubbing, seeing your favourite band, sharing memories of a night out or playfully exploring the city, getting to know and experiencing, even creating, music – can mobile add to all these? And how does it affect how we get our friends together for joint action? Does it trigger emergent behaviour? Or is it the ideal means to pull it all together? What do *you* think?

Lee Humphreys: Out with my mobile - exploring social coordination in urban environments :: Tim Cole: The mobile phone as the next electric guitar (or any other instrument you want) :: Rudy De Waele: Connecting cultures through music :: Charlie Schick: One night - a global story of one night in the mobile life :: Antony Bruno: Where the long tail ends :: Karenza Moore: Come together - the use and meanings of mobiles amongst UK clubbers :: Frank Lantz: Big Games and the porous border between the real and the mediated :: Mark Curtis: Mobilising our meat based selves - social planning while on the hoof.

The citizen media unconference

Dan Gillmor gathered a gaggle of blogging powerhouses at Harvard Law School yesterday for a very unusual event. In an age marketing overhype and media mega shows (although E3 is promising to cut back a little), coughing up a twenty at the door for grub to sit in a room with no panel, no speakers, no sizzle, makes for a pretty unconventional convention alone. Check out Doc Searl’s notes and the podcasts to see what came out of what may one day be considered a historical summit.

The Chinese effort to download and translate U.S. TV

This is a fascinating story, well worth a read. There is a homegrown effort in China to download episodes of American TV shows, translate them, put up subtitles, and redistribute them. Piracy, yes, but it gets around the Chinese censors and it’s all-volunteer. (NYT free reg. req.)

Sony's WiFi Mylo

Sony is launching its first WiFi broadband communication and entertainment device. The new Mylo personal communicator is capable of operating in any open 802.11b wireless network, in public spaces and within private homes.

The name mylo stands for “my life online”. Sony's device provides instant messaging, browse the Internet, listen to music, send emails and view photos concurrently.

Small enough for a pocket or purse, the slim, oblong-shaped device features a 2.4 inch color LCD (measured diagonally) with a slide out QWERTY keyboard for comfortable and quick thumb typing. With 1GB of the flash memory, the mylo supports the playback of MP3, ATRAC or WMA (secure and unsecure) files.

It features a built-in speaker and can view MPEG-4 personal videos by transferring files via USB cable or with Memory Stick Duo media. You can also store JPEG pictures from the Internet or your digital camera.

The device comes embedded with popular instant messaging services: the Google Talk instant messaging service, Skype and Yahoo! Messenger. These services are free and the product does not require initial computer setup or a monthly service contract.

The product includes JiWire’s hotspot directory listing more than 20,000 WiFi networks in the United States. The mylo personal communicator boots up in seconds and can scan for available wireless networks right away.

The “What’s Up” screen serves as the hub, storing up to 90 of your friends’ avatars so you can quickly see who’s online. You can store up to nine online identities per person which allows you to first choose who you want to chat with then easily initiate conversations using your preferred application.

The embedded HTML browser lets you quickly connect to full Web pages on the Internet. You can also send and receive text emails with web mail services like Yahoo! Mail and the Gmail web mail service.

Providing networking possibilities without a wireless network, the mylo personal communicator detects when it comes into the presence of other mylo units. With the ad-hoc application, you can share play lists and stream music between mylo communicators one at a time.

The mylo device uses a lithium-ion battery that offers up to 45 hours of music playback, around seven hours of chatting and web surfing and more than three hours of continuous Skype talk time. It comes with a microphone, stereo headphones, a USB cable and a neoprene case.

The mylo personal communicator will be available in September for about $350 online at sonystyle.com, at Sony Style retail stores and authorized dealers nationwide.

Perhaps it will be useful for uploading 7 Megapixel stills or 640x480 videos shot from Sony's H-5 ($500). GigOm and Engadget have more.

(thx for the heads up, JB! -kc.)

DOCSIS 3.0

CableLabs has issued a series of specifications for DOCSIS 3.0. It will enable cable operators to offer significantly higher speeds with downstream data rates of 160 Mbps and upstream data rates of 120 Mbps.

The Data-Over-Cable Service Interface Specifications (DOCSIS) 3.0, are available at CableLabs. DOCSIS 3.0 features "channel bonding", which enables multiple downstream and upstream channels to be used together at the same time by a single subscriber.

To achieve these higher data rates DOCSIS 3.0 describes a methodology for channel bonding in both the upstream and downstream directions. DOCSIS 3.0 also incorporates support for the Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) and greatly expands the number of Internet addresses that cable operators may use.

Generally speaking, each 6 MHz channel set aside for data can support an additional 40 Mbps down and 30 Mbps up. The new specs will also support "partial feature compliance" to DOCSIS 3.0.

That option, DOCSIS 2.0b, will be available for DOCSIS 1.1 or 2.0 cable modem equipment and cable modem termination systems (CMTSs) that support downstream channel bonding. This test option also is designed to ensure that the equipment is compatible with forthcoming DOCSIS 3.0 equipment.

In the U.S., cable operators are facing pockets of Fiber To The Premises (FTTP) competition, primarily from Verizon, but whether DOCSIS 2.0 is enough for now, or if downstream channel bonding techniques should be applied before DOCSIS 3.0 becomes commercially available is still uncertain.

There is only so much bandwidth available on coax. Usually it's 750-860 Mhz. Bonding channels could take out some analog (or digital) cable television tiers. That might require a digital cable box for consumers.

CableLabs will begin to conduct interops, certifications and qualification testing against DOCSIS 3.0 products "whenever suppliers are ready, as is our normal position," said CableLabs VP of Broadband Access Michelle Kuska, in a statement.

Big Band is a proponent of switched video. Rather than direct all programs to all areas at all times, a switched broadcast system only provides those programs requested by STBs in each node, freeing dramatic bandwidth to expand programming and other service offerings.

A single head-end computer can monitor and manage all switched broadcast sessions in a cable system. The only significant new hardware requirement is deployment of switches capable of receiving abundant programs over existing high-capacity optical networks, and directing each program towards the appropriate node.

A cable or phone provider can virtually remove capacity limits with switched broadcast. IPTV can support scheduled programming, video on demand and a practically unlimited number of TV channels and video content. IP-TV also enables a range of interactive features, allowing viewers to purchase products shown in a TV program by using Web-browsing functions built into the TV programming itself.

U.S. cable operators have over 73 million TV subscribers, generating revenues of nearly $60 billion per annum," says Analysys, a research firm. DirecTV, the nation's largest satellite broadcaster, has more than 15 million customers while EchoStar serves more than 11.71 million satellite TV customers through its DISH Network.

SBC and Verizon plan an End Game, cherry picking FTTH subs and spending big on infrastructure (until the money runs out).

DTV is another area of potential growth. There will be 11.8 million holdout over-the-air TV households at year-end 2008 who will need DTV converters. The Senate Commerce Committee bill sets aside $3 billion while a separate House of Representatives bill allotted $990 million, or $830 million after administrative expenses for subsidizing DTV settops. The cost of the converters was pegged at $60/each with the subsidies covering only $40. Kagan reviews The State of HDTV.

C/Net, Cable Digital News, Om Malik, EE Times, Business Week, Infoworld, E-Week and Telephony have more.

Executives at the TechNet Innovation Summit in San Jose say this whole Internet thing is still just beginning. Faster access means more industry growth. Says Netflix CEO Reed Hastings: "Web 2.0 is broadband. Web 3.0 is 10 gigabits a second."

Wonder where your cable dollars go?

Last week Time Warner and Comcast wrote a big check for the assets of bankrupt Adelphia Communications, the sixth-largest cable operator in the country. Adelphia, in turn, paid $56.7 million in salaries, bonuses and special awards to its top five managers since they joined in 2003 and drove it into the ground.

Networked journalism: Feeding the Times

The Times has two good stories today that were both helped by the work of bloggers. I don’t say that at blog triumphalism or as a war cry of bloggers replacing journalists. Quite the contrary, I say that because these are the sorts of examples of networked journalism at work that I hope we’ll be seeing more and more.

Michael Barbaro, Tom Zeller, and Saul Hansell wrote a wonderful Page One story tracking a nice little old lady in Georgia by her supposedly anonymous searches revealed by AOL. The bloggers pounced on the AOL story immediately and showed the way; these guys then did a great job of picking up the story, finding a perfect case and putting it in context by interviewing privacy experts.

And today, Kit Seelye wrote about the faked Reuters photos, a story that happened only because of the bloggers’ sleuthing. It took MSM a few days to pick up the story, but they have and gave credit where credit is due.

It’s not about them v. us, as Nick Lemann would have it. It’s about them and us. The more we work together, the more informed society will be. It is a good thing for journalism that there are now more people than ever doing journalism and these are just two small illustrations of that.

: LATER: Note, however, that the Washington Post couldn’t resist slamming Little Green Footballs for no good reason. Johnson replies.

: SPEAKING OF PHOTO PHOIBLES: YNET News says the AP now has a problem:

A woman has made two appearances in photographs used by the Associated Press and Reuters, allegedly wailing over the destruction of her Beirut home. US bloggers have however noticed that photographs were taken two weeks apart from each other, according to times stamps on the images, and that the photographs were taken in different locations.

s woman is the unluckiest multiple home owner in Beirut, or something isn’t quite right,” noted the author of the Drinking From Home.

Get Metaversal at Eyebeam on August 10

Just a reminder: 3pointD will be at the Eyebeam OpenLab in Manhattan tomorrow evening, August 10, from 6-9pm, to take part in the Metaverse Roadmap pre-release party, which Electric Sheep Jerry Paffendorf has titled Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Metaverse but Were Too Afraid To Ask. “The night consists of presentations and conversations about the metaverse space (video games, virtual worlds, CAD, maps, and web apps) coming out of and inspired by the Metaverse Roadmap Project,” Jerry writes on his blog, where the final liine-up of presenters can be found. I’ll be in conversation with noted Second Life resident Prokofy Neva, dicussing the convergence or collision, depending on your point of view, of real life and virtual life in terms of business, culture and political issues in places like Second Life and There.com. What are the the relative merits and pitfalls of RL businesses, people and uses increasingly entering virtual worlds? Does a line in the virtual sand need to be drawn around metaversal
spaces? Should be segregated into “virtual” and “mirror” worlds, never to meet, or can a single metaversal space possibly contain the multitudes necessary for a peaceful co-existence of the two paradigms? We’ll take a flyer at some answers to these and other questions and let the audience get involved as well. Good fun, and tasty food for metaversal thought. See you there.

Why we (the US) don't get the (text) message

"Consider this anomaly: Ecuador, with a per capita GDP of $4,300, has the United States beat when it comes to a critical wireless technology. Americans may be 10 times as wealthy, but Ecuadorians send four times as many text messages.

The opportunities start with understanding economic and cultural factors that drive usage. Pay-as-you-go cell-phone plans offered abroad encourage text-message use, as does the fact that in most countries, fewer people own PCs on which to send instant messages and e-mail.

...The overseas ardor for SMS is not a quirk Instead, it's a leading indicator of what will happen in the United States. Rather than substituting for PC-based communication, as it does in poorer countries, mobile messaging Stateside will untether commerce, social networks, and other applications originally tied to PCs. When smart innovators translate services originated abroad to America's cell phones, we'll really get the message. "

Josh Wolf, Friend and Videoblogger, Jailed by Federal Court

Please share this story...

Josh Wolf is a friend of mine. He's a freelance journalist and videoblogger. A year ago, he captured video footage at an Anti-G8 protest in SF. Some of this footage was published on his blog, and was subsequently licensed to local news affiliate stations.

At the protest, there was alleged damage by protesters to a SFPD police car. Josh claims he does not have footage of the alleged incident. His raw footage was subpoenaed by a California Grand Jury in the investigation -- when Josh refused, the case was dismissed because California has shield laws protecting journalists from revealing their unpublished material. But, the case was moved up to a Federal investigation because they claimed that since the SFPD receives Federal anti-terrorism aide, the invesitgation regarding damage to SFPD property is a Federal matter. Federal law does not afford protections to journalists the same way that California and many other states provide.

Josh is now in Federal prison until he either gives up the subpoenaed video footage, or the term of the Federal Grand Jury expires (1 year). Josh's lawyer attempted to bargain with the Federal judge, granting him access to the footage to determine if there is evidence of the alleged incident. The judge refused to view the tape and instead held Josh in Contempt of Court, sending him to prison without bail.

Josh believes that his footage is sought after so that law enforcement can use it to identify individuals attending the protests, not simply for purposes of this specific investigation.

This is an important case for many reasons. First, civilian journalists should not be forced by the government to aide in surveillance by law enforcement. Secondly, there is no reason why this should be a Federal investigation in the first place -- that's what makes this different than the Judith Miller case, which was clearly a Federal investigation from the outset. If this is a Federal matter, then what is not a Federal matter? This is evidence of a disturbing trend -- how long until anyone connected with a political protest is forced to name names in front of a Grand Jury?

Can you say "Chilling Effect"?

Please consider donating to Josh Wolf's legal defense fund at http://joshwolf.net/blog

Here are additional links:
Video interview prior to Grand Jury hearing
Time.com coverage
Reporters Without Borders call for Wolf's Release
SFist.com coverage

Tags: Josh Wolf, injustice, Chilling Effect

Conflux, NYc festival for psychogeography

Conflux, the annual New York festival for contemporary psychogeography, will take place in Brooklyn, NYC, September 14-17.

At Conflux, participants turn NYc into a playground, a laboratory and a space for the development of new networks and communities. All events are free and open to the public. They include walks and tours, lectures, workshops, street games and tech-enabled expeditions, interactive performance, public art installations, movies, etc.

I’ve spotted a few interesting projects in the programme:

2.4GHz scape (image on the left), by Sawako Kato, will let audiences experience the realtime sonification of 2.4GHz signal (spectrum used for WiFi, microwave ovens, bluetooth, baby monitors, cordless game controllers etc.) around the place. People will also be invited to join the soundscape using their laptop or bluetooth devices such as the mobile phones to make the signal interference.

The Anti-Advertising Agency’s Portable Sound Units are small sound-systems triggered only when pedestrians pass by them. They playback on-the-street interviews with the public about their opinions on outdoor advertising. Sara Dierck, Michael Dodge, and Steve Lambert from the AAA conducted hours of audio interviews about issues surrounding outdoor advertising with the public but also with selected individuals in the fields of advertising, conservation, and social criticism. They compiled and edited down the interviews into very short clips that raise questions about the role of advertising in culture. During Conflux, the units will be temporarily installed in various locations around the festival and area streets.

AAA Portable Sound Units

Also on the programme: Sue Huang’s Street Cut-ups that uses text found on the street and remixes it to find surprising new meanings; Caroline Woolard will affix ’seats’ into the u-channel of the no parking and stop sign posts implanted in the sidewalk; Toby Lee and Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga will invite you to freeze for 5 minutes; etc.

Another Glowlab production: The Drift Relay , a collaborative psychogeographic experience in the form of a 24 hour relay-style exploration of San Jose, will kick off next week at ISEA: Tuesday, August 08, 10am - Wednesday, August 09, 10am.

Originally from we make money not art at August 5, 2006, 04:00, published by Marisa S. Olson

Mobiles Lead the Way in Underutilised Devices

Catching up with this month's Wired at 33,000 feet, I was struck by a little snippet of a survey of Wired readers – thus highly biased, in the nicest possible way. These people are some of the most technically literate on the planet.

The question asked was; Which device or tool do you think you're not using to its full potential? Surprise, surprise, the mobile phone led the field with 27%, with runners up the digital camera (25%) and the computer (18%). Somewhat surprisingly, 2% actually cited their office chair – what was I saying about being technically literate?

But if that's the situation with Wired readers, what's it like for the rest of the population?

Usability of mobile devices, coupled with clever ways to educate users, are going to take centre-stage in the mobile phone sector in the next few years. As an industry, we need people to start using their mobile phones beyond voice and texting – that's abundantly clear, especially as they switch over to 3G.

Already, usability experts are at a real premium, with employers falling over themselves to retain their services – even on a temporary basis. If you have a tame usability person you're using, be very nice to them indeed and proffer a pay rise quickly, as we're just about to see demand way outstrip supply. Just a feeling I have, you understand.

Print on Demand book from the Internet Archive

Print on Demand book from the Internet Archive
Originally uploaded by JoshB.

Brewster Kahle explained the Internet Archive's BookMobile project, where they have a mobile unit that can print and bind a physical copy of a book for the cost of about $1. They have these all over the world, and need a whole lot more!

Apple OS X 10.5 "Leopard" officially debuts

Filed under: Desktops

• 64-bit Cocoa and Carbon application support, right beside 32-bit apps, all native.
• Time Machine - Automatically backs up every version of your files to a hard drive or server. Includes snazzy 3D Time Machine view (pictured) to browse through older versions of folders.
• Boot Camp - "Even better." Ships with Leopard.
• Photo Booth - With expanded camera support.
• Spaces - Apple's term for virtual desktops. Allows you to group different applications together in their own environment for different tasks, and allows movement of windows between "spaces."
• Spotlight - Can search other machines over a network. Boolean operations, application launching, and recent items will also be added to the search tool.
• Core Animation - Developer architecture to create moving eye candy with little code.
• Universal Access - VoiceOver enhancements, Braille support, closed captioning and improved navigation.
• Mail - Stationary (templates), Notes (specially highlighted self-sent emails) and To-Do lists all built in.
• Dashboard - New Dashcode tool allows visual template-based Widget development. There's also a new Web Clip app that takes any part of a web page and turns it into a Widget.
• iChat - Allows multiple logins, invisible mode, animated buddy icons, video recording and tabbed chats (hooray.) There's also photo booth effects, iChat Theater (slideshows, Keynote presentations and videos displayed over video chat), and photo/video backdrops.
  
• Enhanced Parental Controls
• Xcode 3

(Check out dem iChat features. -kc.)

Self Forming Content Networks

Fred Wilson writes:

When it comes to networks, the most powerful model is the self organizing network. That allows participants to move seamlessly between networks and takes out all the overhead of managing them.

en't seen self organizing media networks take hold. Adsense is a self organizing network for publishers and advertisers, but not for the readers/consumers. You can't put together a page that shows all the content that an email marketing ad has appeared on. You might be able to use search to do that, but it's certainly not a seamless process.

This is in the context of FeedBurner Networks.

Freedom to Tinker - The Freedom to Tinker with Freedom?

At Freedom to Tinker, David Robinson asks whether, in a world where DRM is presented to so many customers as a benefit (e.g. Microsoft’s Zune service), the public as a whole will be quite happy to trade away its freedom to tinker, whether the law needs to intervene in this, and on which side: ensuring freedom to tinker, or outlawing it in order to enshrine the business model that “most people” will be portrayed as wanting, given the numbers who sign away their rights in EULAs and so on.

“Many of us, who may find ourselves arguing based on public reasons for public policies that protect the freedom to tinker, also have a private reason to favor such policies. The private reason is that we ourselves care more about tinkering than the public at large does, and we would therefore be happier in a protected-tinkering world than the public at large would be.”

Many of the comments - and those on the follow-up post - look in more detail at the legal issues, with some very interesting analogies to freedom of expression and points made about the impact on innovation - which benefits everyone - when power users are prevented from innovating.

I felt I had to comment, since this is an issue central to the architectures of control research; here’s what I said:

“I think I’d ask the question, “Even if it becomes illegal to tinker with a device, what is there to to stop someone doing it?”

If it is purely the fear of getting caught, then tinkering will be stifled, to some extent. But power users will form groups just as they do now, and some tinkering will still go on. (If the tinkering is advanced enough, it will be too difficult for law enforcement to detect/understand it anyway).

At present much file-sharing activity is illegal, but it still goes on in vast quantities. The fear of getting caught is a major retardation to that activity, I’d suggest; there may also be an ethical component to the decision in many people’s minds. They’re told it’s analogous to stealing a CD from a store, and they believe or are persuaded, partially at least, by that. It seems immoral or unethical.

But does anyone seriously believe that tinkering with devices is unethical? (There are probably a few people who do, e.g. ZDNet’s Adrian Kingsley)

Tinkering with devices will never seem immoral or unethical to the vast majority of the public, hence the only barriers to stop them doing it are a) fear of getting caught and b) lack of knowledge or desire. Most people don’t bother tuning up their cars or tinkering with their computers, even though they could.

Power users do, and in a future where tinkering is illegal, it will again only be power users who do it, and fear of getting caught will be the only reason for not doing it.

So what about this fear of getting caught? How likely is it that one’s modifications or tinkering will be detected by some kind of enforcement agency? The only way I can see that this could be carried out in any kind of systematic way would be if observation/reporting devices were embedded in every product, e.g. every PC reporting home every few hours to squeal if it’s been modified.

But we already have that! Or at least we will soon, and therefore it seems irrelevant whether or not it becomes illegal to tinker with devices. If every computer is ‘trusted’ and spies and reports on its user’s behaviour, whether it reports to Microsoft or a Federal Anti-Tinkering Agency is, perhaps, beside the point.

Architectures to prevent or stifle tinkering can be designed into products and technologies whether or not there is a law requiring them. The user agrees to
have his/her behaviour and interactions monitored and controlled by the act of purchasing the device.

Even if the law went the other way, and there were a legally guaranteed right to tinker, all that would happen is that manufacturers will make it more difficult
to do so by the design of products. Hoods (bonnets) would start to be welded shut, in Cory Doctorow’s phrase, (the Audi A2 already has this, sort of), backed up by stringent warranty provisions. You might have a right to tinker with your device, but no law is going to compel the manufacturers to honour the warranty if you do so.

This, I think, is the crucial issue: the points Lessig makes about the designed structure of the internet, the code, superseding statute law as the dominant shaper of behaviour in the medium, apply just as strongly to technology hardware. Architectures of control in design will control users’ behaviour, however the laws themselves evolve.”

Spliced feed networks with ads

Brad Feld blogged yesterday about a new FeedBurner effort to place ads on more feeds through the creation of aggregated feed networks. A single curator selects a few feed URLs to create a mega feed for a topic or musing. FeedBurner sells targeted ads inside of the aggregated feed and its various forms of syndication -- HTML, RSS/Atom, JavaScript widget, etc. -- on a CPM basis.

Who other than FeedBurner gets paid for these ad impressions? It seems like another attempt to mine the seemingly free gold laying on the riverbed named user-generated content. The idea isn't much different than Squidoo, a company donating a percentage of profits to charity to make it seem a bit less like photocopying the work of other writers for profit.

In the literary world there are established means for paying writers for aggregation of work. A network such as FeedBurner could have all publishers opt-in to the possibility of network selection and provide such publishers an approval process for new published channels. Payments could be made on a per-use basis when a page using the content turns a profit. Authors with a Creative Commons By-Attribution license and a valid e-mail address in their feed could receive an opt-in e-mail for channel alerts.

Perhaps it's best to use a network of venture capitalists as a test group, since they may not notice the pennies dropped in their hats from the crowd passing by, but the network seems like an under-thought launch announcement plan from FeedBurner and its VCs.

Washington Post Plays with Video Mash-ups

The WashingtonPost.com has started a clever program that invites readers to mash themselves up into a video interview with political reporter Dana Milbank. Basically the video includes Millbank asking you a series of questions about your political campaign.

I like this initiative. While it does little add to the news experience in any meaningful way, it illustrates that the Post is willing to let their hair down a bit. It positions them as hip and funny. The downside is that although there are guidelines posted asking videographers to behave, there's nothing to stop them from publishing this on a video sharing site in an unauthorized way. I am sure they calculated the risks vs. the rewards. (Hat tip to Podcasting News)

(I've been working on a series of videos where I insert myself into cable news talk shows as the second or third 'pundit' to refute their claims. If I had known WaPo would sanction this all along.... ;) -kc.)

Why Short Codes if you have the URL, SMS, Text, Phone Numbers etc.?

1. In print where space is scarce, you can imagine the following scenario. A lot of small classifieds in a newspaper can have one general QR Code and then for every individual classified a short code number. This way you can give an easy access to very small items (in a normal newspaper you can find items with a size of 0.5x3.9 cm)
2. In print this scenario is already in use, think about NZZimmo (Search with code from NZZ ad) for example, where you have next to every real estate ad in the newspaper a number which on the web you can type in to find more information about the object. With a short codes in your Kaywa Reader, you could now access this same information more quickly and easily without using a desktop computer.
3. As we haven't got yet the macro camera phones which are commonplace in Japan, we cannot go as small as 0.9 cm yet. With the short codes however we can provide a QR Code that is at the same time small and always of the same size.

Benkler on Calacanis

From Nicholas Garr's blog: Yochai Benkler on Calacanis's wallet.

YouTube APIs.. Is this new?

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

Hmmn.. This could be very interesting..!

"YouTube is excited to offer APIs to the developer community. Using our APIs, you can easily integrate online videos from YouTube's rapidly growing repository of videos into your application. The APIs currently allow read-only access to key parts of the YouTube video respository and user community."

Thanks Steven.

Suzanne Vega's live performance in Second Life

"Then again, you also have an artist who's stuck, expressionless, to her chair, a simulated guitar that refuses to properly attach, and an audience that's uniformly bald. (Attendees were required to remove all attachments, including hair pieces, to curb the lag that so many residents on a single server would inevitably cause.)"

Viacom and Google ink ad-backed video syndication deal

Google’s AdSense network is going to get its first big test of video ads under a new deal with Viacom’s MTV Networks. It will be an interesting syndication test: anyone with a website featuring AdSense will be able to embed an MTV Networks player featuring content including Nickelodeon’s “SpongeBob SquarePants” and MTV’s “Laguna Beach.” Along with last week’s AP announcement, this marks the second significant deal for Google in which it is partnering directly with a content provider. (Thanks, Mark!)

T-Vlog - vlogs on Copenhagen television

OPEN CALL FOR VIDEO - EVERYTHING IS UNDER REMOTE CONTROL

T-Vlog is a project that explores the interfaces between traditional local broadcast media and the global phenomenon of videoblogging, inspired by Matteo Pasquinelli’s Manifesto of Urban Televisions, with its statement the horizontality of the net must meet the ‘socializing; power of television&rdquo. T-Vlog is a direct link between the viewer and the transmission, enabling viewers/users to upload directly to an rss feed that goes live on TV, unmoderated. The channel where you can currently see T-Vlog is tv-tv an artist run non-commercial local TV-station in Copenhagen

CALL FOR WORKS

Next week, Tue-Thu., we are transmitting under the program title Remote Control. By uploading to www.t-vlog.net viewers/users will themselves be filling out the time slots!

We are not only looking for Danish or Scandinavian videobloggers to contribute but in keeping with our local-global concept we’d like to see videos from all over the world. And remember: We will not store the videos forever or claim any copyrights! The shows will be archived in compilation videos though – as a kind of TV version of the Node101 Anthology Film Archives shows.

You are welcome to upload any short video clips but please note that the max filesize is 40 mb. Everything will be transmitted on tv-tv during the dates below. Upload now or during the actual transmission - think of it as remote-controlling a whole tv-station.

By uploading to our row of transmissions next week you’ll be contributing to spreading the word about videoblogging in Denmark. We are organising collaborative vloggingexperiments and teaching people how to videoblog in connection to this project.

REMOTE CONTROL

Tuesday Aug. 8 , Wednesday Aug.9 , Thursday Aug.10, 23 - 01 hrs (wednesday to 00.30)

www.t-vlog.net

Apparently There Are No More Terrorists

How do I know this? Well, I don't. I can only infer it from the fact that the Department of Homeland Security is picking up people at the border for apparently nation-threatening involvement in T shirt copyright infringement. No, seriously.

Courtesy of Bruce Schneier's CRYPTO-GRAM, I was pointed to this gem, titled "Terrorist in a bootleg T-shirt". According to the piece's author, he was detained and questioned on entry into the US not on account of his time in the middle east, nor on account of his extensive phoning back and forth while in Pakistan. Instead, he apparently upset someone by selling Boston Celtics' sportswear without a license in Boston in 2003.

My fellow Americans, this is our tax dollars at work. The author has some pretty nasty words for Homeland Security, too.

Photo fake: When will they ever learn…?

Charles Johnson — who helped expose the fake CBS memos that brought Dan Rather down — has done it again, showing how a Reuters photographer (clumsily) faked a photo in Beirut yesterday to add more smoke to the skyline. This time, it didn’t take the news organization 11 days to respond; Reuters pulled the photo, suspended the photographer, Adnan Hajj, and apologized just now. If you’re going to use the tools of technology to tell, you’d better learn that there are people out there who are better at the tools than you are. Count this as an ass, fact-checked.

Third Voice

Today’s Tech Crunch posts made me think about a startup concept that’s been kicking around the net for awhile now. Through a VC friend of mine I heard about a sad tale about a company called Third Voice. This company’s software did something similar to what recent releases OthersOnline and Diigo are doing. The basic concept was to provide a message board and chat service that allowed people to leave comments about a given URL. I thought it was a pretty good idea. The Third Voice would provide a way for people to get reviews of products or services, discuss recent news and find out about crooked websites or poor service.

A buddy of mine and I heard about the concept (and it’s demise) and decided to take a whack at it. I was setting up the technical side of things when I started to look closely at the business model so I could develop the software requirements. I noticed more than a few problems with the concept when I was putting it through it’s paces designing the spec…

When I was doing research and looking around, I noticed that most site that the product would be useful on already had discussion, either in comments or a messageboard/forum. People usually discuss things like news, new products, music, etc. Well all of these things already have comment boxes. I love the idea of putting up a way for people to talk about a web 2.0 product or story…but that’s what techcrunch is for right? Amazon for books, various music sites for music… It just didn’t seem like there was a need that wasn’t being filled.

We thought about the use for doing reviews of a site or it’s product/service. But then we’d have to have a way to moderate it somehow to prevent people from slandering their business rivals or to give a business owner a chance to defend himself (granted most “forums” don’t do this, but it only seems fair if the product would be used mainly for reviews and hints). And then when looking at the list of sites I browse on a regular basis…not many need “reviews”. It just didn’t seem to be that useful…

I also took into consideration the resistance from website owners. In the wired article about the demise of Third Voice people referred to it as “digital graffiti”. And I would assume that a web site owner would prefer to have someone on his comment board, giving him more page views and community loyalty than to have some 3rd party app making a living off of his content. The more I thought about that, the less I liked it.

The final problem I saw was adoption. Installing an IE or firefox plugin is pretty easy. But really, how many people have the knowledge or inclination to do it? The thing about a forum is it takes a large volume of contributing users. You have to include everyone, even the people who render themselves technically incompetent. I tried all kinds of ideas…downloaded app, browser plugin, bookmarklet… just none of it seemed easy enough to set up to where you could get a large enough volume of people.

It’s possible that I over thought these issues or was a bit risk adverse. There are times when I wish we had just done it and thrown it out there (and I guess it’s not too late). I will be very interested to see how OthersOnline and Diigo do. I considered a social networking system like OthersOnline, but my problem is that surfing habits aren’t all that indicative of personality or traits. Look in your browser History right now and look at the last 20 sites you went to. Are these the things you want to be associated with? (if you’re reading this in the evening and you’ve got porn in your history, you know what I’m talking about). I think Diigo could be very valuable, but it has some of the “digital graffiti” aspect to it. The annotation feature was something I’d considered previously and I think it’s a great, great idea. I think this product could really go far, if they can get people to adopt it.

Even with all of it’s problems, I think the Third Voice concept has a lot of merit. In a more offline context, the idea of being able to leave little warnings or notes or interesting comments at various places in the real world is very intriguing and would be good to model online. For example wouldn’t it be great if you could access (useful) notes / tips / trivia / warnings when you were in a strange city (”Warning: Do not flirt with the redheaded bartender, she’s prone to violence”). That same concept would be wonderful on the web. I’m glad that there a few people playing on the edge of this space so I can see how it works out. And RIP to Third Voice.

The big business of unblocking MySpace

Newly passed US legislation proposes that all “chat rooms” and “social networking sites” should be blocked and rendered inaccessible to minors in all public places, including schools and libraries. This leave kids scrambling to get on to the wickedly popular MySpace website, and to get their IM fix.

As more schools and offices are blocking IM services and MySpace, proxy servers such as “Box of Prox” are springing up like wildfire. System administrators and content filterers are not able to keep up the rapid pace that these proxy servers are being created.

What do you use to bypass filters established by your network provider?

Duran Duran Headed to Second Life

We’ll bring you more details later today (I’m blogging this from the Brooklyn courts building, where I’m on jury duty, maddeningly), but 3pointD has just got word that the “80s supergroup” we told you would be setting foot in the virtual world is none other than Duran Duran. I don’t have access to all the details while I’m here sitting in judgment on my peers, so you’ll have to wait until this afternoon before I can bring you more on just what Nick and Simon have planned, but it’s so far going by the name The Virtual World Experience, designed and created by Rivers Run Red, in association with Sony/BMG Music Entertainment. One thing that’s interesting is that the project seems to have been driven as much by the band’s interest in the virtual world as by RRR’s interest in getting the band on its client roster. Stay tuned for updates.

Review of Convergence Culture, by Henry Jenkins

I read Henry Jenkins’s new book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide this weekend. The book is a short, smart, buttery read on a hot topic, and it is sure to draw both popular and academic interest. Jenkins is a multifaceted media scholar, a critic of vaudeville, fan fiction, comics, film, games, and more. He is also the founder of the Education Arcade, an MIT group interested in the intersection of videogames and learning. And so, even though the book addresses games as a minority subject, I offer this review to alert our readers to Jenkins’s current thinking. In a future post, I will attempt to address what convergence might mean for videogames with an agenda.

Originally from Water Cooler Games at August 1, 2006, 15:07, published by Pau Waelder

Thursday: The future is aggregation

A new study by market research group In-Stat and reported in MediaDailyNews finds that the market for online video will increase by tenfold in the next four years. The big winners? Content aggregator companies:

As one of its foundational premises, the In-Stat report notes that "within the very near future," individuals will control what, when, and how they see all the programming of interest to them. Furthermore, In-Stat asserts that this consumer-controlled delivery will be dominated by major content aggregators like AOL, Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Apple--which are increasingly able to "blend professional video with their high-touch services that follow consumers from screen to screen," Kaufhold (Gerry Kaufhold, a principal analyst for Converging Markets and Technologies) says.

According to In-Stat, 12.8 percent of broadband-equipped households around the world are already viewing content via an online aggregator. And the raw numbers can only grow as broadband penetration jumps from about 194 million households in 2005 to 413 million worldwide by 2010.

broadcasters have to adopt two strategies in order to be competitive. One, we must unbundle our content to play in this space and, two, we must get into the aggregator business themselves, and I think this has to happen at the local level.

Funny the report doesn't mention youTube, the 800-pound gorilla of online video aggregators.

Eye-tracker Quake controls!

Hmm. The problem with this guy is he assumes everyone's seen eye-trackers before and that we won't think he's just controlling the game from under the table.

Where's his other hand? Ahahh!

OK: I jest. I am prepared to believe that eye-trackers exist, and I suppose now that this sort of computer voodoo will probably be mainstream by, like, tomorrow, and that I've just not been keeping up with the latest in awesome hardware developments. Sigh.

Question though: how the hell do you aim?

Super cool eyetracking Quake controls.

(Thanks Adam B!)

Josh Wolf and Civil Disobedience

Freelance journalist Josh Wolf is in jail for patriotically practicing civil disobedience and his life must be sucking right now because of it. If you have never read Thoreau’s civil disobedience, catch up.

Josh Wolf is in prison because federal authorities are over-stepping anti-terrorism and jurisdiction laws to prosecute local-level events. The FBI demanded he hand over footage he recorded at a protest in San Francisco where a police car was burned. They want the footage to see if they can find the car burner. The FBI is on the case because they consider the burning of a police car an act of terrorism akin to a foreign unlawful combattant bombing an American city. Josh and his lawyer believe this a clear abuse of power and misinterpretation of the anti-terror laws.

The reason the FBI are allowed to prosecute as a federal case is federal dollars partially fund the SF Police’s Departments budget and thus it was an attack against the U. S. goverment. This is a very scary premise that is being used all over the country by the feds. Did the event happen on a highway, well that’s federal jurisdiction? Did it happen in a library that gets federal funding? Under this math, where aren’t federal dollars spent? I really don’t like this abuse of jurisdiction, especailly when the definition of terrorist in this case is very different than how most Americans define it.

Catching car burners is not how terrorists are caught. It’s how thieves and people needing anger management classes are caught. Real terrorists do not get caught up in petty local protests. They do not form book groups at the library. They are covert and underground. They are very hard to find track and discover. We need our Feds to be spending all their time doing this very hard work! Finding aggressive vandals just lets federal agents feel like they are making us safer when only their heads are in the sand. Heck they haven’t even found them, they haven’t any evidence and think his video will lead to the end of fears.

Josh Wolf is in prison because he has violated the law as it stands. Laws that he thinks are unjust. So much so that he’s willing to screw up his whole life just to say in the loudest voice that he can that our federal law enforcement has gotten off track. What would I do in the situation, I don’t know. But Josh has made his decision and I respect it immensely.

If you think this is a case of significance you could support his legal defense fund.

[Photo from National Lawyers Guild]

Ryan Is Hungry » Josh Wolf: Federal Grand Jury Appearance

A videoblogger is being sued:

Ryan Is Hungry » Josh Wolf: Federal Grand Jury Appearance: “We went to Josh Wolf’s Grand Jury appearance earlier this week. The video is 10 minutes long, but has good information and we wanted to document as much of the event as possible.

As we understand it, the Federal prosecutors want him to turn over a raw video tape he recorded during a protest over a year ago. Josh refuses to hand it over and now, potentially, faces jail time.
Here’s the original video that got Josh in trouble.

At this hearing last Thursday, July 20th, the judge extended his judgement till August 1st. Go to joshwolf.net for more updates.

Why should any of us care?
For us, it’s important to support journalists or anyone with a camera being harassed by the government to turn over recordings of public events that each of us has every right to record. We don’t want the government, local or federal, to make it a habit of asking for anything we happen to record. Then we each might question: “Do I want to record this and be harassed later on?” This is especially true during controversial political events.

The good news was this-
At Josh’s press conference, there were about 30 people there. Mostly regular people. 40% of the people had some kind of recording device: audio, video, digital photo, and plain old notebook. Its very cool to see that we all realize that we have the power to disseminate information we think is important. Things can be remembered and discussed without permission.”

Social technology and the hidden dimension of time

Anthony Giddens, British sociologist and one of my long-time personal guiding lights, has characterized the primary interest of sociology as an effort “to explicate how the limitations of individual ‘presence’ are transcended by the ‘stretching’ of social relations across time and space.” It’s always seemed to me that the growing adoption of social technologies–like this very one here–into our communication practices (activities, coordination, exchange, commmerce, learning, etc.) serves as a direct reflection of this “stretching of social relations across time and space.” I’ve felt that these technologies line a frontier defined by concerns that touch our society and culture deeply. And that our very proximity to one another is shaped and informed by our use of these technologies to conduct our lives in non face-to-face communications.

We often speak of proximity as a matter of space, of closeness, nearness, even touch. We’ve seen that distance collapse, foreshortened by the spin of a mouse on the point of a click. Who among us is not a click away? But interestingly, I think, the dimension that’s transformed most by social media is time, not space. It’s time in the sense that the duration, episode, and rhythm of our interactions with others is radically lightened by social technologies, faciliated by a medium that has no “there” there, presented but not with a deep presence. It’s a strange thing, this discontinuous time of media. Things happen, but are not tied together, perhaps because we have such difficulty negotiating our availability and thus presence to others. Interruptions occur so frequently they become a continuity in and of themselves. We’ll have 16 tracks of conversation going but at different time signatures, and our presence to and in all of them will feel more fragmented than whole.

I don’t know what a p2p take on temporality might look like. I think the discipline is more inclined to spatial and visual maps and representations. But time and temporality are of paramount importance to production coordination, action sequencing and the organization of dependencies in the distribution of work, and so on. We have long departed from a simple “serial” time and temporality. But might the organization of social relations by p2p not better accommodate time than it currently does?

P2P International Currency Exchange

[via P2P Blog]

[bliki | what is a bliki?]

Moneytwins.com describes itself as:

“..the first service that allows individuals and small companies to exchange their foreign currency notes directly with each other without using the services of a bank. There is a unique price for each currency at which transactions happen, the same that is used by the largest financial institutions,…”

Many people just keep foreign money as a souvenir, because it is often not worth exchanging it upon returning home. Or, sometimes, in my case I give it to friends and family travelling to the same destination.

Moneytwins.com seeks to become a way to find other people who want that currency, and trade with them at current exchange rates, and without fees. (Moneytwins has started out offering the service for free to attract users. Eventually, they plan on charging a small listing fee of about .05%, similar to what ebay is doing, see this interview). The money is then exchanged at a pre-arranged location, or via shipping through delivery services like UPS or DHL. Security is based around a reputation system, where users rate past transactions.Moneytiwns also wants to facilitate remittance of money between immigrants and their families back home.
This is a great idea. Although the Moneytwins application still has some bugs to work out of their system, based upon my experience of registering there and looking around.

Securing A P2P Currency Exchange

Another consideration with P2P currency exchanges, and P2P banking functions in general, is that international organized crime could seek to use these systems as a way to launder money. The Moneytiwns model is moving in the right direction by employing reputation systems. However, if people wanted to launder money through a system like this, they could easily set up hundreds of ID’s. They would be motivated to maintain good reputations, because their incentive is to find an easy way to transform and hide currencies, and not to stand out in the system. A P2P currency exchange could help organized crime achieve at least one money laundering function. Reputation alone would would not be enough of a deterrent. In this case, reputation would have to be combined with some sort of accurate identity verification.

There are similar security considerations for exchanging money to and from virtual worlds, like Second Life, and game worlds like Ultima Online. These virtual and game worlds are beginning to feature money exchanges from real world money to virtual currency. Or, in some cases, we see a market of people selling virtual currency for real currency in online auction sites like ebay. These systems could also be targets for money launderers, because they potentially allow people to disguise or fake identity.

Mentos Celebrates Diet Coke Video Meme with Contest

Tags: mentos, dietcoke, youtube, meme

Why Wikipedia works (it's not the hive mind)

Dirk Riehle posts an interview with several active Wikipedians on "How and Why Wikipedia Works." Lots of detail, plus this interesting nugget (that Science Library Pad caught):

DR: What about the 'collective intelligence' or 'collective wisdom' argument: That given enough authors, the quality of an article will generally improve? Does this hold true for Wikipedia?
EB: No, it does not. The best articles are typically written by a single or a few authors with expertise in the topic. In this respect, Wikipedia is not different from classical encyclopedias.
KN: Elian is right. Also, most of the short articles remain short and of rather poor content.

Technorati Tags: encyclopedia, wiki

The Transformation of the Web: How Emerging Communities Shape the Information we Consume

Abstract: This paper presents an overview of a broad selection of current technologies and services: blogs, wikis including Wikipedia and Wikinews, social networks such as Friendster and Orkut as well as related social services like del.icio.us, file sharing tools such as Flickr, and podcasting. These services enable user participation on the Web and manage to recruit a large number of users as authors of new content. It is argued that the transformations the Web is subject to are not driven by new technologies but by a fundamental mind shift that encourages individuals to take part in developing new structures and content. The evolving services and technologies encourage ordinary users to make their knowledge explicit and help a collective intelligence to develop.

Automatically Geotag Your Digital Photos

Sony is introducing a new GPS device that will let you easily add geolocative information to digital photo files and browse your snaps via a Google Maps app using Sony’s Picture Motion Browser. According to a press release, the two-ounce GPS-CS1 GPS device ($150 when it goes on sale on SonyStyle.com in September) is about three and a half inches long and simply clips onto your belt loop or keychain and records your location over time, as near as I can figure. You then import the GPS information, and some Sony image-tracking software matches locations to photos based on timestamps.

Once synchronized, your photos can become virtual push pins on an online map by activating the Picture Motion Browser software bundled with the latest Sony cameras and camcorders released after July. You can easily add new photos and coordinates to the mapping web site, courtesy of Google Maps, and showcase years of globe-trotting.

Neat. Would love to hear more about this, if anyone has any links.

SL Business Mag Launches

The new business magazine for the virtual world of Second Life (which I blogged last week) published its first issue yesterday. Though the mag’s Web site is a bit confusing to navigate and the publishers have stayed with their decision to use PDF rather than a more Web-friendly format, the writing in the articles is by and large better than that found in most SL publications. The content, however, leaves something to be desired, as it seems to be aimed mostly at new residents who don’t yet have a business presence on the Grid. That said, it’s interesting to see a wider range of content creators featured in a publication like this. The question is whether the current incarnation — both in terms of content and format — will be sustainable.

I won’t belabor the PDF question except to wonder whether it will put a brake on downloads. It doesn’t seem to stop the Metaverse Messenger, however, if their circulation figures are to be believed, and their PDF is even harder to read than SL Business’s. SL Business, in fact, looks absolutely great. The problem is, its content doesn’t quite live up to its image, and one is left wondering why a disproportionate amount of effort has been spent on the visuals.

The mag, even at 60 pages(!), doesn’t really deliver the kind of news and business information it seems to promise. Almost every article is either a brief tutorial of only the most basic aspects of SL business life — snapshots, music streaming, fashion design — or brief profiles of various content creators. Two articles — one on copyright and IP, and one on investment opportunities — contain so little useful information that they’d have been better off left out, in my opinion. There’s also a real lack of anything resembling economic or business data, data that SL proprietors would find quite useful, I’d imagine.

As noted, it’s great to see a wider range of content creators featured in a publication like this, but the book ends up coming off more as a shopping mag than anything else. Keep in mind that a good shopping mag would be a great boon to SL, and if SL Business were somehow to morph into that kind of animal, I’d imagine it could be great success. Also note that many of those profiled also have an ad in the mag, often opposite their profiles. It would be good to know whether these were comped or paid, and exactly what the relationship between advertising and editorial is. If it’s a pay-to-play arrangement, be open about it; it won’t necessarily drive readers away.

Part of the problem will be to sustain the tone and volume of the content. There are only so many tutorials one can publish. And producing 60 pages a month in an environment like SL will also be a strain, I’d imagine. Even the tutorials themselves could go a bit deeper; most of them hardly give any more information than SL itself provides.

I look forward to seeing what SL Business becomes. If it remains what it is now, I think it will be of limited usefulness — although it would definitely be a good place to discover the odd piece of new content. If it refines its focus somewhat, it could be really good. And if it provides Web content in addition to a PDF, it could catch on in a big way. I do think it’s great to see new media outlets crop up in Second Life, though, and I wish SL Biz the best of luck.

OhmyNews Citizen Reporters' Forum video

Here's an excellent collection of videos from the July 2006 OhmyNews Citizen Reporters' Forum in Seoul.

It's not journalists versus bloggers

I was going to write some thoughts about Columbia J-School dean Nicholas Lemann's New Yorker hatchet job on citizens media, but Jeff Jarvis has done such an excellent job that I'll simply point to him. MUST read stuff.

Mobile phone video from both sides of Lebanon war

(Thanks, Paul Lamb!)

Joe Garafoli writes in the San Francisco Chronicle about the appearance online of phone videos from both sides of the conflict in Lebanon and Israel.

Julien created BloggingBeirut.com 18 months ago as a romantic pursuit -- a way to share the beauty of his native Lebanon with a woman he met in graduate school in New York. That relationship dissolved, but last week BloggingBeirut was getting 400,000 hits a day after Julien, who asked that his last name not be published, posted video shot on cell phones of his beloved hometown now ravaged by war.

In a town in northern Israel last week, 16-year-old Guy Naveh posted footage on the video-sharing site YouTube.com that he shot with a digital camera from the balcony of his family's apartment. He wanted friends in other parts of Israel and relatives in the United States to sense the panic people feel when an air raid siren blows. More than 9,000 people have seen Naveh's video, including a friend of his who wanted to shoot a video, too, Naveh wrote in an e-mail, "but his mother don't want him to go outside."

"When you watch a video you can almost feel what the camera man did," Naveh wrote. "And when you read a text ... well ... you need to use your imagination."

Video-sharing technology is revolutionizing how people far from the battlefield understand the latest Middle East war. Experts predict that the edgy, personalized clips being passed around worldwide soon will influence traditional broadcast news by infusing it with the passion of citizen journalists, who are reporting as rockets crash onto their neighborhoods.

From popular video-sharing sites like YouTube to amateur blogs floating in the Internet ether, viewers are seeing footage shot by the shaky hand of someone living where the bombs are falling in Israel and Lebanon -- and they are feeling their fear. This type of street-level, first-person footage, or guerrilla filmmaking, has been seen less from citizens of Iraq or Afghanistan, experts said, because the technology infrastructure and power supply is inferior to that in the more prosperous Israel and Lebanon.
...

As for the credibility of video floating around the Internet, Global Vision offers this advice to journalists on its Web site, www.globalvoicesonline.org:

"Quote from any blog at your own risk, just as you quote from any source at your own risk. And as with any source, anonymous blogs must pass a much higher credibility threshold than blogs whose authors make their identity public and their allegiances clear."

How to find them

URLs for videos and videobloggers mentioned in this article:

Mohammad Soubra's video can be found at: www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=msoubra

Guy Naveh's video can be found at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-nEphWmM0M

Julien's blog can be found at: www.BloggingBeirut.com

Jaron Gilinsky's report from Haifa can be found by searching Current TV's site, www.current.tv/pods/news/PD03937

Global Voices Online is at www.globalvoicesonline.org

E-mail Joe Garofoli at jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com.

Carnival of the Mobilists # 38

This week’s Carnival is at SmartMobs and a very fine job Judy Breck has done as moderator.

Congrats to Rudy and Stephanie for winning host and post of the month in the awards sponsored by Khosla Ventures for June.

From now on we’ll still to the new Monday morning timetable as it seems more popular with readers and hosts have the weekend to polish things.

Making the jump from one-man blog to community website

This month, Roderick expanded his site, adding three additional blogs and a slew of contributors, shifting LA Observed from a one-man blog to an emerging community portal. Roderick answered questions about the changes in a telephone interview with OJR.

Josh Wolf - Civil Contempt Hearing Today

Josh Wolf, the videoblogging journalist who has been brought before the Grand Jury by the Feds in order to obtain raw footage of a protest he documented, has been charged with civil contempt. His hearing is today.

Ryan Hodson, on her new site, Ryan Is Hungry, posted an interview with Josh concerning the trial and the ramifications of forcing journalists to give up their rights.

It’s ten minutes of time well spent in order to understand what is at stake with this trial.

Josh needs donations in order to pay for this battle. So far, he’s raised two thousand dollars but may need much more if the trials continue.

Preserve your right to record.

- Anne

News websites' "most e-mailed" lists can be deceiving

Chicago Tribune

That's because what motivates a person to e-mail a story is often different from what motivates that person to read one, says Steve Johnson. "Talk to people involved in digital publishing, and mostly they'll tell you that a story rises to the level of being e-mailed when it contains practical advice or cautionary tales -- on travel, say, or diet -- or when it has a 'holy-cow' factor," he writes. "Sometimes that means hard-news stories, as in, 'Holy cow, Israel is dropping bombs in Lebanon.' More often, though, it seems to be on the order of, 'Holy cow, a man tried to molest a cow.'"

Makes sense, and explains the breathless prose style of top headlines on Digg or Cosmo. --MM

Originally posted by Jim Romenesko from Romenesko, ReBlogged by migurski on Aug 1, 2006 at 12:29 PM

Wireless Warfare in the Streets

The Wi-Fi in Your Handset - New York Times

It's a pretty innocuous headline and photo, but make no mistake this is an early salvo in what looks to be a heated battle over the control of the wireless infrastructure. The cell phone service providers are on one side, the equipment makers and software companies on the other. Governments? They are both omnipresent yet conspicuously absent from the core of the debate, they seem to only have a clue as to what is happening at certain key junctures (ie when municipal WiFi discussions get serious like in SF or Philadelphia).

Originally posted by Abe from Abstract Dynamics, ReBlogged by migurski on Aug 1, 2006 at 12:38 PM

Contour: A Novel Technique for Modeling and Capture

I suppose the big game industry news of the day is the cancellation of the yearly E3 tradeshow (who gives a crap, it was just a big marketing fest), but more interesting is the announcement of a new technology for digitally capturing super-high resolution models and motion of actors, called Contour. See articles in the NYTimes and Wall Street Journal. It’s developed by entrepeneur and inventor Steve Perlman (veteran Apple guy, General Magic, WebTV) and to be demoed at this week’s Siggraph in Boston. See and read more at his website, Mova.com.

Instead of placing a mesh of glowing dots all over the actor’s face and filming her from various angles to create a moderately hi-res model and motion capture, Contour mixes fluorescent powder into the actor’s makeup, and captures monochromatic shaded images of the actor’s face while she performs under seemingly normal lighting conditions — made possible with modified strobe-like fluorescent lights. The result is an extremely high resolution digital model, photographed textures and motion capture of the actor’s face. (Animators have to manually add detail to places makeup can’t go, like eyeballs and inside the mouth). Effectively each grain of makeup is like a motion-capture dot, allowing for very very hi-res, and low-cost, capture — “volumetric cinematography”. Brilliant! (literally)

This has immediate applications to filmmaking, as the articles describe, as well as to motion-capture oriented videogames. On purely visual terms, Contour does seem to make major progress towards crossing the uncanny valley, for linear (non-interactive) playback of an actor’s performance.

But, it does nothing to cross what one might call the uncanny valley of AI — how to generate believable interactive behavior. Canned motion capture sequences are of little help when implementing highly dynamic, procedurally animated interactive characters.

MTP, Portable Player Standard? Microsoft’s McLauchlan Sets Us Straight

Portable music player technology isn't as simple as it once was. With digital music files have come new restrictions from the music labels on how music is played and transferred, as well as discussion of various specifications for connecting devices to computers. In a June 16 story on Platform-Agnostic Drag-and-Drop Music Listening, I suggested lovers of independent music might be better off foregoing both Digital Rights Management (DRM) and Microsoft's preferred connection mechanism, the Media Transfer Protocol (MTP).

There has been a lot of criticism of DRM, but in the process, a lot of people have missed the details on Microsoft's MTP. I advocated using the older USB Media Storage Class (MSC) connection method because it's compatible out-of-the-box with Mac and Linux as well as Windows. But I did note that MTP isn't itself “DRM,” since many of its features are unrelated to music, let alone music DRM. That launched a semi-interesting debate with Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow, and in the process we learned many of you really can't stand Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow.

The best way to learn something about a technology, though, is to talk to someone who actually develops it. Dave McLauchlan from the Windows Media Devices Group at Microsoft wrote me privately to rebut some of what I said, make some corrections, and set the record straight on the Windows Media devices and specifically MTP. Dave is himself a musician — see his music site, and note that even though he works for Microsoft, his music is available on iTunes via CDBaby and in non-DRMed MP3 downloads. His response isn't the one-sided DRM advocacy you might expect, though he has some pragmatic points to make about DRM, as well. Most interesting to me is some of the insight he provides on how these technologies are evolving for music use. I stand by my claim that musicians should consider sidestepping labels and selling non-DRMed music direct to their listeners. But there's plenty to be learned here.

(Continued at CreateDigitalMusic.)

Happy Birthday Current TV!

10. "The little network that could" literally has defied all odds and expectations gaining major distribution on ComCast's digital tier.

9. Current has pioneered viewer created advertising (V-CAMs) by giving our viewers the opportunity to create ads they want to watch. We have already aired a couple on the network, and awarded our first V-CAM producer $5K for having an ad used on another website!

8. In addition to winning numerous awards for our own programming and broadcast design, we have also had VC2 producers like Crystal Frambrini and Marco Franzoni win prestigious awards for their Current TV Pods.

7. Over the past year we have hired or done exclusive deals with VC2 producers Joe Hanson, Mark Rinehart, Adrian Baschuk and Roberto Grijalva.

6. When we launched with VC2, we thought maybe it would make up about 5-10 percent of the network. It has exploded to 30 percent and continues to grow.

5. The fact that we are reinventing journalism.

4. Expanding into other mediums to tell stories in ways that allow even more people to participate.

3. Pods like this uploaded to our Website.

2. Current folks meeting together offline.

1. Comments like these on our message boards.

News is a constant

The latest Pew study on news usage is out (David Newberger does a great job picking the good bits) but this is what struck me:

The consumption use of news across media is fairly constant. Use of newspapers is shrinking. Says Pews: “…even the highest estimate of daily newspaper readership — 43% for both print and online readers –­ is still well below the number reading a print newspaper on a typical day 10 years ago (50%).” That leads some to believe that interest in news is thus decreasing, but Pew says that’s not the case:

The rise of the internet has also not increased the overall news consumption of the American public. The percentage of Americans who skip the news entirely on a typical day has not declined since the 1990s. Nor are Americans spending any more time with the news than they did a decade ago when their news choices were much more limited. In 1996, people on average spent slightly more than an hour (66 minutes) getting the news from TV, radio or newspapers. Currently, they spend virtually the same amount of time (67 minutes) getting the news from all major news sources, the internet included.

: Oh, and tell this to Jack Shafer:

But one constant remains: Local and community news continues to be the biggest draw for newspapers. And as was the case during the mid-1980s, roughly nine-in-ten of those who at least sometimes read a newspaper say they spend a significant amount of time getting the news about their city, town or region.

People who say they logged on for news yesterday spent 32 minutes, on average, getting the news online. That is significantly less than the average number of minutes that newspaper readers, radio news listeners, and TV news viewers spend with those sources. And while nearly half of all Americans (48%) spend at least 30 minutes getting news on television, just 9% spend that long getting news online.

I think that’s a bit of a red herring. The use of each medium is different: one passive and time-based, another directed and involved. Even so, it’s clear that the internet is not taking over news. It is remixing news time. Says Pew:

The web serves mostly as a supplement to other sources rather than a primary source of news. Those who use the web for news still spend more time getting news from other sources than they do getting news online. In addition, web news consumers emphasize speed and convenience over detail. Of the 23% who got news on the internet yesterday, only a minority visited newspaper websites. Instead, websites that include quick updates of major headlines, such as MSNBC, Yahoo, and CNN, dominate the web-news landscape.

To some degree, news consumers are drawn to the internet for the very reason that it does

not take much time to get news online. Most users say what distinguishes web news is its format and accessibility ­ the ease of navigation, speed with which information can be gathered, and convenience “at my fingertips.”

I wonder whether there is a way to get another measure of news: how many stories, how many topics, hoe much information, rather than just how much time. In other words: If you spend 30 minutes watching TV news, you get a handful of stories. If you spend 30 minutes online, you could get dozens of stories or you could spend a long time on one. Time is not the best measure. I want to know about the number of news nuggets mined.

Much more to dig into in the Pew survey….

: LATER: Nicholas Carr writes about the survey, too. He tries, as usual, to turn this into a confrontation, though I don’t think it is; it’s all a matter of degree and time but the trends are the trends.

(By the way, Carr never passes up an opportunity to snipe at me as his resident philistine, which is fine, and I’ve parried back. But I’ll also note that when we met at an Annenberg event, he didn’t have the guts to say any of that, face-to-face. I sought him and and joked that we were matter meeting antimatter. He did not discuss his apparent efforts to feud. But then he got back online and immediately brought out the rifle again. It’s odd to define oneself by what one is not but if you do that, I suppose you need to find or manufacture an opposite number. This is all beside the point. And that’s my point.)

University of Buffalo Points to Digitized Fingertip

The upcoming Siggraph conference, which starts Sunday, will see demonstrations of a boatload of interesting new technologies, among them a fingertip digitizer developed by researchers at the University of Buffalo’s Virtual Reality Laboratory (which has a bunch of other cool projects going, to boot).

A small thimble-shaped device worn on the tip of a finger, the digitizer is interesting as an input device. Imagine dragging your finger across the surface of a solid object and having it gradually take shape on your screen, complete with surface texture. While devices exist to do such things already, a fingertip is arguably a more intuitive and responsive device than any stylus or other peripheral. The UB lab has also developed cool stuff like a touch-based CAD device. Toss ‘em all in the pot and you could very well have a powerful interface that closes the gap between personal intention and what a computer understands. [Via What’s Next Network.]