Tits&Tats Reblogged

Burble London

2007-09-04T15:54:00.000+02:00

Burble London, open to the public to celebrate London Fashion Week, will lift-off at 8pm sharp on Sunday September 16, 2007 at Holland Park, London. It appears as a "golden spectacle", part of the Moët Mirage evening, commissioned by Moët & Chandon.

The Burble is a massive structure reaching up towards the sky, composed of approximately 1000 extra-large helium balloons each of which contains microcontrollers and LEDs that create spectacular patterns of light across the surface of the structure. The public, both audience and performer, come together to control this immense rippling, glowing, bustling 'Burble' that sways in the evening sky, in response to movements of the long articulated interactive handle bar at the base of the structure. The ephemeral experience exists at such a large scale that it is able to compete visually in an urban context with the buildings that surround it.

-> More at http://www.haque.co.uk/burblelondon.php

Teleshadow - the live iPod ad creator

2007-08-16T13:34:00.000+02:00

“Shadows are being used by Japanese researchers as an non-intrusive way for friends to stay in touch. Called Teleshadow the system pipes video of what people are doing at home via the net to their friends’ houses. But instead of showing images in full motion and colour, Teleshadow turns them into shadow outlines projected on the inside of a small decorative lamp. Creator Shunpei Yasuda said the shadow presence system aims to fill the gap between live video and static images.

Mr Yasuda, a post-graduate student in Media Design at Japan’s Keio University, said the inspiration for the system came from Japanese history. For many years, he said, Japanese homes have had Shoji or paper walls that divide some rooms. The thin walls preserve some privacy but the shadows cast on the paper as people move about also act as a reminder of that person’s presence…” Continue reading Shadow lamps to connect friends by Mark Ward, BBC News.

[via Networked_Performance]

To read: Second Person - Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media

2007-08-10T14:12:00.000+02:00

-> http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11000

Brilliant New WWF Billboard

2007-08-09T11:38:00.000+02:00

a brilliant dynamic billboard idea, created by WWF Canada, using an awning to cast a shadow, representing rising ocean levels, addressing the current issue of climate change.
[link: youtube.com & wwf.ca|via migurski|via information aesthetics]

Prometeus - The Media Revolution

2007-06-15T13:46:00.000+02:00

Man is God.
He is everywhere, he is anybody, he knows everything.

This is the Prometeus new world.

All started with the Media Revolution, with Internet, at the end of the last century.
Everything related to the old media vanished: Gutenberg, the
copyright, the radio, the television, the publicity.

The old world reacts: more restrictions for the copyright, new laws against non authorized copies. Napster, the music peer to peer company is sued.

At the same time, free internet radio appears;
TIVO, the internet television, allows to avoid publicity; the Wall Street Journal goes on line; Google launches Google news.

Millions of people read daily the biggest on line newspaper. Ohmynews written by thousands of journalists; Flickr becomes the biggest repository in the history of photos, YouTube for movies.

The power of the masses.

A new figure emerges: the prosumer, a producer and a consumer of information. Anyone can be a prosumer.

The news channels become available on Internet.

The blogs become more influential than the old media.

The newspapers are released for free.

Wikipedia is the most complete encyclopedia ever.

In 2007 Life magazine closes.

The NYT sells its television and declares that the future is digital. BBC follows.

In the main cities of the world people are connected for free.

At the corners of the streets totems print pages from blogs and digital magazines.

The virtual worlds are common places on the Internet for millions of people.

A person can have multiple on line identities.

Second Life launches the vocal avatar.

The old media fight back.

A tax is added on any screen; newspapers, radios and televisions are financed by the State; illegal download from the web is punished with years of jail.

Around 2011 the tipping point is reached: the publicity investments are done on the Net. The electronic paper is a mass product: anyone can read anything on plastic paper.

In 2015 newspapers and broadcasting television disappear, digital terrestrial is abandoned, the radio goes on the Internet.

The media arena is less and less populated. Only the Tyrannosaurus Rex survives. The Net includes and unifies all the content. Google buys Microsoft. Amazon buys Yahoo! and become the world universal content leaders with BBC, CNN and CCTV.

The concept of static information - books, articles, images - changes and is transformed into knowledge flow.

The publicity is chosen by the content creators, by the authors and becomes information, comparison, experience.

In 2020 Lawrence Lessig, the author of 'Free Culture', is the new US Secretary of Justice and declares the copyright illegal.

Devices that replicate the five senses are available in the virtual worlds. The reality could be replicated in Second Life.

Any one has an Agav (agent-avatar) that finds information, people, places in the virtual worlds.

In 2022 Google launches Prometeus, the Agav standard interface.

Amazon creates Place, a company that replicates reality. You can be on Mars, at the battle of Waterloo, at the Super Bowl as a person. It's real.

In 2027 Second Life evolves into Spirit. People become who they want.

And share the memory. The experiences. The feelings. Memory selling becomes a normal trading.

In 2050 Prometeus buys Place and Spirit. Virtual life is the biggest market on the planet. Prometeus finances all the space missions to find new worlds for its customers: the terrestrial avatar.

Experience is the new reality.

[via Bruce Sterling]

Participatory Urbanism

2007-06-06T17:01:00.000+02:00

Participatory Urbanism presents an important new shift in mobile device usage - from communication tool to “networked mobile personal measurement instrument”. We explore how these new "instruments" enable entirely new participatory urban lifestyles and create novel mobile device usage models.

-> read more...

Paola246

2007-05-14T11:53:00.000+02:00

The talk of Belgian Blogger-town was a new site by a young lady called Paola. She stormed into the blogosphere with all the usual weapons: blog, myspace, twitter, youtube and Flickr. Some high-rated flemish bloggers launched her by dropping her name on twitter or linking to her on their blog which started the buzz.
Since she was good looking and that it sounded like she had some speech-training, a lot of people were reminded of Lonelygirl15, a series of youtube movies of a girl called Bree which was revealed by the New York Times as staged by a filmmaker looking for some fame.

After a week, 2 Flemish bloggers (Luc Van Braekel and Robin Wauters) found out who was behind it, so the creators were forced to come out quite early. Paola246 appeared to be an experiment of HetPaleis, a Flemish youth theater. They wanted to create an interactive play and how the online world could be used for such a production. The complete press-release (in Dutch) can be read here. The production was in collaboration with K&L and CHIPS VZW.

Check out the buzz in Dutch.

[original at adromag.net]

Martin Varsavsky & FON

2007-04-18T08:18:00.000+02:00

Löic Le Meur has posted a new episode of his video podcast:

"Martin Varsavsky, well known spanish serial entrepreneur and one of my best friends, shows us around FON and VPOD Madrid and explains how he builds a global company from there."

MEETING OF MINDS: 'The user is the content' - April 26-27, 2007 - Antwerp, Belgium

2007-04-12T13:20:00.000+02:00

Recent changes in hard- and software have supported the way of using/reusing and creating/recreating information. For anyone who wants to do so, it is now possible to create, to publish online, to make her/his own video or music creation, and share all this with others on the Internet.

Indeed technological developments empowered people to express themselves and allowed them to participate in projects and share creations on a much larger scale than before. They also transformed the business of content distribution since part of the users is no longer interested in the whole lot offered by for instance news papers or music labels, but in their own selection of it.

What is the value of this content? What is the impact of it on traditional media and publishing? Will we evolve to a more flexible copyright system? What are the influences of nations/states/regions and other regulators of the online/mobile market? These issues will be discussed more deeply during a Meeting of Minds and will be challenged afterwards by the future scenarios presented.

Experts meet during the day, but the discussion will not be restricted to specialists. We also want to hear your voice at two public events. Registration for the two events is free. Use the registration form.

'Radiobooks' go worldwide

2007-04-01T10:21:00.000+02:00

Radiobooks are books written by Flemish and Dutch writers, never to be published on paper. These books are read once by the original authors, broadcasted once on public radio and from there on only available through podcasting.
Originally these books were available in Dutch. But now they will be translated in English, French, Spanish and Indonisian.

The first radiobook available to a worldwide audience is 'Who drank Hector Hernandez' from the award winning Flemish writer Dimitri Verhulst.

ENGLISH: Radiobooks -> www.radiobooks.be
FRENCH: Radiolivres -> www.radiolivres.be
SPANISH: Radiolibros -> www.radiolibros.be
DUTCH: Radioboeken -> www.radioboeken.be

The First Major Web 3.0 Application

2007-03-13T17:07:00.000+01:00

Danny Hillis has launched an early version of what might just be the the first major Web 3.0 application. The application called Freebase, has its aims right in line with those of Google. Hillis told the New York Times that, “We’re trying to create the world’s database, with all of the world’s information.”

According to Nick,

Freebase is a user-generated brain. Like Wikipedia, it allows people to freely add information to it, in the form of text or images or, one assumes, anything else that can be rendered digitally. But it also allows users to add “metadata” about the information - tags that describe what a word or picture is and how it relates to other information.

-> Read more

[source: 901 am]

24 March - Shutdown Day

2007-02-20T11:19:00.000+01:00

	It is obvious that people would find life extremely difficult without computers, maybe even impossible. If they disappeared for just one day, would we be able to cope?
	Be a part of one of the biggest global experiments ever to take place on the internet. The idea behind the experiment is to find out how many people can go without a computer for one whole day, and what will happen if we all participate!
	Shutdown your computer on this day and find out! Can you survive for 24 hours without your computer?

-> www.shutdownday.org

Packet Garden. Grow a world from network traffic.

2007-01-25T10:26:00.000+01:00

Packet Garden captures information about how you use the internet and uses this stored information to grow a private world you can later explore.

To do this, Packet Garden takes note of all the servers you visit, their geographical location and the kinds of data you access. Uploads make hills and downloads valleys, their location determined by numbers taken from internet address itself. The size of each hill or valley is based on how much data is sent or received. Plants are also grown for each protocol detected by the software; if you visit a website, an 'HTTP plant' is grown. If you share some files via eMule, a 'Peer to Peer plant' is grown, and so on.

-> http://packetgarden.com/

Their Space - Education for a digital generation

2007-01-19T11:05:00.000+01:00

Their Space: Education for a digital generation draws on qualitative research with children and polling of parents to counter the myths obscuring the true value of digital media.

Approaching technology from the perspective of children, it tells positive stories about how they use online space to build relationships and create original content. It argues that the skills children are developing through these activities, such as creativity, communication and collaboration, are those that will enable them to succeed in a globally networked, knowledge-driven economy.

Provocative report by Hannah Green and Celia Hannon for Demos.
-> http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/theirspace

the game is up!

2007-01-10T12:02:00.000+01:00

The game is up! is a festival packed with adventureous artists from several disciplines who break the rules to underline their artistic statement.

The festival comes in three parts: exposition, performance and talks with media artists.

Some names: Stelarc (AU), The Yes Men (UK), Crew (BE), Golan Levin (US), and many more...

The game is up! runs from February 7 until 16 2007, at the Kunstencentrum Vooruit in Ghent (Belgium)

-> More info at www.vooruit.be (in Dutch)

Hacker Con Submits to Spychips

2006-12-28T12:46:00.000+01:00

One thousand attendees of the Chaos Communication Congress voluntarily wire themselves up to RFID location-tracking devices. Just because they can.

-> Read More
-> 23rd Chaos Communication Congress
-> OpenBeacon - a free active 2.4GHz beacon design

Magnatune film now available for viewing

2006-12-28T10:49:00.000+01:00

Magnatune In Six: A short film by Nicolás Amado about music, life as an artist, the industry, the fans, the evil forces and how to defeat them.

-> http://magnatune.com/six

Sterren op museumtrip

2006-12-21T16:27:00.000+01:00

Dutch and Belgian Rock artists visit museums in the low contries.

This VODcast is a cooperation between Rock Werchter, Amuseevous and deBuren.

Website | RSS 2.0 | iTunes

Create your presence stream...

2006-11-14T18:13:00.000+01:00

Jaiku's main goal is to bring people closer together by enabling them to share their presence. For us, presence is about everyday things as they happen - what you're up to, how you're feeling, where you're going. We offer a way to connect with the people you care about by sharing presence updates with them on the Web and mobile.

Create Your Presence Stream
Post presence updates, add icons to messages, set your location. Add your Web feeds to your stream.
Follow Your Friends
Get an overview of the latest updates from your contacts and add comments.
Get Jaiku on Your Phone
Text presence updates from any phone. Share location, availability, who you're with from your smartphone.

-> http://jaiku.com/

Thinglink is a free product code for creative work.

2006-10-16T17:03:00.000+02:00

Thinglink.org is an open database where makers can register their work for free and create labels for their products. Crafters, artists, designers, producers, and other makers can use Thinglink to identify their products and document their work. We built Thinglink for makers, because we think everyone is a maker. We hope it will make the social networks around products visible and navigable.

All content on thinglink.org is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license.

BoekenCast.be

2006-10-16T12:53:00.000+02:00

BoekenCast.be is the first Belgian podcasting station with several channels. It's all about literature.

The station will be officially launched during the 'Boekenbeurs' (a major Book Fair in Antwerp, Belgium).

-> www.boekencast.be

Conference: Virtual Public & Cultural Participation

2006-09-08T15:16:00.000+02:00

Radioboeken

2006-07-17T13:06:00.000+02:00

Radioboeken are stories written on request by Dutch and Flemish authors. The authors read their stories for the first and the last time. These books will never be published.

Website | RSS 2.0 | iTunes

deBuren podcast

2006-06-07T11:52:00.000+02:00

In June 2004 the Netherlands and Flanders opened a cultural institute, a centre of debate and reflection, called deBuren (the neighbours). In Brussels, the capital of Europe, deBuren was given the task of presenting and documenting the culture of the Low Countries and of providing a platform for debate on culture, society and politics in the Netherlands, Flanders and Europe.

deBuren podcast delivers interviews, lectures, debates, literature from and about the low countries.

Website | RSS 2.0 | iTunes

RFID Snakes and Ladders

2006-05-16T10:35:00.000+02:00

RFID Snakes and Ladders is a giant game of snakes and ladders that shows how RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology can be used beyond the warehouse door. The game has been developed by new media company Blink and is being played at the Media Centre, Huddersfield, until June 2nd. It’s just like any other game of snakes and ladders, except the whole building – which is home to over 120 separate small businesses - becomes part of the game board.

First and foremost, RFID Snakes and Ladders is fun. Players are issued with a counter containing an RFID chip. All they have to do to get into the game is pass it in front of the giant dice and check how far they ‘rolled’ on a connected website. If they land at the bottom of the ladder, they pass their counter in front of the model ladder to climb it. If they hit the head of a snake, it’s a slippery slide unless they get to the model snake in time.

Models are placed at intersections around the Media Centre: in the entrance, the café bar and outside the lifts.

Players take a turn every three hours (unless they throw a six or land on a snake or a ladder, when they have to act quickly). In this way the game becomes part of the normal working day. Players might take a turn when they first arrive, another when they grab a coffee, and another at lunchtime. Playing takes just a few moments each day.

And if they land on a bonus square, they get a secret bonus prize. Players who reach the top square first win prizes from the centre’s Café Ollo menu.

RFID Snakes and Ladders is one of a number of experiments in mixed reality gaming, using the real world as the board for an online game, including Pac-Manhattan in New York and Mogi in Tokyo.

But it’s something more besides. It’s also a way of connecting people who may ostensibly inhabit the same location, but who often feel isolated from each other.

“After the Media Centre we hope to test the game in places where people are in danger of feeling cut off or lonely,” said Andrew Wilson of Blink Media. “For example in sheltered housing or the children’s ward of a hospital, where playing a simple, ongoing game with others might help to bring people together face to face.”

For more information on RFID Snakes and Ladders contact Andrew Wilson at Andrew[at]blinkmedia.org or 07980 224927.

Notes For Editors

Blink are a Huddersfield based company working with film, new media and mobile technology since 1999. Projects include the Guardian newspaper’s interactive SMS event in 2001, which taught the mainstream media how to use text messaging.

The Snakes and Ladders game programming and web design was by C.H.I.P.S. vzw, new media specialists based in Antwerp, Belgium. In 2004 they created the SMS project STADSchromosomen for UNESCO’s World Book Capital Antwerp.

RFID hardware was designed and built by Daniel Blackburn of Carbon Based Games, Huddersfield. Daniel was recently awarded a two year Fellowship by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA).

Illustrations were by Andy Sykes, an award winning illustrator and animator from Leeds. He has been awarded a Pocket Shorts commission to make a film for mobile phones, and the commissioned film won a runner up prize at the Texas DCI Mobile Content Festival and has been screened at festivals in Bristol, Rotterdam and San Francisco, as well as on BBC2's Homegrown Hollywood.

The Snakes and Ladders models were made by Richard Dawson, an experienced TV set designer who works on Casualty and Life on Mars.

BlogCom 2006

2006-04-24T11:24:00.000+02:00

Interviews (in Dutch) with:
-> Luc Van Braekel (lvb.net)
-> Eug (podcasting.be)

More about BlogCom...

Links April 19th

2006-04-19T11:17:00.000+02:00

Companies Warn About EU Broadcasting Rules - Media and technology companies are warning that proposed European Union broadcasting rules would restrict the growth of emerging media formats such as video broadcasts on the Internet and mobile phones.

Vitamin is a resource for web designers, developers and entrepreneurs.

[reblogged from K&L]

P2P (More) Legal in France

2005-03-11T20:40:00.000+01:00

A french appeal court ruled yesterday in favour of somebody who downloaded about 500 movies, on the ground that those were private copies, and that he didn't redistributed them, and that a tax was payed on blank media. This sets the huge precedent that P2P is legal over there. For the details, apparently no distinction was made on the method used to download the movies (upload issues) and the famous EUCD directive was even used by the defending lawyer.

[Source: Slashdot]

the "democracy" that is Europe

2005-03-09T14:34:00.000+01:00

So despite the fact that the EU Parliament has rejected software patents for Europe, and despite the fact that there is not a qualified majority of member states supporting it, the EU Council has now endorsed their draft of the "Directive on the Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions."

This struggle continues to astonish me. There's no good economic evidence that software patents do more good than harm. That's the reason the US should reconsider its software patent policy.

But why Europe would voluntarily adopt a policy that will only burden its software developers and only benefit US interests is beyond me.

They call it a "democracy" that they're building in Europe. I don't see it. Instead, they have created a government of bureaucrats, more easily captured by special interests than anything in the US.

[Source: Lessig Blog]

EU Council Presidency Adopts Software Patent Agreement Against Council's Rules

2005-03-07T16:54:00.000+01:00

7 March 2005 -- The Council Presidency today declared the software agreement of 18 May 2004 to have been adopted, in violation of the procedural rules and in spite of the evident lack of a qualified majority of member states and the requests of several states to reopen negotiations.

Report
* Cyprus submitted a written declaration at the start of the Council session
* Poland, Denmark, Portugal and others (not specified) asked for a B item (discussion point)
* The Luxembourg presidency claimed this was not possible due to procedural reasons, and that this would have undermined the whole process -> it would stay on the list of A-items
* Luxembourg then gave a long statement regarding how the EP still gets a chance in second reading, the importance of avoiding legal uncertainty etc.
* Denmark said it was disappointed about this, but accepted and submitted a written declaration
* Later on, the list of A items was accepted by the Council

Conclusion
* Luxembourg negated the Council's own Rules of Procedure, which state that a B-item (which is at the same time a request to remove an A item) can only be rejected by the a majority of the Council, and not just by the Presidency. (art 3.8)
* The objecting countries seem to have forgotten to request removal of the A-item from the agenda. Rules 3.1 + 3.7 would have given any single country the right to have the A-item removed, because the Luxemburg presidency had failed to insert it more than 14 days earlier. This is how Poland has removed A-items from the Agricultural & Fishery Council twice in the past.
* This is a very sad day for democracy, and casts a very dark shadow over the European Constitution, which will give the Council even more power.

[Source: FFII]

New project - wists.com, visual bookmarks plus

2005-03-03T12:32:00.000+01:00

Will post more shortly - such as what features will be adding. My new project is called Wists.
Have a play, mail me If you like it or don’t like it.

The idea is to bridge the gap between blogging and bookmarking.
It aims to make simple list blogging as easy as bookmarking and make bookmarking take advantages of weblog publishing, with automatic thumbnail image creation etc.

Like Newsblogger (which we worked on at Moreover in conjunction with Blogger to create aggregated bloggable news content) in addition to bookmarking, Wists aggregates content from online stores link to directly.

Wists is simple to start with but the ongoing aim is to treat thumbnails as an image equivalent of a headline and slowly evolve a tool for managing and syndicating image headlines.

(Basically we built it because I am really lazy, I like pictures and hate writing and it takes lots of clicks to blog thumbnails.)

[Source: David Galbraith]

Word of mouth 'winner for books'

2005-03-03T12:18:00.000+01:00

Best-selling novels like The Da Vinci Code are often chosen because of a word of mouth recommendation, a survey to mark World Book Day has revealed.

[Source: BBC NEWS]

160 Characters Hit The Stage

2005-03-03T12:15:00.000+01:00

Virgin Mobile in Australia is sponsoring a new SMS-based comedy show called 160 Characters, which stars the audience, a Virgin Mobile phone and six cast members.

The live comedy show relies on audience members using their mobile phones to send text messages to a lone Virgin Mobile phone placed on centre stage. After viewing the SMS texts, the show’s six cast members have to improvise a comedy sketch to depict each of the messages.

[Source: 160Characters Association]

Remixing Culture: An Interview with Lawrence Lessig

2005-02-27T17:34:00.000+01:00

[...]

Koman: So that sounds like it's essentially an economic issue, a question of how a country decides to control its culture and how it chooses to have people monetize that.

Lessig: Yes, exactly right. And I think it's important that people see it like that, so people don't simplify the debate about intellectual property into a debate about commercial development. These are people who want commercial development to explode, but they're just skeptical that the world of proprietary software and proprietary culture is the best way for it to explode.

Now people who see the world in black and white think that the only way alternative to total ownership of culture, total ownership of software, is communism, so Bill Gates famously referred to the skeptics of intellectual property as a bunch of communists. But that's silly. What is true in both contexts is that a better balance between proprietary and nonproprietary is a more successful way to encourage innovation and growth.

This is a battle that Microsoft is increasingly afraid of, because their objective now is to demonstrate to Brazil and others governments that free software is more expensive than proprietary software. Now I think that claim is not true, but the Brazilian response to it, I think, is brilliant. Their response is, "OK, fine, let's assume you're right--we don't think you're right, but let's assume you're right. What do we get with free software? We get a technology sector that is trained in a wider range of skills than would be the case if their only mission in life were to maintain Microsoft proprietary systems." Rather than being sharecroppers, they want to be independent farmers. And that is a brilliant insight about the potential for this to enable developing nations.

[Source: O'Reilly Network]

Motorola to Build 'Skype Ready' Cell Phones, Headsets.

2005-02-21T11:15:00.000+01:00

Motorola, a leading maker of mobile phones, and Skype, a leading Internet telephony company, said this week at 3GSM World Congress that Motorola would launch a lineup of products that are dubbed 'Skype Ready', including cell phones and handsets.

[Source: X-bit labs]

EU software patent law faces axe

2005-02-17T18:35:00.000+01:00

The European Parliament has thrown out a bill that would have allowed software to be patented.

Politicians unanimously rejected the bill and now it must go through another round of consultation if it is to have a chance of becoming law.

During consultation the software patents bill could be substantially re-drafted or even scrapped.

The bill was backed by hi-tech firms that said they needed the protections it offered to make research worthwhile.

[Source: BBC NEWS]

podcasting - the experiment

2005-02-17T07:55:00.000+01:00

So because I only understand things by tinkering with them, I've decided to tinker with podcasting. I am convinced from an intellectual perspective that this one of the most important net-related developments in a long time. But I need to understand it more than intellectually. Thus, with thanks to Dave Winer and Adam Curry for start-up advice, an experiment in podcasting begins.

I have started, however, exactly where they said I should not -- reading written texts. Wired has encouraged me to podcast readings of my columns, and as that was an easy and deadline-related reason to get going, I've made that the beginning. The best of podcasting, I am told and have seen, is not read, but written. Writing in mp3 is something I hope to experiment with soon.

Until then, here is 050201 (the first, maybe the only, podcast from February, 2005): A reading of my March column in Wired, read with a very bad cold.

[Source: Lessig Blog]

Michael Robertson Unveils Linux Music Service

2005-02-09T19:56:00.000+01:00

Don't call it a comeback because Michael Robertson has been in the music space for years. Today, though, Robertson will unveil a new music service along with companion Linux hardware and software applications that create an alternative to Microsoft and Apple's digital entertainment hubs.

At 6:30 AM PST, Robertson, CEO of the desktop Linux firm Linspire, will unveil MP3Tunes.com, his first digital music product in four years. His last foray, MP3.com, had an Icarus-like trajectory, once enjoying a $65 per share stock price before being felled by hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuit payouts and swallowed by Vivendi Universal, one of the conglomerates that originally filed copyright infringement lawsuits against the company.

The new service stays true to Robertson's tactics, both old and new: The song catalog highlights unsigned and independent artists, features no digital rights management, and runs on Linux. While MP3Tunes plays it safe and will only offer non-major label music, it's more than just a download service.

Visitors to the Web-based MP3Tunes.com can purchase individual MP3 songs (encoded in a high-quality 192-kbps rate) for 88 cents or a single album for $8.88. Currently, the service is launching with music only from the distributor CD Baby, which specializes in unsigned artists, or artists whose labels allow them to offer DRM-less songs for sale online. CD Baby has 415,000 songs that will be available on MP3Tunes.

[Source: Technology Review via BoingBoing]

What do we buy when we buy music?

2005-02-09T19:49:00.000+01:00

"Is music something you own or something you rent?"

It's not a little question. And, in fact, it cuts to the heart of how consumers perceive their transactions with cultural merchants of all kinds. When you bought a compact disc, you were buying something tangible. And you could assume you also bought a bunch of rights to use it in various ways. Also, each new purchase would add to your collection, and accrue over time.

When you lease a library of music, you have a massive library to access, but as soon as you stop paying your monthly fee, the entire library is gone. Also, each song in the library carries more restrictive rights limiting how you can use it.

When consumers shift perspective on how they purchase creative content in one medium, it can shift how they perceive all other such transactions (theater tickets, movie tickets, event passes, and such).

[Source: The Artful Manager]

EU Software Patent Law Moves Forward

2005-02-09T19:33:00.000+01:00

Zygfryd writes "Just when we were all celebrating, the Polish Press Agency (PAP) reports that the Patent Directive is not likely to return to the first reading as the Commission may ignore the Parliament's vote on restarting the process. Revisions are said to be still possible, but under political pressure the Polish government stated they would no longer oppose the directive's adoption and support the former agreement made in May. Polish diplomats will, however, support any opposition initiated by other countries on the February 17 meeting." At the same time, drseuk writes "The Spanish Senate has just voted against Software Patents. This should hopefully require the Spanish EU representative to vote against any attempts by the Council of Ministers to ignore the will of the European Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee."

[Source: Slashdot]

Why Wilco Is the Future of Music

2005-02-09T19:30:00.000+01:00

If this war is to end, it needs authentic voices. We have had enough preaching. The outrage is beginning to wear thin. It will take bands like Wilco, who live a different example and whisper an explanation to those who want to hear. Peace takes a practice. One that only artists can make real.

[Bron: Wired]

Smart search lets art fans browse

2005-01-30T12:55:00.000+01:00

ArtGarden, developed by BT's research unit, is being tested by the Tate as a new way of browsing its online collection of paintings.

Rather than search by the name of an artist or painting, users are shown a selection of pictures.

Clicking on their favourite will change the gallery in front of them to a selection of similar works.

[Source: BBC NEWS]

Latest Opera browser gets vocal

2005-01-27T19:30:00.000+01:00

Net browser Opera 8.0, due for official release at the end of next month, will be "the most accessible browser on the market", according to its authors.

The latest version of the net browser can be controlled by voice command and will read pages aloud.

The voice features, based on IBM technology, are currently only available in the Windows version.

Opera can also magnify text by up to 10 times and users can create "style sheets", its developers say.

This will enable them to view pages with colours and fonts that they prefer.

But the browser does not yet work well with screen reader software often used by blind people, so its accessibility features are more likely to appeal to those with some residual vision.

[...]

[Source: BBC NEWS]

Birth of an Industry: IPod Loading

2005-01-26T11:04:00.000+01:00

IT sounds like a line from a spam e-mail: Work from home! Low risk! Flexible schedule! Earn hundreds of dollars each gig!

But an emerging group of resourceful entrepreneurs says there is no catch. The rising popularity of Apple's sleek iPod has created a new niche service: the professional iPod loader. There are housekeepers to tend homes and gardeners to tend landscaping. Why not iPod loaders to take care of music collections?

For $1 to $1.49 a CD, the professional loaders will embark on the time-consuming process of copying a music collection onto an iPod, often providing a digital backup copy as well.

[...]

Hyung J. Chun, a 30-year-old cardiologist at Stanford, has started his own iPod business. With two other doctors, Dr. Chun invested $1,000 to buy a 100-CD changer to start his business, Feedmypod.com. "Hopefully we can turn it into something that can generate revenue eventually," Dr. Chun said.

[...]

[Source: The New York Times]

IBM Heads to Open Source

2005-01-12T14:33:00.000+01:00

IBM is releasing some of its intellectual property (patents) into the public domain to create a 'patent commons'.

U.S. patent leader IBM said it plans to donate 500 patents for free use by software developers, marking a major shift of intellectual property strategy for the world's top computer maker and a challenge to the technology industry.

The IBM move is meant to encourage other patent holders to donate their own intellectual property in order to form what the company refers to as a "patent commons," a modern twist on shared public lands set aside under traditional laws.

full article in Wired News

[Source: Smart Mobs]

Digitise every Canadian book

2005-01-10T16:48:00.000+01:00

Copyfightin' Canadian law prof Michael Geist has a modest proposal for Canada's digital strategy: digitise every Canadian book, ever:

While digitally scanning more than 10 million Canadian books and documents is a daunting task, the Google project illustrates that it is financially feasible. Reports suggest that it will cost Google approximately $10 to scan each book.

Assuming similar costs for a Canadian project and a five-year timeline, the $20 million annual price tag represents a fraction of the total governmental commitment toward Canadian culture and Internet development.

In fact, the most significant barriers to a national digital library do not arise from fiscal challenges but rather from two potential copyright reforms currently winding their way through the system.

Boing Boing

Mobile content and control

2005-01-10T14:31:00.000+01:00

A new service by Digital Media innovator Kisky Netmedia could change the landscape of mobile content and control. According to Kisky Freeloader represents a shift in trends looking to more collaborative systems to offer consumers more control over their mobile life.

Mobile content continues to bring in high revenues for providers because users pay not only for content, but for the mechanisms which get the content onto their phones. Unlike the online environment where consumers are comfortable creating, sharing and distributing their own content, the mobile platform does not allow consumers control over what goes on, and comes off their phones, without the help of a premium rate service.

Kisky has solved the problems by offering simple WAP distribution for most tone types at no cost to the user. The ethos behind Freeloader is simple; it builds on the philosophy of the Internet as a creation environment and distribution network make your own content, share it with the community, and get it on your phone for free.

Smart Mobs

ITunes user sues Apple over iPod

2005-01-06T14:42:00.000+01:00

A user of Apple's iTunes music service is suing the firm saying it is unfair he can only use an iPod to play songs.

He says Apple is breaking anti-competition laws in refusing to let other music players work with the site.

Apple, which opened its online store in 2003 after launching the iPod in 2001, uses technology to ensure each song bought only plays on the iPod.

Californian Thomas Slattery filed the suit in the US District Court in San Jose and is seeking damages.

[Source: BBC NEWS]

Blog reading explodes in America

2005-01-04T16:11:00.000+01:00

Americans are becoming avid blog readers, with 32 million getting hooked in 2004, according to new research.

The survey, conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, showed that blog readership has shot up by 58% in the last year.

Some of this growth is attributable to political blogs written and read during the US presidential campaign.

Despite the explosive growth, more than 60% of online Americans have still never heard of blogs, the survey found.

Blogs, or web logs, are online spaces in which people can publish their thoughts, opinions or spread news events in their own words.

Companies such as Google and Microsoft provide users with the tools to publish their own blogs.

[Source: BBC NEWS - PEW/INTERNET]

Copyright double billing

2004-12-30T11:17:00.000+01:00

Having seen many of his presentations and read many of his articles, it's been enjoyable watching Larry Lessig refine his copyright arguments over the past few years. Many still wrongly assume that he's anti-copyright, but his views are much more nuanced than that, certainly more subtle than those of the media industry or the US government. Here's a short passage from his latest article on copyright term extensions:

We rightfully grant the monopoly called copyright to inspire new creative work. But once that work has been created, there is no public justification for extending its term. The public has already paid. Term extension is just double billing. Any wealth it creates for copyright holders is swamped by the wealth the public loses in lower costs and wider access.

A limited term of protection in exchange for freely available creative work...sounds reasonable to me.

[Source: kottke.org]

Capturing Cultural Value

2004-12-21T11:13:00.000+01:00

Cultural organisations are currently forced to justify their grants on the basis of their contribution to government goals such as economic development, tourism or social inclusion. In a new Demos report John Holden argues that new methods and language must be found to validate public funding of culture and the arts. Download the full text of Capturing Cultural Value or read the press release.

[Source: DEMOS]

The People Have Texted

2004-12-20T10:11:00.000+01:00

A book compiled from the comments people sent in SMS in Antwerp and Leeds has been freely published online

STADSchromosomen (CITYchromosomes) is a project from Antwerp, in which the people of Antwerp were invited to write a biography of the City through SMS. Earlier this year, on September 19th, a book was released under Creative Commons license gathering these text messages.

The original report in June can be viewed here: City Points To Texting

During the launch of Belgian Creative Commons licenses on December 10th 2004, C.H.I.P.S. vzw - the organisers of the CITYchromosomes project - announced the English translation of the original publication.

The former elderman from the city of Antwerp, Eric Antonis, sees the book as an important contribution to the debate about cultural participation. "The sms messages present an interesting insight into how residents and visitors feel about Antwerp" he says.

"The Antwerp citizen has a unique relationship with his city. He likes nothing better than to complain about it. "Zagen",this is called. It is an awkward declaration of love.He expresses his loyalty to the city by complaining about it."

City,millstone round my neck...marvellously unmarvellous city...I am a piece of you,you are a piece of me.
Taintlikeitusedtabe,he complained. Nevermind,I said,patting him on the shoulder.

But many of the messages are more optimistic:

sun,panpipes and pavement cafés filled with chattering people.No,this is not a square in the south,but a place in front of the Rubenshuis,in April.
Hush! A palace is hidden behind those concrete walls.

As well as messages from the Antwerp project, messages from a similar project in Leeds are also included.

CITY MORNING They say nights R best in cities but I disagree.Early mornings R unwritten poems waiting to happen,with the milk's clink,the first bus's cough.
GHETTO Some say Chapeltown is a ghetto. But them talk what them don ’t know.Because Chapeltown is the right place to go.

The pdf of 'CITYchromosomes - story of a city' is available for download here (77MB): www.stadschromosomen.be

[Source: 160 Characters]

Dan Gillmor on His Move to "Citizen Journalism"

2004-12-17T15:58:00.000+01:00

Tech journalist Dan Gillmor gives OhmyNews International his first interview since announcing that he will leave the San Jose Mercury News next month in order to start a citizen-journalism venture. Many insiders are scratching their heads. Why is the much respected tech writer leaving what he described as 'greatest gig in the world' for the perilous journey of developing an entrepreneurial idea in citizen-journalism? He spoke to OhmyNews at Harvard Law School in the middle of the final day of the College's Berkman Center-sponsored 2004 Internet and Society Conference last Saturday.

[Source: Slashdot]

Shame...

2004-12-02T13:04:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, Sabam, the Belgian equivalent of the RIAA won a court case against the Belgian branch of internet service provider Tiscali. The court has upheld the charge by Sabam that Tiscali encouraged music piracy by failing to block access to peer-to-peer networks.
That is one of the most ridiculous legal decisions I've heard of. Let's shut down the railways while we're at it as some people bring back drugs from the Netherlands by train. Strangely enough, they also went for a small player and not the incumbent with a 15 times larger user base and probably with a legal team to match.
Now, they're going to appoint experts to see if it's technically feasible, so nothing may come of it. It all depends how clued-in these "experts" are. For all I know, it may end up with some random port being blocked somewhere affecting Skype users instead of the target. This is Belgium after all, home of the "enact a law, think about the consequences or enforceability later" system.

[Source: one.point.zero]

Meet the Pro-Ams

2004-11-30T09:46:00.000+01:00

Our new report The Pro-Am Revolution is out today and has been picked up by The Independent, The Telegraph and The Times among others. My favourite headline is probably 'The anoraks shall inherit the earth'.

[Source: Demos Greenhouse]

Arts & Science

2004-11-26T11:59:00.000+01:00

"We are all au fait with the arts, but we shouldn't forget that science is part of our culture too."

"Would we see science as one big linear narrative? Or would it, like the arts, light up the universe from a series of shifting perspectives, and provide overlapping versions of reality?"

[Source: Guardian Unlimited | Life | Firing the canon]

SMS Guerilla Projector

2004-11-19T11:22:00.000+01:00

The SMS Guerilla Projector is a high powered, home made projection device that can be used to project SMS messages on to buildings, signs or any other surface. Made by Troika, the London based collective of designers and artists, it consists of a mobile phone, camera lens and slide projector.

[Source: networked_performance]

Firefox, an Internet Explorer killer, has gone 1.0

2004-11-10T13:33:00.000+01:00

Cory Doctorow: Firefox, the finest, most secure Web browser ever created for average-user applications, went 1.0 today. You can download it below, toss out Internet Explorer, and be relatively assured that you computer won't be compromised due to Microsoft's bad design decisions and lax security maintenance. Link, Direct link to FTP server

[Source: BoingBoing]

DEAF04 - Affective Turbulence

2004-11-08T15:09:00.000+01:00

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

[Source: networked_performance]

UK Creative Commons article

2004-10-29T10:11:00.000+02:00

Becky Hogge has written an excellent piece in today's Guardian about the Creative Commons in honour of the upcoming Creative Commons UK launch.

On November 1, a group of new copyright licences will be released in the UK, arriving from the US under the umbrella of Creative Commons (CC). The project is the brainchild of Stanford University's law professor Lawrence Lessig, and the licences allow artists to move away from traditional copyright's "all rights reserved" towards a more digital age-friendly "some rights reserved". The different types of licence allow artists to choose which rights they wish to maintain. They could keep the right to exploit works for commercial gain, to veto derivative works or ask to be credited each time their work is reproduced. In turn, those encountering CC licensed works on the internet know immediately how the original artist feels about the use of that work without having to ring lawyers.

[Source: boingboing]

iTunes Music Store Belgium

2004-10-27T15:23:00.000+02:00

Open up your iTunes application, the iTunes music store is now available in Belgium.

[Source: one.point.zero]

The WIRED CD: Rip. Sample. Mash. Share.

2004-10-27T14:54:00.000+02:00

These musicians are saying that true creativity needs to be open, fluid, and alive. When it comes to copyright, they are pro-choice. Here are 16 songs that encourage people to play with their tunes, not just play them.
— WIRED magazine, November issue (get the CD free with your copy, on newsstands now!)

[Source: Creative Commons & WIRED]

What's the opposite of sustainable software?

2004-10-26T20:18:00.000+02:00

Government IT projects are out of control. That's a given. 30 billion quid is a lot of money (for something visible from space it would be a lot of money – in fact, it would get you quite a long way up your space elevator).

I don't want to trivialise the task of integrating dozens of creaking National Health systems and putting something useful on hundreds of thousands of desks but I do want to make a simple (naive?) comparison – what does it cost to build and run, ooh, Hotmail (200 million users and climbing) or eBay/PayPal (95 million members and $7.5B in transactions) or Yahoo (274 million users) or Google (4.28 billion pages and 100,000 servers)? What does it cost to build complex and meaningful applications like Flickr and MySQL and Asterisk and Linux itself (or even Windows)?

Answer (let's be frank): bugger all. Absolutely nothing. Well, a trivial sum – at least in comparison to these consultant-built monsters (how many trees would you have to plant to make the NHS system carbon neutral?). Since we seem to be constitutionally incapable of building sustainable, appropriately-scaled applications to deliver public services via the conventional route, it's about time we took a chance and handed one of these projects (or even a tiny slice of one of them) to the hackers to see if they could do a better job...

[Source: bowblog]

Launch event CC-Belgium

2004-10-25T13:11:00.000+02:00

"As to the launch event, the CRID and the KUL are organising it with the collaboration of Constant vzw (www.constantvzw.com) and the IAK / IBK - Digitaal platform. Note that it will take place in Brussels, on December 10th, 2004. The date has been chosen as to include the event in the Jonctions / Verbindingen festival, organised by Constant, whose theme this year is precisely the copyleft movement and licences.
We will post more details on that launch event very soon."

[Source: The Cc-be Archives]

FFII The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure: Brussels 9-10 Nov: Regulating Knowledge: Costs, Risks, and Models of Innovation

2004-10-23T07:36:00.000+02:00

The FFII would like to invite you to our conference "Regulating Knowledge: Costs, Risks, and Models of Innovation", which takes place in Brussels on 9 and 10 November 2004. For details, see http://eu.ffii.org/sections/bxl0411/index.

Early registration greatly simplifies planning, and for Parliament access is recommended at last one week in advance, hotel/hostel reservation is easier if you book two weeks in advance. Also, unless you register, we cannot guarantee a place for you. Seats are limited. Participants coming from afar may consider applying for travel support (limited funds).

For the current status on software patents (and why your participation on a national level matters), the launch of http://www.NoSoftwarePatents.com/ see http://kwiki.ffii.org/SwpatEu0410En