Convenience Wins, Hubris Loses and Content vs. Context, a Presentation for Some Music Industry Friends at FISTFULAYEN

This is an interesting article, both for what it is saying about the music industry (and content providers as a whole) as well (and perhaps more importantly) about illuminating the role that vested interest plays in stifling creativity and technological development in order to protect current position.

Imagine, for example, what cars would look like today if only we used our inherent ability as humans to create rather than protect, rather than the DRM-like struggle that was illuminated in the movie Who Killed The Electric Car? I know, the standard answer is that the market would encourage it if it were economical, but read this article (and watch the aforementioned movie) for an insight into the greater story, beyond the dogma of Econ 101.

The viewpoint of the author is very refreshing, and may point to a greater trend emerging in our approach to exchanging our creative potential.

"I’m here to tell you today that I for one am no longer going to fall into this trap. If the licensing labels offer their content to Yahoo! put more barriers in front of the users, I’m not interested. Do what you feel you need to do for your business, I’ll be polite, say thank you, and decline to sign. I won’t let Yahoo! invest any more money in consumer inconvenience. I will tell Yahoo! to give the money they were going to give me to build awesome media applications to Yahoo! Mail or Answers or some other deserving endeavor. I personally don’t have any more time to give and can’t bear to see any more money spent on pathetic attempts for control instead of building consumer value. Life’s too short. I want to delight consumers, not bum them out.

"If, on the other hand, you’ve seen the light too, there’s a very fun road ahead for us all. Lets get beyond talking about how you get the music and into building context: reasons and ways to experience the music. The opportunity is in the chasm between the way we experience the content and the incredible user-created context of the Web."

Laptop With a Mission Widens Its Audience - New York Times

Laptop With a Mission Widens Its Audience - New York Times

A nice write up on the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. Beginning in November (for two weeks) you can Buy 1, Give 1 for $400.

Earth2Tech’s Eco-Tour of Google Earth � Earth2Tech

"[Google Earth] is being used by environmentalists, concerned citizens, and yes, eco-bloggers, to map the effects of climate change, tag renewable energy plants, and point out environmental degradations of the land. Scientists, such as Dr. Jon Blower from the University of Reading, even use Google Earth to visualize multiple scientific geo-data sets, which can lead to new conclusions. Google (GOOG) has more recently pulled together the Global Awareness layer and Google Earth outreach, where nonprofits like the World Wildlife Fund and the Global Heritage Fund can create location-based data points to highlight and promote their respective initiatives. "

Dembot: TubeMogul

Andrew Baron of Rocketboom on TubeMogul. In Brief, it is a service that uploads one file to multiple video sites (YouTube, Brightcove, Blip, Dailymotion, Revver, Google Video, Metacafe, Myspace and Yahoo) within minutes. Nice.

Dembot: TubeMogul

Google Docs in Plain English

Part of "leveraging new-media for a rapid transition to sustainability" is the ability to "work smarter, not harder." This means cutting repetitive work. As we have been bringing our vision for EQ from the vision to the manifest, we have been collaborating on many documents. I'll save the details of our experience, as I think it is well represented in the following video. Now, as you get close to formatting the final product, the robust nature of local programs (like Keynote or Excel) are indespensible, but in the collaborative information gathering, synthesis, and wordsmithing phase, a collaborative document protocol like the one sketched in this video could be a more efficient and effective way of working together asynchronously (i.e. not at the same time).



YouTube - Google Docs in Plain English

NYTimes kills its paywall: "Google visitors make more dough than subscribers" - Boing Boing

"What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.

"What wasn't anticipated was the explosion in how much of our traffic would be generated by Google, by Yahoo and some others," Ms. Schiller said."

NYTimes kills its paywall: "Google visitors make more dough than subscribers" - Boing Boing

Dembot: JoCo Live

Andrew Baron post about a new live-streaming show with chat functionality, ala The Mobius Live! on EQ.TV

Dembot: JoCo Live