Tunes: Music Video on Demand
Posted November 19, 2008 
Comments(0)
Posted November 19, 2008 Comments(0) 
Web: Visual directory of Web 2.0 companies and products (and blogger ethics)
Posted February 5, 2007 Comments(0) 
Go2Web2.0 featured @ TechCrunch.
Coup to be featured at TC, but be ready. This site came crashing down under the flood of traffic from TC.
One blogger asks about the relationship between blogger and featured companies at MichaelArrington Sucks. (Obviously a blog with an opinion, whether impartial or not, you can decide.) You will see that TC is the only featured advertiser on the site. MAS also alleges they (blogger and site owner) are in a relationship and trade “favors.” The owner of the site is also a powerful “digger.” Should that all be disclosed as well?
TC states that they will expressly state and disclose when there is an apparent conflict of interest; and I take them at their word on this point.
But, of course, the world of blogging has gone corporate. Posts are valuable real estate. And, perhaps inevitably, there are now businesses that even enable bloggers to sell posts to review advertiser products (with varying degrees of disclsoure).
I can’t help but be a little cynical about big bloggers. This is after all big business.
Photog: Portraiture Pool @ Flickr
Posted January 31, 2007 Comments(0) 
Portraiture Pool @ Flickr. These by d_rum2001.
Such great talent being shared every day in the photo pools at Flickr. Feel free to suggest some for us to spotlight.
Art: Not just for the “qualified”
Posted January 30, 2007 Comments(0) The following excerpted from Justin Ruckmin. This well sums up the arrogance of the gallery/museum culture and the democratization of art and culture. Thanks again to the Internet.
At the beginning of 2006 Barry Neuman, art dealer, remarked to Artnet Magazine:
I think it’s a safe bet that there will be 50 to 60 new and bona fide (i.e., seriously authored by qualified people) art world blogs by the end of the year.
… to which Kriston Capps, writer for the Smithsonian’s Eye Level blog responded:
“Seriously authored by qualified people,” [is] a sentiment totally contrary to the esprit de corps of the blogosphere. What’s in fact great about most blogs is that they are nonseriously authored by nonqualified people. By the best count I’ve read, there are around 400–500 art blogs in the nation. Assuming even half of those are updated regularly, that amounts to a virtual library of information about artists, trends, and institutions. Even if not all these blogs are of the highest quality, the cream rises—and distributes the best information from the lesser-known blogs. To a certain extent, blogs survive by this network. (…)
(…) Artists, professionals, and enthusiasts writing about art are in fact part of the “actual, hands-on, real-world art scene.”
It is true that art blogs are becoming more diverse, with institutions joining the ranks of the citizen journalist. (…) But even to the extent that museoblogs bring some unique expertise to bear on the subject, the blog model is still fundamentally one that the layman can do as well or better. In other words, I wouldn’t wait for the pros to come ’round on blogs before I started paying attention to them.
Tunes: MTV’s Urge is the latest entrant to online music delivery
Posted May 17, 2006 Comments(1) 
MTV’s URGE set to launch on May 17th.
From AP Business:
At launch, URGE will have more than 2 million tracks, which can be purchased individually at 99 cents or as full albums starting at around $9.95.
The service also will offer unlimited downloads at a monthly rate of $9.95, or $14.95 for the ability to transfer songs to any of more than 100 compatible portable music players.
URGE is entering a tough field, but one that needs more competition. I wonder how this will compare to current programs offered by Real, MSN and Yahoo!
I am tired of being “tied” to my iTunes and iPod. We need more flexibility as consumers to move our music from place to place and from player to player. I think we will see some antitrust examination in the next adminsitration. The French had the right idea, for once, in bringing their action against Apple’s iTunes (otherwise I am usually appalled by their attempts to regulate the Internet).
Nowhere else is the kind of complete ownership of a vertical market allowed in this fashion. It reminds me of the old example of the movie studios owning the actors, the production, the distribution and the movie theaters.
Design: Web 2.0 Pastel
Posted May 16, 2006 Comments(0) 
For a while now, it has been pretty obvious to me that the advent of Web 2.0 not only means lots of fun social networking tools (like YouTube, del.icio.us, digg, Flickr, Skype and MySpace), but also an aesthetic that is clean, neat, and easily navigated. In other words, kind of boring at times. In Web 2.0, the designer’s job is to make way for the application.
That’s all fine. I like clean and neat, but I get the impression that all Web 2.0 desginers are reading from the same book. Why does all design need to be the same to achieve usability and functionality? Don’t get me wrong, there are aspects to this school of design that I like. Some significant improvements have been made to the old school text-link farms (see Yahoo! nostalgia after the jump).
And look at me–I use the default theme on Wordpress! I am not one to judge. I am merely making an observation. Maybe it is just the pastels that bother me: I haven’t seen so many hot pinks, baby blues, lime greens and purples since the 80s. And since I am old enough to remember that, you can imagine that I am especially grateful for the new, larger sans serif type.
Maybe that is the downside to all of this network socialization; we are being brought to some simple common denominators.
