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We're Not Who You Think We Are

Archives for March 2006

Museums Meet Web 2.0

March 13, 2006 by Kassia Krozser

This year’s SXSWi festival is filled with several micro-themes, one, of course, being the idea of remixability. Today’s tech people don’t see entertainment as a static concept. They’re moving ahead as if this is a generally accepted principle — as always, it’s up for to the rest of the world to leap on the bandwagon (and they always do).

Leaping boldly into the void is Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. In creating an online design museum, the institution is embracing Web 2.0 and making art accessible to the public in a new and exciting way. The relaunched website will allow visitors to create virtual collections, act as their own curators, even help museum staff by adding to the institution’s knowledge-base. In other words, the museum realizes that the dialogue doesn’t have to go just one way.

Among the models that [Kevin] Farnham and Maeda point to are Yahoo’s My Web 2.0 and the site http://del.icio.us. Users on those sites already are creating communities through “tagging” — Web-speak for linking personal reactions to items on a site. Tags allow spontaneous communities of strangers to share interests in seemingly random ways.

The Washington Post rightly wonders if museum culture can survive radical upheaval — museum websites are traditionally staid and as likely to entice browsing as a brochure for teeth whitening. And if a museum’s website can’t engage people, what hope does the museum have?

It’s not wrong to wonder how a Smithsonian museum can survive as the Wikipedia of design culture. Or whether a museum site modeled after the populist photo-sharing http://Flickr.com — with favorite artifacts and amateur points of view — would diminish an institution’s reputation. The bigger question for all museums is how to flourish if they don’t.

  • A Curate-Your-Own Museum Web Site

Filed Under: Unexpected Results Tagged With: Cooper-Hewitt-National-Design-Museum, museums, remixability, smithsonian, SXSW, SXSWi

The Daily Loper – March 12, 2006

March 12, 2006 by Lopy

Todays links of interest:

  • Net video explosion triggers traffic jam worries
    What’s gonna kill the new media explosion? Small pipes.
  • SXSW 2006 – Over 900 Artist MP3s for Free Download
    Fireup your favorite Bittorrent client and download this massive library of free (and legal) mp3s
  • YouTube: Natalie Portman Rap Search
    The afternoon’s (03:17PM 03-12-2006) YouTube search on “Natalie Portman raps” returned 4 results.
  • Meet the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame class of 2006
    Forget the time it took for them to get around to inducting Black Sabbath and the Sex Pistols (and Johnny was hilarious on Kimmel the other night), but what took them so long to induct Miles?
  • Sling Media coming to a UMPC near you
    We’ve been joking about the size of and need for the newly launched Ultra-Mobile PC — the device formerly known as “Origami,” — but here is an application for it that actually makes sense.
  • 2005 Motion Picture Industry Report
    Despite the much-publicized dip in attendance, still pretty healthy. Interesting point: the people who want more choice in how they viewed movies saw more movies last year than those who don’t. The record labels should pay attention.

Filed Under: The Daily Loper

Physical Artifacts For Virtual Music Collections

March 12, 2006 by Kirk Biglione

It’s almost hard for me to fathom now, but there was a time in my life when I owned over 5,000 albums. My record collection took up most of my living space for many years. My eventual transition to CD narrowed that number considerably, to just under 1,000 albums. Now that I’ve made the transition to digital music I have access to 17,000+ songs on a network attached storage unit, and there’s almost no evidence of my music collection anywhere in the house.

The paradox of digital music is that while listeners are now exposed to a larger quantity of music than ever before, there are very few physical artifacts associated music anymore. The iPod has become the primary tactile interface that music lovers use to select and listen to music. Visual design is less important than ever, and liner notes have practically vanished.

As Gray McCord of M3 design noted during the Smaller, Faster, Lighter session at day 2 of SXSW:

The experience of music has been reduced to a data management activity.

McCord is working on a concept for a new type of music packaging that could be used to represent digital music in a physical world. The concept looks like a cross between a traditional LP cover and a book. With plenty of room for art, liner notes, lyrics, and more, the packaging could restore a vital part of the popular music experience that has gone missing in the iTunes era.

McCord noted that several ways that the packaging might benefit the music industry:

  • Improved packaging could revive the retail experience by giving shoppers a way to interact with digital music in a traditional record store.
  • Could ultimately lead content providers to use less draconian DRM schemes since consumers would be more likely to buy the physical product.
  • Would also encourage consumers to purchase entire albums instead of downloading individual songs.

Or the RIAA could just go about business as usual and pretend that nothing has changed since 1956.

Unfortunately, if I were a betting man I’d have to put my money on the later.

Filed Under: Music Tagged With: Music, Packaging, SXSW, SXSWi

Librarians Versus The Search Giants

March 12, 2006 by Kassia Krozser

You want a hot discussion? Put librarians, Microsoft, Google, and Bob Stein from the Institute for the Future of the Book on a SXSW panel to talk about issues surrounding book digitization (and call the panel “Revenge of the Librarians”). An hour wasn’t nearly long enough for the conversation – and the diverse audience proved that the issues surrounding digitization aren’t limited to a small segment of the population.

Starting with the ideas of what happens after books are digitized and what the impact of a shrinking pool of knowledge might be, the panel started by discussing the elephant in the room (let me say that it was refreshing to see open back-and-forth dialogue between the panelists, unlike the normal nicey-nice stuff you see): Google’s book-related programs — Microsoft’s project isn’t online yet, so escaped detailed scrutiny. Dan Clancy, of Google, explained the various components of the initiative.

The goal for Google and Microsoft (other than making money, and that’s what corporations do) is to build indexes of authoritative works that will provide resources during search. To do this effectively, they need to have a lot of books digitized. This is an expensive and time-consuming process.

[Read more…] about Librarians Versus The Search Giants

Filed Under: Google, Mediacratic, Microsoft, Publishing Tagged With: Bob-Stein, Book-Publishing, Copyright, Dan-Clancy, Danielle-Tiedt, Digitizing-Books, Future-of-the-Book, Google-Book-Search, Google-Publisher-Program, Librarians, Libraries, Liz-Lawley, Microsoft-Book-Search, Project-Gutenberg, SXSW, SXSWi

The Weekly ‘Loper – March 12, 2006

March 12, 2006 by Rox

While you were shooting steroids meant for Barry Bonds into Slobodan Milosevic, here is what we were concentrating on:

  • The Battle Royale: Download Royalties – Every time there’s a new content delivery system everyone freaks out over how big their cut will be.
  • A History of the Ricky Gervais Show – Jim’s latest obsession. This week anyway.
  • Apple Launches Subscription Multi-Pass Video Service – What happens if The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are in reruns for a week or two? Does your monthly sub — I mean “Multi-Pass” carry forward?
  • What Really Keeps Studio Executives Awake At Night – You mean besides hookers and cocaine? How about that they have no idea what’s actually in their libraries.
  • Will Origami Introduce The Era Of UMPC? – I would like to include the winner of the 1998 Computer Haiku competition.

    “Windows NT crashed.
    I am the Blue Screen of Death.
    No one hears your screams.”

  • RIAA: Stop Taping Songs Off of the Radio! – What does the RIAA have against little kids anyway?!

Filed Under: The Weekly 'Loper

The Daily Loper – March 11, 2006

March 11, 2006 by Lopy

Todays links of interest:

  • Amazon, Hollywood studios in talks for downloads
    Will Amazon beat iTunes in the race for downloadable feature films? Sorta makes you wonder what that Amazon player is going to look like
  • Piracy is Good? How Battlestar Galactica Killed Broadcast TV
    Was Galactica the first made-for-bittorrent series ever?
  • Why release it now in multiple formats?
    So when my DVR cuts off the mind-blowing season finale of Battlestar Galactica with 2 fracking minutes left, I can immediately download it from iTunes, instead of screaming and punching a hole in my wall. (WARNING: This link contains BSG spoilers.)
  • Razr defect forces halting of U.S. sales
    Wait! Even the pink ones?
  • YouTube: Natalie Portman Rap Search
    This morning’s (07:40AM 03-11-2006) search on YouTube for “Natalie Portman Raps” returned 5 results
  • Google accelerates war of Word with software giant
    Google vs. Microsoft. Ali vs. Frazier. Godzilla vs. Megalon. The Red Sox vs. the Yankees. The Allies vs. the Axis. Buffy vs. Angel. The Beatles vs. The Rolling Stones. Humanity vs. The Cylons.
  • Analyst: Lower-priced models boost iPod demand
    Has anything in the history of the whole world ever been as hot as the iPod? Yeah, probably. Still, the iPod is fracking unstoppable right now, isn’t it?
  • Rather says age of real news isn’t over, despite popularity of satire
    Whew! Thank the gods! First, we had the end of history, which was bad enough, then real news was going to end, as well? Stupid Jon Stewart.
  • Merger to Wed BlackBerries, Phone Systems
    To those of you who didn’t realize that Blackberries weren’t your corporate phone systems, we need to talk. To those of you who said the Blackberry was just a fad, no. To those of you looking to free yourselves from tyranny, accept the truth: you lost the
  • ‘Stealth movies’ are not reviewed
    The “growing problem” of movies that the studios keep the critics from screening until after they are released to the general public. Usually because they suck. However, this year, several have been #1 at the box office in their first week of release.

Filed Under: The Daily Loper

RIAA: Stop Taping Songs Off of the Radio!

March 11, 2006 by Jim Connelly

When I was a kid, I used to place a handheld Panasonic cassette tape recorder (with a condensor mic!) next to a transistor radio to tape songs off of KYNO-AM. Not yet having the the money to go out and buy every single song I liked; these recordings were key to how I connected deeply to pop music, on which I’ve since spent a huge amount of my disposable (and not so disposable) income.
Little did I know, that in the eyes of the RIAA, my 10-year-old self was a thief, and they were itching for a way to keep me from stealing their songs. And now, with the advent of digital radio, they may have found a way.

[Read more…] about RIAA: Stop Taping Songs Off of the Radio!

Filed Under: DRM, Radio Tagged With: broadcast-flag, copy-protection, digital-radio, EFF, RIAA

SXSW Day 1: Convergence and Transformation: A Whole New Creative World

March 11, 2006 by Kirk Biglione

The experts agree — say the words “Digital Convergence” and people’s eyes glaze over. Clearly, the Medialoper elevator pitch needs some retooling.

David Pescovitz, of Boing Boing, lead the panel off by noting that he doesn’t really know what digital convergence is. On further reflection he’s pretty sure there is no such thing as convergence, but only divergence. When technologies converge they tend to produce sub-standard products – like the all-in-one uber-pda’s that don’t do any one thing particularly well.

Happily, David-Michel Davies jumped in to make the point we’ve been harping on for a while now — there’s a difference between digital convergence and convergent media.

From our perspective digital convergence is about technology, while convergent media is about content. Davies noted the danger is that media companies seem to be fighting to make the internet more like traditional media, instead of adapting traditional media to be more like the internet.

Some more random notes in no particular order (since that’s what semi-live blogging is all about):

  • Old media = no participation. New media = everyone participating and collaborating.
  • Convergence will ultimately come down to user experience – the ability of users to easily collaborate, interact, and remix.
  • Napkins can be used for good or evil.

Quote of the day (so far):

They used to say, “on the internet no one knows you’re a dog”. Today, everyone is branding themselves as a special breed of dog.

Yes, these notes are somewhat incomplete, but I’m recovering from my first celebrity sighting of the day – DA Pennebaker.

Filed Under: Services Tagged With: Convergence, SXSW, SXSWi

The Daily Loper – March 10, 2006

March 10, 2006 by Lopy

Todays links of interest:

  • Publishers Fight Back
    Apparently they’re not going to take the loss of readers in a spineless manner…or maybe they are. The new digital realm is more tempting than ever.
  • Jane Pratt and Gwen Stefani Sitting In A Tree
    Pratt turns to Stefani in her return to the magazine world. Stefani turns to the magazine world to complete her multimedia empire. The question, of course, is “does their target audience read print anymore?”
  • YouTube: Natalie Portman Rap Search
    This morning’s (10:05am 03-10-2006) search on YouTube for “Natalie Portman Raps” returned 3 results, but only 2 actually worked.
  • Wireless video? It’s hard to see it
    A review of various competing mobile video services. There are some issues, to say the least. It may be that the cell phone works better for communication / information than it ever will for entertainment.
  • Google to Pay $90M in ‘Click Fraud’ Case
    Uh-oh, there goes your revenue stream!
  • Hollywood sex scenes attract lawmakers’ attention
    Fooorrr the chilllldrennn! Forrrrr the chilllldren! Yeah, surrrre. Nothing like using “protecting the children” as an excuse to legislate morality.

Filed Under: The Daily Loper

Light In The Lopers

March 10, 2006 by Kirk Biglione

Members of Team Loper have just arrived in Austin, TX for SXSX Interactive. As a result, posting on Medialoper may be someone sporadic over the next week. On the other hand, we may just get the urge to live-blog every session. You just never know.

If you happen to see someone wearing a Medialoper t-shirt, you can be sure it’s one of us. Feel free to introduce yourself and please don’t hesitate to buy us a drink.

Filed Under: Mediacratic Tagged With: Austin, SXSW, SXSWi

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Previously on Medialoper

  • Certain Songs #2578: Supergrass – “Sun Hits The Sky”
  • Certain Songs #2577: Supergrass – “Alright”
  • Certain Songs #2576: Superchunk – “If You’re Not Dark”
  • Certain Songs #2575: Superchunk – “Endless Summer”
  • Certain Songs #2574: Superchunk – “Reagan Youth”

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