Frank Gruber analyses the various services that sell online music on TechCrunch in a two part piece. In this first piece he compares pay-per-download services. The next part will look at all you can eat subscription services. The outlook is heavy DRM and an AAC/WMA format war which is bound to end in tears for us users.
Dave Winer: “Instead of thinking of “user generated content” think of the Internet as an idea processor, and you’ll be much closer to the power of what’s going on”.
I’m always looking for different ways of looking at the internet and I like this one. Depending on who you are and what you do the internet can seem like very different things, and it changes over time.
When I first started going online in the early nineties I was pretty impressed but I soon got bored as I realised that really the internet was just a glorified catalogue. Websites were static and they just tended to show you things. You couldn’t really interact. I’m sure there were interesting things going on in the web then but I just wasn’t aware of them.
The web today is a very different place. People of all walks of life all around the globe are able to interact in so many different ways, share things, create things, do business and more. Its incredible that the web has so far met everyone’s needs. The pace of change is accelerating rapidly and the boundaries of what the web is are being pushed in ever more directions. The whole net neutrality issue is somehow related to this. Will the web continue to evolve as something for everyone? It’s an important question.
The web as storage in the clouds: Amazon S3 - Simple Storage Services.
Great audio interview by Dr Jobbs with Amazon’s Adam Selipsky about the new S3 service. I’m starting to see the big deal with this thing. I’m also starting to get some really good ideas for new projects. When you don’t have to worry about storage things could get a lot more fun for developers.
Looks like the Da Vinci Code will get released after all as Dan Brown wins his case at the High Court in the UK. Any publicity is good publicity.
NYTimes: “The authors of ‘Holy Blood’, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, had failed in their effort to prove that Mr. Brown had stolen their ‘central theme’ because they could not accurately state what that theme was”.
Rushi has compiled a great list of links for AJAX newbies and its kind of geared towards PHP programmers. Just what I was looking for.
Techdirt: Universal Pictures are trying to beat dvd counterfeiters at their own game in Russia by selling “cheap ‘n early” dvds at lower cost and quality.
I missed this post on Cinematical last weekend about the upcomming Shrek spin off “Puss in Boots”. I had wondered what had happened to this idea. While I was working at the Creature Shop last year I had a load of fun doing some motion capture tests for this. Due to the fact that cats have weird back legs that bend the wrong way, the physical department, which built the animatronics, had made a special Puss in Boots exoskeleton that a human wore and to which the motion capture sensors were attached. In this way the motion data that was captured would look like it was from a walking cat.
I ended up doing the initial testing for the exoskeleton as I was about the right size and had to prance about the studio with a pretend sword. When it came down to the actual motion capture shoot they got someone else in but I did get to try on the Honey Monster outfit that day too. Brings back such good memories.
Complete coincidence but I’m going to a reunion lunch of the Creature Shop engineering team tomorrow which should be interesting. Damn it’s such a shame that the place closed down.
BBC News: “Hundreds of thousands of people have signed up for new .eu domain name since it became available to the public on Friday”. Damn it some person with my name got the one I wanted. Imposter!
BBC News: “Digital download-to-own is the new holy grail of the film and TV industry as it fights to respond to the twin challenges of piracy and new market entrants”…”However, the consumer must be at the centre of all new strategies and DRM systems that are not sufficiently flexible are doomed to failure”.
Adam Curry is looking for “animators, scripters and people involved in machinima” to work with him on making some cool stuff for second life. Sounds like its for money too. I heard this on Thursday’s DSC while on my way out to the final day of my Redhat course in Guilford (after I’d written the previous two paragraphs..funny how things go). Sounds interesting to me. I can think of quite a few great people who might be interested.
