dcinput

Sometimes time sure does fly. I missed out on blogging some real interesting stuff the last couple of days due to an insanely busy work schedule. That really bums me out.

Its been a really interesting week for all things digital. Here in the UK for the first time ever a single has made it to number one based on digital downloads alone. Think about it for a second, they’ve got a number one and they haven’t actually made anything that you can physically hold in your hand. Far out.

BBC News: “US hip-hop duo Gnarls Barkley have become the first act to score a UK number one single on the strength of digital sales alone”

One of the interesting things is a massive shift in how the charts are formed. The charts for the last ten years have, for the most part, been defined by what singles teenagers are buying from the shops. With downloads playing a major role, the demographics of chart influence is moving to the 20-30 year olds. IMHO this can only be a good thing for music. But then I would say that wouldn’t I…

The other major news in the world of digital was the announcement that six major studios are clubbing together to sell movie downloads that you can keep.

NYTimes: “The studios are caught between a rock and a hard place”…”If they don’t make movies available electronically, piracy will get them. But they simultaneously have to take care of their brick-and-mortar customers. If the chain stores became angered”…”they might pull back from their heavy promotion of DVD’s”.

Lots of interesting chatter on the blogosphere about the development as the news makes the top of memeorandum.

Great piece by Scott Kirsner on CinemaTech - thats where I heard about it first. One of the best places for anything d-cinema related.

For the most part people are complaining about how rubbish the service is going to be: expensive and heavily DRMed. What people are missing is that this is really just the first step. The studios are just starting to “get the internet” but are treading very cautiously, and for good reason. The prices will come down, the market will see to that, in the end it’s just way cheaper to not actually have to physically make anything.

With companies like Amazon and Apple trying to secure deals with Hollywood this has the potential to drastically change things: jobs will be lost and companies without internet presence will go under. It’s going to be a roller coaster ride from here on in.

Dave Winer thinks that NPR are figuring out how to make money on the internet. The article of his on the fundamental law to making money on the internet (version 3) that he links to makes for interesting reading.

Damn I love the OPML Editor for blogging but it sucks so hard that when you switch to the normal Wordpress interface then back the the OPML Editor that all the work you did gets deleted. All the picks I uploaded just disapeared. Grrr. Now I have to put them back again.

Where does all the time go? I need a time machine. It’s nearly midnight and I have a few PHP/MySQL tutorials to get through before bed…in the end the master plan will come together it’s just sometimes juggling work, professional exams, personal projects and eating good pizza can leave you a bit thinly spread.

The best pizza in London town is the Furnace and you sure better had the pizza Porchetta its just so great. Mmmm.

I really should change my blogroll. I mean who are these guys? Matt, Donncha, Dougal. I sure don’t know.

Tried the early riser technique with some success this morning. Nothing too early but plenty of time to cook myself some breakfast and go down the shops. I’ll try a little earlier tomorrow.

I was very interested in the ideas behind Independant World Television (IWT) when I first heard about it last year. The idea is to create a global news television network that is independant of corporate and goverment funding and hence pressures, and which can report what is really going on in the world. Many of the interviews you can download are very enlightening as to the ecosystem of world news coverage.

I can’t help but wonder how they plan to choose their perspectives for their reports and investigations. Is it even possible to create a world news network that is useful for all? Maybe not, maybe thats why they are changing the name of the network to “The Real News”. I prefer the old name. I imediately distrust this new name, it just doesn’t seem honest.

I started off the day using the OPML Editor to blog this morning while at home. At work I can’t use it due to company firewall settings so I used the normal Wordpress WYSIWYG interface. When I got home this evening I again started using the OPML Editor and somehow everything I have written while at work today has been deleted. How rubbish is that! Luckily I was super busy at work so there wasn’t much.

Regional Film and Video: “Rushes are investing over £2 million in a huge and ongoing expansion of the facility”…”The money has so far been invested in five brand new ‘state of the art’ suites as well as updating six existing suites with the most advanced technology on the market”.

Regional Film and Video: “Evolutions has announced that it has purchased Soho based facility, Nats Post Production for a seven-figure sum.”…”With upwards of eighty suites the purchase will make the company the largest independently owned facility in Soho”.

Its April fools day today so watch out! I slept in till late so no one managed to get me.

I’m blogging using the OPML editor and it seems to work pretty good! Houray. You can find the instructions of how to set it up to work with your Wordpress blog here.

You might have noticed a lack of presence the last few days. I’ve been really quite ill all week and it’s been pretty unpleasant but I’m on the mend now, finally.

While I was ill I started buying good old fashioned newspapers and actually had time to read them cover to cover, with all the supplements. Really quite refreshing. Some interesting articles.

Did you know that in the UK the Sale of Goods Act offers rather a lot of protection against faulty goods even when the manufacturer’s guarantee has run out? The act says the goods must last a reasonable time and can be anything up to 6 years.

The article in the Guardian that I was reading gives the example of a faulty ipod. Even after the 1 year waranty has expired you should be able to demand a complete refund so long as the fault lies with the goods manufacturer rather than abuse to the machine. I’ve had to get my ipod replaced a whoping 4 times so far so this might come in useful for when it fails out of waranty.

I’ve ended up about a week behind in my listening to the Daily Source Code due to being ill. So I’m currently playing catch up. Adam is running a golden ticket competition. They have chosen 1 listener at random who ends up with a slightly different show to everyone else’s. I guess when this person listens to the show they get told they’ve won. Great idea for a competition.

Looking at his weblog no one has claimed the prize yet. I’ve still got like 5 shows to listen to…it would be funny if I was the winner.

Nice April fools from Scobble. I’ll admit he had me for about 2 paragraphs. It made the top of memeorandum.

I’m loving using the OPML Editor to blog but I can’t find an easy way to stick pictures in the posts. Maybe I’m just being dumb.

Looks like I didn’t win the golden ticket

Josh Oakhurst has been making good use of Netflix to do some documentary watching. He lists his top 10 great documentaries.

Fox anounce that they are going to make a Simpson’s movie.

The Hollywood Reporter: “Phone and cable company executives contend that they need to be able to charge some companies premium prices if they demand secure networks, virtual private networks or higher speeds for the transfer of movies or other large files. They contend that their pledge not to harm consumer access is enough”. Hollywood wakes up to net neutrality.

According to Joe Barton, who is pushing the Net Neutrality Bill, “We just had eight gentlemen that represent the largest trade groups and the brightest minds in the country, and not one of them gave a concise definition”…”We’re tied up in knots in this bill, potentially over something that we do not yet even have a universally recognized definition of what it is”.

Ha ha so no-one understands it yet. You got to love it. I’ve held my hands up all along saying that I was confused about this topic. I think the penny is starting to drop though. The one thought that I keep coming back to is that I don’t think people understand what the net actually is, today, as in now.

The question people need to answer first is “What is the Web?”. You might think that’s an easy question but I get the feeling that it’s actually a very big rusty can of worms.

Lately I’ve been finding it hard to find time to put fingers to keyboard and turn out a consistent amount of content on the blog. It can be partially attributed to a massively hectic work schedule, the documentary making course I’m attending and the need to fill every last minute of my day nerding away for my RHCT course and exam at the end of the month.

However I’ve realised that it might also be the way that I’m bloging. Let me explain.

The default title-then-post format of the Wordpress blog is starting to get me down. It just doesn’t fit in right to life when you’re busy with other stuff all the time. You see this format kind of forces you to write about 1 theme per post…essay style. The reality is that its just too time consuming. The other thing is that a lot of the time I don’t want to write an essay. Often I just want to link to a whole bunch of different articles that I’ve come across throughout the day with really short comments. Other times though, when I’ve got more time, I like to spend some time researching a piece and write about it in depth.

So I’ve decided to try a slightly new format. Starting tomorrow there will be two types of posts:

1. “dcinput daily” posts - One each day (hopefully) which will grow throughout the day with small posts to interesting things I come accross (a la Scripting News)
2. Longer essay type posts - whenever I have time to go into something in a little more depth.

I’m hoping to figure out how to get the OPML Editor to work with Wordpress. I’m pretty sure I remember reading that someone figured it out. Anyways let me know what you think.