Janis Ian writes an alternative perception of the music industry and their "problems" with peer-to-peer networks:
If you think about it, the music industry should be rejoicing at this new technological advance! Here's a fool-proof way to deliver music to millions who might otherwise would never purchase a CD in a store. The cross-marketing opportunities are unbelievable. It's instantaneous, costs are minimal, shipping non-existant?a staggering vehicle for higher earnings and lower costs. Instead, they're running around like chickens with their heads cut off, bleeding on everyone and making no sense. As an alternative to encrypting everything, and tying up money for years (potentially decades) fighting consumer suits demanding their first amendment rights be protected (which have always gone to the consumer, as witness the availability of blank and unencrypted VHS tapes and casettes), why not take a tip from book publishers and writers?
[...]
One other major point: in the hysteria of the moment, everyone is forgetting the main way an artist becomes successful - exposure. Without exposure, no one comes to shows, no one buys CDs, no one enables you to earn a living doing what you love. Again, from personal experience: in 37 years as a recording artist, I've created 25+ albums for major labels, and I've never once received a royalty check that didn't show I owed them money. So I make the bulk of my living from live touring, playing for 80-1500 people a night, doing my own show. I spend hours each week doing press, writing articles, making sure my website tour information is up to date. Why? Because all of that gives me exposure to an audience that might not come otherwise. So when someone writes and tells me they came to my show because they'd downloaded a song and gotten curious, I am thrilled!
Brave words from a little musician that very well could get squashed by the industry. At least she would still be able to write.
[Via Kevin Marks]
Mario (Quasimondo) keep on producing cool projects, this time around its the Flash Connection v1.0 that has been released.
[It] tries to visualize the ties between the flash-related sites that I currently link to. My rough crawler could of course only read HTML so pure flash sites will probably show no outgoing links. At the moment the information gets served by a static XML file, but in the future I try to make it fully dynamic (perhaps it is even a better idea to crawl RSS feeds).
I think RSS feeds sounds like a good idea. I like the way the relations are displayed, but the current version could have been more easily manipulated I think.
Interesting article in the New York Times today: Escaping to Bryant Park, but Staying Connected to the Web
It was the perfect collision of technology and nature, at least the way Oren Eckhaus, a Brooklyn photographer, describes it. He was surfing the Internet on his Apple Titanium PowerBook one day last week and a leaf fluttered in a light breeze and landed on his keyboard."I'm surrounded by all this technology, and this leaf falls — that is so amazing," Mr. Eckhaus said, sitting in the shade on a bench in Bryant Park last week. "Nothing like that can happen at home, except the coffee can spill on your computer."
The really neat part about this project in Bryant Park, New York City, is that the access is made available for free. Currently there are more than 70 hotspots in NYC that are publicly accessible and free, all run by NYCwireless
Now if I could only convince some of the parks in Oslo to buy into this idea, and I would get a lot more fresh air and sunshine :-)
[Via Dave Winer]
A new cool resource for anyone using any of Macromedia's MX products for developing or designing web and multimedia content: Designer & Developer : Tips Library
Its nice to see Macromedia coming along with a more interactive resource center. At the Tips Library you can contribute with your own tips, to quote Macromedia; «ways of saving time, checking quality, or making your site something "special"»
Interesting announcement from the norwegian browser company Opera today: "Macromedia to Embed the Opera Browser in Web Authoring Products"
Today, Opera Software announced an agreement with Macromedia, whereby the two companies will work together to integrate their products for the Mac platform. Opera will deliver a full-featured, embeddable version of its desktop browser to be integrated into a wide range of Macromedia Web development products.
The anouncement has sparked some questions in the blog community about what this means for the Macromedia products.
At ActionScript.com the question was:
Macromedia uses Opera's browser in their Mac products (how or why this will work is a bit mysterious)
Todd @ What Do I Know also wants to know what is going on:
...why in the world is Macromedia joining efforts with Opera to create an embeddable browser for the Mac?
I think Mike Davidson from ESPN.com has an interesting explenation/theory:
First let's deal with why they need an embeddable browser. Not many of these have been released yet, but many companies are starting to use Flash to develop desktop applications. At ESPN, we created 'The BottomLine' which we believe to be the most widely used installable Flash desktop application in the world. We released it a couple of months ago and it has already been downloaded by over 300,000 users. Here's the problem though: the application is only embeddable as a true installable app on Windows PCs. The reason is that there is an IE control built into Windows which allows you to easily construct a 'shell' around any Flash app. All other machine/browser combinations must use the popup window version of the BottomLine.
[Via ActionScript.com]
Macromedia has released a developer beta of a new Flash 6 player, codenamed Airwolf. The list of bug fixes and extra features in the player is actually quite impressive.
The Flash 6 build r39 beta can be downloaded from Macromedia.com. Mike Chambers have been nice enough to provide a username and password:
Username : betabits
Password : flex475
New features / fixes include:
- Masking Device Fonts
- Accessing ID3 properties in MP3 files with the Airwolf Player
- Flash scriptability (XPCom/LiveConnect) support for Netscape
- Text fields are now more efficient and consume less memory
- Intel P4 optimizations
Does anyone know if this beta addresses the Flash Player Cross Server Scripting exploit that was reported earlier this summer? I couldn't find anything in the release information.
[Via Mike Chambers]
