Friday , March 29 2024

Culture and Society

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

U.S. Gov. censors web service set up to evade consorship: A web-proxy service set up by the US government’s International Broadcasting Bureau to enable websurfers in Iran to evade censorship is itself massively censoring what they can see. That is the conclusion of an independent new report released from the …

Read More »

BBC: TV On Demand

The BBC is ahead of the curve with “rich” Internet content. They have begun a pilot project that could lead to all of their TV content being available on the Internet on demand: The future of television is almost upon us: the day when we spend our train or bus …

Read More »

Microsoft’s Rent Control

As usual I have mixed feelings. Today Microsoft came out with their new DRM, called Janus (who would have thought Microsoft would choose to identify one of its products as two-faced?), which will, in the short run give consumers more flexibility with digital content, specifically enabling “rented” material like music …

Read More »

“Designing Bits and Pieces”

Very interesting symposium at MIT’s Media Lab on May 10: On May 10, the MIT Media Laboratory and the Consumer Electronics Association will co-host a symposium at MIT’s Kresge Auditorium, followed by a research open house at the Media Lab. Walt Mossberg, Personal Technology columnist at the Wall Street Journal, …

Read More »

Future of Music Policy Summit Blog

The Future of Music Policy Summit 2004 is going on right now in DC. Since most of us aren’t there, a great way to keep up with the proceedings is via the blog that CD Baby’s Derek Sivers is keeping. Topics up so far include This Panel Kills Fascists, The …

Read More »

Concert on Your Keychain

Wow – this takes the instant live recording concept another step farther: Now, minutes after your favorite band sounds its last note on stage, you can load a live recording of the concert onto a cigarette-lighter-sized hard drive hanging off your keychain. Take it home, toss the digital files onto …

Read More »

Blah Blah More RIAA Lawsuits Blah Blah

The beat goes on, 477 more: Since January, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), employing the “John Doe” litigation method, has sued more than 2,000 people. The RIAA is using this method because the names of the 477 people accused of illegally distributing copyrighted sound recordings on peer-to-peer services …

Read More »

Chasing Twisters

Fifth grade science teacher David Thon is joining as an “embedded blogger” as a team of WeatherBug meteorologists take part in a five-day-long tornado chase called WeatherBug Storm Chase 2004. The team will set out in search of storms beginning Monday, May 3 in Oklahoma City: David (top right) was …

Read More »