Culture and Society

Our own Kevin Aylward of the Wizbang Blog has staked out territory in the blog awards arena. Resembling the Grammys for award granularity, readers may vote on various categories until the cows repatriate, so to speak. If you are a member or a reader of Blogcritics (and you are reading …

Mac Diva told us about iPod jacking last week, but this is this week: Media Lab Europe, research partner to MIT Media Lab, is testing tunA, a software application that employs Wi-Fi to locate nearby users, peek at their music playlist and wirelessly jack into their audio stream. Pronounced like …

Could the MPAA’s anti-screener campaign have turned out any worse? It has been a PR nightmare, it has called into question the very integrity of the Academy Awards, it has created a very public rift between independent producers, actors, directors, and critics against the “establishment,” AND it hasn’t even worked: …

More lawsuits from the RIAA – “Merry Christmas, you’re a statistic”: The RIAA is firing off a new wave of lawsuits and lawsuit-notification letters to users whom the RIAA alleges have illegally distributed significant amounts of copyright-protected music files online. The group is filing 41 new lawsuits and sending 90 …

Our John Mudd is pissed – apparently there are others: Some business owners who depend on Google driving Internet users to their Web sites are angry over a change to the top search engine’s ranking system, which they say threatens to dent their revenue during the holiday shopping season. One …

The new Napster is giving away a free three-day trial of its subscription service during December. Consumers who subscribe to the service after their free trial ends will receive five free permanent downloads. In addition, Napster has inked a deal with RadioShack to distribute pre-paid cards that allow consumers to …

For the last 16 months we have been writing and writhing about the dangers of the copyright industry infringing upon personal freedom, consumer rights and the efficacy of the Internet, the diminution of the public domain, heavy-handed use of the judicial system, increased corporate control over both hardware and software …

Bob Tedeschi looks at the digital music prospects for the coming year: COMING to a music download store in 2004: Yo-Yo Ma’s Shostakovich Quartet No. 15 and Bob Dylan’s second show at Amsterdam. So go the predictions of some music industry executives, who say that as music labels and retailers …

Playboy turns 50 this week with the publication of a special anniversary issue. Though we are a far cry from the “anything goes” sexual revolution of the ’60s and ’70s – with AIDS the single biggest killjoy – and hedonism in general is out of fashion, I think the world …

So far, I have found two things for which mobile phones are really good: safety (as in “I am broken down in the middle of BFE, please come rescue me”) and courtesy/convenience (“I am am running late, be there in 20 minutes”). From a business standpoint, it also untethers you …