Science and Technology

I want to take a moment and commend Henry Copeland and Blogads for doing what a year ago looked impossible: turning blogs into a viable advertising medium. When Blogcritics was getting off the ground 14 months ago, the notion that blogs could generate traction enough to interest advertisers was viewed …

Only two days until Halloween – why do the holiday, movies, attractions, stories, etc., that trade in fright find such resonance with us? I looked into this and the bizarre rise of Internet “ghoul pools” on MSNBC.com: “It’s a dead man’s party, who could ask for more?Everybody’s coming, leave your …

Stalwart, omnipresent Farhad Manjoo calmly eviscerates Hollywood’s calls for a “broadcast flag” that would prohibit the transfer of digital television programs over the Internet, and that really entails telling electronics manufacturers how they must make their machines: On its Web site, the Motion Picture Association of America provides a handy …

A pair of MIT students have developed a music sharing system that is in compliance with current copyright law: Keith Winstein and Josh Mandel may soon be the most popular guys on campus. They say they’ve discovered a way to give their fellow students at MIT and elsewhere dorm-room access …

Accumulating pearls of wisdom at the feet of my personal digital music guru Jim Griffin: get your collective act together or risk having government authorities slap compulsory licences on the business. In a hugely entertaining and passionate speech, Griffin expressed his clear preference for voluntary negotiations, advocating charges to be …

In a strong challenge to the hegemony of Apple’s iPod, Samsung offers a new digital audio player with the Napster brand: FOR TWO YEARS, Apple Computer Inc.’s iPod has reigned supreme among hard-drive music players, both for Windows and Macintosh users. Now the competition is getting serious. Just in time …

I am very unhappy about this, but I certainly can understand it from her point of view: An anonymous Boston College student yesterday ended a legal fight to keep her identity secret from the music recording industry, which wanted to sue her for allegedly distributing copyrighted songs over the school’s …

California socks spam firm with $2 million fine: The state’s attorney general, Bill Lockyer, brought the case against PW Marketing of Los Angeles County and its owners, Paul Willis and Claudia Griffin in 2002, under a 1998 state anti-spam law. ….PW Marketing, Willis and Griffin were charged with sending out …

VentureBlog contributor Naval Ravikant, inventor of the jelly, muses on the ubiquity of wireless computing at Dartmouth: Instant Messenger for voice will emerge – Just as ubiquitous wired connectivity lead from email (sporadic and asynchronous) to IM (always-on and synchronous), so ubiquitous wireless connectivity takes us from cellphones to a …

Bookofjoe discussed Skype and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) a few days ago here. I (and about 1000 of my closest friends) got this about SIP directly from Michael Robertson, former MP3.com guru, now Lindows maven: SIP is to telecom, what MP3 is to music biz. Hold on tight boys …