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Thursday, May 09, 2002 |
"If this practice is spreading like wildfire and traffic to blogs is surging, doesn't it seem like an obvious opportunity for online advertisers? For advertising opportunities, blogging technology needs to be user friendly. Ad technology needs to step up to the plate. To me, this parallels the crudeness of currently available ad opportunities in instant messaging.
Blogging isn't widely used, accepted, or provided by companies to employees. The technology would be an excellent forum for workplace communication. Quite often, my clients are trying to target the at-work audience. This would be a perfect fit. Not only would it be a great way to brand or promote products and services online, it would also allow advertisers to gain planning insight. Have you ever watched postings on an online bulletin board or lurked in a chat room? It's amazing what you can find out about people's interests, needs, problems, and attitudes toward a brand.
Many pundits strongly disagree. They believe blogging is built on trust. I agree. They think promoting a mobile phone or airline tickets or soft drinks on a blog would be horribly wrong. That's where I say, 'Give me a break.'
Open a newspaper, use the remote control on a TV, flip through a magazine, listen to the radio. What are you surrounded with? Advertising, of course. Perhaps these cynics want to protect and preserve the untouched atmosphere. I respect their opinion.
But I still say, 'Why not slap an ad on it?' " [ClickZ, via nickdenton.org]
Already today we've seen Macromedia take center stage. Now there's Pepsi Blue. Okay, granted the Blue blog isn't an official Pepsi site, but it's already coming up number one on Google. Talk about a new advertising model....
11:33:30 PM Permanent link here
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"We all love to be scared. But when does it become too much? I have been chatting with family and colleagues about this of late. Not in a planned way. We've just been reading a lot of it lately.
Dave, my husband, loves Steven King. He's been reading King's anthology collection, Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales. Well, Dave works the graveyard shift. He's recently realized that reading horror while working late nights may not be the best idea. It just invites your coworkers to try and scare you. So last night after I got home I had to find something else for him to read. He ended up with the Parrot's Lament, that was highly recommended by Liz and a history of World War II.
Also, over dinner last night, a colleague of mine mentioned how she loves murder mysteries. She doesn't like reading them when she travels alone. Because they can be scary. There was more to this conversation. But it was in the same vein.
When can we read horror without scaring ourselves and those around us? Why do we like to scare ourselves in the first place. Just some random thoughts." [It's All About Books!]
I think it's when the horror/mystery becomes too plausible. Sheree stopped reading Stephen King books when she had kids. I, myself, have never been a big fan of horror books or mysteries. I much preferred the futuristic speculation of science fiction. Now I read nonfiction that seems like science fiction.
Side note to Teri: YACCS!
11:12:29 PM Permanent link here
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You can't see it, but I'm doing the happy dance of joy! The Userland folks waved their magic wands and whatever levers they pulled behind the curtain fixed my RSS feed. Whoo-hoo! Major kahuna thanks to them and to Bill Kearney for his efforts!
Click and see for yourself! 
10:20:52 PM Permanent link here
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"We've been given the go ahead from O'Reilly, the "...FRIENDLIEST and most WONDERFUL publisher we've ever dealt with" (sorry, a little editor tease there), to announce a new book on weblogging!
Among the authors is yours truly, writing the chapters on Blogger. I'm joined by Mena and Ben Trott writing about Movable Type, Scott Johnson who's been dropping hints about the book, Rael Dornfest from O'Reilly, and Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing fame. Nathan Torkington is the editor that has to manage this wild and wooly crowd.
The book should be out in September. Start saving your pennies now.
The name of the book will either be Weblogging Essentials or Practical Weblogging. My preference of course is for the latter since I'm also writing Practical RDF. " [BurningBird, via Scripting News]
This is great news, especially combined with Rebecca Blood's forthcoming titles. I'm glad to see that Radio will be included, especially now that it's become a multi-author environment. What I'd really love to see is an ALA Editions book about how to take advantage of blogging, both internally and externally, within various types of libraries. We're at the point where there are enough successful proofs of concept that it's a viable form of communication now. Throw in the RSS news feeds aspect and you've got a fantastic new tool for all libraries.
If nothing else, public libraries should purchase these titles when they are published.
10:15:28 PM Permanent link here
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"In short, a battle for control of your living room is about to be waged by consumer electronics makers, developers of personal-computer hardware and software, and set-top-box designers that sell directly to cable and satellite providers. Now that home networking is a reality (albeit a tricky one), companies are building devices that not only store or connect to a range of entertainment choices but also communicate with one another to distribute those choices throughout the home....
Still, traditional arguments against convergence do not necessarily pertain. If you wanted to build a digital camcorder that also takes high-quality still images, you would have to install two image-capturing devices. But adding music-jukebox capability to a digital video recorder, or enabling DVD playback on a game console that already uses a DVD-ROM drive, is simply a software update. By this fall, TiVo customers will have the option of activating a RealOne media player, already a common feature on PC's. While the precise configuration has yet to be announced, the TiVo application is likely to provide not only streaming audio and video from the Internet, but also the ability to store and play hours of music directly from the TiVo's drive....
In the next couple of years, Sony plans to introduce a similar product, the Personal Network Home Storage device. A concept product demonstrated last fall had a capacity of one terabyte, or 1,000 gigabytes, which means it could hold either 450 hours of DVD-quality movies, 1,500 CD's or 600,000 high-resolution photographs. Presumably that sort of box would sit in the corner of the room or in the basement (one nickname for entertainment servers is "media furnace"). Sony also plans to offer networking in most of its consumer products, so that the content in your media furnace could be vented not only through TV's and audio receivers but also through clock radios and MiniDisc players.
The reason all this is not yet on the market is that manufacturers are still searching for answers to the big questions of simple interoperability." [NY Times Technology]
Emphasis above is mine, mainly because that's the part that made me drool. That's as someone who consumes as much media as I possibly can. Laugh if you want, but my friends will tell you that I could probably fill a terabyte pretty quickly. Hopefully media companies will realize that and take John Robb's advice to help me fill that terabyte, rather than restrict what I consume to the point where it's not worth it anymore.
Putting on my librarian hat causes me no end of concern in the above scenario. When digital content is being sold directly through digital pipelines to consumers, I hope there are ways for libraries to still circulate it. If the current mindset in the entertainment industry prevails and there are no exceptions for libraries to lend digital files, then we will slowly lose our relevance and even our mission to serve our patrons because we can't provide information or entertainment outside of our four walls. That's the exact opposite of what I advocate libraries do - shift their services into their users' worlds.
9:22:34 PM Permanent link here
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"This year, Macromedia -- the company that makes Flash and Shockwave -- has posted a $305 million quarterly loss, laid off 110 people and lost a $2.8 million copyright infringement suit to Adobe.
But for all the company's apparent troubles, in the last week there's been a lot of good feeling directed toward the firm, with people saying that Macromedia is one of the few companies to appreciate the new topography of the Web.
That's because Macromedia is blogging.
Not only has the company started to tailor its software to the needs of people who run their own weblogs, but it's also dived headlong into the much-hyped "blogosphere" itself, setting up its own weblogs as a way to nurture ties with its customers.
Macromedia calls this "the blog strategy," and some see the company's moves as the start of a trend. These days, it's almost unfashionable for a self-respecting Webophile to not have his own blog; if Macromedia's effort is any indication, soon a tech company that doesn't embrace blogs may seem equally dated....
Macromedia had five of its 'community managers' create their own weblogs using Radio and Blogger, two of the most popular blog publishers. (The bloggers are John Dowdell, Mike Chambers, Matt Brown, Vernon Viehe and Bob Tartar.) " [Wired News]
I've subscribed to Matt Brown's blog, but the problem with the ones on Blogger is that they haven't used Voidstar's RSSify service to syndicate them. So they understand the "publish" side of the model, but not the "subscribe" side. Overall, though, I have to congratulate Macromedia because this is a great idea, and these guys are providing a valuable service.
7:32:05 AM Permanent link here
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"A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that the copyright infringement case against the Russian software company Elcomsoft can go on, dismissing the defense's claim that key provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act are unconstitutional.
U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Whyte of San Jose said that the DMCA was neither vague nor did it violate the First Amendment, as Elcomsoft had argued. Although the judge agreed with Elcomsoft that computer code is speech, he said that the DMCA does not unconstitutionally ban that speech....
U.S. v. Elcomsoft, the case that began last July with the arrest of the Russian programmer Dmitri Sklyarov, has become a major courtroom test of the DMCA, the controversial law that many in the programming community have criticized as being too broad. Elcomsoft is charged with creating and trafficking in a copyright 'circumvention device' -- that device is the company's Advanced eBook Processor, which breaks the encryption scheme of Adobe's e-books.
One of the main complaints against the DMCA has centered around 'fair use' -- the right to access copyrighted works for limited use. Elcomsoft's attorneys as well as other critics of the DMCA have argued that the law does not sufficiently protect fair use rights, and that it instead enjoins anyone from creating a so-called 'circumvention device,' even if the purpose of that circumvention is lawful.
But in denying the defense's motion, Whyte ironically agreed with them that the law does not distinguish between devices created to promote fair use and those created to 'infringe' upon a copyright....
'The statute does not distinguish between devices based on the uses to which the device will be put. Instead, all tools that enable circumvention of use restrictions are banned, not merely those use restrictions that prohibit infringement. Thus, as the government contended at oral argument, (the law) imposes a blanket ban on trafficking in or the marketing of any device that circumvents use restrictions.'
The judge further adds: 'The act expressly disclaims any intent to affect the rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including the right of fair use.'
In other words, it doesn't matter whether you create software to crack an e-book only with the intent of copying some passages from the e-book in a 'fair' manner: Creating that cracking software still violates the DMCA, according to Whyte." [Wired News]
I want this to go the Supreme Court anyway so that the DMCA can be struck down as unconstitutional, but my question is this: how can this judge agree that computer code is speech, while another judge decides that video games are not? As an outsider looking in, I'll never understand our legal system.
12:20:26 AM Permanent link here
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© Copyright 2004 Jenny Levine.
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