Wednesday, June 2, 2004

Network News on Friendster / CNET / Mediaburn (via RSS 2.0) Sassa, who has also held executive positions at Turner Broadcasting System, where he launched the cable channels TNT, the Cartoon Network and Turner Classic Movies, said he plans to build a major consumer brand from Friendster. "This is not an enterprise software play, this is about providing people with a better way to spend their free time. Friendster is about being able to discover new things through people you trust." Friendster hires new CEO [CNET News.com] 10:17:18 PM

New Weblog, Wireless Unleashed Group-Blog on Spectrum Issues. Kevin Werbach, Clay Shirky, Andrew Odlyzko, and David Isenberg have launched Wireless Unleashed, a group weblog. Kevin says: The site focuses on the benefits of reallocating low-frequency wireless capacity from broadcasting to unlicensed applications, both here and around the world. There is a huge amount of capacity which could be used for two-way applications like broadband to the home, but which is locked up in broadcast allocations based on 1950s technology. Freeing up that capacity could create massive opportunities for innovation, and could dramatically lower the costs of wireless connectivity in developing countries. The blog will serve as a sounding board for our commentary on this issue. We will be writing whitepapers as well. [unmediated] 8:36:54 PM

Group312Films Group312Films Invites You to The Third Incarnation and Retrospective Screening Party Celebrate THE WORMS ABOVE, THE BIRDS BELOW, and the completion of their third incarnation of inventive independent films Monday, June 7th, 7pm at darkroom on Chicago Avenue. The party will showcase the newest work of the current generation and a special retrospective of past generations. THIRD INCARNATION Sixth Month Screening Party Monday, June 7 darkroom 2210 West Chicago Avenue (between Damen and Western Avenues) Doors open at 7pm Screenings begin at 8pm Admission to the event is free / 21yrs and older welcome The evening will include complimentary wine, drink specials, screenings, video mixing, food, and music until 2am. Raffle gifts will be given away throughout the evening. Gifts include donations from The Niebaum-Coppola Estate Winery, The Chicago International Film Festival, The Gene Siskel Film Center, Facets Multimedia, The Chicago Cultural Center Mosaic Program, PBS, Moonshine Restaurant and Bar,The Museum of Contemporary Art, and JINX Coffee Shop. Group312Films, the Chicago-based not-for-profit, artists' collective of digital video and film directors. Every month, for a six-month period,each Group312films director creates one short video. Members select a theme and host a public screening of the month's productions. Filmmakers collaborate on ideas, score, direction, concept and editing. They also collaborate with actors, editors, writers, musicians, lighting technicians, sound-designers, and graphic artists. The projects are captured on mini dv, digital 8, 8mm and 16mm. Each public screening offers a mix of documentaries, animation, narrative and drama. The film topics and themes vary widely from politically provocative and whimsical, to autobiographical and ironic. 8:31:46 PM

This Weekend on The Acoustic Storm with Jeff Parets The Acoustic Storm Radio Program is music-intensive with pertinent artist information. Each week, a different artist is spotlighted in "The Eye of The Acoustic Storm." Hourly segments of "The Eye" feature the artist's music and often contain bio information and sound bites. Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham formed one of the most dynamic rock bands in history. They also produced some of the most powerful acoustic-rock ever recorded. Led Zeppelin will be featured the weekend of 6/5-6/6 in the Eye of the Acoustic Storm. Here's where and when you can catch The Acoustic Storm across the country. 8:13:21 PM

OpenQuicktime Open source QuickTime initiative. Very interesting project, includes a beta version of a broadcasting app as well. From the site: OpenQuicktime aims to be a portable library for handling Apple's QuickTime popular media files on Unix-like environments. It is aim is to provide encoding, authoring and editing support as well as video playback. [unmediated] 7:15:55 PM

'Category: Music: Religious' Maybe like the Godfather of Soul. - Editor A new direction?. You may have heard my music called a lot of things, but this one is new... Thanks Eric [Ottmar Liebert] 6:56:35 PM

The Bastille in Hanford The Bastille in Hanford 2003. Thanks for the photo, Richard. [Ottmar Liebert] 6:27:11 PM

From ReallySimpleSyndication.com Really Simple Syndication: "Dave, how I can explain to my large media corporation higher-ups why it's not a bad thing that they lose traffic if their readers are using our RSS feeds instead of visiting the site?" [Scripting News] 6:22:56 PM

Utah and Really Simple Syndication What's Utah's inspiration on RSS Feeds? Mountains? Skiing and Snowboarding? Senator Orrin Hatch? Utah is still beating the rest of us in RSS Feeds. Via Phil Windley's blog, Utah has a Bill Tracking page which also includes an RSS feed. Utah can also create... [Tech, Knowledge, and Community] 6:19:16 PM

mini me-dia Lightening the load for sneakernets?. As reported in Wired, Japan's NTT has developed this new media format, a small, plastic card called Info-MICA that can be cheaply mass-produced and can now hold 1GB of data (they plan on upping this to at least 10GB in the future). They're read-only and the per-unit cost will supposedly be low, but only when produced in large batches on expensive machines. NTT is shopping Info-MICA to music labels who they hope will show interest because they claim the media will be tough to pirate. [unmediated] 6:09:16 PM

By Rachel Smolkin, The American Journalism Review "The Expanding Blogosphere" [Daypop Top 40] 6:50:25 AM

DRM Article Labels to dampen CD burning? [CNET News.com] 6:43:41 AM

60's, 70's and Beyond Score, Baby! Your guide to cult soundtracks of the 60's, 70's and beyond. [The Cartoonist] 6:40:36 AM

Land of Opportunity Clarence Darrow. "When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now I'm beginning to believe it." [Quotes of the Day] 6:35:04 AM

PR Opinions Gorilla Marketing Award That gorilla marketing is very effective.... Guerilla marketing could be defined as marketing programs that attempt to achieve successful outcomes through using innovative, non-traditional tactics that attempt to encourage "buzz" or word of mouth communication. It became a hugely popular pursuit towards the end of the 1990's to the present day, though the vast majority of "guerilla" marketing could be filed in the "what were they thinking category" from beautiful people using mobile phones to artwork on the pavement. Of course clever guerilla marketing can be tremendously effective, but like most marketing disciplines, the greater the volume, the lower the quality and the less effective they become. A colleague, commenting on my recent post about JBoss and their attempts to promote their products anonymously on message boards, pointed out that such ham fisted attempts at Guerilla marketing should really be called "Gorilla Marketing" because of its unimaginative fumbling efforts at creating buzz (a term I'm not hugely fond of). That got me thinking and I am delighted to announce that JBoss is the first winner of the sporadic PR Opinions Gorilla Marketing Award. All nominations welcome.   [PR Opinions] 6:32:16 AM