"Today one of my professors told us about an article in the Sacramento Bee called State of Denial. When I went to go read this article I found I had to pay $1.95. Tell me, how many copies of the paper could I get for that price? At least two, maybe four, or even eight! Now tell me, what sort of value is that to me? None. I won't pay $1.95 for one article. Because the Sacramento Bee is charging so much they are effectively locking away the past in their vaults." [Grant M. Henninger]
Another reason not to lock away your content behind a cost figure that is perceived to be too high by the user but too low for a credit card-based transaction (at least until micropayments are a reality).
And, of course, a friendly reminder that you can usually get this type of article for free from your local library!
I left some thoughts on Don Park's site, but all I really want to say here is that I would bet good money the Google/Blogger folks are working on this already, as well as the Moveable/TypePad folks. If they aren't, they should be, and if they just got the idea from me here, I will be happy to send a bill for my consulting fee. [G]
Don Park: "Wiki is like a fun house for cheery gully dwarves, endless interconnected rooms with five-feet high ceiling and no housemaids." [Scripting News]
If Blog is an one-mensional animal with a single continuous stream of consciousness, Wiki is a N-dimensional animals with many segmented strands of consciousness. While the two are related on the surface, they are two very different beasts.
UI-wise, Wiki is like a fun house for cheery gully dwarves, endless interconnected rooms with five-feet high ceiling and no housemaids. Think neck pains and perma-mess.
John Palfrey asked me to debate Jon Bonne at MSNBC about the value of citizen blogging in the 2004 presidential election. I reluctantly agreed, figuring I'd get slimed with all kinds of gratuitous boasting about how they check facts, and know all the insiders, and have big budgets, etc etc. I wasn't disappointed in the first round. He begins his rebuttal to Citizen Bloggers in NH with this gem: "The elusive part of the feedback loop in election reporting has always been the voter." That's like saying the elusive part of skiing is snow. The elusive part of cooking is food. The elusive part of sex is (use your imagination). I'll have a rebuttal tomorrow. [Scripting News]
Students enrolled on the Gothic Imagination course, which looks at 18th to 20th century art, architecture, literature and music, were given 5GB of music on their iPods.
Assignments included looking at how the music related to other art forms of the day.
A course entitled War, Politics and Shakespeare incorporated war-related music, asking students to make connections between a variety of protest songs and a selection of Shakespeare plays.
As well as specific music functions, the iPods also offered a way to share other students' work, with some assignments being downloaded on to everyone's machine.
The Karma of Literature... BookCrossing.com