When people like me get worked up about ISP censorship, national firewalls and other wonderful ideas, it’s not because we condone theft. It’s because the people who do the censoring are often idiots. Here’s yet another example: the UK Music Publisher’s Association (MPA) managed to get an entire public domain music site taken offline because it – wrongly – believed that the site was hosting an illegal music score.
Author: Carrie
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Record companies: sell records? Us? Don’t be silly
An illuminating piece by David Hepworth:
When you have built up some anticipation around the release of anything, what on earth is the use of delaying that release and allowing that anticipation to fade into disinterest? Public attention is a finite resource and it is quickly diverted on to something else.
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Kurt Vonnegut story grids
I was at a Kurt Vonnegut talk in New York a few years ago. Talking about writing, life, and everything.
He explained why people have such a need for drama in their life.
He said, “People have been hearing fantastic stories since time began. The problem is, they think life is supposed to be like the stories. Let’s look at a few examples.â€
[Via Spikemagazine.com]
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Is Amazon working on a Kindle tablet?
I’ll be amazed if it isn’t. Andy Ihnatko:
A Kindle Tablet would have an instant clarity with consumers that no other tablet can communicate … not even the iPad.
There’s a real perceptual problem with tablets. Just what the hell are they, anyway? And how is the average consumer — someone who’s by no means intimidated by new technology, but who’s in no way mesmerized by the shining shininess of its shine, either — meant to know why they would want to have a tablet and their notebook?
Even the iPad suffers from this problem. It’s a brand-new category of computing and the differences are subtle if you’ve never spent time using one. You’ll get a clear picture if you sit next to me on a four-hour flight and ask me an innocent question about this computer on my tray table, but trust me: this solution comes with its own unique set of downsides.
But what’s a Kindle?
“It’s a book reader.â€Â Sold!
The word “Kindle†is as intimately associated with that product category as “iPod†is with music players. Amazon wouldn’t need to describe their new tablet as “magical†when they already have “Kindle.†That one word would get millions of iPad fence-sitters inside the tent. Why should Amazon even care if these folks don’t discover the web browser and the email client after a few days? Or if it’s a couple of weeks before they install their first app?
The current Kindle is a wonderful device, and getting new stuff for it is a joy: find, click, read. I think Ihnatko’s right when he says the iPad is as much about its ecosystem as the device itself, and I think he’s right when he says Amazon has its own content ecosystem.
This is all complete speculation, of course, but I’ve been spending a lot of time covering tablets recently and nothing really jumps out in a “never mind the iPad 2; look at this” kind of way. A Kindle tablet would.
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The iPad 2 is £399
That, boys and girls, is Apple waving its arse at its rivals.
Wi-Fi only: £399 / £479 / £559
Wi-Fi and 3G: £499 / £579 / £659
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Will Twitter get shitter?
Twitter is five, and like all good five-year-olds it’s about time it paid its way. Me, on Techradar:
I was in Glasgow’s famous Sauchiehall Street on Saturday night. If you haven’t been recently, it’s like a Hieronymus Bosch painting where the demons wear too-short skirts or G-Star Raw. It’s genuinely unpleasant, a seething mass of drunken, vomiting and occasionally fist-fighting imbeciles.
If you need proof that a significant part of the human race is as dumb as rocks, I can give you the postcode to prove it.
Or I can let you see Twitter on my phone.
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Here’s what Apple’s up to with the iPad
Many of you were around for the transition from text to graphical user interfaces. Some of you were even around when the world shifted from mainframes to personal computers. Well, congratulations: you’ve lived to see your third revolution in computing.
I think the good Mr Ihnatko is bang on the money: the iPad 2 is an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary step, but it’s heading somewhere very, very interesting.
I know that Apple plans to deploy the next great leap at about the same time when everybody else is introducing new tablets that sort of do what the iPad could do in early 2011.
At this rate, Apple has until 2012 — or even early 2013 — to make their big move.
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“An opportunity for Gary to take cheap shots at a band he doesn’t like and sneak in a mention for one he does”
Jon Bon Jovi reckons Steve Jobs has killed the music business. Sometimes I love my job.
By a happy coincidence, I reckon Jon Bon Jovi represents everything that’s wrong with the music business. I think there’s a reason why Bon Jovi albums don’t sell like they used to.
It’s because they’re rubbish.
And thanks to technology, they can’t get away with it any more.
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Why should you pay more to use your iPhone as a portable hotspot?
The latest iOS update enables you to turn your iPhone into a wi-fi hotspot, sharing your 3G connection with other devices – and even though iPhone data plans are capped, you still need to pay extra to use the feature. Why could that be? I think I know the answer.
There are only two possible explanations.
One, iPhone data is a different shape from Android data. It’s triangular, or maybe octagonal, and it gets stuck in the internet tubes.
Or two, the networks are bastards.
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‘Contribute to my website’ is the new pay to play
The nice people at .net magazine have a spanking new website, and one of my pieces is on it: “What are words worth”, where I… well, you saw the headline.
In the age of social media and user-generated content, suggesting that your name on someone else’s website is “exposure†is like suggesting membership of the HTML Writer’s Guild will boost your chances of getting a well-paid agency job.