New URL for this blog is http://take21.wordpress.com/
Same purpose: teaching, lecture notes and posts on technology, culture, law and business.
What’s new? The name is shorter.
Still to do: tidy up the archive of course material. Sidebar not ideal for navigation.
Sometimes fast is good enough: export content from old blog, import to new blog. Thanks WordPress! Isn’t XML wonderful?
Regular readers will need to update their RSS feed for the new blog.
A shameless self-publicist writes …
The flyer for my Coventry Conversations lecture After newspapers, what future for journalism? is out and available for download.
The lecture is on Thursday 29th January and open to all.
Pete Hnatushka has done a fine job of interpreting the brief for the graphic.
The PDF is a 236Kb download.a_mackenzie_flyer
On Tuesday 20th January President Obama takes office. Millions of people in America and around the world entrust their hopes to the new President.
You could watch the inauguration on TV. In the UK, live on BBC 1 at 4.00pm. Also on Sky.
You could also watch live on the internet via Hulu, where the video will be available along with past speeches and press conferences in perpetuity.
On Wednesday 21st January 13.00-14.00 Professor John Oucho speaks at Coventry University:
from Barack Obama Senior to Barack Obama Junior: my hopes for the US and Africa.
Download the Coventry Conversations lecture programme from the previous post.
The excellent Coventry Conversations series of talks by media insiders continues.
The winter season features Jon Blair, Nick Davies, John Oucho, David Moorcroft, Andrew Mackenzie, Peter Ogden, Jon Snow, Peter Barron, Richard Keeble, Bob Satchwell, Roger Cook, Martin Lewis and Andrew Vallance.
Practitioners and academics in an hour of talk about contemporary issues in media.
For the lecture topics, dates, venues and a little background on the speakers, download the flyer.
Flyer as PDF (84k) coventry-conversations09
I’m talking on the 29th January on ‘After newspapers, what future for journalism?’.
Newspapers are not going to survive in their present form. A long history of declining readership, a deep recession and web technologies are combining to eliminate national and regional newspaper titles. Magazine publishing is not exempt.
Print revenues are in steep decline and the web does not produce significant revenue for publishers.
What prospects for journalism as a profession? What strategies should students and educators consider?
Victor Keegan has a piece on why serious games matter in Technology Guardian. What are serious games? Games which have the formal intention of training and learning, rather than learning being a side effect of gameplay.
Games development is important for the UK economy and currently facing serious competition from Canada’s (successful) strategy of subsidising games development to build an industry with critical mass.
Good to see a mention for the Serious Games Institute at Coventry University. Also the TruSim interactive triage training simulation from Blitz Games Studios. I’ve seen a demo at their Leamington Spa HQ and it’s impressive.
Victor Keegan Technology Guardian
Wired has a piece by Steven Levy on the team behind Google’s Chrome browser. Inside Chrome: The Secret Project to Crush IE and Remake the Web.
(Their Capital Letters, Not Mine.)
Fascinating glimpse into the development process and an easy introduction to the technologies used in Chrome.
Jack Schofield in the Guardian thinks the secrecy angle is overstated and points out that many of the features in Chrome have appeared in other browsers. Inside Chrome: the story behind Google’s browser.
“Google’s Android software — the plan to take over all the world’s mobile phones — needed a browser. Firefox has not pursued mobile, so should Google have done a deal with Opera, Apple or Microsoft? Maybe not. And if it was going to put a lightweight mobile browser into Android, it would make a lot of sense for Google to offer a browser for PC users as well.”
That’s why.
Save Net Radio reports today
“Legislation authorizing SoundExchange to negotiate royalty agreements with webcasters on behalf of copyright owners and performers before the end of the year has been approved by the U.S. Senate. The Webcaster Settlement Act of 2008 (H.R. 7084), passed unanimously in the House of Representatives earlier this week, was approved by the Senate yesterday evening and now awaits President Bush’s signature.”
The Act offers a likely solution for webcasters, whose industry has been under threat since the March 2007 decision by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) to massively increase royalty rates payable by internet broadcasters. Campaigns in support of netradio, appeals and proposed alternative legislation had run into stalemate, until recent moves by larger webcasters and royalties-collection agency SoundExchange towards a negotiated settlement. The Act allows SoundExchange to make agreements, which will have legal status, with webcasters on behalf of copyright holders.
It’s not yet a deal. Different sections of the industry- DIMA, small webcasters, NPR- have to arrive at settlements.
David Oxenford, whose Broadcast Law Blog is an invaluable source of legal opinion on US media, has written extensively on the Internet Royalty dispute and represented small webcasters. He explains What the Act Means
Do the right thing
We have decided to drop the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for released iPhone software.
(Via Daring Fireball)
Nobody reads EULAs
Flashmagazine reports a Senior Director of Engineering at Adobe confirming that Adobe have a Flash player for iPhone in development.
We’ve been here before. In March Sun announced they would develop Java for iPhone, without noticing that the EULA does not allow apps to launch executables.The Register
Adobe can get a player ready for the iPhone, but Apple don’t have to approve it.
John Gruber explains again, why this is not going to happen.
The conference Flash on the Beach at Brighton (UK) looks like the place to be for Flashionistas.
Their report also links to a thoughtful piece by a Flash developer about why Flash on the iPhone is not a good idea.
Out-law radio have an interview with Dr David Price of piracy intelligence firm Envisional.
He talks about the user experience of P2P networks often being better than the paid-for version, how some companies have adopted P2P for distribution and who content owners should prosecute.
Read here and download or subscribe through iTunes.
Out-law radio and the out-law website are services from UK law firm Pinsent Masons.
District Judge sets aside previous $222,000 award in favour of the RIAA against single parent Jammie Thomas as disproportionate and orders a new trial.
Extracts from the judgement:
“The Court would be remiss if it did not take this opportunity to implore Congress to amend the Copyright Act to address liability and damages in peer to peer network cases such as the one currently before this Court … The defendant is an individual, a consumer. She is not a business. She sought no profit from her acts.
The statutory damages awarded against Thomas are not a deterrent against those who pirate music in order to profit. Thomas’s conduct was motivated by her desire to obtain the copyrighted music for her own use. The Court does not condone Thomas’s actions, but it would be a farce to say that a single mother’s acts of using Kazaa are the equivalent, for example, to the acts of global financial firms illegally infringing on copyrights in order to profit in the securities market.
Unfortunately, by using Kazaa, Thomas acted like countless other Internet users. Her alleged acts were illegal, but common. Her status as a consumer who was not seeking to harm her competitors or make a profit does not excuse her behavior. But it does make the award of hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages unprecedented and oppressive.”
Full coverage and link to the judgement recording industry vs people
