NOFX - Romantics?

NOFX – Together on the Sand from Ribbed
It’s been a modern punk rediscovery week. Why not kick off with Fat Mike and Co’s most romantic moment.
The Replacements – Bastards of Young from Tim
Alongside The Smiths, my all time favourite band. Starting to believe Tim might, just might, be the equal of Let it Be.
The Cramps – Human Fly from Off the Bone
A reason needed to have Human Fly on anything? Me thinks not.
Rancid – Time Bomb from …And Out Come The Wolves
One of the best post Two-Tone era ska-punk songs.
The Ataris – San Dimas High School Football Rules from Blue Skies, Broken Hearts… Next 12 Exits
It told you it was a punk week. This is the most ‘emotional’ of these punk tracks but darn it, I loves me some Ataris. Not new Ataris. Just this Ataris.
Amadou & Mariam – Sabali from Welcome to Mali
A transcendent slice of funky dance music and, thus far, one of the soundtrack songs for my summer.
The Decemberists – The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid from The Hazards of Love
I don’t care what the anti-hipsters say, Colin Meloy is a great songwriter and with this record, he’s learned how to rock.
Neko Case – Middle Cyclone from Middle Cyclone
Possibly the single richest female voice working today. This whole album, if you’ve yet to try, is a Spotify must.
Ash – Oh Yeah from Intergalactic Sonic Sevens
Taken from their first record really but their singles collection shows that Ash, for all their precociousness and need to be taken seriously, are a top pop band.
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – American Girl from Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
I only like about three Tom Petty songs but American Girl, his signature tune, is just a perfect summer driving song.
St Vincent – These Days from Jesus Saves, I Spend
A b-side cover of the classic Jackson Browne tune. The Nico version is wonderful too but this one is sung by a young lady who can, well, actually sing.
Cheap Trick – Surrender from At Budokan
The live version of the easiest song on Guitar Hero, taken in tribute to our Rock Band rediscovery session over many beers in the past week.
Love as Laughter – Miss Direction from Sea to Shining Sea
An occasionally great band’s greatest moment. Contains the line “she’s the greatest miss I’ve ever seen”. Track down the Neal Casal cover for even more resonant feeling.
Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band – Born To Run from Born to Run
The Boss. If you don’t like Born to Run, it’s possible you’ve already died.

LISTEN AWAY

This is television by the way

Visions of the Year 2000

Isn't he lovely

Hey folks, it’s been a while but here’s a list from my grubby mitts of what I was listening to last week. Today’s pick from the vault of horrors features unspeakably loud drone, pirate-themed thrash metal, an impossibly frenetic Amen loop workout, calculated mathcore terror and John Barrowman. Have fun!

JJ – My Life, My Swag (from JJ No 1)

Enduser – Beatdown (Xanopticon remix, from Mashed Up and Beat Down)

Solitude Aeturnus – Empty Faith (from Adagio)

Melt-Banana – Picnic in Panic (from Mxbx 1998 – 13,000 Miles At Light Velocity)

KTL – Theme (from 2)

Mogwai – Thank You Space Expert (from The Hawk Is Howling)

Suffocation – Blood Oath (from Blood Oath)

Meshuggah – Rational Gaze (from Nothing)

Swashbuckle – Scurvy Black (from Cruise Ship Terror)

John Barrowman – If You Leave Me Now (from Another Side)

Check out the playlist here.

The browser selection screen

In Windows 7 a “ballot” screen will provide users with the choice of the more popular browsers. The problem inherent in this situation according to Hakon Wium Lie, Opera’s chief technology officer, is that the IE logo is so embedded in the general public’s consciousness as a means of accessing the Internet that there will be a natural bias towards this. The solution is apparently to remove all the logos on the ballot page, I’m not sure whether Microsoft will go for this after caving to the demands for such a ballot system in the first place. I can see his point, from my early days of using Freeserve on dial-up it seemed that you absolutely couldn’t get on the Internet if you didn’t have the little blue logo sitting on your desktop. On the other hand I’m not even sure that removing the logo will persuade the raft of people that will be susceptible to what Lie is outlining to not lean towards IE. After all, from their point of view they probably won’t want to know the difference between Opera, Safari, Firefox, Chrome or whatever crazy name companies come up with; they just want to get on the Internet so why not pop for the option that has the word “Internet” in it. Ooh, I’ve heard of that one, let’s go with that one.

Source – Techflash

The late, great Sky Saxon of The Seeds.

Numero cinco, amigos!! Download the playlist from Spotify through THIS LINK and enjoy!

Japandroids – Young Hearts Spark Fire from Post-Nothing
Elements of accessible Sonic Youth and Jane’s Addiction.
Neu! – Hero from Neu! 75
The greatest, bar none, motorik rock music ever created.
Mos Def – Twilight Speedball from The Ecstatic
From his outstanding new record which re-confirms his place atop the mound.
The Beach Boys – Fun, Fun, Fun from Endless Summer
Well, it is the summer.
The Smiths – William, It Was Really Nothing from Hatful of Hollow
Best band ever?
Cass McCombs – Dreams Come True Girl from Catacombs
He’s gone and made his first truly brilliant record.
Yves Klein Blue – Polka from Draw Attention Themselves
Pretty decent blend of noise and Coral-like gypsy-ish folk? Sort of.
The Seeds – Can’t Seem to Make You Mine from The Seeds
Good night, Sky Saxon. RIP.
Nelly – Ride Wit Me from Country Grammar
Ditto on the Beach Boys comment, a modern(ish) summer classic.
Bonnie Tyler – Total Eclipse of the Heart from Faster than the Speed of Night
No words.
Jimmy Cliff – No Rivers to Cross from The Harder They Come
Undoubtedly one of the five greatest vocals ever recorded.

Lionel Barber, editor of the FT, leading the charge

Chris Anderson has come in for much flak over his Free: The Future of a Radical Price book, partly because it seems the majority of the models he posits in the book for the future of media distribution aren’t, in the strictest sense, free. I can’t defend him wholly, but he has started the conversation of charging online into a new era and it seems some more interesting, potentially viable ideas are starting to brim to the surface. Specifically, his central theme of freemium, through which users are given a free service and then asked to pay for a premium model, is starting to gain traction in the newspaper world.

Lionel Barber, the editor of the Financial Times, already successful in its venture in paid-for-content online, said during a speech at the Media Standards Trust event in the past week that “almost all” news organisations would start to charge for content within a year. It’s a bold statement which, like Anderson’s arguments, has attracted much conversation and there are two sides to the Barber argument.

Barber does sit in an exalted position in terms of charging for online content. Not only is the Financial Times a broad niche publication, as opposed to smaller niche titles which are struggling a little more, but it has an audience ready, willing and able to pay for its content. He said during an interview with Matt Wells on The Guardian’s Media Talk podcast in the past week that the paper had raised its cover price substantially and had continued to relatively thrive. This is partly due to its place in the world, one in which Rupert Murdoch’s ownership of its only true competitor, the Wall Street Journal, has seen that publication begin a shift towards the more general news content seen in News International’s other papers, but also that its reader demographic is primarily affluent. Those, combined in fairness with the quality and unique nature of its content, means Barber is speaking from a strong position.

Barber is right though that those with a niche role to play could survive. The problem Rupert Murdoch will face is two-fold. Moving the Wall Street Journal to a more general news site but then charging won’t work because that information will be available elsewhere. Second, his other titles in the UK simply do not have the kind of niche needed to back a paid-for model. The Times, The Sun and the News of the World are all huge readership publications, but none have anything particularly unique about them. Celebrity stories especially do not seem viable candidates for charging given not only the fact that sites like TMS or Perez Hilton are free, but they seem to get scoops before anyone else does. Additionally, celebrity news does not lend itself well to in-depth reporting, meaning that extra information that the FT could charge for in writing about corporate espionage or that the New York Times could charge for through the quality of its writers, will not be in demand because, to be frank, not too many folks give enough of a fuck to understand much beyond the surface of the news.

Steve Brill, proposing ideas on micropayments

For me, the best way to do this seems to be a micropayments method. This was raised again in the past week through an interview with Steve Brill on The Atlantic, in which the entrepreneur and journalist outlined its plan for a universal password systems for all publications through which users could access subscriptions and pay for articles where and when necessary. It sounds like a kind of PayPal one-click system through which a newspaper online, say the New York Times, could give you a preview of an article and then you pay for the whole thing; you pay a subscription to access the whole site at all times; would charge for certain sections of the site. There are probably other options on this too, but the primary tool being used would be micropayments, in which consumers pay for access to single stories, or access to print single stories at least.

From the way Brill described this, it would not be a huge amount of money and would seem to me, as an avid consumer of quite a large number of newspapers, to be a bright way forward. Simply throwing up a payment wall in which consumers have to pay immediately is unlikely to work for the majority of newspapers. The Guardian, for instance, has marked out a niche position in the market, as Barber said during his interview on the Media Talk podcast, but the sheer level of content it currently gives away would mean that putting up a wall immediately and blocking readers from certain parts of the site without payment may prove difficult to stomach. In its favour, however, the Guardian has marked itself as a technological leader, managing to garner itself a following in the US and throughout the web. Figures in the past week showed it trouncing other newspapers in the UK for the number of times its URLs are tweeted.

This is going to have to be a slow and staggered process, beginning small in terms of payments and walled content areas, and building to a point where the revenue model becomes sustainable again. The question remains over whether readers will be happy to pay for content which they will be able to access, in pure news form, through the BBC or CNN. The real issue for newspaper is to balance producing unique, essential content with the introduction of charging. If you wall the content immediately, why would people believe that the in-depth reporting offered by a newspaper will provide them with anything more necessary than what the Beeb has told them?

Check out David Simon’s piece for the Columbia Journalism Review arguing that the leading newspapers, specifically the New York Times and the Washington Post, need to lead the paywall charge.

Lego Zombie Man (from Flickr user Chaosfish1)

An examination of the craze for zombie-related fiction, from Publisher’s Weekly.

The vampire craze, however, is not good for women, according to Double X.

The Sunday Times has a list of the best literary websites. No Bookslut or Largehearted Boy?

A defence of the Washington Post salons by Alan M Webber.

The top ten exclusives from the San Diego Comic-Con.

I fucking knew it. Swearing is totally shitting good for you! You twat.

The Cat Empire, possibly the best live band I've ever seen.

Evening all! After my last update I was fortunate enough to take in stunning live shows from both Take That and The Cat Empire. Two quite different events but nonetheless spectacular. This week’s playlist therefore features a Take That track sandwiched between Cocteau Twins and Leviathan, my tastes can be described as… varied.

Intricate – Tinizong (from SM Compilation 03)

Plaid – Chasend (from Renaissance)

Michael Jackson – Workin’ Day and Night (from Off The Wall)

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Zero (from It’s Blitz!)

Terminal 11 – Nobody Does It Like You (from White Cock Compilation 1-4)

Fucked Up – The Chemistry Of Common Life (from The Chemistry Of Common Life)

Amon Tobin – Yasawas (from Bricolage)

Pixies – Letter To Memphis (from Trompe Le Monde)

Cocteau Twins – Blue Bell Knoll (from Blue Bell Knoll)

Take That – Rule The World (from Stardust)

Leviathan – Summoning Lupine (from Howl Mockery At The Cross)

The Cat Empire – The Car Song (from Two Shoes)

Grab the playlist here.

The Elonex e-book reader from Borders in the UK

Bertelsmann is to partner with Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the private equity giant, to sell music rights through the former’s BMG Rights Management unit.

Why does music move us? Scientific American considers this very question.

Bob Iger, the CEO of Walt Disney Co, is pretty darn certain that people will pay for online content.

The book stores are to take on Amazon at its own game by launching e-readers of their own.

This woman here has, apparently, the world’s strongest vagina.

If you haven’t already, read Malcolm Gladwell’s great review of Chris Anderson’s Free. Remember, as noted by John, you can listen to the book on Spotify at the moment.

Chris Packham is a bloody genius. Watch his insert Smiths song titles into his presenting gig on Springwatch.

Tim Westergren, the founder of online radio service Pandora

Record labels and online radio stations finally managed to lay to rest a two-year battle over royalties after the two managed to agree on a new system which will cover music streaming distribution.

Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora, is quoted on the New York Times saying that this was the “agreement we’ve been waiting for”.

The radio stations rightly managed to work to the argument that the royalty rates were high enough to threaten their business model. This would have a negative subsequent impact on the record labels as, evidenced by Spotify and Pandora particularly, streaming has become a key treasure trove for people in finding out about new music.

The explanation of the deal from the NYT says:

The new agreement treats sites differently depending on their size and business model. It applies to companies that make most of their money from streaming music, so webcasters like CBS Radio, which runs online music services for AOL and Yahoo, are not part of it. It covers the period from 2006 through 2015 for big sites and through 2014 for small sites.

Webcasters with significant advertising revenue, like Pandora or Slacker, will pay the greater of 25 percent of revenue or a fee each time a listener hears a song, starting at .08 cent for songs streamed in 2006 and increasing to .14 cent in 2015. Pandora had $19 million in revenue last year and expects that to rise to $40 million this year.

Small sites with less than $1.25 million in revenue, like AccuRadio, Digitally Imported and RadioIO, will pay 12 to 14 percent of it in royalties. All stations will be required to pay an annual minimum fee of $25,000, which they can apply to their royalty payments.

The stations have also committed to disclose a greater volume of information on the songs they stream and how many people listen to them to non-profit SoundExchange, which collects and distributes digital royalties for the artists and labels.

All seems like a giant elephant has been removed from the room. Now the stumbling block is gone, online radio can finally begin to make its play to become the accepted new distribution network for music. Whether it works or not is up for obvious debate, but it should be interesting to witness the progression of that industry.

What can Sarah Palin teach the world about social media? Seemingly, given the quality of this blog post, a lot more than she can teach us on most topics. Additionally, if you don’t read Andrew Sullivan’s amazing Daily Dish on The Atlantic, do so now. The man’s coverage on the Palin debacle is second to none.

Geoff Livingston is compiling a list of the best photographers on Twitter. And it’s ace.

Oh, yet more Twitter-related news. Keep an eye on the LucasArts feed for some promotional Tweetage. Read about the situation a little here.

After his death today, Robert McNamara’s What I’ve Learned has been dug up by Esquire. If you’ve not seen Errol Morris’ documentary on McNamara, Fog of War, seek it out.

Lori Drew has been acquitted the MySpace bullying case. It’s one of those decisions which leaves a bad taste in the mouth for the moment, but it ultimately the right one.

Some people only need to see a nude, gay Austrian model character creation to be offended. Which, in itself, is offensive. Oooh, I’m offended.

Nicholas Kristof is naming the best children’s books ever written. Anything by Roald Dahl for me.

Play the District 9 viral game.

Drinking and riding? A fair pursuit?

Gormley's Fourth Plinth

The Guardian, which was the subject of a recent piece on here by John regarding its crowdsourcing of the MP’s redacted expenses documents, is moving ahead on trying to capitalise on its early adoption of crowdsourcing techniques.

It’s next project will be covering the Gormley fourth plinth project in Trafalgar Square, through which members of the public will sit on the plinth in the square for one hour at a time, twenty-four-hours per-day for 100 days. It’s an art project which can’t fail as people can do anything while on the plinth, literally anything. Therefore, everything is art.

Anywho, the Guardian is trying to document this through crowdsourcing techniques, essentially having the public do its reporting for it. I talked a little about the possibility that social media attitudes could be used to help with the creation of news for a cheaper overhead in another previous article, and this seems a pretty decent evocation of that principal. Now it’s a question of whether the public can be arsed to take photos of the people sitting on the plinth at 3am on a Tuesday…

Blur's triumphant comeback

The Stooges – Down on the Street (from Fun House)
Quite simply one of a handful of completely perfect recordings.
The Notorious BIG – Hypnotize (from Life After Death)
I’ve had a strange fixation on this song after listening to a cover of it by Dan Black.
Pixies – Wave of Mutilation (from Doolittle)
Because we bought Pixies tickets this week!
The Lemonheads – My Drug Buddy (from It’s a Shame About Ray)
…and that meant a super-mini 90s revival on my Spotify
Anni Rossi – The West Coast (from Rockwell)
A hugely talented young singer-songwriter finally making waves.
Wilco – Jesus Etc. (from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot)
There new one isn’t as good as the older stuff, and this is still the best album.
K’naan – In The Beginning (from Dusty Foot on the Road)
I’ve actually been listening to his new one, Troubadour, but it’s not made the Spoti-verse yet.
Jackson 5 – I’ll Be There (from Third Album)
Off the Wall is genius, but did he ever truly better the Jackson 5?
Dinosaur Jr – I Want You To Know (from Farm)
Farm proves that their comeback with Beyond was absolutely no fluke.
Van Morrison – Tupelo Honey (from Tupelo Honey)
A great summer song from Van’s America-loving period.
Blur – This is a Low (from Parklife)
They’re back and, in hindsight, I have no idea why anyone though Oasis would win the war.

TechOD Working Week #3

Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail

Here’s one for you Spotify fans comes news of the first audio book to be released on the increasingly awesome music service. Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson (who also is the editor for Wired) is a discussion on the viability of business models that give away their products or content for free. This is a subject very close to our hearts here at TechOD and there couldn’t be a more fitting debut for audio books on Spotify.

Check out the news at Spotify’s blog here

Footnote: I’m beginning to think I may need to create a dedicated “Spotify” category here at TechOD…

A couple of folks have been using photoshop and Flickr to create the worst possible entries into the 33 1/3 series of essays on personal choices for classic albums. My favourite is above but you can see more here and another burgeoning set here.

The changing face of journalism is likely to remain a question, particularly given its direct relationship to the media, for some time to come. The last few weeks have seen a number of major shifts in the industry, including the growth of hyperlocal news platforms, the role of Twitter in the Iranian elections and, now, a convincing shift for the Huffington Post into the mainstream arena.

HuffPost has been the symbol simultaneously of the death or journalism and its evolution. Those who reject the site as a glorified aggregation site peddling constant left-wing opinion and snarky comment have started to subside somewhat as the site grows and continues to work towards a place as a genuine source of mainstream journalistic reporting. The key development in the past week probably fuels the arguments of both sides.

Nico Pitney, the national editor of the site, has been doing a superb job in creating an aggregated live-blog source of news coverage from the Iranian election, providing a rundown of genuine and reliable coverage of the problems in the country. His work is very good, bringing together the aggregation abilities of HuffPost with a genuine journalistic integrity which has perhaps lacked in the past when it would snarkily comment on other stories written by mainstream sources.

This week, Pitney was invited to a press conference (see below) to forward an inquiry made by an Iranian, a move which brought an expected degree of scorn from old-school journalists on the Washington circuit already terrified about the death of their profession at the hands of those online players like HuffPost and Politico. Admittedly, the key issue seemed to centre around the alleged planting of Pitney to ask the question and concerns from White House reporters of a perception that they share their stories with the administration.

Those concerns are somewhat justified, but I really feel like the majority of the scorn coming from the old-school players has more to do with the annoyance they feel that their employers failed to understand the threat posed by the online environment and are now struggling to maintain their dominance over the world of reporting. Whether the Huffington Post got to where it is through quality of reporting or by capitalising on the quality of reporting done by other news outlets is debatable, but no doubt that the ambitions of the Huffington Post are towards becoming a genuine, respectable competitor.

Arianna Huffington, quoted here by in Jeff Jarvis’ Guardian column:

“In the two biggest stories of our recent time – the war in Iraq and our financial meltdown – investigative journalism did not fulful its mission.”

“Among the advantages of online, she argues, is that “we can stay with a story until it breaks through the static”. Huffington has long argued that mainstream media suffer from attention deficit disorder while bloggers are afflicted with obsessive compulsive disorder. Online, she promises, small stories can turn into big ones with help from crowdsourcing – that is, contributions of effort, not just money. And thanks to the internet, distribution is instantaneous and worldwide.”

Given the recent Guardian crowdsourcing project, it seems this could represent one of the key developments in the online world which may produce the kind of financing needed for online journalism to thrive and shift into acceptance by the mainstream world. The entire financing model could change from business to service; people online contributing to stories and donating money to sites to make sure news outlets are able to afford investigative reporting. There would always be a danger that those donating will seek, as with the traditional newspaper model so perfectly illustrated by News International, to influence the reporting style and politcial bent. But that danger could be addressed through strict guidelines on donations and the level of influence that this will have.

The reason, to me, that this could work in bringing journalism into a new era would be the inherent narcissism of the online environment. Crowdsourcing reporting techniques would provide fuel for the narcissism of the social web to be pushed in a direction which serves both the self and the public. Using the kind of self-promotion desired by so many mavens of the online environment could see hundreds, maybe thousands, of people all reporting hard on each story with a view to gaining some sort of recognition for the act. In this way, the explosion of social media could be transitioned into becoming a genuinely important tool rather than just the fad of our day.

Back to Pitney though. Whether there is agreement over whether Pitney’s being called-upon by the President was a good or bad thing, the answer to which is primarily a left-and-right thing and a traditional-vs-new thing, is not really the point of the story. The fact that Pitney was called upon by the President to forward a question gives him a place as a key component in the reporting of the Iranian elections, one of the most visible and important news stories of the year. The coverage on the story from The New York Times, The Guardian and the BBC has been notably fantastic, but Pitney’s live-blog of the situation is a truly amazing piece of journalism, well worth of earning HuffPo a Pulitzer Prize. He has been rewarded not because of the growing popularity of his publication, but because of the quality of work it is doing.

No doubt that HuffPo is getting better as a news site, moving on from aggregation and comment-based pieces to actual, genuine reporting. The difference is that they are finding the middle-ground between traditional and new media and, for those on the traditional side, it will take some time to reconcile the changes. But the fact is this: Nico Pitney’s work for the Huffington Post is likely to only be the first moment of greatness for that publication, and traditional media is just going to have to rectify its errors of the past and learn to evolve and deal with the threat, especially now the snarking is stopping and the quality reporting is commencing.

Notes

Follow Nico Pitney on Twitter.

Watch Nico Pitney confront Dana Milbank over reporting ethics and the question.

Great New Yorker article on new media journalism.

Redacted Expenses = Crushed Reputations for All

The MPs expenses scandal is causing the UK to be hammered throughout the world, harming our moral high-ground position and making us a mockery for people across the planet. MPs can argue to the last breath of humanity that there are greater problems facing the world than what they claimed our money for, but this is moving beyond us being angry at their lack of accountability and fortitude to us being a joke to far too many people.

The most recent incident to illustrate the problem is the move by Foreign Office minister Mark Malloch-Brown to delete section of a speech he was to give in Mozambique this month amid fears that the UK commenting on higher standards of governance will be received with a healthy helping of guffaws and a distinct lack of authority. This followed on from statements made by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and from the Turks and Caicos Island premier Galmo Williams which indicated the lack of authority we now have to lead debate on political leadership and standards of practice by our leaders.

Let’s just try and understand that while we are pissed about the fact they have been spending our money on Sainsbury’s sandwiches and staples, let’s not lose sight that our MPs are making a mockery of the UK across the world.

Wolves In The Throne Room on stage

Hey folks, here’s your Spotify playlist of the week from John this time. The real highlight this week has been the arrival of the new Wolves In The Throne Room album Black Cascade. It’s been on repeat almost constantly, which while it isn’t the healthiest of listens, it’s certainly been an interesting working week. They only have one release on Spotify for WITTR but it gives you a good flavour of a band who are basically a literal cross between God Speed You! Black Emperor and Mayhem.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Hysteric (from It’s Blitz!)
Wolves in the Throne Room – Queen of the Borrowed Light (from Diadem of 12 Stars)
Dirty Projectors – Two Doves (from Bitte Orca)
Isis – Ghost Key (from Wavering Radiant)
Philip Jeck – Anatomy (from Loopholes)
Bat For Lashes – Glass (from Two Suns)
Flying Lotus – Riot (from Los Angeles)
Lali Puna – Everywhere and Allover (from Tridecoder)
The Locust – AOTKPTA (from New Erections)

Check out the playlist here.

The Associated Press has handed down a ruling to its staff to govern the usage of social networking sites by those working for the company. The AP has informed its staff that they must take responsibility for their Facebook profiles “to make sure material posted by others doesn’t violate AP standards”.

The moves comes a few weeks after the news agency handed down a reprimand to an employee over their posting of a comment on their own Facebook profile which criticised newspaper chain McClatchy.

AP vice president Kristin Gazlay wrote to staff in the past week to inform them of their duties in “upholding the AP’s reputation for fairness and impartiality, which has been one of our chief assets for more than 160 years”.

Doesn’t really seem like a wonderful slice of internal policymaking, does it? Trying to govern what your employees say, do and, perhaps, think outside of working hours. Not the smartest move in the box.

However, it does highlight a key issue facing so many companies at present on a web with an ever-increasing ability to link and communicate between communities. Companies are struggling throughout industries to figure out ways to either capitalise upon, or at least have some semblance of control over, social networking and user-generated content online.

The Wired article on this story notes that reporters working for The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post have been told not to add confidential sources to their friend lists, while The New York Times has gone vague in its policy guidance, urging its reporters to use “common-sense” in their usage of social networks.

The biggest problem highlighted with the policy however is that reporters at the Associated Press are being imposed upon with the responsibility to monitor and govern comments made on their Facebook profiles by others, a move which surely contravenes all sorts of free speech laws.

This is probably just a brief stop on the road to standardised policies for dealing with social networks in the workplace, but it really does seem a misstep to try to govern such a fast-growing sector where even those with power to govern the actual networks themselves have little in the way of power against the users.

Crowdsourcing opens the door for a new form of journalism

A new transparency

Last week saw the release of the full MPs expenses, controversially featuring swathes of black blocks censoring the more delicate information, supposedly for security purposes. The redacted sections have only served to underline the whole expenses travesty. The fact that despite all the damning revelations of MPs claiming for bath plugs and moat cleaning the publication of the censored claims has made the whole affair worse.

As much as I feel utter despair at the whole sorry situation, this post isn’t about the seemingly unstoppable corruption of British MPs (I was a bit hungover when I started the first draft of this article, hence the slight venom in the first paragraph).

Outsourcing

The thing is, there were a lot of forms published. Going through circa 700,000 pages is obviously quite a task, so why not get someone else to do it? When the details became available The Guardian got their IT bods on the case to come up with a basic application that allowed users to view the PDFs and provide feedback on what they actually were. Anyone could load up the page and look at a receipt or claim form and select from a few options and enter text to effectively catalogue their findings, any claims which had previously gone under the radar could now be flagged up for further investigation. For fans of The Wire, just think of getting up on a phone tap and marking the evidence as either ‘pertinent’ or ‘non-pertinent’.

Here's an example screen from The Guardian's crowdsourcing expenses application

This notion isn’t anything new, it’s essentially distributed computing powered by people. What this episode shows is the willingness of a large body of people to contribute to a breaking news story. It’s a new form of investigative journalism in a way, carried out by the very people who will be ultimately be reported to by the media. The recent news that Twitter was asked by the State Department to delay maintenance in order to stay up supporting the flow of information around the demonstrations in Iran is another clear indicator of the role emerging technologies can play in current events. A comment at the end of one of the Guardian’s many blog posts about the expenses commended the participants for their efforts in reviewing tens of thousands of pages:

And it’s been a good day for citizen journalism. Frankly, you’ve done most of the work. It’s been great. Some of us do wonder if there will be any role left for professional journalists if you’re doing all the investigation yourselves, but that’s another story. In the meantime, thanks very much. And keep digging.

Power to the people

It’s certainly a potent image, professional journalists acting as overseers to a fleet of researchers. This re-distribution of power that’s enough to drive the speed and accuracy at which information can be reported is a fascinating concept. The Folding@home project is another example of the power of distribution where calculation tasks are dished out to client applications that typically run on a home PC or even Playstation 3. The sheer number of nodes on this computer network mean that the Folding@home project is the most powerful distributed cluster in the world at least sixty scientific papers have been published on the back of the data gleaned from the thousands of participating users.

The movements in the web these days are hinting at more participatory technologies, Google Wave as mentioned on this site before is potentially a watershed in this area. There’s an interesting article published in the most recent issue of Wired UK about this shift towards collaborative technology and the sharing of information likened to a new form of socialism. It’s this communal approach to modern day computing that I find so exciting.

We’re living in a world where Wikipedia is almost always the first port of call for checking out the basic facts on a subject. Wiki technology is another example of a collaborative medium overseen by the people, for the people. While Jimmy Wales himself is a vocal critic of crowdsourcing (when applied to companies effectively getting cheap labour by asking anyone who cares to re-design their website, he has a point here), I’d certainly like to get his opinion on examples like The Guardian and decoding the MPs expenses. The applications themselves are interesting enough but when thoughtfully applied to a wider world community, who knows what we as computer users will be capable of en masse.

Further reading on ‘Crowdsourcing the MPs Expenses’

Check up on your local MPs’ expenses and stance on some key issues at TheyWorkForYou

The Guardian Expenses Crowdsourcing Site

Folding@home Project

Definition of Crowdsourcing at Wikipedia

Sony’s press release following Folding@home entering the record books

The Wired article as mentioned above: The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online

Finally, I know it’s a re-post but it’s still brilliant. Here’s the Google Wave demonstration from their Developer’s Conference:

Sonic Youth, 1987

So every week John and I are going to put together a brief Spotify playlist to give you all a taste of the kind of music we have been working to. For our inaugural edition, the playlist comes from Sam and is as follows:

New Order – Regret (from Republic)
Sonic Youth – Sacred Trickster (from The Eternal)
The Donnas – Take it Off (from Spend the Night)
Chamillionaire – Ridin’ (from The Sound of Revenge)
Pantera – Cowboys from Hell (from Cowboys from Hell)
Philip Glass – Metamorphosis: One (from Solo Piano)
El-P – Fantastic Damage (from Fantastic Damage)
Dirty Projectors – Cannibal Resource (from Bitte Orca)
Guy Clark – LA Freeway (from Old No.1)
Bruce Springsteen – Devil’s & Dust (from Devils & Dust)
Townes van Zandt – Pancho & Lefty (from The Late Great Townes van Zandt)

Check out the playlist here.

Mos Def in Be Kind Rewind

There was one comment made by Lady GaGa that particularly irked me when she was describing her creative process. When writing a song she would also consider what she would be wearing at the time of performing it, such was her insistence on binding together the twin worlds of pop music and fashion. As a decidedly amateur musician this concept of thinking which one of my paltry collection of dinosaur-themed T-shirts I would adorn while performing a piece is completely alien to me (I’m also speaking as someone who can’t stand the fashion industry).

However, this cheery piece of news at the Guardian throws the whole music/fashion (or mushion as I’m now dubbing it in a style worthy of an MTV mash-up) into a slightly more palatable light. All round lovely dude Mos Def is releasing his new album on a T-shirt. Obviously while the shirt is not playable, it does come with a tag that allows you to download the album afterwards. The shirt carries the artwork on the front and the tracklisting on the back and will set you back around £24. Perhaps a bit over-priced for a non-physical music release coupled with just an item of clothing, but at least it’s another case of someone somewhere trying something new.

Source: The Guardian

Watershed moments for Twitter, no? The micro-blogging platform decided to delay planned maintenance owing to its importance for communication in Iran amid the aftermath of the country’s disputed election.

Twitter’s blog said:

A critical network upgrade must be performed to ensure continued operation of Twitter. In coordination with Twitter, our network host had planned this upgrade for tonight. However, our network partners at NTT America recognize the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran. Tonight’s planned maintenance has been rescheduled to tomorrow between 2-3p PST (1:30a in Iran).

This is a major moment in the short history of the platform. This could well shoot it into the consciousness of the mass public in the way MySpace and Facebook went before. The cynic in me questions if this is the beginning of the end. But the Tweeter is rejoicing at keeping the faith and proving wrong those who would dare call Twitter a fad.

Official, folks: Twitter is important.

UPDATE: The State Department allegedly asked Twitter to delay is maintenance.

Just as I briefly noted in the post about Digital Britain, newspapers need to find a new business model which will allow them to adapt to online, thrive in the environment and perhaps continue in their place as market leaders.

I’m a firm believer in the power and importance of press, of the noble art of journalism and the need for good, investigative reporting to remain intact as we transition into a new age.

One way of doing this has come into focus today after the moves by the Yorkshire Evening Post and KM Group, the Kent area publisher, announced plans to launch a number of hyperlocal sites for communities within their respective areas.

The report on the Editor’s Weblog indicates that the Yorkshire Evening Post will launch twenty sites to cater to the Leeds region while KM Group is forming Sittingbourne Messenger, a site which will serve villages in Kent.

CN Group, the publishers of Cumberland News, and the Newsquest-owned Brighton Argus have also launched hyperlocal and community offerings as the UK’s regional newspapers try to cope with the difficulties posted by the traditional newspaper revenue model.

NYT's The Local blogging platform

In the US, the trend has also come into prominence with offerings in San Diego, the NYT’s Local blog and four, yes four, news sites which cater to Maplewood, New Jersey.

Whether all this will ever come to anything is a very different question. This is surely only one idea being considered by many.

The other visible strategy being used by newspaper publishers is the paid-for model, used to successful ends by The Financial Times and Wall Street Journal in the past. The success of the WSJ site has prompted News Int to launch plans for a standalone Sunday Times website which would run on a paid-for content model, not to mention other titles in its portfolio (a move which has met with some criticism).

The fact is, hard as it is to admit anything in the favour of Rupert Murdoch, that the paid-for model could well be the future for many newspapers to survive online, or at least the one many will turn to. The problem then is how much relevant, unique content can they provide. The analysis is invaluable, but those seeking the raw news will always be able to go to the BBC (although we technically pay for that too). They can then choose to pay for content from newspapers to get analysis or, more likely, will transition to new media outlets for that type of content.

The Financial Times has performed well with its paid-for content model

Hyperlocalisation seems like it could work, should the community it caters to have a strong enough appetite to consume the news on those sites. Question is, will this generate any more advertising revenue to actually give the publications a stable base? The hyperlocal model is based on that basic revenue model (although no doubt some are seeing potential in the medium). Maybe the higher level of engagement for those unable to enter the conversation of national news will draw more to the sites, but I remain somewhat sceptical.

The future of newspapers is bleak no matter where you look so, for the sake of my mental health, I’m just going to praise hyperlocal developments and try my best to keep buying a paper for as long as I can.

NOTE: Check out this NYTimes piece on hyperlocal news.

A Wordle representation of Digital Britain, from the Guardian's Digital Content blog

Everyone in the UK with a fixed-line phone will pay a 50p charge per month in order for the country to finance its move to faster broadband access, according to the Digital Britain report outlined today by Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw.

The report is also to grant new powers to Ofcom to combat unlawful file-sharing while the government also announced the appointment of Martha Lane Fox as digital champion.

Bradshaw said that the intention is for all national radio stations to be switched over to digital by 2015.

The main points of the report, identified on the BBC, are as follows:

three-year plan to boost digital participation

universal access to broadband by 2012

fund to invest in next generation broadband

digital radio upgrade by 2015

liberalisation of 3G spectrum

legal and regulatory attack on digital piracy

support for public service content partnerships

changed role for Channel 4

consultation on how to fund local, national and regional news

It’s all well and good but it all seems somewhat late to the party. An extra 50p per month seems like a decent start but, given the pattern of Labour’s hidden taxes in the past, that will be only the beginning as costs spiral.

Here’s hoping we can just get this dealt with in an orderly fashion.

The most interesting inclusion to me is an explicit desire to aid newspapers throughout the nation. This seems in principal like a decent aim but, you have to worry somewhat, that the only way to do this and ensure complete independence for all publications, the government can only really provide temporary support until the industry works out a new business model to cope with the changing environment.

The Phallus drewesii. Cock mushroom.

Honestly, you dream of writing post titles like that.

Herpetologist Robert Drewes has been honored by his scientific disciples with the use of his name in the christening of a penis-shaped mushroom.

The picture above, from the Scientific American blog, provides ample evidence that nature has a beautiful sense of humour.

Unfortunately for Drewes, who is honored in the stinkhorn fungus’ name, Phallus drewesii, the discovery has a length of only about two inches. Plus, there is no fall back option for Drewes to boast what he can do with it.

Those in the Jewish community are to be given a chance to get online with a new ‘kosher’ search engine, Koogle.

The search engine reportedly meets the standards set by Orthodox Rabbis who restrict the use of the internet by those in the faith to ensure they avoid any sexually explicit material.

“This is a kosher alternative for ultra-Orthodox Jews so that they may surf the Internet,” according to Yossi Altman, the manager of koogle.co.il. Reuters notes the site does not permit the majority of items which the greater proportion of devout Orthodox Israelis are forbidden to have in their homes.

I don’t want to get started on any issues of religious censorship and why you would need to prevent people from looking at pornography. Instead, let’s applaud yet another group of people in the world making money off religion.

MySpace has announced plans to cut a number of offices globally as the company, owned, let we forget, by Murdoch’s News Corp, works to cut costs and recover from a recent slump which has seen its place as the beacon of social networking usurped by the likes of Facebook.

Apparently, the group will close offices in California, Italy, France and Spain with hundreds of jobs likely to go. The company has been seeing a drop in user numbers in the US and UK while Facebook continues to gain, surely a sign that perhaps MySpace’s time has passed.

That’s not to say it has no future, MySpace has definitely got a chance to shift its business model into becoming more of a music distribution site and cut the social networking side of its business. I haven’t had a MySpace account for some time and have no plans to come back given the kind of intense self-promotion which has become the norm. That would be conducive with shifting its business model to a kind of online marketplace of unsigned bands, essentially what it already is. This just seems to me expected and should prompt a change, perhaps even one to track the business models of NewsCorp’s newspapers online to begin charging for the service. Death knell?

Imagine a Microsoft Surface style approach but embedded within your desk. Various objects placed on the desk such as phones, external hard drives and amazingly, even a cup of coffee all connect up with the desk surface displaying various attributes and functions for each entity. Dubbed “Seamless Experience” it’s easy to see why.