MediaReview

hackdiary: The BBC's programme catalogue (on Rails): "'The BBC plans to open up its archive to make a treasure trove of material available to everyone.' - BBC Press Release, August 2003

Ever wondered what's in that archive? Who looks after it? It turns out there's a huge database that's been carefully tended by a gang of crack BBC librarians for decades. Nearly a million programmes are catalogued, with descriptions, contributor details and annotations drawn from a wonderfully detailed controlled vocabulary.

I'm the lucky developer who gets to turn this hidden treasure into a public website. No programme downloads yet, but a massive searchable programme catalogue.

In the early part of next year, you can look forward to a public beta with extensive programme details and broadcast histories. There are 'On This Day' schedules that go back to 1933. It's got full contributor histories, and Really Good Search. I can't begin to describe the depth of this dataset - it had an entry for the one time in the 1990s when my dad was on local TV news as a spokesman for Oxfordshire County Council. The cataloguers have worked hard on this stuff for years, and it deserves a wide audience."

DriveTime: The Telecommuting Video Blog :: Street Tech :: hardware beyond the hype: "This guy, Ravi Jain, is shooting a weekly video blog from the driver's seat of his car during his daily commutes between Jamaica Plains and Allston, MA (a.k.a. 'five hours of 'studio time''). He has guests on (who are bumming rides), and when his wife commutes with him, they do a 'Regis and Kelly' type show (or at least that's how Ravi fancies it), with some 'marital banter to start the show'"

IMG News:: "Essential Facts About The Computer Game Industry
7:58 AM | Cord Kruse | Comment on this story

The Entertainment Software Assocation has released its Essential Facts About The Computer And Video Game Industry for 2005. A compilation of sales figures, demographics, and usage data, the Essential Facts provide an interesting look at the changing profile of the average gamer.

Some information from the Essential Facts:

- 75% of heads of households play computer or video games.
- The average game player is age 30.
- Women over the age of 18 represent a greater portion of the gameplaying population (28%) than boys from ages 6 to 17 (21%).
- Gamers devote more than triple the amount of time
spent playing games each week to exercising or playing sports,
volunteering in the community, religious activities, creative
endeavors, cultural activities, and reading."

M G E I T F: "MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival is the most significant event of the year for the broadcasting industry.

Founded in 1976 and now in its 31st successful year the Festival is held annually over the August bank holiday weekend (25-27 August 2006) at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.

Featuring prominent industry voices the Festival is packed with over 50 individual sessions covering the most pertinent issues facing the industry from policy to programme making.

The wide ranging programme involves keynote lectures, preview screenings, masterclasses, interviews and networking parties which make for a stimulating Festival weekend.

The Festival is attended by over 1600 UK and international delegates representing the diverse range of the industry. Use this website to find out more about MGEITF – the latest news, Festival Programme 2005 and how to register as a delegate."

This discussion/debate over the value of the amateur v. the need for quality production values, started with an August podcast and has included an interesting exchange on the Internet.

Technology360: Do Public Broadcasters Get It?: "Dennis Haarsager's rolling environmental scan for electronic media. � 'Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.' --Jerry"

Via John Palfrey:
A market for ideas | Economist.com: "A market for ideas

Oct 20th 2005
From The Economist print edition
Intellectual-property protection can be good for the technology industry as well as for its customers, says Kenneth Cukier (interviewed here). But it requires careful handling"

TCS: Tech Central Station - The Video Future Approacheth: "Because while the long-planned switch to HDTV creeps along, video technology is advancing by leaps and bounds in areas that, in what I'm pretty sure isn't really a coincidence, Congress hasn't managed to get its hands on yet. The result, widespread video podcasting, is likely to bring about something far more revolutionary than higher resolution commercial broadcasts: It might actually produce TV that people want to watch.



Podcasting is already big, with people producing 'radio' programs for Internet distribution using nothing more than a computer and an Internet connection. Video podcasting will make producing and distributing TV programming nearly as easy. Podcasting and audio MP3 technology have demonstrated pretty clearly that in the audio world people care more about hearing what they want, when they want, than they care about super high sound quality. I suspect that video podcasting will demonstrate the same thing: a pretty good picture coupled with a show that you actually like is worth more than a stupendous picture coupled with a show you don't care about that much. And according to some people, the Video iPod is already good enough to ensure that video podcasting will be 'huge.'



If Congress cared about promoting video distribution technology, it could do a lot -- without even spending taxpayer dollars -- by reforming intellectual property law to make it easier on amateur producers and distributors."

in addition to the numbers below, Klipmart reported that viewers watch an avg of 22 secs of a 30 sec video.
Half of Internet Users Watch Video: "
More than half of Internet users watched online video in June, according to research released by ComScore Networks.

ComScore found that 94 million U.S. Internet users, or 56 percent of those online, watched streaming video. Based on the previous three months, the research firm found those watching video did so for an average of 73 minutes per month.

The research represents the first figures released by ComScore's video ratings service, based on its panel of 2 million Internet users who have their activities tracked by ComScore and extrapolated to the entire Internet audience."

blogs | AttentionTrust.org: "AttentionTrust has a three-part mission:

1) Educate people about the existence of “attention data,” i.e. metadata that reflects what we pay attention to (and what we ignore) and its potential value as a resource.

2) Empower people to exert greater control over their own attention data–our first initiative in this area is the recent release of the AttentionTrust Extension, an “attention recorder” in the form of a Firefox extension that allows users to record and share aspects of their clickstream and browsing history.

And 3) Build a community of individuals and organizations that agree to respect users’ rights to own, manage and exchange their attention data in a transparent environment that allows users to decide who has access to their data and how it’s used."

» Do Public Broadcasters Get It? (Stephen Hill) | Steve Gillmor's InfoRouter | ZDNet.com: "October 24, 2005
Do Public Broadcasters Get It? (Stephen Hill)"

gates' vision of the future
MediaGuardian.co.uk | Media | Gates unveils his vision of a future made of silicon: "He said the next challenge would be to take advantage of ubiquitous wireless, super-fast internet connections. Advances in computer hardware had been a 'miracle' but high-speed internet connections would accelerate the pace of change even further. Computers would become almost invisible, he said, integrated into everything that we do.

'In some ways the computer just disappears into the environment. All these devices will be hooked up to the internet and the internet will not have any speed limitations. And these devices will be a lot cheaper than they are today,' he said.

Magazines and newspapers would eventually become redundant in their existing form, with interactive, personalised content delivered to handheld devices. 'A lot of the reading that's taking place, the richness to be able to call up anything will take over,' he said."

The Shlock of the News: "While Google delivers information based on an amalgam of its users' preferences, AOL employs old-fashioned creatures called editors.

But what AOL is doing to its editors is awful: undermining its own integrity and undercutting all journalism. More than ever, AOL is driven by advertising dollars. The more times a page is viewed, the more money it makes. As an interactive medium, it's easy for them to link specific editorial content with advertising results. 'Every time you click,' writes the AOL editor, 'our page views go up we get more ad dollars then I get promoted.'

Now, in the broadest terms this is how any medium works, from movies to magazines. More people means more revenue, and so on. But between an interactive news product that targets a narrow audience, and a printed newspaper in search of a wider one, the differences are distinctive.

Interactive writers can quickly become slaves to instant ratings; while paper journalists are buffered by the relative inefficiency of print, and protected by a long tradition of willfully ignoring a newspaper's advertising."

Tube Status and Independent data on London underground delays: "Current tube status:
Bakerloo - Minor delays faulty train at Charing Cross. : Minor delays since 19:37

horse's mouth? click here for tfl's info page

London Underground delays so far today:"

Welcome to mefeedia: the first video aggregator.

oops
Guardian Unlimited | Readers editor | Seeing and believing in China: "On Thursday last week the Guardian carried the following note in its daily corrections column: 'In a report headed 'They beat him until he was lifeless': How democracy activist in China's new frontline was left for dead after a brutal attack by a uniformed mob (front page, October 10) we said that Lu Banglie [a pro-democracy activist] was so injured in the beating that 'his eye [lay] out of its socket' and 'the ligaments in his neck were broken'. Subsequent reports have made it clear that Mr Lu's injuries were not as serious as had been stated"

:: Rabble ::: "Rabble enables a new kind of self-expression that informs, entertains and connects people through the media they create. Create your channel and post location-based media - your favorite places, photos or an up-to-the-minute newsworthy event. It's like putting virtual sticky notes on the world around you. Then connect with your world. Tell Rabble where you are and it will show you who is around you and the media they have created. Through bits of location-tagged media, find and interact with other people and get information you won't find in the yellow pages. Part blogging, part location-based personal networking, Rabble connects you with the world in a unique and intuitive way by turning 'users' into 'producers' and creating a marketplace for mobile user-generated content."

Glenn Reynolds' thoughts on HDTV and podcasting:
TCS: Tech Central Station - The Video Future Approacheth: "Meanwhile, technology is, as usual, passing Congress by. Because while the long-planned switch to HDTV creeps along, video technology is advancing by leaps and bounds in areas that, in what I'm pretty sure isn't really a coincidence, Congress hasn't managed to get its hands on yet. The result, widespread video podcasting, is likely to bring about something far more revolutionary than higher resolution commercial broadcasts: It might actually produce TV that people want to watch.



Podcasting is already big, with people producing 'radio' programs for Internet distribution using nothing more than a computer and an Internet connection. Video podcasting will make producing and distributing TV programming nearly as easy. Podcasting and audio MP3 technology have demonstrated pretty clearly that in the audio world people care more about hearing what they want, when they want, than they care about super high sound quality. I suspect that video podcasting will demonstrate the same thing: a pretty good picture coupled with a show that you actually like is worth more than a stupendous picture coupled with a show you don't care about that much. And according to some people, the Video iPod is already good enough to ensure that video podcasting will be 'huge.'



If Congress cared about promoting video distribution technology, it could do a lot -- without even spending taxpayer dollars -- by reforming intellectual property law to make it easier on amateur producers and distributors."

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.: "Watch
Instantly find and watch 1000's of fast streaming videos.
Upload
Quickly upload and tag videos in almost any video format.
Share
Easily share your videos with family, friends, or co-workers."

Martus.org -- Human Rights Bulletin System: "Download your own Martus software to use for recording and storing information concerning the abuse of human rights.

The Martus download includes everything you need to enter Martus bulletins on your computer. English, Spanish, French, Russian, Arabic, Thai, Persian and Nepali language translations are available. Martus server software is also available, as well as source code files. It is compatible with Linux, Windows and Mac!"

BuzzMachine � Blog Archive � My favorite podcasts: "I am also a big fan of Diggnation, where Digg.com founder Kevin Rose and friend Alex Albrecht talk about the stories that the public voted up to the front page of Digg… while they try a new beer. It’s that simple. But that’s what makes it so good: They actually care about this stuff. They give their opinions. They give credit to the people who found these stories. And they give us news. They’re two guys talking and you can imagine joining them over a beer and joining in the conversation. And, like Rubens, they produce the show to a clock and keep it moving.

My son is the one who got me into Diggnation. Today, he’s wearing his Diggnation T-shirt. And I hope he’ll forgive me for messing up an effort to meet Rose when I was at Web 2.0/1.0 in San Francisco. But note well that Rose is a celebrity to Jake and the audience. Podcasts are making stars.

Jake also got me to make it a habit to listen to and enjoy TWiT (This Week in Tech) with host Leo Laporte and a bunch of regular guests, including chronic curmudgeon John C. Dvorak. And he got me to watch video versions of both.

So one week, I thought I’d download tech podcasts produced by NPR so we could listen together. But they quickly bored Jake — and me — silly because they’re overproduced. They’re underhuman. That is the voice of “professional” radio and it’s not a compelling voice at all. I’d rather listen to friends — or people I come to think of as friends, or at least would like to meet — than the strangers of big-time broadcasting.

That is the true voice of the internet."

Wikipedia founder admits to serious quality problems | The Register: "Wales was responding to author Nicholas Carr, who in a dazzling post on the transcendent New Age 'hive-mind' rhetoric that envelops the 'Web 2.0' bubble, took time out to examine the quality of two entries picked at random: Bill Gates and Jane Fonda.

He wasn't impressed by what he saw.

'This is garbage, an incoherent hodge-podge of dubious factoids that adds up to something far less than the sum of its parts,' he wrote.

Something that aspires to be a reference work ought to be judged by the quality of the worst entry, he said, in response to the clock-stopped, right-time defense of the project, not by the fact it's got some good articles.

'In theory, Wikipedia is a beautiful thing - it has to be a beautiful thing if the Web is leading us to a higher consciousness,' writes Carr."

The Volokh Conspiracy - -: "The American Internet companies which do business in China are assisting the creation of the world's most sophisticated architecture of repression. No company should make profits at such a terrible cost to human rights. After American companies left, the Chinese tyrants would undoubtedly find other, inferior, foreign companies to provide Internet services and assist with the suppression of liberty. It would be better, though, if China's architecture of repression were built by inferior, less efficient companies, rather than by the best minds of the world's best computer companies."

Cool, a Video iPod. Want to Watch 'Lost'? - New York Times: "at first blush, the video iPod is not about to revolutionize Hollywood in the way the iPod revolutionized music.

Why? Two reasons. One is that studios are not rushing to make their most popular movies and shows available for the video iPod (note that only Disney shared the stage with Mr. Jobs last week, and the primary motive may have been its desire to repair relations with Pixar). Perhaps even more important, mobile gadgets with access to everything that is already on television are on the way.

Just last week, EchoStar, the satellite broadcaster, released one such device, a portable personal video recorder called PocketDISH; it got much less notice than the video iPod got. Think of PocketDISH essentially as a pocket-sized TiVo - a small computer that lets you record television shows onto a hard drive with the click of a button - with a screen for watching what you've recorded. And like TiVo and its clones, it can record any program you can watch on a full-sized TV at home, and then allow you to fast-forward through the ads when you view it."

MediaGuardian.co.uk | Press&publishing | Paper view technology: "Cheap, paper-thin TV screens that can be used in newspapers and magazines have been unveiled by German electronics giant Siemens.

The firm says the low production costs could see the magazine shelves in newsagents come alive with moving images vying for the customers' attention as they move along the aisle."

Google, Comcast Consider Investing in AOL: "Yahoo, Google, MSN, AOL, and Skype Technologies SA all offer a form of computer-to-computer calling over their IM service. They could eventually become major networks for sharing music, video and other digital files."

Boing Boing: TV on the Internet versus IPTV: "The bottom line is that, the television over broadband needs some sizzling new kind of content in order for folks to go back and click. My feeling is that MTV should have done their MTV Desi channel over broadband, and perhaps used it as a learning experience for other niche channels over broadband. If done right, television over broadband has the potential to pip IPTV to the post."

Freedom to Tinker � Blog Archive � Virtual World, Meet Terrestrial Government: "Last weekend at the State of Play conference, the “great debate” was over whether virtual worlds should be subject to terrestrial laws, or whether they are private domains that should determine their own laws. But regardless of whether terrestrial regulators should step in, they certainly will. Stock market regulators will object to the trading of virtual stocks worth real money. Employment regulators will object to the unconstrained labor markets, where people are paid virtual currency redeemable for dollars, in exchange for doing tasks specified by an employer. Banking regulators will object to unlicensed virtual banks that hold currency of significant value. Law enforcement will discover or suspect that virtual worlds are being used to launder money. And tax authorities will discover that things are being bought and sold, income is being earned, and wealth is being accumulated, all without taxation."

Poynter Online - Romenesko: "On Forbes.com, Lisa DiCarlo writes: 'Is Yahoo taking another big step in the blurring of lines between professional media and grassroots journalism?'"

Forget Blogs, Print Needs Its Own IPod - New York Times: "That is the future that newspapers have to prepare for. Readers no longer care so much who you are, they just want to know what you know.

That may sound grim for big media brands, the kind of proposition that will not provide enough cash flow to finance a squad of reporters examining what a hurricane left behind or venturing out onto the streets of Baghdad. But in a frantic age where the quality of the information can be critical, being a reliable news source humming away in everyone's backpack sounds just useful enough to be a business."

Variety.com - Comcast crashes the party: "Comcast is quietly trying to wolf down Blockbuster's lunch.

Like other operators, the cable giant is hell-bent on tapping into the billions of dollars that people spend to buy and rent DVDs -- and one scheme would put movies on Comcast systems the same day they touch down in the video store.

The move comes as the key players concoct new ways to unite content with potential customers. The truisms about strict windowing of product may end up being tossed out the window.

Sensing that the financially troubled Blockbuster is ripe for plucking, Comcast is sounding out the Hollywood studios on the following proposition: A Comcast customer with a digital box will see a menu listing for, say, 'The 40 Year-Old Virgin' as much as six weeks in advance of its scheduled appearance on pay per view.

For a fee of about $17, the subscriber could call up the movie for one immediate video-on-demand showing. Two days later, the DVD of 'Virgin' shows up in the mailbox for the subscriber's permanent collection."

Variety.com - B.O. blahs blamed on male aud exodus: "Hollywood is losing the interest of young males -- traditionally the most avid moviegoers -- to other distractions including vidgames and the Internet, a new study concludes.

Released by online research firm OTX, which polled more than 2,000 moviegoers to understand the decline in attendance this summer at the box office, the study found males between 13 and 25 saw 24% fewer films this summer than in 2003, the last time the poll was conducted.

While other demographic groups also saw fewer films this summer, the drop among young men was the steepest, OTX reported."

Boing Boing: Singaporean blogger goes to jail for a month for "sedition": "Singaporean blogger goes to jail for a month for 'sedition'
A Singaporean blogger who made 'racist comments' on a blog's message board has been fined SING$1000 and imprisoned for a month. Another commenter was fined SING$5000 and put in jail for a day."

Technology360: Can you read radio's future between these lines?: "Mark Ramsey writes: 'The more universal broadband Internet is, the more radio is vulnerable to it. � A recent PEW study shows that growth in demand for broadband seems to be leveling off. 53% of homes accessing the Internet now use high-speed access, compared to an only slightly smaller figure six months earlier. ...�...if high-speed Internet becomes, as I expect it to, a source of talk and especially music programming competitive with radio, universal high-speed access would be devastating to the radio industry as we know it today. Even if high-speed access stalls in the high 50% range it has the potential to leave radio with what's left: A smaller, older, lower-income, less educated audience base of significantly less interest to advertisers. ...' Link: Radio Marketing Nexus."

PBS Taps Post's Getler as Its First Ombudsman: "PBS said yesterday it has hired the first ombudsman in its history, tapping Michael Getler, who holds the same job at The Washington Post, to serve as an independent in-house critic.

Getler, 69, who is at the end of his five-year tenure as The Post's ombudsman, said he would post his critiques on PBS's Web site and perhaps appear on the air occasionally.


Michael Getler is leaving The Post after serving as the newspaper's ombudsman since 2000.
Michael Getler is leaving The Post after serving as the newspaper's ombudsman since 2000. (By Michael Lutzky -- The Washington Post)
Who's Blogging?
Read what bloggers are saying about this article.

* Davenetics: Newsmonger


Full List of Blogs (1 links) �

'I'm an unknown quantity to them,' he said. 'My career has been in newspapers. A lot of people probably don't know me or haven't heard about me and are not used to having this additional channel for challenge. I guess it's just a matter of them absorbing my intrusions into their world."

Rock-n-Go 岩棋志: Participatory Panopticon: "Soon -- probably within the next decade, certainly within the next two -- we'll be living in a world where what we see, what we hear, what we experience will be recorded wherever we go. There will be few statements or scenes that will go unnoticed, or unremembered. Our day to day lives will be archived and saved. What’s more, these archives will be available over the net for recollection, analysis, even sharing.

And we will be doing it to ourselves."

American Rhetoric: Newton Minow -- "Television and the Public Interest": "Newton N. Minow: 'Television and the Public Interest'"

Technology360: Skype signals online video plan: ".. However, Skype also appears to be be moving towards becoming a platform for online video content in a move that could eventually see it square up against conventional television companies."

EFF: DeepLinks: "Listen. Suppose our sympatico politicos carve out a bunch of Digital TV provisions that, in fact, do have something to do with government finance? Suppose they stick those provisions in the Senate Commerce Committee's reconciliations bill (due October 26th), where they're practically untouchable?

But some key clauses on which these provisions depend will be omitted. Consequently, it will it be vitally important that Congress passes another Digital TV bill to fill the gaps.

That Digital TV bill will contain -- oh, look at that! -- the Broadcast Flag language. Oh, and the RIAA's Digital Radio Broadcast Flag, too, just for the sake of completeness.

Now our friendly politicians can tell their colleagues that the Digital TV Completion (n�e SOCPUPT) bill is an essential part of the reconciliation process, and must be passed as a matter of urgency before the compulsory reconciliations come into effect!"

Back Off Buatta: Craig Is My Decorator - New York Times: "Before long she found herself on a listening tour of New Yorkers on the cusp of a life change. If eBay is merely a feast for gluttons, a groaning table of stuff, craigslist is 'an atlas for life,' she said. Unlike transactions on eBay, those on craigslist usually require face-to-face encounters, so each of her purchases (she spent less than $4,000) yielded a moment - or more - with someone eager to share the back story. The larger the object, the more dramatic the tale.

It was one woman's furniture sale, listed online as 'My Boyfriend Is a Lying Cheat,' that originally lured Ms. Cullerton into her nocturnal hunts. (In addition to having a book habit, she is insomniac.) She scanned craigslist from 3 a.m. on - most postings went up between 10:30 p.m. and 1 a.m., she said - and would be on a doorstep by 10 the same morning, ready for an earful. 'They couldn't wait to tell you,' she said, 'either because they were so depressed or so elated.'"