 Monday, August 04, 2003
Stopping the Pop-swappers
"According to the RIAA, CD sales dropped by 10% in 2001 and a further 6.8% last year, largely because of file sharing.
But the figures tell a different story.
In America and the rest of the world the biggest culprit in falling music sales is large-scale CD piracy by organised crime.
In just three years, sales of pirate CDs have more than doubled, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).
Every third CD sold is a pirate copy, says the federation....
The pirate CD market is now so big, $4.6bn (£2.86bn), it is 'of greater value than the legitimate music market of every country in the world, except the USA and Japan'...." [BBC News, via Slashdot, emphasis above is mine]
Although this article doesn't really say anything new that the RIAA's critics haven't been saying for years, it's a good summary. The whole issue, though, is indicative of the media industry's attitude in general, that technology in the hands of ordinary people is bad if big business can't control it and keep it focused in one direction (them to us rather than interactive) in order to maintain their business models and bottom lines.
I don't work for a media or technology company that has to sell things to customers, but even I can see some of the obvious ways in which these businesses could start innovating and enhancing the user experience as the user wants to experience it.
To prove it, here are some ideas I'm throwing out to them for free. Dear Abby....
No Huggy, No Kissy, Until I Get an RSS Feed
"Before RSS took over, I had a folder named 'Daily' which had links to all of the URLs that I surfed to on a daily basis. One problem was that for the sites that changed daily, it was a pain to decide what was new. An even bigger problem was the ones that didn't change daily. Eventually, the pain of surfing to them daily was outweighed by the pleasure I would get when those sites were finally updated. A bunch of my friends' infrequently updated blogs fall into this category (you know who you are : ).
Sure, RSS is useful to track Scoble as he shirks his moving duties, but even more useful to track Tim when he eventually does update his blog. With RSS, I don't have to experience any pain surfing to Tim's blog day after day. Instead, I let SharpReader poll Tim's blog and when it's finally updated, I'll know about it. All gain; no pain.
What that means, unfortunately, is that I only read blogs with RSS feeds, because I've long ago gotten out of the habit of surfing my 'Daily' folder. So when Josh Trupin (editor of MSDN Magazine) gave his reasons for being out of the office on Monday, he had to send me an email with a link to the description of his horrific train injury detailed on his blog. As fun a writer as Josh is, I won't go back (unless Google brings me there) 'til he's got an RSS feed. I've been hurt before; now I'm older and wiser and require an RSS feed before I'm willing to wed myself to a blog." [via The Scobleizer Weblog]
Another RSS Bigot joins the fold. Get with the program, people, and recognize how valuable an RSS feed is for your site!
And speaking of sites gaining RSS feeds, it's been six months since Corante started providing RSS feeds for its wonderful blogs - how about an update on how that's going? Some stats about how that's affected readership (good and bad), how much traffic is from RSS, are they getting more links due to the RSS, etc.? I have my suspicions, of course, but some numbers to start tracking the rise of RSS would be great.
RSS Jobs
"Are you looking for a new job? Are you using the internet? Do you have search agents saved on Monster, Dice, HotJobs, and countless others? Do you have the time and patience to weed through all the job listings on all the job boards you would like to check on a daily basis?
Imagine creating all of your search agents in one place, and viewing the results all at once. Imagine knowing at a glance which listings are new, and which you have already seen. Imagine spending less time checking more job boards than you do now. Imagine doing this throughout the day, when you want to, and on your schedule.
RSSJobs allows you to create and save searches for Monster, Dice, HotJobs,and more in one location, then delivers the results to your favorite RSS Reader." [via The Scobleizer Weblog]
No "about us" page, but it's an interesting idea, especially since you can throw the feeds into the aggregator of your choice.
"From the 2002 Campus Computing Survey Report from Campus Computing.net:
'Roughly two-thirds (67.9 percent) of the institutions participating in the 2002 survey report that they have functioning wireless LANs, compared to half (50.6 percent) in 2001 and 29.6 percent in 2000. Another eighth (12.7 percent) report that wireless LANs will become functional this year. One tenth (10.0 percent) of the survey respondents indicate that full-campus wireless networks are up and running at their institutions as of fall 2002, compared to 6.2 percent in 2001 and 3.8 percent in 2000. Across all sectors, the 2002 data suggest that wireless services cover just under a fifth (18.3 percent) of the physical campus at those institutions reporting wireless networks, compared to 10.9 percent in 2001.'
Thanks to Leslie Simmons for the citation. The URL of the summary is: http://www.campuscomputing.net/summaries/2002/index.html" [Bill Drew on WEB4LIB]
We're going to start seeing the first generation of college graduates who expect wireless access when they get out in the real world - not just at home, not just at work, not just at the bookstore or coffee shop, but at the public library, too. Everywhere. Think about the kind of impact that type of expectation (and eventual reality) is going to have on our society, and then multiply it by all succeeding generations.
Police: Teen Abduction Foiled by Cell Phone Cam
"A quick-thinking 15-year-old boy used his Sprint cell phone camera to take pictures of a man who allegedly tried to lure him into his car, leading to the man's arrest, police said....
'He was able to have the presence of mind to utilize the technology at his disposal,' Rowan said. 'He was upset at the time, but he's OK. He has a bruise to his arm and wrist....'
A spokeswoman for Sprint, the manufacturer of the phone, says the incident is the first time -- as far as the company knows -- someone has used the year-old technology to foil a criminal." [CNN, thanks Aaron!]
mt as courseware
"One of the most active entries I've posted this year was my wish for a good open-source courseware package. I ended up looking at a few of the suggestions, but to get what I wanted, all would have required too steep a learning curve and customization process.
So, today I decided to see if I could leverage my existing knowledge of MovableType to generate something that met my basic needs for courseware. I plan on keeping the grades in our Prometheus-based courseware (saves me the hassle of dealing with password-protected stuff, and importing class lists), but putting everything else into a customized course blog. That allows me to make the course content easily accessible to students, colleagues, and other interested parties--and to allow comments and ideas from people outside of the class to become part of the [sic]
The beginnings of the course site can be found at http://www.it.rit.edu/~ell/320/320-031/. I've done nothing yet with aesthetics, obviously, because I wanted to first think through functionality...." [mamamusings]
How cool is it that Liz Lawley is extending Movable Type to become basic courseware and documenting how she's doing it via her personal blog?! The next time someone questions the value of blogging, show them this entry!
Of course, it would be interesting if Liz could work the school's library into the course blog, too - assignments, resources, links to live help if available, etc. The key is for librarians to work with professors on these kinds of projects and then promote these services to the entire faculty.
On a side note, let's see how quickly trackback works to show this post to Liz. It will be yet another wonderful example of how blogs open the lines of communication, collaboration, and good-old-fashioned brainstorming!
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