Digitising Cover Art October 29, 2009
Posted by Chris Wright in Internet, Music, Technology.Tags: dbPowerAmp, EAC, flac, iPhone, MP3, MuvUnder Cover, Squeezebox, SqueezeCenter
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Such is the speed of technology that the once proud LP cover, 12 inches square, gatefold and legible has undergone miniturisation via illegibly tiny CD covers replicating cherished original artwork, to its current status as a 200 pixel square icon pressed into service as a usability aid in iPlayers, Squeezebox Duet, SqueezeCenter server and just about every mobile phone currently doing double duty as a music player.
Ok that’s a curmudgeonly take on what actually is a pretty decent usability aid and in this post I’m going to recommend some software that will retrieve the album art from the internet and insert it into your music files so that the player can pick it up and display it.
I played around with a number of different applications that would tackle the difficult job of searching the internet for the cover art, retrieve it and insert it into the ripped cd files. since I have well over a thousand CD’s converted to flac, I wanted a program that would give me these options;
- Configurable search – I don’t want the software to download hundreds of random pictures, I want to configure the primary sources and have the option to widen the search if the primary source doesn’t deliver.
- Choose Image – I want to be able to scroll through the images and choose which one to use
- Automate the inserting of the image into the flac (or mp3) file and insert a copy into the folder for the library
Of the standalone products I tried, several were iTunes focused (Tune Up, Widget Foundry Amazon Art) which is no good for me and a couple were modifications on the software used to rip cds – dbPoweramp being the best of the bunch.
Because I don’t use dbPoweramp, (preferring the freeware EAC) I needed a dedicated piece of software that would do just this job and do it well. I ended up with a Windows only application snappily entitled MuvUnder Cover. This delivers on every point, is childishly simple to use and best of all, if not free, cheap. at $14.
Squeezebox Boom! October 16, 2009
Posted by Chris Wright in Technology.Tags: flac, iPod, Logitech, MP3, Slim Devices, Slimserver, Squeezebox, Transporter
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There comes a time when a piece of hardware is released that is so brilliant that it has to be bought. A case in point is the new offering from Logitech, the Squeezebox Boom – a cross between the classic Squeezebox, a device that has to be plugged into a hi fi, and an eighties BoomBox – basically a portable soundsystem that supports iPod connectivity and streaming services from local hardware. This is Logitech’s second addition to the range bought out by Slim Devices several years ago.
First impressions are – it’s tiny, maybe 12″ across and has no carrying handle. The sound though is incredible for such a small device. Real solid bass, this player punches well above its weight.
For people new to the Squeezebox family, the rest of this article need not apply – simply install the server software on your wireless network, load up your mp3s or flac music collection and you’re good to go, for veterans, this is where the fun begins!
I currently run the Slim Devices Transporter for digital music, using a ReadyNas NV+ for storage. ReadyNas shipped the NV+ with the Free SlimServer software ready installed, which was a factor in my choice of Network attached storage.
Fearing a slew of rebranded releases in the wake of Logitech’s purchase of Slim Devices, I must admit to steering well clear of updating my system on the basis of ‘if it’s not broke, don’t fix it!’, but cometh the hour…
The latest server software shipped with Logitech’s rebranded hardware is called SqueezeCenter – so predictably, this prereqs a newer version of the Raidiator software – the management UI that sits on top of the base Debian distribution. So time to roll up the sleeves and get the hands dirty!
First task is to download all of the files needed for the upgrade. These are helpfully listed on the Slim Devices Wiki , along with links to download them from. I reproduce them here with extra comments.
1. CleanSqueezeCenter
This is a utility that returns the slimserver database settings to the default – a fresh scan of the music library re-populates the database.
2. CleanSqueezeCenter for x86 (Pro and NVX models)
This only applies to the ReadyNas Pro and NVX models which use the i86 chip architecture. NV and NV+ models use SPARC – this is important also when choosing the version of Squeezecenter.
3. Radiator (ReadyNAS firmware)- latest version is RAIDiator-4.1.6
There is a version of Squeezecenter that is supplied as part of the RAIDiator upgrade. This ships with SqueezeCenter 7.3.2. The final release of Version 7.3.3 is available here.
Unfortunately, SqueezeBox Server 7.4 (the new name for SqueezeCenter) is not yet available for the ReadyNas platform. The Logitech download pages irritatingly forward to the latest version, so it is only available today, through the beta site. For the benefit of the intrepid, I did a fair amount of research on the news groups before deciding not to install beta code – of all the betas, version 7.4.1-28862 is probably the best bet, a version which appears to have cured a nasty bug that caused a reboot of the ReadyNAS to start two instances of the server software, the first not connected to the database, but blocking the ports, the second connected to the database but unable to get the ports it needs to broadcast.
Onwards and upwards then. First task is to upgrade the RAIDiator software.
Load the admin page into the browser and navigate to System > Update > Local tab.
Click on Browse and browse to the folder you stored the files in earlier.
Select the Radiator firmware file and click “Upload and verify image…” (ex. RAIDiator-4.1.6)
Once the file uploads, click on “Perform System Update”.
Once the update is finished, go to the Shutdown tab and select “Shutdown and reboot your device”, then click Apply.
Monitor the progress of the restart with RAIDar. This utility scans the network searching for a ReadyNAS signature, when it finds it, it probes and returns with a snapshot of the status – it does not refresh automatically, so press rescan periodically.
After a couple of refreshes, the icon next to the MAC address in RAIDar will turn blue – this indicates ‘a lengthy background task is running’ . No cause for alarm – this may run for an hour or more!
Once you have reconnected to the admin screen, the next task is to run the CleanSqueezeCenter utility to prepare the database for the new install.
1. On the Admin page, go to System > Update > Local tab
2. Click on Browse and browse to the folder you stored the files in earlier.
3. Select the CleanSqueezeCenter file and click “Upload and verify image…”
When the upload is finished, click on “Perform System Update”. You will be prompted to restart the ReadyNAS – as before, go to the Shutdown tab, select ‘Shutdown and reboot your device and click Apply. Once your ReadyNAS restarts, log into the Admin page again and go to the Streaming Services tab.
If, like me you do this the second RAIDar reports the device is ready, you will be horrified to find that SlimServer has disappeared from the list of streaming services, to be replaced by ‘No Definition’… relax, this is temporary and once the new SqueezeCenter software is loaded, it will show up in this dialogue.
This gets us to a stable version of the server software, and is a good place to draw breath and check that everything is working. Preliminary tests show that the gui loads faster and is much more responsive. It has been redesigned in the interests of usability, so ‘Settings’ down in the bottom right hand corner contains most of the options with which we can break the software! The simple stuff is arranged in a short sequence of menus on the left hand side.
So that is more or less that, I’ll post any updates as they come up, but so far, so good, the system works just as well as it ever did, the gui is faster, and the new player is supported. Job Done?
Postscript
Job Done? Well, no!
On closer inspection, the Internet Radio BBC stations fail to work, with an error “Unable to play file type…”
Further research reveals that this is a known issue on the Linux platform, but very few people seem to have actually solved it. Deeper digging, in the logs identify the file type as ‘wma’ – windows media files. The Netgear forum suggests that the problem is solved in release 7.3.3 of SqueezeCenter.
Sigh…Version 7.3.3 can be downloaded here
The upgrade is exactly as before – First go to the streaming services tab in the RAIDiator menu and delete SqueezeCenter 7.3.2.
Then Go to System – update – local
Choose the image you just downloaded and update, once this has completed go to
Shutdown – Shutdown and reboot
When the system is up again, run the CleanSqueezeCenter utility, Shutdown and Reboot.
Voila!
Internet radio now works. I installed the BBC iPlayer extension to deal with the BBC Real Audio streams.
Social Media and Public Relations July 13, 2009
Posted by Chris Wright in Advertising, Blogs, Film, Internet, Life, Media, Technology.Tags: End of the Line, Facebook, Flickr, mySpace, PR, public relations, social software, Twitter, Web 2.0
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These are interesting times, as the economy buckles and sways under the onslaught of rising debt and falling sales, the new economy, espoused by Wired magazine back at the turn of the century suddenly seems relevant again. As traditional companies fall by the wayside, a new breed of Digital Media Agency is poised to leapfrog the traditional PR practice and take the art of promotions into the 21st Century.
For traditional PR companies, the art of publicising a brand, be it a drink, a musician or a charity, is well established. Essentially, market research gives a picture of the current awareness of the brand and of the temperature of public opinion. This is compared to the desired state for the brand and a strategy is created that moves public opinion from the current position to the would-be position. At least, that’s the theory.
Most campaigns have a certain amount in common. Traditional media such as Print, Radio and Television are used to host advertising campaigns whilst promotional slots are arranged with ‘influencers’ appropriate to the desired brand. So an interview set up with Jonathan Ross for example on prime time BBC National Television will have a massive influence on the intended audience and will reinforce the effect of a straightforward advertising campaign.
Nowadays however things are changing. It’s hard to get a slot on the Jonathan Ross show and there are only a limited number of slots available in a season. Didn’t somebody say Facebook had over 300 million users? Hang on a minute! Jonathan Ross averages only 3.5 million…. and so logic being what it is, a new industry is born.
Given those figures, a digital media campaign ought to be able to deliver unprecedented conversion rates – shouldn’t it? Well a measure of caution may be appropriate – advocacy is often blinded by a fatal mixture of naivety and hope. There are a number of very significant factors, reducing the potential of digital campaigns to much more realistic figures. For example the degree to which a large audience might identify with the brand. Is it global or niche? Is it possible to correctly identify the location of the target audience? We know that Facebook tends to attract young professionals, creatives, writers and artists, that MySpace attracts a younger audience that is interested in music and movies but within those broad demographics, how easy is it to get to the target audience?
Let’s examine a case.
The movie ‘End of the Line‘ is a documentary which puts forward the idea that if current fishing practices are allowed t ocontinue unchecked, we may as a species succeed in turning our oceans into a primordial sludge supporting only single cell organisms – within our lifetimes. Apart from the compelling nature of the subject matter, a few things make this film especially interesting.
The film has now run for four weeks in the West End of London and has been picked up by cinemas around the country, with bookings until the end of September. The cause has been taken up by mainstream mass media - the Sun, Hello and Heat magazine, as well as regional and local papers and the entire national press.
It has also engaged with the corporate world in ways no one can remember any other British film doing. The head of a major High Street presence, Pret a Manger, saw an early screening and changed his entire company’s policy on tuna.
Waitrose put backing into the making of the film and even Morrisons is now advertising some of its fish as line-caught.
The fact that the film has struck such a chord with the people and companies who have seen it has put the issues in the film on the political agenda, in ways they were not before.
This is remarkable stuff – and unprecedented for a documentary to cause this much of a ruckus. Here are some more facts.
- Facebook profile - 4,596 fans
- YouTube trailer – 41,566 views
- Twitter page – 2,225 followers
- Claim your Piece of Ocean Campaign
Notwithstanding the emotive content of the film and I’m quite sure it would have had a substantial impact in it’s own right. it has undoubtedly benefitted to some degree from a well orchestrated PR campaign based primarily on using Social Software to raise the profile of the film. How was this done?
The film was backed by a web site and merchandising, so far, so Web1.0, but where this movie moves away from the mainstream is in it’s espousal of Web2.0 sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter and it’s innovative use of a web site hosted campaign that gives viewers a chance to make their presence felt. What is especially interesting is that Twitter was added almost as an afterthought – a fact which is reflected in the comparitively low number of followers.
It is possible to visualise a campaign, something like the figure here. Web1.0 technology, traditional media, funding etc all have a part to play.
The key to leveraging Web2.0 technology is in fostering a sense of community, and it is on Facebook and YouTube that viewers have the chance to make their opinions known.
It is this sense of involvement that encourages users to return and continue the conversation, and critically, to recommend the site to their friends. In this way, it is possible to encourage almost exponential growth for a message which has a universal meaning. It might be more difficult to stimulate the same degree of growth for a line of clothing or a CD, but the principle remains the same.
Twitter has a particular characteristic that gives it huge potential in this space, the character limit of 140 and the inclusion of a URL make it possible to attach a clickable link to an irresistable tag line. This is a very different notion to the idea of pirating the hash tag to insert a completely inappropriate advertisment into the trending topics. Retweets spread the link virally and the takeup, relying entirely on the suitability of the content to the task in hand could encourage users to self select – I’m reminded of a campaign that ran in the New Musical Express in the mid seventies, to promote the T. Rex album The Slider – the first few weeks a teaser campaign ran consisting of a small photograph printed on multiple pages – a rear view of Marc Bolan, unidentifiable except perhaps for the trademark curls. After a couple of pages, the photograph appeared with a caption, printed large across the photograph “Bolan’s Back”. The campaign scored a bullseye with the intended audience and the album was a substantial hit. In a sense, the same kind of opportunity is available with Twitter, a tag line, sufficiently intriuging to deliver the click through would serve to tickle the appetite of the target audience. The beauty of Twitter is that the model dictates that anything resembling spam would die a death, Twitter depends on retweets to spread the message.
The key to success in harnessing the power of Web2.0 technology is to engage the audience with a strong message, and interesting content, to choreograph the interconnectivity of multiple forms of social media in a pattern that reinforces the message, keeps content fresh and encourages the audience to revisit and to pass the message on. Blogging, Web Sites with a high degree of interactivity, Facebook, Youtube and Flickr may all have a part to play.
Tag – You’re it! May 5, 2009
Posted by Chris Wright in Blogs, Internet, Technology.Tags: blog, browse, collaboration, data mining, database, graze, relational, repository, search, tag, tagging, Wiki
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One of the concerns that collaborative software helps to ease is the loss of precious intellectual capital with the leaving or retiring of an employee. This is a point that is well understood but a question I am often asked when I’m talking to clients about collaborative technologies is “What is the point of tagging? It’s so inconvenient, can’t we just have a drop down menu of all available tags?”
It’s a good question, and it comes from a place which is very comfortable with slick user interfaces. People are busy, doing real work – why do they have to do this ‘tagging stuff’? It’s almost back to the halcyon days of Wordstar!
There are a number of things to think about here – not least the fact that a drop down menu of tags would actually undermine the mechanism by which tagging works. Let me try and explain what I mean.
We are creating data at a rate faster than ever before, there are silos, mines and every concievable type of repository full of data, and it just keeps on coming. We need to find data, to find the right data, fast, in order to make good decisions. Google I am told, consumes as much power in a day, feeding it’s data crunching centres as a small city does in a week…let’s consider the user for a moment….
I’m a big music buyer and one thing that I do in every city I visit, if I have time, is to visit the music stores and browse the racks of CDs and Vinyl. Often, I’ll be inspired by what I see and my mind goes off in all directions, soon the original cd that I wanted to buy has been buried in a slew of conjecture, guesswork, associations etc. I’m standing in the middle of a warehouse full of music, completely unable to recall the name of the artist or the title of the album I came here to buy.
What do I do to recover? Well, it’s pretty easy really – I have to rebuild the associations that the album has for me and just as the experience of browsing can disrupt my train of thought, so it can be used to recover the train of thought. An example might be that elusive Johnny Thunders version of Green Onions….I might recall that it was vaguely something to do with the New York punk scene of the seventies. So browsing the groups that I can recall, Television, Patti Smith isn’t helping, Patti Smith’s Gloria is warm, but not right….it’s a cover, it’s a sixties song originally….hmmm who else covered sixties tunes, New York Dolls for one…..Stranded in the Jungle, Pills, getting warmer by the second,, who was in the New York Dolls….Johnny Thunders!
Ok, so that’s a slice of my day, but the point is that the data that helped me find that particular record has nothing to do with the record itself. It’s not data that would be held in a database listing the attributes of that record – we would expect to find serial number, media, song titles, artist, maybe a picture of the cover, but there’s no way I can browse to that row in the database in any intuitive way. The data that helped was: sixties’, ’seventies’, ‘New York’, ‘New York Dolls’, ‘cover’…. good candidates for tags in fact, in an article about that particular song!
So tagging enables intuitive search and human beings love searching intuitively. We are trying to make authors of everyone, but it is impractical to perform full text searches on the volumes of data that we are now producing. Tagging allows humans to feel their way through the information overload and retrieve data that is of value, reasonably quickly.
So that is the first point, the user in the ‘browse’ case really appreciates tagging. The second point is much more direct, authors take a pride in their work and actually quite like it when people read it! Blogs being a fantastic example – we use tags to make sure that an article comes up in these intuition led searches that internet users love to engage in. It is actually in the author’s interest to be creative about tagging, it will attract more readers.
Lastly, why can’t we have a drop down menu? Well I’ve seen ‘most used tags’ listed, which goes some of the way towards meeting this request, but my thinking is that while a list of most used tags might give me some options, I’d actually like to make up my own, maybe add to the list in time?
So, in a nutshell, tagging is all about information categorisation, indexing and retrieval – it leverages the human brain as much as it does the data mining, search applications and who knows, in view of google’s extraordinary electrical consumption could even be considered ‘green’!
2009 – The Year Of The Ox January 2, 2009
Posted by Chris Wright in Internet, Life, Technology.Tags: astrology, Brian Eno, Cormac McCarthy, Facebook, futurology, The Edge, Vox
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Futurology is notoriously ‘hit or miss’, we generally fail miserably with specifics, even in prosperous and optimistic times, so in this new dawning of recession and strife, not forgetting famine, plague and pestilence, it seems more appropriate than usual to turn to the generalists for advice. We live in interesting times!
The Chinese astrologer Han Teen See has these observations on the new year:
2009 The year of The Ox will be a very intense year. The many significant incidents that occur will be sudden and deadly. The year will be filled with many more wars, military engagements and terrorist atrocities compared to previous years. Military forces worldwide will be more aggressive and active which will signify the greater likelihood of wars and military engagements in selected regions of the world……
…..People will generally be more aggressive, impulsive and quick-tempered with such behavior spreading quickly like wild-fire. Direct conflicts, arguments and disputes will occur more frequently…..
…..There will be an increase of both organizations and individuals adopting unethical or illegal methods to benefit themselves this year. It will imply that corruption, evasion of proper business practices, tax evasion and fraud will be on the rise.
Companies and businesses that have expanded too rapidly and have done so without taking into account their cash flow and resource management will suffer badly this year. Furthermore, those companies and businesses that have not been giving fair value to their customers and clients will be badly affected as well. This is because, both customers and clients alike will be more selective in their choice of products and services and will choose those that give them fair value….
And so to The Edge. For those unfamiliar with this organisation, The Edge is a forum, drawing together some of the brightest minds in a spectrum covering science, the arts, education, and asking once a year, a question germane to the time. The annual question for 2009, perhaps picking up the theme of relentless gloom and despondency was ‘What will change everything?’
Brian Eno, offers this as his answer: “The feeling that things are inevitably going to get worse” ! The point he is making, is that the history of progress has been founded on a certainty that better things are around the corner. Optimism and hope have been practically hardwired into the psyche of the western world. What happens when that optimism and hope is removed? When we start to see the walls closing in, the world shrinking? Well, in Eno’s view, something remarkably similar to the predictions of Han Teen See. The emphasis will be on short term gain, once survival becomes a driver, selflessness becomes a distant memory and in politics and business, global initiatives fail because trust will fail – the moral framework breaks down and law and order quickly follow….Cormac McCarthy – The Road becomes the new reality. As an answer to the question, Eno is undoubtedly right – this is root cause.
So pestilence and plague it is then…or is it? This is one of those points in time where we have a choice, as individuals and collectively. The choices we make today may very well set the tone for the next hundred years. These are my predictions for the year.
This is a year where the buck stops. I fear for the bio-technology industry, as an occasional investor I headed for the safer havens of mainstream technology six months ago – and still lost more than I care to admit. More than any other sector of technology, bio-tech depends on research money, government projects etc etc. It has never been profitable and in current economic conditions, unless the model is substantially revised, I expect to see the sector struggle.
Web2.0 is a set of technologies, desperately short of a profit model. for all it’s targeted advertising, has anyone ever actually bought anything via Facebook? These applications are fabulous, revolutionary even, but unless somebody works out how to make money from them, we can expect to see turbulence ahead. My tip for survival – Vox. A hosted blogging application including many of the social software favourites such as file sharing, music, photos etc. It is aimed at the smaller community, organisations and families, and in so doing provides a sense of identity that could be converted into a selling point. The difference between Vox and Facebook is that Facebook encourages mass socialisation, and in so doing exposes its members to the scrutiny of strangers. Not everybody is enthused by this model. Vox encourages privacy and this could turn out to be a differentiator worth paying for.
More generally, I’d expect to see businesses and governments start to prepare themselves for the new reality. This is a time for strong vision and fearless leadership. At government level we should expect to see an upsurge in technology mediated education – we’ve been talking about it for long enough, let’s see action! Dare we also anticipate an upgrading of the IT infrastructure such that fast broadband is achievable in every home?
The motor industry is one to watch – Toyota posted a loss for the first time in fifty years? Ford, Chrysler and General Motors had to be bailed out by the US government. The message is modernise or fail. We should see these companies ruthlessly stripped back to fighting weight, better use of technology, resulting in better knowledge retention and less waste.
I expect to see customers demand value for money – the first green shoots are beginning to appear already. I was able to negotiate a discount of 20% before Christmas, on designer clothes purchased in the high street. If you don’t ask, you won’t get. Services will be more realistically priced because there are so many alternatives. The wild fluctuations in transport pricing should start to level out – my favourite recent example being the purchase of a flight from Edinburgh to Belfast for less than £1 + airport taxes, the next day, being asked by Virgin Rail to pay more than £250 for a rail ticket from London to Manchester. I decided not to travel that day. If the UK government wants to get people to use the trains instead of the roads, then we need to regulate pricing. The excuses being trotted out by Virgin and their ilk (passengers paying for the running of underused services) are the same excuses used in the sixties, before the rail networks were nationalised. They simply don’t wash a second time. Businesses who are seen to be exploiting their customer base are at risk. That’s all there is.
In the end, 2009 is an opportunity. It’s my hope that governments, businesses and individuals start to make the right decisions, to enable freedom of movement globally, to encourage global cooperation and trust and in so doing enable a return to prosperity. It is my darkest fear that they won’t.
Meh! November 25, 2008
Posted by Chris Wright in Internet, Life, Technology.Tags: blog, Meme, Web 2.0, Wiki
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The recent inclusion of ‘meh’ in the Collins English Dictionary and the elevation of “wiki” to the Oxford English dictionary have provoked some hilarious postings on The Register. The subject of net neoligisms is one which by turn vexes and fascinates.
History tells us that the evolution of a spoken or written language is accelerated by slang, by the absorption of ‘foreign’ words into the current idiom. Over time, some of these words stick, others fall by the wayside. The continuous process keeps language alive and vital. Attempts to record a language, definitively, are by their very nature doomed to failure because existing words pick up new meanings, and new words emerge to provide more distinct or precise meaning.
The evolution of the English language can be traced to several significant stages. The spoken language in England was originally several dialects of Celtic origin. In the 5th Century, the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes invaded from Denmark and northern germany, in the process pushing the native inhabitants and their languages, north to Scotland and west to Wales and Ireland. Gaelic, one variety of a Celtic language is found in Scotland and Ireland, Welsh, another variety is still spoken in Wales.
During the 600 odd years leading up to the Norman invasion of 1066, the languages imported by the germanic tribes coalesced into what we now call Old English – about half of the words in current parlance have their roots in Old English. The Normans brought French to the island and with it, a rigid class system. The upper classes and business classes spoke French, the peasantry Old English. Over a period of some 400 years, middle English, the language of Chaucer emerged – broadly, Old English with added French!
The 16th century brought the Renaissance and with it, travel – this had a profound effect on the language, new words were imported by traders and other travellers and the invention of the printing press accelerated the standardisation of what became Early Modern English.
Late Modern English has persisted from appproximately 1600 to the present day, spurred on by the Industrial Revolution creating a need for new words to describe new technologies and the British Empire adopting words from the colonies. Varieties of late modern english have evolved and cross pollinated through the power of media, so American English with its strong Spanish and French influences has brought words such as vigilante into the common language via the movies.
Which brings us to the vexing question of ‘meh’. If there were a Darwinian theory of language it would say that the words that are fit for purpose, that bring more precision, that are required would be the ones to survive. There is a very strong argument that, that has usually been the case. This is why slang has such a strong influence on language. Slang evolves, to meet circumstances which are geographical, cultural and societal at specific points in time. An example of this would be the changing usage of the word ’swinging’.
Originally ’swinging’ referred to the sideways oscillation of an object, suspended from a fixed point. In the fifties, it acquired a new meaning, related to jazz, swinging morphed into a description of rhythm – still vaguely related to oscillation. In the sixties it was used to describe a different form of music – beat, and ‘Swinging’ became an interjection of approval. A pop group ‘The Swinging Blue Jeans’ capitalised on this meaning as a means of buying instant credibility with the public. The seventies, brought with it a darker meaning, completely separated now from its roots, swinging referred to the appalling practice of wife swapping for sexual adventure that is reputed to have infested suburbia during those straitened times.
Two things are significant – the greatly reduced time span – 30 years in this case and the completely different meaning attached to the word by the end of the tie span – it is the speed of change that has increased dramatically.
‘Meh’ is a word that has not evolved so much as occured. Hijacked from the Simpsons, it has held its original meaning, and been gleefully adopted by the Nathan Barley generation as an all purpose utterance signifying boredom, ennui. Like many neoligisms spawned by the net, it serves no uniquely useful purpose and does not substantially clarify nor make more precise the articulation of that feeling it purports to describe.
Not all net neoligisms are so useless – meme, cyberspace, unfriend are all useful words which better describe something – they bring value to the language in a way which ‘meh’ conspicuously fails to emulate. ‘Meh’ is a word which is so strongly reminiscent of the utterance of a sheep that its continued usage by otherwise intelligent people mystifies me totally. I wonder about decadence at times – the adoption of useless and ultimately destructive practices. In the increasingly self referential world of new media, I see useful technologies whose advocates, in their frenetic adoption of every passing fad, are ultimately failing to communicate – the very issue these technologies are supposed to solve.
Comments in Late Modern English please!
// Credit for much of the thinking behind this post should be given to Jacqui Rowe, Mel Curtiss, Elle Gee, and Brenda McWalters whose spirited rejoinders to my flippant post on Facebook made me think!
Pownced! October 3, 2008
Posted by Chris Wright in Blogs, Internet, Life, Technology.Tags: AIR, microblog, Pownce, Twitter, WebKit
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My experiments with Twitter, documented in previous postings here have stubbornly refused to yield any conclusive proof that the tool is useful for anything other than spreading gnomic utterances about life, my blogs, the universe and er…. computers. I struggle to write interesting one liners -and deprived of the context that Facebook provides it’s status line, the one liners really don’t do it for me. I’m full of beans but do I really need to tell the world?
The problem, I think, is that when I consider it, I don’t have a lot of practice in meaningful many to many communications – in fact the relentless march of technology has herded us all away from the family dinner table, into either 1:1 communications (txt, telephone) or 1:Many (n) communications (radio, TV). We’re just not that good at n: n. I challenge you to remember the last conference call where you didn’t have to IM a colleague to enquire “Who is this talking?”.. Actually, the dinner table doesn’t generally yield fantastic results – except possibly in volume, but at least I usually know who’s talking. Probably me.
Which brings me to Pownce ! Just what I need, I thought, another microblogging / social software solution – only Pownce actually has some rather interesting features. Starting on the basis that it is a microblog, it has the concept of friends (not followers, thank god! I was never comfortable with that conceit). Messages can be broadcast or private – ie the app can be used to IM with a friend. OK Twitter can as well if you use the direct message facility, but Pownce is a lot more intuitive.
The killer functionality though is file attachments – you can send in the free client, 50mb attachments as part of a chat session. A file – music, picture, or a link or an event. Signing up to the Pro version raises the bar to 250mb. To me this makes the application immediately useful, in a way that Twitter just isn’t.
Additionally, Pownce has a downloadable client, running on the Adobe Air platform which utilises both the WebKit (in common with Chrome) and Flash engines, has published API’s and a rapidly expanding list of supported / integrated tooling. Including inevitably iPhone support, Facebook synchronisation and a host of other interesting looking widgets.
I’m in. Once the user base has grown and the tooling supports automated Powncing in the same way that Twitter does, I see Pownce as a real contender – in fact, in these times of market turmoil I’d be tempted to put money on it!
Video Killed The Radio Star October 1, 2008
Posted by Chris Wright in Music, Technology.Tags: Apple, BBC, CD, iTunes, Music, Sony, Wired
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Who killed the recorded music industry? In the light of Apple’s veiled threat to shut down iTunes in the face of demands from the music publishing industry for a larger slice of the pie, this question is suddenly a lot more relevant. The central issue is not about Apple, it is about the way that society rewards artists and the failure of the free market to keep up with technology.
Before the gramaphone (ignoring the wax cylinder) there was no recorded music industry. Musicians made a precarious living by playing real instruments, live, in front of real people. Songwriters had a share of the sheet music sales from popular songs. as I said, the living was precarious.
The music industry as we know it, evolved during the sixties – by this I mean the infrastructure of the industry, the distribution channels, the manufacturing, recording and marketing instruments, the fundamental structure of a recording contract that tied an artist into promoting records on tours underwritten by the record companies, ultimately paid for by the royalties on successful records. and by records, I mean the physical vinyl artifact.
This arrangement suited the record companies very well, so well that when CD’s and digital file formats arrived, they completely failed to see the writing on the wall. It was abundantly obvious to anyone with the wit to look, that recorded music would be passed from person to person via computer networks. In one fell swoop, the record companies lost control of the medium and some would say, the industry.
Napster, the peer to peer file sharing service was the first to really get under the record companies skin – hugely successful, the companies invention, a peer to peer music sharing system created a model for a decentralised distribution channel that has proved impossible for the traditional industry to control. It took a federal government to close down Napster, but there are a host of similar enterprises still in semi legal business.
This is why it has been so difficult for the industry to deal with. For each track there is an owner of the sound recording, the record company. There is also a separate work, the musical composition – the song the artist sings. By law, each track of the CD is also considered a reproduction of the musical composition. On a typical CD, there may be 12 sound recordings and 8 separate music publishers. Multiply that times 3,000 record companies in the US, and 25,000 music publishers, times 27,000 new CDs per year. Separate individual negotiations for all these rights are simply not a viable option.
With CD sales falling last year by 20% to ($7.4bn (£4bn)), the record companies now have a major problem. The artists do too, but the good ones are now making up the shortfall by playing live – this has to be good for the long term health of the art. By which i mean that new technology has been seen by the record companies as primarily a means of reducing recording costs – to the detriment of the quality of the product, as the art of songwriting took a back seat to the art of sampling. In the current climate, forcing acts to play live may encourage the use of technology to entertain the audiences again. But it’s not that simple.
Traditionally, the audience / society, pays the piper – prices are hiked and artists, record companies and publishers all live happily ever after. Now however there is a problem. Apple don’t own the medium, they are just the de facto owners of the largest share of the market. Rivals include Sony, who as a record and hardware company themselves, would be very well placed to mount a strong competitive alternative. So Apple will not want the price of recorded music to rise. The record companies, watching their profits dwindle daily are unlikely to want to take the hit, which leaves the publishers and the artists themselves.
Interesting times ahead. Should songwriters be paid for writing songs? Is it reasonable for the record industry to seek to sustain its profit levels when they no longer own the medium? What does the record industry do in these days of digital recording technology, to justify its profit? Should Apple simply raise the price of digital music?
What if the artist retains control of the recording? Is there any point in recording 12 song albums any longer? What are the implications of selling less songs? Would a tour the size of Madonna’s for example be sustainable on the back of the profit gained from a couple of singles? Actually the answer to that one is yes, ditto The Rolling Stones, but what of the middle ranking acts that depend on touring to shift albums?
But back to the central issue – we have an audience, millions of music hungry people with money to burn, who are quite happy to spend it. We have a computer company, Apple, capitalising on the digital format to charge the audience for the music at 99 cents per track. We have a music industry desperate to play ball with Apple because they no longer own the medium. We have a music publishing industry asserting its right to gain a higher percentage of the digital rights – so who loses?
Answers on a postcard please!
Marlboro Mum September 29, 2008
Posted by Chris Wright in Advertising.Tags: Marlboro
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Latest in the occasional series….courtesy of Cory Doctorow’s excellent Craphound.com
and what could be more natural after a good helping of lard?
