Stories

Technorati knocks itself out. Again

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Technorati, the comically inept search engine, has redesigned itself again – knocking itself out in the process. The site was down when bloggers checked in yesterday. More importantly, the latest redesign is a tacit admission that it’s given up on its original mission – indexing the world’s weblogs. Technorati now claims to present “zillions of … Read more

How Free Press breaks the citizens’ network

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In 2003 the journalist Ron Suskind captured one of the quotes of the decade when he cited an unnamed Bush administration official as saying:

“When we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality, we’ll act again, creating other new realities.”

On the web today, “political activism” has become a virtual reality game that anyone can play, whoever you are. To succeed, a campaign need not be reality-based at all: it can generate its own fictional cause, complete with symbolic heroes and villains. Eventually the “campaigners” bump into physics, or economics, or real electors – who may have different, more urgent priorities – and the “campaign” vanishes as quickly as it appeared.

But what’s interesting is the real world consequences of the virtual campaign can be the complete opposite of the campaigner’s stated goals.

For example, have a look at this exchange with Ben Scott. Ben is a policy director at Free Press. The outfit describes itself as a “national, nonpartisan organisation working to reform the media”. A goal is a media more responsive to citizens, and more accurate too.

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Mozilla phancies doing a Phorm

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The Phorm bug is spreading. The idea of collecting a user’s browsing history and flogging that data doesn’t just appeal to ISPs. The Mozilla Foundation, the people behind the Firefox browser, want some of that action too. The Foundation is officially a tax exempt non-profit – but still manages to pay its chairperson $500,000 a … Read more

One Laptop Per Child: it’s a con, says former exec

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The former security director of the One Laptop Per Child non-profit has blasted the project for losing sight of its goals, accusing chairman Nicholas Negroponte of deceiving the public. It’s all about shipping kit, says Ivan Krstić in an incendiary essay.

“I quit when Nicholas told me — and not just me — that learning was never part of the mission. The mission was, in his mind, always getting as many laptops as possible out there; to say anything about learning would be presumptuous, and so he doesn’t want OLPC to have a software team, a hardware team, or a deployment team going forward,” writes Krstić.

“Nicholas’ new OLPC is dropping those pesky education goals from the mission and turning itself into a 50-person nonprofit laptop manufacturer, competing with Lenovo, Dell, Apple, Asus, HP and Intel on their home turf, and by using the one strategy we know doesn’t work.”

Ouch.

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“Wake up and smell the Doritos™” – Terry McBride

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Copyright is over, and musicians should make themselves as pretty as they can for big brand advertisers, says top music manager and label boss Terry McBride.

McBride’s Nettwerk Music manages artists including Avril Lavigne and the Barenaked Ladies, and it’s been an indie label for over 20 years. He’s put his thoughts into a Music Tank report published today, and a keynote at Brighton’s Great Escape music festival.

It’s an upbeat vision of the future that eulogises free music, mash-ups and corporate sponsorship. It’s just not a vision of the future everyone is going to welcome – for example, Billy Bragg, who warned against corporate-flavoured feudalism here recently.

Last night Terry was named Music Manager of the Year by his peers. So we caught up with him today ahead of the keynote, to find out where the RIAA scourge thinks the money’s going to come from.

In the report, entitled “Meet The Millenials“, McBride writes –

“Discovery of new music in the digital economy will be synonymous with consumption”. The money will come from ad-supported music services and subscriptions.”

He predicts:

“Premium data services will be the new format of chic within social connections of friends and like-minded individuals”.

“Price will be a fluid definition and more indicative of a response to demand and freedom to use the file after purchase. The definition of what is ‘free’ and what is ‘paid’ will merge, and become a relative point of view.”

That’s one to remember when your landlord knocks on the door, demanding the rent.

“You might think I’m two months behind,” you’ll be able to say, “But that’s a relative point of view.”

Actually free music will become “an upsell technique for other music related products, e.g. concert tickets, clothing, music or artist branded physical products,” reckons McBride. The recorded music helps establish a larger commercial presence. And don’t forget micro-monetisation of P2P recommendations, he writes.

So let’s hear it from the horses mouth. Show us the money, Terry!

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Top-slicing the Beeb: Clueless execs get busy

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Some quangos, like jellyfish, seem to be able to reproduce asexually. It’s what they live to do. What this means is that without any contact, parthenogenesis occurs and they simply spawn off a little version of themselves, which may grow as large as its parent. Britain’s uber-regulator Ofcom, I learned this week, definitely falls into this class. I just hadn’t realised how badly it longs to plop out lots of baby Ofcoms.

Ofcom recently proposed that the BBC should share the licence fee with commercial rivals. But with one exception, none of the commercial rivals actually want this to happen – which leaves Ofcom keenest of all on the idea.

At the Westminster Media Forum debate on Wednesday, executives from the top of British TV management discussed the regulator’s review into Public Service Broadcasting, in which “top-slicing” the licence fee is The Big Idea.

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The New Statesman’s NuLab IT Awards

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Although the New Statesman magazine’s annual New Media Awards (NMA) don’t quite match up to the EFF’s annual Nepotism Award – nothing quite does – they’re still a rich source of humour and embarrassment.

Getting an NMA is the equivalent of getting an orange at half time from the coach of your village football team, just for turning up in the rain. But this year, even by its own standards, New Statesman appears to have outsourced the nominations to a team of satirical writers.

What else can explain one nominee, East Devon District Council, which is lauded for “using AJAX web technology” to “provide efficiencies in waste collections”.

Rubbish enabling rubbish, if you like.

But Garbage 2.0 faces a tough challenge from another nominee, Jimmy Leach, “head of digital communications” at 10 Downing Street.

“Since he started in his post at Downing Street,” we learn, “Jimmy Leach has transformed the government’s approach to new media”.

That’s remarkably similar to the boilerplate text Number 10 sends out to accompany Jimmy Leach’s forays into the real world:

“Since he started in his post at Downing Street, Jimmy Leach has transformed the government’s approach to new media,” apparently.

How? Well, “he executed the e-petitions strategy which has resulted in many millions of people engaging with the website. He has also instituted a series of podcasts featuring the PM and personalities such as Eddie Izzard, Stephen Fry, Chris Evans, Bill Bryson and more”.

Your taxes at work, there.

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Nokia’s music bundle Comes With Hoover-shaped liabilities

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Nokia faces a crippling financial bill for its strategy of bundling free music with handsets, which will give users unlimited song downloads with Nokia phones.

The world’s biggest label, Universal Music, joined the “Comes With Music” initiative at launch last December, and Sony BMG joined last week. The Register has learned that Nokia must pay the wholesale per-unit rate for downloads over a certain ceiling – believed to be 35 songs per user per month.

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