SOME RANDOM DUDE

If you have been reading this blog for even a moderate length of time, you are most likely aware of the unusually high amount of Nine Inch Nails articles on this site (seen here and here to name a few). Considering the general theme of this blog, I could see how this could be seen as strange to many. Still, I tend to write a lot about how digital media (which design-technology intersects with) is changing not only mainstream media, but the society which consumes it - which in turn impacts how we do our work. For the past two years, Nine Inch Nails has really been on the frontlines of pushing media away from the consolidated, copyright-heavy, corporate-run model to a distributed, grassroots, artist-run model.

Last night, Nine Inch Nails released Ghosts I-IV, an independently-produced album that is available for download for the price of $5. There are 36 songs in this album, so that $5 looks even more reasonable than ever. For those of you into the tangible, CDs can be purchased as well. Additionally, 9 songs are available completely for free - no questions asked. While this is distribution model is new, it is not new - we have seen it with In Rainbows and Niggy Tardust, each with their own little tweaks on it. However, make no mistake, Ghosts is unlike any other album distribution we have seen.
(more…)amazon, business, cd, copyright, creative commons, digg, distribution, download, ghosts, information, internet, marketing, media, money, mp3, music, myspace, nin, nine inch nails, online, p2p, peer to peer, pirate bay, piratebay, promotion, reddit, riaa, social bookmarking web

Catching up on extremely tardy posts. I get a big ‘F’ for the past couple weeks of blogging.

Enjoy the links.

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A while back, I read a very interesting article debating the validity of social news sites. There is no denying that the old media machine is beginning to sputter - most notably newspapers. New media has begun to pull visitors away from traditional news outlets with free access to news, less advertising (sometimes) and features unique to the internet such as voting, discussing and recommending. Getting news on the internet is not, well, news at all, however social news is starting to catch on. By catching on, I do not mean our generation, we have been well aware of it for some time - I mean that the larger mainstream is slowly starting to hear whispers of such an idea. The interesting thing is that many people are trying to pit traditional news against social news - as if “there can be only one”. Rather, social news is a great addition to the genre of news which will only improve the public’s access to information.
(more…)democratic, digg, internet, media, money, news, online, ratings, social news, traditional news, voting web

Image courtesy of urlyart.

As many of you most likely know by now, a
series of numbers used to crack HD-DVD have been spreading like wildfire on the internet. As to be expected, articles pertaining to this subject (and the number) showed up all over the place on Digg. All of the sudden, those dugg articles started disappearing off of the Digg site - no doubt from heavy pressure from people affiliated with the HD DVD business. It became suddenly clear why the pressure in this particular case seemed to work when an article pointed out that Digg took a HD DVD sponsorship. As one could expect, the Digg community was furious.
(more…)advertising, alternative news sources, community, democratic process, digg, dugg, hd dvd, internet, kevin rose, money, news, social news, traditional news, web web 2

I read a very interesting article, Why the Semantic Web Will Fail, about one person’s thoughts on why the web will never reach its full potential due to the greed and short-sidedness of big business. The author makes some very good points in the article and it is quite compelling to read.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Semantic Web will never work because it depends on businesses working together, on them cooperating.

We are talking about the most conservative bunch of people in the world, people who believe in greed and cut-throat business ethics. People who would steal one another’s property if it weren’t nailed down. People like, well, Conrad Black and Rupert Murdoch.

And they’re all going to play nice and create one seamless Semantic Web that will work between companies - competing entities choreographing their responses so they can work together to grant you a seamless experience?

I think the author is right about one thing - big business is not a big fan of an open, sharing web and will fight it tooth and nail in the name of profit. My feeling however is that business really does not have a choice in the matter. The web is built on a very open, uncontrollable model - opening up infinite possibilities for individuals, competitors and or startups to ruin them in a heartbeat. The web is moving towards a more open model, like it or not. We do not rely on big business, big business relies on us. If corporations do not want to work in that model, all it takes is $15 for a domain name, $100 a month for hosting and word of mouth for some David to take down Goliath.
(more…)content, corporations, delicious, digg, fair play, flickr, information, open data, open web, semantic web, sharing, web 2dot0 youtube