David Emery OnlineThings that are blogs
Things that are blogs:
Frequently updated webpages with content arranged in reverse chronological order
Things that are not blogs:
The Hype Machine
Blog posts
Blog comments
See also: “I’ve just posted a blog”.
Visit ➔The Collapse of Complex Business Models
Diller, Brill, and Murdoch seem be stating a simple fact—we will have to pay them—but this fact is not in fact a fact. Instead, it is a choice, one its proponents often decline to spell out in full, because, spelled out in full, it would read something like this:
“Web users will have to pay for what they watch and use, or else we will have to stop making content in the costly and complex way we have grown accustomed to making it. And we don’t know how to do that.”
I could have quoted the whole of this to be honest. Really interesting.
Visit ➔Experiential Rights
Call it Kaplan’s Law: the more value a non-music company adds to the fan/artist relationship, the bigger the threat to those who’s business depends on being between the two.
Ethan hits the nail on the head here. Rights is hardly a sexy subject to talk about, but it’s an undeniable anchor that the whole industry is moored to (which – to stretch the metaphor to breaking point – is no good if you sitting in your speed boat, ready to set off).
turntable.fm is the perfect example, as it’s now blocked outside of the US due to “rights issues”. What this really means is that the US current has an easy way of licensing the specific model that turntable.fm uses – that of an online radio station – that other places don’t have (in exactly the same form at least). It’s the same system that Pandora (similarly US-only) uses, and to be perfectly frank I’d be surprised if it continues past 2015 (when the setup is up for renegotiation) as the major labels think they should be paid far more per play then the currently get from Pandora or turntable.fm (and damn them if they can’t stay in business as a result).
It’s a pretty complicated mess, it has to be said…
Visit ➔Secondary attention and the ghosts in the corner
I remember seeing a talk once from a guy who did sound for the ER (on TV, not in actual hospitals). He was telling stories with the sound - foreshadowing moments, enhancing themes, adding drama - all via secondary attention. And I've always wanted to try and use sound as a way of telling you what's going on in/on/with the web. We've been mucking about with a few varients of this - from the abstract and arty to the slightly less abstract and arty - and we're going to try them out via some boxes which Adrian's building for us.
There’s something really interesting in all of this. Not sure exactly what it is yet, though.
Visit ➔The Horrors - Skying
Love the new album by The Horrors – ‘Endless Blue’ (wait for the guitars to kick in about half way though!) and ‘Moving Further Away’ (wait for the guitars to kick in about half way though!) are particular highlights.
Visit ➔Lil B, SwagSec, and the Gay Hacking Parade
But some of this didn’t add up. ‘Gay hackers target Amy Winehouse’ still seemed too good a headline to be true.
Then I saw that Lil B was releasing his new album today. Apparantly his album ‘I’m Gay’ (named so in support of the LGBT community, though Lil B is himself a heterosexual) had been released without any notice.
Convenient? I later hear through the grapevine that Winehouse and Pritchard share the same PR guy. Would it be too cynical to imagine he has a new client in Lil B? Yes, it would. Until you see that Lil B had a ‘secret’ meeting with Universal staff back in March.
Does this smell even a tiny bit like a marketing campaign? Is it possible that the site owners and label did this purely for press coverage?
Pretty crazy if true. Pretty lousy marketing if it is.
Visit ➔Walking Around In Circles: As Google+ Opens Up Will People Start Using It Correctly?
Who knows, maybe I’m just a Silicon Valley guy who has lost touch with reality. It’s entirely possible. But maybe, just maybe, the opposite is true. Maybe “regular” people have been allergic to using groups in the past because they simply don’t want to use groups. Maybe it’s one of those things that’s a good idea on paper or in a brain-storming session, but doesn’t translate onto the web.
Maybe — gasp — the web isn’t meant to mimic the real world.
I go on holiday for a week and come back to yet another social network. I haven’t used it yet, but from what I’ve read Google+ doesn’t seem to offer anything significantly different – significant enough to make people switch away from Facebook, at least.
This article pretty much sums up my feelings – the key differentiator is the ‘Circles’ groups concept, but I’m just not that convinced people can be bothered to split their friends up into groups when social networking. Even with a nifty UI it still sounds a lot like work to me, and I’m sure I’m not alone.
It also surprises me just how similar to Facebook Google+ is – it’s pretty shameless, right down to the UI look and layout. One thing I haven’t seen though is events, which I know was a massive driver for Facebook in the early days and I’m sure could do the same if/when it’s added to Google+.
Otherwise, the only thing Google+ has over Facebook is that it isn’t Facebook. That might be good enough for the geeks (who in my experience have never been Facebook fans, although I’ve never really figured out why) but I’m not sure it will be for everyone else.
Visit ➔Soulwax's mashup marathon
Realising that getting clearance for all the samples would be a headache, they found a loophole and applied for radio licences, becoming an internet radio company instead. The upside was no tussles with lawyers. The downside was they couldn't charge a bean: the app will be completely free.
The whole thing is pretty nifty, but I particularly like the idea of being able to release mashups and mixtapes as ‘online radio stations’.
Visit ➔"Orient yourself"
It was fairly common in medieval times to put east at the top. Which has a logic to it: when traveling across open terrain, the one consistent thing you had to orient yourself by when you broke camp in the morning was the sunrise. In fact, that’s the source of the term “orient yourself”: it literally means to face east.
Whoa.
Visit ➔The Wheels Of Steel: An Ode To Turntables (in HTML)
I have been interested in the idea of building a turntable-based UI in HTML for years; however, the past presented a number of technical hurdles. Setting dreams of browser-based remixing aside, simply recreating the core design elements of a turntable was practically infeasible until the advent of CSS3. The features most notably missing from browsers involved drawing circles, rotation of elements and low-level control of audio. As of 2011, it's a pleasure to say that these features can be implemented almost entirely using HTML, CSS and JavaScript alone.
Seriously cool.
Visit ➔Apple Reverses Course On In-App Subscriptions
Apple has quietly changed its guidelines on the pricing of In-App Subscriptions on the App Store. There are no longer any requirements that a subscription be the "same price or less than it is offered outside the app". There are no longer any guidelines about price at all. Apple also removed the requirement that external subscriptions must be also offered as an in-app purchase.
This is a big deal, but doesn’t surprise me too much – Apple’s original terms (if you offer a subscription outside an app you have to offer it as an in-app purchase at the same price) were just untenable for most publishers.
Visit ➔New Mobile Safari stuff in iOS5: position:fixed, overflow:scroll, new input type support, web workers, ECMAScript 5
It looks like there’s finally some major improvements in mobile Safari, some of which I’ve found below on my “first glance” after downloading the SDK. Chime in if you find anything yourself!
Finally position:fixed works in iOS 5 – this should make more complicated designs a hell of a lot easier to implement.
Visit ➔So I wrote a book. It’s called Responsive Web Design.
“So what’s the book about and stuff I guess,” you ask. Well, Responsive Web Design expands on the ideas I articulated in the original article. It’s a crash course in how you can apply fluid grids, flexible images, and media queries to your own work, but let’s face it: design is so much more than those three ingredients. As a result, I’ve tried to share a few stories I’ve picked up from working on real, live responsive projects: the lessons I’ve learned, the questions that have been raised, the hard choices made.
If you’re a web designer you totally need to buy this book.
Visit ➔Is This iOS 5? Dunno, But It’s Likely The Right Idea
Notifications that come down from the top bar could be how Apple ends up doing things in iOS 5. After all, this would mimic already existing functionality — when tethering, a blue strip appears along the top; when on the phone, it’s a green strip. Might notifications (or at least Twitter notifications) produce a gray strip?
Should have blogged about this earlier – this is how I’ve thought Apple would improve notifications for ages, as it shouldn’t require any modifications to any apps out there at the moment (as in theory they should be able to cope with the double height status bar already).
Visit ➔Kaiser Chiefs ... but under your control
And so to The Future Is Medieval. Without any buildup, fanfare or whatever you want to call the pop equivalent of leaving Red Bull cans scattered around Leeds city centre, the successor to 2008's Off With Their Heads appeared on Kaiser Chiefs' website on Friday. In doing so, it effectively heralds the arrival of the world's first bespoke album. Ten songs from a choice of 20 for £7.50 – no more, no less – but what those songs are, and the order in which they run, is down to you.
An interesting variation of the “In Rainbows” model – I thought we were done with that, to be honest, as it’s a model that’s not actually very good at selling records if you’re not Radiohead…
Visit ➔Mobile + Websockets + CSS 3D
Thanks to Pusher hosting websocket service, i was able to create this quick experiment using smartphones' accelerometer, websockets (with fallback to flash) and CSS 3D magic.
This is very cool – it lets you control an object in 3d space in your desktop browser using the accelerometer in your phone, all just using clever javascript and CSS.
Visit ➔Microsoft unveils Windows 8
There'll be two kinds of applications for Windows 8, one that runs in a traditional desktop, and the other pseudo-mobile apps based on HTML5 and Javascript, but both environments -- rather, the entire OS -- have been designed from the ground up for touchscreen use. Keyboard and mouse will still be options for both sets of programs.
Well this looks pretty nice – which for Microsoft is generally no mean feat – but I wonder if it would actually work that well in practice? The information density is pretty low so I can see a lot of sliding and tapping to get to the content you’re after at any given time. Also, the look would fall down pretty quickly if 3rd party devs don’t stick to it carefully so either it’s going to be hemmed in tightly or it won’t ever look that nice in practice (imagine all the garbage that normally gets pre-loaded on a PC integrated into that demo and you get what I mean).
Also, don’t get me started about how traditional apps are integrated in – i.e, they’re not, you just use them exactly like you always have. So, in essence Microsoft have welded a tablet optimised version of Windows Phone 7 onto the top of Windows 7 in the hope it will all work out nicely…
Visit ➔Facebook To Launch Music Service With Spotify
Facebook has partnered with Spotify on a music-streaming service that could be launched in as little as two weeks, sources close to the deal have told Forbes.
The integrated service is currently going through testing, but when launched, Facebook users will see a Spotify icon appear on the left side of their newsfeed, along with the usual icons for photos and events.
Well that would certainly be interesting. Presumably this would tie right into Spotify’s (eventual) US launch as well – I’d be surprised if Facebook would do a major venture with someone without US presence.
This comment by Spotify on the story is hardly much of a denial either.
Visit ➔Bronze
Bronze is a new non-interactive music format in which recorded material is transformed in real time, generating a unique and constantly evolving interpretation of a song on each listen.
The first piece of music available in Bronze will be Flesh Freeze by Gwilym Gold.
Interesting stab at the “music as app” concept – particularly of note as it’s not the traditional ambient electronic instrumental music that you normal get with this sort of thing – it has lyrics and everything.
Visit ➔Hollywood shuns intelligent entertainment. The games industry doesn't. Guess who's winning?
And then there's LA Noire, the James Ellroy-inspired crime drama, which has caused a stir, and rightly so, with its firm focus on narrative and staggering new facial animation technology. I'm a massive dweeb who keeps up with the latest gaming developments, and even I was astounded at what they've pulled off here. You're watching actors give genuine performances – within something that is still defiantly and unapologetically a video game.
There’s no doubt that LA Noire isn’t perfect – the game elements in places are a little bit repetitive maybe, and I for one have frequent issues with the interrogation scenes where I have no real idea what my character is going to say next – but there’s also no doubt that it has pushed the medium of interactive storytelling on several great strides.
If anything, it gets all the film-like bits right more so then the game like elements (and more right then many films do), but the way it melds the two together – you really are interacting with the story – is what’s most impressive.
Visit ➔