I never get tired of watching Jeff Han demo this multi-touch interface. On one hand it is completely revolutionary but on the other hand I have this mental response of “yeah of course”. It just seems like the way computing should be going. These are the kinds of innovations I want, not prettier START buttons. Jeff Han deserves a Noble Prize for this work.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JcSu7h-I40]
Ewan Spence knocked this together for us yesterday.
THE TPN TOOLBAR.
It’s a toolbar for FF and IE which will make it easier for you to listen to the latest TPN podcasts. It has a built-in media player and is pre-populated with the top 20 TPN shows (based on our previous month’s stats). It also has a button which replicates the “Latest Shows” box on the TPN hompage and which shows you the very latest TPN podcasts published each day. Another button shows you the latest TPN news.
Would a couple of you mind testing it for me in FF and IE and giving me your feedback?
Richard Sambrook is the Director of BBC Global News and on his blog “SacredFacts” he is trying to suggest that there isn’t a power struggle going on between “old media” and “new media” but that
It’s about integration, not subsititution…
Richard, what is your rationale for saying it isn’t a power struggle? I can only think of three reasons why you would say that.
1. You don’t believe there is a desire, on behalf of audiences, to have more power over the media they consume.
2. You don’t believe any “power struggle” will succeed because “old media” is just too big, politically protected and cashed up for “the people” to take power away from it.
3. Or… You do believe people want it, you do believe they will try succeed to taking it… but because you work for the old guard you’re just hoping that if you keep your eyes closed, and say “Kansas, Kansas, Kansas” over and over again while clicking your heels, it will all just go away?
I think the RIAA tried that over the last ten years but maybe they didn’t have the right fairy dust?
Trust me when I tell you, Richard, that there is a power struggle going on. We, the people, want more control over our media than we currently have. That is a power struggle. We are going to take it (control) away from big media companies. Whether we take it partly away or entirely away remains to be seen. But ten years from now, you will have less power and we will have more. Unless you are willingly going to give it up, I’d say that meets every definition of a struggle.
Meanwhile, over on Mark Fletcher’s “Australian Newsagency Blog”, my radio sparring partner from earlier this week, James Farmer, is trotting out the tired old rationale that:
theage.com.au is the number one News & Info publisher in Victoria – the smh.com.au in NSW. The vast majority of people come to a few sites to get their media fix, listen to a few radio stations, watch a few tv channels and read a few publications…
The problems with this line of thinking are multiple.
1. Australia newspaper circulation is in massive decline. See my earlier posts on this for the facts. Even if the owners of these papers have been able to begin to translate their old print readership into online traffic, it is well known that they don’t make nearly as much money online as they on from print. So their revenues are going to take a battering. As their revenues decline, they have to continue making cut-backs, as Australian print, TV and radio news networks have already experienced over the last decade. As they cut back their news staff, they rely more and more on Reuters and AAP feeds which are undifferentiated everyone else’s. As their unique content declines, do will readership and revenue.
2. What empirical data do you have, James, to suggest that “The vast majority of people come to a few sites to get their media”? Have you asked the majority? Did you poll them? Or are you just assuming that is what they want to do because that is what they have always done? That’s like saying people of 18th century Europe didn’t want democracy because they had always had Monarchs.
3. Even if you are right and people *do* want a few sites to get their media from, what Darwin-Given right does Fairfax or News Corp or Channel Nine have to be the sites they get their media from? Why won’t they want to get their media from Google? Or from TPN? Or from Gnoos?
We have not yet begun to fight.
This article on the new Samsung “iPhone killer” F700 has this interesting paragraph:
… the F700 offers 7.2 Mbps download capabilities through High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) connections. Once the 7.2 Mbps HSDPA network is completely deployed around the country, F700 users will be able to download a 4-MB MP3 song in roughly four seconds, according to Samsung.
So by my reckoning, a 20Mb podcast would download in about 20 seconds. Radio is DEAD.
If any of you are still sitting there thinking “well, they didn’t have any WMD, they weren’t connected to al Qaeda, so why *did* we have to invade Iraq” – one of the reasons has emerged in a memorandum prepared for the meeting of the U.S. House committee on oversight and government reform which is examining Iraqi reconstruction.
In the year after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 nearly 281 million notes, weighing 363 tonnes, were sent from New York to Baghdad for disbursement to Iraqi ministries and US contractors. Using C-130 planes, the deliveries took place once or twice a month with the biggest of $2,401,600,000 on June 22 2004, six days before the handover. The memorandum details the casual manner in which the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority disbursed the money, which came from Iraqi oil sales, surplus funds from the UN oil-for-food programme and seized Iraqi assets.
(link)
Yep – money. Shitloads of money, funneled from the pockets of Iraqi citizens (via U.S. Congress) into the pockets of…. nobody knows. But it isn’t hard to guess. Just follow the hype. Who wanted the war? Who campaigned for it hardest? Who manipulated the perceptions of the public in order to justify it?
The report continues:
The memorandum concludes: “Many of the funds appear to have been lost to corruption and waste … thousands of ‘ghost employees’ were receiving pay cheques from Iraqi ministries under the CPA’s control. Some of the funds could have enriched both criminals and insurgents fighting the United States.”
According to Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, the $8.8bn funds to Iraqi ministries were disbursed “without assurance the monies were properly used or accounted for”. But, according to the memorandum, “he now believes that the lack of accountability and transparency extended to the entire $20bn expended by the CPA”.
This is what “Operation Shock And Awe” was mostly about – the cynical redistribution of wealth from the hands of the Iraqi people into the hands of foreign countries with larger armies. It’s like the countries we live in are primary school bullies taking lunch off of the Year One kids at lunchtime. If the kids report our bullying to the teacher (the UN Security Council) it doesn’t matter a damn because we OWN the teachers. They are part of the system of corruption and control.
Welcome to democracy.
When I was in SF in November I attended Kevin Maney’s tech industry jam session. When I got up on stage to sing a few numbers it marked the first time I’ve sung on stage since about 1990. Since then I’ve found myself playing a lot more guitar and thinking a lot more about putting together a band.
Here’s what I’m thinking. Instead of a few geeks getting together just to drink and eat pizza, why don’t we start a regular jam session? I’ll find a venue (a bar) and once a month we can book it out, and get together for a jam session with guests. Private invite only. Have some fun, network with other geeks, and keep our chops up at the same time. Might even release an album on the TPN record label.
If you play an instrument or sing and would like to jam with me once a month, fill in the form below and put “G’Day World Band” in the comments section (so I can sift through the comment spam).
Every year, the editors of Harvard Business Review find twenty essays on provocative and important new ideas.
Here is my review of the 2007 list.
They are:
1. The Accidental Influentials
2. Entrepreneurial Japan
3. Brand Magic: Harry Potter Marketing
4. Algorithms in the Attic
5. The Leader from Hope
6. An Emerging Hotbed of User-Centered Innovation
7. Living with Continuous Partial Attention
8. Borrowing from the PE Playbook
9. When to Sleep on It
10. Here Comes XBRL
11. Innovation and Growth: Size Matters
12. Conflicted Consumers
13. What Sells When Father Knows Best
14. Business in the Nanocosm
15. Act Globally, Think Locally
16. Seeing Is Treating
17. The Best Networks Are Really Worknets
18. Why U.S. Health Care Costs Aren’t Too High
19. In Defense of “Ready, Fire, Aimâ€
20. The Folly of Accountabalism
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The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.
Due to Molly’s incessant nagging (like I don’t already have a wife), I’ve turned on the Mobatalk comments system! Here’s how you use it.
1. Go to leave a comment in the normal fashion.
2. Click record a comment. Wait for the small flash app to load.
3. Record your message telling me how great I am.
4. Hit attach.
5. SUBMIT the comment in the normal fashion.
Should be some fun!
Welcome to anyone visiting here for the first time after hearing about podcasting on Jon Faine’s show this morning. Take a few minutes to check out some of the shows, listen to the other shows on The Podcast Network, and leave a comment, send me an email, whatever. Welcome to the future of media.
The show was fun. I’ve been down to the ABC/JJJ a few times now and I thought Jon was probably the most balanced of all of the interviews I’ve done on radio. Traditional radio jockeys and mainstream journos usually love to turn their noses up at “citizen media”, with an air of snotty superiority which is the pride coming before the fall. Jon wasn’t too bad though. After the show he commented that the ABC seems convinced that podcasting is the future and they aren’t throwing any more money at “this” (he waved a finger around the studio). I told him that he’s the last of an era. That seemed to get his back up a bit and he protested that more people than “EVER” will listen to the radio in the future and I didn’t have the heart to tell him that he’s dreaming.
James is a great guy. He was telling me afterwards over coffee about his recent launch of EduBlogs Premium, a commercial service he’s just launched for educational institutions that want to run their own blogging service. I’ll get him onto GW soon to chat about it in more detail. So much for James being the “anti” new media guy. 🙂
Jon’s big red button:
John Howard *still* doesn’t want to do anything about climate change. The Cartoon Network pays $2 million in fines in the cheapest ad buy this year. And I review some of the recent comments on the blog. All that and not much more on tonight’s show.
If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed.
The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.