The first in a series of three short videos from the Digital Natives project of U of St. Gallen and the Berkman Center that tells the story of Zack McCune, a Brown student (and Berkman intern) who “won the DMCA lottery” and was sued by the RIAA. It’s nicely done product by summer interns Nikki Leon and John Randall, and it’s a cliff-hanger…

[Tags: berkman st_gallen riaa dmca digital_nativescopyright zack_mccune ]

Jon Udell talks about his interview of Dan Bricklin in which about Dan talks about his experience entering the world of audio. Jon says:

When I embarked on my personal audio adventure a few years ago, I naively thought that our fancy new digital technologies would make the whole process very simple. Boy, was I wrong about that.

As a coda, Jon uses the story of the production of of that very interview as an example of the routine complexities of audio.

Too true. I’m often tempted to record an interview but then I remember just what a pain in the butt it would be to edit it, even with my very low standards for audio quality.

So, is there something wrong with the idea of writing software that:

1. Converts spoken audio into text (presumably using existing tools)

2. Lets you use an editor to delete pieces of the text and move other pieces around, as you would with a low-end word processor

3. Uses the edited text to edit and output the audio

Even if Step 1 worked only moderately well, this application would turn editing spoken audio into a trivial task, no harder than (in fact, exactly the same as) editing a text file.

Does this software exist? Is there a good reason why it doesn’t, shouldn’t or couldn’t?

[Tags: jon_udell dan_bricklin podcasting ]

When I read something like today’s news that only 10% of American newspaper editors consider foreign news to be “very essential” to their coverage, I instinctively turn to the bloggers who I know will have something enlightening, thoughtful and sometimes profound to say. And that by itself says a lot about how news is changing.

Of course, I did read that particular news in a newspaper, although I was referred there by a blog aggregator. So, I’m not saying that professional news media are unnecessary or add nothing. Not at all. But the news ecology in just a few years has become 100% mixed.

Tags: news media participatory_media ethan_zuckerman

Mygazines.com is an interesting idea. Currently in beta, it’s designed to let anyone upload any magazine or magazine article, and then share the content, using the familiar elements of content-based social networking sites (or, more accurately, the social networking elements of content-based sites).

The site unfortunately has little information about itself, so I don’t know what they think they’re going to do about the obvious copyright issues. The existing content includes the magazines’ ads, so maybe the site hopes publishers will see some benefit in being scanned ‘n’ read. (As an example, here’s a link to the complete contents of the current issue of The New Yorker.)

While the tool for reading is pretty slick, the process of posting to enable said slickness seems pretty onerous.

I’m interested to see what becomes of it… [Tags: copyright magazines publishing media everything_is_miscellaneous ]

We often buy “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” despite its awful name and soul-withering chemical composition. Even the product’s faux-entertaining site refers to it as a “nutritious blend of oils.” Mmm. But, I like it, so shut up.

In fact, we just bought the “light” version of it, which is therefore some sort of simulacrum of the original. I can’t figure out whether its name should therefore be:

1. “I Can’t Believe I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter”

2. “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Not Butter”

or

3. _______________________ (fill in the blank)

[Tags: puzzle ]

I find I’m not watching The Daily Show nearly as much as I used to, I think because Bush has dropped out of the scene so much that I don’t need the emotional release Jon Stewart was providing for me.

I bet I wouldn’t be as fanatically devoted to The West Wing now if it were still on.

The Bush Departure: Taking the comedy, leaving the tragedy.

[Tags: jon_stewart daily_show bush ]

This was passed along by Jacob Kramer-Duffield, a summer intern at the Berkman Center, for no reason other than that its a summer Friday.

Tags: bunnies pancakes

Here are David “End to End” Reed’s comments to Congress on Net neutrality. They were apparently well-received.

I am an admirer of Marco’s. His new project is trying to explain what’s important and real about the Internet. Its page is here,. It’s in Italian, but I am confident in recommending it without having read it. (I’m still on the road, and only have 3 minutes left on the free hotel wifi before its 15 mins are up.)

Spending an interesting day in Milan in conversation about whether Web-based social networking sites/services are going to continue to shape our expections about SNSes (and sociality), or whether the ubiquity of mobiles will wag this dog. The social roles of SNS on the two platforms are so different. One creates my presence, the other announces my temporality.

(Hint: Don’t try blogging on ytour blackberry on a bus.)

Not only that, I am famous for being unknown.

This video is just weird, and pretty funny, although being the butt of the joke undoubtedly affects my judgment. That is, being skewered skews…

Apparently, I’ve been punked ut good.. Good one!

I’m in Milan for an afternoon, and then in Madrid for some part of a day, and then home. Blogging may be lighter than usual.

I’ve been in Milan several times before. Every time I see it, it seems like a different city. I’m not sure if it’s seasonal, because of the accidents of the parts of town I see, or one of the great pleasures of a failing memory. But, my, what a beautiful city it was this afternoon! [Tags: travel milan ]

Before paper, what did the wings of moths look like?

[Tags: puzzle ]

My friend Hanan Cohen in Israel reports that because of the pettiness of the prime minister’s fraud, he’s now known as LOLmert.

[Tags: israel olmert ]

Tim Spalding, founder of the estimable LibraryThing, is calling on us all to create an open shelves classification project to replace Dewey and his pals. LibraryThing is a brilliant implementation of a what a library built on a social network of readers can be, so I’m excited about Tim’s new idea.

[Tags: library taxonomies tim_spalding librarything everything_is_miscellaneous ]

Im reading Julian Warners “From Writing to Computers,” published in 1994. In a wonderful chapter he looks at the senses in which the Western tradition thought documents contained or were intelligent — written documents “appear to understand what they are saying,” Plato says. Warner looks carefully at Platos Phaedrus, a seminal text for those concerned with the transition from oral to written cultures. Thats the one where Plato worries that the onset of written documents will ruin human memory: Those who acquire the skill of writing “will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on writing to bring things to their remembrance by external signs instead of on their own internal resources.”

Plato has another complaint: Writings cant respond to questions: “writing involves a similar disadvantage to painting. The productions of paintings look like living beings, but if you ask them a question they maintain a solemn silence.” Ive taken these quotes from Plato from Warner pp. 58-59.

Makes you wonder what Plato would have made of chat, IM, and SMS.

Tags: plato julian_warner chat sms im

:”Wall-e” is such an amazing movie that it left me unsatisfied.

It’s totally enjoyable. The graphic realism is phenomenal. The creativity of the details is staggering. The directorial vision is superb. The editing is one confusing scene short of perfect.

But “Wall-e” is yet another damn kids story. Oh, adults will completely enjoy it. Scene for scene, it carries you through. You care about the characters and each segment has plenty for everyone. But ultimately the story is predictable, simple, and safe for the kiddies.

At this point in Pixar’s amazing career, it’s proven it can do anything. It can imbue a trash compactor with personality and zip it across a world subject to any rules Pixar imagines. Pixar has the technical skill to show us anything it can imagine. It has the movie-making craft to tell a story with a thousand moving parts.

Now it’s time to stop playing it safe and to and make some art. Now it’s time to stop dazzling us with what it can do, and to do it.

IMO.

[Tags: pixar movies wall-e animation entertainment reviews ]

I’d like to throw a hat into Obama’s VP ring: Elizabeth Edwards.

She is so right for an administration that is promising fundamental change in the politics of governing. Edwards hears past differences to what is shared. She hears past anger to what is worth defending. She hears past fear to what is worth cherishing. If — as a defining phrase of Obama’s puts it — we are the ones we are waiting for, Elizabeth Edwards models who we need to become if we are to enable change to happen.

And is there a better model of the hope Obama stands for? With Elizabeth Edwards, no one can confuse hope with mere wishful thinking or weakness. Edwards faces her mortality with clarity, and seems strengthened by it. I’m sure she hopes that she will survive for many, many years. But she seems to embody a larger type of hope as well: The notion that our future doesn’t have to be like our present. That every moment is an opportunity to move that future closer to us. That we bring that future closer by relentlessly finding what is best in those we encounter. That we can change our world by giving in to our urge to connect with others, our urge to be better people than we are.

There are obvious negatives to an Edwards vice-presidency. She is not ready to step into the presidency if, G-d forbid, something should happen to Obama. True. We would have to rely on the machinery of the administration to carry us forward. And, of course, she has untreatable, fatal cancer. John Edwards could be prevailed upon to be, in effect, her co-VP.

She has political strengths. She’s a woman, a southerner, a speaker who connects with her audience, a military brat. Those strengths could help.

But most of all, Elizabeth Edwards is hope walking on two legs. [Tags: politics elizabeth_edwards obama vp ]

I am not as unhappy with the FISA bill as many of my friends are. But this bill needs to be challenged in court. For one thing — as others have pointed out — that the president told you to do something illegal doesn’t excuse you from it, if only because presidents don’t have the power to order you to do anything.

EFF is asking for donations for a court challenge. EFF’s budget is a dry cough in a thin hanky compared to the economic forces it’s fighting. Is it worth a few dollars to you to get this bill tested?

Tags: wiretapping fisa eff

LATER THAT DAY: I took Wray Cummings’ advice in the comments below, which worked. So, now all the examples of uncentered HR statements in this post are in fact examples of centered HR statements, which makes the post rather mysterious. Imagine, if you will, then, that all of the little horizontal rules are left-justified. And, thanks, Wray!

I know I’m going to be embarrassed about this, but for months, if not for years, I’ve been unable to bend the simple <hr> element to my will. I can adjust its length, but I can’t get the little !@#$% to center itself.

I’ve tried everything I can think of to make it work:

<hr width=’100pt’ >:

<hr width=’100pt’ align=center />:

<hr width=’100pt’ align=’center’ />:

<hr width=’100pt’ style=’text-align:center’ />:

None of these work in Firefox or Safari. I have not intentionally redefined hr in any of my many CSS style sheets, but wouldn’t the local, inline setting take precedence anyway?

What incredibly obvious, embarrassing thing am I missing? Go ahead, make me look bad. And I’ll thank you for it. [Tags: html hr ]