A technical - but interesting - article on the economics of the music business

The New Economics Of Music: File-sharing And Double Moral Hazard

Go to Duke University, get a free iPod

The next time anyone starts moaning about how expensive a US university education is, point ‘em at this: “Duke University freshman to get iPods“. Free. To keep.

An offline public wifi hotspot directory

The great thing about public wifi hotspots is that there’s any number of directories that you can use to find the nearest one. The downside is that you generally need to be online in order to use the directory, hence something of a Catch-22.

Now someone’s made the obvious step and produced an offline database - the Jiwire Hotspot Locator. It comes in PC, Mac, Linux, AvantGo and WAP formats, and seems to be pretty comprehensive and up-to-date. Much simpler than wandering around with an open Powerbook sniffing for a signal…

An offline public wifi hotspot directory

The great thing about public wifi hotspots is that there’s any number of directories that you can use to find the nearest one. The downside is that you generally need to be online in order to use the directory, hence something of a Catch-22.

Now someone’s made the obvious step and produced an offline database - the Jiwire Hotspot Locator. It comes in PC, Mac, Linux, AvantGo and WAP formats, and seems to be pretty comprehensive and up-to-date. Much simpler than wandering around with an open Powerbook sniffing for a signal…

Political blogging in the UK

The Hansard Society - “an independent, non-partisan educational charity, which exists to promote effective parliamentary democracy”, to quote their words - has published a report on the use of weblogs in the UK political process, examining whether they can offer an alternative to the traditional channels of communication.

Their findings are not particularly blog-positive - based on the views of a ‘jury’ of non-bloggers who monitored the content of eight political blogs, one of their main conclusions was

“[our jury] found the tone of content unappealing”

although they did concede that

Blogging has the potential to be of enormous benefit to MPs and other elected representatives who use it as a listening post rather than another tool to broadcast their ideas, achievements or party dogma.

The obvious problem with this is that listening is not something that politicians are particularly adept at generally - witness the “Big (one-sided) Conversation” that was launched by the UK Labour party earlier this year (and has vanished into obscurity almost as soon as it arrived.) The natural instinct of the political machine seems to be one of absolute control over the medium and the message - while there are a number of UK MPs who run what could loosely be termed blogs, most are simply a series of slightly-modified press releases parroting the message of the day from the party’s media managers. Actual personal opinion is rather less common, and tends to be the preserve of local politicians, minor parties and eccentrics who have long given up hope of high office.

And central government is even seemingly even less interested in listening - when Stand.org.uk collected several thousand online signatures to a petition protesting the planned introduction of identity cards in the UK, the response of central government was first to ignore them completely, then to count the several thousand individuals as one single vote, and finally (and grudgingly) admit that there might be some opinion against the proposals. But the legislation was passed in any case.

The eight blogs that the study monitored don’t strike me as being particularly good examples of the real power of the medium - a better selection might have included Stand, or TheyWorkForYou, a fantastic database of information about the speaking and voting record of member of the UK parliament.

Perhaps the real value of weblogs in the political environment is airing the issues that the establishment would rather not air. Would we have known what was going on in Abu Grahib, for example, if it wasn’t for the fact that the news bounced around the blogosphere until the offline news outlets picked up the story?

Odious Cinemas Hall of Shame

In case anyone was wondering who was responsible for the pile of rotting dingo’s kidneys that is the Odious Cinemas webshite, it’s Lateral. Who (in their blurb) say they pride themselves on being a “bullshit-free zone” - which is ironic, considering their output on this particular site. Even more amazingly, it won awards…

(Just tell me if I’m getting this all out of proportion, won’t you…)

The Odeon saga rumbles on…

If Luke “Don’t know a good thing when it points out where my website has gone wrong” Vetere is paid for the quantity of marketing interest he can generate in Odious Cinemas, he’s in for a whacking great bonus this year. Unless, that it, he’s paid for the quantity of positive marketing interest, in which case he’ll be collecting his P45 any time soon. Take a look at this lot…

UK ‘555′ numbers

Via plasticbag, Ofcom’s Telephone Numbers for drama purposes.

Good to see they’ve thought of everything - regulation must keep ‘em busy…

MacDevCenter.com: 12 Steps to Improving Your Mac’s Performance

Some obvious, and some not-so-obvious: MacDevCenter.com: 12 Steps to Improving Your Mac’s Performance

Roger Moore’s Fantabulous Eyebrows

And the Tony Hart gallery music. Doubleplusgood…