Egypt get cut off

http://io9.com/5746338/could-a-us-government-crackdown-take-america-off-the-internet

Around Thursday of last week, the entire internet within the boundaries of Egypt was cut off. This isn't as easy as one might thing to accomplish, as thousands of routers had to be restarted and had their memories wipe, but was maintained for things like stock exchange. This was all done with the apparent goal of ending the 30-year-rule of President Hosni Mubarak (I don't really know how this accomplishes that). Annalee Newitz, the author of the article, brings up the interesting question regarding this situation happening to the United States: is it even possible and what would the long-term effects be?

(Euro)visions of Cyberspace 1996

Two weeks ago, we talked about repeating patterns and historic specificy of the reactions that new media provoke.

This clip is a recording of a performance of the song "Surfen Multimedia" at the German finals for the European Song Contest in 1996. Enjoy ;-)

Translation of the lyrics:

Chorus
Surfing, surfing all over the world via multimedia!
Surfing, surfing day and night on the information superhighway!

Go on the Internet tonight.
I'm waiting there for you.
Dude, be a user, be online!
You'll meet me in the Email [sic].

Chorus

And if you need a couple of megabytes,
I got them for you.
Interface or cyberspace:
I'm happy to share.

Chorus

We're on tour with bits and bytes, with mouse and click.
In the World Wide Web we'll follow every hot trace.

Chorus

Best,
Rainer

Just as we discussed in class the other day about how Facebook will now be employing

the comments of its users in reference to specific name-brand products as a means of drawing

attention of its users' friends to side advertisements, interestingly enough, according to the New

York Times, Google will now be revamping its advertisement strategy as well. Those who use

Gmail as their email source may soon begin to notice ads and further, ads with images, reflecting

the content of their emails in the form of commercial advertising on the side panel of their email.

The new advertising plan is still inthe experimental stage and not all may be bombarded with the

new advertising as of yet.

Check out the link to see the numerous responses to this news.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/google-shows-ads-with-images-in-gmail/?ref=technology

January 27, 2011, 7:43 PM

Google Shows Ads With Images in Gmail

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

Google’s display ads, or ads with images, have been showing up across the Web and even in Times Square. Now they are bound for Gmail.

Google started showing the ads alongside people’s e-mail in-boxes on Jan. 21. The company is still experimenting with them and not every Gmail user will see them, said Rob Shilkin, a Google spokesman.

Ads in Gmail have always been related to e-mail messages. For instance, if Gmail users are corresponding with friends about planning a vacation to Mexico, ads for flights or hotels in Mexico might appear. The display ads will show up according to the same formula, Mr. Shilkin said.

Gmail ads struck some users as eerie when they were first introduced in 2004, but most Gmail users have grown accustomed to them. Google says that all ad placement is automatic and no human reads private e-mail messages.

Display ads are a growing business for Google as it expands beyond the simple text ads that appear next to search results and on other Web sites.

The ads contain images and sometimes audio and video and often publicize a brand, like an airline, as opposed to suggesting a specific action, like booking a flight on the spot. Google shows display ads on two million Web sites, including several of Google’s own, like YouTube, Google Finance and now Gmail.

The ads appear next to e-mail messages that contain many images, like a promotional e-mail from a department store with photos of clothing, Mr. Shilkin said.

The change was first spotted by Search Engine Land, an industry blog.

The Long Tail of the Cloud

SoundCloud is a music sharing platform. It is based around different users uploading and sharing their music either publicly or privately. It evolved from a small remix context of professional and semi-professional artists to 2.6 million users worldwide. The environment is heavy on social networking features such as messaging, comment-ability, and tagging. Overall, it looks as slick as iTunes but is more geared towards the social dimension of music as opposed to sales alone.

http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/tag/soundcloud/

On January 10th, SoundCloud founder Alexander Ljung announced a fresh round of funding. Index Ventures and Union Square Ventures invested $10 million in SoundCloud late last year.

http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/faq/

I think that this sort of investment is an example of Chris Anderson’s concept of “the Long Tail.” For any particular industry, the Long Tail is composed of the vast amount of niche and amateur content. The head is of made up of the “hits” (mainstream or popular products). The theory supposes that if consumers are given enough choice, demand will shift toward the broader niche oriented tail. (ex. Netflix, Amazon)

This is especially the case for the digital music market. The production and distribution of music can be accomplished incredibly cheaply and easily these days. In conjunction with today’s genre-mania and the nearly “infinite shelf-space” (Anderson) of the digital domain, niche music seems to be where things are going.

SoundCloud has more than doubled its user-base since last May. My guess is that a majority of this increase took the form of indie and amateur artists who are contributing to an ever-expanding niche universe. Major label and mainstream artists are slowly trickling into the SoundCloud community.

The All Things Digital article seems to point to SoundCloud as an example of a promising music streaming platform; promising enough for a $10 million investment. SoundCloud and it’s latest investors will likely seek to expand and develop their niche-oriented music environment in the spirit of the Long Tail. The social dimension of the platform is it’s strong point, so changes are likely to reflect this. Online exclusives and interactive content from artists well-known as well as obscure will probably continue to supply much of the “value” of participating in the SoundCloud. Efforts to make SoundCloud a more tightly integrated and mobile friendly experience can already be seen in the free SoundCloud app (available at the Mac App store) as well as in its relationship with a host of other music apps like Freestyle, improVox and Virb.

There’s a lot out there and there’s something for everyone; you just need ways to find it. So far, SoundCloud has provided an exciting platform for exploring the social dimension of music. It will be interesting to see how SoundCloud evolves over the course of this coming year.

The Future of Newspapers

Most of the readings for this week were about the business models of entertainment media, yet the Internet has also changed the way we consume information. I personally do not read a physical newspaper, nor do I have an online subscription to a newspaper. I consume news through Yahoo, NPR, I google search topics, I get links to articles through friends, I watch news clips on HULU, etc. There are an infinite amount of sources online and chances are we can find a way to get the information we need for free.

FREE seems to be natural for the generation that has grown up with the Internet. I am not aware of the statistics of people who have a subscription to an online newspaper, but I can guess that most of them are not college students. While newspapers have already made a transition to online content their business model has not changed much, YET. Conglomerate Tycoon Rupert Murdoch, has teamed up with Apple to introduce The Daily, a digital newspaper for Apple's iPad tablet computer that Murdoch has called his company's "most exciting project." Of course Murdoch knows newspaper business, he understands that newer generations will not buy paper newspapers, and he knows that the current online newspaper format is not very interactive. This transition he is making reminds me of the Shirky article, "The Collapse of complex business models." When Shirky mentions Murdoch he seems think that Murdoch's model is like one of those civilizations that will collapse. HOWEVER, in an interview from about a year ago Murdoch explains his thoughts and plans about the future of newspapers, after watching this interview I get a sense that Murdoch is taking a step in the right direction.

He plans to charge for subscriptions to The Daily, but judging from the interview it will be a more interactive application, not a traditional online newspaper. It will be interesting to see how this strictly online newspaper/app will work and how it will change newspaper business models.

Critically Acclaimed South Korean Director makes feature film on Iphone

Director shoots first major movie solely with iPhone

So Park Chan-Wook, the director of the ridiculously awesome "Oldboy" and "Thirst" decided to direct his next movie on an Iphone. While I can see how this might be useful for getting shots in cramped places (similar to how the Canon 5d Mark ii was used for the House season finale) I think this is terrible news for the film industry.

Just like how the lightbulb put many candlemakers out of business, using the Iphone to film a movie will greatly reduce the amount of crew needed to make a project. The only benefit that comes from this will be the many people inspired to become film makers without breaking the bank.

Jaron Lanier at UCSB!

Media in 2020

http://www.youtube.com/user/ericssonmultimedia?v=RXvBOxKNY7M&feature=pyv&ad=6164631756&kw=michael+dell&gclid=CKL5wdC-hKYCFRhCgwod_Q9Gpw

This link basically sums up how Michael Dell and other heads of industry think media will change by the year 2020. They think that the advancement of technology that has made it easier for people to communicate with each other over the last 15 years will continue to grow at a much more rapid rate to the point where the most brilliant minds in the world can be in touch with one another in the development of new media and/or new companies. This is essentially saying that the future of media will rely very heavily on collaboration among people all over the world.

I agree with Dell's perspective on the industry's future being based on collaborative efforts from people all over the world. It seems as though social networking is the inevitable future, and it would therefore only be natural for this social networking to advance over the next few years to the point where most work is done via the internet rather than in person. If this is the case, and tools such as Drop Box and Google Docs become advanced enough, I see no reason why people in the US and India can't work together in 2020 as closely as people in neighboring cubicles do today.

Why we should care about net neutrality

With everything our generation is facing today (tuition hikes, the job market, etc...), it is hard to believe that protecting internet freedom is worth our time. Most of us either trust others to do it or blindly deny the need for concern. What most don’t understand is that we have become dependent on the internet; it provides what we know and how we know it. Because of this, it is imperative that the internet remains a free exchange of ideas and who else could protect it better than those who depend on it? Every issue we care about is affected by the freedom of the internet and we would be doing ourselves and future generations a great disservice if we lost net neutrality.
With computers and smartphones, we are connected to the internet at all times. For that time, the most generally frequented website is Facebook; in my three and a half years in college I have met only two people without a Facebook account. From event invitations to a friend posting the latest YouTube video, it has become an essential link to society. If net neutrality didn’t exist, Facebook, Google, YouTube, and most other websites that were starter businesses might not either. And beyond the large websites, everyone frequents other personal interest websites or blogs which are essentially small businesses vying for survival. Losing net neutrality could mean creating a website would be similar to making a movie, which would require petitioning a corporation, being vetted for profitability, and giving creative control to that corporation which will own the website. The freedom to make any website on any topic almost defines the internet and if we want that to continue, we need to protect net neutrality.
Most of my friends, including me, chose to watch TV on our computers with Hulu and Netflix because of our hectic schedules. With net neutrality, these two companies can compete fairly and earn our patronage through the quality and quantity of their content. However, because there is no net neutrality law, Comcast (who is about to have a large financial stake in Hulu) has begun charging Netflix exclusively to stream their content. If a net neutrality law isn’t instituted soon, Comcast could even slow Netflix buffering time and make Hulu the artificially superior website. Losing Netflix might give us more time to study, but most of us would rather transition to alternative and mostly illegal streaming (which could also be blocked without net neutrality). If we want access to quality, virus and pop-up free entertainment that has been vetted by the free market, maintaining net neutrality is essential.
We have a surprisingly hard time believing that the internet will ever change. What most don’t know is that this potential change has happened before. Filmmaking was as open as the internet when it was first invented; anyone with a camera could make a movie and get it distributed through traveling variety shows until companies gained control and made it almost impossible to get a movie made and distributed. The same thing happened with radio and television. I am convinced that if we realized the true threat on the internet, we would not just post something on our Facebook status or write on their politician’s Wall, but actually be motivated to participate in the democratic process. That is what needs to be done if internet freedom is going to be protected in the freest country in the world.