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July 6, 2007

Mp3s: Clapton's Buddy Holly; Nico scores movie; 100 best games; Octosquid; Apple Mp3s? ...

Vacation continues...

Friday mp3s: Eric Clapton channels Buddy Holly: Maybe Baby and Peggy Sue.

His time: Providence-raised Nico Muhly -- son of painter Bunny Harvey and filmmaker Frank Muhly -- gets the composing credit for the movie Joshua, opening today in some cities. If it takes off, it may play here. L.A. Times review: Having it all: Love, money, a creepy kid

His mom writes, "I think he underplays everything. He just had 4 nights of the Boston Pops playing a commissioned piece..check out his website which is more like a blog at this point...lots of hidden writing in the projects etc."

Playing around: EDGE'S Top 100 games of all time. Video games, that is. The best filter, I think, for playable free games, with reviews, reader comments and walkthroughs, is Jay Bibby's Jay Is Games.

Octosquid: : Curious creature caught off Keahole Point. Honolulu Star-Bulletin reports on what may be a new species found off the Big Island. See it large..

Another view:

Michael Darden | West Hawaii Today (reg. req.)
A squid-like creature, rescued from a Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority deep water pipe filter, swims in a fish tank June 27 at the facility.

Scientists all agog at 'octosquid'. Hawaii Tribune-Herald.

Squid and Octopus at N.H. Public Television may help you figure out which parts are which.

Apple Mp3s?: The music industry nobs have finally figured out what we're doing by Fake Steve Jobs (no credible link). Interesting discussion in comments in response to his succinct dissection of the music industry. It begins,

So you've no doubt seen this story or one like it explaining that Universal Music Group won't renew its iTunes deal. And you've seen people saying that the majors are trying to "recalibrate" their relationships with us. Actually what's happening is they're crapping in their pants. They woke up one day and realized that we've got 80% share of digital downloads. Suddenly all the power in the value chain resides in one player. Oops.

Here's the thing. These guys could have done what we did. In the early days of the Internet, everyone figured the majors would build digital distribution arms. But they didn't do it, because they didn't understand technology, and they didn't want to invest in building this expertise, and they were freaked out about piracy and paralyzed with fear. So we stepped in. We made the big investment. We hired programmers. We developed software that's easy to use and works flawlessly. (If you think that's trivial, think again. It's huge.) We ran the system. We promoted it, we marketed it, we haggled with all the majors and struck deals. We took all the risk, which was considerable. Now we're reaping the reward. And the majors want a bigger slice. Um, for what? We did all the work. Ain't gonna happen, slick....

A comment:

Anonymous said...

Nice theory, but completely wrong. Record companies own the music, the IP, and those back catalogs are piles of infinite money (unless infinite copyright goes away). What's happening is distribution is becoming a commodity, so iTunes is going to fade away eventually, too. Apple is a middleman and the Internet eliminates the need for middlemen. Arbitrage like this works for a while, but at the end of the day the record companies are going to get bought out by other media-owning companies like Disney....

Apple may own distribution, but they can never call it Apple Records.

See me, read me: Knoxville News Sentinel drops registration, fees for sports site: Editor Jack McElroy's blog announced:

But now online advertising is a booming business, and we believe that building as large an audience as possible is the ticket to long-term success.

Here's knoxnews.com. GoVolsXtra, their University of Tennessee sports site, has dropped paid subscriptions and is now free.

American dream: Inside an Indian Call Center Amar C. Bakshi (Harvard '06) talks to "Alan" and "Jim" at a call center in Chennai:

...Speed is of the essence. These callers need to make 30 sales a month, one per day. They dial 700 numbers each day to accomplish this. Machines answer 300 of those calls. 200 people just hang up. 195 say their parents or the homeowners are gone. Of the remaining 5, only one pulls through. Lots of talk. Little love.

Yet these men embrace their proximity to America, the land of opportunity. The same things that drew them to the call center life -- the ability to rise through the ranks fast based on merit (sales) -- also attract them to America. Vimesh and Saravama both see America as a place where “money flows" without getting trapped in the hands of a few corrupt elite -- at least better than in India. Vimesh tells me, “it's a place where rules must be obeyed” and no one is beyond the law. In Chennai, they complain, the rich stay rich because they break the law and horde wealth...

Ants, we're all just ants...

There's video, too. This is the new new journalism.

Peer review: Damage Report Most of the two hundred journalists who left The Dallas Morning News landed on their feet. Those who stayed are not so sure. Columbia Journalism Review. (Both DMN and projo are owned by Belo.)

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 9:08 AM | Permalink

Comments

Posted by: Amar C. Bakshi on July 21, 2007 1:31 PM