Entries Tagged 'Wired' ↓

101 Ways to Save the Internet. A nice, fun list of things that would make the Internet and the world of tech in general better. In particular, please (please!) consider the following: “Stop with the jokes. If we get the one about French military victories one more time, we’re going to come over and unplug you personally.”

in Wired News: Flash: Blogging Goes Corporate. It’s a reasonably interesting article but it’s not without problems. The whole thing describing why they put the sites on third-party domains is just weird, and really undercuts the whole effort, in a way. The Wired News writer gives them a pass on this, and goes even further:

Hale added: “Would it have been a true blog if we put it on Macromedia.com? Not really.”
Indeed, it was important to Macromedia that its blogs seemed true, that readers perceived them as the thoughts of very helpful community managers instead of corporate shills. If the effort felt disingenuous, like the company was merely jumping on the blogwagon, it could have backfired.

Not putting the sites on Macromedia.com just underlines that they think of the site as a very limited (and unitary) thing, notwithstanding the hugeness of it. It’s weird for a company that’s supposed to be all about creativity to not be creative enough to envision a macromedia.com that was both credible and had small weblog-esque sections. More likely they’re hedging their bets, giving themselves the opportunity to pull the plug quietly later if needed.

Plus, I think it does reek of astroturfing. Putting a blog on Macromedia.com would have been big news. This isn’t corporate blogging. It’s not corporate blogging until they are open to the idea of mingling official corporate messages with more informal information all on one site.

Schizophrenia gene suspected. This sort of news always modifies my generally suspicious attitude towards gene therapy and genetic research.

A lot of people linked to the Elian-Whassup parody yesterday. As expected, Wired News has the story today. The story is interesting though: the guy from AP admits that “[we] police our copyright as aggressively as we can, although this is the first time that I can remember us going after a parody site.”

Uh, if you’re claiming copyright infringement, it’s probably not a good idea to be quoted admitting that the infringing item is a parody, which is generally considered to fall under the scope of fair use.

I don’t support the crap that “hackers” or “crackers” get up to - but with the questionable arrest of mafiaboy (a Montrealer, btw), I just want to ask the authorities to demonstrate how a short outage cost companies “hundreds of millions of dollars.”

While Dr Dre and Metallica are both talking about suing Napster, record company people are starting to get it. Wired News reports that the majors are going to offer downloadable music in a big way this summer. Quote: “Although the recording industry has complained that some services that offer downloadable online music violate copyright laws and cut into a label’s profits, company sales actually are up.”

It’s promising in one way, but the article is also pretty depressing, because the contradiction between Metallica/Napster and what the labels are planning to do indicates that the artists are probably going to be squeezed by this whole thing.