Preoccupations

Google news treemaps

via Eyebeam reBlog:

Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator. A treemap visualization algorithm helps display the enormous amount of information gathered by the aggregator. Treemaps are traditionally space-constrained visualizations of information. Newsmap's objective takes that goal a step further and provides a tool to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe. newsmap

The principles are clearly explained by this posting on Boing Boing:

Newsmap is an application that visualizes the totality of the GoogleNews aggregator — an amazing piece of software which not only aggregates almost every single online newspaper, but combines news stories into clusters so that when the same story is repeated among several news sites, it files and displays only one to you - no mater how different the actual text that makes the article is. Google news aggregates stories in several languages and customizes its content for 10 particular countries. I've loved googlenews for this particular reason since the first day, and it was then when I started thinking about visualizing the totality of it, since it could be a very close approach to getting a picture on how news media attention differs from country to country. Newsmap utilizes a treemap algorithm to dynamically create each view, and the size of each cell is determined by the amount of related articles that exist inside each news cluster.

Google Web Alerts (beta)

Google Web Alerts are sent by email when there is new information on the web matching the search you specify. Some handy uses of Google Web Alerts include:

• keeping current on a competitor or industry
• monitoring references to your name or company
• finding out when people link to your site
• discovering new websites on a certain topic

Declining CD sales — not due to file-sharing?

A new study by two researchers at Harvard Business School and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, finds that sharing digital music files has no effect on CD sales. This is the first study that directly compares actual downloads of music files and store sales of CDs.

The authors, Associate Professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee of Harvard Business School in Boston and Professor Koleman Strumpf of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, conclude that "File sharing had no effect on the sale of popular CDs in the second half of 2002. While downloads occurred on a vast scale during this period - 3 million simultaneous users shared 500 million files on the popular network FastTrack/KaZaA alone - most people who shared files appear to be individuals who would not have bought the albums that they downloaded," say the authors.

Even in the professors' most pessimistic statistical model, it takes 5,000 downloads to reduce the sales of an album by a single copy. If this worst-case scenario were true, file sharing would have reduced CD sales by 2 million copies in 2002. To provide a point of reference, CD sales actually declined by 139 million copies from 2000 to 2002. AScribe

Orirignal report here. Link via Marginal Revolution.

No end to the Grey Album ...

A well-considered article in calendarlive.com (Los Angeles Times):

Record producer Brian Burton knew he'd done something technically illegal when he electronically blended tracks from the Beatles' White Album and vocals from Jay-Z's The Black Album into a CD called The Grey Album. But he was so excited by the mix of Fab Four riffs and Jay-Z raps that he badly wanted people to hear it. "When I was finished, it was the biggest sense of accomplishment I've had over anything," he said. So in January, the Los Angeles-based Burton, who records as DJ Danger Mouse, made a couple of thousand copies of the disc and started mailing them out. His wish to be heard has come true many times over, although not in the way he expected. On Feb. 10 the Beatles' record company, EMI Music, stopped Burton from distributing The Grey Album. That action triggered an online revolt that led tens of thousands of people to download digital copies of the CD, generating enough buzz to draw reviews from such mainstream outlets as CNN.

EMI's move against Danger Mouse was a spectacular backfire in the war over what's fair when the muse runs afoul of copyright law in the Digital Age. Technology is making it easier than ever to sample and rework recordings, and to the chagrin of entertainment companies and some artists who hold copyrights, the public is showing little sympathy for their efforts to control original works. Fred E. Goldring, a Beverly Hills-based music-industry lawyer, likened EMI's response to The Grey Album to the major labels' earlier mishandling of the Napster file-sharing service. "By creating a controversy and trying to shut it down, they actually attracted more interest in it," Goldring says. "They created their own hell." He adds, "It became probably the most widely downloaded, underground indie record, without radio or TV coverage, ever. I think it's a watershed event." That's the dilemma faced by entertainment companies and other copyright holders in a sampling, file-sharing world. The law may be black and white, but among artists and audiences, the creative landscape has been remixed in shades of gray. ...

One reason artists may want to keep "White Albums" from being mashed into "Grey" ones is concern about the integrity of their works. "Taking it to extremes," says the Offspring's Holland, "what if someone took one of your records and put Adolf Hitler over it — something you don't believe in and despise? If you really think about it, if you're OK with it one way, you've got to be OK with it always. I think that's part of what free speech is in America. It'd be a bummer, though."

David Bowie, whose records are popular material among Internet music-mashers and mixers, says he reserves the right of refusal because of just such a possibility. "I would always give the artist the chance to present to me what he wishes to do," says the veteran rock star by e-mail. "I would not give permission if I felt the work to be morally or politically repugnant. I would expect to be compensated for the work used. Outside of that, I'm fairly easygoing, as long as there's some kind of communication between the artist and myself. I think that is the important part." ...

Bowie has observed parallel conflicts played out and resolved, to some degree, in the world of visual art, where appropriation of one artist's pictorial image by another has led to litigation involving such major names as Robert Rauschenberg and Helmut Newton. He's ... philosophical. "It will all slowly sort itself out into some kind of workable mess," he says, "but will continue to be a gray area for years to come. But that is life, isn't it?"

Link via volokh.com

Six Apart

A new weblog from Mena, Mena's Corner:

Ten days ago, when we announced TypeKey, much of the initial criticisms we read could have been answered with more information. After reading most everything that people had to say about the service, Ben and I worked on an FAQ that addressed almost all of the objections we saw. And oddly enough, providing more information about TypeKey helped answer questions and clear up the misconceptions.

Last week it finally sunk in that we've done an extremely poor job communicating about the growth of Six Apart to our users and to the weblogging community. This silence can be partly attributed to the sort of confidentiality that's required when working with partners or brokering deals.

But, fundamentally, our silence was due to the fact that we were, for a lack of a better word, scared.

Coincidentally, it's Dave Winer's essay about Six Apart that does an extremely good job articulating one of the prime reasons for our fears:

"If they have to walk on eggshells in order to communicate, they're going to do less of it. So try to give them the benefit of the doubt, and try to work with them."

So what does this all mean to you?

It means that we've entered a new era of Six Apart. We're going to pull back that curtain and not be afraid to reveal what Six Apart has become. We realize that we're never going to please everyone and, without sounding like a daily affirmation, that's okay. We want to show our users what goes on at Six Apart and what we're doing to keep our growth in tune with our vision of what Six Apart should be. We want to show that there are other people at this company other than the Trotts and that these people work hard, contribute a great deal and are part of what we've become. And, of course, we won't be able to share everything, but we'll try to share a lot more.

We're committed to remaining a successful company and providing the best tools possible. Frankly, I'm glad I can write this when we are doing well and have a lot of opportunities ahead of us rather than as a retrospective on bad decisions we made during the life of our company.

So, on this year and nine day anniversary of the incorporation of Six Apart Ltd., I christen this weblog "Mena's Corner.*

* Not the greatest name, I know. But, it doesn't have to be perfect.

I share, you rip off, they pirate

Via Lawrence Lessig, this BBC News item:

Copyright law has become a tool for the powerful, argues technology analyst Bill Thompson, but that is not the way it is supposed to be.

I spent the weekend enjoying the products of other people's intellectual effort, and all for free. I listened to the Grey Album, read some of Lawrence Lessig's new book on creativity and the internet, and watched The Return of the King on DVD at a friend's house. Only one of these activities was entirely legal: Professor Lessig has made a copy of his book available under a Creative Commons licence which allows it to circulate freely without payment, as long as it is not exploited commercially. One was pretty clearly illegal. The Return of the King is not released on DVD until 25 May, but all six gigabytes (or so), is available to download for those with a broadband connection and patience. Happily for my son Max, who is a big fan of the movie, that number includes a friend of mine who was pleased to show off his success in stealing from Warner Home Video. I felt uneasy about enjoying the movie, since although anyone can make music in a bedroom studio, film-making needs the millions of dollars that come from DVD rentals to support future work. So I would like to reassure Peter Jackson that Max will be spending his pocket money on the film when it appears in the shops.

But my third exercise in online distribution was the really interesting one. The Grey Album consists of 12 songs created as an experiment by DJ Danger Mouse. He mixed the vocals from Jay-Z's Black Album with music elements sampled from The Beatles' White Album and circulated a few thousand promotional copies before EMI, who own the copyright, notified him that the album was in breach of their copyright and it was withdrawn. ... Naturally, copies are circulating widely on the internet, and a couple of weeks ago one of my students was kind enough to pass the files on to me.

It is not, I have to admit, great music, but it is interesting and worth listening to as an example of what sampling and mixing can do. The Grey Album is clearly a new work of art, inspired by its two sources in the same way as Cezanne influenced Picasso. Yet EMI believe they can stop it, and are using copyright law to do so. Whether or not they really do have a strong legal case, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation has questioned the validity of their claims, their expensive lawyers have managed to persuade Danger Mouse to withdraw his work from public view, and this is where Professor Lessig comes in.

Lawrence Lessig is a professor of law at Stanford University and ... he has been heavily involved in the battle against those who are using new technologies and copyright law to restrict our online freedoms, especially our freedom to create new work that builds on the work of others. Free Culture argues that cultural creativity is being undermined by rights holders who are abusing the power they have under existing copyright and intellectual property law. For him, "the opposite of a free culture is a 'permission culture' - a culture in which creators get to create only with the permission of the powerful, or of creators from the past".

Danger Mouse has not been granted that permission, and the result is that his music is forced underground, circulating via websites which operate in fear of a cease and desist letter from a corporate lawyer. ... Danger Mouse wants his music to be heard and is being stopped by a large corporation and its lawyers: his only route to an audience is through the web. Peter Jackson wants to control the circulation of his films in order to recover the costs of making them and pay for more, and it is reasonable for him to do this. As Prof Lessig says in the introduction to his book, "a free culture is not a culture without property; it is not a culture in which artists don't get paid. A culture without property, or in which creators can't get paid, is anarchy, not freedom".

Copyright emerged as a bargain between creative people and the state, a bargain which gave creators certain legal rights in the belief that doing so would benefit society as a whole. It is hard to see how EMI's suppression of the Grey Album helps anyone. Whatever their legal rights, EMI have no moral right to limit Danger Mouse's creativity in this way. By doing so, they make it clear that existing laws are simply not good enough to cope with the creative possibilities which are open to us all in the digital world. We need to find the balance between the freedom exemplified by the Grey Album and the anarchy towards which completely unregulated sharing of stolen intellectual property could lead.

Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday is remembered as one of the most tragic figures in music, her life wasted in a haze of drink, drugs and abuse. But, on the eve of a tribute to the legendary singer, Martin Gayford argues that her career was a triumph, not a tragedy. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus famously observed that it is impossible to step into the same river twice - when you do, the water will have changed.

Billie Holiday found that the same was true with songs. Tomorrow, she once pointed out to her accompanist, Jimmy Rowles, "I'll be in a different mood. That's why I can never sing the same way, 'cause I don't always feel the same. I just can't do it. I can't even copy me." Nor can anyone else copy Billie Holiday. She is in the strange position of being not only hugely influential, but also inimitable. On April 5, numerous singers, many born decades after she died in 1959 - the line-up includes Carleen Anderson, Susheela Raman and Amy Winehouse - will pay tribute to Holiday at the Barbican, but none will really sing like her. Nobody ever could.

In some ways, Holiday was the greatest popular singer of the 20th century - although not in every way. Ella Fitzgerald in her heyday had an incomparably better voice, smooth and rich as cream; so too did Sinatra. Holiday's vocal range was narrow, and her tone thin and acrid. But emotionally, Fitzgerald sounded like a little girl in comparison.

What Holiday could do in a manner far beyond any other performer was to communicate feelings, and not just single moods, but complex emotional clusters. She could drag a few words across the beat - possibly lyrics banal in themselves - in such a manner as to convey ruefulness, irony, tenderness, love, joy, resignation, salty delight, one after another, or several all together. But to do this, you had to be Holiday. More than that, by her own account you had to be Holiday on a certain day. ...

According to Max Jones, "Her own lifestyle, probably responsible for much of the disorder swirling about her person, she defended stoutly as ‘my own damn business'." She knew, he went on, that it would shorten her life: "This she foresaw, naturally, and accepted it. She wasn't unhappy about it." Her stage persona as "Lady", the sad torch singer, was in part, as another biographer, Stuart Nicholson, has argued, her creation (just as was her name, her vocal style, and everything else about her). Behind it was a complicated, difficult, enormously talented woman.

Her drink and drug habits were not that different from those of many male jazz contemporaries. As with them, with Holiday it is hard to separate self-destructiveness and lust for life. Holiday herself, asked why so many jazz musicians died so young, replied:

"We kind of live one hundred days in one day. Like myself, I want to bend this note, bend that note, sing this way, sing that way, get all the feeling and eat all the good food and travel all over, all in one day, and you can't do it." The pianist Hampton Hawes put it this way: "I know she died because she was too emotional and big-hearted, always racing. She lived her life so full it was inevitable she would go down fast."

Is that success or failure? In life, the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson has remarked, it's not longevity that counts, but intensity. That Holiday certainly achieved, and you can hear it in every note she sang. Daily Telegraph

'Billie and Me', part of the Barbican's 'Only Connect' season, takes place on April 5. Tickets: 020 7638 8891.

Black clouds ahead for students?

A rise in the number of graduates may mean a decline in wages and prospects for those with a degree, a study says. Only a third of the 28 million UK jobs are "knowledge-based", economists at Cardiff and Lancaster universities say. The government wants 50% of young people to enter higher education by 2010, up from the current 43%. But the study, based on US and UK employment figures, forecasts the largest growth in the next few years will be in "lower-skilled jobs".

Its figures show starting salaries for graduates are falling, with last year's average of £12,659 down from £13,422 in 2002. The Department for Education and Skills said the figure for this year would be £21,000. But Anthony Hesketh, of Lancaster University, and Phil Brown, of Cardiff University, said this was based on "blue-chip" companies, taking on just one in 20 graduates. They found that in the US - a more developed "knowledge economy" - just one-fifth of 145 million employees were "knowledge workers". Their book, The Mismanagement of Talent: Employability and Jobs in the Knowledge Economy, predicts a decline in graduate prospects in both countries.

Dr Hesketh said: "It is not like the 1960s, when so few people went into higher education. "A degree still gives you entry into the race, but it does not guarantee a ticket for the winners' enclosure."

He added: "We have tended to think that there has been an explosion in the number of jobs requiring knowledge workers. "In reality, the situation is that what growth there has been has in fact been sluggish. Lower-skilled jobs have expanded at far faster rates than knowledge-worker jobs." BBC News

Personalised Google

Here.

Link via azeem.azhar.co.uk

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