l'inflation aux USA en graphiques, "open" yahoo, orson scott card, etc.

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Feb 26, 2008, 9:34:30 AM2/26/08
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Internet :
Politique :
Jeux Vidéos
Science Fiction : 
  • Le récent livre de Orson Scott Card, Empire, est adapté en jeu vidéo sous la direction de OSC. Pour ceux qui ne connaissent pas, le thème est très proche de ceux de pas mal d'autres auteurs américains aujourd'hui : DMZ, Joe Dante, etc. L'utilisation des forces armées américaines à l'étranger crée des tensions au sein des USA jusqu'à conduire à un point de rupture où les forces basées à l'étranger doivent choisir quelque gouvernement soutenir : Slideshow : Orson Scott Card Builds an Empire
  • Un magasin qui ne vend que des produits qu'on pourrait utiliser pour voyager dans le temps... : Echo Park Time Travel Mart

Culture :

    Inside the mind of a New Yorker cartoonist



    "

    1983 12 05 059

    Michael Maslin is blogging this month at the The New Yorker cartoonist blog. Here, he attempts to make things scrutable, explaining the genesis of a cartoon:



    First, an image of a Thurber guy on skis popped into my head as I sat staring at a blank piece of paper. So I had my rough inspiration. Can’t say why I chose to make the skier a woman, and put her in a showroom—sorry, some things just can’t be explained. I began by drawing the salesman, and, wanting him in the school of Thurber, I drew his body with wavy fluid lines. The man’s expression, especially his wedge-shaped open mouth, was distilled from the hundreds of Thurber drawings I’d studied. The woman trying out the skis was less Thurber-ish. I thought that if she were a copycat Thurber woman, the drawing would just look like a Thurber rip-off. The caption, “Whoosh!,” was, as is so often the case with me, a gift from the cartoon gods.


    "

    Voir en ligne : Inside the mind of a New Yorker cartoonist

    Hale "Bonddad" Stewart : Don't Expect Economic Problems To End Anytime Soon



    "

    Since June of last year the curtain has raised on the US economy. Underneath the hood of "The Greatest Story Never Told" lies a host of problems that will take a while to fix. In other words, don't expect this situation to end anytime soon.



    So -- what are the problems we face?



    America's Comptroller General David Walker, Congress's head accountant who is leaving his position next month, warns our government is "bankrupting America." Using unethical accounting worse than Enron's. Fiscal responsibility lost. He sees "striking similarities" with Rome. Both parties are gluttons in a spending orgy.


    Consider the following:



    But growth is only a small part of the story. As has been widely publicized, the Bush-era deficits reversed the effects of the deficit reduction from the Clinton years. We will almost certainly end the Bush years with a higher debt-to-gross domestic product ratio than we had at the start of the Clinton presidency. That is not a disaster, but the next administration will not have the luxury of allowing the debt to increase in the same way.

    Perhaps more important, the ratio of foreign debt to GDP has soared in the Bush years. By the end of the Bush presidency, we will likely have added more than $1.5 trillion (more than 10 percent of GDP) to our foreign indebtedness. This is the result of the massive trade deficits of the Bush years.



    Here's what the graph looks like:





    And that's not all. US households are mired in debt as well:







    And now state and municipal governments are feeling the heat:



    U.S. governors including New Jersey's Jon Corzine and New York's Eliot Spitzer may ask Congress to help reverse rising municipal debt costs stemming from the subprime mortgage market's collapse, Washington Governor Christine Gregoire said.

    Gregoire, Corzine and Spitzer joined other governors Feb. 24 in forming a group that will ``produce something that gets us out of the problem, but most importantly produce something for Congress'' to deter a future borrowing squeeze, Gregoire, a Democrat, said during a National Governors Association meeting in Washington yesterday.



    Interest on insured bonds, including debt with rates set at periodic auctions, rose to as high as 20 percent because investors shunned the securities or demanded higher yields on waning confidence in the companies guaranteeing repayment. The jump in borrowing costs is another consequence of a credit pinch tied to the subprime collapse that led to $163 billion in Wall Street writedowns.



    But wait -- there's a whole lot more:



    It's far from over folks and still spreading: Years of inventory, foreclosures, building slowdown, risky bond insurers, weak rating agencies, funds holding bad debt, freezing exits and fuzzy math on values. Yet Bernanke and Paulson still live in a Washington bubble of wishful-thinking fantasies.


    The housing mess is nowhere near bottom -- and won't be for awhile.



    Consider the following:





    The total number of existing homes for sale decreased at the end of last year -- which is what typically happens. Now inventory is increasing again -- to an incredibly high level (The following graphs are from Calculated Risk.





    And the number of months it would take to clear available inventory is inching up again -- from an already high level. And considering how high consumer debt is (see above) it's doubtful consumers are going to rush into the market anytime soon.



    And then there's the foreclosure issue:



    ...foreclosures rose 8% in January compared to December and nearly 57% from January 2007, RealtyTrac said on Tuesday. Nevada, California, Florida posted the top state foreclosure rates, it added. "January's foreclosure numbers demonstrate that foreclosure activity is continuing on its upward trend, substantially increasing from a year ago in many states," said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. "However, the 8% monthly increase in January is not as precipitous as the 19% spike we saw in January of 2007, and several key states actually experienced decreasing foreclosure activity from the previous month. It could be that some of the efforts on the part of lenders and the government -- both at the state and federal level -- are beginning to take effect," he said


    Add the fact that home prices are dropping:



    One-tenth of U.S. homeowners hold mortgages that are larger than the worth of their homes, Moody's Economy.com said on Friday.

    Nearly 8.8 million homeowners, or 10.3 percent, are in over their heads, its chief economist, Mark Zandi, estimates.



    As a result, millions of U.S. homeowners have the incentive to abandon their properties.



    And now we have the possibility of higher inflation coming our way. The short version is commodity prices are increasing across the board, the dollar is dropping, money supply is increasing and reported inflation rates from the the BLS are spiking.



    The bottom line is simple: the US' economic problems run wide and deep. There is no simple way to deal with the escalating federal debt issue. It's going to take cutting spending and raising taxes. The housing mess is a long way from reaching bottom. We have a ton of inventory to sell at a time when the purchasers are mired in record levels of debt. And commodity prices are spiking as well, caused by the increased demand from India and China.



    It's going to take awhile to cure these problems. And the answers aren't going to be easy to swallow, especially in a country that doesn't like complicated or difficult choices.



    For more on the inflation picture, read this:



    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hale-stewart/the-inflation-picture-is-_b_87524.html






    "

    Voir en ligne : Hale "Bonddad" Stewart: Don't Expect Economic Problems To End Anytime Soon

    Jennifer Love Hewitt Bikini Talk Continues : I Won't Work Out To Change How I Look



    "

    Jennifer Love Hewitt is still talking about the infamous bikini shots that had her criticized in newspapers, television and magazines late last year. At an Oscar party she told People magazine, who put the picture and Hewitt's defense on their cover:



    "The thing I think is great is when those pictures were taken, no matter what, I had just been asked to marry," says Hewitt, engaged to Scottish actor Ross McCall, "so he loves me just the way I am."

    And if she does decide to something about her body, "I will for my health, not for typical reasons," she told PEOPLE on Sunday at an Oscar viewing party at SBE's The Abbey in West Hollywood.



    "If I do work out more it will be for my health, so I can live a long time and we can have kids and be happy together until we are in our 80s," Hewitt, 29, said at the event, benefiting AIDS Project Los Angeles. "It won't be because I am worried about how I look."



    Soon after the pictures went public, Hewitt blogged how a "size 2 is not fat."






    "

    Voir en ligne : Jennifer Love Hewitt Bikini Talk Continues: I Won't Work Out To Change How I Look

    Le chiffre du jour : -13 % !



    "-13 %, c'est la baisse du nombre d'objets mis aux enchères sur eBay, depuis la campagne de boycott, lancée le 18 février dernier. eBay s'est attiré les foudres de certains de ses principaux "top seller" après avoir modifié son système de notation, interdisant, désormais, aux vendeurs d'objets..."

    Voir en ligne : Le chiffre du jour : -13 % !

    Bien vieillir dans la société de l’information

    eBay, boycott et mastodontes



    "

    Le boycott d’eBay par les vendeurs a entraîné une réduction notable de la liste des objets mis en vente (voir ce billet ). Son impact pourrait être ressenti par la compagnie californienne qui se trouve en pleine transition de CEO et dont la croissance ininterrompue depuis 10 ans commence à marquer le pas.


    Cela ne peut, en outre que renforcer la compétition de plusieurs autres sites en tête desquels on trouve Amazon et Overstock , un autre site important de vente aux enchères online.


    D’une façon plus générale, ce boycott confirme l’importance croissante des mouvements de protestation des usagers après, notamment ceux de Digg (voir ce billet ) et de Facebook (voir ce billet ).


    Quand le bonbon n’est plus sur l’étagère


    Les trois sites dépendent du contenu généré par les usagers. Cela permet aux entreprises de faire des affaires en or à moindre coût mais cela confère aux dits usages un pouvoir non négligeable qu’ils commencent à utiliser.


    Quand ils n’aiment pas quelque chose, ils peuvent le dire et se faire entendre en fonction d’une logique simple qu’explique très clairement Josh Catone sur le site Read/WriteWeb. Si vous boycottez un certain type de bonbons par exemple, ces derniers restent présents dans les magasins et la compagnie visée peut toujours répondre avec une campagne agressive de pub ou de marketing. Mais “si vous réunissez assez de gens pour boycotter la création de contenu sur un site qui dépend du contenu généré par les usagers, l’effet en est ressenti par tout le monde. Le bonbon n’est plus sur les étagères parce que le boycott les vide.”


    Les mastodontes en question


    A cela il faut ajouter que les sites mastodontes sont peut-être en train de commencer à souffrir de leur trop grande taille et de leur modèle centralisé. Comme eBay, les grands sites de réseaux sociaux semblent commencer à marquer le pas. On parle de “fatigue de Facebook”, par exemple.


    Un billet de Michael Fowlkes montre que CozyBug , un petit site de vente aux enchères de Seattle, a vu son trafic quotidien augmenter de 4.400% au moment du boycott. Ce qui m’intéresse là-dedans c’est que le site en question se voit d’abord comme une sorte de réseau de “marchés aux puces locaux” (notamment pour les objets difficiles à transporter ou que les gens veulent voir avant de les acheter).


    CozyBug offre ainsi un système géographiquement distribué face à eBay. Un peu comme Ning, qui permet de constituer des réseaux sociaux décentralisés à taille humaine, se présente comme un modèle alternatif à celui de MySpace et de Facebook.


    On est en droit de se demander s’ils ne correspondent pas mieux à la logique du web… et s’il n’y a pas place pour les deux modèles.


    Qu’en pensez-vous? 

    "

    Voir en ligne : eBay, boycott et mastodontes

    Link Journalism : Is Linking to News a form of Journalism ?



    "

    Scott Karp attempted to coin a new term on his Publishing2 blog today: link journalism. "Link journalism is linking to other reporting on the web to enhance, complement, source, or add more context to a journalist’s original reporting," he wrote. Links as journalism is something that Karp has been writing about recently; it ties into new media and citizen journalism, and it is something that we think warrants a closer look.



    Karp was inspired by something the New York Times' public editor said in his reproval of the paper's recent hit piece on Senator John McCain. Karp zeroed in on the Times' ombudsman's assertion that that McCain story had mostly been reported over the years, but that readers could still benefit from a retelling of the facts to "help voters in 2008 better understand the John McCain who might be their next president."



    What better way to pull together the bits of a story has has been "reported over the years" than by using links to the actual reporting, asked Karp. The traditional media method would be to summarize the previous reporting, said Karp, "but on the web, with its infinite space and connectedness, the Times could have added an important supplement to their own perspective" by linking.



    Unfortunately, a quick search through Google News archives reveals that much of the important historical content is stuck behind pay walls -- the rationale being that old news doesn't get enough page views to monetize with advertising and is only of value to people researching a story, who are likely willing to pay for access. But as the New York Times' public editor pointed out, sometimes historical context is helpful. But is framing significant historical reporting around current events and using links to the actual reporting to build a readable trail really journalism?




    The Drudge Report, seen here in 2006, has been doing 'link journalism' for over a decade.



    This sort of reporting is something that bloggers and others on the web have been doing for years. One of the best known examples is The Drudge Report, which has been putting out link-based reporting since the mid-90s. By organizing links to other original reporting, Matt Drudge has really pioneered a type of online news that is something like the web-based equivalent of a paper that carries only wire stories, and does no original reporting.



    The Drudge Report and other so-called link blogs, are really a subset of edited news aggregation, which has a great signal to noise ratio. Because the content is being vetted by an editor, readers can assume that they're being directed only to relevant, non-redundant reporting (assuming they trust the editor). Link journalism is also something citizen journalists do a lot of, as when we share links via Google Reader like Robert Scoble, or via del.icio.us like Jemima Kiss. Bloggers and citizen journalists have long recognized the value of the link as a way to add context for readers and reinforce the points we make in our posts.



    According to Wikipedia, "Journalism is the discipline of gathering, writing and reporting news, and broadly it includes the process of editing and presenting the news articles." Karp's link journalism falls at least into the "gathering" and "editing" pieces of that. It's certainly not on the same level as original reporting -- which link journalism relies on completely -- but it does have an important place, and I hope newspapers are listening to Karp's call to tear down pay walls and start recycling relevant historical content by utilizing links. And not just to their own reporting, but to any reporting that could add value for the reader.



    There is, of course, one major hurdle in the way of convincing newspapers that this is a smart thing to do: the mainstream press doesn't like to send people away from their web sites. To that, Karp responds, "Just remember Google’s law of links on the web -- the better job you do at sending people away, the more they come back."




    "

    Voir en ligne : Link Journalism: Is Linking to News a form of Journalism?

    Comment Internet bouscule une presse américaine malmenée par ses actionnaires



    "

    Et si nous commencions par quelques nouvelles, peu réjouissantes, glanées ces derniers temps au fil de l’actualité de la crise économique de la presse américaine ?


    en lire plus

    "

    Voir en ligne : Comment Internet bouscule une presse américaine malmenée par ses actionnaires

    The Man Behind the Barack Obama is Your New Bicycle Website



    "


    By now, you’ve probably ran across the cryptic "Barack Obama is your New Bicycle" website (and the corollary Hillary Clinton one). Y’know, it’s where Barack does only good things and Hillary does the opposite (both purely invented, of course).


    Well, it turned out that the whole thing was done by Mathew Honan, a contributing editor to Wired magazine. Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn has the scoop:


    I came up with the idea for the site last week, on [Wednesday, Feb.]13, while riding the bus up Market Street on my way home for the day. My wife is an avid cyclist, and loves to talk about bikes and cycling. Recently, she’s gotten really active in the Obama campaign, and I had been kidding her that "Barack Obama is your new bicycle." There seem to be a lot of people who feel that way.


    I told one of my friends about it, and it made him laugh too. And then the idea just sort of fell into place. I got home, registered the domain, and had everything up just as it is now four hours or so after I thought of the idea. Needless to say, I’m pretty surprised at how it took off.



    Link - Thanks Austin Clay!

    "

    Voir en ligne : The Man Behind the Barack Obama is Your New Bicycle Website

    Licorne Atomic Bomb Test : Beautiful and Scary



    "


    Photo: Pierre J. [Flickr]


    There’s something scarily beautiful about an atomic bomb explosion … this one is from the nuclear test "Licorne", where the French Army detonated a 914 kiloton thermonuclear device in the Mururoa Atoll on July 3, 1970. It was the fourth nuclear test and largest.


    More info on Licorne can be found at the Atomic Forum:


    Licorne was a test of an experimental thermonuclear device for the TN-60 warhead; the fourth thermonuclear test conducted by France. The nuclear device was suspended from a balloon, which was filled with 14,000 cubic meters of helium, 500 meters (1600 feet) feet over the Dindon testing sector. 3,700 men stationed on Mururoa were evacuated for this test.


    Newly appointed Minister of Defense Michel Debré observed the test from the De Grasse along with 12 representatives from the French press. The De Grasse was positioned some 30 miles from Mururoa for the shot.


    An observer described the Licorne detonation as being a “a stupendously beautiful pillar of fire piercing a perfectly symmetrical mushroom.” Six hours after the explosion, Debré and the visiting correspondents returned to the main base on Mururoa. Debré reportedly swam in the Mururoa lagoon during this time to make the reporters think the radiological effects of the nuclear tests were harmless (Source)


    "

    Voir en ligne : Licorne Atomic Bomb Test: Beautiful and Scary

    Song Chart Meme



    "

    Psst, here’s a cool meme going ’round Flickr. It’s called the Song Chart Meme, the graphical interpretation of songs, and here are a few examples (see if you can identify the songs):



    Pic: boyshapedbox [Flickr]



    Pic: slowburn [Flickr]



    Pic: boyshapedbox [Flickr]


    And the one that started it all …



    Found at boyshapedbox [Flickr]


    Link [Flickr

    pool] - via Gawker

    "

    Voir en ligne : Song Chart Meme

    The Atlantic v. Brennan Decision Rejecting "Making Available", as PDF and Text



    "I'm getting so much email about the decision in the Atlantic v. Brennan case, I thought you'd maybe like to see the ruling [PDF] itself, and I also have it is as text. It's

    making news because the music industry's foundational theory that "making available" is a copyright violation was rejected. Here's part of what the court wrote about that:
    At least one aspect of Plaintiffs' distribution claim is problematic, however,
    namely the allegation of infringement based on "mak[ing] the Copyrighted Recordings

    available for distribution to others."... This amounts to a valid ground on

    which to mount a defense, for "without actual distribution of copies . . . there is no violation

    [of] the distribution right    ." 4 William F. Patry, Patry on Copyright § 13:9 (2007); see also

    id.     n.10 (collecting cases); Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 508 F.3d 1146, 1162 (9th Cir.

    2007) (affirming the district court's finding "that distribution requires an 'actual

    dissemination' of a copy").

    As you can see, judges not only can read what lawyers and others write on a subject, as this judge read William Patry, they can be influenced by what they read. Patry wrote a famous treatise on copyright law, which you can buy here, if you can afford it. It's 7 volumes, over 5,500 pages, and here's an interview with him about the work. The treatise comes with its own blog, which is a nice touch. If you can't afford it, he has another blog, The Patry Copyright Blog, where you can learn a lot about copyright law, and it doesn't cost a dime. Patry is also Google's Senior Copyright Counsel, but that's separate from his treatise. Can you imagine how good it must feel to write a treatise and then have a case decided in part based on what you wrote?

    This case is, to me, more interesting for a couple of other reasons, though.

    "

    Voir en ligne : The Atlantic v. Brennan Decision Rejecting "Making Available", as PDF and Text

    Maroc : Condamnation à trois ans ferme de l’auteur du faux profil du Prince sur Facebook



    "Le 22 février, au tribunal d'instance de Casablanca, le juge chargé de l'affaire Fouad Mourtada était certainement au courant qu'il avait rendez-vous avec l'histoire. Ce n'est pas tous les jours qu'il lui ait donné, entre dossiers de violeurs, pédophiles (dernier fait (...)"

    Voir en ligne : Maroc : Condamnation à trois ans ferme de l'auteur du faux profil du Prince sur Facebook

    Le site du jour : Sabotage de jeux



    "Le site « Retro Sabotage » se fait une joie de saboter un jeu vidéo classique, dont il change les règles et auquel il ajoute des astuces décalées."

    Voir en ligne : Le site du jour : Sabotage de jeux

    Echo Park Time Travel Mart



    "


    "Behold the fluorescent glory of the ECHO PARK TIME TRAVEL MART Marquee. Check it out in person at 1714 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, Calif. The store will open full time on January 15th, 2008."



    Just opened in Los Angeles: The Echo Park Time Travel Mart, specializing in everything you need for time travel, such as Mammoth Chunks, Barbarian Repellent (warning: doesn’t work for Ostrogoth), and Time-Freezy Hyper Slushy drink.





    The Echo Park Time Travel Mart is a brainchild of Mac Bernett of 826LA, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting kids explore creative writing and helping teachers inspire their students to write. 826LA is looking for someone to help run the Echo Park Time Travel Mart If you knew this already through your time traveling, then you’d be the right person!


    Links: Introducing the Echo Park Time Travel Mart at Stefan G. Bucher’s Daily Monster Blog | Photo Gallery | 826LA website

    "

    Voir en ligne : Echo Park Time Travel Mart

    My Paper Mind, a “Stratastencil” Animation



    "




    My Paper Mind is a fantastic short film by Javan Ivy. It is made with an experimental animation technique he called "Stratastencil," where stacks of differentially cut paper are used as "frames" in the film. The 30 or so second animation above took about 18 hours to make.


    Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Metafilter | Javan’s website

    "

    Voir en ligne : My Paper Mind, a “Stratastencil” Animation

    A land of indie games & clever controllers : GDC post-mortem



    "

    The Game Developer's Conference offers a ton of information for the budding game developer. What were the key words this year? Independent and immersion. We take the indie games and new controllers for a spin.

    Read More...




    "

    Voir en ligne : A land of indie games & clever controllers: GDC post-mortem

    Yahoo’s Quest for Open : Inconceivable



    "



    Yahoo just sent us a set of press materials talking up the buzzword of the moment - Openness. In fact, the press materials were pretty short; they were only around ten paragraphs or so. They used the word (or a derivative of the word) ‘open’ in it close to forty times, though.


    yahoo-open.jpgThe information they sent on our way essentially covered two topics - the upcoming release of the new Yahoo! Buzz (which we snuck some screenshots of earlier today). The other is a new revision to Yahoo! Search that uses behavioral tracking to change the results of your search screens in much the same way that Collarity tailors their site searches for better results.


    Don’t get me wrong - both of these new offerings from Yahoo have the potential to be very cool. The new Yahoo Buzz looks like it implements the best of several worlds as a virtual mash-up of Google News, Techmeme and Digg. Similarly, if the new Yahoo search works anything like the demonstrations of Collarity’s Behavioral Relevance Engines I’ve seen, Yahoo could be buying their ticket back into the search game.


    Here’s the deal, though: neither product has much of anything to do with ‘open,’ and I can’t say I appreciate the framing of it as such. Open with relation to search (especially when you’re talking about a system that does behavioral tracking) would be ownership, or at least exportability of my attention data from which the tracking algorithm derives its judgments of me.


    Similarly, the new Yahoo! Buzz isn’t so much of an open system as it is at its core, a memetracker. Memetrackers by their very nature are sucking in user generated content and usually bits of mainstream press as well. That my blog may end up within their Buzz Index doesn’t make it open - just accurate. Open is a concept that really doesn’t much apply to the concept, unless they want me to be able to export, again, my profile and attention data to other social networks or to source XML code.


    Here’s a free tip, Yahoo: you’re starting to do some cool and highly relevant things again. Don’t muck it up by using all the wrong lingo and buzzwords in your salesmanship of your cool and relevant things.


    ShareThis







    "

    Voir en ligne : Yahoo’s Quest for Open: Inconceivable

    Slideshow : Orson Scott Card Builds an Empire



    "Wired's video team presents footage from the Cougar Ace, a cargo ship full of Mazdas that listed in the ocean off Alaska.




    "

    Voir en ligne : Slideshow: Orson Scott Card Builds an Empire

    With Online Collaborative Novel "Shadow Unit," Can Fanfic Cross Over ? [Shadow Unit]



    "

    shadowunit1.JPG Elizabeth Bear, author of awesome scifi novel Carnival along with many others, writes in to tell us about an interesting new online project she's involved with. It's called Shadow Unit, and it's basically an effort to turn the tradition of group-written fanfiction into something more literary than gushing over Harry Potter's pink cheeks. With fanfiction fast becoming an accepted way to break into the book biz, and somebody like Bear on board, we're definitely paying attention. Shadow Unit was created by Emma Bull, who has taught at prestigious scifi writers workshop Clarion West, with help from Will Shetterly, Sarah Monette, and Amanda Downum. Here's what Bear had to say about it.



    Essentially, what Shadow Unit is, is a virtual serial drama--sort of a TV show without the actors or directors or Hollywood, for that matter. If you're familiar with the fanfiction concept of a virtual season, it won't seem that unfamiliar.

    In addition to the site content (we plan to do eight novella-or-novel-length episodes a season, and Season 1 just started), there are also "DVD extras" (vignettes, goodies, artwork, cut scenes, clever bits of meta (a few pages from a crumpled shooting script that might have been used by one of the actors for this show that doesn't exist, for example)--and several of the characters have a web presence. Which is to say, in-character blogs that don't break the fourth wall.



    It's all quite experimental.

    OK, here's some good lunchtime reading for tomorrow!

    Shadow Unit [official site]




    "

    Voir en ligne : With Online Collaborative Novel "Shadow Unit," Can Fanfic Cross Over? [Shadow Unit]

    Pew report on the demographics of the old net hands



    "The latest report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project is called "A Portrait of Early Adopters: Why People First Went Online --and Why They Stayed":


    Our canvassing of longtime internet users shows that the things that first brought them online are still going strong on the internet today. Then, it was bulletin boards; now, it's social networking sites. Then, it was the adventure of exploring the new cyberworld; now, it's upgrading to broadband and wireless connections to explore even more aggressively. Yet there are changes in their activities and motives. In the early days, most internet users consumed material from websites. These days they are just as likely to produce material. One common refrain is that they think more change lies ahead and they are eager to watch and participate...


    Tastes and technologies do change. Most of those in our respondent pool said that in their early
    days on the internet they acted largely as individuals and consumers. That is, they used search
    engines; got news; played games; conducted research; downloaded software and emailed
    friends, family and colleagues. Many of these activities consisted of serial connections -- people
    querying systems, communicating privately with other individuals or with highly-defined
    communities. It would take a couple of years (and the addition of new tools) before people in this
    group engaged in creative and community processes. Once they had easier-to-use online tools,
    faster connections, and more familiarity with the online environment, they say they began to
    create and share photos, pieces of writing, videos and audio files. They also began rating
    products and tagging content.



    Link







    "

    Voir en ligne : Pew report on the demographics of the old net hands

    In First-Ever Online Primary, Obama Wins the Expatriate Vote



    "Even a scientist working in a location as remote as Antarctica logged in online to cast a vote for Democrat Barack Obama, who won the global primary Thursday.






    "

    Voir en ligne : In First-Ever Online Primary, Obama Wins the Expatriate Vote

    SF Skyline of the Tomorrow Will Be a Massive Chinese Kitchen [Reimagining]



    "

    Zhan%20Wang%20SF%20Cityscape.jpg From now through late May, San Francisco's Asian Art Museum is featuring the work of Zhan Wang, a contemporary sculptor/artist who uses shiny metals to reinvent traditional Chinese art. He's also the master of using kitchen utensils, pots, pans, and other mirrored silverware to create giant cityscapes. So far, he's done everywhere from London to Beijing to Buffalo in stainless steel. Pictured here is a metallified San Francisco that he made just for the current exhibit. Asian Art Museum main page




    "

    Voir en ligne : SF Skyline of the Tomorrow Will Be a Massive Chinese Kitchen [Reimagining]

    Advanced Technology

    EVE Online Economist : Scarcity Is The Basis Of Fun



    "

    Dreyjogpreview
    SAN FRANCISCO -- The key to MMO economics, and the basic elements of fun gameplay boils down to the idea of resource scarcity causing necessary conflict, according to EVE Online's in-house Economist, Dr. Eyjólfur "Eyjo" Guðmundsson.

    As Edward Castronova wrote in his book Synthetic Worlds, "the very process of making choices under scarcity is enjoyable."



    Guðmundsson echoes his sentiment by pointing out that if every item, level or achievement in a game is acquired with no labor (or the use of player resources), these games lose the conflict necessary to drive a story, an economy or a fun gameplay experience.

    Moreso than any other proposed idea of what makes games fun that I've been exposed to this week, I fully agree with the good doctor.



    I won't paint myself into a corner by saying the free-to-play online game model is akin to the Internet bubble burst at the beginning of this century, but I think Dr. Guðmundsson has encapsulated my greatest concerns over this new trend.



    Much like a novel or play, the key component to any story telling -- which is the predecessor of everything seen in gaming -- is that crucial conflict, and the most simple way for game creators to control this aspect is through creating scarcity of resources (whether that is money, time or in-game items).



    This is also my greatest fear regarding the growth of virtual item sales.



    Then again, maybe this is a vast oversimplification. Feel free to swear at me in the comments.







    "

    Voir en ligne : EVE Online Economist: Scarcity Is The Basis Of Fun

    Insane Soccer Ad



    "





    (YouTube link)


    I’m impressed. -via mental_floss"

    Voir en ligne : Insane Soccer Ad

    The future of 3d gaming ?



    "




    Johnny Lee, a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon, appears to have invented one of the most promising home virtual reality displays I’ve ever seen. To do so, he attached the standard Wii sensor bar to a pair of glasses and put the Wii remote on the TV (essentially reversing the typical usage).


    The effect is surprisingly convincing - click play, or visit YouTube to watch Johnny demonstrate his Wii-based VR system. If you want to skip all the setup, the 3d head tracking starts at 2:45 into the clip. via zdnet


    To see some other great projects from Johnny Lee, including more using the Wii, check out his CMU Projects Page.

    "

    Voir en ligne : The future of 3d gaming?

    "Emo-’Nique" - Fri, 22 Feb 2008

    Michel Gondry swedes the trailer to his own movie



    "

    Michel Gondry swedes the trailer to his own movie"

    Voir en ligne : Michel Gondry swedes the trailer to his own movie

    Mozilla's 10th anniversary in Brussels



    "

    Part of the Mozilla crowd jumping in joy. Notice the flying Red Panda!




    I'm a bit late blogging about this as we were having a developer meeting this weekend, but Mozillazine.org has the scoop: On February 23rd, 1998, Netscape announced Mozilla.org. Around a hundred Mozilla contributors gathered in Brussels to celebrate the event[1].




    I vividly remember this period of my life. I remember trying to explain to journalists what Open Source (or Free Software) meant in terms of software development, what kind of impact it would have on the industry, and why Netscape, facing competition from Microsoft, would only be able to survive by changing the rules of the game. At the time, people could get the notion of "free as in beer" part, but really could not get the code-sharing and collaboration part. Things have changed since then (one could argue that in many cases, people still don't get it today, but we have to recognize that the industry has changed its approach in ways that are amazing).




    10 years is a good time to step back and think about what Mozilla has done over time to improve the state of the Web and the state of Open Source.




    In terms of the state of the Web, Mozilla, with Firefox, has made a huge contribution. Let's remember the situation of say, 2002. Security issues, pop-ups, malware attacks were commonplace back then, so many ordinary users gave up on the Web, because it was too unpleasant and risky for them. But the worst for me was that everybody was creating content for Internet Explorer 6, because it was the dominant browser (more than 90% market share, thanks to the very efficient but illegal Windows bundling that put IE on everyone's desktop). At the same time, Internet Explorer was not being developed anymore. The Web was being built on a dead browser! On top of this, because Microsoft was not innovating on the browser space at all, this was preventing a lot of innovation to happen on the Internet. I can safely say that all of us at Mozilla take Internet and the Web seriously. It's a wonderful promise to mankind, and I think it is similar in importance to the invention of the printing press. As Mitchell Baker recently told me, "Mozilla was built on hope", the hope that we can bring back innovation to the client side of the Web by providing a free and open-source easy to use browser.




    Let's fast-forward to 2008. Firefox has achieved 500 million downloads[2], 28% of market share in Europe, and 150 million users (and counting), and version 3, our best and most promising release so far, is going to ship soon. Innovation is happening again for the end-user (think about our awesomebar, the site-security information, the site-specific preferences) and the Web developer (Off-line support, canvas, cross-site XMLHttpRequest, JavaScript 1.8, etc.) Millions of people now understand that what a browser is, why it's important to have choice, and have taken the time to install and use a better browser.




    In terms of the state of Open-Source, things have improved a lot too. More people now understand what this means (a lot of work remains to be done, though), and what's more important is that Mozilla has proven that it's possible to harness the collective intelligence of thousands of volunteers around the world and build a very easy-to-use, extensible and secure product. Everywhere I go and talk about the way we are organized, people want me to do similar talks inside their company, which shows that we're ahead of the game in terms of Open-Source innovation and marketing.




    And now, where is Mozilla going? One thing is sure: we at Mozilla want to be here for the long term, to make sure that Internet users keep having choice and enjoy continuous innovation. This means improving Firefox on the desktop (and believe me, I've seen nightly builds of Firefox 3, and they're blazingly fast!). But this also means providing a version of Firefox for mobile phones. I'm looking forward to helping Mozilla succeed in this. It's been 10 fantastic years. I'll make sure the upcoming 10 years are going to be even better and more exciting. And it's not just me, but all of the Mozilla community, who are committing to this...


    Notes


    [1] We actually gathered like every year for 2 days of technical talks and took advantage of the date coincidence to party even harder than usual while extending the collective knowledge of Belgian beer by sampling local products with a level of dedication and scientific measurement that only engineers can demonstrate ;-)


    [2] with 500'000 additional downloads per day...

    "

    Voir en ligne : Mozilla's 10th anniversary in Brussels

    Pourquoi je veux (à nouveau) quitter Rue89



    "

    Rue89 est une belle réussite Internet. Une réussite fonctionnelle, technique, ergonomique et graphique. Une réussite marketing aussi. Dans quelques semaines, un tour de table sera organisé et devrait valoriser la société près de 3 millions d'euros. Et pourtant, il y a comme un malaise... L'idée fondatrice du projet, "l'Info à trois voix" (la voix des experts, des internautes et des journalistes) n'est aujourd'hui qu'une caution, un slogan vide de sens.


    Fin 2006 mes camarades de Rue89 et moi faisions le même constat : le journalisme était en crise. Les blogs commençaient à devenir une alternative aux journaux traditionnels. La blogosphère allait tôt ou tard devenir plus influente que les grands medias. Depuis trop longtemps l'édito avait remplacé l'info. Il fallait donc revenir à des fondamentaux et le journaliste devait se limiter à ce qu'il est censé le mieux faire : trouver, vérifier et rendre l'information de la façon la plus claire et la plus neutre possible. Nous voulions mettre les blogueurs et les internautes au coeur du projet. Le rôle de la rédaction était de privilégier les témoignages, de s'assurer que les faits et seuls les faits seraient rendus, de bannir le dogmatisme et d'animer le débat entre internautes. Le travail des journalistes devait se limiter à sélectionner les meilleurs contenus émanants d'experts, d'amateurs (souvent de blogueurs) et d'internautes pour fabriquer un journal d'un nouveau genre. En somme un projet d'interêt public.



    Depuis le lancement de Rue89, j'ai exprimé à plusieurs reprises et en privé des divergences sur l'évolution de la ligne éditoriale et de la stratégie du site. Il m'a semblé dès le début que mes camarades journalistes tombaient dans les anciens pièges, cédaient à leurs vieux réflexes. Dès la semaine qui a suivi le lancement du site je leur faisais part de mon étonnement de voir Rue89 se transformer en un journal d'opposition constitué presque exclusivement d'articles ou d'éditos émanants de la rédaction ou d'amis de la rédaction, souvent journalistes. La logique de castes perdurait, seul un détail changeait sur la forme : l'édito devenait billet de blog...  Tous les jours depuis des mois je me désole de voir disparaitre les contributions de non journalistes sur le site. Je m'amuse souvent à compter le nombre de papiers qui n'émanent pas de la rédaction ou du sérail journalistique. Hier (le 19 février) par exemple, sur la quinzaine d'articles en "une", un seul était issu d'un non professionnel de l'information. Le site en est arrivé jusqu'à faire la promotion des "blogs" de la rédaction.


    Pourquoi ce coup de gueule? Parce que je suis en colère de le répéter à mes camarades sans qu'ils n'entendent la critique. Critique qui leur vient d'un non-journaliste. Critique d'un lecteur qui ne reconnait plus le projet qu'on lui a présenté au départ et qui était censé révolutionner l'information. Critique d'un actionnaire qui ne voit pas comment un site qui a fini par être aussi marqué politiquement alors qu'il se voulait un lieu de débat libre, constructif, intelligent, un espace ouvert, pourra un jour prétendre être un média reconnu pour son indépendance. Et enfin critique d'un cofondateur qui voit cette idée originale de "l'Info à trois voix" (la voix des experts, des internautes et des journalistes) n'être aujourd'hui qu'une caution, un slogan vide de sens.


    Au lendemain de mon départ du projet nous avions déjà eu un différend à propos d'un billet publié sur http://lepresse-papiers.rsfblog.org/tag/Lévy-Provençal. J'ai voulu apaiser la polémique interne qui a suivi et ne pas y donner suite en pensant que les choses pourraient s'améliorer. J'ai imaginé que le projet avait dans son ADN une trace qui un jour arriverait à changer la donne, faire tomber les barrières, ramener à sa juste valeur le rôle du journaliste et surtout éliminer le système de castes qui règne depuis trop longtemps dans ce milieu.


    J'ai longtemps rêvé d'un projet qui renouvelle le journalisme sur Internet. J'aurai tant aimé que Rue89 tienne ses promesses et révolutionne réellement l'information. Cela n'a pas été le cas et je suis convaincu aujourd'hui que Rue89 n'y parviendra pas. Pour toutes ces raisons, et parce que j'ai la conviction que ce projet a trahi ses ambitions, je ne souhaite plus être un associé de Rue89.  Je souhaite aussi que le capital issu de la vente de mes actions soit mis à profit d'un nouveau projet réellement d'intérêt public. Un projet auquel je refléchis et qui est ouvert aux participants de bonne volonté.


     

    PS: Ce billet a été rédigé dans la nuit du 19 au 20 février. J'ai pris le soin d'avertir mes associés le 20 février au soir avant sa publication. La réaction de Pierre Haski a été une fois de plus l'incompréhension malgré mes critiques passées. Puis c'est la colère qui a pris le dessus:  "c'est pas des méthodes entre actionnaires, fondateurs de surcroit, et surtout d'un simple point de vue pratique, tu ruines ton investissement au moment ou tu veux vendre tes actions!!" Certes ! Il est clair que si j'avais voulu m'enrichir avec Rue89, je n'aurais jamais agi comme je le fais...

    "

    Voir en ligne : Pourquoi je veux (à nouveau) quitter Rue89

    go



    "

    "Go" from Supercentral. Each audio file contains a collection of separate speakers individually reading "Arthur the Rat". The story was originally created by phoneticians to study and compare regional pronunciations of spoken English. If played simultaneously, the 30 sound files contained in "Go" render "Arthur the Rat" nonsensical. I was unable to ReBlog the piece without compromising its shape, click the above image to hear and see "Go". - Ceci Moss

    "

    Voir en ligne : go

    Phun -2D Physics Sandbox



    "





    (YouTube link)


    Phun is fun! Phun was created as a MSc project by Emil Ernerfeldt (who also created the music) for supervisor Kenneth Bodin, HPC2N/VRlab, Umeå University, Sweden. The program is free to download. Link -via Viral Video Chart"

    Voir en ligne : Phun -2D Physics Sandbox

    TV Ads Losing Their Effectiveness



    "

    A majority of marketers believe that television advertising has become less effective in the past two years, according to a new survey from the National Association of Advertisers and Forrester Research.



    Over 50 percent of marketers reported that when half of all television households use DVRs, they would cut spending on TV advertising by 12 percent. Current DVR penetration is estimated to be nearly 25 percent.



    At the same time they also seem to be somewhat happier with the performance of their media agencies in dealing with all the changes occurring across the media landscape. Still, 28 percent of respondents reported that their media agency is ill-equipped to address the changes in TV advertising, compared to 47 percent two years ago.



    Keep Reading






    "

    Voir en ligne : TV Ads Losing Their Effectiveness

    George Clooney : Hollywood Heartthrob Comes Over For Dinner



    "

    Time hits newsstands tomorrow with a George Clooney cover, "The Last Movie Star." Reporter Joel Stein mixed things up and asked Clooney to his house for dinner, and Clooney actually came. There is a lengthy interview/profile and a hysterical video of the evening on Time's website (footage includes Clooney inspecting the living room, Clooney in Stein's crawlspace). Clooney is up for the Best Actor Oscar this Sunday night for "Michael Clayton."



    Some highlights:

    Clooney also preempts situations that might earn him ridicule later. So he has either turned down every gift bag he's been offered or has put them up on eBay for charity. "I've been smart about that. Rich famous people getting free s___ looks bad. You look greedy. And I don't need a cell phone with sparkles on it," he says.




    "I know what pisses people off about fame," Clooney says. "It's when famous people whine about it."





    "After Syriana and Good Night, and Good Luck I was offered the Richard Clarke book and every issues movie," Clooney says. "I didn't want to be the issues guy because if the issues change, you're done. The Facts of Life is a good example. If you're a young heartthrob--which I never caught on as--those fans not only abandon you, but they're embarrassed to have liked you. It's the same thing with issues movies. I want to just be a director."





    Clooney wasn't able to get into Darfur until late January, when the U.N. said it would give him an official title. "I have a U.N. passport. It says 'Messenger of Peace' on it. It's very cool," he says.




    Read the whole thing, and be sure to watch the video.






    "

    Voir en ligne : George Clooney: Hollywood Heartthrob Comes Over For Dinner

    iPhone, Illimythics, Ten, Neo : l’illimité en détail



    "Retrouvez toutes les offres illimitées en détail dans un comparatif des différents forfaits : iPhone chez Orange, Illimythics chez SFR, l'abonnement de Ten, MNVO de Orange, et le Neo de Bouygues [Lire la suite]"

    Voir en ligne : iPhone, Illimythics, Ten, Neo : l'illimité en détail

    Bookscan revisited



    "

    Tomine New Yorker

    We’ve been trying to collect our thoughts on Brian Hibbs 2007 Bookscan analysis all week but what with catching up on 500+ emails, work, laundry, getting engaged and all, we have had a hard time finding a moment’s peace.


    Anyhoo, the thing to remember about all this — esp. the Brian-vs-Dirk argument — is that everyone has their own horse in this race. Hibbs’ is that the Direct Market is a more efficient market for comics than bookstores. Dirk’s is that anything that isn’t manga or indie sucks and is stupid and doomed to failure and that anyone who attempts to look at such material without this bias is a dingbat. And us? Well, it’s probably that books with wide appeal will sell more but that everyone’s definition of “wide appeal” will differ.


    We honestly can’t get our brains working enough to go through all the numbers and statistics and so on, so we’ll just point out some of our own observations, based on our knowledge of the book biz and the occasional leaked Bookscan numbers we get to see.


    First of all, by any reasonable measure, the bookstore market for graphic novels is still growing! We’ll use one simplistic snapshot:


    The 50th ranked title in 2006 sold 25,527 copies.


    The 50th ranked title in 2007 sold 33,496 copies.


    The #100 title in 2006 sold 18,060.


    The #100 title in 2007 sold 19, 934.


    Of course there could be lower numbers at the bottom offsetting gains at the top, but I’m inclined to go with Milton Griepp’s analysis of trends. The rate of growth may have slowed, but it is still growing.


    One area of contention between Brian and Dirk is whether these numbers can even be begun to be taken seriously because Bookscan does not represent 100% of book sales. Dirk seems to think they are all hoodoo voodoo because they represent 65% of the market instead of 70-75%. That’s not an insignificant difference, but it’s not hoodoo voodoo, either. Bookscan measures sales at the checkout stand. These are actual books that CONSUMERS purchased. That the numbers often don’t match up with what publishers say sold is because those higher figures measure what bookstores ordered. These books “in print’ may hang around on shelves for a long time, get remaindered or returned.


    A lot of people have said that comparing Bookscan bookstore numbers and Diamond GN charts is an “apples and oranges” comparison, but as someone smarter than me said, it’s could actually be “apples and apples.” Both measure guaranteed sales to the end user of the system. The end user of the bookstore channel is the reader. The end user of the Diamond system is the retailer. Until comics shop adapt POS systems in greater number, there is no reliable “sell through” number for the Direct Market.


    ASIDE: Some people suggest that Bookscan doesn’t include any comics shops among its reporting stores, but my understanding is that there are a few — indie bookstores in general are under-represented in Bookscan. But to play the game YOU MUST HAVE A POS SYSTEM!


    The big joker in the deck is actually library sales which Bookscan does not measure. There are an estimated 117378 or so libraries of all kinds in the US. There are more than 9000 central libraries. That’s more outlets than bookstores OR comics shops. We’re told that, for instance, although Minx sold more books in the DM than bookstores, when you add in library sales, the “bookstore” (ie. stores and libraries) market is far larger.


    The reality is that the Kat Kans and Michelle Gormans of the world are just as important as the Brian Hibbses and Chris Powells to the comics industry.


    Since I’m incapable of statistical analysis, I’ll add that you can argue Hibbs’ methodology but by leaking the numbers he has he’s given a valuable tool for those who know how to look at the metrics. 5000 books sold on Bookscan doesn’t sound that great, but it means that there are at least twice that in print, and for your average GN that’s in the neighborhood of break even.


    That said, there are some pretty horrible numbers out there. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: the bookstore market for graphic novels is pretty much like the market for books with no pictures. Name authors sell books: Moore, Gaiman, Vaughan, Loeb. Adrian Tomine’s 5001 for Shortcomings may seem paltry for a book that has gotten as much press as it has, but it’s about in line with what novels by prose critical darlings sell, according to Bookscan. The metrics of bestselling books are not that high. Sure Nora Roberts and The Secret sell hundreds of thousands of copies, but there are some 172,000 books published in the US each year, and most struggle to sell a few hundred copies.


    All that said, it is sobering to see the low numbers on certain books. Hibbs takes this as a repudiation of indie books, while Dirk just sticks his fingers in his ears and goes “la la la!” The truth is that challenging material in any medium will always sell in lesser numbers. The odd breakout, like FUN HOME, proves that a story with REAL resonance to many readers can find its own audience.


    I was going to spend more time picking on Dirk here, but it is really useless since he has his mind made up. I’ll take one key example.




    Since Hibbs provides exactly zero evidence for his assertion,



    BZZZZZZT, no, Hibbs said that only Shortcomings of any “indie comics” title, sold more than 4400 books on Bookscan last year. That’s plenty of evidence right there. Since Dirk cannot input any data that goes against his programming, he goes on to refute the idea that idie comics don’t sell like this:



    it’s pretty much pointless to attempt to refute it. Instead, let’s go in the other direction, and assume that both Hibbs and Reynolds are right: Art comics don’t sell in bookstores, and most sell only a quarter of that in comic-book shops. (What exactly does one-forth of nothing look like, I wonder?) Questions then arise: How are companies like Drawn & Quarterly and Fantagraphics managing to afford all those pricey hardcovers that they’ve been releasing lately? And where do they go? Do Chris Oliveros, Brett Warnock, Kim Thompson and Dan Nadel all get together in some hidden forest somewhere, back dumptrucks into a big bonfire and burn copies of Storeyville and Acme Novelty Datebook while they dance around laughing? How long before the credit-card companies and investment bankers who are probably supplying the money for all of this get wise?



    As usual, snark is supplied where an actual grasp of facts — library sales, sell-in, a lower-than suspected margin for break even etc. — would suffice. This is why I take very little of what Dirk says about the book market seriously.


    In closing, and to back up my own little hobby horse, I’m going to list the top selling non-manga GNs of 2007 in the top 100 sellers.



    Frank Miller’s 300

    WATCHMEN

    MARVEL ENCYCLOPEDIA

    BONE ROCK JAW

    BONE OUT FROM BONEVILLE

    BONE OLD MANS CAVE

    BONE THE GREAT COW RACE

    BONE DRAGONSLAYER

    BONE EYES OF THE STORM

    DARK TOWER THE GUNSLINGER BORN

    CIVIL WAR

    ANITA BLAKE VAMPIRE HUNTER V1

    CIVIL WAR ROAD TO CIVIL WAR

    PERSEPOLIS: THE STORY OF A CHI

    MAUS: A SURVIVOR’S TALE

    HEROES



    Obviously this list is made up of about half genre and half timeless classic. That’s what most bestseller lists reflect. From where I sit, it’s about right on plan.


    (Above: Tomine’s cover to this week’s New Yorker, a comic strip charting the life cycle of the book. Since it’s my sub copy, I had to black out my address label — apologies for disrupting Tomine’s composition. UPDATE: Thanks, Adrian! )

    "

    Voir en ligne : Bookscan revisited

    Google argues against calling IP addresses "personal data"



    "

    Google is trying to head off a European proposal to treat IP addresses as personal information. In most cases, it's simply not, says the search giant.

    Read More...




    "

    Voir en ligne : Google argues against calling IP addresses "personal data"

    I Love Bees Designer : 'Games Are the Ultimate Happiness Engine'



    "

    Janemcgonigal
    "Reality is broken," and the task of fixing it falls squarely to game developers, according to Jane McGonigal, an academic and game designer most famous for her work on the I Love Bees Halo promotion.



    McGonigal believes that games, after three decades of engaging people on wildly different levels, offer the solution: combine the immediate gratification of games with the drudgery of reality and reality suddenly sucks a lot less.



    The end goal of this scenario she has created is to have games exist in almost every facet of reality, from playing with your dog to running down the block.

    While the example of MMO components being added to everything one does is presumably an oversimplified example to illustrate her point, the idea of tying games to everything is simultaneously so simple and could be so ridiculously successful, that I'd be surprised if it wasn't a near term eventuality.







    "

    Voir en ligne : I Love Bees Designer: 'Games Are the Ultimate Happiness Engine'

    Is Clinton's "Moment" Being Overplayed By Press ?



    "

    It has become the seminal moment of last night's debate.



    Depending on your political vantage point, Sen. Hillary Clinton either resurrected her campaign, ripped a line off of John Edwards, or offered her valedictory address to voters when she declared: "Whatever happens, we're going to be fine. I just hope that we'll be able to say the same thing about the American people, and that's what this election should be about."



    The Clinton camp trumpeted the quote as "the moment she retook the reins of this race," and her words have received the preponderance of press attention from last night's debate.



    Oftentimes, the write-ups read as if she received the night's lone standing ovation.



    "And at the right time... at the end... earning one of the only standing ovations in the 40-plus hours of debates," wrote Marc Ambinder.



    "When she finished," wrote Newsday, "the audience gave her a standing ovation that took many, including Obama, by surprise."



    "Was it a pivotal moment that could change the campaign, or the swan song of a candidate who may be nearing the end of her U.S. presidential bid?" reads the Reuters analysis. "Hillary Clinton's concluding statement in a televised debate on Thursday drew a standing ovation from the audience and plaudits from analysts."



    But the response to the senator's remarks, which came at the conclusion of the debate, may be getting exaggerated attention. "There were standing ovations in and out of almost every break," a CNN debate producer told The Huffington Post. A review of debate video tape confirms this.



    The producer noted the standing applause wasn't the result of applause lights or crowd-warmers. "It was spontaneous," he said, remarking that the crowd was more enthusiastic than any he'd seen at previous debates.



    In any case, all the attention was enough to make the Obama campaign jealous. The next morning an email was sent out to reporters offering a "moment" of their own.



    "In our view, the moment that most clearly demonstrated the difficulty Hillary Clinton would have drawing a clear contrast with John McCain in a general election was when she, quizzically, attacked him for supporting the war in Iraq," the email read. "Clinton also voted for the war."






    "

    Voir en ligne : Is Clinton's "Moment" Being Overplayed By Press?

    Michael Moore : Insurance Industry Would Love Hillary's Healthcare Plan



    "

    en. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-N.Y.) proposal to mandate that all people purchase health insurance would be a boon to the industry, filmmaker Michael Moore said Friday. "Can you imagine, every time Sen. Clinton says that, the licking of the lips that goes on with these health insurance executives?" Moore said during a conference call with reporters.



    Moore, director of the Academy Award-nominated documentary "SiCKO" about the U.S. healthcare system, criticized both Clinton and her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), for failing to support a universal system of government-financed health coverage during their runs for the White House. "The two Democratic candidates don't quite get it," he said.






    "

    Voir en ligne : Michael Moore: Insurance Industry Would Love Hillary's Healthcare Plan

    More On The UADA—Funny Money For a “Virtual” Facebook App Roll-Up Company



    "

    uada-logo-2.pngThere is a lot of funny money on Facebook, but it is getting really bad. Startups are trying to raise money based on virtual valuations. Earlier this week, I wrote about a fishy Facebook organization in the making called the UADA. It is listed on Facebook-stat site Adonomics as the biggest Facebook app company, even though it doesn’t seem to exist yet. Altura Ventures, a Facebook-focused VC firm which owns and operates Adonomics, is also behind the UADA and is conveniently using Adonomics to promote the mystery company before its launch on February 29.


    But the UADA isn’t even funded yet. It turns out that Altura is trying to raise a seed round of $250,000 for the UADA, and another $250,000 for Adonomics, which will be spun off from its parent company, KallOut. (Stay with me, Altura and KallOut are two entities that are joined at the hip). From a letter to prospective investors (which I’ve printed in full in comments), the UADA is described as a “virtual roll-up of the facebook developers’ ad real estate that will likely represent 200 to 400 million installs, 40 to 50 million unique and 6 to 10 million daily active users.”


    Notice the term “virtual roll-up.” A real roll-up would be a company aiming to buy up the best Facebook apps. That would actually make sense since there are more than 16,000 Facebook apps and consolidation is inevitable. But the UADA is not actually buying anything. Instead, it is trying to sign up Facebook app developers to its “cooperative” which will cross-promote their applications and run advertising across the network of apps. The reason this is only a”virtual” roll-up is because the UADA will only collect 20 percent of any revenues generated across the network. So it is really just a marketing agreement.


    Lee Lorenzen, the CEO of Altura Ventures and interim CEO of the UADA, has bigger dreams. And they are dreams. The guy has not even raised his $250,000 seed round yet, and he is already counting on closing a $3 to $6 million series A round by May 24. Not only that, he’s also got his IPO all planned out, at which point all the developers who sign up for the UADA will miraculously agree to reverse the revenue split 80/20 in the UADA’s favor in return for cash and stock. Sounds good, except that the letter to potential investors makes clear that no “definitive agreements with TheUADA members” have even been signed.


    Here’s the part I love. Lorenzen is apparently clairvoyant:


    This company will be profitable from day one based on its 20% share of ad revenue on 1 to 5 billion page views per month under management. . . . Upon IPO, this company will have $30+ million in revenue and $20+ million in earnings and long term rights to all the ad real estate of the majority of top apps on Facebook. From this platform, TheUADA will buy or build a suite of category killer apps (e.g., dating, gifting, shopping, calendar, etc.) for the mainstream social operating system (this is equivalent to the position the Microsoft Office Suite enjoys on Windows).


    This is the next Microsoft, folks! And you can own one percent of it now for only $25,000!


    Oh, and did I forget to mention that the $500,000 Lorenzen is hoping to raise for both the UADA and Adonomics will go towards “transferring some of KallOut’s IP into these businesses to fund KallOut’s operations.” That’s right, KallOut’s operations, not the UADA’s or Adonomics. So how will the UADA function? Lorenzen and KallOut employees will provide “engineering and management services” to both the UADA and Adonomics for a mere $100,000 a month (this is on top of the $500,000). Talk about cashing out the shareholders before you’ve actually done anything.


    If you receive this invitation in your Facebook inbox to invest in the UADA, my advice to you is to just delete it and unfriend whoever sent it to you.


    Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.





    "

    Voir en ligne : More On The UADA—Funny Money For a “Virtual” Facebook App Roll-Up Company

    Organizing online workers through a new consumer movement



    "


    Last weekend's blog post on the eBay sellers boycott generated some very interesting comments, and I want to follow up with some more thoughts on organizing online workers.


    As background, I've been arguing for a few months now that labor unions should do more to organize online workers.  The argument goes that folks whose primary income is derived from activities as diverse as blogging, eBay auctioneering, Second Life merchandising, and so forth, compose a new industry segment which is already quite large and will grow in the future.  Furthermore, despite the fact that these individuals are hard to organize due to the nature of online work, their livelihood is essentially at the mercy of a small group of executives at web companies like eBay and Linden Labs.  Therefore, they comprise a group who have important collective needs, and who would benefit tremendously from workplace organizing.


    While I still think most of this argument holds up, I'm less and less certain that a traditional labor union is the best vehicle for organizing online workers, for a variety of reasons.  The primary reason is that online workers are not actually employees of the companies whose services they are working with; they are consumers of those services.  Thus, the eBay sellers "strike" is not a strike at all, but a boycott.  The more I think about this round peg/square hole problem, the more I believe that the solution is to just build a round hole.  In other words, alongside a thriving labor movement, we need a powerful and well-organized consumer movement.  Follow me across the flip for more, and tune in tomorrow for some practical follow-up.



    The problem of organizing online workers is, in a sense, just a special case of the problem of organizing consumers generally.  Consumers are notoriously hard to organize, since in many cases, they don't know one another.  Whereas workers at a factory or an office see each other every day and have multiple chances to get to know one another, consumers of a single business generally don't, and indeed, many prefer it that way.  Consequently, the consumer movement tends to be far less organized than the labor movement.  Consumer groups tend to form in an ad hoc way around a specific issue, make some noise about that issue, and perhaps win a couple of victories before flaming out.  While occasionally consumer groups become institutionalized, even regularly lobbying government around a key set of pet wonky issues and scoring a few important victories, they rarely make much noise on the electoral scene or gather significant and long-lasting commitments from their "base", as labor unions regularly do.


    In fact, the differences in organizational power between the labor and consumer movements can be traced back to the legal rights afforded the one but not the other.  Whereas workers have the right, under the National Labor Relations Act, to organize and force their employer to negotiate a contract with them collectively, consumers have no legal right to force the businesses they patronize to bargain with them collectively.


    Nevertheless, consumer culture is becoming an increasingly important part of daily life.  The extreme form of this trend, perhaps, is found among online workers, who derive their livelihood by consuming online services.  But there are no shortage of consumers who, while they don't make a living as consumers, nevertheless derive a substantial part of their identity from being Starbucks snobs, Harley drivers, and everything in between.  Dozens of books have been written about consumer culture and brand identity, including Juliet Schor's The Overspent American and Naomi Klein's No Logo.


    I think the growing prominence of the Internet in daily life, and particularly the dominance of a few huge brands, like Google, Facebook and eBay, in many peoples' online experience, calls for the development of a more active and energized consumer movement.  The Internet has created a long tail of consuming relationships into our lives.  In a single day, I could conceivably spend a great deal of my online time at Google, Yahoo, and Bloglines, a moderate amount of time on Facebook, much less time at Powells, and an infinitesimal amount of time at places like the local coffee shop's website.  As we add up the patterns over time and across a wide swath of web users, we end up with what's bound to be a very, very long tail of online consuming relationships.  From the individual's point of view, we end up creating more accounts, and checking off more license agreements, than we can possibly remember.


    More than that, the Internet gives us tools to organize ourselves as consumers in ways which were unimaginable a few years ago.  These tools run the gamut from the consumer's blog, which allows consumers of a single brand to find each other, and to the corporate MySpace or Facebook page, which allows consumers to talk back, publicly, to the company whose products they rely on.  Conceivably, we could even include the tools of open source software development in this list - after all, these tools allow software consumers to fight back against the policies of closed-source corporate software developers by directly competing with them.


    On the whole, what we have are the ingredients for a more energetic and systematic consumer movement.  I think we now have an historic opportunity for consumers to band together in order to sway corporate policy on a regular basis.  Indeed, events like the eBay sellers boycott and the Facebook Mini-Feed and Beacon revolts could be seen as the early harbingers of a new consumers movement, or as a natural continuation of the open source revolt of the 1990's.


    This kind of consumer movement will require the creation and development of a series of well-organized consumer membership associations, capable of representing consumers of companies ranging from Nike to eBay.  Such associations would make it their business to maintain a regularly-updated list of consumers of a given brand or product; to build community amongst their members; to notify their members of corporate policy changes; to organize boycotts, to informally negotiate with cooperative corporate executives, and so forth.  The funds for these associations would probably be derived from dues, meaning both that the associations would have to produce some kind of tangible benefit for their members, and also that these associations would necessarily represent only the most enthusiastic consumers of a given brand or product.


    I think the development of this kind of consumer movement would be extremely beneficial to the labor movement, in the long run.  On the one hand, the labor movement could provide organizers and others with experience when the time to boycott or take other actions comes along.  On the other, the consumer movement can assist the labor movement in applying pressure to companies with bad labor practices.  In fact, in some cases the consumer movement can do one better than that.  Since some consumer groups (like a hypothetical eBay Sellers Association) will necessarily include businesses in their membership, those groups can make union-neutral corporate policy a prerequisite of membership, and thereby pave the way for more organizing victories.  Of course, this kind of relationship is bound to have moments of tension - for example, in cases where consumers don't sympathize with striking workers, and don't choose to respect picket lines.


    While I don't think it makes sense for labor unions to be actively involved in creating consumer membership associations from whole cloth - it's just too far afield of their core mission - I think it's absolutely incumbent on the progressive movement as a whole to be involved in germinating and nurturing an active consumer movement which acts in solidarity with the labor movement.  Such an alliance, if properly organized and engaged, could be a powerful counter-balance against the creeping encroachment of corporate policy in our daily lives.


    I'm not, incidentally, totally sure of the legal merit behind these ideas, and I'd welcome feedback from legal experts who know a bit more about things like anti-trust law and interstate commerce regulations.  More than that, I'd be interested to hear what other folks think about the idea of organizing consumers into institutionalized membership groups capable of building community and lobbying corporate executives when necessary.  What do you think?



    Tags: consumer movement, labor movement, online workers (all tags)



    "

    Voir en ligne : Organizing online workers through a new consumer movement

    Facebook’s traffic may be plateauing. So what ? (Caroline McCarthy/Webware.com)



    "

    Caroline McCarthy / Webware.com:

    Facebook's traffic may be plateauing.  So what?  —  There's been a lot of buzz this week about Facebook's traffic leveling off or declining, and naturally, it's been accompanied by schadenfreude over the fact that the hottest start-up in Silicon Valley may soon be losing its laurels.

    "

    Voir en ligne : Facebook's traffic may be plateauing. So what? (Caroline McCarthy/Webware.com)

    Adding Value in a Copyright-Adverse Environment



    "

    Technium LogoThe Technium recently posted a fascinating article about adding value in a copyright-adverse environment. The post is one of the most interesting things I’ve read recently. It should resonate with content creators who work in virtual worlds, and with attorneys advising clients about these spaces too. I will undoubtedly overgeneralize this very deep post by trying to sum it up, but in a nutshell, it argues that there are lots of ways to add value even in an environment where copying is rampant and copyright law isn’t respected (like free-form virtual worlds at the moment, particularly Second Life).


    From the post:


    [S]tart with a simple user question: why would we ever pay for anything that we could get for free? When anyone buys a version of something they could get for free, what are they purchasing?


    From my study of the network economy I see roughly eight categories of intangible value that we buy when we pay for something that could be free.


    In a real sense, these are eight things that are better than free. Eight uncopyable values. I call them “generatives.”


    The author discusses these eight “generatives” in some depth. The article is focused on the internet generally, but I think it is particularly relevant to virtual worlds. I can already see how some of these are popping up in virtual worlds, even in my own shopping experiences. Could I find a cheap knock-off of a suit or prefab office I like in Second Life? Sure, but for three or four of the reasons outlined here, I seek out a “real” one. The article goes some distance toward explaining why, and it is well worth reading.


    I’m not at all convinced that copyright enforcement is a dead end in virtual worlds (in fact, I suspect we will see much more of it over the next five years) but I think that it has to go hand in hand with other tools — like those discussed here — in content creators’ toolboxes as well.



    Posts and comments by VB editors and writers on this site, on other sites, and in virtual worlds are not offered as legal advice and no attorney-client relationship is formed by these interactions. Posts and comments reflect only the opinion of the author, and do not necessarily represent the opinion of VB's editor, other contributors, or sponsors.
    "

    Voir en ligne : Adding Value in a Copyright-Adverse Environment


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