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Ray Kurzweil - By Sheer Force of Will

Look at Bill Gates’ face. He’s clearly humbled in Ray’s presence… as well he should be.

Ray Kurzweil is one of the great minds of our era - and may make breathroughs that could profoundly change our evolutionary biology. Appartenly a documentary is being made about him, so we’ll all get a better look into Ray’s world.

- Wikipedia
- Documentary Info
- Business Week
- Wired

Obama cares about your data structure

Yet another reason to tilt towards Obama… he’s promising to wrest all governmental data into universally accepted formats. That’s your data people. If all goes well, this could usher in a new era of accountability and clarity.

Jeffrey Veen has a great post about Barak’s talk about it with the kids at Google . The visit was also covered by Wired Magazine.

Thoughts on Total Music

Eh… this feels like a half-baked solution to me.

Why rely so heavily on the hardware manufacturers? Isn’t it better to just fully license on behalf of the consumer through a PRO-like entity that takes payments from the network operators? Seems to me by involving hardware companies we’re inserting unnecessary friction into the process of consuming our licenses/products.

Why not let people listen in the formats and contexts they prefer - regardless of device? Do we really still think of localized on-demand libraries as stolen goods? We need to start thinking of them as unlicensed consumption. Involving the hardware layer for blanket licenses doesn’t address this legacy issue. Will Doug’s new gadget prevent me from playing songs I’ve already downloaded by P2P?

What’s my incentive for acquiring one of these new gadgets anyway, even if paid for by a hardware manufacturer? I already have an iPod - an iPhone in fact. The guy from Apple told me they expect to sell two million by the end of 2008. He was quickly proven wrong - turns out it’s probably going to be closer to four million - perhaps even more. Introducing a new gated piece of hardware is asking for failure. The tide is clearly moving away from such an approach.

As Gerd Leonhard says in his thoughtful and provocative new book, no one is going to make money inserting friction in the music consumption process. While we’re at it, here’s a full on plug for Gerd’s book:

The End of Conrol by Gerd Leonhard.

Listen to the podcast here.

Did You Ever See a VC Cry?

“I’m afraid it will be too late”, intones uber VC John Doerr. He’s referring to correcting course in regards to green technologies and gobal warming. When Doerr speaks you should listen. As one of Silicon Valley’s top venture capitalists, he’s directed the funding of Compaq, Netscape, Symantec, Sun Microsystems, Amazon.com and many others.

He gave a presentation in March at the TED 2007 conference outlining his vision for the so called Green Tech movement. He predicts that the next decade will bring an unprecedented wave of economic boom throughout the world as we fashion new technologies to conserve or eliminate our use of hydro-carbon based energy sources. It will make the dotcom boom seem paltry in comparison. He gave a more detailed overview on The Charlie Rose show last year.

He believes in this idea with all his heart. This has become his life’s crusade. You can get a sense of this when, at the end of his TED talk, he starts crying at the prospect of having to face his daughter in twenty years and explain how we finally started turning things around and saved the world… or explain how we didn’t.

He’s spot on or course. Let’s stop kidding ourselves. We’ve been lead down a path of pernicious complacency by greedy corporations and dim-whitted politicians who have made a concerted effort to deride and negate the evidence so clearly before us. Containing and reducing the production of greenhouse gases will not only preserve our world, it will also save a lot of people lots of money. Doerr focuses on the Walmart example. They’re one of the leaders in this effort. Do you really think Walmart cares about people? Clearly not. But they do care about longevity and their bottom line.

Watch the TED presentation here.
Watch the Charlie Rose interview here.

Internet Radio Royalty Rate - the FAQ

The Wunderkinden over at Digital Music News have posted an excellent (if pedantic) FAQ about the proposed royalty rate changes for streaming Internet radio. It gives you a pretty good idea how very complex this whole issue is. This debate is also a good trial run on how a consumer compulsory licensing scheme might play out in the near future.

Read the FAQ here.

For the record, I am not per se against raising rates across the board - including Public Broadcasting. Music has real value and society ought to pay money to get that value if they choose to consume music. Raising royalty costs will ultimately shift the burden to advertisers, where it belongs. We are about to see an explosion in streaming advertising (so-call “pre and post roll” ad insertion). YouTube will lead the charge on this as they complete their court settlements with major content owners. Once they turn on the advert switch en mass, this sort of ad buy will become as ubiquitous as banner ads and TV commercials. As a lover of music, I would just assume get more money flowing towards licenses now rather than later.

The Public Broadcasting issue is indeed troubling. It does seem like they should catch some sort of break here. In my opinion this break should not come at charging them less than others, but by providing private and public subsidies to counteract the hike. Truth is this sort of Internet streaming model will soon become the primary means by which the Public Broadcasting audience consumes their content- so they need to reconcile their responsibility to bring fresh ideas to the people while empowering the technology to produce dollars to keep musicians economically viable. Note also that the hike only applies to music played via Public Broadcasting - not original spoken-word based content.

Nielsen’s Tweaks: Time Spent Edges Out Visitation and Views

In their continuing pursuit of relevence, Nielsen has re-emphasized a key reporting metric from visits/views to actual user time spent on the site. Advertisers are getting itchy - they want more audience-oriented measurements. This speaks to just how hot online video has become.

Check it the full article here.

Viddler Video Player

Viddler is a relative newcomer to the world of UGC video sharing - but they bring a unique twist. They allow viewers to supply time line based tagging to specific moments in the video content. Among other things it allows the content author to supply meaningful indexing to the time line - a feature long overdue. It also provides a fun way to bring viewers closer into the content.

Example here:

back and forth

I’ve posted a new set of photos up on flickr and Picasa. The set was edited in iPhoto, then uploaded to both services using iPhoto Plug-ins. My hope was to do all naming, sequencing and tagging in iPhoto, then quickly upload via a plugin. But since iPhoto doesn’t seem to support tags, this process is pretty kludgey.

The “description” field in iPhoto winds up being mapped cleanly into the description field in flickr, but not the tags field. Picasa, bizarrly, appended the decription text into the photo title field. So that was a pain to clean up.

There must be a better way. Any ideas?

back and forth - Picasa
back and forth - flickr

Trendwatching - Still Made Here

The Dutch marketing research company Trend Watching, has published their latest briefing titled (STILL) MADE HERE.

“(STILL) MADE HERE encompasses new and enduring manufacturers and purveyors of the local. In a world that is seemingly ruled by globalization, mass production and ‘cheapest of the cheapest’, a growing number of consumers are seeking out the local, and thereby the authentic, the storied, the eco-friendly and the obscure.”

Read it here.

Subscribe to their report here.

Evan O’Dorney

Yesterday’s spelling bee champ is a very special person - and spelling appears to be the least of the reasons why.

I just saw him on The Today Show. He said he had to juggle three or four balls while memorizing the spelling of words. When asked why he responded “Because it gives my hands something to do - otherwise they start picking up things, and I get distracted by the math of every day objects”. Apparently his real gift is towards mathematics and music. Spelling is hack work for him.

“With the math, I really like the way that the numbers fit together. With the music, I get a lot of ideas by composing notes. And with the spelling, it’s just a lot of memorization.”

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=local&id=5357793