Given what I’ve written about eBay Australia and PayPal recently, is it hypocritical to have added a “donate” button to my website which works through PayPal? I don’t think so. After all, I did say that for small businesses setting up online, PayPal is “often the most cost-effective way to accept credit card payments, and the easiest to set up technically”. And it is. I got that “donate” button set up in 10 minutes. The gripe was about eBay forcing its sellers to use PayPal, which they own. What do you think?
Stilgherrian Live Alpha: a program brief
Decided! The first episode of Stilgherrian Live Alpha will be “recorded live” on the Internet this Thursday 8 May at 9.30pm Sydney time. Oh shit! That’s tomorrow!
I won’t repeat what I’ve already written about my plans [1, 2]. This post presents a Program Brief — so I can clarify my thinking as much as anything else — and gathers a few recent thoughts. I’m intending to make the entire process transparent in the immodest hope that someone might find it useful.
Aims
- Continue my process of moving from doing hands-on technical work to media production, executive production and consulting.
- Build upon the “Stilgherrian as a blogger” brand to establish the core personal media global microbrand of “Stilgherrian as a presenter”, around which I can gather other projects.
- Establish a regular audience who can become the core of my 1000 True Fans.
- Develop and document production workflows so that we can produce similar programs quickly and cheaply.
- Experiment with and settle upon a suite of hardware, software and services which works for me in this context.
See, there is method to my madness!
Social networks: the Nuclear Option
I’d planned to write something else today, but if I don’t mention this article now then I’ll appear way out of touch. Mark Pesce has just posted another magnificent essay: The Nuclear Option.
It’s a commentary on how Twitter and similar tools which help us create instantaneously-connected global social networks are changing the world. Entertainingly written too, as always — and not just because he mentions me.
I won’t quote it. Just read it. Then make a cup of tea, read it again, and stare out of the window for a while.
Music industry internetz FAIL
Ah, the music industry really doesn’t grok teh intenetz. Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI), who coordinated the Australian Music In Tune propaganda flick I mentioned on the weekend, didn’t know their website was offline until phoned them. Meanwhile I’ve written a piece on this for Crikey, to appear a couple hours from now. [Update 1.20pm: It’s being held over until tomorrow. Apparently Crikey found something more important than me.]
Oh you poor, dear record companies…
You’ve got to hand it to “the music industry”. This week they released a propaganda film Australian Music In Tune which asks us to sympathise with musicians because they’re all poor struggling artists. Diddums.
The only reason musicians trying to “make it” are poor is that as soon as they do get that sought-after recording contract they still pay for everything from there on. Before they see a single cent from their music, they have to pay off the studio hire, recording engineer, video director, stylists, set designers, editor and dozens of other parasites — including music company executives with their nice lunches and their BMW leases.
An entire industry — “the music industry” and their retail outlets — sits between the musicians and their audience, sucking out something like 90% of the money in the process.
And they have the gall to rope musicians into their propaganda film under false pretences, telling people like Frenzal Rhomb’s Lindsay McDougall that it was a movie about life as an artist.
He said he was told the 10-minute film, which is being distributed for free to all high schools in Australia, was about trying to survive as an Australian musician and no one mentioned the video would be used as part of an anti-piracy campaign.
OK, so who are the guys in the photo? Jared Madden (left) and Adam Purcell (right) have created tune-out.com in response to the industry crying poor.
The Geekery of Linux on an iPod
I’ve finally found a use for that iPod Photo 60GB that’s been languishing in my desk drawer. I’m going to use it as a field recorder for my podcasts.
The resale value of an iPod that’s bigger than a postage stamp but doesn’t play video is, presumably, three-fifths of bugger all. However it can record sound.
Apple deliberately crippled the iPod’s recording functions to mere 8-bit quality — OK for recording dictation and the like, but not good enough for snarfing surreptitious bootlegs of a Silverchair concert. But running Linux on the iPod unleashes its full 16-bit glory.
After a couple hours’ work I now understand the process of Linuxing a ’Pod. But to get it to work, my MacPod (that is, an iPod formatted for Mac file systems) has to be turned into a WinPod (one using Microsoft’s file systems). I won’t bother explaining why, but it’s yet another example of that old phenomenon…
In general, Macs can read Windows file systems, but Windows machines can’t read Mac file systems. Sigh. I’ll finish it on the weekend.