Ask A Ninja: Special Delivery 1

And the winner is.... Ask A Ninja for "best series" in the You Tube Video Awards

Waiting for my Joost invite

I've been patiently waiting for a while now for my Joost Beta test invite to go through, but so far... no luck.

But I DID get a teaser email letting me know that it is not too far off!

Here is the email:

Hi Jameson Bull,

This is just to let you know that we haven't forgotten your request to try Joost. We're now speeding up the process of adding testers and we'll shortly be inviting everyone who has signed up to try Joost.

This includes you, so expect an invite within the next couple of weeks - in the meantime, thanks for bearing with us - we appreciate it.

See you soon on Joost!

The Joost Team

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

Interesting explanation of how the interactive web is changing just about everything around us.

Behind the Scenes with Steve Garfield

Click To Play

A video I took with my digital camera of Steve Garfield, filming Bryan Person, at February's Social Media Club of Boston.

This is my first BlipTV test video to see exactly how easy posting video on the net is.

Check out Steve's Video HERE.

I have returned!

Okay, so I took a little unexpected break from the blog, but I have since been re energized with some Social Media Fuel and have decided to return to posting. With the idea that social media is rapidly growing, probably even faster than I can imagine, I thought it might be interesting to anyone out there looking at expanding their knowledge of "PR 2.0" by checking out just some of the sites that I subscribe to (not that I know even close to everything about new media communications, but I do have a pretty heavy new media diet).

I’ve included just about everything in my regular new media diet, not just things PR related. Hopefully this will give some newcomers to the new media world an easy way to get their feet wet, as well as give some "veterans" an idea of what else there is out there that they may not have stumbled upon yet.

What else is everyone subscribing to? Leave responses in the comments.

Communities I belong to
Digg
Del.icio.us
New Media Release Google Group
Flickr

Podcasts I Listen to/watch
For Immediate Release – The Hobson and Holtz Report
New Comm Road
This Week in Tech - TWiT
NPR – On the Media
Steve Garfield's Video Blog
TEDTalks
The Show with Ze Frank
Ask a Ninja
Diggnation

Anti-DRM Day

Protect your freedom!

As dubbed by Defective By Design.org, today, October 3, 2006, is "Anti-DRM Day." With recommended demonstrations, protests, stickers, flyers... the whole shebang... I am still not that sure of the effectiveness of today's "theme" especially when tossing around the misleading phrase of "digital freedom". To me at least, it gives the impression that we should toss DRM out the window all together, while it is far more logical to urge content producers to use DRM to manage the rights of musicians, artists, and thier own copyrights through a compromise of each groups interests rather than enforcing secretive, and sometimes immoral and illegal, restrictions on how consumers can use content that the rightfully purchased.

Why was Oct 3 picked anyway? Does it have some significance?

Anyway, while the program lacks any clear strategy or objective (not necessarily a bad thing), I do think they are heading in the right direction. Education is the first step toward having any sort of change in how DRM is treated by media companies. Not only does the general public need to know what exactly it is they are paying for with each$.99 iTunes purchase, but a greater understanding of the implications of DRM, the limitations it puts on the content that you "purchase" (in the most severe of cases, a purchase can more closely resemble a rental agreement without the buyer's full understanding of how the content is allowed to be used).

If I tell my technophobic-girlfriend about DRM by explaining merely that it is the technology that Apple puts on iTunes songs that limits you to use it on X computers and burn it to CD X times, she'll just shrug her shoulders. But if she finds out that playing a CD on her computer can secretly install software that will monitor her content usage as well as open up her system to a slew of viruses and hackers, she might pay a little more attention.

If the RIAA/MPAA are so concerned with piracy, would it be such a bad idea to act ethically and with honest concern for the relationships that they have with their customers rather than bully them around and anyone who stands up against them a pirate, criminal or a thief? Not that content producers/distributors don't have a right to protect their content... but if you push your entire customer base into corner, and someone is bound to push back.

Hopefully the video industry will not muck it up as badly as the music industry has. ..

Links:

http://defectivebydesign.org/en/node
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=3705

Technorati Tags: anti drm day, Jameson Bull, DRM

Andy Rooney made me dumber

While doing some casual chanel surfing tonight, I happened to stumble upon Andy Rooney's daily rant on 60 Minutes.I hadn't actually seen his segment in five years or so, but I was really glad that I hadn't because my brain went numb for a good 20 minutes after the show and it almost completely washed away my faith in network news.

Not only did Andy just miss the boat with his rant on Spinach, the day after the F.D.A gives the OK to eat it again, but his two minute verbal vomit lacked event the slightest hint of intelligence, insight, or even respect for the program's viewers.

Check out the text version here.

I'm not sure if the aging viewers of 60 minutes demand that this junk, or if the show's producers are too stuck in tradition to actually offer their viewers that might enlighten or even improve their daily lives. Either way, I don't see myself trying to swallow that much garbage anytime soon unless I develop some masochistic tendencies.

Tecnorati Tags: andy rooney, vegitarian