With all the talk here about free, and more on the way, it’s good that Chris Anderson launches his analysis of the principle of free in a Wired cover story. And even a wiki!.
Archive for February, 2008
A free launch
Monday, February 25th, 2008Lessig for Congress
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008Extraordinary — Lawrence Lessig launches the Change Congress movement and at the same time ponders running for Congress himself. It would be extremely exciting to have him there, but could he win?
UPDATE: He decided against. Probably a wise decision. Reasons: he almost certainly would lose big, and that wouldn’t help the larger goal of the Change Congress movement.
Free books!
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008The Freakonomics blog has a useful round-up of the latest trend towards free online book publishing. Among them Daniel Solove’s very timely title The future of reputation: Gossip, rumor and privacy on the Internet.
Hvorfor fikser ikke NRK næringsliv?
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008Nyheter fra Dagens Næringsliv blir heretter å finne på NRKs nettsider og tekst-tv. Der kom partene bloggeren i forkjøpet, her har man lenge brygget på nettopp dette: hva er det som gjør at NRK aldri har fått skikkelig taket på økonomi- og næringslivsstoff? Det er ganske oppsiktsvekkende at en av landets største redaksjoner ikke lykkes på et av de viktigste stoffområdene. En mulig forklaring er historiens bør: politikk og u-tenriks (legg inn litt offisiøs uttale her) har hatt prioritet nummer 1 så lenge bloggeren kan huske. Næringsliv, ikke minst børs, har hatt et litt suspekt preg. En hypotese: Var NRK bedre på økonomi i en epoke da politikk og økonomi var tettere sammenvevd? Da smelteverkene gikk fra krise til krise landet rundt, syntes NRK å være på høyden i sin fortløpende dekning av regjeringens redningsaksjoner. Det samme merkes i dag — når regjeringen kjøper seg inn i Aker eller skal hamstre aksjer i StatoilHydro, kvikner man til på Marienlyst. Mens DN har gått fra seier til seier i takt med nasjonal og global liberalisering.
Shortwave 0… web radio 1
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008An announcement from the BBC World Service: Shortwave transmissions of the radio service to Europe closed for good yesterday. Powerful images are triggered. Back in the 70s, the World Service and other radio transmitters over shortwave was the only broadcasting alternative available if you were tired of the one – 1 – radio channel and one – 1 – TV channel of the Norwegian state broadcaster. On World Service you could hear live commentary of English football matches on Saturdays and of midweek evening action. That is, if the weather permitted, often the noise made it quite hard to discern if Peter Lorimer had scored or missed the big opportunity. And then, on Saturdays at 6 PM local time, James Alexander Gordon presented the official — classified — football results. It was amazing to discover the other day that he is still doing this. Like the shortwave noise, hearing him pronouncing the team names and scores brings back the media world of the 70s. Tune in to the BBC on web radio next Saturday and experience a living media legend.
Frustrated Goliath
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008The saga of Bild-Zeitung vs. Bildblog has a new chapter. The huge newspaper wants the German press council (Presserat) to stop accepting complaints from the small, but famous watchblog. The workload those complaints (12 to date) place on the organization is just too large, and besides, the Bildbloggers just do this to generate fuzz which generates ad revenue for themselves. The Bildbloggers answer, while we just shake our heads in disbelief. What a mountain of arrogance a big newspaper can amass over the years.
See also:
Netzeitung in green
Thursday, February 14th, 2008Netzeitung has changed the logo and the navigation. Isn’t it very …narrow? What about using more width or move towards a magazine style with photography and multimedia at the centre? Well, it’s hard to see any basic change to the concept, so we’re still waiting for steps that will reveal why Montgomery bought the NZ.
See also initial reaction from onlinejournalismus.de.
Tree-saving Germans
Thursday, February 14th, 2008Germany’s Brockhaus publishing house has decided not to produce any new editions of its 30-volume encyclopedia. Starting April 15, the articles will only be updated online, financed by advertising. The 21st Brockhaus edition will be the last on paper. The publishing house has already put the smaller Meyers Lexicon online. Here there are some quite nice features: users can contribute their own photos and win prizes, and there are signs of wikification as well.
Harvard joins Open Access movement
Thursday, February 14th, 2008Clearly an important signal: Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences has adopted a new policy that gives the university the right to make scholarly articles freely available on the web (in an institutional archive or repository). See a round-up of reactions at the Open Access News site. (via jill/txt).
See also — older posts on this topic:
Proffe fotografier for bloggere — helt legalt
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008Høres ikke det bra ut? Men først en omvei. For en stund siden våget jeg meg på et debattinnlegg om opphavsrett. Hovedpoenget var at Creative Commons er et veldig godt svar på mange av problemstillingene digitaliseringen av åndsverk stiller oss overfor. I kommentarfeltet nedenfor ble jeg (og andre) utfordret av Toralf Sandåker, som blant annet skrev: “Hvordan endres forretningsmodellene, og hvordan skal vi få betaling? Konkret? Jeg ser ikke hvordan vi skal få betaling når du foreslår at vi skal tillate gratis nedlasting, selv om det er etter aksept av en rekke immaterielle betingelser.” Det er et meget godt spørsmål, men en del av svaret er helt sikkert at det ikke finnes ett og bare ett svar. Men nå til saken — og et mulig delsvar. Selskapet PicScout har nylig annonsert et nytt konsept kalt PicApp i samarbeid med det store bildebyrået Getty Images. Fra pressemeldingen:
PicApp allows online publishers to select copyrighted imagery from PicApp content partners and post them in seconds to their web site or blog to illustrate their comments. Images streamed from PicApp’ls partners carry non-intrusive advertisements related to the content. Revenue is shared with the content partner.
Slik skal bloggere og andre nettpublisister altså kunne publisere “art, cartoons, stock photography and even breaking news photos from events around the world.”
Nå finnes det allerede gode muligheter til å pryde blogger og nettmagasiner med flotte bilder, blant annet takket være nettopp Creative Commons og tjenester som Flickr. Men det smaker unektelig av fugl å få tilgang til profesjonelt fotografi også. Et eksempel: se forskjellen på bildene fra opptøyene i Kenya funnet på Flickr og Roberto Schmidts bilder som vant 2. premien i World Press Photo i klassen “Stories”.
PicApp er foreløpig i lukket beta. Vi får vente i spenning. (via journalism.co.uk).
