Tomorrow afternoon I’m taking part in a roundtable discussion on how consumer behaviours may change as music radio, music TV, digital downloading and music retail overlap more and more. I’m one of the panel members along with Andrew Harrison (Associate Editor of Word), John Strickland (CEO of Tunetribe), Simon Hopkins (Head of BBC Music Online), […]
Month: November 2004
Does content protection undermine usability?
The INDICARE project is dedicated to researching the consumer acceptability of Digital Rights Management (DRM) in Europe — its partners include two German organisations, one Dutch, and one Hungarian. Its web site features regular and insightful articles on content protection across different platforms — mobile, Internet — and reviews from a user perspective. Usability of […]
Confusion is merely the state of being well informed
In an interview in the catalogue for his current exhibition at Flowers East gallery, Tom Phillips attributes the quote in the title of this article to Winston Churchill in response to a troubled subordinate. Whenever I engage with Phillips’ work, I get a confused feeling of being both inspired by the elegant simplicity of some […]
Digital media networking meeting in London
It’s short notice, but if you’re in London tomorrow evening, and fancy meeting a group of 15-20 professionals in the new media, television, film, music, press/publishing, radio and advertising sectors — very informal over a drink or two — then please come along to this event that I’ve organised. It’s at The Gate in Farringdon […]
Interval
It’s unlikely that I’ll be posting any new articles here in the next ten days or so, due to other commitments. Normal service will resume towards the end of the month.
The Music of Loudspeakers (notes from CyberMusic event)
Having organised the three-day symposium for Cybersonica ’03 and edited the proceedings, it was a more relaxing experience to attend today’s event as a punter. (Apparently Cybersonica ’05, scheduled for late April, will return to full-length format.) My notes from the event focus mainly on Robert Worby’s talk on “The Music of Loudspeakers” and Jon […]
The economics of consumer attention
Here’s the beginning of an article I’ve written for the current issue of Five Eight — for the full article, please subscribe to Five Eight monthly. A recent survey by The Guardian asked the question “Where do you go to find out what music to listen to?” Of the sixteen options they listed as possible […]
Outline for social software to enhance personal media collections
I had an idea today for a bit of software and/or web-based service that would combine the features of cataloguing all your personal media collection (CD, DVD, digital files of various formats) and linking each item to the commentary (reviews, interviews, fan comments) that may enrich your experience of the song, album or film. This […]
Learning songcraft via the web
The Edutainment field has, deservedly, got itself a bad name for not delivering on its promises. Often the premise has been that people see learning as boring or stodgy, so it has to be smuggled in, Trojan-horse-style, under the guise of a game or a celebrity-driven story. The Radio 2 Sold on Song web site […]
iPods, podcasting and learning
A couple of weeks ago I speculated about podcasting breaking out of traditional radio and journalism models to find new applications. Since then, I’ve found that many people are ahead of me in thinking about applications, particularly to learning. I first came across Podcasting for Education by D’Arcy Norman, which makes some suggestions for using […]