leahstern

January 28, 2009

Ryan Sohmer Rails Against Internet Regulation

Ryan Sohmer is the author of the wildly succesful webcomics Least I Could Do, and Looking For Group. His recent post in the LICD forums is a response to the Writer’s Guild of Canada’s calls to begin regulating the internet in Canada, especially in the realm of online video.

“Say what you will about the web, and there is much to be said, it breeds innovation. The reason for that is because it’s non-regulated, because an ass like me can produce whatever he likes, however he likes in an effort to entertain others. The majority of the things we try don’t/won’t/shouldn’t work, but if 1 out of every 100 projects works, that’s a success.” – Ryan Sohmer

excerpted from “Union Woes” – Least I Could Do Forum.

As one of a select few who make their entire living from independently publishing content on the web (and associated merchandise sales), Ryan’s opinion should certainly carry some weight.

Canadian media has typically been less reactionary in new media intellectual property concerns, with the CBC going so far as to release a DRM-free, high quality version of “Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister” via Bittorrent last March.

January 27, 2009

High Resolution Inauguration Photograph

The Fullscreen Gigapan Viewer offers a very interesting look at last week’s Inauguration. Who can you find in the crowd? It’s like Where’s Waldo for the digital age. Ultra-high resolution photography offers some interesting opportunities.

Has anyone had personal experience with this? I’ve seen scanback cameras used for fine art reproduction, but I’m not sure what kind of camera took this photography. Could this be from a medium format digital camera like the the Hasselblad H3D-39II?

EDIT: According to the photographer’s profile page (David Bergman) the image is “made up of 220 images and the final image size is 59,783 X 24,658 pixels or 1,474 megapixels.” That’s way higher than the H3D’s measly 39 megapixels. The fact that it’s multiple images stiched together explains the pincushioning on the edges. Still an interesting technical implementation. What else could this tool be applied to?

January 12, 2009

Creative Capitalism and Social Entrepreneurship

This NYTimes article is a must read for anyone interested in the field of social entrepreneurship:

Can Businesses Do Well and Do Good? – Economix Blog – NYTimes.com
“The question of creative capitalism is whether there is some role for institutions that falls between traditional profit-making and nonprofit firms. Is the world being well served with these two clearly distinguished types of entities, one of which serves only shareholders and the other of which has some other goal? Does it make sense to consider hybrid organizations that have an obligation to earn financial returns, for some of their investors, and social returns for others?”

One possibility that this article fails to address is the for-profit entity that is wholly owned by an individual or group of individuals who seek a set return while allocating further gains towards furthering their mission, be it supporting the arts, fighting poverty, increasing the availability of educational resources, or a host of other worthy endeavors.

Shareholders are not necessarily part of the picture for all businesses, especially in the age of Web 2.0 startups. It is possible to bootstrap a small company, and maintaining full control of the company simplifies a number of questions that this article raises about serving shareholders or social good. If the company management is also the owners, then the decisions are more simple (though not necessarily easy). Furthermore, just because a company is small doesn’t mean that it can’t have wide impact.

One of the most exciting aspects of technological advancement is the capacity to amplify and scale the result of effort, from the wheel to the internet. The potential to turn a small investment into lasting social change is a large draw for many people entering the social entrepreneurship field.

January 9, 2009

How to Make a Good First Impression

According to Prospects, the UK’s Official Graduate Careers Website, research shows that first impressions are made up of the following (via Interviews: How to impress):

55% visual impact, i.e. dress, facial expressions and body language;
38% tone of voice;
7% from what you actually say.

What does this say for how you present yourself? Whether meeting with an agent, a venture capitalist, or even just making new friends, your appearance and tone have a lot to do with how you are perceived.

If you have time to overcome a first impression, then what you say will have a larger impact in how you are remembered, but it will be much easier if the image your are projecting is consistent with how you want to be seen.

January 6, 2009

Creative Commons Doesn’t Cannibalize Sales

NIN Frontman Trent Reznor (Photo by Capital M) — NIN Frontman Trent Reznor
(Photo by Capital M)

Chris Anderson recently posted “The best selling MP3 album of the year was free” on The Long Tail blog. Apparently, Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts I-IV was the best selling MP3 album of 2008 despite being released under a Creative Commons license that allowed for free, legal sharing.

The album grossed more than $1.6 million in revenue duing the first week in release. Creative Commons blog has more:

NIN fans could have gone to any file sharing network to download the entire CC-BY-NC-SA album legally. Many did, and thousands will continue to do so. So why would fans bother buying files that were identical to the ones on the file sharing networks? One explanation is the convenience and ease of use of NIN and Amazon’s MP3 stores. But another is that fans understood that purchasing MP3s would directly support the music and career of a musician they liked.

This would seem to be another big win for proponents of alternative models to the traditional intellectual property attitudes stemming from the physical goods economy.

December 22, 2008

CodeKindness Pairs Nonprofits with Technology Volunteers

: CodeKindness: Mobilizing Technology Volunteers for Social Good

CodeKindness is designed to help technologically skilled volunteers support nonprofits by working on projects of a variety of flavors including social networking, web design and development, hardware, and databases.

Nonprofits can create an account and post a request, which is then approved by CK. Word then goes out by RSS, email, and social networks, as well as on the website itself, about the opportunity, and volunteers can sign up to show interest in the project.

Once the nonprofit’s project manager picks a volunteer, CK helps them keep track of progress and encourages the project manager to check in with their volunteer once a week until the project is completed. After completion, the project manager is encouraged to thank the volunteer by sending them a CodeKindess t-shirt, whose purchase supports CK.

The nonprofit then rates the volunteer and statistics are shown on the site. Currently there is a relatively small amount of activity, with 2 projects completed and 4 more in progress. There are 20 open projects and 24 technology volunteers, so the balance seems to be working out well so far.

I like CK’s approach to social entrepreneurship and I encourage you to head over there and browse the projects if you are technically inclined, or register if your nonprofit needs technical assistance. Time will tell whether this model will be successful, but I applaud the effort and I imagine that both the developers and the nonprofits that get involved will realize substantial returns.

December 19, 2008

RIAA Strong-arms ISPs Instead of Customers

: Image by chazlarson

TechCrunch today reports that the RIAA is changing tactics:

Instead of dragging music downloaders and file-sharers into court, it has somehow convinced ISPs to take on the role of digital policeman (and jury and judge).

The original story in the Wall Street Journal has full details, but the gist is that the RIAA will provide ISPs with IP addresses of file sharing offenders. Those offenders (or accused offenders) will be warned and, after three strikes, have their internet service disconnected.

It beats sueing “several single mothers, a dead person and a 13-year-old girl,” but details are unclear as to the appeals process. At least the court system is set up to handle disputes like this.

December 19, 2008

Video for Inspiration: I Met The Walrus

It’s amazing what someone can do with a tape recorder and some pen sketches.

I Met The Walrus

Ok, so maybe an exclusive interview with a famous celebrity 38 years ago doesn’t hurt, but the point is, you don’t need much to tell a story. You can start any time, so don’t let yourself make excuses. Just start somewhere. Then keep going.

December 15, 2008

Bargain Hunting on Craigslist

What do you still buy on Craigslist? I find it useful for finding apartments and jobs (or gigs), but since Craigslist became a household name, shopping for cheap stuff has been replaced with avoiding the people trying to rip you off.

Now you find things posted above list price rather than below. I wonder if there are people who actually overpay for these things or if the sellers are just hoping to find someone to haggle with. Occasionally, a good deal will crop up, but is sifting through the overpriced ones to find it still worth the virtual trip?

Personally, I use keyword RSS feeds. I check my Google Reader almost daily (or several times depending on the day), so it makes sense for me to check there instead of going to Craigslist to browse the deals. To set up a feed for the camera flash I’ve had my eye on, a Canon 430EX, I did my search on Craigslist and clicked the RSS icon in the lower right of the page to get that feed and add it to my reader.

Most days there are no entries, but whenever someone posts a 430EX for sale, I see it in Google Reader. Most of these deals don’t even beat Amazon’s price for a brand new 430EX, but yesterday I noticed one listed for a good 15% below the best price I’d seen anywhere else.

I immediately emailed the poster, and shortly received the reply: already sold. Even with my custom keyword RSS feed and frequent visits to my reader, I still wasn’t fast enough to take advantage of none-too-common bargain. Maybe I should set up SMS alerts to my phone. Has anyone had success with a similar setup? What deals have you found on CL?

December 12, 2008

Podcasting for Nonprofits

Adam Weiss, Podcast Consultant, recently posted a roundup of his resources from the Podcasting for Nonprofits workshop he presented at Brown University last week. There is a plethora of good, introductory information there for podcasters on a budget. Make sure to take a look at his video on proper microphone placement. Just a little bit of knowledge will go a long way towards improving the quality of your audio.

In a bit of a ‘small world’ moment, Anna also saw Adam give a short demo of the Manfrotto Modosteady at the Boston Media Makers meeting on Sunday. Someone’s been busy.