Hey, did you hear about this in the news? Thought so.
In any case, info and discussion on these important hearings are at Philly Future.
Did You Know?
The House OKed a Flag Burning Ban Amendment?
That the Supreme Court ruled: Your house can be taken against your will – legally?
That Cable Companies don’t need to share their lines? (hey – unlike the telcos – from what I understand cable put these up without subsidies – but don’t listen to me – I work for a cable company).
That p2p companies that induce copyright infringement are breaking the law? (this sounds bad but maybe it’s not)
And that religious displays in certain contexts on government ground are illegal?
Neither did I without reading it on the web.
For some different views and thoughts on these matters, read Dan Gillmor.
Ad-Free Gawker and Page Six Blogs Launch
I don’t like the sounds of this, but I figured it would happen sooner or later: Adrants » Ad-Free Gawker And Page Six Blogs Launched
An anonymous blogger has launched two Blogspot-hosted Blogger blogs. One steals Gawker’s entire editorial content word for word. The other steals the Post’s Page Six content. The only thing these two blogs leave behind are the ads. In an announcement email about the Page Six Blog, the emailer claiming to be “a v” wrote, “The idea of the NY POST becoming spam peddlers has forced us to create a blog to alleviate gossip hounds of any barriers to daily trash. We don’t like registration gates and here is our method of bypassing them.”
Web Content by and for the Masses
New York Times: Web Content by and for the Masses
…Flickr, acquired this year by Yahoo, is just one example of a rapidly growing array of Web services all seeking to exploit the Internet’s power to bring people together.
From photo- and calendar-sharing services to “citizen journalist” sites and annotated satellite images, the Internet is morphing yet again. A remarkable array of software systems makes it simple to share anything instantly, and sometimes enhance it along the way.
Inexpensive to create and worldwide in reach, the new Internet services are having an impact far beyond the file sharing at issue in the Supreme Court’s decision on Monday, which focused on copyright violations using peer-to-peer software.
Indeed, the abundance of user-generated content – which includes online games, desktop video and citizen journalism sites – is reshaping the debate over file sharing. Many Internet industry executives think it poses a new kind of threat to Hollywood, the recording industry and other purveyors of proprietary content: not piracy of their work, but a compelling alternative.
The new services offer a bottom-up creative process that is shifting the flow of information away from a one-way broadcast or publishing model, giving rise to a wave of new business ventures and touching off a scramble by media and technology companies to respond.
“Sharing will be everywhere,” said Jeff Weiner, a Yahoo senior vice president in charge of the company’s search services. “It’s the next chapter of the World Wide Web.”
…”We are now entering the participation age,” Jonathan I. Schwartz, the president and chief operating officer of Sun Microsystems, said on Monday at an industry conference in San Francisco. “The really interesting thing about the network today is that individuals are starting to participate. The endpoints are starting to inform the center.”
Yahoo! is launching MyWeb.
How to hire a product manager
Not that I am in a position to hire one, but this seems an interesting reference. Norton’s blog: Ken How to hire a product manager.
iTunes Podcast support launched
Download the new client from Apple and iTunes will help you find, download, subscribe, and listen to podcasts on your PC. I’m using it right now at work and I gotta tell ya – if you have an iPod it’s a no-brainer, but even if you don’t you’ll love it just to listen to all that is available – and now easy to use.
Dave Winer will probably be the best source of coverage for publishers so check there for any potential impact on you.
Building Flash Applications with Eclipse
A good video tutorial I just finished over at FlashExtensions.
Very, very easy.
Google Launches Video Playback Today?
John Battelle’s Searchblog: News: Google To Launch Online Video Playback This Monday
Google will not disclose the raw numbers of videos that have been
uploaded to date, but the company will make all those which were tagged
as “free” available for real time streaming through the VLC player,
which Google has modified and will make available for download Monday
morning. The company also intends to make its VLC code available to the
open source community as part of their Google code project.
BTW, in unrelated news, did you know Jim Romenesko makes $152,163 a year? From his blog? Me neither. Despite what other bloggers think, I feel it’s well deserved and it helps to show you what becoming a recognized must-read in a on demand subject is worth as a blogger.
Tom Cruise Attacks Matt Lauer on Psychiatry
A Couch Tom Cruise Won’t Jump On
…”You don’t know the history of psychiatry. I do.”
Cruise looked like a man possessed — or at least in need of an Ativan — leaning insistently forward in his chair, hammering Lauer when the host suggested that some people were actually, you know, helped when doctors prescribed psychiatric drugs. Lauer sparred with Cruise specifically over whether it made sense for Brooke Shields to have sought therapy and taken antidepressants for postpartum depression — a decision that Cruise had previously criticized.
…As a top-level celebrity believer in Scientology, Cruise has been steeped in the lingo and policies of the late church founder, L. Ron Hubbard. (Hearing Cruise use a term like “ideal scene” during his exchange with Lauer would perk up the ears of anyone who’s been in Scientology’s orbit before.)
Hubbard launched his self-help movement in the 1950s with a book called “Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health,” and from early on, he battled with psychologists and psychiatrists. Indeed, Hubbard once wrote in an internal policy statement: “Our war has been forced to become to take over absolutely the field of mental healing on this planet in all forms.”
BTW, Katie Holmes has a Scientology minder who is following her as she promotes “Batman Begins”.
And Scarlett Johansson was turned down for a role in MI:3 after she doesn’t embrace the “religion”.
Way, way more in a related thread at Metafilter.
Ok.. I’m turning tabloid.
I, Cringely on Adobe’s Macromedia Acquisition
PBS | I, Cringely . June 23, 2005 – No Flash in the Pan
…Conventional wisdom says that Adobe needs this acquisition to bulk-up for the inevitable conflict to come with Microsoft. Conventional wisdom is occasionally wrong, however. I’m not saying that the acquisition makes no sense. Quite the contrary, I support it. But the lack of competition from Microsoft in Adobe’s traditional graphics markets comes down primarily to Bill Gates realizing that Microsoft simply hasn’t been in a position to compete with Adobe on a technology-for-technology basis. Gates tried to undercut Adobe’s PostScript with Microsoft’s TrueType fonts back in the late 1980s and was taken to the woodshed by Adobe. The professional graphics market wasn’t willing to give Microsoft the three tries it generally needs to get something right.
What’s changed is not the companies (brain-for-brain Adobe is still smarter in its niche), but the market. Microsoft’s endless quest for new revenue lines has settled on PDF as a target for its new Metro product, not just for graphics professionals, but for all of us.
The other thing that has changed is the mobile market, especially mobile phones — the PCs of tomorrow. Macromedia is making progress in the phone market and Adobe, for the most part, isn’t, hence the acquisition.
So it is a good deal all around, especially if Adobe can learn from Macromedia how to have fun.
But let’s get back to Flash for a moment, because I really do believe it is the key to this deal. What’s key about Flash is not just that it is installed on nearly every computer in the world, and that its influence is extending now into mobile phones. What’s key is that we all upgrade to the latest version of Flash as a matter of course, making it the ideal Trojan horse program of all time.
Let’s say Adobe/Macromedia had some little bit of code – a VoIP client, for example — they wanted to bring to market. Just make it part of the next version of Flash. Over the course of a few months and practically without effort, that little program would be installed and ready to go in hundreds of millions of computers. Then all Adobe would have to do is to announce it and the service could be up and running practically overnight. That’s the kind of market clout that not even Microsoft has. And that’s what makes Macromedia a bargain for Adobe even at $3.4 billion.