The Daily Thing

I have a friend who is in a band that I’m helping with their web presence. The other day he contacted me about making some changes to their website to update it for them.

“I’d like to put some songs on the site but I don’t want them to be downloadable,” he said.

“Actually, you DO want them to be downloadable. In fact, you want as many people to download and put it on their iPod as possible.”

Why? Here’s my reasoning:
Putting music on the web for free helps expose bands music to a wider audience than could ever have been done before. I don’t know how many countless albums I’ve bought by hearing one song on cd’s (or tapes back in the day) that people have made. “Who is this? Where did you get it?”

It also makes your fans, and they’re the ones that count, feel like you’re giving them something special and builds their loyalty. How many people aren’t buying Metallica albums because of the crap they pulled with Napster? I haven’t seen a new album in a long, long time. If you hit the dog the dog is likely to bite you back.

Though you may not make any money off the song you put up for download if your music is good and appealing it help you sell the album ($10) instead of just the song ($0.99).

It pays to give.

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So it looks like Linspire, provider of bargain basement PC operating systems, and Microsoft, provider of…a home for malware and viruses (how nice of them), have teamed up and inked a deal similar to the one Microsoft and Novell signed. Strange thing is, Microsoft is again offering Linspire users the “guarantee” they can’t be sued over infringing copyrighted materials in Linux. Material that Microsoft has yet to prove exists.

vnunet.com: “In addition, Linspire will provide its customers with the option of acquiring a “patent covenant” from Microsoft to protect them from action by the software giant to enforce its claimed ownership of key elements of the Linux operating system.

“The patent covenants provide customers with confidence that the Linspire technologies they use come with rights to relevant Microsoft patents,” Microsoft stated.”

If Microsoft has material that infringes on their copyrights they need to come forward to the community as a whole. Otherwise this appears to be some sleazy scare tactic to fear companies who might be converting from Microsoft products to Linux. I don’t know about you but I find Linux servers MUCH easier to maintain and a hell of a lot more secure.

Tags: In the News by admin
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Ever since CBS took Schoolhouse Rock off the air in the 70’s I’ve been looking for something to fill the void. Something that would help me remember the little “Cliff Claven-esque” factoids I know and add a few new (albeit useless in most regards) to my repetoire. Ask Yahoo! filled the void nicely. So nicely, in fact, it had garnered the top spot on the my iGoogle page that also doubles as everyone of my browsers home pages. But, like all Yahoo! projects (read: flickr, delicious), it was only a matter of time until Yahoo! fucked it up.

Ask Yahoo!: “Ask Yahoo! is teaming up with Yahoo! Answers to bring you Ask Mike. It’s another way to pose questions, get answers, and (hopefully) learn a thing or two. Please visit us at our new home on Yahoo! Answers, and join our network today.”

Ask Mike…errrr…ummmm…Ok Mike. No offense. I’ll see ya’ later. Give Yahoo! our regards and tell them to keep up the good work.

NOT! (Cue outro music: “Another One Bites the Dust“)

Tags: Don't Quote Me on This, From the Web by admin
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This just kinda pisses me off. A former administrator of the Smithsonian Institution has come forward claiming exhibits on global warming were deliberately altered so as not to anger the Bush administration.

The EnviroLink Network: “The Smithsonian Institution toned down an exhibit on climate change in the Arctic for fear of angering Congress and the Bush administration, says a former administrator at the museum.

Among other things, the script, or official text, of last year’s exhibit was rewritten to minimize and inject more uncertainty into the relationship between global warming and humans, said Robert Sullivan, who was associate director in charge of exhibitions at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

Also, officials omitted scientists’ interpretation of some research and let visitors draw their own conclusions from the data, he said. In addition, graphs were altered “to show that global warming could go either way,” Sullivan said.”

Tags: Everyday Science, Nature and the Environment by admin
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A rash of recent big foot sightings in rural India is prompting authorities to investigate. What makes these sightings different is almost all have been within the last month.

Discovery Channel: “The bizarre sightings have been made in the Garo hills area of Meghalaya state, close to the borders with Bangladesh and Bhutan, with villagers calling the mysterious creatures ‘Mande Burung’ or Jungle Man.

‘A team of wildlife officials and other experts will conduct a study to find out if there is any truth in the locals’ claims about these hairy giants,’ said Samphat Kumar, a district magistrate in the West Garo Hills district.

The creatures have apparently been talked about and occasionally spotted for years, but sightings have increased in the past month, prompting authorities to look into the matter.

One local farmer, 40-year-old Wallen Sangma, said he had seen an entire family of the creatures.

‘The sight was frightening: two adults and two smaller ones, huge and bulky, furry,’ he told a reporter who visited the remote area on Thursday and Friday.

‘Their heads looked as if they were wearing caps, and their colour was blackish-brown,’ he said, adding the four ‘monsters’ were about 100 to 130 feet away from him as he looked for firewood in a forested area.

‘The four of them quietly vanished into the undergrowth,’ he said of the recent sighting.”

Tags: In the News, Nature and the Environment, Science and Technology, Weird Wired World by admin
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Researchers in Switzerland have solved one mystery only but now are faced wih a “who dunnit?” that’ll be a little more difficult to solve.

Discovery Channel News: “A prehistoric hunter known as Oetzi whose well-preserved body was found on a snow-covered mountain in the Alps died more than 5,000 years ago after being struck in the back by an arrow, scientists said in an article published Wednesday.

Researchers from Switzerland and Italy used newly developed medical scanners to examine the hunter’s frozen corpse to determine that the arrow had torn a hole in an artery beneath his left collarbone, leading to a massive loss of blood.

That, in turn, caused Oetzi to go into shock and suffer a heart attack, according to the article published online in the Journal of Archaeological Science.”

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I had to delete a feed from my RSS reader this morning. I won’t say whose feed it was but the large amount of high resolution video they had embedded in the feed was significantly degrading the performance of my two favorite readers, NetNewsWire and Vienna. So bad, in fact, I got the SBBOD (Spinning Beach Ball o’ Death) for long periods.

This brings me back to a lesson I learned while on the radio in college, you don’t want to give your listeners the opportunity to turn the dial because they will. People are impatient and have a short attention span.

I really enjoyed the articles this person posted and read their blog on a regular basis but we have to remember our readers. Don’t give them the opportunity to turn the channel. Keep video, audio, and photos you post on your blog a reasonable size. One HD video isn’t bad but compound that number 10 or 20 times and it’s overwhelming for even the best systems.

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Though you may not see evidence of it in the archives, The Daily Thing celebrated its 5th birthday this month.

The Daily Thing has always been about things I find interesting and want to comment on or share with others. Hopefully you have found something you like or enjoy that keeps you coming back. Anyway, I just wanted to say, thanks for 5 years.

Tags: Behind the Scenes by admin
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Here’s something interesting from the web. Cuban President Fidel Castro has published some articles in Granma, the Cuban daily newspaper, pointing out what should be apparent to every American, trading our dependency on foreign oil for a dependency on biofuels will only hurt us in the end.

Caribbean Net News: “Castro and his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez have opposed US President George W. Bush’s efforts to boost ethanol production, arguing that two-thirds of the world population would starve if corn, sugar and edible seeds are used to produce fuel instead of food. Venezuela is the word’s sixth largest exporter of crude oil.

Rather than swap fossil-fuels for biofuels, Castro suggested that governments replace incandescent light bulbs with florescent bulbs in businesses and private homes, as has been done in wide-scale electricity savings programs in Cuba and Venezuela. The shift could save hundred of billions of dollars a year worldwide, Castro wrote. “

If you think about it, biofuels are going to be developed by petroleum companies who have the most to gain and the most to lose. When we’re all dependent on biofuels are we going to be paying $12-15 at the pump because it “costs more to grow the corn”? Just something to think about.

Tags: In the News, Nature and the Environment, Science and Technology by admin
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• Five simple steps to designing grid systems - Part 5 : Journal : Mark Boulton
  (tags: design howto techniques tutorials web work layout webdesign grid css)

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