WordPress.com User Wanting to Try WordPress 3.0?
May 31, 2010
WordPress 3.0 features are appearing here at WordPress.com (yes, chaningway.org does live at WordPress.com). So are the posts in my series on 3.0, such as:
If you’d like to try out 3.0 itself without having to find hosting and install it yourself, there are a few spaces at WanderNote, a little WordPress site I run. You can head on over there to read about WanderNote and/or to sign up. You might be particularly interested if you use Evernote (3 million people do), or are considering doing so.
Guardian’s Open Platform
May 27, 2010
If I had to choose just one newspaper, it would be The Guardian. That’s a rather archaic opening sentence in this age of digital plenty, including as it does the terms choose just one and newspaper.
But I remember buying the dead trees version. I particularly remember running in to the newsagents next to Edmonton (north London, UK) train station to get my Guardian before getting on the train to work.
Most of the time I lived in France, I subscribed to The Guardian Weekly, which included articles from Le Monde and the Washington Post as well as from The Guardian itself. The articles from Le Monde were translated into English, those from the Washington Post not so much.
I now live in Washington Post territory. I’ve yet to buy the Washington Post newspaper, and I doubt I ever will. I do have the Washington Post website bookmarked, and visit it often enough to get annoyed at the register/login hurdle.
I visit the Guardian online multiple times most days. I appreciate its openness, as well as its content.
So I am particularly interested in the Guardian’s open platform. I read about it in a couple of recent articles by Mathew Ingram at GigaOM. Lest it seem that Mathew and I are uncritically besotted with openness, I’ll choose this quote from the first of his articles.
The Guardian’s ownership structure — it’s owned by the Scott Trust — likely has something to do with the paper’s interest in an open API, and its willingness to provide its content to others despite the lack of any immediate return, since it can afford to think longer term rather than just focusing solely on quarterly earnings.
In other words, media owned via financial markets and other mechanisms of impatience would find it harder to do what the Guardian is doing. Here’s my favorite quote from Mathew’s second article.
Open APIs and open platforms aren’t all that new. But The Guardian is the first newspaper to offer a fully open API… We thought it was worth looking at why the paper chose to go this route, and what it might suggest for other companies contemplating a similar move… I explore the topic in depth in a new GigaOM Pro report (subscription required).
I love this quote because, even as Mathew writes in glowing terms about the openness of a 190-year-old newspaper company, he tells us that we need to provide a credit card to have full access to his coverage. This from GigaOM, cutting-edge new media property, running on open source software, etc.
See, I haven’t lost my British sense of humour. It’s that same sense of humour that allows me to smile rather than curse when I note that the Guardian’s site is misbehaving as I write this. It reminds me of the paper being formerly and fondly referred to as the Grauniad, because of frequent tpyos.
Local Natives
May 25, 2010
Today is the last new release day ever at Lala (Tuesday is new release day in the USA, and Lala closes next Monday, May 31). So this seems like a good time to reflect on music itself, as well as on the tech through which we access music.
My favorite of 2010 so far is Local Natives’ Gorilla Manor. I see the comparisons with Fleet Foxes and with Vampire Weekend, but find LN very different from, and preferable to, those bands. Anyway,here’s a video of a rather good version of “Wide Eyes.”
I feel as though I ought to link to Local Natives’ site, and I feel just as strongly that I ought to warn you that it might hurt your eyes.
Simplify Music the Android Way
May 21, 2010
Alternatives to Lala are much sought-after at the moment, if the search traffic arriving at my post with that title is any guide. One things I didn’t mention in that post, or in the follow-up about music lockers, is that I was disappointed when Lala was acquired by Apple, rather than by Google.
One of the many interesting pieces of news coming out of Google I/O is that Google did make a music-related acquisition recently: Simplify Media. According to MG at TechCrunch, Google will use the acquired technology to give your Android devices access to your music – including music you’ll soon be able to buy in the Android marketplace.
Farhad at Slate provides more detail and enthusiasm.
As [Google's Vic] Gundotra explained, you’ll do this by installing a small app on your desktop that will send your music… to the Internet… Once the files are online, your phone will have access to your entire music library whenever you’ve got an Internet connection… Even though the music doesn’t live on your phone, it behaves exactly as if it does.
Count me interested, although not inclined to get as carried away as Farhad. Here’s where he goes further than I’m willing to.
In the future, not only will you not get a CD when you buy an album, you won’t even get a digital file. All you’ll have is an access flag tied to your account in a database in a server farm in some far-off land.
I know that land: it’s Lala land, which got taken over, and is about to shut down. That model counts has too many breakable components to be feasible in the forseeable future.
Drupal Earworm
May 20, 2010
I didn’t realize until this morning that there is a Drupal song. It is infuriatingly catchy, so don’t listen to it and then claim I didn’t warn you.
I found out about the Drupal song from a post by Dries, who can claim much of the responsibility for Drupal, but can deny any direct responsibility for the song. It is an earworm: a song or other music that repeats compulsively within one’s mind.
The sequences Acquia-Buytaert and Drupal-Earworm compelled me to write the following. Social media addiction compelled me to incorporate links.
A is for Acquia, founded by Dries;
Buytaert’s his last name, pronounce it with ease.
C is for CMS (rather weird term);
Drupal‘s a CMS, subject of worm.
Ear’s where the worm lives,
Forget it I cannot.
Got to stop rhyming,
Halt it here, dammit!
I should note that the above alphabet rhyme, like all of the content at Changing Way, is under a Creative Commons Attribution license, and so can be completed, augmented, adapted, mashed up, etc., as much as you want as long as you attribute.
Music Lockers and Lala Knockers
May 17, 2010
The Lala shutdown is just a couple of weeks away. How you replace Lala depends on what you used it for. For me, MOG looks like the closest thing to a replacement: a previous post includes a comparison of MOG with some of its rivals.
That post drew a comment from Martin Rigby of Psonar, a music locker service. Lala does provide a locker, as well as samples and streams, and so Psonar is a Lala replacement for those who used it mainly as a locker. Martin is critical of the Lala shutdown.
Isn’t it incumbent on Apple, as Lala’s acquirer, to continue to offer the service as designed to the people who had signed up for that service?
At Psonar we offer our users and prospective users this pledge – we will never do anything that denies you perpetual access to your music other than due to events beyond our control. And, if we are forced to change or take down the service, we will do all we can to ensure users get adequate notice… and are given a means to transfer their music elsewhere.
Michael Robertson of MP3tunes offers a similar mix of criticism and comfort to Lala users (via RWW).
I feel bad for those who purchased Lala songs with expectations of permanency only to find out they lost their music. To help those jilted customers take back control of their music MP3tunes is offering a music locker for 10 cents – the cost of just one of those web songs.
The MP3tunes offer seems to be for a 50 GB locker for one year. I presume that subsequent years will cost the regular price (currently $40, although I’d expect the price and/or size of a Premium locker to change over time).
I’m not particularly surprised or outraged by the Lala shutdown. In particular, it doesn’t change my attitude toward Apple. I didn’t expect that the Lala service would be around forever, and factored that into the decision to spend a buck for multiple plays of an album I particularly like.
One of the last albums I added to my library was Gogol Bordello’s Trans-Continental Hustle. Had Lala stuck around long enough, my cost to listen to a track would have fallen below a cent. That won’t happen, but I think I’m getting value for my dollar.
I still have $3.38 in my Lala wallet. I decided to spend it, and an additional $1.61, on The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter. It’s as eclectic as Trans-Continental Hustle, it’s freak-folk from the 1960s. As Pitchfork’s Andrew Gaerig remarks, it’s the Incredible String Band’s best album and “A Very Cellular Song” is their best song: “a 13-minute tour de force” (as much a suite as a song, and yours for only 69c if you follow the above link to Amazon).
Which brings me to something that does annoy me about Lala. If you buy something for more than you have in your wallet, you are steered toward paying for the whole thing and leaving your wallet intact, rather than emptying your wallet and paying the difference.
That said, I will miss Lala, and not just for the streams I paid for that will dry up at the end of this month.
Facebook: Going to the Dogs?
May 16, 2010
A few weeks ago, I grudgingly acknowledged that we might be in the decade of Facebook. Since then there has been backlash of various forms, defense of Zuck and his firm against said backlash. None of it has changed my mind about FB.
A couple of snappy canine remarks caught my attention recently: hence this post. First is dabitch’s observation. Facebook – you are not the customer. You are the product. The point, of course, is that what you might think of as your data is FB’s product.
Second is Rob Cottingham’s brilliant update to the classic On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.
While I’m not barking mad at FB, but I do appreciate a well-phrased growl at it.
UK Has New PM
May 11, 2010
So, the United Kingdom has a new Prime Minister: David Cameron of the Conservative Party. The government is a coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. I wrote just after the election that:
The Conservatives could form a government, with a majority, with the support of the Liberal Democrats. I think, and hope, that they won’t get that support without commitment to reform the electoral system toward proportional representation.
We still don’t have the details of the deal. When we do, I’ll post about them. If they include a firm step toward PR, then I for one will forgive Nick Clegg and the rest of the LibDem leadership.
I do have some regret that the LibDems couldn’t do a deal with Labour instead. But I think that the operative word is couldn’t. Such a deal would have required the support of all Labour MPs and of some of the other, smaller, parties, and that support just didn’t seem to be there.
How to Lie With Infographics
May 10, 2010
Among the oldish books I hope I’ve kept, but I haven’t seen for a while, is How to Lie with Statistics. This misleading art has become even more important of late, with the ease of posting infographics to the web.
So I was particularly interested to see a post on Smashing about misleading infographics. The emphasis is on inadvertently misleading infographics.
If you design a visualization before correctly understanding the data on which it is based, you face the very real risk of summarizing incorrectly, producing faulty insights, or otherwise mangling the process of disseminating knowledge. If you do this to your audience, then you have violated an expectation of singular importance for any content creator: their expectation that you actually know what you’re talking about.
I’m more concerned about deliberately misleading infographics. The post does mention them, and the book does include some misleading graphs.
I see an opportunity (although not one I’ll be pursuing myself). A blog that collects misleading infographics, and may well turn into a book.
