remedial thoughts

A lament for physical media: Daft Punk's Random Access Memories (CD edition)

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Wed, 22 May 2013 10:04:00 +0000

The last couple of weeks have been testing times. Really, they have. As a long time fan of Daft Punk (I saw them in '97 at the Mayfair in Newcastle) it's been tricky to avoid their carefully planned promotional strategy for the release of Random Access Memories. There's been the constant radio airplay of 'Get Lucky', there's been the teaser tracks, the ad spots, the full album stream via iTunes, etc. Let's just say the hype has been building for a while (check out Billboard's timeline here).

This has made it difficult to resist the allure of the various pirate offerings. There was the video that was compiled by fans using clips from the various Coachella adverts and Saturday Night Live spots. Then there were the various iTunes live stream audio captures of differing quality appearing all over the web. The official release of Get Lucky was prompted by an illegal leak captured from a Dutch radio station, forcing the hand of Columbia into releasing the single early.

Nevertheless, I purchased the single through iTunes and not long after I pre-ordered and paid for the iTunes LP (Mastered for iTunes) version for the sum of £8.99. I had succumbed to the hype, and on release day the album was pushed to my iPhone, my iMac and my Macbook so that I could enjoy the official release whereever I went.

However, I do have to admit to having downloaded the album in advance of this official release. I've tried all sort of versions: the supposed CD rip (Columbia / 88883716862 / CD), the WEB rip (Columbia / USQX913001 / WEB), the vinyl rip (Columbia / USQX913001 / Vinyl), and the special mastered version (Qobuz 24-bit / 88.2 kHz Édition Studio Masters / WEB). However, I much prefer the sound quality of the iTunes version. It's just a shame that if I wanted to buy the Japanese bonus track 'Horizon' I'd have to pay for an expensive imported CD (£22 registered airmail) or resort to piracy (Sony Music Japan / SICP 3817 / Japanese Edition + Bonus Track / CD).

It's an ethical nightmare

I'm a fan. I'm a fan who also loves the album - I will gladly hand over my money for Daft Punk product. However, I'm not keen on the excessive import/postage costs for 1 track alone. I want to legally purchase this music but it seems ridiculous that in the era of digital networks and near zero-distribution costs that such a disproportionate barrier exists.

And it gets worse...

It would seem that the availability of the UK CD release is less consumer-focussed than it could have been. Forgive me for sounding like a digital dinosaur (CDs are digital, right?) but I actually like to own physical media like CDs - even if I seldom play them - primarily because I've suffered several hard-drive failures over the years and lost large sections of my digital music collection. Secondly, I don't like the idea of being tied to Apple's ~~proprietary~~ compressed music format for the rest of time. Can I take this with me if I switch to a different device (Window Media Player? PS3?). At least with the CD, I can control the format and codecs I prefer in a few years time (without having to transcode the media and reduce the audio quality). Thirdly, it's a lot nicer to listen to CDs though my high fidelty audio setup than it is to listen to compressed music.

So if I want to buy Random Access Memories on CD I can use Google Shopping's search tool to find me a copy from Sainsbury's for £8.99. This is a price I'm happy to pay but where's the competition? Google Shopping doesn't even search most of the big providers. Tesco and Asda are both charging £10. Morrisons sell it for £10 but they don't have an online purchase option! What is this? The 1990s?

It seems like the supermarkets are the only physical music retailers left. This is okay if you are after something that's likely to chart but what about the leftfield music? HMV and Virgin are dead. Play.com has become a glorified market place where smaller providers offer products, often with a lack of detail or item description, and questionable feedback scores. Zavvi have stopped selling CDs altogether.

I guess I could always go to everyone's favourite tax avoider, Amazon (I will not link to them), but I find it morally repugnant to pay them £9.99 for a product when I know they'll go out their way to avoid paying corporation tax. CD-Wow were caught out by the Channel Islands tax loop-hole being closed down, so WowHD replaced them and they have the best price at £7.99.

So, I can buy the CD at a reasonable price but only because I know where to look (I'm not wanting to pay £19 Littlewoods!). But does everyone? And are people being offered a fair price for their supposedly obsolete media? As physical formats become less and less relevant to the consumer they'll inevitably become rarer as demand decreases, forcing the price up. This looks like its happening right now. I find this rather sad, but predictable. I guess we can always pay perpetual fees to access rather than own

EDIT #1

It seems I may need to clarify a few things about my initial whine:

My whinge here is partly about the death of the high street music retailer - I admit I didn't make that clear enough. I can go buy this album from a supermarket as it's a certainty to chart (the bookies recently slashed the odds on it being the biggest album of the year) but I've struggled to buy a less renowned artist, like Deerhunter (Monomania), from Asda or Tesco. I used to rely on specialist music stores to provide me with my physical media. Failing that, I'd go to the usual suspects (Play, Zavvi etc) who are also on the wane (Amazon excluded).

My initial lazy searches only turned up 3 recognisable UK stores selling the CD (Sainsbury's, Amazon and Littlewoods) with prices from £8.99 to £19.00. There was another company called Base.com, but I've no idea if they are reputable. Apparently they've been around for decade but this was the first time I've heard of them. ScreamingCD.com showed up but they are Canadian based and postage is an issue.

Amazon are hardly offering music at a competitive price on all their products. After some digging around I found alternate prices: 25% cheaper in the end. This does matter to me at least. I actually spent more than I expected as I found some other bargains. I ended up buying 4 CDs for £30 rather than 3 meaning I could support more musicians, admittedly at a lower royalty rate. Then again, the royalty rate on CDs is better that than that on digital releases. The Gowers Report (2006: p51) showed that artists get 8% from digital sales (less than the credit card company who handles the transaction!) while they get 9% from CD sales. This is marginal when dealing with one consumer (ie me) but the problem is scaleable. The shift to digital distribution is not always a best case scenario for creators.

Returning to Amazon, if you are the one-stop shopping destination for a substantial amount of internet consumers then monopolistic practises tend to occur. This is not my point by the way, it's one made in the BBC series The Virtual Revolution, in relation to sector market leaders becoming dominant (eg Facebook in social, eBay for auctions, Amazon for entertainment goods, etc) .

However, it's also about the death of the recognisable online retailer who used to provide me with many varied pricing options for my favoured consumer products. Put simply, I hate that it now takes more effort to find the things that I like when it used to so much easier.

It's easier to just buy the album via iTunes (even though Google Play and Amazon's MP3 store are offering it cheaper) - which I did. However, just because it's easier doesn't make it convenient or flexible. I still wanted the physical CD (which I have also purchased from HDWow) so that I can play the uncompressed sound through my Arcam/Mission/Marantz stereo.

A plea for help...

For the record, I can't get these 256 kbps .aac files to play in Windows Media Player without transcoding and making the lossy format even worse. If iTunes sold Apple Lossless (.alac) files then I'd be happy to batch encode them to .wav (well, actually, happy is not the best disruptive term for the process). If anyone has some helpful solutions for this issue then I'd be grateful for your advice. Likewise, I'd appreciate advice on how to get these .aac files to play on my Sony Playstation 3 without a reduction in quality. I suspect the answer is the CD ripped to .wav though...

Star Wars iPhone Edits

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 12:30:00 +0000

One of the things I've increasingly found myself doing in the past year or so has been the incessant editing of images on a very small screen, typically an iPhone 4 (or more recently, an iPhone 5). Photography-based apps are some of the most regularly downloaded bits of software from the iTunes store if the iTunes charts are anything to go by.

Indeed, there is a burgeoning mass of professional and amateur enthusiasts taking to the small screen with much gusto - just witness the success of people like Richard Gray (aka @rugfoot on Twitter) who teaches courses in iPhoneography at Kensington and Chelsea College. The iPhoneography website has (unrelated to Gray) has also been around since 2008, offering application reviews as well as a supportive network of creative individuals via their Flickr group.

Needless to say the rise of Instagram and other apps (eg Aviary, Instaeffects, Wood Camera, Vintique, etc) that offer quick and easy-to-apply filters, either for free or for very little cost, has produced an upswell in experimentation and creativity wherein even the most average of images can be transformed into something approaching professional quality.

That's not to say that every user of such apps are suddenly professional photographers - far from it - but the techniques that used to be the preserve of a few are now being aped by algorithms and employed by the many, often with mixed results. Suffice to say there has been an explosion in the amount of images being circulated across various networks, as people increasingly photoblog their food or create digital pinboards of things they've stumbled across on a daily basis.

The thing that really interests me is the ways in which individuals can experiment with various applications in order to achieve some interesting results, often with some helpful feedback from others who witness said experiments. The limitations of mobile phone cameras (limited focal control, digital zoom, etc) makes for some interesting workflows as users find ways to breather new life into old images, even if that is simple bit of colour correction with Snapseed or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, total image destruction with Decim8.

With that in mind, I've been playing around with a few different applications as part of an experimental Star Wars album so I thought I'd share some of those images here as they've been getting some fairly positive feedback from the people that have seen them. My intention with these images was twofold:

1) experiment with a number of different applications in order to see what they could do

2) in doing so could I make the overly familiar somewhat unfamiliar yet still recognisable on a very small screen (<4 inches)

All the images below were edited on an iPhone. The applications used in the creation of these remixed images include iPhoto, Photoshop Express (with paid upgrade), PXL, Etchings, Decim8, Snapseed, Wood Camera, Vintique, and Instagram

You can find me on Instagram at http://instagram.com/robjewitt

Any comments, questions or feedback is welcome

The morality of the press

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 08:48:00 +0000

This post is aimed at the Level 3 journalism students taking the Media Ethics modules (MAC373, MED312). It would seem that I haven't been given access to the module space in Sunspace yet, meaning that I can't add material, post content, respond to messages, etc... In the mean time I'll post material here until I'm given the keys to the kingdom.

The week we are looking at the differences between morals and ethics in relation to professional journalistic practice. Radio 4 has a regular programme which quite often covers these issues so it's worth checking out the The Moral Maze, presented by Michael Buerk/David Aaronovitch.

In particular I thought I do is draw your attention to an episode that was first broadcast on 19th of November 2011 entitled 'The Morality of the Press'. It can be streamed in full from here. Here is the description that accompanies the specific show:

The Leveson inquiry into the culture and ethics of our press opened this week. In the wake of so many scandals has time finally been called on the industry that for so long has been drinking in the last chance saloon? Defenders of the press say any moves to impose external policing and regulation will threaten freedom of speech and undermine the vital role a free press plays in a democratic society. But why should we treat our press differently from any other industry that's key part of society? Broadcasting, energy, water - they all have external regulators. Is it still tenable to argue that the press is somehow different, special and should be exempt, when at the same time it operates within a climate that thinks it's acceptable to hack in to the mobile phone of a murdered teenage girl? And what about the noble calling of journalism itself? Has the financial pressure on the industry created a culture where ethics and morality come a poor second to doing whatever it takes to get a story that will sell? If we want to reset the moral compass of journalists is time for hacks to consider swearing the equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath? Or are we actually looking through the wrong end of the telescope. Do we get the press we deserve and are the people we should be questioning are those you buy, read and enjoy the stories that have prompted the Leveson inquiry? The Moral Maze - the morality of the press.

Combative, provocative and engaging debate chaired by Michael Buerk with Clifford Longley, Kenan Malik, Anne McElvoy and Matthew Taylor.

Witnesses:

Steven Barnett - Professor of Communications, University of Westminster

Ian Collins - Radio broadcaster - Formerly with TalkSPORT

Simon Jenkins - Journalist and Author, Former Editor of The Times and London Evening Standard

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen - Research Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford and Assistant Professor of Communications, University of Roskilde in Denmark.

Er, hello

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 08:38:00 +0000

Wow - I haven't written a blog post here since May 2012. That's a long time. That might be something to do with the arrival of my first child at the end of April. Being a parent can be quite time-consuming. Hopefully, I'll start pushing some material out here over the newt few weeks...

BBC confuses Halo for the UN

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Tue, 29 May 2012 11:02:00 +0000

Some of the things I like to point out on this site are those instances where in quality journalistic organs occasionally slip up and misreport video game footage or content as if it were the stuff of the 'meat-space'. Earlier in the year ITV got in trouble for mistaking footage form the game ArmA 2 for IRA training videos and there are often scare stories about the increasingly photo-realistic graphics of contemporary games.

So it should come as no surprise that the BBC have found themselves on the receiving end of what can only be described as a 'face-palm fail' moment wherein they mistakenly used the logo from the United Nations Space Command instead of the the logo from the United Nations Security Council. One is a fictional body from the popular first person shooter gaming series Halo, while the other is one of the principal powers within the UN charged with the maintenance of international peace and security.

The incident tool place during a lunch time One O'Clock News broadcast last Thursday in which the BBC were reporting on the current conflict taking place in Syria. From the screen shot Sophie Raworth can be seen discussing an Amnesty International report alongside the logo of the fictional UNSC. It would appear that a Google image search for the UNSC (United Nations Security Council) brought back multiple images from the Halo game that were then used in the broadcast. Currently, the UNSC has very little ambition to police the Covenant and are more focussed on Earthly incidents.

A BBC spokesperson told Eurogamer 'mistakes do happen' but this image was not broadcast in later bulletins. A segment of the video has been uploaded to YouTube and is embedded below.

The Harvard Reference System and citing tweets

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:44:00 +0000

Earlier this year The Modern Language Association (MLA) decided to devise a standard format to assist students and researchers who liked to cite data found on Twitter. Given that Twitter is increasingly becoming a place in which news can break, frequently ahead of mainstream channels, then it makes perfect sense to attempt to accommodate this platform. The MLA system works well with how Twitter functions.

They advise researchers that citation should being the entry in the works cited list (aka the bibliography) with the author's real name followed by the Twitter user name in parentheses. When only the user name is known, default to that. What should follow this is the entire text from the tween in quotation marks. Spelling mistakes and capitalisation should remain exact (don't change anything!). Finally, the entry should include the date and time of the message and the medium of the publication (in this case, Tweet). Here's an example:

Jewitt, Rob (@rob_jewitt). "The problem with nerd politics gu.com/p/37hyb" 14 May 2012, 8:55pm. Tweet

If citing the tweet in the body of a paper the MLA recommends it is cited in its entirety.

Now this might seem fairly straightforwards but I do find it curious that the MLA ignores the unique URL provided by a tweet. After all, every status posted has it's own page. The above example could easily be supplemented by the link: http://twitter.com/#!/rob_jewitt/status/202124949522104322. I'd have thought that this would have been essential given that the exact timings on Twitter are subject to the timezone of the reader rather than the poster, meaning errors can occur.

The Harvard Reference system and web sources

At the time of writing there is no formal guidance for how to cite a tweet within the structure of the Harvard Reference (HR) system , but it should be possible to work within the current guidance dealing with websites and adapt the MLA system to come up with a solution. There are even automated tools like the CiteThisForMe page that attempt to auto format sources but it struggles with Twitter.

Students at Sunderland are encouraged to use the HR system as outlined by the resources over on the University Library Services site (direct link to "Cite them right" guide).

The common approach to citing an electronic source, like a website is to include the following info in this order:

Author
Year that the site was published/last updated (in parentheses)
Title of Internet site (in italics)
Available at: URL
(Accessed: date)

There may be instances where the author is not known but the page includes a title, so that should be used instead. There may even be instances where neither of these can be identified, meaning that the only information that can be provided is the page URL. As you can see, this is less than ideal. Many sites and blogs are happy to identify an author or contributor, so where these are provided then they should be used accordingly. There are also extra fields (highlighted) to deal with:

Author of message
Year that the site was published/last updated (in parentheses)
Title of message (in quotation marks)
Title of Internet site (in italics)
Day / month of posted message
Available at: URL
(Accessed: date)

So, following these rules, this authored Lifehacker article should look something like this:

Thorin Klosowski (2012) 'Living in Public: What Happens When You Throw Privacy Out The Window', Lifehacker, 26 April. Available at http://lifehacker.com/5905347/living-in-public-what-happens-when-you-throw-privacy-out-the-window (Accessed: 15 May 2012)

Citing a tweet in the Harvard Reference system

By drawing on the guidance for citing blogs, then it's possible to come up with some easy to follow rules for citing Twitter. It is a micro-blogging service after all. The following example will use the tweet I employed in the MLA example above coupled with the HR advice for citing blogs. I propose the following method:

Author of message (Twitter user name in parentheses)
Year that the status was published (in parentheses)
Full message (in quotation marks)
Title of Internet site (in italics)
Day / month / time of posted message
Available at: URL
(Accessed: date)

The aforementioned tweet should look something like this in the bibliography:

Rob Jewitt (@rob_jewitt) (2012), "The problem with nerd politics gu.com/p/37hyb", Twitter, 14 May 2012, 8:55pm. Available at http://twitter.com/#!/rob_jewitt/status/202124949522104322 (Accessed: 15 May 2012)

It might look a little cumbersome but it has the advantage over the MLA system in that it is more accurate and helpful for anyone else who might want to refer to the same message, or even check its veracity. This is by no means a definitive solution but it is an attempt to be consistent. Comments and feedback welcome

Virgin Media's blocking of the Pirate Bay: consequences

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Wed, 09 May 2012 14:34:00 +0000

According to a report over at the BBC it seems like the hacker group Anonymous have taken down the Virgin Media website as a response to the company's blocking of the Pirate Bay. A tweet appearing to be attributed to @AnonCircle carried the hashtags #OpBayBack and #OpTPB, clearly referencing the infamous website.

VIRGIN MEDIA - Tango Down #OpTPB virginmedia.com #OpBayBack #Anonymous
— Anonymous Circle (@AnonCircle) May 8, 2012

Piracy research

Meanwhile, The Pirate Bay website is currently hosting a link to a research project ran by the good people at the Cybernorms Research Group (based at Lund University). In this follow-up study they are seeking to understand online norms and values in relation to effective laws and polices so are asking for help. This link will take you to a short questionnaire (no personal data or IP address info is collected). It really will take next to no time and will help contest the industry-led lobby-led research. More information can be found over at cybernorms.net.

TheSlyrateBay

I was also contacted via email by the founder of TheSlyrateBay - a website currently helping online users bypass the Pirate Bay blocks. The founder suggests that the site allows you to log in to your personal Piratebay account without the need for any other external proxies or Virtual Private Networks (VPN). It's free and can be accessed form a browser. You use it at your own risk but it might help fill your Pirate Bay fix. At the very least, you can use it to get access to the non-infringing Pirate Bay blog.

EDIT: It seems like Orange are the second UK ISP to implement a block on the Pirate Bay judging by this post

EDIT #2: The Pirate Bay have taken to Facebook to criticise the DDoS attack on Virgin Media, critiquing the method as a form of censorship equivalent to web blocking.

Virgin Media blocks the Pirate Bay and how it doesn't even matter

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Thu, 03 May 2012 20:36:00 +0000

As of yesterday Virgin Media customers were no longer able to reach the standard domain address for the Pirate Bay (thepiratebay.se/) after an earlier high court ruling demanded that the UK's biggest ISPs block access to the site on the grounds that it breaches copyright laws. This move has brought with it criticisms from several internet advocacy groups.

Speaking over at guardian.co.uk Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, said:

Blocking The Pirate Bay is pointless and dangerous. It will fuel calls for further, wider and even more drastic calls for Internet censorship of many kinds, from pornography to extremism ... Internet censorship is growing in scope and becoming easier. Yet it never has the effect desired. It simply turns criminals into heroes.

Part of the problem is that in an attempt to block access to copyrighted material, Virgin Media have also cut off access to the Pirate Bay blog - leading to a rather chilling effect on free speech.

It seems like the block has had an inverse effect as TorrentFreak carried a report in which the Pirate Bay stated they witnessed a surge in traffic to the site - after the block came into effect. Traffic levels saw a spike totalling an extra 12 million visitors as web users came to see what the fuss was about (a classic case of the Streisland Effect).

Access to the site can still be achieved if web users are committed enough to seek out alternate ways to reach The Pirate Bay. The UK arm of the Pirate Party have a proxy server setup to help people bypass the rather clumsy attempt at enforcing domain level censorship. How long this link stays available remains to be seen.

Over on the Pirate Bay's blog is an overview of the different ways in which users can still access the site:

As usual there are easy ways to circumvent the block. Use a VPN service to be anonymous and get an uncensored internet access, you should do this anyhow. Or use TOR, I2P or some other darknet with access to the internets. Change your DNS settings with OpenDNS. Or use googles DNS servers... we could go on...

There are a range of different VPN services - some free, some expensive - that provide web users with alternate ways to route around censorship. The very real danger in the future lies with the potential misuse of domain level blocking. The Pirate Bay has been blocked as a consequence of successful lobbying by the entertainment industry (due to hosting links to files that may violate various copyright claims), but as the web becomes more and more a commodified experience, one wonders how long it will be before censorship of domains occurs at the expense of websites that carry material other powerful lobbyists disagree with

In the mean time, the blocking doesn't matter. The video below shows one way round the block. However, the future of the Internet doesn't look quite so open today.

Instagram and printing your photos

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 16:26:00 +0000

Given the recent success of the iOS and Android photo application, Instagram, there's been an explosion of interest in people using the service as the $1 billion Facebook acquisition received widespread media coverage. It seems like everyone is a fauxtographer now.

In the early days of Instagram (October 2010) the only way you could view your snaps was via the application itself but it quickly granted access to users' images via the API. Several different companies have been setup to take advantage of this access, offering a range of photo printing services or social networking services. I recall signing up to Followgram in order to check out my photos from a web browser. It's quite a basic 'display' service.

There are other services available. Statigram offers users quite a different proposition, including detailed statistics about your images (eg such as the most commented upon or liked photos) and it even offers links to a good range of printing services. You can have your photos emblazoned across iPhone cases, fridge magnets, posters, pillows and more...

Not everyone will want to print their Instagram images but they can be fun and playful, and even quite artful, so much so that there is a growing market for people looking to express their creativity beyond the digital context. However, the main problem I've encountered when looking for services to print Instagram photos are mainly to do with geography. All the services I've found (like Bumblejax or Hatchcraft) are US-based (eg Postalpix and Printstagram) meaning that costs to export to the UK make them unattractive.

The bamboo shadow box frames that Hatchcraft make would look great on my walls but at $22 per 4" frame and $34 per 7" frame with import duty and postage on top make these a somewhat expensive way of showing of your keepsakes.

So, if you know of any bespoke services dealing with printing or framing Instagram content based in Europe or the UK then I'm interested in hearing your views (leave a comment please!). There's an open question on Quora if you'd rather leave your responses there.

Sunday Times in Modern Warfare fail

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 20:07:00 +0000

You may recall a short while ago I posted about the massive fail at ITV whereby they managed to include footage from a video game (ArmA 2) whilst giving the impression it was an IRA video. Ofcom ruled that they were in breach of the Broadcast Code. Well, it only turns out that the Sunday Times have used an image of the fictional soldier, Soap MacTavish, from the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series in a story about an ill-fated Nigerian-based rescue attempt that resulted in the death of a Briton and an Italian. I'd love to link to the story but News Corp have stuck the Times behind a paywall.

The Sunday Times even went as far as striking out the eyes of Soap, you know, just in case any of his fictional relatives recognised him and feared for his safety. I really can't tell why this picture is associated with the story. From the composition, it also looks like Soap is on a call with David Cameron.

The Media Blog picked this story up and it's since been reposted over at Tech Radar and C&VG. It looks like this may be a case of the mainstream media failing in their ability to distinguish fiction from reality again. It also seems a little tasteless to include an image from a video game when writing about a tragic incident.

Appreciation of a fanbase - David Moody is awesome

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 20:36:00 +0000

As a child growing up in the 1980s I was fascinated with horror movies, fitting really, given that in the UK at this time there was a well-established moral panic around 'video nasties'. That violent horror movies had the power to corrupt the innocent was always an idea I found ludicrous, and it perhaps informs some my teaching practices to this day. Regardless, I was a big fan of George Romero's zombie films (the Night, Dawn, Day trilogy), and this fondness has stayed with me. Especially when it comes to zombie-based video games...

Anyway, few years back I was discussing my interest in the living dead with a school-teacher friend of mine (hi Elliot!) whose personal knowledge of zombie media was far more refined than mine own. He recommended that I seek out the literary fiction of David Moody, a British writer who self-published an early novel of his back on the internet in 2001. The book in question was Autumn, which was recently republished. It's a book revolving around a mysterious illness which afflicts the majority of the human race, killing them only for some of the corpses to, you guessed it, come back to life. This is a zombie novel after all. What follows is a tale of survival, futility and hope as the last remaining survivors attempt to come to terms with the disaster in their own ways.

At the time I was first made aware of the series, I seldom gave it much thought, mainly because I was immersed at the time in the graphic novel, The Walking Dead, by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard. This is the 'continuing tale of survival horror' made famous by the recent television adaptation. If you enjoy the television series then you can do yourself a massive favour by seeking out the original source material - it goes where no television series can dare to go. Seriously.

More recently, a chance encounter with an ex-student of mine (hi Craig!) who also loves horror fiction put me onto the zombie novel by Max Brooks, World War Z. I was initially sceptical about the title, seeing it a cheap cash-in on the rise in popularity of the zombie, especially given the raft of HMV-friendly titles I'd browsed like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but I was blown away by the quality of the story. It has since been made into a film to be released this year (trailer below):

Having, enjoyed this book I was in the mind to seek out David Moody's work, and I wasn't disappointed. The way Moody managed to capture the pointlessness that survivors of traumatic events feel was a pleasure to behold. Also, the attention to detail (eg the stillness of the post apocalyptic world; it's quietness) was refreshing and by the time I finished the first book I had already ordered the subsequent novel in the series, Autumn: The City. The ways in which the zombies herd together, chasing a lost and forgotten sound until distracted by something else was well-realised.

It's at this point that things started to go a little awry, and not because of the fault of Moody or his storytelling. Quite the contrary, the subsequent book was as good as the first, if not better. No, the problem was that after getting two-thirds of the way through the book, a printing error had meant that pages from earlier in the novel were replicated, thus curtailing the narrative. At this point I endeavoured to contact the publisher but, when struggling to find their contact details, I stumbled across David Moody's email address. I sent him a polite enquiry regarding the contact details of the publisher, not really expecting a response.

Within the hour David Moody himself returned my email explaining that there are a handful of copies of the book with this problem and that the publishers (Gollancz) were aware of this and were in the process of arranging a recall. His email was friendly, apologetic, measured and it took me completely by surprise. All I was expecting was to be given an email address of a customer services departement (and not straight away either!), but no, Moody actually took personal ownership of the issue and went out of his way to pursue the solution to the problem. A new book is on its way to me from the publisher.

You might imagine that this type of thing would really frustrate an author as it runs the risk of damaging their reputation and future sales. I've a new found respect the David Moody and I shall definitely be purchasing more of his work. When an author takes time to look after the fanbase the way he did, then that respect is deserved.

Thank you, David, you made my day.

War or gaming fun? Spotting the difference

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:01:00 +0000

A week ago I wrote a piece about ITV's blunder in which video game footage taken from YouTube found it's way into a documentary about Gaddafi. Ofcom were less than pleased with the lack of due process and compliance breaches on display. A few days ago, a BBC picture editor (Phil Coomes) wrote a playful piece in which he stressed the blurring of real and virtual worlds given the popularity and success of increasingly photorealistic video games depicting war or conflicts.

I only came across this article after a colleague of mine forwarded me the URL devoid of context. I think he knew it would wind me up and the gist of my response to the article can be found below.

Photo/realism

I get pretty confused about these kinds of posts from journalists, in which they attempt to link the digital representations of (usually) fictional war-based games with real world combat. I get that still images can look similar but there's a world of difference between experiencing war first hand and picking up a controller or a mouse and playing in a virtual world with strangers on the Internet (as in Battlefield 3 or Modern Warfare 3). Granted, Coomes was responding to a point raised by the photographer John Cantile, who claimed that the level of realism was such that the "next sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may not even have left their bedrooms". The rest of the article seems to give way to Cantile's experiences rather than being the work of Coomes.

What irks me about these kinds of claims is the easy at which the impacts of one experience (war) are neatly overlaid onto that of another (gaming) at the level of photorealism. You'd think that there's never been a thing called cinema in which actors depict realistic events a la vérite. When reading through the Ofcom report into the ITV blunder it's almost understandable how the game footage form ArmA 2 made it's way into a documentary - a failure of basic fact-checking before running with something grabbed from the internet, but it's another thing entirely to compare gaming to the real experience of warfare. This should be apparent to Cantile as he has photographed battalions in Sirte, Libya.

Fatigue

I'm sure Cantile felt "drained" after playing Battlefield 3 for many hours - I do too, but I also feel really drained after playing FIFA or Fat Princess online for large periods of time. However, I don't make the mistake of thinking that I am at the Bernabéu of that I've ever really played there, setting up goals for Lionel Messi and basking in the cheers or boos from fans and oppositional supporters alike.

The sound mix for Battlefield 3 is phenomenal - you can get incredibly disoriented with rockets and explosions erupting all around your character. This really can be a "hellish cacophony"as Cantile claims. It sounds even better with an expensive pair of headphones but that can break the verisimilitude - it's not often soldiers storm battlefields with big headphones, a games controller or a mouse and keyboard. I note he was a playing on PC - the only real injury the contemporary digital soldier will experience is Repetitive Strain Injury?

I know what happens when a player gets gets shot in Battlefield 3 as I've been killed several thousand times. You get a kill-cam of the player who shot you, overlaid with stats about your 'nemesis' (eg their weapon, their class, their personal kill/death ratio) before being dumped to a character load-out screen to do it all again. Very real. And let's not even go into how bad the texture 'pop-in' is on the PS3, further heightening the supposed reality effect! The texture mapping and frame-rate hardly contributes to the replication of reality (neither does having an on screen radar or ammo count). Just witness the realistic text effects below:

Anxiety

Cantile has spent some time attempting to match real world images to those taken in-game saying: "In some cases it is actually quite hard to tell the difference between my photographs and the computer version, which is deeply worrying. The level of detail is so precise that the virtual war zone is as convincing as the real thing". I'm not sure how worrying it is. As I've alluded to earlier, there are many other media forms that "look" real, but are not - they are representational or, in the case of games, simulational (see Gonzalo Frasca on this point). I think this is the underlying anxiety in the article - a point that is hinted at rather than explicitly addressed, and one which has connections with other moral panics about media forms and their supposed effects.

So the essence of the piece can be summarised thusly: still images taken from some war-based video games look like real combat environments. And rightly so given that vast swathes of research money has been vested in making these products look similar to the actions they depict in order to ramp up the dramatic experiences of gameplay. But it's somewhat disingenuous to claim that we should be worried about the similarities between static images of two completely different experiences

MAC281 Cyberculture 2012 - module taster

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:32:00 +0000

I've been putting together the module guide for this semester's module guide for MAC281 - Cybercultures. I'm currently tweaking the document and finalising a special guest for Week 6 but this is how it's looking at the moment:

Week 1: Introduction to the module & a short history of Cyberculture – An overview of the module content and assessment

Week 2: Copyright in the Digital Age – This session will establish some of the major arguments that inform the current copyright climate in the UK, and the West more generally. In particular it will look at the ways in which recent legislative changes have developed to ‘support’ content creators in the face of filesharing by exploring the Digital Economy Act and its impacts. (Rob Jewitt)

Week 3: The Music Industry and the Net Part 1: Producers, Profits, Pirates & Peers - This session will consider the crisis facing the music industry posed by recent changes in the organisation and distribution of music in the age of the Internet. The primary focus will be on the industry. It will consider claims made by the industry about sales and will consider business models for the music industry. (Rob Jewitt)

Week 4: The Music Industry and the Net Part 2: The Suits vs The Scene – This session will consider the opportunities presented to music consumers provided by the Internet. It will reassess some of the claims made by the music industry in context of actual audience members and analyse some of the reasons "pirates" give regarding “sharing” music via the Internet. (Rob Jewitt)

Week 5: Openness, Crowdsourcing & Participatory Culture

– The knowledge and resources of millions of people can now be harnessed through self-organising groups via blogs, wikis, chat rooms, forums, peer-to-peer networks, and personal broadcasting platforms, etc. This session will consider the impact of low-cost online collaborative production tools and the importance of open data and free culture to the participatory nature on the Web. (Rob Jewitt)

~~Week 6: Weblogs and the Rise of Citizen Journalism -~~ Today, thanks to weblogs and mobile phones that can send photographs, anyone can be a journalist. New media evangelists claim traditional structures are crumbling as digital technology breaks down barriers and heralds a new age of transparency and participatory democracy. Will citizen journalists change our view of the world? I'm expecting to have a guest speaker here to cover all things journalism and data. Will reprot back tomorrow

Week 7: Video Games, Narrative and ‘Play’ – The history of digital games stretches back over the best part of half a century yet academia has been slow to engage with this interactive form beyond offering moral objections. This session will consider the ways game scholars have attempted to situate and explain this ‘new’ medium by discussing narrative design and “play” mechanics. (Rob Jewitt)

Week 8: Game Music, Design and User Experience – This session will build upon contemporary discussion of game design and user experience by focussing on the frequently overlooked aural experience. It will consider the various ways in which music features within gaming experiences by touching upon the licencing of game soundtracks, incidental music through to a consideration of rhythm-based gaming experiences. (Rob Jewitt)

Week 9: The 'Actualities' of Virtual Realities - An exploration into the history, application and cultural and social impact and implications of virtual reality. The lecture will draw on key examples of VR from popular culture and industry as well as its use as an actual technology. (John-Paul Green)

Week 10: ‘Getting around’ in online environments - How do we come to know and explore our way around online places? This session will seek to define and explore more deeply our relationship with different online places and sites and ask how we come to habitually know and navigate around them. It will examine a variety of different places including virtual and gaming worlds as well as social networks, thinking about the ways that we know and interact with these different but very familiar environments. Using the work of Ingold and Shinkle, the session will also look to uncover the different roles of the body and sensoriality when we browse around, interact with and inhabit various online places. (Eve Forrest)

Week 11: Digital Photographic Cultures Online – Are we all photographers now? With photographic technology becoming cheaper and more accessible we can capture, store, print, upload and distribute our images like never before. This session will examine the explosion of amateur photography, looking at the different impacts and varying aesthetics of the photograph online. (Eve Forrest)

Week 12: ‘Net Neutrality’ and the Future of the Internet -

Network neutrality is a complex issue that has generated intense levels of political discussion in the United States in recent years, and attention has turned to regulation in the UK. This session will consider the whether network operators should be prevented from blocking or prioritising certain network traffic or traffic from particular sources – effectively creating a two-tiered Internet – and who stands to gain from this (Rob Jewitt)

Miro Video Converter dimension settings explained

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:14:00 +0000

Anyone who has used the great Miro Video Converter (ver 2.6) tool for transcoding video into a format that can be viewed in any browser you may care to use might find the encoder settings a little opaque. There's no intuitive way of finding out exactly what dimensions the video you want to process will come out at other than by being familiar with the encoder settings.

The encoder settings are handily listed under the following categories:

Android Devices

Nexus One

Dream / G1

Magic / myTouch

Droid

Eris / Desire

Hero

Cliq / DEXT

Behold II

Apple Devices
iPhone
iPod Touch
iPod Nano
iPod Classic
iPhone 4 / iPod Touch 4
iPad
Apple Universal

Other Devices and Formats
Playstation Portable (PSP)
Theora
WebM (vp8)
MP4
MP3 (Audio only)

For some people, these settings may be fairly self explanatory. However, it's still not exactly clear which of the settings will give the best quality output. What I intend to do in this post is explain what these settings equate to when using a real world example. I'm going to take a piece of video freely available and run it through each of these presets and then post the details of the file size and the dimensions. The video I have chosen is to use is entitled Liquid Skies by Annis Naeem:

The reason I have chosen this video is mainly due to its relatively short length (1 minute 36 seconds) - encoding video files can take a long time especially when the original file is long and necessarily large as a consequence.

Annis has enabled downloading of the video from his Vimeo page and it comes out as 29.1 MB Flash (.f4v) file. Using the Inspector tool within Quicktime we can see that the actual video dimensions of the file are 960 x 540 pixels, and it is encoded with the AVC Coding codec. We can also see other pieces of information such as the audio codec, frame rate and data rate. This file will be used as the starting point when trying all of the different presets.

Helpfully, when converting the files Miro appends the name of the preset to the new file name. However, there are times when this goes wrong - the Apple presets for the various iPod models all omit the specific device they are intended for so if you want to make multiple copies for different platforms it is advised that you add "nano" or "touch" to the file name to help distinguish between the conversions.

The Android Settings

Below is a list of the video conversion presets followed by the resulting file size of the newly converted video as well as the video dimensions

Android Devices

Nexus One - 17.5 MB - 800 x 480 (853 x 480 actual)

Dream / G1 - 8.9 MB - 480 x 320 (568 x 320 actual)

Magic / myTouch - 8.9 MB - 480 x 320 (568 x 320 actual)

Droid - 18.8 MB - 854 x 480 (853 x 480 actual)

Eris / Desire - 8.9 MB - 480 x 320 (568 x 320 actual)

Hero - 8.9 MB - 480 x 320 (568 x 320 actual)

Cliq / DEXT - 8.9 MB - 480 x 320 (568 x 320 actual)

Behold II - 8.9 MB - 480 x 320 (568 x 320 actual)

All of the Android presets came out as .mp4 files using the H.264 video codec, but the audio codec remained unchanged along with the frame rate (29.97). There appears to minimal (if any) difference between the settings for Dream / G1, Magic / myTouch, Eris / Desire, Hero, Cliq / DEXT, and Behold II.

The Apple Settings

Again, below is a list of the video conversion presets for Apple devices followed by the resulting file size of the newly converted video as well as the video dimensions

Apple Devices
iPhone - 15 MB - 480 x 320 (568 x 320 actual)
iPod Touch - 15 MB - 480 x 320 (568 x 320 actual)
iPod Nano - 15 MB - 480 x 320 (568 x 320 actual)
iPod Classic - 15 MB - 480 x 320 (568 x 320 actual)
iPhone 4 / iPod Touch 4 - 15.1 MB - 640 x 480 (853 x 480 actual)
iPad - 15.1 MB - 1024 x 768 (1365 x 768 actual)
Apple Universal - 15.1 MB - 1280 x 720 (1280 x 720 actual)

As with the Android presets, all the Apple conversions came out as .mp4 files using the H.264 video codec, with the frame rate and audio codec remaining unchanged. The iPhone, iPod Touch, Nano and Classic all outputted the same video file. However the iPhone 4 and iPad outputs varied in video dimensions whilst the file size was slightly larger than the older Apple devices. It looks like the iPhone and iPad presets are optimised for those individual devices (the 'Retina Display'?) whilst the Apple Universal setting seems more geared towards an Apple TV device with its 720 output.

The Other Settings

As above, here's a list of the video conversion presets for the non-Apple/non-Android outputs. Not all the presets were able to convert the original file and the audio and video codecs were sometimes converted to fit the platforms they were expected to work on

Other Devices and Formats
Playstation Portable (PSP) - file could not be converted
Theora - 31.7 MB - 960 x 540 - video codec: Theora - audio codec: Vorbis
WebM (vp8) - 4.4 MB - 960 x 540 - video codec: V_VP8 - audio codec: Vorbis
MP4 - 17.3 MB - 960 x 540 - video codec: AVC - audio codec: AAC
MP3 (Audio only) - 1.47 MB

Screengrab of WebM conversion

These presets produced a mixed bag of results. The Theora preset produced the biggest file out of all the presets available and the video footage looked sharp. The opposite can be said for the WebM conversion which produced a blocky and pixelated image, but it did compress the file down to 4.4 MB - the smallest size on test. It was truly awful when dealing with any onscreen motion. The Playstation Portable preset simply refused to work with any video I've thrown at it to date.

Conclusion

It certainly seems that Miro Video Converter contains a number of presets that do much the same thing as others. This is most likely due to the diversity of users with different platforms looking to make video specifically for their device (as in the case of the Android and Apple settings). Given that the generic Android and Apple presets put out video at 480 x 320 it's fair to say that the smaller file sizes reduce the amount of visible detail available, but then they are nearly half the size. This is an expected trade-off in quality.

Miro Video Convertor is a free tool with a tidy interface. If you are looking for a quick and simple drag-and-drop tool then it will more than likely meet your needs. Just don't expect much in the way of control over the conversions you run through it. For that, you'll want to use something like Handbrake

Ofcom slaps ITV's wrists over game footage

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 18:11:00 +0000

Back in September of 2011 ITV dropped a bit of a clanger when they unwittingly included some footage from the video game ArmA 2 in a documentary about Colonel Gaddafi's links with the IRA. "Exposure: Gaddafi and the IRA" aired on ITV1 on Monday the 26th of September and purported to feature footage labelled as "IRA film 1988" (see video below).

This footage appeared within the opening minutes of the programme and matches similar footage posted earlier in 2011 which claimed the video was footage of the Provisional IRA shooting down a British helicopter near Silverbridge in 1988. Clearly this was a case of ITV's fact-checking processes falling well short of something approaching acceptability especially given that the last time I checked, real life doesn't feature texture pop-ins.

Nevertheless ITV admitted that the mistake was a result of human error but that hasn't stopped them from having their wrists slapped by the British broadcast media regulator, Ofcom. Broadcast Bulletin, Issue 198 (23rd Jan 2012) found ITV to be in breach of standards following 26 viewer complaints about the game footage and other footage purporting to feature a riot in the Ardoyne area of Belfast in July 2011. Ofcom investigated the documentary under Rule 2.2 the Broadcasting Code which states:

“Factual programmes or items or portrayals of factual matters must not materially mislead the audience”.

ITV responded to the complaints by saying they had intended to portray two real events but that in each case the 'wrong footage' was used to illustrate them:

“mistakes were the result of human error and not an intention to mislead viewers. In both cases, steps were taken to verify the content of the footage used but unfortunately these did not reveal the errors”

In attempting to explain how ITV could have used the wrong footage (from the game) they said they were aiming to use material that had featured in an episode of The Cook Report entitled "Blood Money" that was broadcast on 12th June 1989. However, this footage was heavily edited and production staff sought to source "a fuller and better version" of The Cook Report material. Nearly two months later the programe director discovered the footage from the internet which “he mistakenly believed...to be a fuller version of the footage used in the Cook Report”. It was ITVs claim that:

“Although there were clear differences between the two pieces of footage, his memory over the ensuing period of time let him down and led him to believe it was the same footage”

The programme director included this footage in the mistaken belief that it was the full material taken from The Cook Report - without having viewed the internet footage themselves.

Compliance?

Now all of this would be bad enough if it wasn't for the fact that a member of the ITV Compliance team also had doubts about the authenticity of the material during the production process, even asking questions of the producer about the veracity of the sound effects and pictures. The assurances given by the production staff to the ITV Compliance team member were accepted in 'good faith' despite neither the producer nor the director checking the footage.

ITV has since made improvements to its compliance processes - a case of lesson learned in order nto to make similar mistakes again. These include keeping a list of archive sources used, extra guidance issued to news, factual and current affairs staff, as well as compliance training changes for production teams.

Nevertheless, given that factual content should not mislead the public and that Ofcom has a duty under the Communications Act 2003 to set standards, the regulator has criticised ITV for breaching the rules and for damaging the trust relationship between viewer and broadcaster saying:

"breaches of the Code that resulted in the audience being misled have always been considered by Ofcom to be amongst the most serious that can be committed by a broadcaster, because they go to the heart of the relationship of trust between a broadcaster and its audience."

This is a serious charge indeed. In fact, from the report Ofcom can scarcely believe that the programme makers could have been misled as there were "significant and easily identifiable differences" between the game footage and that material from the 1989 episode of The Cook Report pointing to "clear deficiencies"in the steps taken by both the production team and the compliance team to verify the content.

Oh dear. I guess ITV will have cancelled any plans to investigate the systematic slaying of dragons in Tamriel

CENSORED

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:15:00 +0000

Today's the day that a number of high profile websites are demonstrating their opposition to the SOPA and PIPA bills currently pending in Congress. The upshot of these bills passing into law is that they are tantamount to giving powerful content industry groups the power to cut-off from the internet or censor websites that are accused of hosting material that doesn't belong to them. Bear in mind that these bills have been sponsored and co-written by representatives of the entertainment industry (eg the MPAA) and it's plain to see whose interests are being served here.

Under the proposed legislation the US Attorney General would have the power to demand ISPS so block access to foreign websites suspected of dealing in pirated content, as well as making search engines delist such istes from the search indexes. Other powers include the blocking of payement services to accused sites too (and we all know what happened to Wikileaks when its funding services where blocked). If these standards were applied to several prominent US-based sites many of them would be in trouble (eg Tumblr, Wordpress, Blogger, Google, etc).

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

There have been some last minute amendments to the proposed bills but they haven't removed the threat to free speech entirely. That's why it's good to see several prominent sites doing their bit to raise public awareness of the threats involved.

Over at TorrentFreak you can find a compilation of websites that are participating in a self-imposed censorship/black-out campaign. I'm going to add links or images to those already covered by TorrentFreak as I come across them. Please feel free to contact me either in the comments, via Twitter or email with any more.

Those sites known to be taking part are in today's black-out are:

Wikipedia

Wikipedia, the student's friend, will be down for 24 hours (except for the pages about SOPA and PIPA)

Minecraft

Insanely addictive browser-based game Minecraft is down

Reddit

The community-powered news site, reddit, is down

Open Rights Group

The Open Rights Group are UK digital activists and they are making sure people know about these heinous bills

Wordpress

The creators of the blogging content management system of choice, Wordpress, are censored.

TorrentFreak

Even TorrentFreak themselves are making a stand. Lord knows, they've been inaccurately accused of being pirates enough times

Wired

Ever-popular tech site Wired are in self-imposed blackout mode

Craigslist

The classifieds service, Craigslist, is also making a stand

Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The video game review site Rock, Paper, Shotgun is down

The Oatmeal

Satirical comedy site The Oatmeal is down

Humble Bundle

Online independent games retailer HumbleBundle have gone dark

Wikia

The alternate pop-culture wiki-based encyclopaedia, Wikia, is protesting

XBMC

Makers of the free media centre resource, XBMC, have gone dark

Zeropaid

Piracy-based news site Zeropaid has blacked out

Demonoid

Long-running torrent site Demonoid is blacked out

Boing Boing

Cory Doctorow's Boing Boing site has gone offline

UKNova

UK-based TV catch-up torrent site UKNova had an interesting message for its users

Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg kinda supports the anti SOPA business but Facebook isn't quite going dark

Absolute Punk

The punks over at Absolute Punk are against SOPA

Liberal Conspiracy

Those good folks on the Left at Liberal Conspiracy are blacking out their homepage

Destructoid

The gaming site for gamers, by gamers, Destructoid is dark

Know Your Meme

Not to be outdone by a spreading meme, Know Your Meme actually became part of what they normally document

This Isn't Happiness

The photography/art-based propaganda site This Isn't Happiness embraced the darkness

imgur

As the easy way to share images, imgur was keen to protest

XKCD

Popular online comic site, XKCD, ran a blacked-out sketch

The Verge

The technology-focussed site, The Verge, voiced their opposition

TechCrunch

The AOL-owned technology blog TechCrunch had a colour make-over

Fark

Home to all things satirical, Fark went for a white out

4chan

The home of weirdness (and haters of censorship!) saw some weird things happen, but hey, that's 4chan for you

Funny or Die

Funny or Die's comedy site got serious about the censorship

GoDaddy

Sometime supporters of the bills, GoDaddy, demonstrated their (customer's !?!) commitment to the opposition

More to follow. Maybe...

Merry Christmas Music Industry

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 13:10:00 +0000

It's been a while since I last posted (work has been intense!), but I thought I'd get a festive post in before the new year. As the year ends there have been many things related to music and the copyright industry for people to get their teeth into: the MegaUpload video controversy; the safe harbours provision debate for Grooveshark; the ongoing arguments around SOPA and the threat to Domain Name Servers accused of hosting content protected by copyright...

On top of this though, there are some positive steps being taken by the music industry to give internet users what they want when they want it (competing with piracy?). I found myself becoming a fully paid up subscriber to Spotify Premium this year (£9.99 per month) and am now enjoying it on my Macbook, iPhone and Tivo box. I'm also waiting for Apple's iTunes Match (£21.99 annually) to filter the first 25,000 tracks in my library before seeing if I can add the other 15,000. Then there's Google Music, but I guess I'll wait and see what the UK provision is like before committing myself to another digital service.

That I've paid for these services may not be a surprise to anyone who read my series of posts in which I tracked my expenditure on music products and services for a year. However, I have found myself being a little conflicted about the value of these services - £10 per month is the same price you can pay for a seedbox and VPN package by which you can download, store and access all manner of torrented materials.

Guilty relief?

Nevertheless, I've come to think of these subscriptions as a form of mild guilt-relief for any form of consumption that might be viewed by others as not strictly legal. I'm not sure I get the full £9.99 per month use out of my Spotify subscription as there are many artists that I love that are missing from the service. Similarly in the filmic consumption space, my £14.99 per month subscription to CineWorld's Unlimited Card hasn't been great value for money when I go less than twice per month as they don't usually get the more obscure weekly releases. I also pay for Virgin Media's most expensive TV package (£24.50 per month) despite never watching any live TV.

I've found myself spending more money this month on second-hand vinyl albums including the spinning wheel version of Led Zeppelin's III album (£25!) than I have on digital services. I guess I should feel guilty in this consumption too, as none of that cash will find it's way back to the struggling artists - at least this is the rhetoric of the games industry about resales. However, I don't. I shall never feel guilty about purchasing tangible objects, even if they are old Rolling Stones, Velvet Underground or Crosby, Stills and Nash records (I feel older than I am!).

In the brave digital future physical music might be dead but at least, for now, I can hang it on my wall.

Merry Christmas music industry!

Blogging case study: a site map

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 10:36:00 +0000

Back in September Andrea Wren started a series in Guardian Money about how to build and monetise a successful blog. She drew on expert advice from 22 year old blogging genius, Glenn Allsopp, from Newcastle. He is the owner of ViperChill and a successful web-entrepreneur who earns £10,000 per month from his online activities.

Every fortnight, Wren has been updating readers with her progress as she tries to carve out a successful niche (check out her progress here). Allsopp has also been providing excellent advice on how to take the plunge into the murky waters of successful blogging over on his Blogging: Case Study site and plans to update readers over the next 6 months as to the progress.

Readers have also been encouraged to sign up for a news letter to the site to get more detailed help on 'how to' make their own sites - indeed Neil Perryman recommended that our students on MED102 and MAC195 to sign up and follow the progress given that we've been encouraging the students to setup their own sites.

One of the problems I've found will Allsopp's otherwise excellent site is it's lack of obvious navigation for those readers coming in a little late. There is some navigation on the site, but it only seems to be available from within one of the sections. This post is an attempt to rectify that issue as well as make it easy for me (and my students) to jump in and out

Niche
Point One: Deciding on your blog niche
Point One: We're not trying to attract everyone

Domain
Point Two: Deciding on a domain name
Point Two: Setting up hosting

Design
Point Three: Your blog design
Point Three: Theme and design resources

Plug-ins
Point Four: Getting your blog ready for visitors
Point Four: Final blog tweaks and recommended services

Strategy
Point Five: Your blogging strategy
Point Five: Standing out

Post Ideas
Point Six: Generating content ideas
Point Six: Examples of popular blog posts

More to follow...

Cheap CD tax loophole to close

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 14:54:00 +0000

Reports that the Treasury is to close the loophole that some online retailers have exploited in order to import CDs into the UK without having to pay VAT have been greeted with cheers from some quarters of the music industry this week. But I can't help feel that it's not something to feel that positive about.

Mail order businesses (like Play.com, CD-Wow, The Hut, etc) who can afford to setup in the Channel Islands have been able to circumvent the requirement to pay Low Value Consignment Relief (LVCR) on items that used to cost under £18 will, as of April 1st 2012, no longer be able to undercut businesses based on the mainland. Apparently, this costs the UK £140m a year in lost tax and receipts.

Over the years many current high-street stores have established bases in the Channel Islands, allowing them to ship their goods to there for repackaging purposes in order to escape paying the tax. Indeed, even HMV does this, allowing them to undercut the process in their own high street stores, many of which are under threat due to the supposed slowing demand for expensive physical products in an era of free music via piracy or legal streaming services like Spotify, We7 or Napster.

There have been active campaigns to cut out the VAT-free loophole by groups like the Retailers Against Tax Abuse Scheme. Their spokesperson, Richard Allen has claimed

"This round tripping mail order industry, whilst popular with consumers, has destroyed or damaged scores of viable job-creating businesses on the UK mainland ... The removal of this major market distortion should be welcomed by all UK businesses that wish to trade online"

And here is the rub - I fail to see how beneficial it is to render the cost of CDs to a sum 20% greater than that which can be currently paid? It certainly means that customers might buy less music in a given period if there are additional pressures on their purse strings. This would have a knock-on effect for some artists and labels in that more tax equals less purchases and therefore less money finding its way up the royalty chain.

I understand the argument about taxes going back into the Treasury coffers - I'm assuming their economic analysis has predicted the fall in total sales of physical units. I don't see how Allan's argument will hold up though. Businesses that want to sell CDs online will still have to charge the extra task to the consumer, who will in all likelihood spend less. Even if Tesco has to pay tax on their goods they will have the economic klout available to undercut independent music stores via cross-subsidising.

In the mean time, quite a few employees in the Channel Islands will be made unemployed.

The colourful history of video games [infographic]

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 10:58:00 +0000

Over at COLOURlovers there's a very attractive infographic which ties in nicely with some of the issues I was talking about in one of our undergraduate modules last week (MAC129 and MED102), when we looked at the historical representations within video games. I thought some readers might like the infographic too. The artists responsible for this is Darius A Monsef IV. For the best view, click here:

10 ideas for the future of digital music

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 17:28:00 +0000

A few days back Bobby Owsinksi, musician and author of the book Music 3.0 - A Survival Guide for Making Music in the Internet Age, posted a series of ideas regarding the future of digital music. These ideas came from some slides prepared by the J. Walter Thompson ad agency (see the slides below):

Things to Watch: Music Edition (October 2011)

Some of the major claims in the original slides have been summarised by Owsinski:

1. Access Over Ownership: The tide has turned on subscription music and we will all soon prefer to stream our music from a subscription service rather than buy it and download it.
2. Capturing Over Collecting: Instead of collecting records, CDs and digital downloads of our favorite music as we did in the past, we'll now capture where we can find the music online instead.
3. The Celestial Jukebox Is Here: Services like Spotify and MOG have captured our musical imaginations thanks to instant access to millions of songs and a new way to discover new music.
4. The Battle Of Personalized Radio: We're at a tipping point of how we consume music, especially via the radio. Personalization of what we listen to is the key to the future of music consumption.
5. The MP3 Player- RIP: With the massive shift to streaming subscription music, the days of the MP3 player are numbered.
6. Coming Soon To A Device Near You: Internet music access will soon be commonplace in the car and home entertainment gear.
7. Sharing Your Playlists Will Reach A Tipping Point: While personalization from a service like Pandora is getting better, it still can't beat what a human can come up with. Soon all companies will make available our playlists so that we can see what our friends are listening to.
8. The Facebook Effect: Listeners connected via Facebook have initially been found to be a lot more engaged, therefore Facebook can actually amplify the effects and popularity of a song or artist, becoming a new avenue for breaking an artist or for promo.
9. They'll Be A New Set Of Influencers: Bloggers have held sway over the popularity of an artist or blog until now, but that influence will be decreased thanks to a new set of music experts, thanks in part to Google's new "Magnifier."
10. Aggregators Help Music Discovery: New aggregator services like WeAreHunted.com or TheHypeMachine.com will collect data from around the web to help consumers discover what's new.

Most of these points I can agree with but there are a couple of issues that could do with being further clarified or reconsidered. In a series of Generator events I've attended over the last couple of years, the issue of paying for access to music rather than paying to own music (CD, mp3, etc) has been well covered by prominent figures in the business of providing such services.

My gripe with the first point is mainly with the sweeping claim that "we will all soon prefer to stream our music from a subscription service rather than buy it and download it" - there will always be a market for purchases or downloads (ie ownership). Streaming services like Spotify and We7 are great at what they do but they are inevitably incomplete and frequently disappointing when you can't access the content you want.

There are several instances where ownership is preferable to access:

If you want to make a home video of your holidays for personal consumption featuring some background music that reminds you of that trip, then naturally, a streaming service is wholly inadequate. It's not like you can drop a live stream into your video editing software.
If you remotely interested in making digital music or performing digital music (DJ, VJ, etc) then you will need to own the music you play. It's not so easy to pitch up or down a streaming track, or beat match a stream for cross-fading.
Streaming content is great in areas of universal wifi and fast-paced mobile data networks, but glitches in the network or coverage black spots can be frustrating. The next generation of 4G, Wimax, LTE, etc networks are a while off yet. Even when they do arrive, they need to be competitively priced or streaming whilst being mobile will struggle to replace tracks stored on the portable device. This issues feeds directly into the seventh point too.

The final two points suggest that sites like the HypeM and aggregation services will replace the influence of bloggers. The problem with this assertion is that the HypeM is a service that aggregates what music bloggers are talking about - without the bloggers there will be no aggregation, unless the service morphs into something else entirely.

Angry Bird Addiction [infographic]

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 15:07:00 +0000

Anyone with a smart phone since 2009 has a good chance to have played the Rovio game Angry Birds. There's also a very good chance that if you have played it once, then you'll have played it again. This is the game that has been downloaded more than 300 million times and is one of the world's favorite time-killers. If you've found yourself staring and prodding at a small screen into the late hours then you might be addicted (in a good way, as opposed to the silly "media-effects" tradition whereby we play GTA and go car-jacking).

The infographic, based on consultation with psychologists, by AYTM below might help you with your addiction. 1000 people were asked about their spending habits with regards to the game and it was revealed that young men aged 18-24 were more likely to convert from a free version of the game to a costed version.

Infographic by: AYTM Market Research

The sound of inevitability

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 15:09:00 +0000

Documents (.pdf) from the Council of the European Union released today have announced what many copyright, copyleft and copyfight activists had long expected - namely that the protection given to the owners of musical productions has been extended from 50 years to 70 years. This has the ring of inevitability as there is an established precedent for extending copyright terms whenever they come close to expiring. More often than not theses extension terms are dressed up in the rhetoric of protecting artists, but more often than not, the term 'artists' is little short of being synonymous with 'multinational corporations'.

Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group says of the matter:

Despite the rhetoric, small artists will gain very little from this, while our cultural heritage takes a massive blow by denying us full access to these recordings for another generation.

Two recent reviews by British governments (Gowers, December 2006 and Hargreaves, May 2011) have examined the support for such protection and have been highly skeptical regarding the supposed benefits further extensions offer smaller artists. The more recent of the two reviews was very clear on this point:

Copyright Term Extension

Economic evidence is clear that the likely deadweight loss to the economy exceeds any additional incentivising effect which might result from the extension of copyright term beyond its present levels. This is doubly clear for retrospective extension to copyright term, given the impossibility of incentivising the creation of already existing works, or work from artists already dead.

Despite this, there are frequent proposals to increase term, such as the current proposal to extend protection for sound recordings in Europe from 50 to 70 or even 95 years. The UK Government assessment found it to be economically detrimental. An international study found term extension to have no impact on output.

Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property and Growth, Chapter 2, Section 2.16, page 19

Whether a creative artist contemplates the economic benefit of copyright duration before they embark upon making music is hard to believe. It's unlikely that the likes of King Creosote, James Blake or PJ Harvey (Mercury Music Prize nominees and winner respectively) contemplate creating music before deciding against it on the basis that 50 years worth of music protection is insufficient, and that they require 70 years of protection in order to ensure their creativity is realised.

Additionally, how does retroactively extending the duration of copyright terms help to incentivise musicians who have already made music? Jimi Hendrix, Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain, Jeff Buckley, etc all made music that many people found inspirational under very different contexts, and now that they are deceased the duration of the protections afforded to the owners of their copyrighted work has been extended further - most likely to benefit the interests of bloated publishers and distributers.

The new extension does offer more protection to those musicians working in groups. The new terms state that the "term of protection will expire 70 years after the death of the last person to survive: the author of the lyrics or the composer of the music". Given that 2012 was the year that many seminal pieces of music from the 1960s (ie The Beatles and The Rolling Stones) were due thought to be about to enter the public domain, it's perhaps inevitable that copyright protection has been extended ever further. Ringo and Paul might breathe a sigh of relief as their individual longevity benefits them both. It's a fairly safe prediction that around 2030 there will be highly vocal lobbying on behalf of the recording industry to extend the new terms to 95 years, or forever less one day.

What is worth noting from the EU Council minutes is that a number of countries did vote against the proposals (ie, Belgium, Sweden, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Slovakia and Slovenia) while a couple abstained from the vote (Estonia and Austria). This hardly reads like a unanimous vote - Directive 2006/116/EC seems to have scraped through. More than 17000 signatories also constituted a vocal part of the call to reject the extension term via the Sound Copyright campaign, but it seems like the industry has won yet another pyrrhic victory.

Downloading videos from YouTube tutorial [video]

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 14:28:00 +0000

Every now and then, when making presentations I like to use video material from YouTube. Usually I tend to stream the footage live online, but there are occasions when the Internet fails and you want a hard copy of the footage so you can embed it in your presentation. There's a great little browser extension called FastestTube that works with Safari, Firefox, Chrome, IE and Opera. Check out the tutorial video below which shows you how it works

The seldom told tale of software piracy [infographic]

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 07:25:00 +0000

While browsing the web I came across the following infographic put together by Starmedia which tells ~~the~~ a story of software piracy (it's difficult to gauge how accurate the stats are given they are taken from a select number of sources). The historical overview is pretty useful for newcomers (or people born after the late 1980s).

Who'd have thought Windows XP would be more popular to download than Vista or Windows 7? Having said that, it's not as popular as Mac OSX Snow Leopard (no serial code required) or Lion. Photoshop still rules the nest as the most sought-after software (see my earlier caveat) despite being a jewel in the Adobe crown. They themselves refer to the 'Photoshop trademark is [being] one of Adobe's most valuable trademarks'. Despite rampant piracy (because of?!) its position as the desktop image manipulation software for professionals and aspiring designers is entrenched and must make Adobe a tidy sum.