27 Aug 2007
· media
The Picture Archive Council of America (PACA), has created a powerpoint presentation that dispels many a myth and sheds light on what copyright protects and for how long, what is fair use, what is an infringement and what is not.
Some of the _ popular copyright myths _ it highlights include:
If an image is on the internet/Google it is in the public domain. If there is no copyright notice on the image, I don’t need permission. If I don’t profit from the use, I don’t need permission. If I remove the image after notice, I don’t owe any money to the copyright. If I alter the image X% I don’t need permission. If I only use a part of the image I don’t need permission. The presentation highlights that since March 1989: copyright notice is no longer required for published works – recommended but not necessary. The proper notice: © year, name
Continue reading →18 Aug 2007
· media
Yossi Vardi commenting on Social Software suggests that ‘there are 3-4 major forces on the Internet:
• self expression
• communication
• sharing
• collaboration
You’d notice that money is not one of them. It is interesting when you consider that ‘that Google Answers, which paid people to answer other people’s questions, is out of business, but Yahoo Answers, which pays only in non-monetary points, had millions of users…’ Read the article here
Continue reading →17 Aug 2007
· media
“There’s a chance to invest right now in China, India, Russia and Brazil, which will pay off big over the next five years… These economies are going to boom, and ads there are going to go directly to mobile and directly to the Internet.” Says David W. Kenny, the chairman and chief executive of Digitas.
He also believes that “It is only a matter of time until nearly all advertisements around the world are digital.”
Continue reading →17 Aug 2007
· media
Interesting times these! While the New York Times is poised to stop charging online users, Google is going to start charging.
New York Times started charging for access in 2005 and has in 2007 decided to abandon the approach. Google started offering free email, albeit restricted to 1 gigabyte (GB) storage, in 2004 and has in 2007 decided to start charging for storage over 2.8 gigabytes (GB) .
New York Post Story:
Continue reading →20 Feb 2007
· media
Business week article on the market place for ideas: “…Colgate-Palmolive… needed a more efficient method for getting its toothpaste into the tube—a seemingly straightforward problem. When its internal R&D team came up empty-handed, the company posted the specs on InnoCentive, one of many new marketplaces that link problems with problem-solvers. A Canadian engineer named Ed Melcarek proposed putting a positive charge on fluoride powder, then grounding the tube. It was an effective application of elementary physics, but not one that Colgate-Palmolive’s team of chemists had ever contemplated. Melcarek was duly rewarded with $25,000 for a few hours work.
Continue reading →18 Jan 2007
· media
There’s a raging debate out west about giving parents access to community sites frequently visited by kids, sites like myspace.com which has been described by some US attorneys as “a towering danger to kids.” As expected, commnunity sites are giving in, albeit reluctantly, allowing parents to have a limited view of who their kids are talking to online. Ars Technica has the story: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070117-8647.html
Continue reading →08 Jul 2006
· media
I’ve spent the better part of this week wandering around in the alphabet-strewn, bits and bytes world of IT, software, hardware, all the stuff that techie geeks do sitting in front of a computer screen. It’s part of work, and I need to understand what’s happening in the Indian IT industry, what’s the buzz, or rather, where’s the buzz. So, here I am, low-tech, no-tech, floating around in blogs and websites, looking at mainstream news channels, obscure blog entries, babudom press releases, the works.
Continue reading →03 May 2006
· comment
Beautiful women, designer clothes, opulent settings, flashy cars and celebrity film stars come together to make a very heady cocktail. Way more seductive than the story of some poor cotton farmer. For the producers as well as the consumers of media, sex and money always triumphs over almost everything else. Karan Johar, Shobha De and TOI rule!
Is it any surprise, then, that skimpily clad women walking the ramps of the Lakme India Fashion Week were all over the media - in newspapers, magazines, TV, radio and on the internet. You could not have missed, nor the Sensex hitting 11,000 mark. However, you were very likely to have missed the news of the 400th farmer committing suicide in Vidarbha (in the western Indian state of Maharashtra) which happened during the same week as these other two events. According to the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti, there have been more than 450 suicides among farmers since June 2005.
Continue reading →30 Apr 2006
· media
If you are already familiar with podcasting and know how to download and listen you could jump to part II – a list of some wonderful podcasts available for free download. Most of these twenty odd podcasts are in ‘Talk’, ‘Documentary’, or ‘Interview’ format and are mostly informative, incisive, inclusive, and international.
Part I: So what is a Podcast and where do I begin?
A simple way to look at this is in reference to a radio. Imagine that BBC decides to take a feature program that it has already broadcast on the traditional radio and decides to make it available on the internet for you and me to download and listen. It could as well be a music group wanting to sample its music online, or it could even be you wanting to share some audio content trough the web.
Continue reading →26 Apr 2006
· media
In any media, while the size of the audience is important, the consumers’ relationship with the media is perhaps equally important. ‘Engagement’ is the buzzword. But what does it really mean?
Is a commuter who is shuffling through FM radio stations in her car just as engaged with her media as someone who is listening to a downloaded podcast by hooking her iPod into the car radio? Who is likely to pay more attention? (This is attention economy, right?). Who is likely to listen through the advertisements? Who is likely to remember the name and message of the show sponsor? Who is likely to be favorably predisposed to the show and the communication that goes with it (she obviously likes the show otherwise she wouldn’t make the effort to download it.)
Continue reading →