Everyone I know hates Twitter but this video proves that it’s not evil. I know he’s got an annoying voice but the point is a good one.
Twitter in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.
By the way, if you are convinced by this advert, or if you already think Twitter is cool, I’m called ditdotdat on there. Surprise, surprise.
Ever since mankind discovered that the Wii remote uses Bluetooth for its wireless connection nerds people have been trying to use it for doing music. There have been some PC based drum instruments and of course the performance artists over at Cycling 74 had someone who was controlling a fancy sample playing looper thingy. I wanted something simpler, as easy to use as the Wii itself, so I wrote a straightforward monophonic string drum playing thing. It’s hard to describe, I’m going to record myself playing it and put it up here later, but to be honest if you’ve got a Mac with Bluetooth it’s probably easier to just download the program and have a go yourself. I’ve given this project its own page (or just click on the KS-3ii link at the top of the blog), with instructions, downloading links and room for your comments and suggestions.
Dave Gutteridge just wrote a rather nerdy, rambling but interesting article called Windows Is Free in which he explains that the choice between Linux and Windows is effectively a choice between two free products because of the ubiquity and wide acceptance of software piracy. Since this effect works to preserve Microsoft’s domination of the Operating System market he suggests that they might have an interest in allowing a certain amount of piracy.
I have noticed the same thing with other software companies, in particular Adobe. One very popular Mac BitTorrent site has a very clear policy about what files they will allow to be shared via their server. They have no Apple software on there and they remove products from any software company if they are asked to do so. However, they have the most recent versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, in fact everything that Adobe make. Why doesn’t Adobe ask them to take it down?
When software manufacturer’s organisations are talking to journalists about software piracy they claim that every pirated copy of a program represents lost revenue. The journalists tend to take this claim at face value but it’s obviously not true. Most people who have pirated copies of Photoshop wouldn’t have bought it if the illegal version wasn’t available; they would have made do with the free version of Photoshop Elements that came with their scanner or their digital camera.
Just think how hard it would be to launch an image editing program to compete with Photoshop. Adobe have every type of customer covered: Rich corporate types buy the full version, home users use the free version and impoverished creative people use a pirated copy. If Adobe could successfully close down the software piracy market tomorrow then a decent cheap shareware program would soon spring up and become the editor of choice for creative people and then Photoshop would be doomed.
There is a phase in the life of any piece of software where piracy threatens its existence. It’s not during the earlier stages when a program needs, above all, to be taken up by as many people as possible. After all, most people don’t want to waste time learning how to use something if it’s useless but they might take the risk if it’s free. This is why there are so many free demo versions out there. Then, once a program is dominating the market, piracy helps again; this time it works to suppress any competition. It’s in the middle stages, when a company needs extra revenue to grow and develop its product and support new users, that piracy can do the most damage.
So, I’m not defending software piracy, I’m just saying that the consequences are more complicated than they are presented as being. When you pirate very popular programs it’s competition that suffers, not the manufacturers. And maybe, if you pay for just one piece of software this month it should be something that is just gaining ground because in reality they are the only people that really need your money.
When I decided to move my sites to a US based web host I felt a little guilty and slightly apprehensive. With so many friends working in new media I wanted to shop locally but there was simply no comparable product available at anything near the same price. Then there was the support issue. People warned me that it might be difficult getting help when I was trying to solve problems with people five thousand miles away on an eight hour time difference.
The web host I chose, I won’t mention their name for reasons I’ll explain later, has been great for the last nine months. Their servers have been up all the time and extremely fast, mail delivery has been virtually instant and the features they offer have remained far in advance of what my local-shopping friends have access to. Today, though, I suddenly faced my moment of truth. A series of interconnected programs I’ve been testing for the last couple of months suddenly stopped working. An hour of checking and I determined that the problem lay with a change made by the web host. I was pretty cross and immediately raised a ticket on their customer service system. Four minutes later I got a reply.
Jon,This is a configuration issue our developers have been tweaking since Wednesday. A new exploit was discovered and the security had to be tightened.
The issue here is that the content of your upload was rejected. The .mp3 was flagged and as a result the 403 was issued. I must send this to our developers so that they can adjust the rules.
I was extremely impressed, really amazed. Now another email has arrived, just under five hours after I told them about the problem.
Jon,We have permanently corrected the problem. Sorry for the inconvenience. Thank you.
And he’s right (although can any problem really be permanently solved?) everything is working fine again. Amazing, and this is on a Saturday, mind you. Admittedly this was their mistake but even so, do you think I would have had this experience with a British company? Please, if I’m being unfair tell me. I’d love to hear about any amazing customer service anyone has had from a British company lately because I’ve got to tell you, it’s starting to depress me.
And why don’t I want to tell you their name? Because I’m worried that if everyone starts using them they might get overburdened, maybe the servers will slow down, maybe you’ll all be demanding customers who can’t track down your own problems. Resources could be wasted, motivation might be reduced, things could still go wrong, so no, I’m not telling. Wild horses and hemp rope won’t drag it out of me.
According to BBC News the experiments that will seek to identify the elusive Higgs boson using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator at Cern are “each about the size of a mansion”. How the f**k big is a mansion? Is that bigger or smaller than a palace? How about a castle? Is this some sort of joke that I’m not getting?
I am a sound engineer by profession and so I get asked pretty frequently why on earth I’m still recording things with a titchy Sony minidisc machine rather than one of the fancy new Flash recorders. For those of you who don’t do recording, Flash recorders, or more correctly solid-state recorders, are the next big thing in portable recording equipment. They store the sound onto a memory card and you can then import that audio into your computer extremely quickly, much faster than real-time. The reason why I still use a minidisc is that although I’ve looked at loads of Flash recorders I still haven’t found one that is better than what I’m using at the moment once you consider size, cost, quality and convenience.
However, minidisc is dead as a format, thanks to Sony’s insane money-grabbing policies, so I know that I’ll have to get a Flash recorder eventually. Since I’m sure that there are plenty of other people with the same dilemma, I’ve put together a collection of my thoughts on all the Flash recorders that I know about. You’ll find it on the Flash Recorders page. If you have any opinions or facts to add, please tell me so that I can incorporate them into the article.
Everyone thinks that the US consumes too much. Even Americans think so; in conversation they frequently bring the subject up themselves, just to get it over and done with. I am currently working in a giant US art gallery, MASS MoCA in Massachusetts, and I have found evidence, small but significant, that all is not as it seems.
Here it is: In American theatres they don’t tend to use cable-ties! When they want to bundle up cables neatly or attach them to scaffolding poles they use thin black cotton cord. Backstage there’s a great reel of the stuff. It’s biodegradable, reusable, easy to undo and a great deal more attractive than cable ties. In the UK we use cable-ties in theatre, in broadcasting, for gardening, for mending our cars. Most of them can’t be re-used, they never rot away and they are ugly as heck.
OK, it’s not a massive thing, but I have been using cable-ties for all sorts of things for ages and it never even occurred to me that it would be better to use string. I thought I was going to be leaving the US with a load of cheap shopping, I didn’t realise I’d be coming home with ideas for saving the planet.
The crazy mixed up world of racial politics is getting itself involved with music again. Usually the only time you hear people talking about race and music is during the MOBO (Music of Black Origin) awards and I’ve always been a bit doubtful about them. Since the music that is nominated for MOBOs is invariably the product of Asian studio electronics I’ve always felt that they should be called the MOJO awards, which also sounds better. But maybe that’s just being mean-spirited.
Anyway, this plug-in for iTunes is designed to allow people to make sure that they’re listening to a proper racial mix of music. It downloads the racial origins of the tracks in your library from a database and tags them accordingly. You can then create a Smart Playlist that contains your desired racial mix.
Of course, cynics might claim that people could use this software to enforce strict racial purity in the music that they play but that seems unlikely to me. After all, you must have bought all the music in your library so why would you want to filter some of it out? Hmmmm. I wonder if Jade Goody has a copy of this.
When I’m writing music I usually set up a studio somewhere around the house with whatever equipment I need. At the moment it’s in the spare room and I’m using my most rare and valuable keyboard, a Yamaha VL1. It is a physical modelling synthesiser, great for woodwind sounds, and was so expensive (£4000 in 1994!) when they brought it out that they didn’t sell very many at all. You hardly ever see them for sale but I was lucky enough to be feeling rather flush when my friend Rick Chew decided to sell his about ten years ago. I don’t use it very often and about five years ago I knocked it off its stand and cracked the LCD screen. I thought it was doomed but the brilliant people at the Yamaha Music service department shipped over the last remaining spare screen from their head office in Japan.
Anyway, jump forward to yesterday. It’s my little daughter Amelia’s birthday party. Children all over the house. Boys. One of them comes and says that he wants to show me something that one of the other boys (who shall remain nameless) has done. I go into the spare room and there, on the floor, is my precious VL1, shards of broken keys lying alongside. I felt faint and sick, not metaphorically but actually like being sick. I didn’t shout at anyone but I was grieving all night.
This morning I phoned up the Yamaha spares department with not much hope in my heart. “Which keys do you need?” said the woman, “An F and a G? We have them both in stock, £3.25 each.” I couldn’t believe it. I was so overjoyed I could barely contain myself. So hooray for Yamaha and don’t forget when you’re shopping that it sometimes pays to spend.
Sense About Science is in the news again. The pressure group describes itself as an “independent charitable trust” that responds to the “misrepresentation of science and scientific evidence”. The story they’re promoting at the moment, about how celebrities should check their facts with Sense About Science before supporting campaigns that do “more harm than good”, even managed to get their spokeswoman Tracey Brown onto the Today programme. Her previous job was at the London-based PR company Regester Larkin. They are “a specialist reputation management consultancy”, which sounds so like the fictional Prentiss McCabe of Absolute Power that I can’t help wondering whether there’s a connection. Their clients have included many of the bad boys of industry, all big employers of scientists: ExxonMobil, Aventis CropScience, Aventis Pharma, Bayer Inc, Pfizer and Shell Chemicals. I don’t think they mentioned that in the introduction to her interview.
The board of Sense About Science also includes Dr Peter Marsh, a Scientist/PR man par excellence. He runs a PR firm which calls itself MCM Research. GMWatch, who really hate MCM, have this to say about them.
On its website MCM says that it is ‘well-known for its research aimed at positive communication and PR initiatives’. Its website used to be more explicit about what it had to offer: ‘Do your PR initiatives sometimes look too much like PR initiatives? MCM conducts social/psychological research on the positive aspects of your business… The results do not read like PR literature… Our reports are credible, interesting and entertaining in their own right. This is why they capture the imagination of the media and your customers.’
If you have a look at the SIRC site, also run by Peter Marsh, you’ll see that they are very good at coming up with titillating stories that journalists often pick up without asking themselves who paid for the research and why. In fact you may be surprised at how many of the science stories that you thought journalists had come up with were actually rewrites of the handy “free bulletins and news updates” e-mails that the SIRC sends out.
Is it any wonder that many people prefer to believe what celebrities say rather than scientists? At least the celebs don’t claim to be impartial, they may be wrong but they aren’t crooked. These quasi-scientific PR companies are bad news for science and bad news for journalism. After all, who would you rather believe, an actor who says that she prefers to eat food that doesn’t contain pesticides or a scientist working for a pesticide manufacturer who says that they’re not bad for you?
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