My colleague Michael Dales has found the very first iPod ad. Quaint.
This sent me looking for the famous 1984 Macintosh commercial — and Lo! — here it is:
Sometimes, YouTube is just wonderful.
Category Archives: Media ecology
User-controlled content
Bill Thompson makes an insightful comment about Yahoo Pipes.
This isn’t user-generated content, it’s user-controlled content. And unlike personalised pages or simple feed subscriptions it really does put control into the hands of the user.
User-generated content
This is a screen-grab from BBC coverage of tonight’s West Coast rail accident. From very early on the BBC was giving details of how to send pictures via mobile email and SMS. The photograph in the right-hand frame is from a passenger on the train.
Later… James Cridland has some interesting thoughts about this. He points out the irony that the photographer in this case was the BBC’s Chief Operating Officer, who happened to be on the train! So technically this is power-user-generated-content!
TechBubble 2.0
This morning’s Observer column…
Colossally inflated valuations are an infallible indicator of a bubble. In the late 1990s, dotcom start-ups with 50 employees and zero profits were briefly valued at more than the market cap of Fortune 500 companies. In 2005, Rupert Murdoch paid $649m for MySpace and eBay paid $2.6bn for Skype, a VoIP [internet telephony] company. Last year, Google forked out $1.65bn for YouTube. Such valuations provide terrific incentives for ambitious geeks because the new web services require less upfront investment than the original dotcoms. What is YouTube, after all, other than some smart software for converting every uploaded video clip into a Flash movie, plus server capacity and bandwidth? Skype adds 150,000 subscribers a day and buys almost no hardware because it uses its subscribers’ computers to do the heavy lifting…
Paradigm shifting
This morning’s Observer column…
It’s interesting how phrases take on a life of their own. Take, for example, ‘paradigm shift’ – originally coined in 1962 by Thomas Kuhn, the philosopher of science, to describe the transition of a scientific community from one theoretical framework to another. The phrase was quickly recognised as a Big Idea by people in all walks of life because they could use it as a metaphor for describing traumatic or difficult transitions in worldviews and mindsets.
As a result, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions – in which Kuhn first sketched out the concept – has never been out of print and is among the 10 most cited books of all time. A quick search on Google for ‘paradigm shift’ brings up 1,240,000 hits. And an investigation using Amazon’s useful ‘search inside’ facility reveals that ‘paradigm shift’ occurs in over 23,000 books on Amazon’s virtual shelves, from all over the disciplinary spectrum. Truly, Kuhn’s phrase has entered our collective unconscious…
The Steep “Unlearning Curve”
I love this idea — of an “Unlearning Curve”…
One of the most challenging pieces of figuring out how to move education forward in a systemic way is “unlearning curve” that we teachers and educators have to go through to even see the possibilities that lay before us. So much of our traditional thinking about personal learning and classroom practice is being challenged by our ability to publish and connect and collaborate primarily because of the opportunities afforded by the Read/Write Web. For instance, in a world where literally any place can be a classroom, we have to unlearn the comforts of four walls that we’ve become accustomed to. When we can share our work with wide audiences, we need to unlearn the idea that student writing and projects are simply ways to assess what they know…
This doesn’t just apply to educators but to anyone who has been successful in an industry which is being transformed by technology. Broadcast TV, for example.
Loadsamoney 2.0
From ye olde New York Times
Everyone suspected that the investors, founders and early employees of YouTube made tidy sums when it was acquired by Google for $1.65 billion in stock late last year.
But until yesterday, few knew just how tidy those sums were. The answer, which Google delivered in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, is now in: The sums are big enough to spark a new wave of envy across Silicon Valley.
The biggest windfalls went, not surprisingly, to the company’s three founders and to Sequoia Capital, the main financial backer of YouTube, the popular video-sharing site.
A founder and YouTube’s chief executive Chad Hurley received 694,087 shares of Google and an additional 41,232 in a trust. Based on Google’s closing price yesterday of $470.01, the shares are worth more than $345 million.
Another founder, Steven Chen, received 625,366 shares and an additional 68,721 in a trust, for more than $326 million.
Sequoia Capital XI, the Sequoia fund that invested close to $11.5 million in YouTube from November 2005 to April 2006, was listed as having 941,027 shares, which are valued at more than $442 million.
The filing lists a Sequoia Capital XI Principals Fund owning 102,376 shares, valued at more than $48 million, and Sequoia Technology Partners XI with 29,724 shares, valued at nearly $14 million.
Sequoia, considered one of the most successful venture capital firms in the country, was also a principal investor in Google.
The third founder of YouTube, Jawed Karim, who left the company early on to pursue a graduate degree in computer science, received 137,443 shares worth more than $64 million.
In addition, several funds affiliated with Artis Capital Management, a San Francisco hedge fund managed by Stuart L. Peterson that was a co-investor with Sequoia, were listed as having received 176,621 shares, valued at $83 million.
When the deal was announced in October, YouTube was less than two years old and had about 70 employees. Several of the early employees are listed in the filing statement as owning thousands of Google shares.
Joyce and Beckett below par
Hilarious film short imagining James Joyce and Samuel Beckett having (well, actually, not having) a game of golf. Funded by the Irish Film Board (Bórd Scannán na hEireann ) and not for those of delicate sensibilities.
Who was it who defined golf as “a good walk spoiled”?
Later… Just wondering what their respective handicaps would be. Joyce’s would be that he talked too much; Beckett’s that he talked too little.
Thanks to Gerard for the link.
Web 2.0 in five minutes
Remarkable YouTube video by Michael Wesch. Really clever use of the medium. Version 2 here.
Thanks to Tony Hirst for the link.
Magnatune Records
John Buckman explains Why I created Magnatune Records…
# Radio is boring: everyone I know is into interesting music, yet good music is rarely played on the air. I’m into everything from Ambient, Industrial, Goth, Metal to Renaissance, Baroque, Tango, Indian Classical and New Age (and many other genres!), and so are many of my friends. Yet, these genres are barely visible in record stores, and totally absent from the airwaves. Radio is mostly about Country, Pop, and Rock, with a little bit of dull, safe classical thrown in.
# CDs cost too much, and artists only get 20 cents to a dollar for each CD sold. If they’re lucky. And, most CDs quickly go out of print: I buy more CDs from EBay than Amazon.
# Online sales (such as over Amazon.com) often cost the artist 50% of their already-pathetic royalty (due to a common record contract provision). International sales and mark-downs often net the artist no royalties.
# Record labels lock their artists into legal agreements that hold them for a decade or more. If it’s not working out, labels don’t print the band’s recordings but nonetheless keep them locked into the contract, forcing them to produce new albums each year. Even hugely successful artists often end up owing their record label money.# Napster, Gnutella and Kazaa proved that people love music, and they want to share it. Lawsuits may shut Kazaa down (and Kazaa obviously promotes copyright violation), just as Napster was shut down. Clearly there’s a huge public demand for Open Music.
# Using the Internet to listen to music is usually tedious: there are too many ads, too many clicks, and the sound quality is usually bad. It’s too much work, not enough reward. A well run Internet radio station (such as Shoutcast, or Spinner) solves that, but the entrenched record industry wants to kill that too, with onerous licensing terms and odd “rights limited” playback schemes.
# I read this article by Courtney Love six months after starting Magnatune, and was stunned by how much I have in common with her vision and understanding of the music business. And, she’s much more eloquent than I am.
And his solution?
# I thought: why not make a record label that has a clue? That helps artists get exposure, make at least as much money they would make with traditional labels, and help them get fans and concerts.
# Magnatune is my project. The goal is to find a way to run a record label in the Internet Reality: file trading, Internet Radio, musicians’ rights, the whole nine-yards.
Good stuff. Interesting site. Smart guy.