Category Archives: tech

junky

On my flight home I was contemplating a parody of the William S. Burroughs novel Junky, with an Apple enthusiast standing in for the heroin addict. Ultimately, I decided that, while humorous in theory, in practice it would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

I love Apple products just as much as the next person (who obsessively loves Apple products), and I did cart my mom into the Apple store to fondle the iphones and ipods a few days ago, but I haven’t molded a lifesized replica of Steve Jobs out of butter in my garage or anything. It’s not even Apple’s price-points that I take issue with. It’s two things: DRM and AppleTV.

I’m much too tired to hold forth about the evils of DRM again today, so I’ll just skip over it and sum up my review of AppleTV: it’s great if you’re in the market for a Foreman Grill that also plays music.

Think I’m kidding? Look at these thermal images of an AppleTV unit. Samer tells me that grilling panini on any Apple product voids the warranty. But this is a test-unit, I didn’t pay money for it. On the other hand, we have to give it back and it would be wrong to goo it up. If I was going to cook on it, I’d probably try frying an egg on anyway, just for comic effect. It’s the first Apple product I’m looking forward to saying goodbye to.

ringtones and false dichotomies

Recently I’ve been involved in a fair number of conversations with musicians and band managers where the topic of downloads – complete songs versus ringtones – comes up. Much marvelling then ensues about why consumers are perfectly content to “steal” musical content in the form of entire songs but pay real money for ringtones.

Now, the issue they don’t understand isn’t monetizing their work. They get that selling ringtones is a nice way to make money. They just can’t get beyond the creator’s perspective that the work only has value to the listener in it’s entirety.

The working assumption is that a ringtone is merely a small piece of a larger work, not it’s own entity. The 3 minute pop song has more value because it is “complete,” a supposition that misses some of the psychological and anthropological implications of cellphone ownership and identity-building entirely. I’ve been digging around in The Literature a bit because I’m sure there’s loads of theories about why people choose certain ringtones. I haven’t come up with any great summaries yet, as it’s slow going and I have other things on my mind.

I don’t know why it’s hard to understand that ringtones aren’t really for the phone’s owner. One exception being when someone chooses ringtones that differentiate one caller from another for convenience of amusement, rather than to tell others something about themself as the owner of the phone. Family members calling my phone are signified by the Addams Family theme song, for instance. Jim Dornan, Katherine Harris’s former campaign manager apparently programmed his phone to play the theme from the Exorcist when she called.

Your ringtone sets your phone apart from others in the crowd. Or, paradoxically, in the case of people who load the latest hit, it can help you fit in with the crowd.

Ringtone selection broadcasts information about the individual who owns the phone and it’s information that individual chooses to try and shape the way they are perceived by their peers. Ringtones are not privately consumed like tunes on an ipod, they’re broadcast into the public sphere and they’re loaded with layers of cultural meaning due to the fact that they are also musical.

If you want to focus on the issues relating to cognition, there’s loads of scholarly blahblahblah on the psychology of ringtones over on google scholar. Personally, I’d suggest ambling over to the site of the RutgersCenter for Mobile Communication Studies – they have enough information to keep you busy for a long, long time.

future of music, day 2

It’s the second day of the [tag]Future of Music Coalition Policy Summit[/tag] and we’re missing the first session cause we’re stick in traffic. Since we’re missing the session on blogging and social networking, I thought I’d blog about missing it.

I talked to most, if not all, of the panelists for the session yesterday and was really looking forward to their conversation today. I’m sure half the audience is blogging it, and video is being captured, but it’s not the same.

(update) As it turns out the panel has gotten a late start and so we’ve arrived “on time” after all. Hooray! As it turns out, Rachel Masters from Ning is on this panel and she’s the one person I never succesfully tracked down yesterday, so all is extra-well now. (/end update)

So without further ado, here’s a slideshow of [tag]Jill Greenberg[/tag]’s [tag]monkey[/tag] and [tag]ape[/tag] portraits.

Local Community Radio

Hannah Sassaman at the Prometheus Radio Project sent this email out and asked that it be forwarded widely. I’ve tidied up the links to post it, so any that are messed up are my fault, not hers. Now you can escape the heat this weekend and learn all about community radio (and maybe take some action while you’re at it).

Dear Supporters of [tag]Community Radio[/tag]:

Greetings from the [tag]Prometheus Radio Project[/tag]! It’s a big week for Senate Bill 1675 and House Bill 2802, the Local Community Radio Act of 2007,
and the fight to expand [tag]low power FM radio[/tag]! Many of you have called or met with your legislators, or are getting ready to do so, and to ask them to cosponsor a bill to bring community radio to the whole USA. Because of the noise we are making around the country – demanding new, local, low power FM radio station licenses in our cities and smaller communities – important media sources are covering the issue, and spreading the word that the time is now to expand low power FM.

[tag]Bill Moyers[/tag], who has covered the impact of media consolidation and a lack of accountable local voices on American communities for years, is broadcasting a special on low power FM and media tonight, August 24th!

Stay tuned for news and analysis from the FCC, from journalist [tag]Rick Karr[/tag], and from your allies here at the Prometheus Radio Project. Watch a summary of the special on media issues here – and watch a clip of the LPFM segment here – and forward to your friends, so they can become as passionate as you are about low power FM radio, and work with you to get your legislators to cosponsor the Local Community Radio Act of 2007.

Not only is low power FM radio taking to national TV – but also – the paper of record of middle Tennessee – the Tennessean –
has just written a huge editorial about low power FM – asking Tennessee Congressmembers to work to expand it!

“Now is the time to act,” say the editors of the Tennessean. They continue, “Since the airwaves belong to the public, it follows that the airwaves should reflect all aspects of the public. This bill would go a long way toward that goal, and deserves full support.”

This article was paired with other great editorials from Free Press, and from strong low power FM leaders, WRFN-LP, Pasquo, Tennessee!

We have to take advantage of this momentum. Write your Congressmember now to tell them how important low power FM radio is to you — and tell them to cosponsor House Bill 2802 — the Local Community Radio Act of 2007 — which would expand low power FM all across Tennessee and beyond!

You can read [House Bill 2802] here.

Our friends at Consumers’ Union have set up a great webtool that can help you write a letter today.

Or write a letter or make a call through our allies at Free Press.

Get background on low power FM at The Prometheus Radio Project.

Thanks for calling your Congressmembers, and sending this note far and wide! Stay tuned for more updates on this battle in the next weeks — as we work together to expand low power FM to communities nationwide!

Hannah Sassaman
Prometheus Radio Project

P.P.S. Read the articles that appeared in today’s Tennessean in support
of [tag]LPFM[/tag]:

Editorial: Legislation would restore radio’s community presence

Ginny Welsch: Local issues shouldn’t be shut out in process

Joseph Torres: Congress should help unique local stations

Sorry this probably isn’t being posted in time for you to catch Bill Moyers, I’ve got the flu or the plague or something and am not really playing with a full deck right now.