| Radio Arthur is podcasting! |
[Jan. 23rd, 2005|12:08 pm] |
For anyone who's interested, the podcast for the Radio Arthur arts and culture show is up and running! It took me a while to program the forms to upload the show details, and I also had to develop my own audio loop for intros using the Fruityloops FL Studio software. If you want to take the podcast, I recommend accessing it using a newsreader with built-in support for RSS 2.0 enclosures, like FeedDemon (which is what I use) or a specialised podcasting client like Doppler.
You can get the podcast using this link.
If you don't know what Podcasting means, it's essentially a combination of Internet radio and web log - Podcasters create a news feed with posts that include links to their radio shows. People who want to download the shows can point their newsreaders at the news feeds, and it tells them what shows are available. Then they can download the shows either manually (by clicking on a link) or automatically. These shows are then transferred into an MP3 player client (most often, iTunes, at the moment). And then you can either listen to them on your desktop or take them with you on your iPod or other audio device. It's sort of like Tivo but for radio. It's always a good idea not to set your newsreader to just download all the shows automatically unless you know you're definitely going to listen to all of them, because downloading shows at 14Mb a pop takes up bandwidth, and most podcasters (including me) do this not for money (it's not paid), but for love of the medium. Well, you know, that, and also the fact that I love the sound of my own voice. |
|
|
| When bloggers and legal departments collide |
[Jan. 23rd, 2005|12:27 pm] |
Microsoft is said to have hitEndagadget and some other blog sites with litigation after they reposted something from Neowin (which also got slapped) about future mobile technology from Redmond. Microsoft blogger Rob Scoble lends credence to the story here. (Aside: I love the fact that the word 'Microsoft' in the Neowin posting about having to remove the story after being threatened by Microsoft is actually a link sponsored by Microsoft).
Anyway. this happened just a couple of weeks after the Thinksecret insider Macintosh news blog got sued by Apple for posting inside information about upcoming Apple products. Can anyone detect a worrying trend here? Microsoft (and presumably other firms) don't mind using blogs when it suits their purposes. After all, Bill Gates gave an interview to Gizmodo just a couple of weeks ago too. But when blogs 'misbehave' in companies' eyes by printing the information they don't want made public, it's easier to slap them down. Apple would be unlikely to try the same trick against, say, CNet or a print publication, but blogs are different. After all, these people are often individuals, often quite young, who will be scared by legal action and back down, right?
Sometimes, yes. Jason Kottke understandably backed down after Sony threatened him with legal action when he posted a spoiler audio clip of an upcoming episode of Jeopardy on his blog. Maybe Sony had something there - after all, he was running the company's material without asking.
Not everyone scares so easily. Nick dePlume (aka Nick Ciarelli), the 19 year-old founder of ThinkSecret got legal representation instead of folding under Apple's threatening behaviour.
The problem is that not everyone is going to have Nick's cajones. For those that don't, there needs to be some sort of organisation that encourages them to take a stand and support free speech. For those that do, there's a growing need for some sort of organisation to help marshall information and provide a clearing house for advice, so that bloggers can't be frightened out of legitimate activities. Oh, hang on, there is. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is working with several universities on Chilling Effects, a project to clarify bloggers' online rights. It includes a searchable database of cease and desist letters.
Clearly, this sort of issue is going to grow in importance as blogs grow more popular. I wonder how many more of these cases there are going to be? If you're interested, you could always subscribe to the news feed over at Chilling Effects and keep track. I just did. |
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
dannybradbury's journal