Blog posts

Paste Magazine :: Extra! Ray Davies ships new album with newspaper (Page 1) Ray Davies followed Prince’s example and gave his new album away free with the Sunday Times. (tags: freemusic music musicindustry raydavies sundaytimes thekinks) Brain Off » OpenStreetMap on the iPhone! Very nice. Now if O2 just had a decent data plan available, an iPhone might be tempting. As it is, I’m probably going to pick up an N95 this week (tags: iphone mapping neogeography openstreetmap) BBC NEWS | AT&T offers Napster music service ...

The non-profit blogging community has been awash with discussions of how to use facebook, particularly for fundraising. Most of the commentary is sensible, in so far as it goes. Any non-profit looking to engage facebook users would be well advised to create a group and explore the use of the causes application, but a strategy to really propel growth in engagement with a campaign will need to go beyond that. ...

Web2Summit: Flickr Places Announced Nice looking new interface connecting up all flickr’s geotagged photos around places (tags: flickr geocoding geotagging places) Home - Involve - peopleandparticipation.net Newly launched by the UK government to help people work out how to “involve people”. Sounds rather vague, but could be useful as it grows. (tags: engagement participation ukgovernment)

Since I mentioned the initial survey, it seems only right to note that the A List Apart Web Design Survey findings have now been published. Eric Meyer has some notes about the analysis process which are worth a look for anyone who may find themself managing surveys. Even though the demographics of the community are fairly well known, it’s a little startling to note just how male (82.8%) and white (84.6%) the respondents are. If you’re wanting to follow up on that, the coverage of " why are the arts so white?" in this week’s Time Out London and the recent demos report Inclusion, innovation and democracy looking at issues arising from the growth of the “creative and cultural industries.” ...

journa-list.com Tracking journalists from the 12 biggest UK (mainstream) news sources. Allows you to keep tabs on those you admire (or don’t) and analyse bias. (tags: analysis bias journalism news) Steve Lawson: recorded music as an advert for gigs - the death of an artform? A response to the argument that (entirely) free recorded music is a good thing because it leads to attendance at gigs. That’d be one thing if most gigs paid well, but that’s not how things work for most independent musicians ...

DougCoupland channel on youtube 9 videos to accompany The Gum Thief. Thanks to the wonderful TubeTV I have them all saved for later viewing. (tags: douglascoupland thegumthief video youtube) The Case for Open Immigration: A Q&A With Philippe Legrain - New York Times Blog “It is abhorrent that the rich and the educated are allowed to circulate around the world more or less freely, while the poor are not — causing, in effect, a form of global apartheid.” ...

The Economist is the latest organisation to announce it will be putting its archive online. Stretching back to 1843, that’s a huge mass of data coming online, even if (for now) it sits behind a very expensive pay-wall. The news comes three days after The Guardian and Observer announced that: The first phase of the Guardian News & Media archive, containing the Guardian from 1821 to 1975 and The Observer from 1900 to 1975, will launch on November 3. ...

It is to be hoped that Tony Blair’s new role as Middle East Envoy will allow him to break away from being an apologist for the neo-conservative hardliners in the Bush administration, but based on a recent speech it seems that is unlikely. The Guardian this morning reported that Blair has said, speaking of “militant Islam” that: This ideology now has a state, Iran, that is prepared to back and finance terror in the pursuit of destabilising countries whose people wish to live in peace. ...

Steve Lawson: more on indie-musicians and the web A useful listing of sites indie musicians should be exploring (tags: indiemusicians music resources stevelawson) Mac Rumors: iTunes Plus Expanded, Becomes Largest DRM-Free Catalog Apple are finally beginning to practice what they preach and allowing non-major labels to put DRM free content on iTunes (tags: apple drm itunes itunesplus) In the ongoing battle between the iTunes Music Store and amazon… (kottke.org) The MP3 store battle is hotting up. Amazon are giving a 20% referral fee to associates on each and every song. This could be quite the earner for musicians whose material is available on the amazon mp3 store ...

It has long frustrated me that so many of the thinkers and movements I admire seem determined to denigrate the urban in favour of an idyllic picture of rural or small town living. Partly that’s because my psychology doesn’t deal well with spending too long outside of a large city, but it’s also because whether we like it or not it’s pretty clear that the future of the human race is going to be in cities. Effort that could be spent working out what was good about our rural past and can be translated into our urban future is often spent merely eulogising it. ...