Ryan’s Scraps: What’s New in Edge Rails: Filters get Tweaked Filters in rails controllers no longer halt on false, but instead on render or redirect. I’ve been hoping for that change for quite a while, but had better make sure my apps running on edge still work (tags: edgerails filters rubyonrails) ongoing · End of a Chapter The Atom Publishing Protocol is published. Now hopefully lots of client and server support will follow. ...
I usually try not to post twice in a day, particularly not on the same topic (there is more techie content coming soon, honest) but this has the potential to be big news: the Danish branch of the International Federation of Phonogram and Videogram Producers “has seriously proposed allowing unrestricted downloads of music over peer-to-peer networks, in exchange for a modest monthly fee to be charged to all ISP users.” Andy Oram notes: ...
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)
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.” ...
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 ...
The rumours of MySpace launching a platform or API have been floating for quite some time, but now as reported on the O’Reilly Radar they have been confirmed. Over the next two months they are going to increase third-party access to their site. First, they are going to highlight the thousands of widgets that have been on their site for years now. This should be released in the next couple of weeks. I am assuming that it will go beyond the FIM’s Spring Widget Gallery. Second, they are going to offer an API for applications to all developers. However, these applications are going to be sandboxed initially and 1-2 million users will have access to them. If the users deem the applications safe and useful they’ll be available to all users. Developers will be able to advertise in their applications. ...