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COM 597 - Summer - Streaming Media
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News/Announcements
July 18 2006, 7:00 PM
Last Class Notes
Andrew Leyshon, Peter Webb, Shaun French, Nigel Thrift, Louise Crewe. "On the reproduction of the musical economy after the Internet," Media, Culture and Society, Mar 2005; 27: 177 - 209. Accessed on 18 July 2006 from Sage Publications, http://mcs.sagepub.com/ .
To find this online, start at the UW library website. If you are offCampus -- login (upper right-hand corner). Then go to Sage database . Here's a Harvard study that shows similar impact of file-sharing on sales. (tip) Another paper - from Denmark - profiled by Lawrence Lessig. Claus Pedersen has completed research on the pattern of filesharing in Denmark. His conclusions are (1) the decline in record sales in Denmark is explained by many factors, and (2) the decline that there is is finansed almost in full by the wealthiest artists. What’s particularly interesting about the study is that it uses data from the Nordic Copyright Bureau, which has a monopoly status in Denmark. That means the data are not estimates of sales declines, but actual sales. (Nordic records 99% of the market). July 18 2006, 6:38 PM
Wrapping Up The Quarter
Papers - please turn them in using eSubmit (link at right, too). Sources should be credible and scholarly if appropriate to the topic; not anecdotal (personal websites) or all open source (wikipedia). Use whatever citation method you are familiar with -- just be consistent! Remember the reason for citations: so that others can replicate your work. So, when you use a digital resource -- be sure to provide either the URL (for publicly available info) or the database (like Lexis-Nexis) and the date you accessed the material.We're not going to get bent out of shape if you use a comma instead of a period ... but we will if we can't find/replicate your research. Please cite, don't plagiarize (even if Ann Coulter does seem to be able to get away with it). As Drew pointed out last week -- we'll be checking blogs for reading review and class assignments .... so if you're behind, better late than not at all. Check the grades folder and let us know if we missed an entry (most commonly this happens if you combine the reading and assignment posts into one). To recap ... here are the assignments: Blog Assignments (in addition to reading summary) July 18 2006, 11:30 AM
Edwards Does BitTorrent
Our emphasis in this class has been on streaming media -- but we mustn't forget a powerful method of sharing video: peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. One of the most successful is BitTorrent. Dave Winer reports today that former Sen. John Edwards is using BitTorrent to distribute campaign videos. He says this is a big deal. They are using MoveDigital as their service/host. There's a list of benefits on their 'how to' page -- one of these is "pay as you go" for bandwidth. Plus, your visitors can help pay for bandwidth, in very small increments (cents, not dollars). Of course, there's RSS, so your viewers know when you've added files. And a lot of other things (ease of use being a biggie). Right now, there are four movies and four licenses -- the largest is 26mb. One suggestion off the bat: they need to name their files with human-readable names, if the file name is the only descriptor for the download! Clicking on the "download" link does not start the BitTorrent version -- for that, you need to click the P2P link. And to have a BT application installed. My straight download (the .mov) was much faster than the BT download (unlike Dave's experience, I'm still "waiting"). From the BitTorrent website: Bram wanted to enable effective swarming distribution - - transferring massive files from server to client with the efficiency of peer-to-peer - - reliably, quickly and efficiently. By 2003, BitTorrent had sparked a global revolution in file distribution on the web. Today, we are providing millions of users worldwide with a valuable platform to publish, search and download popular digital content. I've created an account (it's painless!) and will test the interface next week. One month free -- basic account $10/year. (Yes, you read that right - per YEAR.) Here's the direct link to the minimum wage video (mov). July 17 2006, 6:13 PM
Notes from Class #7
I have uploaded Travis' PowerPoint presentation from Thursday's class into the PPT directory. It is up there for your review. Authoring: Aggregators: Good Free Podcast Receiver: MSC: Yet another article July 11 2006, 6:09 PM
UGC Links
UGC = user-generated content. Here are some sources/inspiration for multi-media.
Next, find podcasts :
July 6 2006, 6:53 PM
Dj's Talk
The UW campus audiotour is for potential students. Profcast is available for 15 day trial -- it's $35 and works only on OS10.4. Here's Jake's take on how to make a Windows Media enhanced podcast. Make magazine has a 'how-to.' So does Apple. And here's Quicktime tutorial. For the Mac folks, here's Broadcaster. Drew to Dj -> where do you see widest growth, user-base or revenue stream? In the past month -- the Nike / iPod convergence. Nike and iTunes have a pair of shoes, put the sensor in the bottom of your shoe and it connects wirelessly to your iPod. Takes info from your shoe, records it ... and it will also give you feedback (if you've programmed it to do this). It uploads the info to Nike's website.
July 6 2006, 4:12 PM
And a note on broadband
The San Jose Mercury News, February this year, asserts:
Broadband access in the US differs from most of the rest of the world (Canada being the exception) -- most of us use cable and the rest of the world, DSL. December 2005 data: the US ranks 12th in broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants -- 6.5 with DSL and 9.0 with cable ... 1.3 "other" for a total of 16.8 or 49 million subscribers. Now -- let's compare this with those industry numbers from SJMN. OECD data say "49 million subscribers" and industry data say "48 million households." If the terms are equivalent, then this looks pretty sound. But the math makes it look like OECD is talking about people (inhabitants) - which brings this far fewer than 48 million households. (Headache!) Cable penetration of US households in March was only 59% - that means 41% don't have cable. Only 27.6 million of those 65.5 million households have cable modems (42% of all cable subscribers). Interestingly enough, the chart shows that cable passes by more households than the total number of TV enabled households, so take even this deconstruction with a grain of salt. [Data from National Cable & Telecommunications Association] Looking at the US population, 21 percent lives in rural areas -- and at least some of those folks aren't getting cable any time soon. Maybe these are the "other" folks in the OECD dataset. But Iceland, a country that I perceive to be "rural," has 26.7 subscribers/100 inhabitants ... and they're almost all using DSL. So ... yes, broadband penetration is up but it's not ubiquitious or even in half all US households. Other data show it's higher in urban areas than rural, due to availability. The US relies on cable more than DSL (why?) when compared to the rest of the world. This makes the discussions about common carrier regulations and network neutrality even more important, in my opinion. July 6 2006, 3:55 PM
Note on Multicasting
In 2005, our content classes were part of a grand experiment using multicast software (Access Grid) and Internet 2 to collaborate on an online game. There were six universities "paired" to create content and another two "paired" to create sound. Often, however, we had to switch to unicast mode -- whether this was because of firewalls in China (our partner) or something on the UW end ... we never knew.
We have the equipment for an individual AG node on the third floor; a venue like that pictured in the link (above) is supposed to be available at Odegaard Library. I'm pretty sure Microsoft also has a multicast client - at least in research. July 3 2006, 4:45 PM
Podcasting Resources
Here are a couple of resources from Gnomedex. First, there is a Seattle Podcasting Network ... with a growing number of podcasts originating here. The group has a wiki that includes tutorials.
Those interested in technology should check out the Gillmor Gang -- warning: heavily skewed towards technology development. [No, this is not Dan Gillmor, it's his brother Steve.] June 29 2006, 5:51 PM
RSS
Drew tells me that y'all are interested in RSS feeds ... first, you don't really want to learn XML (I don't think)! So ... check out this is excellent introduction to RSS from Podcasting News: what is RSS, what does the XML file looks like, and how to create your feed by hand. Use this online form to create your first feed. And if you think you'll be managing a lot of feeds, you'll probably want to get a third party tool like Feed For All or use a service like FeedBurner. Consider investing $20 into this podcasting starter kit (117pp) -- there's one for Macs and one for PCs. I have both, if you'd like to take a look. :) RSS readers: Bloglines and Yahoo! provide excellent web-based readers. I've not tried GoogleReader. The advantage of web-based readers: read anytime, anywhere. My favorite reader is Thunderbird, because I like the e-mail interface (filters, delete, forward).You can also get plug-ins for Outlook. Windows RSS dedicated readers: NewsGator/FeedDemon and Pluck. Mac readers: NetNewsReader, Shrook (myFav). Windows reader review from About.com; Mac reader review from Arstechnica. Browsers: Safari, Firefox ... MSIE 7.0 (still beta, I think). June 28 2006, 3:04 PM
More Articles of Note
More articles that touch on some of the ideas we have been discussingin class. Looks like NBC inked a deal with YouTube - Article Nokia starts a trial where you can watch TV on your phone - Article And finally, GUBA and Warner Brothers are distributing movies a $9.99 a pop, The same price Apple has been wanting and the studios have been so resistant to embrace. - Article June 27 2006, 5:26 PM
Student Examples, Blog Record
Two notes. First, here is a compilation of streaming media examples to date (@ 5.15 pm Tuesday). Second, there is a PDF with the assignment/blog post record available in the pub folder. Because everyone isn't yet registered -- here is the info to see the directory: user is student ... pwd is ... streaming I have created the digital locker where Drew and I will post specific grade information and feedback on your final projects. Each student has access only to their "locker" using UW NetID security features. But the "was there a blog post" record is a semi-public (class only) spreadsheet. Articles of Note | June 26
I have bumped into a few interesting articles of note that reinforce some of the topics we have touched on in class. None of these are required reading, but they may give you additional perspectives on the ever-evolving notion of streaming media. Here is an article about Apple's efforts to court favor with the film industry. THis article is aobut dangerous activites on YouTube. And finally, an article about mobile media in Korea. The PowerPoint decks for the first two classes are up on the web site if you need them for any reason.
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Useful Links
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Last modified: 7/18/2006 7:23 PM
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