Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
scriptingNews outline for 9/10/2000
Author: Dave Winer Posted: 9/10/2000; 8:38:32 AM Topic: scriptingNews outline for 9/10/2000 Msg #: 21107 Prev/Next: 21106 / 21108
Today's Song: He Got Game.
NY Times: A Web Rebalancing Act. "MP3.com may be thoroughly punished even though it has tried to ensure that people pay for copies of the music they want to listen to."
Tim Paustian: "I am working my way through the test suite, at this point the code makes it through test 4 of 26. Right now it is balking at a alias verb. I may be able to knock this off quickly and have a beta version to test soon."
We're going into endgame mode on Radio UserLand. In preparation I started working on the feature list. For me, it's mostly marketing from here-out. The team is organized, the plan is in place. A couple more weeks and it'll be soup.
The MusicBrainz Metadata initiative is designed to "create a portable and flexible means of storing and exchanging metadata related to digital audio and video tracks."
The Downloading Communism poster I ran yesterday came from the Modern Humorist Store.
Eric Kidd considers himself a "commercial open source developer". Interesting!
Yesterday's highlight was getting to hang out with Chuck D. He's an incredible speaker, at least eighteen times during his speech I cheered, his philosophy is the musical counterpart of the Two-Way Web and How to Make Money on the Internet. He's taking control of his music and offering other musicians a way to get their stuff out there without being too much of a middleman. He's brilliant and an inspiration. I asked to shake his hand, we talked about lawyers and journalism and the creative freedom that the Internet offers.
MacWorld interview with Chuck D. "The day of the lazy artist is over." Amen.
The rest of yesterday's discussions centered around demographics, monetizing things, audiences and all the rest of that bullshit. What if it's not possible to make money on the Internet? Does that mean there's no value to the Internet? A medium that resists money-making. Now that medium might have some integrity. Think about it.
I heard about a Web-based TV show with product placements. If you click on a product you go to a page where you can buy it. Does that sound wonderful to you? It makes me want to puke. What happened to art?
And if you think I use strong judgmental language, you should listen to Chuck D. There's value in people with strong opinion. Too many flattened-out companytowners floating around trying to make everything the same. That's what the Internet offers the chance to route around, at a social level. The Internet at its best is anti-TV. In this medium you hear what real people say, not what middlemen think you want to hear.
Last night I had dinner with Ann Greenberg, Julian Millenbach and CDDB founder Steve Scherf and his wife. Ann is a VP at the company that runs CDDB. Julian is the Director of Engineering at Larry Ellison's network computer company that Gina Smith is running. We talked about how CDDB works, what their next steps are, and I learned at a fairly detailed level what's going on inside Larry Ellison's mind. Now we'll expand our coverage into these two areas and maybe do some interesting stuff with CDDB in Radio UserLand. I have the big picture in both areas now.
This page was archived on 6/13/2001; 4:56:36 PM.
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