Find out why the RIAA thinks lower royalties will benefit artists:
Today, Yahoo! announced that they have removed limits from their web hosting. The driving force behind the change was to help small business owners. Yahoo! is hoping that small businesses will be able to focus more on their business (and less on web hosting), since they won't have to worry about exceeding limits anymore. For a mere $11.95 per month, small businesses will get unlimited disk space, unlimited data transfer, and unlimited e-mail storage. Check out Yahoo!'s Small Business Web Hosting.
...A new service on CrimeReports.com, launched last year and expanding nationwide, overlays police reports on maps, so people can view where arrests and other police calls have been made. Users can configure e-mail alerts to notify them of crimes in locations of interest within a day.
The free site relies mainly on police departments paying $100 or $200 a month, depending on their size, to have CrimeReports.com extract the information from their internal systems and publish it online...
Stay current with Microsoft:
A few of Microsoft's projects were aimed at helping advertisers get better at reaching their ideal customers online, particularly using search keywords.
The company showed a dashboard advertisers could use to forecast the success of certain keyword advertising campaigns and a system it says will make it easier for advertisers think about key ideas, rather than hundreds of individual keywords.
Our mission is to help you be more effective in your daily work and open doors to opportunities using the professional relationships you already have.This isn’t networking—it’s what networking should be.
Forget exchanging business cards with acquaintances that don’t know your work, or trying to renew professional ties when you need a favor.
Two noteworthy reads about LinkedIn from 2007 by Mashable:Four Web 2.0 sites you should know about, all of which are relatively new to the scene:
Metafilter is a weblog that anyone can contribute a link or a comment to. A typical weblog is one person posting their thoughts on the unique things they find on the web. This website exists to break down the barriers between people, to extend a weblog beyond just one person, and to foster discussion among its members.
What is Seesmic?
Until now, online communication has lacked personality as it’s been limited to text (IM, SMS, email). Now, Seesmic brings conversation alive through video. See and hear people share their experiences straight from their webcams, join in live conversations, and engage in real interactions with real people.It’s so easy: record a video directly on Seesmic’s website, or upload an existing video straight from your computer, or link to a video posted on a social network, whatever works for you, works for us. Join the Seesmic community and experience a new way to express yourself, to make friends, and to be seen and be heard. Conversations can also be simultaneously broadcast via Twitter and soon via other platforms.
Be seen. Be heard. Be on Seesmic.
I love the concept of digitizing business cards. These days anything that can be made on paper, whether its a check, a business card, or a grocery list, can be digitized. Instead of writing checks, we now use online banking. To make a grocery list, we use a word processor. Surely, business cards will follow suit.
An awesome example of this would be Thomas Marban's "hub page". It is extremely clean and profesional looking, yet with an artsy, elegant feel due to its great design and calming blue color scheme. As you first look at the page, the white rectangle with his picture and title immediately grabs your attention. This brings your attention right where it should, to the most important information on the page. Essentially, the whole rectangle (the white portion and the lighter color with all the contact information) is a business card embedded within the page. Most of all, I find it especially cool that you can download all of his contact information via the link to the right of his e-mail address (the miniature looking business card).
The next feature that gains your attention is the list of his websites along the right hand side of the page. Again, using the color white, he brings your attention to these links. He doesn't make these white links come off too strong, which keeps the focus on the "business card" portion to the left. Then, along with each link, he lists his involvement with the company/website.
Lastly, he puts links to all of his social media (web 2.0) profiles along the bottom, in a darker text. The social links are there, but in a humble way that doesn't draw your attention away from the "more important" information.
I think the online business card is a great concept. Initially, for me, four reasons stand out as to why an online business card is better than its paper counterpart:
Microsoft is trying to acquire Yahoo for $44.6 billion to increase their competitiveness in the Internet consumer market. Read more here.
Amazon.com is purchasing an online audiobook seller for $300 million, in an attempt to increase their presence in the digital download market. Get the full story here.
The following are articles that I enjoyed and/or thought were of particular value. I became extremely backlogged with posting this week so the list will be quite long. I'm only going to post titles with the links so pick and choose as you like:
Want a Good Digital Distribution Deal? Get a Good Lawyer
Norovirus: Q&A
Wikimedia Foundation
Top 25 Web 2.0 Apps for Money, Finance, and Investment
What to do if you're laid off in 2008 recession
Organize Your Money in 2008 with Wesabe
eMusic
Amie Street
How to figure people out - Machiavelli Psychology
How to Find Work That You Love - A Logical Guide
Advice for Setting up a Home Office - Group Interview
United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team
Who gives better search results?
Get Rich Slowly
The Finance Buff
About Cory Doctorow
The following are six articles from ars technica on the current state of digital rights management:
"Oops: MPAA admits college piracy numbers grossly inflated"
Yes, college students need to rein in the file-sharing. We get it. Artists need to eat. But while the MPAA has been busy lecturing universities about the way they run their IT operations, perhaps the universities have something to say to the motion picture business about how it buys and releases its research. Back to school, MPAA.
So, in conclusion:
- Indies gaining market share
- Digital downloads up 45 percent in one year
- Well-known artists going indie
- DRM-free downloads from all major labels
- Major label revenues declining
- CD sales in a death spiral
Those don't suggest that the music business is dying so much as changing, and the center of gravity is shifting to individual artists and to smaller, more focused operations. There will always be a role for what are still called the "major labels"; who would put out all those American Idol and Hannah Montana albums, for instance?
Can music companies compete against "free"? Sure they can; it's an issue I addressed in yesterday's feature on the changing nature of the music business, and confirmation came today from the oldest of old-guard sources, CBS. The company, which owns Last.fm, announced today that Last.fm will now offer on-demand streaming of millions of tracks from all four major labels and a huge host of indies. For free.
When it comes to opening new online music stores, DRM-free is the name of the game. Now that all of the Big Four music labels have either completely dropped or are in the process of dropping copy protection requirements from their music, online retailers are rushing to sell the newly-freed songs faster than a Mac user gravitates to an iPhone. Although Amazon has now made a name for itself as the first (and currently, the only) MP3 store to offer DRM-free tracks from all of the Big Four labels, Yahoo now plans to throw its hat into the ring later this year.
Of course, once it is in possession of an IP address, the RIAA files a John Doe lawsuit and then obtains an ex parte subpoena to discover the name and address of the person who was assigned that IP address. (And sometimes, that person played no role whatsoever in the alleged infringement.) But the complaints used by the RIAA don't reflect that. The RIAA's investigators didn't identify an individual in Atlantic v. Njuguna, as the complaint says, merely the IP address of a piece of Internet-facing hardware like a cable or DSL modem. They may also be able to get the IP address of the device directly connected to the hardware, which could be a PC, laptop, wireless router, or something else. Either way, it's not an individual, and the RIAA's lack of precision in its complaints is troubling.
In fact, the IFPI's own numbers show that in the US, for instance, 17.6 percent of all Internet users regularly share files. If 30 percent of those users buy less music, that means that file-swapping only leads 5.9 percent of all US Internet users to buy less music. The number is even lower if we take the US population as a whole.
Forgive us if we're skeptical here, but implementing a draconian solution like deep packet inspection of all Internet traffic in order to get a few percent of the population to buy more music doesn't sound much like progress, or even rationality.
Snap Shots makes it easier for site owners to empower their readers with enhanced hyperlinks that display previews, text summaries, videos, stock charts, MP3s, product info, and much, much more. Just roll your cursor over this link to see how it works."
Deyey.com aims to help small company and individuals to save their cost to run and promote a business. We provide two FREE online applications now. One is for designing a Name Card, another one is for File Mangament. Besides, our web platforms can share your name cards and files with other people. It lets more people in the world to know more about you and your business. We know that they are not enough to help in your businesses, so it is just our starting point. We have plenty of ideas want to do and we will try our best to get it done!
