I met the Simuze guys, an open and independent music initiative in the Netherlands, during a recent trip to Amsterdam, where I met Marten Timan, who wrote his thesis on Open Content and the Music Industry. They now have made a selection of 19 of their bands, in a ‘best of’ CD: see here.
Date archives "October 2006"
Spanish translation of Richard Poynder interview on P2P
We remind our readers that the extensive interview on P2P, undertaken by Richard Poynder, is also available in a Spanish translation, thanks to Roberto Martinez. You can find it here.
The Ethical Economy – 1
This is part of the new ‘Book of the Week’ experiment, where we will publish excerpts of new books. Adam Arvidsson’s book on the Ethical Economy is a draft, to which you are strongly invited to contribute. You may do so in the form of comments, separate blog entries, or by using the discussion page… Continue reading
Introducing the new ‘Book of the Week’ series
From tomorrow Monday onwards, we will bring daily installments of new books, which are either already written, as is the case for the book by John Heron on Participatory Spirituality; or, and this is perhaps more exciting, are in the process of being written. This week, we will start with the book by Adam Arvidsson…. Continue reading
Top 5 P2P Books of the Week
1) The Small-Mart Revolution, How Local Businesses Are Beating the Global Competition, by Michael H Shuman Via Dave Pollard’s exceptional blog: “Michael Shuman, one of the co-founders of BALLE, has written an excellent book diagnosing the reasons entrepreneurial businesses face an uneven playing field and an unfair competitive disadvantage versus the multinational corporatist oligopolies (MCOs)…. Continue reading
Speak Free Music: monitoring innovative business models and quality free music
Speak Free Music supports the emergence of a viable free music scene, and selects for quality music and new innovative business models. Do please suggest other similar sources, in order to update our new directory on Open Music Practices. If you are a producer rather than a consumer of free music, please do have a… Continue reading
GeoBliki
Link: GeoBliki GeoBliki enables a form of Open Source Disaster Recovery, through a combination of wiki, blogging, geospatial sensor-data network connectivity, and social network analysis/trust metrics. The whole system is built on Ruby on Rails technology. This is an ambitious project, that ties together a network of data from satellites from NASA’s Earth Observing System…. Continue reading
The Google Innovation Culture
Slashdot reports on a blog entry by a Google developer, which makes the following description of innovation practices there: “Developers can switch teams and/or projects any time they want, no questions asked; just say the word and the movers will show up the next day to put you in your new office with your new… Continue reading
Why is commercial open source so expensive?
Why is Open Source Software so expensive for the enterprise? There is a very interesting discussion on this topic at Slashdot, of which we select 3 contributions 1. “Possibly because it’s not a good business model for enterprise consumers–and therefore must up its charges. I mean, you want to sell a product that a community… Continue reading
European concern for the commercial and cultural dominance of Google’s universal library
The Institute for the Future of the Book discusses the new book by Jean-Noel Jeanneney, i.e. Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge: a View from Europe. They dismiss the cultural concerns of the French National Library director, showing the multilingual basis of the Google project, but sympathise with the concern for the commercial dominance… Continue reading
Open Source Shorts – call for submissions
Open Source Shorts is a screening of short films released under Creative Commons licences. Creative Commons licenses provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors and artists and build on the “all rights reserved” concept of traditional copyright to offer a voluntary “some rights reserved” approach. With Creative Commons licences people are free… Continue reading
Friends of Robert Anton Wilson Relief Fund
The great man behind the Illuminatus Trilogy and other classics like Cosmic Trigger and Prometheus Rising is sick and needs help to pay medical and living expenses. Donations can be made directly through Bob’s PayPal address: olgaceline@gmail.com. You can also send a check payable to Robert Anton Wilson to Dennis Berry c/o Futique Trust P.O…. Continue reading
Video interview on the P2P paradigm
Robin Good has recently published the first ever webcast explaining the peer to peer paradigm. It was conducted by James Burke, our collaborator in Amsterdam, and nicely complements the previously mentioned extensive interview with Richard Poynder. If you want an easy introduction to P2P theory, this is a good first try.
What to think of Chavez and Venezuela?
Chavez recent antics at the UN and especially his predilection for consorting with dictators, probably under the adage that the enemy of his enemies are his friends, have the danger to blind us to the interest of the continuous social experimentation in Venezuela. We have mentioned on these pages the emergence of an economy based… Continue reading