OLDaily By Stephen Downes June 26, 2003 The RIAA Boycott Is On The recording industry declares war against its customers, announcing plans for thousands of lawsuits, and its customers fight back, urging a boycott of all purchases of recorded music. Of course, we won't hear much (if anything) about this boycott through the taditional media, since it's owned by the same companies (which also explains much of the press coverage surrounding this issue). It's going to be a long, hot summer for the recording industry, I think. Can the internet sustain its first major battle head to head against traditional media? I'd say - yes. Expect sweeping changes and widespread accessibility to online music in the fall. Seriously. By Ashlee Vance, The Register, June 26, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect] Scholar-Based Innovations in Publishing Excellent PowerPoint presentation. From the abstract: "In recent years, a number of innovations have emerged that seek to provide sustainable alternatives to the predominant publishing paradigm. In this presentation, a variety of initiatives that exploit the inherent potential of the Web and other digital environments to offer open and enhanced access to the personal and collective scholarship of individuals, organizations, and nations will be profiled." Caution: if you view this in your browser, don't click on the screen shots - you will be taken to the web page instead of (as expected) to the next slide. By Gerry McKiernan, Ames IA, June 23, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect] LoJack for Your Stradivarius RFID tags - small, passive radio frequency identification tags embedded in objects - can be used to track inventory or, as this story suggests, help trace stolen musical instruments. The obvious next killer application: lapel-pin RFIDs broadcasting information (marital status, business card, sponsored personal advertising) to listening handhelds and other mobile devices. Now you can exchange business cards with someone merely by passing each other at the reception (so to speak). Yes, another quality million dollar idea brought to you for free from OLDaily. By Rafe Needleman, Business 2.0, June 26, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect] Weisberg Leads Slate to a Higher Place From the 'trends to watch' department: "People are realizing this is a business like any other and has to follow the same rules. And advertising, which is very conservative in a lot of ways, is really starting to come around to the Internet, and recognizing it as a value proposition and recognizing the potential to do things you can't really do in other media, like reach people at work." So says Slate's new editor, Jacob Weisberg, after his first year in office. Related to this, worth a look is Google's AdSense program, which provides cusomized text-based advertisements for web pages. To see what advertisements AdSense would serve, submit a URL to this page and try for yourself. By Laura Rich, Online Journalism Review, June 25, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect] NewsTrolls Does online advertising work? This is an advertisement for my other site, NewsTrolls. Follow this link and see for yourself whether online advertising, properly done, can work. By Various Authors, June, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect] Mark Oehlert's Research Blog Mark Oehlert, who since the year 2000 has been publishing his e-clippings newsletter through Yahoo! Groups, has launched Mark Oehlert's Research Blog, scoring a hit right away with his Masie Center research map. By Mark Ohelert, Mark Oehlert's Research Blog, June 24, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect] ebXML Primer I've covered ebXML before in OLDaily, but for those of you who are new (or for those of you whose eyes glazed over last time), this smartly written introduction will cover it for you in about five minutes of reading. By Sean Gallagher, Baseline Briefing, May 15, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect] The Echo Project This is very interesting, and either the harbinger of peace in the RSS and content syndication communities (unlikely) or of open conflict (more likely) between those who support Dave Winer's approach to syndication, and those who don't. Tentatively named 'Echo,' this site contains initial discussion and advocacy toward rebuilding content syndication from the ground up. It's mostly a good idea, except that the RSS 'brand' and format is already well entrenched, and because it is, essentially, yet another 'fork' in syndication languages (which makes the tally two for Dave Winer (Userland format, RSS 2.0) and two for his opponents (RSS 1.0 and Echo). But hey - this is what I have always said would and should happen with metadata formats (no "one standard for all", remember?) and so I'll just roll with it. Educational metadata organizations - currently about 3 years behind the RSS community - should take note, though. By Sam Ruby, June, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect] Know a friend who might enjoy this newsletter? Feel free to forward OLDaily to your colleagues. If you received this issue from a friend and would like a free subscription of your own, you can join our mailing list at http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/website/subscribe.cgi [ About This NewsLetter] [ OLDaily Archives] [ Send me your comments]