The Social Dynamics of TV Watching

Under the category of “And Now For Something Completely Different,” I thought I’d just note in passing that I have a new publication up, not about e-Science or Libraries or IP, but about Television.
Yes, Television.
More specifically, the paper is about streaming television and the social affordances of the viewing space.  I started thinking about this [...]

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Fighting for non-rival pudding

About half a decade ago, my fascination with (and anger about) issues arising from the growing push toward licensing access to library materials, rather than purchasing them outright, pushed me out of a traditional library career path and into one that would allow me to focus more deeply on explication of and advocacy for the [...]

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Ah, Synergy

I love coming across the doings of folks I have known when I’m least expecting it.  For example, I spent a summer working for the editor of this book — which, incidentally, looks really cool and has now been made available as a free PDF.

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Toe-dipping

More evidence that Yahoo’s thinking DRM-free: a Jessica Simpson single released for sale as an unlocked MP3 (CNET).
$1.99 seems a bit pricey, though.
(Some might say especially so for Jessica Simpson…)

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News of the Totally Friggin’ Rad

(Warning: extreme library geekiness ahead.)
According to this story in Information Today (via Library Link of the Day):
OCLC is going to be opening up full public searching of WorldCat!
(Official announcement here.)
I am breathless with anticipation.
Why is this so exciting? Well, here’s OCLC’s description of WorldCat:
WorldCat is a worldwide union catalog created and maintained collectively by [...]

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I’d buy that.

Apparently, Yahoo’s thinking about offering non-DRM mp3’s through its music service. That would rule. And they’d more than likely have me as a customer.
Right now, I would love to be buying all my music online — I tend never look at a jewel case again after I rip the CD inside — but [...]

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A Lament for the State of Radio Broadcasting in America

I dove headfirst into Last.fm a few weeks back, while procrastinating on writing my article. Since then, it has helped make my cubicle so much more bearable — I listen all day at work. Now that I’ve listened to a fair mass of music, it’s getting better at knowing what I like, and [...]

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For you Wiki junkies out there…

If you haven’t already seen it, there’s a really fascinating conversation going on at Edge about whether Wikipedia represents a negative manifestation of the “hive mind,” whether meta-everything is really the best direction for web (and perhaps epistemological) development, and a multitude of other social-computing-type issues.
It’s all building off a long essay, “Digital Maoism: The [...]

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