[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtI5n9Ed04c] What I love about YouTube is all the great talent. Ana Free is 20 (later this month) and from Portugal. She has a wonderful catalog of music videos on YouTube. Low production, […]
Category: Media
Avril’s World Beat
Avril Lavigne’s single “Girlfriend” is available in more than a half-dozen languages, including French, German, Japanese, and Mandarin. Well, not the whole song in each language but the catchy chorus, anyway. Music is a universal […]
License, Stupidity, or Politics?
It is nitpicking time for the bone pickers. Last night, the DVR recorded the pilot episode of “Bones,” which was telecast for no reason I can guess; it’s an old episode. I hadn’t seen the first, which shocked from the opening sequence. Anyone from Washington should know that the airport above couldn’t possibly be Dulles. The identified airport isn’t in Washington but Virginia—in, duh, Dulles—and absolutely nowhere close to the U.S. Capitol. About 30 miles distance separates runways and the domed government building.
The view above would fit for Reagan National Airport. No doubt it is that airport. So, why does “Bones” kick off with such a glaring mistake? I make a big deal out of this for two reasons: The show is all about brainiac forensic anthropologists who live and breathe minute details; the setting is Washington, D.C. For either or both reasons, “Bones” should get the airport right.
I Want to Go Unprotected
Last week’s announcement—that Apple would offer DRM-free music from EMI—jump-started my motivation to dump DRM. Last autumn, I expressed concern about my growing library of copy-protected content, particularly music. The iTunes music store had always […]
Playing the DC Tourist
Yesterday, my daughter, her friend, and I went into downtown Washington, making the most of the deflowered cherry blossom season. Weather reaching 26 degrees Celsius on April 2 plummeted to 5 degrees by Saturday. The […]
So Much for Transparency
Four days ago, the mailman delivered the April Wired, which has a great story on Microsoft’s Channel 9. I have closely watched the Channel 9 blogsite since its launch in April 2004. I blogged back then about what I expected: “Channel 9 is a brilliant marketing concept. Marketing is the key descriptor. The site is run by people paid to evangelize Microsoft products. Their job is to win over developers to Microsoft products”.
I also worried that Microsoft would use Channel 9 to replace journalists: “Company-controlled blogsites could be given first—or only—access to key product managers or executives; the insiders’ view, just like the Channel 9 positioning, but in reality managed dissemination”.
Go Maine!
University of Maine is refusing to cooperate with the RIAA, which wants the names of students accused of downloading music, presumably from file-sharing sites. I say good for the home state and University of Maine system. […]
An Amoral Imperative
A confession, long time coming—or perhaps just explanation—about recent professional changes. Until November 2006, I was a market research analyst covering Microsoft and had been since May 2003. I left the analyst position and returned to journalism for many reasons.
Painful Changes
My blog relocation has turned out to be quite an exhilarating experience. On Saturday, I managed to delete all the content and my Movable Type export file. Everything was lost! Oh, it’s a harrowing tale.
Some background: I made the move on Wednesday to pmachinehosting, which a few days later changed its name to EngineHosting. I also moved from Movable Type to ExpressionEngine. I lacked two things: A new design and fix to a troublesome problem, that ExpressionEngine inserted index.php/comments in the path of posts (e.g., http://www.joewicox.com/index.php/comments/painful_changes.
Picture Them
On Sunday, my daughter took out her Canon Digital Rebel, put it on a tripod and started snapping self-portraits with a friend. She purposely didn’t use flash, which meant the girls had to be extra […]
What They Saw
Today, a couple released video footage they shot on September 11, 2001, “36 floors up and 500 yards from the North Tower” of the World Trade Center. The video, “September 11, 2001: What We Saw“.
The video is riveting, because of the raw emotion expressed by the observants’ disbelief and grief shared by so many of us that day—and because the viewer knows what is yet to occur: The second plane hitting the South Tower, the collapse of the South Tower, and the collapse of the North Tower. If there is a perspective of looking with hindsight, this video is it.
Get Your D80, Folks
As I walked by the Ritz camera at White Flint Mall this afternoon, I saw a Nikon D80 box on display in the window. So I checked inside, because I thought the camera wasn’t going […]