March on Houses of Parliament against new internet laws

Update: It is reported that in the morning at 7:30am the details will be officially announced. The first step will be to see what is said before jumping at internet speculation, but remain vigilant and prepared to take action, because if we just sit and talk about it on twitter, the UK government will steamroll right over us.

Boing Boing has reported on a secret document leak which, in summary, is the beginning of the end of the last truly free state in the world - the internet.

Click here for the details on Boing Boing, but the summary at the end reminds us what it all means:

“This is as bad as I’ve ever seen, folks. It’s a declaration of war by the entertainment industry and their captured regulators against the principles of free speech, privacy, freedom of assembly, the presumption of innocence, and competition.

This proposal creates the office of Pirate-Finder General, with unlimited power to appoint militias who are above the law, who can pry into every corner of your life, who can disconnect you from your family, job, education and government, who can fine you or put you in jail.

…Tell every Briton you know. If we can’t stop this, it’s beginning of the end for the net in Britain.”

Not just Britain - if this goes through, it will be the first chapter in many nations following suit.

I propose a march on the Houses of Parliament in protest. We must co-ordinate this with a powerful web campaign, which I am sure will self organise itself if we stay focused.

This is a #webwar. I have never felt inclined to join a march, but always said if our rights online are taken, we can NOT go down in silence. I am all for proposals to improve our society, particularly where I work in the music industry, but this is madness.

There were equally terrifying proposals recently announcing every piece of data transferred in the UK will be open to be monitored, without being signed off - even someone in local council.

If we don’t stand, Web 3.0 will be more about what we can’t do than what we can.

Let the discussion continue on the comments below. When should we march? What is our message to the government? How can we co-ordinate this? How can our discussions continue in secrecy, without alienating others sympathetic to ours cause?

Edit: If you wish to contact me in private (or is it?) contact me at playmusic [at] me.com, or if you are on twitter I will DM you my phone number @tomdavenport.

Shadows make for a mind-bending image. Turn it upside down and it makes sense. Unattributed, from Derren Brown’s blog.

Shadows make for a mind-bending image. Turn it upside down and it makes sense.

Unattributed, from Derren Brown’s blog.

Redesigned iPhone gamepad coming soon? Watch a Mario Kart demo in action.

The FPS need something like this, the current control system for such games have your thumbs all over the screen - in Modern Warfare, the control system is excellent despite working in this manner, but the long awaited Eliminate has serious flaws in it’s control method with the frantic pace and jumping characters.

As for other game genres, it would be helpful to have a controller like this for navigating some menus, but for the most part the touch control systems have been elegantly designed and a controller like this would be overkill.

(via zodttd)

‘The Bash-a-Tron’ sonic manipulator.

Mostly brilliant because of the name.

(via sonicmanipulator)

"For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, or a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life."
— Alfred Souza (via tmblg)
3D in your browser, with NO glasses?
The real reason App Store e-book submissions are up

Am I the first to realise why e-book submissions are up in the Apple App Store? Even above video games, historically the highest catagory in app submissions?

If I were a developer, I’d be anticipating the Apple Tablet/Slate launch. We can only go on the assumption, but it will likely have an App Store, probably the same app store with so much content available on it Almost 100,000 apps now, isn’t it?

So why the sudden e-book frenzy?

Read More

Music webstores: Why Gogoyoko were best - and why they've already lost

In early 2009 the new breed of music web interfaces were beginning to bubble to the surface of twitter feeds.

We saw Soundcloud impress with an embeddable player you could put anywhere - with a smart waveform and commenting interface, the exit from MySpace became clear. But it doesn’t work as a standalone webstore - not it’s mission or purpose, at present, just a fantastic tool. We still needed the future of online music stores to present itself, and we needed them to get a user base big enough to commit to them, knowing their reputation and network would be supported in the long term. It doesn’t matter how good an application or web site is, if there is little for customers to go to, there will be little point in investing time in it for your band or label.


Coming early 2009? ‘Course you are.

Word of Gogoyoko came through, and the classy design and clear payment system made it something for the new music business to lust for. Here were the points that made it so appealing:

  1. Artists get get 100% of the sales profit
  2. All power and value to the artists. No middle man. gogoyoko handles all VAT payments and royalties to music collection societies.
  3. Get extra revenue from music streaming
  4. Because getting a fair share from music sales is not fair enough.
  5. You’re the boss
  6. Artists get to set the price and promote and sell directly to their fanbase. Through gogoyoko artists can promote, distribute and sell their releases and soon live shows as well, communicate directly with their fan base and make contact with new listeners all over the world.
  7. Charity
  8. Charity plays a big role in our concept, with 10% of all advertisement revenues going to partnering international charity & environmental organizations. gogoyoko also provides artists with the opportunity to donate 10% of their music sales to charity.
  9. gogoyoko is for everyone
  10. And that means you too. Everyone can sign up for free and sell their music. There’s no filtering, no limits and no one we exclude. gogoyoko is made by artists for artists and we make no exceptions.

.

Amazing. It really would have been amazing.

Months later, we still don’t have free access to the service, and a new champion in Band Camp has already arrived with the most impressive free stats system and a fast, simple shopping interface for customers.This is before considering the efficient cloud service from Spotify, which suggests we’ll be throwing away money on individual purchases if we can stream anything for a fixed (and in fact, very fair) rate.

Gogoyoko did offer me an invite when I pointed out how they have somewhat missed the ball this year, in the UK at least. During the sign up process, some kind of bug prevented me from completing the registration. Tip for self-destructive developers: this is one way to make a user give up on your service.

The lesson here is to roll out your magic, do anything service ASAP, because the attention of the web is a fickle one. Gogoyoko could still become a leader, but their service will have to live up to expectations and floor the feature set on the rest of the market. Good luck with that. Really.

jonathan-deamer: fascinated: Songkick has a cool app/company timeline in their new space. This is great, all small teams should do this to remember just how much they actually accomplish. Easy to forget. I should do this for my general life too.  It’s so easy to let the days pass by without stopping to reflect. I can definitely see its use for startups/small teams.

jonathan-deamer:

fascinated:

Songkick has a cool app/company timeline in their new space. This is great, all small teams should do this to remember just how much they actually accomplish. Easy to forget.

I should do this for my general life too.  It’s so easy to let the days pass by without stopping to reflect.

I can definitely see its use for startups/small teams.

How to measure your social media ROI
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