DRM & Music

Some great interviews about music, DRM (Digital Rights Management), and eMusic on FutureTense radio, from American Public Media.

eMusic CEO says music industry should begin killing off digital copy protection schemes, January 17, 2007
Description from the Future Tense web site: "eMusic, the number two digital download service behind Apple's iTunes, recently sold its 100 millionth song.
"eMusic sells songs from smaller labels and independent artists, and unlike iTunes, Napster and Rhapsody, the songs are MP3 files with no copy restrictions. You can play them anywhere and make as many copies as you like.
"eMusic President and CEO David Pakman says the lack of "digital rights management" is a big reason for eMusic's success." (there's also a longer mp3 interview with Mr. Pakman at the web site, which is worth a listen if you like eMusic or iTunes, or care about DRM issues ...)

and

Is digital music copy protection on the way out?, January 19, 2007
Description from the Future Tense web site: "Ever since major record labels started selling downloadable music, they've built restrictions into the songs. This is called, perhaps euphemistically, digital rights management, or DRM. These restrictions prevent customers from making backup copies or playing them on different devices. A song from Apple's iTunes, for example, won't play on any portable device but an Apple iPod.
"Digital music journalist and blogger Eliot Van Buskirk sees signs record labels are beginning to see the downside of customer-unfriendly DRM, and may soon begin selling more music in the unprotected MP3 format.
"Van Buskirk, who writes for Wired News, says Amazon.com's expected entry into MP3 music is one sign of the changes to come."

and

Neighborhood record store invades iTunes' turf, January 23, 2007
Description from the Future Tense web site: "When a record store called Other Music hit the scene 11 years ago in New York's East Village, it chose as its location a little spot across the street from then-powerhouse Tower Records. The Tower chain of stores is gone, a victim of the downturn in the music industry. Now, Other Music plans to open a digital music store where it will sell songs in the MP3 format, without copy restrictions.
"Other Music co-owner Josh Madell says iTunes dominates the digital music space, but there's room for other players.
"Other Music's digital songs will sell for 10 to 15 percent more than iTunes, according to Madell." See the OtherMusic web site for info. about their digital download program...

Interruptions & Watching Television

Apparently, television commercials serve a useful purpose in the enjoyment of television shows. Future Tense's Jon Gordon interviewed Jeff Galak, a doctoral candidate at NYU's Stern School of Business last week regarding Galak's research suggesting that "commercial interruptions make TV shows more enjoyable."

Apparently it's not the commercials themselves that make us enjoy the shows we are watching. Instead, it's the forced break; we get habituated to what we are doing and thus enjoy it less over time. Since the commercials stop the show, when we return to the show, we enjoy it more because we've had a break. From the abstract:

"...[S]tudies demonstrate that, although people preferred to avoid commercial interruptions, these interruptions actually made programs more enjoyable (study 1), regardless of the quality of the commercial (study 2), even when controlling for the mere presence of the ads (study 3), and regardless of the nature of the interruption (study 4)."

The article will be published August.

For More Information

• Gordon, Jon. Study: Interruptions make TV shows more enjoyable. Future Tense, Jan. 20, 2009.
  
• Nelson, Leif D., Tom Meyvis, and Jeff Galak (2009), “Enhancing the Television Viewing Experience through Commercial Interruptions,” in Press at the Journal of Consumer Research, 36 (August). [Paper; subscription required or check @ your library]

Word Games for Free Rice

Interesting story on Future Tense this week about a web site called Free Rice.com which asks you to define a bunch of words -- and for every time you click on a definition, the site will donate 10 grains of rice to the hungry. Jon Gordon says that "The United Nations World Food Program says the Web game FreeRice has generated enough rice to feed 50,000 hungry people around the world for one day."

It's kind of fun: you get a word and have to select the definition from 4 options. I started with "toupee" and other words include "fecundity" and "wend." So far, I've donated 110 grains of rice. I lost on defining "ruth" and "fusillade," so I got some easier words. If you have a bit of time, like word games, and want to donate rice to help end world hunger, this is for you!

For More Info:

• Word quiz Web site aims to feed the hungry. Future Tense, Nov. 13, 2007.
• Free Rice.com word games
  

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Favorite Podcasts

I've had two conversations recently in which I was discussing favorite science podcasts. Since this blog serves as a long-term memory aid, I'm listing, in alphabetical order, some of the sci-tech podcasts I like right now. (read about earlier favorites)

• All in the Mind Terrific 30-minute discussion of all things psychology from Australia's ABC Radio National. Host and science journalist Natasha Mitchell is very knowledgeable and has interviewed folks like Steven Pinker, Dan Dennett, and others in psychology, neuroscience, and even philosophy. I've blogged about many episodes. (note: their web site was down as I wrote this, but it should be back soon)
  
• Brain Science Podcast Host Ginger Campbell (an ER "doc" in Alabama) conducts terrific interviews and book talks about many cognitive science topics. She's interviewed Christof Koch, linguist Alice Gaby, and Brain Rules author John Medina. She asks good, knowledgeable questions and her conversations have inspired me to buy many books for myself and for my library. You can follow Ginger on Twitter, and read what I've blogged about prior Brain Science podcasts.
  
• Free Library of Philadelphia "Author Event" lectures, feature many types of authors including several scientists. I just listened to physicist Paul Davies' talk entitled Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life and was riveted by Simon Winchester talking about The Man Who Loved China: Joseph Needham and the Making of a Masterpiece. There are also lectures by Steven Pinker on his book The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature and Eric Kandel talking about In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind. Looks like mathematician and physicist Brian Greene will be speaking this fall! These hour-long talks usually contain a 30-minute lecture then ~30 minutes of Q&A with the audience.
  
• Future Tense 3-4 minute radio program subtitled "Public radio's daily journal of the digital age." Host (and Twitterer) Jon Gordon covers many aspects of technology, such as podcasting (not mainstream yet, apparently), PowerPoint, as well as many Mac and PC issues. I've blogged many Future Tense episodes.
  
• GSLIScast Audio recordings from many speaker presentations at Simmons Graduate School of Library & Information Science. They usually run 60-90 minutes.
• Radio Times with WHYY's Marty Moss-Coane. The majority of these 50-minute podcast are NOT about science, but the ones that are are terrific (and the others are, too). Moss-Coane has interviewed Avery Gilbert, psychologist and smell expert; Gary Marcus, Hampshire alum and director of NYU's Infant Language Learning Center; and Drew Westen, author of The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation. Unfortunately, the mp3 links have a short shelf-live at WHYY's site, so it's best to subscribe to the show via iTunes.
  
• SirsiDynix Institute Free, hour-long workshops with library leaders about various aspects of library science, including David Lee King's primer on video on the web and the awesome Maximizing the Power of the Web: Pew Internet & American Life Project's 2007 Findings with Lee Rainie.
  
• TED Talks 20-minute talks by prominent thinkers in many disciplines, including science, technology, arts, and more. Topics include Sugata Mitra showing how kids teach themselves; Patricia Burchat shedding light on dark matter; and Kevin Kelly on the next 5,000 days of the web. I've blogged about several TED Talks.
  
• TVBarn Not science-related, but thoughtful conversations about TV between (Twitterer) Aaron Barnhart and a few radio talk show hosts across the country. My favorites are when he speaks with Paul Harris. They are usually 5-15 minutes but sometimes last longer.

Please add your favorite science podcast(s) in the comments!

World Music

Last week, Future Tense had an episode about National Geographic's World Music site.

From the Future Tense web site: "National Geographic is known for bringing the world alive through its magazine and television documentaries. Now it's aiming to educate the world about diverse cultures through music. National Geographic World Music is a music store, and includes videos, photos, maps and features from National Geographic Magazine."

Songs are 99c each, and you can listen to them in a nice streaming audio format. I liked a woman named Souad Massi, whom they say "writes some of the most gorgeous Algerian pop to be found on either side of the Mediterranean." You can hear 1 minute snippets of each song from her album Mesk Eli, so you get a real flavor of the CD.
Incidentally, eMusic has the album, translated to Honeysuckle .

Nice way to hear new music!

Mirror Neurons & Video Games

Been reading about mirror neurons a lot lately; first in the April issue of Scientific American Mind (abstract only) and now in the New York Times (from June 4, subscription may be required).

SciAm suggests that mirror neurons are how we learn from the world — learning language, for instance, but also maybe why we yawn when someone else does (are you yawning? I am ...). My buddy Ramachandran is quoted as saying that mirror neurons may be as important to psychology as DNA is to biology.

The New York Times says that some golfers and Nascar drivers make use of mirror neurons by playing video games to improve their skills. It helps them visualize situations they will encounter in their sport. The Penn State football coach is using Madden's NFL game to help train his new players.

Both articles are referring to research conducted by Marco Iacoboni, a mirror-neuron researcher at UCLA's Brain Mapping Center. You can see some of what he's written "recently" from Google Scholar.

Finally, the radio show / podcast Future Tense recently discussed research showing that "that surgeons who warm up by playing video games perform better at simulated surgery." They didn't mention mirror neurons in the podcast, but I bet there is a connection ...


Citations:
Scientific American Mind
April 2006
A Revealing Reflection
By David Dobbs
Mirror neurons are providing stunning insights into everything from how we learn to walk to how we empathize with others

New York Times
June 4, 2006
Sports / Play Magazine: The Home-Screen Advantage
By CLIVE THOMPSON
Hooray for mirror neurons! It turns out that video games can be good training tools. Just ask a Nascar driver or a Penn State QB

Future Tense
May 30, 2006
Jon Gordon
Surgeons who warm up playing video games make fewer mistakes

Chatting As A Girl ...

... can be scary. APM's Future Tense reports that chat rooms can be hostile to girls. In some ways this isn't a surprise, but the magnitude of the hostility is striking.

"A study by the University of Maryland's School of Engineering finds that female-name users of Internet Relay Chat are subjected to a barrage of sexually abusive language and violent verbal attacks. In the study, chatroom users with names like 'Kathy' or 'Irene' received 25 times more malicious messages than users with names like 'Bob' or 'Jack.'"

More info is at physorg.com (*very* commercial, but interesting), which reports that the "results will be published in the proceedings of the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers International (IEEE) Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN '06) in June."

You can listen to the Future Tense piece in RealAudio or as a podcast through iTunes.

The Music Genome Project?!

A new favorite podcast is Future Tense from American Public Media. Last month they reported on Pandora, "an Internet music service that streams songs based on 400 distinct musical characteristics."

The people behind Pandora are working on a music genome project, so if you say you like Al Stewart, they'll play music for you which "features major key tonality, demanding instrumental part writing" or "mellow rock instrumentation, folk influenes, mild rythmic syncopation, melodic songwriting, and acoustic rhythm piano." It's $36 per year, but you can listen to 10 hours for free.

The Genome Project, according to the Pandora site "capture[s] all of the little details that give each recording its magical sound - melody, harmony, instrumentation, rhythm, vocals, lyrics ... and more - close to 400 attributes!"

Anyway, check out Pandora and the Future Tense podcast (RA req'd)(other topics include Google stuff, the DMCA & listening to electronic music, and using the Internet to help victims of Hurricane Katrina).

"Connected But Hassled"

Those awesome folks at the Pew Internet & American Life Project have a new report out called A Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users, in which they say "half of all American adults are only occasional users of modern information gadgetry, while 8% are avid participants in all that digital life has to offer."

Jon Gordon, of American Public Media's Future Tense, did a show about this on May 7 (Technology: Where do you fit in?). On the web site, he summarizes the report thusly:

"In a new survey, the Pew Internet and American Life Project finds that adult Americans are broadly divided into three groups: 31 percent are elite technology users, 20 percent are moderate users and the remainder have little or no usage of the Internet or cell phones."

What I like about this survey, and the summary press release, is the categorization of technology users. I'll list a few, but check out the press release for more details, and check out the pdf full report for even more good stuff. (quotes taken from the press release)

The top two categories are:
* "Omnivores (8%): They have the most information gadgets and services, which they use voraciously to participate in cyberspace, express themselves online, and do a range of Web 2.0 activities. Most in this group are men in their mid- to late twenties.
* "Connectors (7%): Between featured-packed cell phones and frequent online use, they connect to people and manage digital content using [information and communication technologies] ICTs – with high levels of satisfaction about how ICTs let them work with community groups and pursue hobbies."

Among others in the middle range,
* "Connected But Hassled (10%): They have invested in a lot of technology (80% have broadband at home), but they find the connectivity intrusive and information something of a burden."

At the lower end of technology users,
* "Inexperienced Experimenters (8%): They occasionally take advantage of interactivity, but if they had more experience and connectivity, they might do more with ICTs. They are late adopters of the internet. Few have high-speed connections at home.
...
* "Off the Network (15%): Those with neither cell phones nor internet connectivity tend to be older adults. A few of them have computers or digital cameras, but they are content with old media."

Take the Pew quiz to see whether you’re a Lackluster Veteran or Connected but Hassled. AND, think about where your library patrons fit in to these categories. Are we providing services for folks in all groups? Should we be?

Save Internet Radio

Lots of chatter on the online radio waves about dramatically increased royalty rates for webcasters, due to go into effect on July 15 (retroactive to Jan 1, 2006!)

Of course, this would mean certain closure for many Internet radio web sites. The good news is that "the Internet Radio Equality Act has recently been introduced in both the House (H.R. 2060) and Senate (S. 1353) to save the Internet radio industry. Please call your senators and your representative to ask them to co-sponsor the Internet Radio Equality Act..." (from Savenetradio)

Below is a letter that the founder of Pandora sent out recently:

Hi, it's Tim again,

I wanted to thank you again for your extraordinary support in the fight to save Internet radio and Pandora. Thanks to the overwhelming number of calls you made, letters you faxed, and emails you sent, the Internet Radio Equality Act is fast gaining momentum in the House of Representatives (74 sponsors and growing). It's nothing short of remarkable for this to happen in such a brief period of time - almost unprecedented.

On Friday, May 11th, a Senate version of the bill was introduced by Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Sam Brownback (R-KS) (pdf version). This is a promising development, but we need your help again. I know we're asking a lot, but the stakes couldn't be higher and the fight is not over.

Please call the offices of your Senators and ask them to co-sponsor the Internet Radio Equality Act, S. 1353. ...

Visit Savenetradio to keep up on our fight to save Internet radio. There are some powerful testimonials there from musicians who have found their audience through Internet radio.

We are deeply moved by your support. Thank you.
-Tim Westergren, (Pandora founder)

Note that these price hikes will also affect public radio broadcasting over the Internet; see what Jon Gordon from APM's Future Tense says on his Wavelength blog post NPR goes public in fight to save Internet broadcasting.


********** What can I do?? you ask ...
Send an email to your congresspeople; the folks at NPR have made this incredibly easy at Tell Them Public Matters. Enter your name & full address and they'll send a supportive email to YOUR two senators & one representative. Couldn't be easier -- unless you want to add a personal note about the public radio stations you listen to online.

Splogs = bad news

An article in the September issue of Wired: Spam + Blogs =Trouble answers the question "why do I have to type 'zvtmzu' to post a comment on your blog?!"

Because of splogs & link farms. Blech.

Jon Gordon on Future Tense interviewed Charles C. Mann, the author of the Wired article. Listen to the podcast or read the article (or both) to find out about this creepy world of creating faux blogs & links to generate advertising revenue.

Interesting side note: I read this article a few weeks ago when my print copy of Wired appeared in my mailbox; the article didn't go onto Wired's web site until Sept. 5. Good way for Wired to keep some mystery & $$ but also make the article available for free -- after some time passed.

(Database) Feature Fatigue?

Heard a great story on APM's Future Tense about "Feature Fatigue." Jon Gordon interviewed Roland Rust (U Maryland) about his recent Harvard Business Review article (Feb. 2006) called Defeating Feature Fatigue.

From the citation in PubMed (who knew they indexed HBR? but I digress): "Consider a coffeemaker that offers 12 drink options, a car with more than 700 features on the dashboard, and a mouse pad that's also a clock, calculator, and FM radio. All are examples of 'feature bloat', or 'featuritis', the result of an almost irresistible temptation to load products with lots of bells and whistles. The problem is that the more features a product boasts, the harder it is to use."

Rust pointed out in the interview with Jon Gordon that he was testing college students and THEY were overwhelmed with all these extra features.

Fascinating stuff. What does it tell librarians and database vendors about how library databases are designed? And how patrons are reacting to them?

ps, I got an iHome radio yesterday, and not only does it come with batteries for the backup, the batteries were INSTALLED, and the clock was set to the correct time. How’s that for anticipating user needs?!

Google Answers -- so do librarians

Last week, American Public Media's Future Tense had a show on Google Answers (hear in RealAudio.

The blurb on their site says:
"Would you be surprised to learn that Google employs a stable of freelance researchers who answer questions for a fee? Google Answers has been around for several years now, but relatively few Internet users ever plow deep enough into Google's ever-expanding set of features to encounter it.

"Google Answers is designed fill the void when the search engine fails you. Users post questions, something like "Who will be required to pay the Alternative Minimum Tax in 2007" and specify how much you'll pay for an answer. A low bid means your question probably won't get answered. But if your fee is acceptable, a researcher will find the information you want, post it to Google Answers, and send you an email."

Jon Gordon interviewed Sarah Milstein, one of the authors of Google: The Missing Manual, 2nd edition. Too bad he didn't also have a librarian, who could talk about how librarians do the same thing -- for free.