Blogospheric Disturbance

I remember when I first got an internet connection at home.
I paid for it almost in its entirety, from the phone line, to the dial-up package, and the computer itself. The family only helped me out in getting a monitor for that computer, and that was fairly cheap.

I discovered sites like Riffage.com, which would offer a free MP3 CD with much of their music on it to anyone who asked. The music was generally from independent artists, but I liked being able to try out all sorts of different music, to see what I liked.

Shortly after my dad died in 2000, and my aunt moved in, she brought the wonder that is called Cable television. With the cable line, we could also apply for high speed Cable internet. So I wheedled my way into talking her into that. Once I got that high speed connection (and a new computer, since the first one was dated), I started hearing about Napster (again).

I had heard of it while I was on dial-up, but it wasn’t really usable then. I tried getting songs, but it would take an hour or so for a single song to download. That was the beginning of my piracy days.
I gave up for a while in 2000, and in early 2001, when I got on high speed, I jumped on board the Napster train again. Shortly after I jumped on with the [tag]Napster[/tag] train again, it was being killed by the courts. [tag]OpenNap[/tag] was born, I was on board, and it was still going off and on.

I started discovering other ways to download music, to start absorbing more and more illegal music, such as [tag]Piolet[/tag], [tag]KaZaA[/tag], [tag]Morpheus[/tag], and numerous other programs and methods. I did it to feed my hunger for all sorts of new music at an ‘unbeatable price’. I hated the idea of buying a CD then, because I’d buy one, and only like two songs on a 15 song CD, but spend $15 or $20 to buy the disc.

I would fill my hard drive with pirated music, burn an MP3 CD for myself as a way to back it up, and delete that from the hard drive. Then I’d keep downloading. I’d end up with 15, 20, 40 copies of the same song with different tags (which became annoying to me when I switched over to Foobar2000 as a media player, and even more so when I started using [tag]AudioScrobbler[/tag] (now [tag]Last.FM[/tag]) at the end of ‘03, but I’m ahead of myself by a little here).
I didn’t care about the fact that the [tag]RIAA[/tag] wanted people like me to stop pirating then.
I was more upset that people couldn’t use proper tags on their music, and properly attribute their music to the original source.

This, as well as my shipping out to Job Corps at the end of 2002 began my downhill descent from my music piracy high.

When I got out of Job Corps, and got back onto a full connection, I was annoyed that a lot of my old haunts were either no more, or of low quality, or were infested with crap.

So, I started looking into legal ways to buy music.

iTunes was fresh on the block, and Pepsi was running a heavy promotion with them at the time, offering free downloads under most bottle caps.
I was [tag]downloading music[/tag], legally, and happily, and even buying the stuff when I was out of freebies…

And then I met [tag]Digital Rights Management[/tag] ([tag]DRM[/tag]).

I almost wanted to pirate again when I first ran into it, thinking that it’s wrong to be told just what I can listen to my music in or on. Then I found out about various methods to circumvent this ‘protection’ scheme on Windows, and well, I went back to buying my music, but without that layer of nagging permissions.

What annoyed me initially was the fact that though I paid for the music, I couldn’t listen to it in [tag]Foobar2000[/tag]. To listen to the music, I had to stay within the [tag]iTunes[/tag] app, even after paying money for music, just to listen to a few good songs.

What kind of sense did that make? I mean, gee, I paid for it. I wanted to listen to it, along with some of the legit free music I’d found, on an [tag]MP3 CD[/tag] while I was out and about. That wasn’t going to happen.

I eventually heard about AllOfMP3, and tried it out. For a while, I was fooling myself, saying “Well, gee, I’m paying for the music, though under another country’s laws, so I guess these artists are being paid like they’re supposed to.”
I bought much music with AllOfMP3, as well as having discovered worlds of music, sometimes remixed that was given away for free to anyone who came by to request the download.

Eventually, my credits on [tag]AllOfMP3[/tag] dried up as they started blocking payments from the USA, so I let that go with a wet flop.

Then, thanks to PayPerPost, I heard about a site called Amie Street, and fell in love with it.
The music’s got a great price tag on it (inexpensive, but legal, and from anyone trying to get their foot in the door, so to speak), and I’ve found a few pretty good artists there.
That, combined with my listening to [tag]Jamendo[/tag], [tag]Pandora[/tag], [tag]SomaFM[/tag], and [tag]OverClocked Remix[/tag]es, plus a few purchases from Sprint’s Music Store are what comprise my music listening points now.

Imagine my annoyance when I get an email that shows how our government, and how the music industry continues to squat on the faces of people who want to legally listen to music!

I spent two days composing my thoughts here, just to get you over to Save Net Radio. I’d appreciate it if you head over there, and help us save something that keeps me legal.

Thanks.

(With credit to GigaOm.)

I was checking my news reader this evening, since I decided to not go back to the shelter immediately after work. I came across one header in my reader that caught my eye, and caused me to frown for a good few minutes, simply because I’m not sure how to react. The gist of this header is, Microsoft now has their hands on TellMe.

For those of you unfamiliar with TellMe, they started years back as a voice-driven system that allowed users to navigate menus on a phone, to perform various actions, and to gather information. Here’s an example call flow I use when calling TellMe (1-800-555-8355 / 1 (800) 555-TELL):

TellMe: Hello, and welcome to TellMe! Main Menu. Here are all the features that you can choose from…
Xial: Weather.
TM: Weather? Got it. To return here at any time, just say “Main Menu”. / Weather. Say a City and State, or Enter a Zip Code. For example, you can say “Dallas, Texas”.
X: Three Three Six Seven Two.
TM: Tampa, FL. To stop this forecast, just say “Stop”. At 6:12 PM, it’s 76 degrees, with a gentle breeze. Tonight –
X: Stop. Main Menu.

It’s very much like holding a meaningful conversation with a computer, like the start of the technology we’d think of seeing in Star Trek.

TellMe’s been working on their VoiceXML Platform for years now, and even had a section long ago called Extensions, where people could actuallly publish their own VoiceXML applications to those calling the TellMe service on their phone. One could experiment with much of the apps published, and easily spend a half hour talking to the phone just playing a game (I was guilty of this — someone had done a VoiceXML version of Dope Wars / Drug Wars I would spend hours a day just playing game after game of this, because I was addicted years ago), or trying out ideas that ended up making it into the mainstream TellMe application in some way, shape, or form.

Finding out that Microsoft now has a hand on TellMe has me slightly wary, since it is Microsoft, after all, but, given the details that are published at GigaOm, this just might be a good thing.

[tags]TellMe, Microsoft, VoiceXML, GigaOM[/tags]

It looks like while I’m running around here, looking for money and a place to stay, the guys at PayPerPost (surely, you remember the people who found ways to grow blog traffic and put a little money in my pocket, yes?) have hinted at some big news.

The last time they did something like this, they got $3,000,000 in venture capital.

They’ve tried to, or have done things like acquire part of Performancing… Get one of the MySpace staff members onto their team… got sweet cameras from Hewlett Packard (which they didn’t give me a single one :(!)…

They’ve also done some things that have upset some of the people who write entries for them, such as segmentation (though it’s partly understandable; it’s just that the mechanism responsible for making this work isn’t being completely enforced on the side of the advertisers, which penalizes the rest of us), and rolled out a few… bumpy releases, which is bound to happen, of course.

I think this time, the surprise is either going to be that they’re going to make advertisers not only rate us before they can run any other ad campaigns, but show us why we’ve fetched bans from certain advertisers, to help us improve on our work (it’d help, and it’d make sure we weren’t being banned because we’re furry, or whatever, haha)…
Or, it’s going to be that they’re going to send me a pony.

Everyone needs a pony (though I’d rather a full grown horse, so I can ride him to and from work each day in a nice white suit, with perfectly straight, unnaturally white teeth, and a white cowboy hat. Oh, and a white briefcase to finish the look. *hint-hint*) on any beta project.

The following is a little copypasta (that would normally go in an email) from the guys and gals at MoveOn.org, a group with a mailing list that I’ve been subscribed to for a while. They sent me an email a little earlier today, which mentioned that our country’s government is attempting to take another slash at public broadcasting (NPR and PBS), which is something that I cannot accept.

When I was a kid, I grew up on PBS. I remember Sesame Street (though Big Bird traumatised me as a child More, for another story.), Arthur, The Reppies, Nova, Nature, 3-2-1 CONTACT!, and numerous other shows that showed up on the two PBS channels we have here in Tampa (Channel 3, WEDU; Channel 16, WUSF). In fact, I admit that those were the two channels I enjoyed the most, because they were the way I thought television should be: unfettered by constant reminders to drink Cloaca-Cola, requests to join the Dyspepsian Generation (You got the right one baby, uh-huh), and lacking in reinforcement that sex is a requirement to be popular on television!

I’d like to help save this resource while it still exists.
If I ever were to decide to have children, I would love to have PBS around for them.

I never really got to listen to NPR as a child — I probably thought that it was too boring then, but the issue is, both NPR and PBS are public resources that many of us rely on for news, education, and entertainment. If we let the United States Government take a knife to their already limited budgets, this could easily spell the end of quality television and radio shows in our country.

Therefore, I ask you to help me out. Put your name to this, and show our Government that you want them to show respect to public broadcasting. Put the knife away, and don’t cut their budgets!

Thank you for your time,

— Justin H.

Hi,

President Bush just proposed drastic cuts to NPR and PBS. We’ve stopped similar cuts in the past, but enough is enough: With the new Congress, we can make sure this never happens again.

We need Congress to save NPR and PBS once and for all.

Can you help out by signing this petition to Congress? It’s really easy—just click the link below:

Civic.MoveOn.ORG, Public Broadcasting, Referral link

Thanks!

[tags]Save Public Broadcasting, NPR, PBS, United States, Government, Politics, MoveOn.org, Children’s Programming, Commercial-free News, Commercial-free Television, Petition[/tags]

I made a reference last week to wanting to get into [tag]selling insurance[/tag].

I had a commenter who asked a question about an [tag]insurance company[/tag] that has relations to the one I was going for.
I replied to the comment, and even sent an email to the person, to make sure they got my comment.

Today, I get a comment again from “Alex”, who basically reposted the link, and showed that they are, in fact, a spammer; One that actually is human, rather than another Tramadol-bot.
Kudos to you for getting by me, but guess what: I just ate your links.

I’ll be glad to let your links live with some actual weight, for a price. I’m not employed by your sister company yet, so advertising rates still do apply. There’s also a penalty rate for being a spammer of $10 per spammed link.
Your total cost is $40.
PayPal button’s on the About Me page; Yes, I accept credit cards, as long as they’re not stolen.

—–
Or not. I forget that humans make mistakes in this digital world. Alex is not a spammer; Alex came back and noticed that the same link was posted twice, and gave me a corrected link to an article that’s actually a rather interesting look at just how people think of Life Insurance.

Much of that article is the truth, and I know it from personal experience.
My mother had life insurance policies on all of us, because she wanted to make sure we all had good burials when we died. She didn’t want us buried in a flimsy wood box, but rather, in a decent casket, in a decent graveyard.

Thus, my apologies to Alex; Ye be not a spammer. Just human.

While I’ve been disclosing in each post, using a long-winded blurb, or as of recent, a smaller image, such as
@post@ (of which this post is one)
I’ve also found that having some sort of policy on hand that explains what I’m doing to others would also be beneficial.
Therefore, I’d like to remind readers and potential advertisers that I do have a policy on disclosure.
If you’ll look in my sidebar, you’ll see a link: “I Disclose.”

This contains my personal disclosure policy, as well as one generated at DisclosurePolicy.org.
I do feel that the DisclosurePolicy.org generated policy is too stiff, and doesn’t quite accurately describe the kind of relationship I’d like to have with you, the readers.

To sum it up, my policy states:
I disclose my relationships with advertisers.
The advertisers that I have a relationship with have a product that either I like, wanted to review, or actually use.
I do work through a third party: PayPerPost.com.

@buzz@

So, I’m cruisin’ the ’sphere this morning, and pop in on my WP dashboard to check the news and latest PPP offers.

I spotted that once again, [tag]Mike Arrington[/tag] is going on and on (again) about that paid blogging craze known as [tag]PayPerPost[/tag]. It’s like he has a hateboner or something over it.

In his recent rant, he states:

Don’t look for PayPerPost to require blogger disclosure anytime soon. Instead, they are creating a distraction, designed to keep the buzz about PayPerPost going strong, as well as to move people’s attention away from the core issue of blogger disclosure of product shilling.

Yes, he’s right. Don’t look for it to be an absolute requirement. PayPerPost is just the intermediate between advertisers and bloggers, just like eBay is the intermediate between buyer and seller. Each can ask the parties involved to behave responsibly, and in the case of absolutely unfair actions on either party, throw the offending party out on their ass.

PayPerPost can ask us posties to offer a [tag]disclosure policy[/tag] of some sort.
eBay can ask sellers to not sell Hong Kong bootleg DVDs.

Let’s take a moment to look at the word that seems to pop out of his mouth all the time: shill.
As a noun, this word is defined as:

1. A person paid to endorse a product favourably, while pretending to be impartial.
2. An accomplice at a confidence trick during an auction or gambling game.

I’d suggest he finds a new word, or actually learn just what PayPerPost is, rather than just declaring in a single glob that posties are scum and shills.
Things that I have mentioned in my PayPerPost entries are things that I actually am interested in.
My family is enjoying [tag]Cellfire[/tag], which I can thank that advertiser for (again).
I’m enjoying [tag]Amie Street[/tag] immensely, and particularly am absorbed with Now On (which has that old-school, Jurassic 5-like feel).
I can actually push [tag]List’d Express[/tag] as an easy to use tool for selling things on eBay: I hate the several pages of crap they make you fill out, just to sell an item for a few bucks. It’s a verifiable headache. List’d shortcuts you through all of that.

Strangely, his whole rant reeks of a lack of research, once again, tinged with a hint of jealousy.
He sees that PayPerPost is moving in the right direction, in giving users the ability to generate a policy (though I wrote my own, and you can locate it in the sidebar as “I disclose”), and still has the need to say what he does.

Should’ve tried a different angle, like, “Oh, PayPerPost now offers a Disclosure Policy Generator, but it needs _____.”

Thanks for the free links, I guess, but [tag]TechCrunch[/tag], please, lay off that horse. It’s dead already.