a small roundup

The Economist has an interesting article on the current state of play between the suppliers and consumers of technology, including content.

Segues nicely into this DRM piece from EFF contrasting marketing versus reality when it comes to the music media you might purchase (assuming you are in a geographical area where this is possible).

On a more optimistic note, I see that Bob X’s Nerd TV will be here next week. Okay it’s going to be extremely techie but isn’t this is what the future was supposed to be? Non-broadcast television.

The first show is with Andy Hertzfeld, whom I chose very carefully because he is smart, thoughtful, idealistic, a good storyteller, and admits to occasionally breaking the law. Andy did the original system software for the Macintosh, but he is really more of an icon for the whole era of graphical computing and has become an eloquent spokesman for the concept of free software. When Andy—who came of age and made his fortune in the commercial software business – explains why he sees Open Source as the “salvation” of not just the software industry but computing, itself, well it really begins to make sense.

Should be good, there’s a great podcast on IT Conversations where he tells some great ‘anecdotes about the development of Apple’s original Macintosh computer, and the people who created it’. Many more of which are available at Folklore.org and in the book Revolution in The Valley.

Lastly, for those interested in content classification Tom Coates has some thoughts on how user tags can be aggregated to classify larger units of content.