If I was to say, hold a BarCamp at the WBR offices in order to create an environment of mixing technology with media and entertainment, would it work? We don’t have a lot of “secret sauce” but I really want to try to get minds outside my own in-building, to help dream up systems and solutions to things that I wonder about, but just on my own don’t have the time or focus to execute, even with a staff.

Interesting thought, no? Even if not AT our offices, something of a BarCamp themed around the mix of entertainment and technology and media would be interesting.

[From Hot Women Drive Fast Cars ~ Chris Pirillo]

I really like Chris. I consider him a friend. But I’m about to the point of unsubscribing from the RSS feed because its turned into an advertorial for car manufacturers as he’s out in Germany on the time of a large multinational. This is warranting a larger post about the ethics of advertorial content within what should be informative “personal” blogs, and how the disclosure of “sponsored” posts should be made.

So here I go: Advertorials are common in both magazines and newspapers. They are content that morphologically mimic the content they are surrounded by, save for a disclosure usually at the top or bottom of the page that indicates “paid advertisement.”

The reason I don’t think they belong in blogs is pretty simple:

1) They pollute my attention stream. I subscribe to blogs to get information. RSS has proven a good mechanism for me to filter the information I want to get, as well as ensure I retain control over the validity of that information in terms of it containing advertising. RSS feedvertising hasn’t disturbed me because I don’t think it works and thus I filter it out. But a feed that is blatant advertisements, without a method of disclosure is disturbing,

2) I think that advertorial content, if to exist within normally informative and editorial based feeds should have a label like [ADVERTISEMENT] to facilitate easy filtering. Likewise, feed readers should let you filter it.

3) If you’re going to do advertorial blogging, provide a non-ad based feed to your readers during the run.

So for now, I have just turned off Chris’ feed, but keeping it in the reader. When he returns from Germany, I’ll turn it back on.

The moral for me about this, if you have the attention of someone through implicit consent (ie, subscribing to a feed), don’t abuse it.

Flash question: What would the architecture be to do post-processing of Flash videos uploaded through Flash Media Server? IE: to do background extraction using a difference key?

What happens when the one thing people want from you, you won’t give them in a straightforward way?

[From TV Torrents: When ‘piracy’ is easier than legal purchase | Surveillance State - CNET Blogs]

ORIGINALLY POSTED DECEMBER 2005, but now relevant thanks to the iTunes ringtone hacker store situation

The value proposition of a media artifact is inversely proportional to the level of abstraction applied by its transmission mechanism.

When I was at UCSB, I lectured a significant amount on the fact that with the movement toward an exclusively digital media-scape, the differences between media types are dependent not on formative properties, but on context and reconstruction. To give an example, the difference between a book and a newspaper happens at the core foundational level. Before content is even considered, each is on a path toward being distinct media (I’m speaking post-plate here). With digital media, the difference between media is not at the core — because of the absolute reductivity into binary — but instead at the level of context and representation.

An MP3 and webpage are formatively the same thing, but in representation extremely distinct. While you can read an Mp3 and listen to a newspaper by viewing the binary through alternative mechanisms (open an Mp3 in VI, or run the binary of a webpage through an audio-tap), you wouldn’t want to. The signal gets degraded to just noise as the context is not suited to the content.When given a lack of differentiation then between formative content, the primacy of the artifact itself is relegated to only the situation that enables representation rather than an object of representation itself. What this means is that an Mp3, a webpage, a photo, etc is indicative of something that can be represented, but as an artifact, it only exists as a braketed data source, not something tangible, intrinsic or immutable.

Ascribing value to a tangible artifact is easy in the sense that even outside the physiological aspects of production (the artist, craftsman, etc), there is the manufacturing cost, material cost and the requisite costs of the independent systems which enable the causal chain leading up to Artifact to happen. When itemized, even outside the cognitive valuation, an analog artifact directly correlates to a monentary value exchange.With digital media of course, the value of the artifact is less tangible and hence harder to quantify. How do you “value” a piece of data? Do you value it before or after reconstruction and representation? That is to say, is a FairPlay AAC file from the ITunes Music Store of value as data, or only of value in conjunction with a device that can play it (iTunes/Ipod)? Is the value of an image, say a stock image, the raw pixel data or the image itself? Are we paying more for more accurate representation (higher bitrate, higher resolution) or a better represented product?

The real question is: how do we equate abstraction with value?

This can be taken to mean, does the value of a digital artifact vary with the degree to which the artifact is abstracted?For an example, lets take a ringtone vs. a protected M4P file from iTunes. The song? Aftermath, by R.E.M. (as its a ringtone I bought last evening).The ringtone for Aftermath cost $2.50 dollars for a 90 day expiring license on Sprint. The ringtone is 15 seconds long, and is one of the choruses from the song. The entire song is 3:53 mins long, equating to 233 seconds. At $2.50 dollars for the ringtone, that means the entire song would cost $38.83. By contrast, the entire song on iTunes Music Store is .99 cents. Or for an Mp3 ripped from a CD, figuring that there are 13 songs on the record, and a record cost $11.99, that is .92 cents for the song?What accounts for a difference of near $38 between the 15 second ringtone and the .99 or .92 song?Simple: abstraction of the data that constitutes the song. This goes back to the first statement:

The value proposition of a media artifact is inversely proportional to the level of abstraction applied by its transmission mechanism.

In relation to a ringtone and an Mp3 then, this means the following: a ringtone is valued higher because the data more closely resembles an analog artifact. Its method of representation is so restricted, that even though it is digital data, it equates more to analog in that the possible choices for transmission mechanisms are limited on a strict basis to certain devices (phones). Thus the level of abstraction for the digital data is low, as abstraction implies choice and fluidity in the network from source to representation. The value proposition therefore is high, while the level of abstraction is low.With MP3’s and AAC’s (more for Mp3’s), the level of abstraction for the data is much higher. An unprotected Mp3 has such a fluidity of representation that the primacy of the data is diminished as the possibilities for recontextualization increases. By allowing an Mp3 to be represented in so many fashions (aurally, visually and even haptically), the primacy of the original artifact is reduced from an object of creative expression (music) to more a collection of data that can be represented as music if so desired, but also recontextualized in other fashions just as easily.

The abstraction of the data then is high, as it is entirely dependent on individual choice rather than lock-in for its representational framework.With high abstraction then comes low value proposition, as the power of the data is diminished through its lack of forcing of strict adherance to its own desired representational framework (like a ringtone). By allowing individual choice then, value gets diminished as the onus for half the media equation (representation) is on the user, not the media artifact itself.So for an MP3, it is .92 cents (or free for most kids) because of its relative abstraction as a piece of data, while a ringtone in the same equation is nearly 40 dollars because its strict media framework relegates it more toward a locked in analog artifact than a piece of digital data agnostic to final representation mechanisms.

Does this explain why a kid will spend hundreds on ringtones and nothing on music?

I think it does, and I see this personally applied to other media besides music, and even other circumstances. It is hard to quantify the value of data when the onus is on myself to make that data relavent to my own consumption desires. It is easier to ascribe value, and easier to spend the money when I know that the purchase of the data does not subject me in any way to dictating its use. It equates to convinience, but more I think it equates to giving people the knowledge of the abstract nature of data (as Mp3’s, photos, etc do), or hiding that abstraction from transmission to representation in order to equate the piece of datas value to the value of the device doing the representation.

This serves then to explain other situations:

• Why do we watch movies in theaters?
• Why do we still buy magazines, but not newspapers?
• Why did Apple need a video iPod to sell videos on iTunes en masse?
• Why are consoles still more popular than playing games on computers?
• Why are Apple’s better than PC’s, according to the evangalistic meme?
• Why does Just In Time manfuacturing products cost less at times (think Scion)?

Here is the quation then:

Value ∝ 1/Abstraction

I’d love to hear comments on this. I plan on lecturing on this at UCSB on October 28 for the Art 1A class.

Conversational Marketing (the buzz word du jour from the people responsible for Geico ads and such) is akin to your dad trying to be hip with your friend when you were teenager. Its about as funny, about as fun, and about its cringe inducing.

[From Want to ‘converse’ with advertisers? Me neither | CNET News.com]

starting to relaunch Murmurs….

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