CBC's new digital music service

CBC is diving into the world of online music with the goal of providing listeners access to their favourite tunes, and a way to discover new artists and connect with fellow music fans.

The free digital service CBC Music offers access to 40 web radio stations, a vast array of music and blog posts by CBC personalities through a website and via mobile apps.

The new initiative allows the public broadcaster "to connect with listeners ... in new ways," said Chris Boyce, executive director of radio and audio for CBC English Services.

READ THE WHOLE STORY ...

"The revolution will not be televised"

Inspired by the spirit of Gil Scott-Heron, the brilliant Ronnie Butler Jr. warns us that ‘…the photos of your junk will be publicized…’.

This is one of the coolest videos I have seen this year! 



Find him on Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/7fgsb7s
Email: info@thephotosofyourjunk.com

A glimpse into the future of school

According to a new education ministry announcement, South Korea intends to completely phase out the use of old-fashioned textbooks in schools by 2015.

Instead, all textbooks will be available in digital form, accessible via iPad or smartphone or whichever digital doodad you have on hand.

It's all part if the country's "Smart Education" plan, which will create a cloud network by which students can access their textbooks and store their homework from any online source.

The right to ideas

National Film Board of Canada

In RiP: A remix manifesto, Web activist and filmmaker Brett Gaylor explores issues of copyright in the information age, mashing up the media landscape of the 20th century and shattering the wall between users and producers.

The film discusses the changes that have taken place with major music companies suing people who download music online. It raises important questions about the ownership of ideas and whether intellectual property laws should be less propietary and more like those of Brazil.

About Brett Gaylor: Brett Gaylor is the creator of opensourcecinema.org, a video remix community which supports the production of his feature documentary RiP: A remix manifesto.

Scores of scores ... and recordings

Internet Music Score Library Project has thousands of classical scores

A young Canadian composer studying law at Harvard University has created an online music score library for thousands of pieces of classical music.

Edward Guo is revolutionizing how sheet music is distributed with the Internet Music Score Library Project (IMSLP).

Guo was 18 years old, studying law and composing music on the side, when he first got the idea. He recalls how little sheet music was available when he was a boy first studying music in China.

The IMSLP makes it possible to download classical scores, from Mozart to Beethoven to Tchaikovsky, for free. About 100,000 works are available online on wiki media software.

Guo has made no money from the IMSLP project and says he is just one of a team that makes the scores available. He said he gets personal satisfaction from the thought that so many people have access to beautiful music.

Website offers free online concerts

A new website allows music lovers to watch concerts for free online, choosing from five different camera angles as they watch.

BillboardLive.com says its new concert-viewing website offers visitors different perspectives on performances by Alicia Keys, Usher, David Archuleta, Daughtry and other artists yet to be announced.

It's alive ... It's ALIVE!

A hoax video purportedly showing Michael Jackson emerging from a coroner's van was an experiment aimed at showing how quickly misinformation and conspiracy theories can race across the internet, German broadcaster RTL said Tuesday.

The video was posted by RTL on YouTube for a single day a week ago and received 880,000 hits. The broadcaster has since removed the video from YouTube, but it has been picked up by other websites around the world.

"We wanted to show how easily users can be manipulated on the internet with hoax videos," spokesman Heike Schultz of Cologne-based RTL told The Associated Press.

Getting it online

The Hearst Corp. announced Monday that it would stop publishing the 146-year old newspaper, Seattle's oldest business, and cease delivery to more than 117,600 weekday readers.

The company, however, said it would maintain seattlepi.com, making it the nation's largest daily newspaper to shift to an entirely digital news product.

Demand for news has not fallen but the revenue model has changed faster than American newspapers can keep up. Thus, falling advertising revenue and the migration of readers to online has rocked newspapers large and small. The Rocky Mountain News in Denver closed in February. The Seattle P-I is the second newspaper to shut down in 2009.

Other major newspaper companies are reducing staff, eliminating bureaus and freezing pay in an attempt to get expenses in line with falling revenue.

Protect your privacy in public

Google will be driving around 11 Canadian cities across the country again "in coming weeks" to take images for the Canadian version of its Street View service, which it hopes to launch "very soon," the company announced earlier this week.

The service, which is already available in cities in the U.S., the U.K., Spain, Australia, Japan and several other countries, provides close-up, 360-degree views of city streets as they would be seen by someone driving along them. The images are linked to the company's Google Maps and Google Earth applications.

Google has collected such images of Canadian cities before, but this time it is letting residents know about it as part of an effort to address privacy concerns that were brought up by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada after the service first launched in the U.S. in 2007, Google spokeswoman Tamara Micner said Thursday.

Click here to see some examples of images caught on Street View

Funny published items

Hmmm, could be a tough decision ...

... and many other classic stories that will make you chuckle!

Flash Memory

How old is YOUR brain?

Try this instant memory test and find out!

It's FREE and easy!

Test your Googley-eye!

This is a fun game to play that uses real images from Google Image searches of the internet to pose the question, "What do all these images have in common?". Try it, it's FREE !

National Film Board of Canada - Online + FREE!

The National Film Board of Canada has launched a new project to allow Canadians to see its films through online streaming.

Oscar winners such as 1952's Neighbours, 1977's I'll Find a Way and 2004's Ryan are among the more than 700 films now available for screening online at NFB.ca.

The NFB plans to put 10 new films a month online.

Apple to remove copy-protection from iTunes and make pricing more flexible

Apple Inc. closed its final appearance at the Macworld trade show in San Francisco on Tuesday by cutting the price of some songs in its market-leading iTunes online store to as little as 69 cents and disclosing that soon every track will be available without copy protection.

Apple offered the record labels that flexibility on pricing as it got them to agree to sell all songs free of "digital rights management" (DRM) technology that limits people's ability to copy songs or move them to multiple computers. By the end of this quarter, Apple said, all 10 million songs in its library will be available without DRM.

While iTunes is the most popular digital music store, others have been faster to offer songs without copy protection. Amazon.com Inc. started selling DRM-free music in 2007 and swayed all the major labels to sign on in less than a year.

Google feature makes searches better

If you have created a Google profile for yourself, you may be interested to know that you now have more power in your mouse than you realize. This new feature in Google Search results makes customizing your info much easier.

Have you ever wanted to mark up Google search results? Maybe you're an avid hiker and the trail map site you always go to is in the 4th or 5th position and you want to move it to the top. Or perhaps it's not there at all and you'd like to add it. Or maybe you'd like to add some notes about what you found on that site and why you thought it was useful. Starting today [Nov.20 2008] you can do all this and tailor Google search results to best meet your needs.

Today we're launching SearchWiki, a way for you to customize search by re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on search results. With just a single click you can move the results you like to the top or add a new site. You can also write notes attached to a particular site and remove results that you don't feel belong. These modifications will be shown to you every time you do the same search in the future. SearchWiki is available to signed-in Google users. We store your changes in your Google Account. If you are wondering if you are signed in, you can always check by noting if your username appears in the upper right-hand side of the page.

The changes you make only affect your own searches. But SearchWiki also is a great way to share your insights with other searchers. You can see how the community has collectively edited the search results by clicking on the "See all notes for this SearchWiki" link.

Have Craigslist and inner tube - will travel

In a move that could be right out of a Hollywood movie, a brazen crook apparently used a Craigslist ad to hire a dozen unsuspecting decoys to help him make his getaway following a robbery outside a bank on Tuesday. He then made his escape in an inner tube on the Skykomish River.

The Copyright Pledge Gains Momentum

The Green Party and NDP Candidates On Board ...

Will you commit to a balanced approach to copyright reform that reflects the views of all Canadians by pledging:

1. To respect the rights of creators and consumers,
2. Not to support any copyright bill that undermines or weakens the Copyright Act’s users rights,
3. To fully consult with Canadians before introducing any copyright reform bill and to conduct inclusive, national hearings on any tabled bill ?
   

• Yes
• No
  

En Francais : Vous engagerez-vous dans une approche équilibrée de la réforme sur le droit d'auteur qui reflète les opinions de tous les Canadiens et Canadiennes en promettant:

1. de respecter les droits des créateurs et des consommateurs
2. de ne pas supporter tout projet de loi sur le droit d'auteur détruisant ou diminuant les droits des utilisateurs face à la Loi sur le droit d'auteur
3. de consulter pleinement les Canadiens et Canadiennes avant d'introduire toute réforme sur le droit d'auteur et de tenir des audiences nationales inclusives sur tout projet de loi proposé.

• Oui
• Non

This was the question being put to politicians last week, as part of the 2008 Election Copyright Pledge that focused on three commitments for copyright reform in Canada :

• respecting both creators and consumers,
• ensuring that any reforms do not undermine or weaken user rights such as fair dealing, and
• committing to full public consultations on any reforms before introducing a bill and inclusive hearings once tabled.

The initial reaction to the pledge has been very strong.
The Green Party (as a party) has agreed to the pledge. In addition, the following NDP MPs have added their names as supporters:

• Charlie Angus, New Democrat MP, Timmins-James Bay, ON
• Olivia Chow, New Democrat MP, Trinity-Spadina, ON
• Libby Davies, New Democrat MP, Vancouver East, BC
  
• Michael Byers, New Democrat Candidate, Vancouver Centre, BC
• Anne Lagacé Dowson, New Democrat Candidate, Westmount, QC
• Phil Brown, New Democrat Candidate, Nepean-Carleton, ON
• John Chan, New Democrat Candidate, Calgary Centre-North, AB
• Tyler Kinch, New Democrat Candidate, Calgary Centre, AB

There is still time before the election to raise the issue with local candidates.

People tell more lies in email than on paper

In two studies co-authored by Lehigh’s Liuba Belkin, people using e-mail lied almost 50 percent more often than those using pen-and-paper.

Workers are significantly more likely to lie in e-mail messages than in traditional pen-and-paper communications, according to two new studies co-authored by Lehigh’s Liuba Belkin.

More surprising is that people actually feel justified when lying using e-mail, the studies show.

“There is a growing concern in the workplace over e-mail communications, and it comes down to trust,” says Belkin, an assistant professor of management in the College of Business and Economics. “You’re not afforded the luxury of seeing non-verbal and behavioral cues over e-mail. And in an organizational context, that leaves a lot of room for misinterpretation and, as we saw in our study, intentional deception.”

Imagine a 'City of Knowledge'

Belgian Paul Otlet [Wikipedia], often considered the father of information management, had a vision in 1934 that came long before anyone else. He first envisioned a "city of knowledge" with concepts of the computer and the internet that were probably considered fantastical at the time.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s Otlet pioneered the field of what we today call Information Science, but what he called "Documentation". A hundred years before the development of the Internet, Otlet used terms like web of knowledge, link, and knowledge network to describe his vision for a central repository of all human knowledge.

Below is a longer documentary narrated by W. Boyd Rayward, his biographer.

N&L Premier urges: Vote Anything But Conservative

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams made his "ABC," or Anything But Conservative, campaign official on Tuesday by registering his crusade against Stephen Harper's Conservatives with Elections Canada and obtaining "third party" status.

It's just the latest move by Williams, a Progressive Conservative, to ramp up his fight to prevent the re-election of Stephen Harper in the Oct. 14 federal election.

Williams has waged a war of words with Harper ever since the leader reneged on a 2006 election promise to exclude non-renewable energy sources from the equalization formula.

> Anything But Conservative website <