There is no copyright in an idea and I’m glad. Imagine a world where ideas were controlled. Books have been written on the topic. “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury is one. Do we care? Maybe we should. All through history regimes have tried to control ideas. I thought this was something we were trying to get away from in 2010. Whether the control is religious, cultural or political – diabolical or paternalistic, it comes down to the same thing. Control. What I think – and I’m glad that I can – is that ideas want to be free.

The Internet has given platforms to a lot of pundits, many of whom have small points of view but big voices, to howl about the theft of ideas. Especially in the area of advertising – which occupies public, accessible space – a lot of people get attracted to the noise, cheerleading the trend to “out” copycat styles, imagery, lighting, themes, techniques, etc. This may be short-term fun, but it’s narrow thinking for the longer term. It’s regressive. Sadly, the misanthropic view is that individuals and societies tend to make the same mistakes over and over. In this case, just as the Internet has given us give the tools to set ourselves free, we clamor to constrain ourselves. Sites like http://www.joelapompe.fr.st/ and blog posts like Ryan Healy’s “The Ethics of Idea Theft” are a grand meeting place for idea-cops worldwide. Get over it people. The point is that original ideas don’t hardly, ever-ever exist. Culture ought to be a dynamic accretion of ideas. There is no such thing as a completely new idea. Please, how naïve! There are only wonderful, endless manifestations of ideas built on each other, mirroring and referencing each other.

Imagine a big open public room. Nothing is confidential. Everyone can see what everyone else is doing. A hundred people come in, stand at easels, grip their pencils. They are asked by a woman at the front to sketch a picture of an apple on a table. They can clearly see each other’s work. When they’re done, each one owns the copyright to their sketch, but they don’t own the idea of an apple on a table. Copyright protects the maker of a work from having it reproduced by someone else. If the best, most beautiful sketch of the apple on the table was scanned by someone and then used without permission, that would an infringement – rightly so. But to protect the rights of the person who came up with the idea of the apple on the table? Of course not – that would be totalitarian. What about a person who suggested the apple should be green instead of red, or the person who thought the apple should have a happy looking worm in it? Should they get a credit on someone else’s sketch if the other person wants to draw a green apple with a worm? Where do you draw the line? Simple. Ideas want to be free. Why do we insist on giving them ownership?

I enjoy a good clean fight as much as the next guy, but watching Canadian cable companies simultaneously laying a social media beating on television broadcasters while showboating to seem to be on the side of consumers, while the broadcasters return blows from behind a human shield of local programming cuts is, well, too much for me. I prefer tuning into the UFC and if I want to go-Canadian, Georges St-Pierre, because the opponents seem to have more respect for each other.  As Corus Entertainment president, John Cassaday notes today to Canada’s broadcasting and telecommunications regulator, the CRTC, at hearings in Gatineau, QC, the current crisis mentality in the Canadian broadcast industry is in turn fostering cynicism, animosity and a risk of a rush to the exit for advertisers. Enjoy the CRTC hearings, if you can stomach them.

Anyone who’s not on an iPhone might be Apple-green with envy over the amazing choice of apps available for download at the iPhone App Store versus the apps at Blackberry’s App World. There are far more iPhone apps, they tend to be less expensive, and they don’t run on Blackberrys. Is this inevitable, when apps are written for different operating systems because they have to be written in different languages? Is this a continuing, deliberate fragmentation of the market to create the appearance of separate solitudes between Microsoft and Apple operating systems and the devices that run on them (i.e. Blackberry and iPhone, respectively)? Maybe both, but what else is new? Well, crowd-sourcing efforts by developers to get their apps on both platforms with the least amount of effort, by creating more elegant code that shares the logical design of the app across both platforms.

What this means for the longer term is that as more and more software development kits (SDKs) in Objective-C (iPhone) and Java (Blackberry) get into the hands of grassroots developers hoping to make money selling their apps online, there is going to be a push toward cross-platform programming. As pointed out by developer Teabot on Stackoverflow.com, the core application code can be written so that it appears very similar on either platform, with API wrappers around the edges of the code that can be re-usable.

To achieve the same look and feel on each platform would require very different ‘physical components’ according to developer Grouchal on Stackoverflow.com, but Teabot goes on to claim that you should be able to share the logical design of your application if you carefully separate it into highly decoupled layers. This is still a big win because the logical application design probably accounts for a large part of your development effort, according to him.

This type of chatter shows it’s inevitable that the division of the apps market across operating system platforms will become eased, as grassroots developers become more inventive in finding ways to bridge the language barrier.

by Tanaz Irani (Spec. Hon. B.A, Pol.Sci.)

It is common and accepted knowledge that once users establish an account on any one of the numerous social networking sites available today, those users are making themselves vulnerable to privacy invasion in a number of ways. Earlier this year Facebook updated its policies on user generated content to allow virtually all uploaded material to be used by the company for advertising, marketing, or essentially any other purpose, even long after the user deletes an account. These policy modifications did not go unnoticed, and in fact were met with public complaint and threatened legal action. This ultimately encouraged the good people at Facebook to return to the older version of the policy; however Facebook is not the only entity that users need to be aware of in respect to privacy concerns.

More and more employers are using social networking sites as a tool to screen potential employees. With the multitude of recent layoffs, and economic hard times, employers are turning to such digital tools to help sort through the numerous applications they receive – weeding out those whose online profile does not meet the standards or desires of the company. Is this (very personal) background check fair? The truth is that outside Quebec, B.C, and Alberta, Canada’s invasion of privacy laws do not extend to information in the hands of private entities, so user beware!

There are a number of pros and cons involved in the question of social networking sites and their interaction with the corporate world. While employers are accessing and assessing the posted content of current and potential employees, complaints made by these individuals against companies for their hiring and firing practices, are on the rise.

It is worth mentioning the “Cisco Fatty” case (as coined by the Globe and Mail newspaper on March 23, 2009). When following a job offer at Cisco, a Twitter user in California sent out a “tweet”: “Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty pay cheque against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.” In less than an hour, she received a reply -from a worker at Cisco- and word is she never got that fatty pay cheque.

Companies on the other hand not only can benefit from this watchdog potential, but also from the timely, financially-sound simplicity of socializing and networking via these sites. Perhaps a ‘poke’ on Facebook does not make the same impression as an expensive luncheon with a client, however it might suffice as a reminder to the client. Of course, it must be noted that such financial benefits are offset by lost productivity related to employees wasting company time surfing around, chatting with friends, stalking old classmates and taking part in innumerable quizzes, games, and various other applications. Heck, I may not be Twittering about it, but all the research and writing for this particular blog entry was done on company time! Is this lost productivity or will the ebb and flow of the digital corporate collision balance itself out? As an increasing number of people have quit smoking, could taking a social networking break be seen as the new smoker’s equivalency break?

Am trying to figure out twitter…

I am signing up for twitter…

Internet streaming is still not ready for prime-time. Sir, I thought you should know. I’ve taken a few minutes today to watch history in the making online. After all, you’ve harnessed the Internet for your presidential campaign. You’ve used social networking sites and blogs to spectacular advantage for fund raising and getting the vote out. You are a young guy, with-it, Internet-savvy. You’ve got a lot of Facebook friends. You must be cool. In that spirit, I thought I’d try to keep up with you and watch your inauguration speech online. Boy was I underwhelmed. It felt like 1999 all over again, like I was on a dial-up connection, gamely trying to do something… revolutionary.

No matter which “live” feed I tried, they all were the same. Likely there were massive user demands on the big news media sites today, but I must report, be careful, they were not up to what we’ve come to expect from you online. President Obama, you need to know that you have not been well served today online by the conventional, television-based media. All the choppy, lagging or downright dead “live” feeds of your inaugural speech were a drag. If the medium is the message, then you should watch your back.

President Obama, I hope you can get on this problem, maybe tonight after work, hopefully not spending too much time on tech support while you’re fixing the rest of the world.

Exposing your music to the masses is getting easier.  With free or inexpensive digital distribution sites you can raise your musical integrity from basement band or bedroom dj to a position of indie rocker or electronic prodigy in a matter of clicks n’ scrolls.  Sites like MySpace are putting control back into the hands of musicians and in doing so are effectively disarming the corporate money making machine we have all grown to accept as the music industry.

1. MySpace.com.  An international social networking website that provides its users with personal mail, a forum for posting public messages, digital community or group affiliations, video streaming, and weblog space.  One of its primary uses is found in the self promoting potential of its platform; musicians can easily get the attention of their peers and people in the music industry.  This is a fully interactive realm, designed and proliferated via user content.

2. TuneCore.com came to be in 2005 when the makers of YourTunes (a Brooklyn based company), realized the demand for this digital distribution outlet.  As a refreshing alternative to traditional music distribution sites, TuneCore refrains from taking percentages from their users’ sales, or asking for the rights to their music.  It allows for musicians and other rights holders to put their music up for sale with multiple, digital, music stores including iTunes, Rhapsody, AmazonMP3, eMusic, and so on.

3. Last.fm. Said to be the world’s largest social music platform.  Last.fm is an online radio station that allows for both music streaming, and music sharing.  Users are able to create a digital profile in which they may express their musical preferences and share their own music.  Based out of the UK, beginning in 2002, this internet-radio and music community has more than 21 million active users around the globe.

4. Facebook.com. Like MySpace, Facebook is an international social networking website that provides its users with personal mail, a forum for posting public messages, digital community or group affiliations, video posting potential and facilitates highly interactive user discourse.  According to ComScore, in June 2008 Facebook has more than 132.1 million visitors!

5. Bebo.com is an entertainment oriented social networking site which allows users to post and share photos, music, personal blogs, and interact with one another via individual profiles.  It is a popular spot to promote and sell one’s music and has in the past, linked up with corporate music leaders including Apple.

6. CdBaby.net is an online music store specializing in the sale of physical compact discs and digital music downloads from independent musicians directly to consumers.  Additionally, the company has become a digital aggregator of independent music recordings, distributing content to several online digital music retailers (www.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD_Baby).

7. IndabaMusic.com is a social networking site that specializes in connecting musicians who may be interested in collaborating in online music projects.  It is free to sign up, and as a user you can personalize your profile, post and receive feedback on your own music and that of your peers.  Similar to other music collaboration sites such as Jamglue, Splice, WeMix, eJamming, Mix2r, NinJam, and YourSpins, Indaba Music profiles provide users with the ability to represent themselves within the music community.

8. YouTube.com.  Perhaps music exposure isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of YouTube, yet once one disregards the video emphasis which has made this site a tremendous success, it becomes apparent that it contains all the key ingredients for getting one’s music successfully heard by masses upon masses of people.

9. MusicFreedom.com is a social networking site that maintains a focus on the distribution, promotion, and sale of digital music.  This site lets its users listen to Podcasts, purchase MP3s from up and coming artists, as well as providing an opportunity for users to network, and share their personal profile with others.

10. TaxiMusic.com is an online music hosting site.  It provides a space in which unsigned bands, artists and songwriters with major record labels, publishers, film & television industry folk can network.  This in an online A&R company, helping to get artists heard, and albums sold.

For more ideas, familiarize yourself with these other popular music-oriented sites: BlogSpot, CloudTrade, HypeMachine, iVideoSongs, MOG, MuxTape, Omnifone, Pandora, Qtrax, RCRDLBL, SeeqPod, Slacker, Jamglue, Splice, WeMix, eJamming, Mix2r, NinJam, YourSpins.

This is seriously cool, especially if users have better control over sound outputs (e.g. using guitar, bass, beats, synth, or samples). Guitar Hero, move over.

Cell phone symphony

As autumn approaches minds turn to harvests, turkey and reasons to give thanks, so I’ve asked my assistant, Tanaz Irani to gather us a bunch of ideas…! On how to monetize social networks.

Social Networking & the Power of Millions of Clicks by Tanaz Irani (Spec. Hon. B.A, Pol.Sci.)

The fundamentally fluid, non-centered and non-linearly controlled nature of the Internet, and the hundreds of social networking sites on it such as Linkedin, Facebook and MySpace, lends itself to a re-thinking of how ideas can be promoted, virally – and how value can be derived not only in the end result but also in the process. The innumerable array of site applications and groups are examples of how these sites are more than a simple digital diary, photo album, or IM program.

On the server side, with partnership programs these sites can earn revenue per click volume, while redirecting traffic towards sponsored pages. Via strategically targeted ads, applications, or user-generated groups, these sites are able to summons up traffic for everything from breast cancer awareness to local condominium projects. A college can generate interest and awareness using social networking sites popular with the student body to promote, image, or brand their institution. These are the online places where students/audience are, so they must be there too – not to control, but to send out a message, or reach out to prospective members of the group.

Another key element to the intricacies of these types of sites is the notion of advocacy or simply giving someone a voice. For example, recent copyright advocacy had tens of thousands (more than 40,000) individuals joining Facebook groups (click here for source) to speak out! At these numbers you can get effective media coverage and lend legitimacy to a campaign or proposal.

The “I am rich” iPhone app is an interesting counter example (Click here for article). Online protests like “I bet I can find 1 million people who dislike George Bush” show what potential these technologies hold for politics.

On the marketing side, it’s about leveraging metrics. The “I am rich” application boils down to some genius who figured he would tap into a highly specialized, but unrealized market segment, and it paid off. The breast cancer group on Facebook reaches hundreds of thousands of people each day, and they’ve found a way to generate enough revenue to offer free services to women. The breast cancer group members are invited to click to a specially directed site, and then click on partner websites (win/win/ hyper marketing). These partner sites (i.e. shopping sites, vacation sites) pay pennies per click, but it adds up and they then offer free mammograms to women in the U.S. based on the $$ they generate. So it is €˜win€™ for the companies, €˜win€™ for the women, and €˜win€™ for the breast cancer advocacy group. But it€™s also hyper because it depends on millions of clicks, each done individually.Š