David's blog

San Fran Musictech a good idea gets better

Fri, 09 May 2008 13:10:05 -0700

Just about to leave San Fran where I attended the Music Tech summit put on by Brian Zisk. It was the second one in 4 months and it was in fact as good if not better than the last one Brain put on. I attend many music conferences in the US and Canada (still planning on france/MIDEM one day), and this conference is one of the only one that is strictly focused on music and technology. It is not concerned with maintaining old business models, or bitching about how technology is ruining said business ...

ARHHG... how NOT to start your morning.

Thu, 01 May 2008 10:00:03 -0700

Woke up at 4:30 this morning.

Son number 2, was crying.

Son number 1 had crawled into bed at some time around 3:30am and is giving me karate kicks to the ribcage.

By 5:30 decided to heat milk for bottle.

Fill glass with formula.

Put glass in microwave. That has idiotically designed "cooking rack" inside.

Watch glass tip on idiotically designed cooking rack and spill milk:
throughout microwave,
all over espresso machine,
over counter,
onto clean dishes,
into cupboards,
onto floor, and f ...

Providing useful attribution when using other people's content.

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:00:02 -0700

I'm guilty.

If you look throughout this blog, you will find many images and quotes without proper attribution. I know I am not alone in my guilt.

Yeah we link to the original blog (most of the time), but the content that we quote/use is often not clearly associated with the attribution. It should to some extent be machine readable: THIS quote/image came from XYZ site. At our company we are building some web services that need to understand/read/display both license and attribution. So we ...

Taking a Cruise

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 09:30:02 -0700

When I was at the founders and funders dinner in Toronto, I invited myself into a conversation on Holiday Cruises. I, as a Gen-Xer, was decidedly anti-cruise. "Never been on one," I said. "Can't stand the thought of being stuck on a floating Hotel."

I was immediately corrected by a gentleman named, Stuart MacDonald, who I learned later is very well known in the travel circles having started Expedia.ca. He waxed on about how its not a floating hotel, you can go on personal expeditions at numero ...

Mike Gillis: My Old Hockey Coach is the Canucks New GM

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 21:10:03 -0700

OK, I'm excited to hear that Mike Gillis is the new GM for the Vancouver Canucks. Mike was my hockey coach for one season at Queen's University. Mike actually helped me love the game again.

The quality of coaching was horrible for the majority of my hockey career. At the top level in minor hockey, coaches are just as keen or more so to climb the hockey ladder as the players. Unfortunately, in my experience that lead to damaging manipulation and mind games by wanna be coaches on wanna be teena ...

IBM Finds Critical Vulnerability in Flash Plugin: Get the Patch. Run don't walk.

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 10:20:02 -0700

First go to this page and Check your Flash Plug-in version. If it doesn't say you have Flash version: 9,0,124,0, go here and UPGRADE.

You must be running 9,0,124,0

Mark Dowd who is a "X-Force Researcher" for IBM Internet Security Systems published a report titled, Application-Specific Attacks: Leveraging the ActionScript Virtual Machine.

If you are not interested in reading the paper or like me it is entirely over your head, Thomas Ptacek wrote a great point-by-point walkthrough on how Mark ...

More on Open Data

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 09:50:03 -0700

More people like Bret Taylor are talking about the need for Open Data to spur innovation.

we need a wikipedia for data
The interesting thing is, almost every internet company would benefit if this data were freely available. Most internet companies have embraced open source operating systems because every company needs an operating system, and no company wants their OS to be a competitive advantage - they just want it to work. I would argue we are all in the same boat with these factual data s ...

Branham Group names Project Opus one of Canada's Top 25 Up and Comers

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:10:03 -0700

Well, I found this out kind of late, but Branham Group named one of my companies, Project Opus Technologies as one of Canada's Top 25 up and coming IT companies.

I'm pretty chuffed about it.

Get the whole story here: Branham Group names Project Opus one of Canada's Top 25 Up and Comers.
...

Music ISP tax is full of holes: Poetry ISP Tax soon to follow and Canadians to subsidize golf

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 11:20:02 -0700

Mathew Ingram is bringing up important considerations with regard to Jim Griffin's plan to Tax ISPs for music data on their networks. I have talked with Jim about this at SxSW, and he hates the term tax, he calls it (I'll paraphrase) "an agreed upon and negotiated fee (without government intervention) with an ISP, which will eliminate the threat of being sued by the RIAA et al." In this sense Mike Arrington is correct in calling it "Protection Money". However, as the courts have determined ISPs ...

DataPortability.org is right to keep the problems small and solvable

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 10:50:02 -0700

I've been thinking a lot about the whole Data Portability Initiative, and I am a supporter of its mission. The biggest challenge for the group is keeping expectations low and projects achievable. After reading Scoble's post and comments on the Road Blocks to Data Portablity I have got Deja Vu all over again. Too many people think this is a straightforward thing to do. The problem space sounds trivial when people say we just need a set of principles and a set of open standards to facilitate thos ...

Back on the road for new presentation schedule

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 16:45:04 -0700

After a brief stay in the office, I'll be back on the road presenting at some great conferences.

I'll start off on April 15th presenting and demoing JAMM at Open Web Vancouver:
How Open Source Technologies and Open Content Bring Value to Music
This talk will be a case study exploring how a highly complex project evolved from proprietary players and MPEG 21 packages to a simpler Web services model based on common Web 2.0 principles and open source technologies. It will also discuss how in the pr ...

Brilliant: Archie does Pulp's Common People

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 09:08:29 -0700

One of my favourite songs has had its lyrics placed in an Archie comic. Brilliant. Check it out

A day in the life when I'm not at home

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 17:20:03 -0700

I got back home from close to 3 weeks of travel. My wife, Mandy was collapsed in bed. I said I was happy to be home after all the travel. I was exhausted and needed rest.

Then I asked, "How was your week, Hon?"

"...grumble." (Turns over).

I get up this morning. Once again ask how the week went.

"Read My Blog." (Sips coffee)

OK...

Anyone got some ideas on how I might get out of this dog house I have found my self in?

Get the whole story here: A day in the life when I'm not at home.
...

An MP3 is not a product to fans. It's just a form of radio.

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 12:40:02 -0700

Music on the radio (and later MTV) has always been free for fans. Advertisers paid for it on the fans behalf. In fact the record labels were willing and eager to actually pay to have their songs playing for ?free? on the radio, but that was deemed illegal.

Record company execs monetized those free plays by selling packages of convenience in the form of discs and tapes so that fans could have, on demand, the music that they liked. Those packages also had collection and connection value to fans, ...

Hearing a lot about subscriptions and flat levies for all you can eat music at CMW

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 08:30:02 -0800

Wow, I'm still somewhat shocked that there are people who believe that subscriptions are the answer. The problem is marketing. Rhapsody (and formally Yahoo!) doesn't know how to properly market the service. Yahoo! Music is the number 1 music site on the Web. If they can't market a music service I'm not sure who can. Still I even heard from one of the smartest guys in the industry that if Apple would offer subscriptions as part of iTunes that will be that, subscriptions will come of age.

Sure. ...