Filed under: Internet, Analysis

The age-old battle of copyright and artist freedom keeps clanging away in the distance, and are we any better off than we were when DAT machines were castrated in the 80's? I read a report this morning about a UK band called "Show of Hands" who claims they are dependent upon so-called pirates who download their music and share it with friends. This isn't much different than Trent Reznor making his music freely available online (and my wife reports the show here in town didn't look any smaller than the ones in the 90's -- possibly even bigger since Reznor has a new legion of fans younger than us). But the music industry sticks by the mantra "a download is a lost sale, and that is theft." Or, as TorrentFreak puts it, "there is no such animal as 'piracy as promotion.'"

Oh really? This sad, antiquated logic continues to do one thing and one thing only: bolster sales of the top-paid performers while creating a chilling effect on artists who would love innovative promotion but fear free samples will incur the wrath of the mighty RIAA, or worse. It's one thing to send the FBI after some poor schlub who leaks some Guns N' Roses tracks, or sue the bejeebes out of hundreds of college kids, but it's quite another to threaten fair trade when artists (who own their own content, thank you) decide to market in ways they see fit.

The only ray of sunshine could be recent rulings regarding Creative Commons which might allow savvy artists to provide music in the manner they see fit, without the RIAA calling fans of the artists a bunch of pirates. Arrr, matey. At the end of the day there has to be some middle ground, but it's a pity the RIAA and other enforcement agencies see the world in black and white and tend to pull their concepts of ownership from the days when TV's were also monochromatic.

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Filed under: Utilities, web 2.0

Google, Zoho, 37signals and other companies have done an excellent job of demonstrating that some applications don't need to be desktop based. In fact, web-based calendars, office applications, and chat services offer many advantages over desktop versions like easy collaboration without the need for an Exchange server. But some applications really make a lot more sense on the desktop. Case in point: ShrinkFile.

ShrinkFile is an online file compression and hosting service. Have a large file you want to share with a friend or colleague and want to save them a bit of downloading time? Upload it to ShrinkFile, and ShrinkFile will zip it and host it for free for up to a week.

Sure, ShrinkFile could come in handy if you're on a computer that doesn't have WinZip, 7-zip, or another archiving application. But you know what? Practically every major operating system available today ships with the ability to zip files. What's more, you could save time both downloading and uploading your large file if you just zip it before sharing it using another service like FileDropper or YouSendit.

What do you think? Am I missing something, or is ShrinkFile basically useless?

[via MakeUseOf]

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Filed under: Design, Utilities, Windows, Freeware

Sometimes you want your mouse to be zippy as possible, allowing you to scroll back and forth across a screen for a quick game of Pong or Arkanoid. But when you're trying to make precise movements in an image editing application, precision might be more important than speed. If your mouse is too fast, you might have a hard time drawing straight lines, for example.

That's where SlowMousion comes in. This free Windows utility allows you to select a hotkey on your keyboard or your mouse to hit when you want your mouse cursor to move very slowly. When you try dragging your mouse with the hotkey depressed, no matter how quickly you drag, the cursor will move veeerrrry slooowwwly.

There does not appear to be a way to make the slow movement the default and hti a hotkey for faster motion, so it doesn't look like SlowMousion will do you much goo in the practical jokes department. But if you need all the help you can get trying to draw straight lines, this little app could come in handy.

[via Lifehacker and Freeware Genius]

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Filed under: Google

Leave it to Google to step in where others have mishandled the ball. It seems their mobile platform Android is getting its very own App Store ala Apple, except without all that pesky submit-and-pray scenario iPhone devs have been unable to complain about. OK, they can complain, they just can't share notes on the actual development process. Google is taking the open road here, and it appears there won't be those issues at Android Market.

From the Android Developer's Blog: "Similar to YouTube, content can debut in the marketplace after only three simple steps: register as a merchant, upload and describe your content and publish it." Holy smokes, that's it? While developers are busy doing the three-step for Google, one wonders what will become of the Great VC Gold Rush currently playing out around Apple's mobile sexpot.

[via CrunchGear]

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Filed under: Internet, Video, News

There's good news today for user generated video sites like YouTube, DailyMotion, and MetaCafe. A federal court in California has ruled that Veoh did not violate the copyright of a pornography company by automatically transcoding video uploaded by a user.

Let's back up a second here. If you upload copyrighted material to an online video site to share with others without the copyright holder's permission, you may be breaking the law. But the question of whether the video site itself is violating the law is a bit murkier. The IO Group, which owned the video in question filed a suit agains Veoh in 2006 claiming that the video service could not hide behind safe harbor laws by saying that the user, not the video site was responsible because Veoh took the action of transcoding the video into Flash for online viewing.

Of course, the process of transcoding a video is pretty much automatic, and the judge in this case seemed to understand that Veoh's action in transcoding the video were about as deliberate breathing. The ruling basically states that as long as a video site can demonstrate that it warns users that they should not upload copyrighted video without permission, removes copyrighted videos promptly when faced with a DMCA takedown notice, and at least makes some effort at sniffing out illegally uploaded videos, the company is lawsuit-proof. Or at least lawsuit-resistant up to a few meters.

[via TechCrunch]

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Filed under: Business, Internet, Web services, web 2.0

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Filed under: Internet, Google

Google has added a simple language translation option to the normal search bar. Simply type "translate" followed by the word and the language you want to see.

For example "translate download into French" or "translate computer into Spanish." The tool currently works with nine languages including French, Spanish, Italian, German and even Hindi.

This is not a substitute for Google Translator. The tool will only translate one word at a time. If you run into a foreign word you can simply type translate and the word to get a result in English.

It's pretty simple and could come in handy once in awhile. You can at least learn to say hello in all nine languages while you are bored at work some day.

[Via Lifehacker]

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