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08Jul
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08JulRT @thomasfuchs "IE8's JS is so incredibly slower than Safari, Chrome or Firefox 3.5. I thought I had a bug in my benchmark code, but no."
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08Jul
Online music site Pandora has been saved from closure after the music and internet industries finally reached a deal over royalty rates. It’s a major boost for the online radio industry, though there’s still a significant disparity between online and over-the-air radio.
Online radio in the US is governed by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and operates under legally mandated royalty rates. In early 2007, the panel of judges which sets these rates decided on a steep rise which would take royalties from 0.08 cents to 0.19 cents per song starting next year.
These seemingly tiny sums mount up: in Pandora’s case, it would have taken the proportion of its revenue which it had to spend on royalties from just under 30% to around 70%, making the business financially unviable.
After a lengthy debate, which included Pandora and other online stations successfully lobbying Congress for extra time to iron out a deal, the record industry has agreed to a plan. As might be expected from such intense negotiations, it’s a far from simple compromise.
The key points are that online streaming services earning more than $1.25 million a year will either pay royalties of 0.093 cents per song (rising gradually to 0.14 cents in 2014), or a flat rate of 25% of revenue, whichever is the higher figure. Smaller firms won’t pay per-song revenues and will usually pay a smaller percentage of royalties, though some firms may pay based on their overall costs.
The deal only applies to sites which solely deal in streaming music and don’t sell other goods or services. In theory, internet firms don’t have to sign up to the deal and are open to attempt separate negotiations. However, assuming the deal gets Congressional approval (which appears likely), any firm has an automatic right to sign up for the new rates and can then operate without fear of the music industry pursuing them for extra cash.
As Pandora will likely wind up having to pay the per-song royalties, it’s introducing user fees for the first time. Users will still be allowed free accounts, but these will be limited to 40 hours per month. Those who want to exceed this limit – which around 10 per cent of users currently do – will have to pay a 99c fee each month.
Despite the deal likely saving his business, Pandora owner Tim Westergren remains disgruntled that internet radio stations must pay royalties while over-the-air stations don’t pay any fees to music companies. He’s still lobbying for a system by which all types of radio pay the same royalties.
Related posts:
- Pandora Not Long for this World?
- Internet radio gets stay of execution…
- Save Internet Radio: Contact your representative today!
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08Jul
SlickMap CSS is a stylesheet for transforming HTML unordered lists into attractive sitemaps.
The stylesheet can easily fit into most of the websites as it supports up to 3-level navigations.
It also provides a functional visual output by displaying the URLs besides the titles. For a demo of SlickMap CSS, click here.
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08Jul@jstrachan this is why GWT going off of source and not bytecode bites us. Volta would work with scala? :)
It's not that simple. You need a way to represent JSNI in bytecode, and type-erasure for generics could hinder future optimizations - Ray Cromwell Working from bytecode might be theoretically tractable if you solved the jsni problem, but you lose a fair amount of information about the java source, as ray points out. But for a language like Scala, it's even worse, because it loses a *lot* of information on the way to bytecode -- lambdas get turned into anonymous inner classes, and a bazillion other transforms that could be much more efficient if translated directly to script. - Joel Webber Not to mention the scala runtime library would have to be cut down since it seems to rely on JRE features not translatable to JS. I would love a Scala GWT frontend, but I think it'll probably be done as a sort of AST->AST translation using pieces of ScalaC itself. - Ray Cromwell -
08JulCode Dimensions; How can we write code in more than 2D?: As I think about a lot of the features that excite me t.. http://almaer.com/blog...
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08JulCode Dimensions; How can we write code in more than 2D? - http://almaer.com/blog...
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08Jul
My name is Brandon, and I have achieved blogging success:
- I live with my wife’s parents.
- Nobody knows who I am.
- And I am constantly asked, “When are you getting a real job?”
Thankfully, Twitter needed a Kathy Griffin to join their Angelina Jolies on the Suggested User List. Several months later, I have over a half million people following me. Most of them? They have no idea who I am either.
So why are they still following?
I’d like to think it’s because of my charmingly neurotic personality, or because I use social publishing tools to inspire activism and help those in need. But… based on what gets re-tweeted and my bit.ly logs, they’re still following because I use snap copy.
Snap copy is a phrase I use to describe injecting humor writing techniques into your day-to-day copy. You won’t be a George Carlin, but using snap copy will make you 20% funnier than you really are.
And that’s 100% funnier than Carlos Mencia.
Ways To Be 20% Funnier, Right Now:
1. Be Brief
Enough said.
2. Compare And Contrast Identifiable Objects
If I started out saying Twitter wanted a Brandon Mendelson to join their Robert Scobles, few of you would find that funny.
By using two very different people that your audience can identify, the audience has a funny mental image they can laugh at.
3. Surprise Your Readers
I Can Do WHAT To Seth Godin’s Head?
We laugh at something because it’s not supposed to go together. Or because it is supposed to go together, but we’ve never made the connection. Your job is to make those connections for the reader.
4. Know Your Audience (Without Being Creepy)
I have read Copyblogger for a few years now. I know many of you either have a blog or have some interest in writing online. So I started out with the stereotypical struggling blogger life to help you relate to me.
If you don’t know your audience, and if they can’t relate to you, you will fail horribly in trying to surprise and entertain them, no matter how funny your jokes are.
5. Don’t Kill Your Jokes (Until They’re 18 And Want To Go To College)
You all know, when you edit, you have to be ruthless. But when it comes to your jokes? Don’t cut. Just fling it.
But: If you’re writing in a professional setting, run the joke by some friends. Don’t ask for feedback (group decisions breed mediocrity), but see if they laugh at it.
If they do… go for it.
6. Use The Ken Keeler Principle
Some words are inherently funny. The reason does not matter. What matters is being able to identify opportunities where you can apply the principle, “Underpants Is 20% Funnier than Underwear” and swap out boring words with funny ones.
7. Always Tweak (Says The Guy With OCD)
After you’ve flung your jokes out there, it’s important to measure what worked. Now you can get ruthless and cut the bad ones.
In the event you skimmed this article, here’s what you need to know:
Snap Copy will make you 20% funnier than you really are. All you have to do is:
- Get to know your audience.
- Don’t edit yourself until you have actually used the joke or tested it. Then you can tweak it.
- If you want to improve the likelihood that your audience will laugh, use funny words where you can, use readily identifiable objects to compare and contrast, and surprise them with things they might not have thought about.
About the Author: Brandon Mendelson is the event organizer of A Million High Fives, an ambitious attempt to high five one million American Twitter users and have them volunteer at homeless shelters throughout the country. He is also a freelance writer for hire that can be reached at brandon[at]brandonmendelson[dot]com.
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08JulRT @RussB "I just deleted all the other apps on my Ubuntu desktop except for the browser. Look! It's the Firefox OS™ !"
Lars Trieloff, Adewale Oshineye and Todd Ditchendorf liked this -
08JulWe have been researching interesting dev tool UIs and came across "Code Canvas" a zoomable code UI from MS Research http://blogs.msdn.com/kaelr...
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