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Technology

Top Internet Threats: Censorship to Warrantless Surveillance

Source: All About Jazz
March 22, 2009

The internet is filled with threats real and imagined, from malicious hackers to government censors.

Beyond the hacks and cracks and in celebration of Sunshine Week we've compiled a brief list of some of the biggest public and private threats facing the internet.

Warrantless Government Monitoring Following the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the practice of wiretapping all internet traffic began in the United States with the Bush administration, and is now being defended in court by the Obama ...

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Technology

Hollywood's Blog Smog

Source: All About Jazz
March 22, 2009

New idiom presents conflict of interest

Andrew Sullivan observed recently that “blogging is writing out loud." He continued: “A blog is not so much daily writing as hourly writing. Blogging is therefore to writing what extreme sports is to athletics; more free-form, more accident-prone, more alive." Because of all this, the relationship between blogging and traditional journalism has become ever more precarious. This is especially true in politics and entertainment, where the appetite for an “exclusive" (albeit a 30-second exclusive) ...

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Technology

Googles Data Culture Drives Designer Crazy and Out

Source: All About Jazz
March 22, 2009

Douglas Bowman, visual design lead at Google, says he’s leaving the company because an obsessive, engineer-heavy, data driven-culture made it impossible for him to work there anymore.

After nearly three years at Google, where he built the design team that remains, Bowman admits that he does have something else lined up. But in a candid blog post headlined “Goodbye Google" he says he got fed up with constant pushback from a bureaucracy that seeks empirical justifications for choices made within ...

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Technology

New Musical Instruments Battle for $10k in Prizes

Source: All About Jazz
March 20, 2009

It was like a low-stakes X Prize for music as musicians, inventors and hobbyists competed against each other in the first annual Guthman Musical Instrument Competition at Georgia Tech for cash prizes of $10,000.

More than 60 people applied, and 25 were chosen to show off a stunning variety of musical instruments of their own devising.

The judges — Harmonix co-founder Eran Egozy, Georgia Tech professor Parag Chordia and Wired.com's Eliot Van Buskirk — had to evaluate a diverse field ...

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Technology

Finding Fame in Austin in the Internet Age

Source: Michael Ricci
March 20, 2009

AUSTIN, Tex. — Weaving through the thousands of fans, spring- breaking music industry professionals and assorted revelers who clog the streets of downtown Austin this week, you might well think that South by Southwest, the annual music conference and festival here, is nothing but a big party. Despite the jittery economy and the decade-long recording industry slump, the festival grows bigger every year. Around 2,000 bands are playing in this year’s 23rd installment, which began on Wednesday night and continues ...

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Technology

ArtistData Upgrades Artist Info Publishing Platform

Source: HypeBot
March 20, 2009

Keeping your news and tours dates current across multiple sites and social networking pages can be time consuming drudgery. ArtistData has been working to create a solution and recently the free service took another major step forward with the release of several new features.

Twitter & Facebook Updates: When artists add shows, news, and blog entries to their account, ArtistData will post updates to Facebook and Twitter with a link to more info on that event. News Feeds: ArtistData now ...

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Technology

Live Nation Questioned over $6 Parking Fee

Source: All About Jazz
March 20, 2009

Live Nation Questioned Over $6 Parking Fee As Ticket Service Woes Continue

Is the Live Nation ticketing website sneaking a new charge onto tickets on top of their already steep service fees? The New York Daily News alleges that for concerts at New Jersey’s PNC Bank Arts Center, tickets purchased through Live Nation for events at the venue included an additional “$6 parking charge” to each ticket. After fans questioned the concert giant about the additional fee, the new charge ...

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Technology

The Paradoxes of Choice in Digital Culture

Source: HypeBot
March 19, 2009

Kyle Bylin, Associate Editor

i.e. What File Sharing Changed

1. Passive Selection Habits--It let us live with decisions not yet made and caused us to become more passive about their deletion. Such as, if a new album is out and you wanted to try it without restrictions on your iPod, you download it. After listen or two, you find out, as it often times happens, that it wasn't as quite as good ...

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