Google Image search to get a whole lot more picturesque

I'm really looking forward to the outcome of this research into enabling users to search the Internet for images....using actual images, not "search terms".
For example, if I wanted to identify a famous painting I knew nothing about, I would upload my picture into the search engine, rather than try to explain the painting in key terms.

The next thing on my list for Google to invent is a similar search engine for music. I'd love to be able to hum something into the computer and Google to come up with suggestions as to what I'm humming. And it would also settle debates on, "you stole that song from _______", "your new song's such a rip off of _____". Maybe the Chili Peppers could use it.

Gnarls Barkley - free, but still backwards

Still waiting on word from the band on exactly what their intention is with this, but Gnarls Barkley have released their new album for free download- backwards. Weird. Personally, I couldn't tell the difference. Kids music these days.

Compulsary music in new media post

Record companies are completely outdated. All bands need now are a producer, and a marketing team to promote the album and manage the tour - Integrated Marketing people are experts at staging events. Muic is a DIY media. For decades we've listened as bands have whinged and whinged about how record companies don't allow for total artistic freedom. Well guess what? You don't need them!

In week 7's lecture, Barry Saunders made some important points about DIYmedia.

• More popular in economy with lowered costs of entry
• Pathway to professional work
• Strategy for established professionals to lower costs, reach audiences in a different way

As technology progresses further and further, the barriers to entry for the music industry are lowering at dramatic standards. Many of the top-charting bands at the moment have found huge success through the self-promotion magnate that is Myspace. The cost of setting up a makeshift home-studio is absolutely minimal! In fact, you don't even need talent! Samples are so readily available on the Internet, open source editing software is free and easily accessed, and the avenues for distribution are literally endless.

I can't play drums, so I use samples from CCMixter. Or if I'm after something a little different, I'll put down a guitar track on my Audio-USB interface (cheap as chips) and email it to my mate, who plays electric drums. When he has spare time, he'll plug in at his house, bash away, and send it back.

I can't rap, so I sample the Beastie Boys, who give their acapella tracks out for free.If I'm after some tripped-out ambient stuff, I sample IceWorld. I'm not much of a singer, so when I can, I use Meladine - pitch-correcting software that can even make Britney Spears sound listenable!

This video is a great example:

As Daniel pointed out on the Explosion blog, bands no longer need to drive all through the night, sleep in their van and live off cereal for the entire tour just to get their name out.

The Internet is playing a bit of Robin Hood, really - it taxes the rich bands (illegal downloads, less cd sales) and gives to the poor (exposure to unknown bands). This flattening of the traditional hierarchical model of professionals and amateurs is representative of a broader change in content production, facilitated by the Internet. So why are bands going to such great lengths to protect their content? They've had it too good for too long.

This week Adam Muir discussed the communal goal of information sharing and the moral compulsion that causes hackers to contribute to the global community. Seemingly at odds with capitalistic society, patents are a restrictive and inefficient way of advancing new media technology - primarily because of the communal collaboration that the term produsage embodies, and the ability within a global community to respond to feedback and improve services more efficiently than a private, market-orientated company can.
Music, like other online content, should be shared.

Industries are focusing on making their online music released less and less compatible and manipulate-able in efforts to discourage piracy – similar to the way in which Microsoft monopolised computer software by making the operating systems compatible only with their own products.

Sunday Sermon: Thou shalt not make a profit from 'Worship'

Making a profit from worship is wrong. Contemporary Christian artists, writing, recording and performing songs for God's purpose, with their intentions 100% to serve His Kingdom, should not be selling the right for Churches to use their music in services for whatever purpose that may be (playing sheet music with lyrics displayed on an OHP being the most common use).

I'm not going to go as far as to say that Christian 'Worship' music should be free to download, because, as the Christian Music Industry would suggest, the money raised from CD sales can go back into the Church and hopefully then, back into supporting the community.

But charging Churches through Christian Contemporary Lisencing International (CCLI) for using the music for the purpose for which it was made is a ridiculous showing of greed and non-communal action.

The current Australian Copyright Council outline on copyright in Churches is a very basic and dated model, that offers very realistic and somewhat generous copyright measures for non-profit use of a commodity in a capitalist market - but the Worship music "industry" should run on the Christian principles of sharing and encouraging, and the model for this already exists with Creative Commons Lisencing.

I get the feeling Jesus would be cracking whips and turning tables over the profiteering out of 'Worship'.