First, new work from M.I.A. is eagerly anticipated as she went on hiatus following a tour for her Grammy nominated record, Kaya. I was at the far edges of the crowd with my sister when she told the audience at Bonnaroo in 2008 that it would be her last performance.  Since then, M.I.A. has largely kept away from music creation.

Second, M.I.A. chose to deliver “Space Odyssey” to fans via a twitter update, where she shared the video via TwitVid, a popular 3rd party service for video hosting that competes directly with Vidly.  While M.I.A’s choice of TwitVid as the media player allowed her to use her Twitter feed to deliver new music directly to her fans, it also has forced everyone to listen to this critically important release in terrible quality video and audio.  Check out the embed above.

Most notably, following the surprise release of the song, M.I.A.’s publicist confirmed that “Space Odyssey”  was released specifically in reaction to a recent New York Times story on the Top 31 Places to Go in 2010 written by Lionel Beehner.  In the NYT piece, Beehner acknowledges that the country has been “plagued by misfortune…but the conflict ended last May.” and goes on to suggest that “miles of sugary white sand flanked by bamboo groves that were off-limits until recently are a happy, if unintended byproduct of the war.”

If you are unfamiliar, a brutal civil war was being fought between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).  Leading up to the end of major conflict in May of 2009, many civilians were killed in efforts by the government to put down the rebel group.  The US State Department has issued a report outlining areas of concern (pdf) where International Humanitarian Law is believed to have been violated.

For some time following the end of combat, a quarter million people from the Tamil minority were forced to remain in refugee camps for months.  Between the brutality on both sides during the war and subsequent forced confinement afterwards, Sri Lanka’s international standing is quite low.  M.I.A. is of Tamil ancestry and fled the country as a refugee.  She has specifically decried (see her explanation at 3:25) the violence on both sides of the war.

M.I.A’s made a bold move in connecting her new artistry directly to a major US news publication’s pithy and embarrassing portrayal of Sri Lanka as a top tourist destination.  She did so using her platform of roughly 82,000 Twitter followers, all eager to hear what she would follow Paper Planes with.  M.I.A. has hit upon a near perfect mix of social networking, social action and artistic expression, most certainly setting her apart as an artist to watch in 2010.

What might the goals of a union of Facebook application developers be? It would help to look at what has stirred the pot recently. About two weeks ago someone posted a complaint that Facebook had unfairly bent the rules to give CBS’s Sports NCAA bracket application advantages for faster viral spread across the Facebook user base. Adding insult to injury, the thread also pointed out that the CBS Sports NCAA bracket application had a poor user rating.

Two days ago another developer posted a thread titled, “Facebook has stolen my idea!” which describes the recently added “Do you know these people?” page on Facebook. The developer suggests he feels “cheated” because the new Facebook page duplicates his own application’s functionality. The developer’s application was forced to comply with platform development rules that required an obstructive approval process in order work correctly.

Facebook’s “Do you know these people?” page circumvents this approval process because it is not subject to the rules independent application developers must follow. Facebook made a better version of the application a part of the Facebook experience by bending the rules that crippled the original developer’s work.

These examples illustrate that Facebook considers it a duty to nationalize or expropriate functionality if it is considered good for Facebook. Rather than something that needs to be declared, Facebook makes this right clear in the Facebook Developers Terms of Service:

“…You hereby grant us a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license, with the right to sublicense, to: (a) access, reproduce, display, distribute, perform, and store on our servers your Facebook Platform Application and any Facebook Platform Application Content, and to create derivative works of Facebook Platform Application Content, as may be necessary or desirable to make such Facebook Platform Application and Facebook Platform Application Content available to Facebook Users in accordance with the terms of this Agreement and the Facebook Platform Documentation and the Facebook Platform Application Guidelines; and (b) otherwise access, use and analyze any Facebook Platform Application Content for our internal business purposes (e.g., for the purposes of targeting delivery of advertisements or other content to persons who have viewed particular types of Facebook Platform Application Content).”

This paragraph basically says that Facebook can duplicate and meet parity or run with your application’s functionality and then integrate it into the basic Facebook experience. The second part basically says that Facebook reserves the right to monitor how much your application would be worth if Facebook were to take your idea.

I think a lot of independent developers get to sleep at night with the belief that Facebook wouldn’t expropriate their applications. These developers comfort themselves with the idea that “it happens occasionally–but only to applications with functionality that obviously belongs in the platform.”

The board of directors for the copper companies were probably counting the same sheep prior to the sweeping expropriation of copper mines by the Chilean government in the early 1970s. The result of that disagreement was that the United States pushed for and succeeded achieving economic sanctions against Chile. But the Facebook development community doesn’t exactly have sanctions on its list of tools of influence. What does it have?

For one, it would have to be part of a greater independent community of developers for all open social platforms. Only by having a union of developers that canvas’s all major platforms could it hold sway against any particular one. Such an organized group might hold sway by steering technical offerings, such as beginner guides, away from platforms that have a history of expropriating applications functionality unfairly. A strong independent application developer union might also be able dissuade or at least condemn social platforms that repeatedly expropriate functionality.

Representation at the table would help, when the biggest social networking application companies, RockYou!, are getting all of the attention. RockYou! has funding from Sequoia Capital, a company that wouldn’t take wholesale expropriation of their software lightly.

I dislike web advertising as much as the next person, and for people who read my blog regularly, I highly recommend Adblocker. This is a Firefox Plug-in, Add-on, Extension, what-have-you that will block G Adsense ads and just about every other advertisement. I’m including my ad filter criteria that I’m using below. If you take a moment to install the add-on and import this advertisement filter list you can begin surfing my blog and just about all other websites advertisement-free instantly.

Check out the difference:

• WashingtonPost.com With Advertisements in Firefox Normal
• Washington Post Without Advertisements in Firefox Running Adblocker with my Filters

Download Adblocker

Here is my filter list…

To use this list, create a text file containing every line below starting with [Adblock]. Save the text file as filters.txt and then import it into your Firefox Adblocker extension. This is done in Firefox by clicking Tools -> Add-ons -> Adblocker -> Options -> Adblock Options -> Import filter…

[Adblock]
*.adgardener.com
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*.adfusion.com
*.taconda.net*
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*.doubleclick.net
*googlesyndication.com
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*.advertising.com
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*/phpAdsNew/*
*adserver.*
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*akamai.net
*ads.guardian.co.uk
*/ads/*
*.zedo.com
*ad.yieldmanager.com
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*/ads2/*
*adspaces*

I didn’t notice any smokers in Ratatouille, and I couldn’t see them in a new traditional film from Disney either. But the FT article goes on to state that Bob Iger’s position is that “the company would also ‘discourage’ depictions of smoking in films made by its other studio labels.”

Disney’s owns Bob Weinstein’s Miramax Films which has released a ton of adult-oriented features including Tarantino’s, Pulp Fiction and Resevoir Dogs. Quentin Tarantino makes including cigarettes in his movies a recurrent presence. Iger goes on to say that argueing with filmmakers working under his roof about excluding cigarette smoking is a “confrontation we are certainly willing to have.”

The timing of the move is certainly not coincidental, as the MPAA recently began making smoking a factor in rating films. This change comes only two years after a suggestion by the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. So while Disney is doing the right thing being the first to take a hard line on tobacco use, it is also protecting a kid-friendly film ratings.

Keeping cigarettes out of the movies is one thing, but Disney aims to make a difference in the nutrition level of its customers as well. In October of 2006 Disney published new guidelines for both food available on theme park menus along with its promotional and licensed foods available in stores. This is most likely a move to help slow down the increase in obesity among children, but you have to question, why is Disney in the food business in the first place?

If Disney is going to get serious about kid’s health they’re going to have to take a hard look at the ethics of marketing to children in the first place.

The very first content following the Letters to the Editor and Index is a column called One Day At A Time. This column mostly reports on celebrity gaffes but sometimes tries to be more. Last week the author (Ann Romano) decided to write about the death of a young man Bonnaroo. She tries to frame the incident as some kind of joke, saying:

“…But as it is in our national security to protect celebrity tour busses from prosecution, the Tennessee Department of Safety immediately cleared the tour bus driver of any wrongdoing. The irony? The young Ohioan was wearing a Bonnaroo admission armband when he was killed. He had apparently hopped the fence to escape the festival. He’d obviously come to his senses, rejected the jam bands/hippies, and was trying to run away. And they ran him down like a dog.” Read the Full entry under Friday June 16th.

I was at this festival reporting on the event for my Dave Site, and was grieved to see such palpable ignorance in black and white. I wrote the editor the following:

“Dear editor:

I usually treat your One Day At A Time column with humor, but was really unimpressed with the Friday, June 16^th entry about the kid killed at Bonnaroo.

If anyone from your staff with influence over the publishing of this piece had attended the festival, I would hope they would realize that making light of Joshua Overall being killed by a tour bus is in really poor taste.Further, if the author of that column had taken time to learn about the festival, they would realize that it is not a bunch of jam bands and hippies.

I would suggest your columnist stick to covering celebrity gossip rather than simultaneously trashing a really great music festival and having a laugh at some kid dieing on a freeway.

Regards,

Rob Banagale”

My letter was shortened for space, but published in Volume 7, No. 5, the June 29-July 5th issue of The Mercury. Sometimes the paper reacts to critical letters with a great deal of sarcasm, and basically makes fun of the person. Fortunately, they simply published my letter with the title: “Death: Not Funny”. They have an online version available here. I have a few comments about the whole thing.

1. The Mercury never contacted me to make sure I had actually written what was sent to them. When I wrote the Portland Tribune, they called me and asked me to confirm my address and that I had written the letter. This lack of checking tells me that the publication does not membership principles listed in the bylaws of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies which state that “A member newspaper shall exhibit sufficient public service through journalism and editorial distinction and excellence to merit designation as a positive editorial alternative to mainstream journalism.”
2. The fact that the kid out at Bonnaroo was killed is a very sad thing, but the magazine missed my other main point. Bonnaroo is not some eccentric hippie festival. It is a hugely important annual event that now showcases the leading edge of music. In fact staffers from The Mercury staff picked artists publicized by Big Hassle, (who handles all publicity related to Bonnaroo), as having the best albums of 2005. This year Bonnaroo had Radiohead as a headliner and tons of artists (My Morning Jacket, Dresdon Dolls, etc.) a rag like The Mercury drools over. It seemed like the One Day At A Time author who described “jam band/hippies” in attendance knew nothing about the festival.The magazine wants so very badly to sound like it is edgy and on the hip side of things musically, but to insult Bonnaroo at this point is a virtual stamp of journalistic incompetence.

I am glad they printed my letter. However a publication with a circulation of 42,500, (64% of whome are between the ages of 18 and 34), should take greater responsibility in how they frame information and news. If you’re going to have a column about celebrity gossip, great. But don’t let this person comment on music or politics, they just aren’t equipped for it and they’re doing a disservice for the developing minds of young people.

The changes were rolled out on January 18th and the response was violent “Tribe: New and Unimproved,” “Revert Tribe Now,” and “I Hate the New Tribe Look” sprang up and garnered members rather than the offically sanctioned comment tribe, “Tribe’s New Look.”

Many users of the site reacted by flaming the changes. The more interesting comments were those that voiced dissapointment in the change and commented that they felt especially wronged because of their personal investment or personal equity which they had invested.

Web 2.0 is all about community, and the response to Tribe.net’s changes is undoubetedly a warning sign for all those who venture into development of a community based website. In order to make it quickly to the top of the web these days, you must leverage the power of user-created content. But by asking users to put the skin on the skeleton of a web 2.0 project you’re opening yourself up to reactionary content creation if you end up threatening a user’s personal equity.

This is the problem Tribe.net is facing. Tribe has matured to the point of having a rather large userbase but has failed to keep up with the popularity of sites like Myspace and Friendster. In a move to come further into step with what works, they re-vamped the layout, interface and ad placement for all of their pages. But the popular opinion of their existing user base is that Tribe is headed in a direction.

The question defaults to how a Web 2.0 site like Tribe should treat user opinion manifested in reactionary content creation. Should the site address these tribes with a tailored message? Should virtual social-dissent be quashed? The answer lies in the loss of participation from core users and whether this can be balanced from new users expected from the “brighter and more friendly” interface.
Tribe.net isn’t the only site to experience growing pains from an organized malcontented user base, Flickr.com underwent similar criticism from its user base upon its aquisition by Yahoo! As sites become incresingly on each user’s free content contribution to propell them forward an obligation of honoring these user’s personal equity grows as well.

It will be up to each site to determine how far they can go against the opinion of internet denizens personal equity and how they will deal with the viral reactionary content creation that results from discontent.

Craig’s credentials are pretty good.  Previously he helped sequence the first privately-held map of the human genome.  This time he’s trying to construct a working genetic sequence using a process called synthetic biology. 

The article raises the question: how do you go about sparking life once you’ve put the pieces together in the right way?  I suggest referring to Mary Shelley’s synthetic biology research in her thesis entitled "Frankenstein."

The idea of wanting to create your own customized creatures isn’t new.  Back in 1926 Stalin had the bright idea of creating his own army of half-human half-monkey super warriors to fight the capitalists.  Yes, you read that right.  Monkey Super Warriors.

If Craig and his bookish gangstas are successful they could be able to to safely make environmentally friendly industrial chemicals, create a limitless supply of clean energy and build something to make superman walk again.  My hope is that they are successful and are also able to create the liger my brother wants for Christmas.