An eventful March unfolds in the arts, technology, and entertainment space. With the sale of TikTok still pending, well-known tech investors like Perplexity, Microsoft, and Oracle throw their hats in the ring. And, though ethical debates of AI-generated and AI-assisted work are ongoing, it is finding success in the auction houses and award ceremonies. Meanwhile, recent tech acquisitions may signal a shift in the music industry, and South by Southwest (SXSW) is making a strategic adjustment following this year’s festival. Read the highlights.
In an age when content creation is set to hyper-speed and cast across chaotically-changing social media platforms, journalism has become embroiled in the crossfire. Some approaches to the form have embraced such change, turning to more decentralized and personality-driven forms of reporting and analysis to survive the ever-choppier digital waters. Learn how AI and social media giants are impacting this evolving journalism ecosystem.
With this increased competition form live service gaming, consumer expectations continue to shift and grow. In Part II of this capstone research by Heinz College Master of Entertainment Industry Management students, the team has employed data-gathering methods such as interviews, a survey, and social listening to better understand factors influencing player engagement and retention.
Live service games, or LSGs, are one of the largest drivers in gaming revenue. However, as the market continues to saturate, game developers are finding it difficult to sustain players. In part one of this capstone study by Heinz College Master of Entertainment Management students, learn more about the background of these games and what has made them so successful.
In the middle of awards season, major announcements in the media and entertainment industry defined February’s news. While Spotify prepares to ramp up its product offerings, new AI-powered tech is winning Grammys and helping make magic happen on the big screen. All this takes place in the shadow of some major policy announcements regarding copyright and AI.
Conflux, the annual art and technology festival for the creative exploration of urban public space, is now accepting session proposals. The 2008 festival takes place September 11-14, 2008, in New York City.
Find out how to submit a proposal to participate in the festival. The deadline for submissions is May 31, 2008.
AVG Anti-Virus Free 8.0 was recently released, and I've been wanting to share this info for a couple weeks, but I am just now getting around to it.
AVG Free is as good as (or better than) most of the top paid anti-virus solutions, so I strongly recommend this product for Windows users.
To get AVG Free 8.0 or for more information, visit the AVG Free site.
Josh Futrell and I are sitting in a Web usability workshop at Technology in the Arts: Canada at the moment, and I thought I'd share some notes from the session. The workshop is being led by Robert Barlow-Busch, director of product design at Primal Fusion, a semantic web startup in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Robert's overriding thought about usability testing is quite simple but very important: "Observe people using your Web site."
Josh looks please to be learning about usability.
Why conduct usability testing?
Aside from basic usability testing, Robert also just talked about projective exercises, which determine what type of emotions people attach to your organization. In the session's particular projective exercise, we were asked to imagine that a group of car manufacturer logos were members of a family. Who in the family would each of the logos represent? Robert's point was that this type of activity is more engaging than simply asking, "What do you think about Ford, Chrysler or Volvo?"
By the way, the entire group agreed that Ford was the drunk uncle. Sorry, Ford.
How does this translate to the arts field? An example that Robert presented was for an arts organization to use this type of activity to test how people view the organization's logo in comparison to the logos of other available activities (cinema, zoo, arcade, video games, Netflix, etc.).
Other resources:
The full set of slides from Robert's workshop will be available soon at TechnologyInTheArts.ca.
Seinfeld jokes aside... It is very important for arts organizations to remain masters of their domains. We were recently contacted by a relatively large arts organization that was having trouble accessing their Web site. Each time they tried to access the site, they encountered a message explaining that their domain name registration had expired and that they would have to bid to regain control of the domain.
I thought it would be helpful to explain what a domain name is and why you should never let yours expire.
What is a domain name?
Every site has an Internet Protocol (IP) address that looks like this: 206.187.23.211. However, it would be very cumbersome to always have to say: "Hey, check out my Web site! It's http://206.187.23.211." That's where a domain name comes into play.
A domain name is the memorable name used by most people to identify your Web site. For instance, if you go to http://204.194.30.217, you will get the Artsnet Web site. But it's much easier to ask people to visit "Artsnet.org" than "204.194.30.217."
To register a new domain name, you must use an officially licensed registrar, such as Network Solutions.
What happens when a domain name expires?
When a domain name expires, it is officially up for grabs. If someone were to buy your domain name upon expiration, they would have complete control of that Web address. Basically, three bad things could happen:
In fact, there are individuals who earn a living snatching up expired domain names and charging extreme prices for the original owners to regain control.
How does one remain master of his/her domain?
If you need assistance obtaining your domain name registrar information, please feel free to contact us.
(Please Note: The 'Seinfeld' image above was used without the permission of Sony Pictures. If they send me a cease and desist order, I will gladly comply. I will also brag about my first official cease and desist order.)
Want to be one of the cool kids? Sure you do. Who doesn't? The Center for Arts Management and Technology is currently offering sponsorship opportunities for its 2008 Technology in the Arts Conference, scheduled for Oct. 9-11 in Pittsburgh, PA.
Be almost as cool as this guy.
Some additional sponsorship notes:
Want more info about the conference? Follow this page for regular updates.
Want more info about sponsorship opportunities? Get it here.
Come on... everyone's doing it.
(Image in this post licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy of ninjapoodles' Flickr photostream.)
Many arts organization Web sites offer users the opportunity to contribute to their online programming in some way, but it's typically an artificial engagement practice. Rarely do users ever offer up anything truly artistic, and it's even rarer still for the organization to showcase the work in a meaningful way. However, the Brooklyn Museum is taking the idea of "you" as the online curator to a new level and letting Web visitors select the pieces for an upcoming exhibit in its physical space. Its upcoming photography show Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibit lets users register and adjudicate work that was accepted as part of a March 2008 open call. The submitting photographers were asked to "consider Brooklyn's transformation over the years, its past and its present, and submit a photograph that captured the 'changing face(s) of Brooklyn.'"
Now that the call for submissions has closed, the Museum has launched a Web interface that walks users through the registration and evaluation process. Rather than just showing images and asking users to vote for their favorites, though, the Brooklyn Museum offers evaluation guidelines. This is a real exhibit, and the Museum wants thoughtful consideration from its curators.
The Click! curator interface presents the image, its title and a description. Clicking the "Viewing Size" functions will increase or decrease the image size for those who wish to adjust for their screen resolutions or who wish to scrutinize the photo's detail. Users can also see thumbnails of the next images to be evaluated.
When the "curator" is ready to evaluate an image, he or she needs only to adjust the evaluation slider between "Most Effective" and "Least Effective" based on two questions presented by the Museum:
"Curators" have until May 23, 2008, to submit their evaluations, and the exhibit will run from June 27-August 10, 2008, at the Brooklyn Museum.
While it's true that the crowd-curated approach doesn't work for all types of exhibits, the Brooklyn Museum has chosen a medium and theme that works well with an audience evaluation process. They ask about "technique and aesthetic," but the primary question is about Brooklyn's transformation.
So I guess my questions are:
I'd be most interested to hear what formally educated curators have to say about the crowd-curated concept.
Those of you who actually visit TechnologyInTheArts.org rather than simply subscribing to our RSS feeds may have noticed a change to the site earlier today. We just completed the first phase of a graphics and content overhaul to bring the Center for Arts Management and Technology’s various services together in one convenient location. We welcome you to explore the site and provide us with feedback by clicking here or using the Contact Us button on the main menu at any time.
Next week, I'll describe in detail the changes we've made and how we've tapped into the full potential of WordPress.
By the way, subscribing to our blog and/or podcast feeds is a good thing and not at all vile like I made it seem earlier in this post. Find out how to subscribe and have all of our content sent directly to you!
Box.net, providers of free online file storage and collaboration services, recently released this humorous image that sums up the shift in perception many in the tech world have had toward Google. The piece of "art" is called Googolopoly. (Be sure to click the image for a full-size version, because reading the game board is the best part.)
You arts bloggers out there should be on the lookout for a sinister Web prowler known as the "splog," or spam blog.
Splogs automatically lift the content from real blogs to increase their own search engine rankings and generate advertising opportunities.
Wired.com recently release a How-To Wiki for fighting splogs: Read it now.
And Lorelle on WordPress, a blog about blogging, has a post about identifying splogs: Check it out.
Be sure your blog isn't being ripped off by a splog, as it could be detrimental to your site traffic and Google ranking.
A documentary by Dutch filmmaker IJsbrand van Veelenhat premiered recently at the Next Web conference has been posted on YouTube. Clocking in at about 45 minutes, it's not a quick clip, but it's definitely worth your time.
I have recently become interested in - nay, obsessed with - tracking down the most effective way(s) to manage my email inbox, and I wanted to share a couple things that really work for me.
I also noticed recently that Getting Things Done guru David Allen offers a free document, Getting Email Under Control, on his Web site. It isn't groundbreaking, but there are several good ideas and reminders.
How do you keep your email under control?
Adobe recently released a slimmed down, browser-based version of its king-of-all-photo-editing software Photoshop, so I decided to take it for a test drive. Photoshop Express features a very simple interface, and upon signing in, the user is immediately presented with a clear set of options.
PS Express also provides a nice photo library so you can easily edit uploaded photos, create albums and email your best shots to friends.
A very nice feature of the library (see the left column of the above screenshot) is the ability to add photos from PS Express directly to your Facebook, Photobucket and/or Picasa account(s). You can also instantly create HTML links to the images so they can be easily embedded into Web pages.
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Hovering over an image displays a list of options for that photo. For instance, you can edit, rotate, email, link and download images directly from this list.One of the better aspects of PS Express is the fact that there are multiple ways to accomplish a particular task. For example, if I simply want to rotate an image, I can simply select "Rotate" from the initial drop down list of choices, and I don't have to navigate all the way into the editing area. |
But the editing area is, of course, the best part of PS Express. Though the options are definitely not as robust as those in the desktop version of Photoshop, there are more than enough editing tools for novice photographers or anyone wanting to make quick touch-ups. Some of the tools include cropping, exposure adjustment, red-eye removal, saturation settings, white balance and color manipulation.
Yes, that is me standing beside a toilet in a prison cell. No, I did not get arrested. I was visiting the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, PA.
Editing an image is incredible easy, and any changes you make are reversible. When you select an editing tool, you're presented with a menu of possible results. In the image below, I've selected "Saturation," and PS Express has shown me all of the variations I can achieve.
Photoshop Express is currently in beta (public testing), and the service is completely free. I strongly recommend this online tool for both its basic photo editing and image management tools.
Check it out and let us know what you think.
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CAMT team members will attend Museums and the Web 2008 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, April 9-12, 2008. The annual conference explores "the on-line presentation of cultural, scientific and heritage content across institutions and around the world." If you are planning to attend MW '08, please email CAMT, as we'd love to connect with you. |
On Saturday, I participated in the most terrifying and exhilarating acting experience of my life: Bricolage Urban Scrawl (BUS). Bricolage is a Pittsburgh-based theater company, and its annual BUS project is a spin on the play-in-a-day concept. Six playwrights gathered on Friday evening, rode city buses for two hours as inspiration, then spent the night writing 15-minute plays. The following day, a slew of actors, including myself, met at Bricolage's space, were handed our scripts and started rehearsing for that evening's performance. These were full productions... not readings. No scripts, no calling for line. Horrifying.
And what was even more horrifying for me was the fact that I had to learn 12 pages of singing and monologues in a matter of hours. Not to mention the fact that the script called for my character to be in his underwear the entire play. It was like a double-nightmare come true: Standing naked in front of people and forgetting all your lines.
But my point is not that I tore off my clothes or nailed every line of my monologues (which I totally did); rather, my point is that interesting and engaging projects like BUS are made much simpler through technology.
The playwrights were able to write from home and email their scripts to the artistic director, rather than hand delivering them after a sleepless night. Also, the production team was able to send each rehearsal party (director and actors) off to different rehearsal spaces around the city and stay coordinated through mobile text messaging.
Yes, this type of theater has been happening since long before computers and cell phones, but I certainly wouldn't want to try and pull something like this off without them. Maybe I'm just spoiled.
Or maybe an event like this would be even better without all of this technology. Would the acting company grow closer? Would the playwrights gain something by sitting around the same space working out their plots?
Technology also has its limits. When 8 PM hit, it was curtain up and no technology could make me look any leaner in the buff. Also, as far as I know, the brain implant that lets an actor upload lines directly to his/her brain has yet to be invented.
Thought I'd give a little teaser on our upcoming podcast interview with independent musician Jonathan Coulton, known by millions of geeks as the guy who wrote the song Still Alive for the award-winning console game Portal.
Coulton will be featured in Technology in the Arts Podcast episode 38 (to be published Friday, March 14) talking about how he's used Creative Commons and other online practices to build a rabid and connected fan base.
Creative Commons, Coulton explains, allows an artist to apply a standard copyright and then scale back the restrictions. While many musicians and record executives are trying to find ways to lock down their songs, Coulton has found a way to make money giving his music away for free.*
Coulton, and others like him, understand that once you establish a fan community hundreds of thousands strong who are deeply connected to your work, you'll have no problem paying your bills. And Coulton certainly likes people to pay if they can... After all, he has a family to support.
Check out our upcoming podcast for the full Coulton interview, and check out Coulton's songs here.
So what do you think? Can free work for musicians? Should musicians run their own careers?
*Free is fine, but you can also support Coulton's work. Find out how.
Interesting little piece on AppScout.com today featuring highlights from Kyle Monson's interview with Google's user experience designer, Jon Wiley. The bit I found most intriguing is that Wiley discussed user feelings related to unintuitive Web user interfaces (UIs). According to Monson, Wiley mentioned that a frustrating UI can make a user feel bad about him/herself. Often in the design phase, there isn't much thought that goes into the psychological effects of a Web page or navigation, and I think this is another layer that deserves consideration.
This is especially true for arts organizations that typically have an aging constituent base. Do you really want to make someone feel ashamed that they can't figure out your online ticketing system?
An example Google UI:
All of my options are right in front of me and fairly clear.
An example of a bad UI:
No, I do NOT not wish to NOT unsubscribe... what?
CAMT team members will attend NTEN's Nonprofit Technology Conference in New Orleans, LA, March 19-21, 2008. The theme of this year's conference is "Building Community," and CAMT will be connecting with members of the arts community throughout the week. If you are planning to attend the NTC and wish to meet with a CAMT team member in New Orleans, please email us.
I am a big proponent of having an empty email inbox. There is just something Zen about a clean slate. But what do you do with those items that require follow-up work? I recently set up a free Gmail account along the lines of followup@gmail.com (that's just an example, so don't try to be clever and spam it!). Any time an email requires a lengthy, thoughtful response, I reply with, "I'll let you know by XXXX," and BCC my follow-up account.
I also have a rule set up in my email software that moves all messages sent to the follow-up address to a 'Follow-Up' folder. A few times a day, I review that folder and clear my follow-up items. It saves me time, ink and Post-Its, and it also gives me a Zen-fully clean email inbox!
We discussed DanceJam, MC Hammer's new online dance community, in episode 30 of our podcast. Well, the beta version of DanceJam is officially open, and users can start publishing videos of their killer moves.
DanceJam, which self-promotes as the "largest dance floor on the planet," allows users to seek out and learn a specific dance, share their own videos and even engage in online dance battles. Now you can make a fool of yourself to a much wider audience than just your parakeet and life-sized cutout of John Wayne.
While DanceJam is certainly aimed at the hip-hop dance crowd, this seems to be the first major dance community geared toward learning and sharing. This is another example of a site and concept to which arts organizations should be paying close attention.
Yes, DanceJam cost millions of dollars to design and develop, but there are affordable ways for arts organizations to collaborate, share and educate. For instance, a dance organization could offer tap lessons as an online series through YouTube and link to the videos from their Web site. Or a literary organization could offer online poetry slams and ask visitors to pick the winners, who could then be featured artists in a spotlight section of the organization's Web site. Just some thoughts...
The point is that arts organizations should continually be reviewing the online practices of for-profit ventures and creatively copying whenever possible.
I stumbled upon a couple of online offerings I thought were worth a mention. One is a very inclusive Web hosting package and the other is a large file sharing tool. Happy Monday! Yahoo! Small Business Web Hosting
I am very impressed with the Yahoo! small business $11.95 per month Web hosting package. Understandably, some arts organizations can't afford $144 per year for Web hosting, but this might be a nice solution for those groups with at least a minimal budget.
What is most impressive about the Yahoo! hosting package is the "bang for your buck" factor, to be quite cliché. The list of included features is quite impressive and includes:
Another feature that seems to be appealing for those with little Web design experience is the package's site creation tool, which is an online Web site builder that basically walks you through the process of setting up a new site. For those in the know or that already have a site, Yahoo! provides FTP tools so you can build a more complex site or move your existing pages.
I'm certainly not trying to be a salesman for Yahoo!, but I thought it was worthwhile to mention this Web hosting package, as I get questions all the time about affordable hosting solutions that offer advanced features.
Of course, for those organizations with little or no budget for Web hosting, the Center for Arts Management and Technology still offers free Web hosting. No PHP or nifty blogging tools with our package, but it's free and very reliable.
Pando - Large File Sharing
Many arts organizations - especially museums and galleries - need to send large image, video and audio files. Pando lets you send files via IM, email or the Web up to 1 GB for free and up to 3 GB with its Pro account that runs only $24.95 per year.
This is a pretty good deal when compared to the more popular YouSendIt.com's 2 GB plan that costs $109.99 per year.
Pando requires both the sender and receiver to download the free Pando tool, but it's a quick and easy download and installation process. The send/receive process is also quite simple, and the Pando software offers a user-friendly layout. For those who get stuck sending or receiving, Pando.com offers fairly thorough documentation on using its software.