Recent Articles Worth Reading

Here are just few articles I have come across lately that I think you might find interesting: Web Refocus - Jeremy O'Neal examines Web 2.0 and forecasts the role that media arts organizations will play in it - namely preserving and promoting the noncommercial space.

Welcome to Wi-Fi-Ville - Kristina Dell reports that more than 300 cities and communities nationwide plan to have wireless ventures in the next year. While we all want free Internet access, what are the contentious issues surrounding the offering of a low-cost or no-cost wi-fi municipal plan as a public service?

Can't Touch This - Welcome to the future of the human-computer interface. Jeff Han, a research scientist from NYU's Courant Institute, wowed the tech world with his touch-driven computer screen. Learn more about this amazing device and watch the demo video.

This last article comes from the current issue of Fast Company magazine. Another article in this issue that is not available on the web, "An Unlikely Story: Tech Where You Least Expect It," documents the success that the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, MA has had with podcasting its classical music concert series. Check it out.

The $150 Laptop

CNN.com recently featured a nice piece about EXTREMELY affordable laptops that will be made available to children in Libya, Thailand and other developing countries through the One Laptop Per Child program. The "XO" machine, which will run on a version of the Linux operating system, will cost about $150. They aren't incredibly powerful - they have a 512 megabyte flash drive in lieu of a traditional hard drive - but they will offer a leg up to children who otherwise wouldn't have access to technology.

Read the complete CNN.com article here.

Art on the Web and Other News

I read an interesting article on CNN.com today, and I wanted to pass it along. The piece examines STUART, a site for art students to hock their creative wares. Also, check out our latest podcast, which features part one of our interview with Microsoft's Ian Lindsay. He was very engaging and a very good sport.

Oh... and Happy Holidays!

Social Networking Technology and Arts Organizations

Recently in the Artful Manager blog, Andrew Taylor discussed how social networking technology evident in popular user-driven sites (MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Dandelife, etc.) is rapidly changing the nature of the web and how we use it by enabling individuals to share their voice, vision and story with the wider world. For many months now, I have been ruminating over how to (a) strategically integrate the use of social networking technology into my programs and services, and (b) convince my organization's leaders that we need to move in this direction.

I know many artists are finding ways to utilize this technology as a tool for furthering their artistic endeavors. Comedian Dane Cook has used his MySpace network to catapult himself into the national spotlight as today's top-selling comedian on tour; Boston painter Jeff Hayes produces a successful painting-a-day blog to sell his work on a daily basis; hundreds of filmmakers post their trailers and short films on YouTube to promote awareness and generate buzz for their work.

So what can social networking technology do for arts organizations?

• Given the current trend in the field for arts organizations to market the "artistic experience" coupled with contemporary audiences' desire for greater interactivity, social networking technology has great potential to assist arts organizations in deepening their audience's experience by providing more avenues for engaging with the art, the artists, the organization, and each other. For example, check out Chicago Classical Music (CCM). Founded by nine classical music organizations, CCM launched in March 2006 as a six-month pilot program under the auspices of the Arts & Business Council of Chicago. This online community is dedicated to connecting its 11 current membership organizations with classical music enthusiasts through a blog, interactive forums, a chat room, a ticket swap feature, an events calendar, and more.
• Due to the "tell your friends, who will tell their friends, etc." nature of this technology, another benefit for arts organizations is the viral expansion of their reach and awareness. Earlier this fall, I started a weblog for our Southern Circuit - Tour of Independent Filmmakers program wherein touring filmmakers post about their experiences on the road in the South. Even in its nascent phase, the blog has been viewed throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and South America; thereby providing our program with a reach and awareness we could never afford to garner through another channel.
• A third potential function for social network technology is to galvanize a virtual community around a mission, goal or issue to spur positive change in the real world. Take a look at how the New Orleans Video Access Center has been using YouTube to answer the question "Why should New Orleans be rebuilt?"

These are just a few ways in which these sites and online services can benefit arts organizations. With every passing day, further innovative uses are realized. So why stay behind the curve? What could social networking technology do for your organization?

Windows Vista: What does it mean for arts organizations?

Microsoft will soon be releasing the latest version of its operating system, Windows Vista. Microsoft's marketing campaign touts that Vista, being released to the company's business customers on November 30 and everyone else in January, will help users be "connected, clear and confident." The "connected" part of this campaign refers to the ease of connecting to people and information, and the "clear" part is meant to infer that the product's user interface will be straightforward and simple to grasp.

However, it's the "confident" part that most people are interested in, because past versions of Windows have had numerous security flaws. Vista is supposed to feature more advanced methods of detecting and preventing spyware and other electronic threats to your computer. We'll see...

The Technology in the Arts podcast (new episode available now!) will feature interviews from the 2006 TitA conference for the next several weeks, but one of our first non-conference podcasts will examine what Windows Vista will mean for arts organizations: How much will it cost? Will my current computers run Vista? What do I need to know to upgrade?

Visualizing musical structure

Students of music theory may be familiar with the principles of "voice-leading", rules which govern the way in which notes move from one chord to the next. (The rules say the steps should be fairly small.) To help music students understand these concepts, Princeton professor Dmitiri Tymoczko recently developed ChordGeometries, software that generates a 3D musical map in real-time and illustrates how far a piece of music diverges from these rules. Tymoczko's accompanying paper, "The Geometry of Musical Chords," was published earlier this year in Science and explores voice-leading from the perspectives of both musicology and mathematics. To see the program in action, download one of three demonstration movies or the software itself, available for Mac OSX and Windows XP.

Ode to Odeo...

While the audio interviews with CAMT staff as part of my continuing series on podcasting will be delayed until next Friday, I didn't want to let this week end without providing something fun and exciting. Odeo, recently named one of the hot Web 2.0 apps by WIRED.com (read the article), is a tool for creating and sharing podcasts without any muss and/or fuss.

Try it out. Simply choose a category and a podcast, then hit play. You can also download all files to your portable listening device. (Note that I did not say iPod... I'm being open to the fact that other mp3 players exist. In fact, I bought my wife an iRock. She liked it until I got my iPod, which was sleeker, smaller, and far more advanced. I'm a jerk.)

Music Video for Net Neutrality

Do your part to spread the word about net neutrality! Visit www.wearetheweb.org.

Guess What Else is Turning TEN!

Flash is turning ten, just like CAMT! Flash is an animation and graphics software product used to create movies and animation for web pages. Flash can be used to create advertisements, games, or other eye-catching elements to make a web page more interactive.

Originally Flash was developed by Macromedia, but was acquired by Adobe in 2005.

Read the article here from wired.com, or visit Adobe's microsite commemorating Flash's tenth birthday.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU... HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!

What exactly is RSS?

Often when people talk about RSS, others simply nod knowingly but have no real idea what they're nodding about. I've discovered that a great deal of people are lost when it comes to RSS and how the technology works. It's actually quite simple (and very cool), so I thought I'd break down the barrier by providing some info and a few helpful links. RSS - or Rich Site Summary - is an easy way to distribute news and other content on the Web.

For instance, if you have eight blogs and three news sites you follow regularly, you can download an aggregator to follow all your favorite content from one convenient digital location.

Getting started:

1. Download a news aggregator. Most are free, and here is the one I use and like for its simplicity.

2. Visit your favorite blogs and/or news sites and find their RSS addresses. For instance, here is CNN's RSS page.

3. Subscribe to the RSS URL by following the instructions provided by your aggregator.

Here is a very helpful page with a nice overview of RSS and aggregators.

You can use the Technology in the Arts blog RSS URL to test yourself. The URL is: "http://technologyinthearts.org/?feed=rss2." Copy the link and subscribe to our blog using your new RSS reader.