In Japan more and more people are using their phone cams to snap shots of outfits and haircuts from magazines while they browse in bookshops. This is now being seen by those in the publishing industry as "information theft" and feel they are being cheated out of valuable sales.
A new study from the University of Oregon has found that local news broadcasts are being infiltrated by advertising at around the same rate that DVR users skip ads. They found that 90 percent of the newscasts contained at least one instance of stealth advertising, including product placement within stories.
On 3rd July Michael Grade CBE, Executive Chairman, ITV gave a speech outlining the declining trust viewers have for broadcast media. He believes 'old media' need to have a 'zero tolerance' of deceit or it will lose to the flood of digital media that is engulfing the industry.
A great new tool for self publishing one off hard cover (and soft cover) books of your portfolio, cookbooks, photography etc - Blurb - book store quality books for yourself or for friends.
How is technology changing the way we obtain our news?
Cooking site Rouxbe, comedy sharing site - Funny or Die , think tank TV - FORA.tv
David Lynch has a go at product placement - youtube link
Who needs the new Apple TV when you can use iRecord, an easy to use media recorder for your video ipod or psp.
Traci Ardren, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Miami slams Mel Gibson's latest blockbuster 'Apocalypto' for not only re-enforcing colonial attitudes but for being violent, pornographic and historically incorrect.
After being named person of the year by Time Magazine we have now been named Ad agency of the year by Advertising Age
A good technique for downloading YouTube clips onto your portable device
Design magazine FRAME is launching it's digital edition in 7 days. The digital edition will have all the same content as the print edition but due to the qualities of digital media it will have a lot more extra features
Variety have written an obituary for the 30 year old VHS format. Only 3 years after DVD became the more popular format.
Todd Zeigler from the Bivings Report lists 9 ways that newspapers can improve their websites. Adrain Holovaty believes it goes further than a list of changes and suggests that newspapers need to make one fundamental change in the way they write their content for new media delivery - a better understanding of the key data within a news story.
When cable TV arrived in the 80's niche channels and programming attracted a decent share of the market away from the free to air broadcasters. Now the internet is bringing even more niche programming in the hope of splitting the pie some more.
A small 'thumb drive' sized usb device can record your favourite FM or Web Radio station then identify the individual tracks so you’ll never have to listen to the radio and wonder what the name/artist of a track might be, or where you might get it.
For years television broadcasters have been claiming that PVR's have had the ability to remove TV commercials. But the reality is they just make it easier to skip through them - until now. MythTV have developed a new way for the recorder to identify a TV commercial and to pause the recording so your final recording is commercial free.
National Geographic have released free to download podcasts
Watch television from all over the world with this windows application TVU Player
Movies for small screens - download movies from their selection to view on your iPod, PSP or phone - Small Carrot
If your connection is fast (broadband) and your computer is quick (1GHz up) then try neave.tv a flash application for watching Youtube and google video fullscreen.
While traditional television executives struggle with new media, Apple have decided to show off there new offering in the world of non-linear programming
No time for reading books? The Daily Lit will email you an 'out of copyright book 'one chapter at a time - fitting culture into your daily emails.
In the past magazines used to be the carriers of the latest trends and fashions - Times Online looks at how the new arbiters of style are online, leaving the dead wood media in the dust.
In the world of instant news whenever and wherever you want it - when does online news become old? According to the New York Times and Albert-László Barabási of the University of Notre Dame it takes 36 hours
Some interesting podcasts from TED - TED Talks
Is the digital future for books a "grisley scenario" of free downloads and cutting and pasting? The New York Times looks at the changing face of book publishing and the physical context that currently holds the key. (bug me not for logging in)
A community of Paris based digital artists - Pleix
Ken Loach has won the Palm d'Or at Cannes for his film 'The Wind That Shakes The Barley', a film about the early days of Ireland's struggle for independence from Britain, which the director acknowledged was a critique of today's war in Iraq.
Digital Air give some good explanations behind the visual effects they use in their moving image work
A nice collection of historical audio clips in mp3 format.
Digital Video Guru compares ten of the top video sharing sites on the Internet. UPDATE: Tech crunch looks at the video sharing phenomenon and the new entrant Jumpcut
The lectures from the Economics of Open Content symposium at MIT have been made available for download in mp3 format.
Empire magazine 's list of the 50 greatest independent films
Apple has added a new way to obtain television programmes from it's iTunes music store - subscription. Fans of 'The Daily Show' will be able to buy the next month's series of 16 new episodes via Multi-Pass for $9.99, or to pay $1.99 per episode. Broadcast television is looking old.
Digital technology has given media consumers the power to produce their own content. What happens when the consumer also becomes the producer? What do the traditional producers do? The Internationa Herald Tribune looks at the rise of the amateur digital content producer
Persuasive games have released a videogame parody of working in a Kinko’s copy store. Disaffected! puts the player in the role of an employee dealing with customers.
After it's much publicised purchase of MySpace, News corporation has been made to back down on it's censoring of user posts and blocking access to competitors websites. Subscribers discovered that when they wrote to each other about rival video-swapping site YouTube, the words were automatically deleted, and attempts to download video images from YouTube led to blank screens.
Mass customisation and niche cultural production are the driving force behind the demise of what has become an antiquated business model. The LA Times looks at the mass media's last blast.
Kansas State University researchers have found that the little crawling text that is put at the bottom of news programmes inhibits the retention of facts by up to 10%
Cute interactive flash animation, move your mouse around and click - Happy Seed
After Sony's PR flop with regards to the 'trojan' it placed on it's music CD's, they have now turned it's target market against them with a graffiti based campaign.
Only 14.2 percent of movie revenue is made at the theatres, while 85.8 percent came from licensing or selling their products for use in the home. Slate looks at the future of Hollywood.
Another directory listing global television broadcasts - WWIT
As more people use cable to access the internet, video footage is becoming more available online. Blinkx.tv gives you the ability to search over 1,000,000 hours of television - while TVTAD (PC only) gives you ways to search for torrents of your favourite shows.
With a new CEO and a string of flops - Disney is gambling on Narnia to pull them into the 21st century. An expensive bet, but David Teather believes it will work.
Empire magazine puts together their list of the 50 greatest independent films
DTV - the new open source free internet television browser (for mac only at this stage)
American TV channels NBC and CBS have agreed to let some viewers pay 99 cents for some television shows - without the advertisements.
A tracker for iPod bit torrents - lots of media for your ipod - podtropolis
French Film legend Gerard Depardieu has announced his retirement from acting
What used to be a way to share common interests with the people around you - popular culture has now become so diverse that today
"The national water cooler bubbles with competing monologues rather than inclusive dialogues."
"To be considered conversant with pop culture, your contemporary omnivore must try to find room in his or her consciousness for a nonstop torrent of DVDs, blogs, Game Boys, anime, podcasts, music-playing cellphones, websites devoted to celebrity news, and scores of TV channels."
The Boston Globe looks at how Popular culture is collapsing under it's own weight.
What happens when you fill your TV programmes with products (for a fee) but then sell your programme to a commercial free channel?
In many European countries like Britain and Germany, paid product placement is still officially off limits. But in America, billions of dollars is made by weaving brands into content - the IHT looks at what the BBC had to do to blur out logos in the latest series of 'Spooks'.
If you would like your television to be used for more than just playing TV programmes through - try Detour DVD
The new Nintendo Revolution Controller has just been announced. Ars have a look at it while IGN look at the possibilities
A major report into IPTV (internet protocol TV) has found that within five years television will consist of millions of shows all piped into our living rooms via broadband.
The 'less is more' maxim is now being used within media publications with reference to advertising space.
It's not from theatres or even DVD sales - but licensing to Television that Hollywood gets most of it's income from.
The internet is taking over as the distribution network for content and Television is no exception. DTV is currently Mac only but will grow to other platforms soon.
Film studio Sony will have to pay $1.5m after faking quotes on movie posters for four different movies.
Each of the movies were of a very low standard (A Knight's Tale, The Animal, The Patriot and Hollow man) so they made up a critic called David Manning - who went on to praise the films.
James Bowie at AIGA searches through the United States Patent and Trademark Office records over the last 20 years and tries to find any social trends in Logo Design.
William Gibson looks at the cut and paste of William Burroughs
Essay followed by discussion with regards to the little network logo animations that appear on the bottom right hand corner of the television.
Paid product placement in Newspapers and Magazines has increased by nearly 20 percent while online and video game product placement is growing even faster - just ask Missy Elliott
With less people tuning in, more competing media and more ways to avoid the commercial breaks - advertisers are looking for new ways to get in front of consumers.
After explosive sales over the last seven years DVD sales are starting to lose steam.
90 percent of DVR (Digital Video Recorder) users are skipping past the advertising.
1. Hollywood cannot control its marketing costs or star salaries. The growing importance of DVDs increases the "needle in the haystack" problem for any single film and thus locks studios into more marketing, creating a vicious spiral.
2. TV is now so much better, and offers artists greater creative freedom. Why watch movies?
3. The Internet is outcompeting cinema, whether at the multiplex or on DVD.
4. Big TV screens are keeping people at home, which lowers box office receipts. This also hurts the long-term prospects of many DVDs.
5. The demand for DVDs has fallen because movie lovers have completed their core collections, just as the demands for classical CDs have fallen.
5. The demand for DVDs was due to fall in any case. Forget the collectors, you buy DVDs to have a stock on hand so you don't have to run out to the video store on short notice. Now everyone has a stock. Stocks must be replenished every now and then, but there is no longer a large new cohort simultaneously building up a stock from scratch.
Kieron Gillen looks at screen based gaming and how this relatively 'new' genre of cultural product is developing and where it has been.
Indiana University professor and journalism researcher Mark Deuze discusses the impact of the Internet on the professional identity of media professionals.
The ipod lounge have a good set of instructions on how to make your own podcasts.
Yesterday Apple launched the new version of iTunes with support for podcasting. Since launch there have been over 1 million podcasting subscriptions made. Interestingly, there is also the ability to subscribe to video logs.
An interesting essay by Douglas Galbi on photography, telephony and virtual worlds - sense in media evolution
A new poll of 1000 Americans conducted by the Associated Press and AOL News has found that 73% of those interviewed prefer to watch movies at home
The story of Mike Burns, creative director at Saatchi NY who clashed with CEO Kevin Roberts - cheerio
The Guardian have a good analysis of the movie trailer and it's role in selling the feature film.
An interesting audio torrent of Wilco's Jeff Tweedy discussing free culture with Lawrence Lessig - via BB
Saatchi's have been spraying London with images of a 'Brazillian Jesus' in jeans and a T-shirt to try and broaden the public image of a brand of rum.
The reported $38 million effort is aimed at "hot, hot people." but at a grass roots level the street art community aren't impressed.
Time Magazine has their list of the top 100 movies of all time
The Sydney Film Festival starts on the 10th of June - the list of what's showing is now online
The next Nintendo games console was unveiled today in Los Angeles
From the Sun Tzu - The Art of War - Audiobook to Buckminster Fullers “Everything I Know” lectures - some interesting podcasts.
It's called 'INLAND EMPIRE' is shot entirely on DV and stars Laura Dern, Justin Theroux, Harry Dean Stanton and Jeremy Irons. - via metafilter
Opening receipts at movie theatres have been dropping steadily and DVD sales have been hitting record levels - does this mean the end of the Box Office?
Cannes 2005 starts tomorrow - the SMH have a good look at 10 films that people will be talking about.
After the outcry from members of the 'creative commons' community, Lawrence Lessig has taken this on board and dropped BzzAgent.
A U.S. court ruling today tossing out restrictions on the recording of TV programmes. The next step forward from the Universal v Sony (betamax)trial.
Tim de Lisle from the Guardian lists 40 reasons why 'Star Wars' movies are not worth it.
Nothing was wooden - except the dialogue. The characters in the first film don't so much hold conversations as stand there like cavemen, lobbing chunks of monologue at each other. As Harrison Ford said to Lucas in a moment of majestic exasperation: "You can type this shit, George, but you sure can't say it."
Ars Technica take a look at the way new media is affecting journalism and the old media.
Creative Commons is entering discussions with BzzAgents (buzz marketing) and the creative commons community isn't too happy about it
Using an old PC you can quickly make your own Tivo/PVR.
The Washington Post looks at the first few Internet TV companies that have recently started up in America - OMN, ManiaTV and Current
KYCY 1550 in San Francisco is about to become KYOURADIO, it's format is changing from talk radio to a format where listeners will be submitting all programming - covered by Wired and ars technica
Business Week has written how Blogs will change your business - blogads writes back.
A good look at how PR firms used to operate with printed media and how they are finding it difficult to approach weblogs to push their trends.
If you need to get access to your music on your iPod you can try Senuti
After the successful trial of Radio Five's 'Fighting Talk' and Radio 4's 'In Our Time' podcasts 20 new shows (mainly talk based) are to be released by the BBC
By scanning the brain when people experience products and brands, marketers will soon be able to tune their campaigns with much more sophistication and success.
AL Gore's new venture 'Current'
Sony is looking into releasing 500 of it's top films using a similar application to Apple's iTunes
David Byrne has recently started up his online radio station
By using broadband and a local server, a small town in Austria is broadcasting it's own content and it's taking off
How podcasters are looking at the money that can be made
In Mp3 format, originally broadcast on the BBC Radio World Service as part of their 'Play of the Week' series.
In May Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are going to debut their new consoles at E3 in LA. The high spec machines are set to cause major headaches for the game development community.
Hero, The Incredibles and Team America: World Police have been listed in the top 5 favourites of conservative film fans
A interesting look at the miracles of the future thought up over fifty years ago
Due to excessive product placement Dr Phil & Oprah have been pulled off Swedish Television.
50 'tools' to help develop your writing skills
A 'museum' of television content
Digital Rights Management has many similarities to the Beta v VHS wars in the 80's. Except this time there are numerous formats and a lot more infighting. Craphound has a good response to DRM and it's proposed purpose.
The largest games developer has been getting a lot of coverage lately, mainly for the wrong reasons.
Media tools like the remote control, digital video recorders and iPods have not only changed the content they provide us, but they give us the control that changes the way we live through it.
Using eyetracking devices, sophisticated methods for delivering advertising are being developed.
Television networks have started shifting their schedules slightly, so as to 'encourage' viewers to stay watching their channel. This practice also increases their advertising revenue.
A good look at the development and growth of blogging and it's relationship with mainstream Journalism.
EA games is interested in producing Television and Films.
One of the worlds biggest selling computer games is to be made into an interactive television program
News corp is investigating ways it can enter the games industry.
What do you get when a film is re-made but without the key point that drove the first film? A pointless film
Some interesting examples of the way cigarettes were sold on Television and movies.
Rupert Murdoch's BskyB satelite television is planning to initiate a service which allows viewers of regular free to air television to blank out the advertisements. An interesting way to kill off your competition.
The BBC has a good summary on pod casting
A cute yet slightly disturbing flash animation - Music box
Wired has an interesting article on 'The Long Tail' - how new methods of digital distribution have opened up new income streams in the smaller niche cultural products.
How about the phone through the TV?
The movie industry is trying to shut down the use of bitTorrent. The Register has a very good analysis on what BitTorrent is.
Is the constant writing and re-writing of scripts killing the raw energy of the art?
If you're ever needing to read to the camera and you want to look directly at the camera - you will need your own home made teleprompter.
A showcase of 12 animations from 12 animators
A good collection of Sherlock Holmes radio broadcasts in mp3 format - via
Don't blame the media - says Frank Furedi
Camera phones have had a surge in popularity but surprisingly the capabilities of the phones are not being utilised. This article blames the poor user interface.
The European Commission has announced it's Networked and Electronic Media initiative.
The Online Film Critics Society's "Top 100 Overlooked Films of the 1990s"
An interesting story from the 70's about the legal bullying of an alternative comic book that parodied Disney.
After celebrating the recent FTA with America, Australia is now coming to realise what the agreement means for people in the 'ideas industry'
Is the new Pixar film just propaganda?
Of all the complaints regarding Television content made in the USA last year, 99.9% of them came from one group - the Parents Television Council. This means a 'tiny minority' is politically dominating the push to censor American television and radio.
A new MacOSX application that allows you to download podcasts
With the PVR giving users the ability to bypass advertising, how is this going to effect the current TV business model?
With Mobile phones with cameras there is now less privacy than ever before
What does the recently signed FTA between Australia and the USA mean for the IP industry in Australia?
An attempt to develop and distribute content to the 18-34 Male demographic has been developed. Content will be delivered on demand with the advertising 'baked in'
With the ability to skip advertising in digital television recorders threatening revenue, Tivo will now put up banner ads when fast forwarding through the commercials
Video is the latest rage in Net advertising. It represents 11% of online spending, says Jupiter Research. And advertisers are budgeting for more.
Will sales of hard drive digital TV recorders change the face of television advertising?
A good resource/webzine for balancing work and life
Some pretty good broadcast animation work
Sky TV in the UK is going to introduce smart cards that reward TV viewers for watching programs and/or advertisements.
New Media for a New Millenium - using new technology to shape television content.
Rupert Murdoch denies Fox news is not 'fair and balanced'. But does support George W Bush and his stance on giving tax cuts to the wealthy.
Console games are going the way of Hollywood. Less innovation, more sequels and movie tie-ins. All in the name of making more money to cover the cost of a increasing development costs and according to this article one of the causes is graphic card development.
The entertainment industry is in turmoil, new technologies have created industry panic. Where to from here?
This growth industry is booming
A new device that can turn of televisions in public spaces
Television viewers in the UK are taking back control of their Televisions
A shockwave zoomable illustration allowing you to travel 'through' the image
Alternative media network - Indymedia, has had it's servers in various countries confiscated via a request made by the FBI. No reason has been given.
If you are interested in downloading philosophy, haiku or various other text notes onto your ipod the try iamlarge
The 3G platform must embrace television - or is it the other way around?
Using RSS to download audio broadcasts to listen to on your iPod.
Essay by Mark Pesce on the ways new technology will change the media landscape and alter the way we watch television.
An essay on the use of images in weblogs
An interesting academic weblog
What happens when game manufacturers begin placing well known brands throughout their computer games.
An article about the language used by scam artists in the publishing industry.
What to look for and what to avoid when it comes to getting your daily news.
By combining current events with screen based computer games, a more politically aware game is created.
A nice alternative way to use your television.
An underground movie theatre with a restauraunt and bar has just been discovered under Paris in the Les Catacombes.
As each cultural industry strives to produce the next big thing, culture is produced and distributed at extremely high speed. Is this due to the relatively new perception that the core purpose of a cultural product is to entertain?
How do people read news websites? With Eyetrack they have been able to track the users eye movements.
A new game 'Food Force' designed to teach children about world hunger has just been released by the World Food Programme
Ten things that Microsoft and TiVo must each do to win the living room
With the possibility of a 'Free' Trade Agreement being signed between Australia and the USA many cultural works will go from being in the public domain to being locked up by America's copyright system.
Does the growth of online games that advertise products mean more children are being directly influenced to encourage their parents buying decisions?
The Guardian have a new weblog up for console games.
Considered the worlds greatest game designer, Shigeru Miyamoto is interviewed on the Sydney Morning Herald