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June 8, 2006

$4k hypoallergenic kitty; Yahoo launches Flickr-like photo site; Radio Deliro; 'B&W Hansel and Gretel'; Journalist: 'I was Russell Crowe's stooge'; Web downloads via TiVo; Copyright showdown today

Fleas without sneezes: Scientists breed allergy-free kitty-- AFP. No, not kitties who don't get hay fever. These lack allergens that cause humans to scratch and sneeze in their presence. For $4,000, one of these precious creatures can be yours.

The demo at right is Persian, of course.

Yahoo photos is open. Free unlimited storage, tagging, etc. ZNet: Yahoo pours AJAX on photo service:

Yahoo Photos has been around since 2000, and has gathered about 2 billion photos and 30 million monthly users. It was early in the game and useful, but not quick to take advantage of Web 2.0 or its sibling Flickr's functionality. The new version (in limited beta in the U.S.) pours on the AJAX, giving it the feel of a rich desktop client application, with slick drag and drop, in line text editing, organizational features, such as automatically updating albums based on tags. Yahoo Photos beta also has integration with other Yahoo services, Mail, Messenger, Mobile and 360. It borrows tagging and comments from Flickr, and Yahoo is partnering with Target for photo finishing services. It also allows users to download original high-res versions of photos.

Yes, Yahoo bought Flickr last year, but sees different audiences. Yahoo photos are not by default publicly searchable, for instance. If you have a Yahoo login and password, you can get in and try it out. Here's the link again.

3:32 a.m.
One man's taste, streaming: At Radio Déliro. I've heard classical piano, Quincy Jones with the Sammy Nestico Orchestra, Peggy Lee, Paul McCartney live, dedicating Fool on the Hill to his old mates, Swedish jazz, a grave Grav Sonata in A Minor by Amsterdam cellist Anner Bylsma, followed by Miles Davis doing All of You, Louis Chedid, Little Jimmy King and the Memphis Soul Survivors. Whew. This feels like a late-night Euro-lounge crawl. Gotta see what morning is like. ...

Radio Déliro, basée sur les préférences musicales de Roland Moreno, est animée et programmée par Sylvain Robert.

Push the Power button on the radio to turn it on and wear Roland Moreno's ears.

via Doc Searls.

The story of Hansel & Gretel told as an old silent black & white German expressionist film. At ZeD - Open Source Television - CBC
via wood s lot.

Fascinating: Nightmare On Wall Street: Prosecution Witness Describes 'Chaos' In UBS PaineWebber Attack

A journalist's confession: I was Russell Crowe's stooge. Flattery caused Aussie journalist Jack Marx to pull his punches on this story for People (The man they love to hate, 9.24.05). Crowe dropped him anyway, so he writes the story he didn't write the first time, in context. Hundreds of readers respond on his Sydney Morning Herald blog, The Daily Truth.

Marx gives it back to them: And another thing...

...Looking over the last few days, I can see very quickly the problems that most people have with me, and they are, in no particular order; lack of "ethics", missing "morals", not a lot of "taste", conspicuously absent "professionalism" and critical shortages of "respect". While I'm sure that neither James Joyce nor Salvador Dali ever cleaned their ears out so as to better hear such criticisms, let alone give answer to them, I feel compelled to explain my feelings about such matters.

Footnote: Marx writes in "Stooge."

At this point I produced from my pocket a book I had published at the turn of the century. It told the true story of the time I had gone in search of my childhood rock and roll idol, finding him destitute in a small coastal town, a reclusive invalid after 25 years of drug addiction. I moved in with him for a few months, finally moving out after relations reached such critical mass that another few days may have seen a fatality. I fashioned the experience into something of a modern-day fable, a cautionary tale about the perils of getting too close to one's idols.

The book turned my name to mud among those who would believe that the only crimes involving rock stars are those perpetrated by journalists and biographers.

The book was, Sorry - The Wretched Tale Of Little Stevie Wright and if you hurry here and scroll down, you can still hear Stevie Wright and The Easybeats sing Sorry.

TiVo offers Net video downloads for TV: News.com (TiVo tunes in to Net downloads)

Through the new TiVoCast service, people can download broadband video clips to their TiVo boxes for free from a handful of Internet sites, such as woman-oriented iVillage, technology-focused CNET.com (a CNET News.com sister site), entertainment-grooved Heavy.com, The New York Times, the National Basketball Association and Women's National Basketball Association, and news and political video blog site Rocketboom....

"Television is still the preferred platform for watching video," Tara Maitra, TiVo general manger of programming, said in a statement. "The TiVoCast service captures mainstream and specialty-based content on the Web, delivering programming that is not otherwise available through the TV today."

...Subscribers will be able to access the content through the Showcases area of TiVo Central, using a TiVo Series2 DVR box connected to a broadband connection....

Much of it so far seems to be audio whose artist/title info screens double for "video," like Music Choice on cable. Among the offerings: Live 365 Radio Network, with its thousands of niche FM, CD and AM stations. (Free reg. req., ads)

Yes, Tivo Nation can now download radio to their TVs.

(Of course, you can download Web radio to your home stereo speakers several ways. I do it through a receiver with a USB input, and the right jack. No TiVo required.)

Related: Copyright Law Faces New Test On Thursday: Should You Pay Multiple Fees For The Same Music?

SIRA addresses ephemeral downloads, or what the EFF refers to as incidental downloads, meaning any content that is either temporary or cached in a computer. Chris Norgaard, partner and intellectual property attorney at Ropers Majeski Kohn & Bentley, says that SIRA actually prevents incidental downloads from being licensed but speculates that the mere mention of it has EFF nervous.

"It's designed to not have separate royalty-triggering events for incidental downloads for buffering and all of that stuff that happens in between," Norgaard said. "In other words, it contains a lot of language aimed at clearing away all of that as being actionable."

But EFF insists just the opposite. "[SIRA] is a subtle way of setting a dangerous precedent for the fundamental meaning of copyright law," said Derek Slater, an activist with the EFF. "It says that basically every transmission of a copyright work is also a distribution. That's very dangerous because the record industry has said if you're performing these songs and you're allowing them to be recorded, like with a TiVo for radio, that's a distribution and it treats it as licensable."

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 11:23 AM | Permalink