P.Viktor

The Politics of File Sharing

Recently I previewed two tracks from Tori Amos' new album Midwinter Graces on my website. The album is not due out in the UK until 16 November but these two particular tracks, What Child, Nowell and Star of Wonder, had been leaked on the internet with many sites freely allowing users to download them. Due to my excitement about Tori's music (I have been a fan since Under the Pink, 1994) and the fact that I have often written reviews of her new albums and publicised her work freely on my site, I decided to 'stream' these two tracks for those fans who also wanted to hear her new music. I have to be clear that my intention was to 'publicise' Tori's new album. On later obtaining a copy of the full album, I wrote a very extensive and positive review - the first review to appear on any online/print publication - of Midwinter Graces. Again, my intentions were clear and honourable - to promote Tori's album ahead of its release date. Now, while I accept that this website is a personal blog and is not affiliated with any mainstream publication (even though I do wrote for online magazines, both general interest and music-based) it does still receive a lot of daily hits and often ranks highly in specific Google web searches. So when I say 'publicising' I am not being arrogant - the hits my blog receives contribute to the promotion of any music, book, film or issue that I write about.

One can imagine my dismay when I received an email from my web platform, Typepad, informing me of the following: "We have recently received a valid request under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act from the copyright holder of certain material that you have posted to your weblog. The copyright holder has said that you do not have permission to use this material. Please delete the following content as soon as possible". Now, I can't really blame Typepad - they are just doing their job. What irritated me first was that the complainant - probably Tori's record company Universal Republic - didn't contact me directly to remove the content. My details are clearly visible on my website, and they could have emailed me directly or even entered into a dialogue with me. Secondly, I was streaming these songs - they were not available to download. And thirdly, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that I was threatened with is a copyright law in the United States (the European Union has its own acts which are not entirely the same). Typepad is an American company and my site is hosted on servers in the Silicon Valley (probably) but I am a British citizen and governed by those laws.

Wolfram Alpha | The Semantic Web

Wolfram Alpha was launched yesterday and sent the Twitterverse into a tailspin, being one of the top trending topics for most of the day. For those not in the know, Wolfram Alpha is a new kind of search engine. Unlike Google, which bases its search on reciprocal links and page ranks, Wolfram Alpha searches the web semantically. Semantic web search is considered by most experts to be the future of how we find information. It searches the semantics or meaning of information, thus allowing a search engine to understand the information it is searching for and present it to us in a meaningful way. For example, a semantic search will assess large volumes of similar data, establish a consensus, and then present an answer.

This is how Wolfram Alpha works: You ask a question, then press the equals symbol and you are given an answer. Obviously this new search engine is in its infancy, so there are a lot of questions it cannot answer, and there are a lot of questions it could never answer (I input 'what is the meaning of life?' and the answer given was 42 - either it completely didn't understand the question, or there is something mystical and  important about this number yet unknown to mere mortals). A fun search is putting in the day you were born. I now know that I am 11,095 days old, that I was born on a bank holiday, that there was daylight for just seven hours fifty-four minutes, and there was a waxing crescent moon.

Wolfram Alpha is only going to become an important part of how we process information in the future. It will no doubt impact our lives the same way Google and Social Networking has. Many people are also saying that this is the death of Wikipedia, but I don't think the two are comparable. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia with very detailed information delivered by a collaborative effort. Wolfram Alpha is perhaps a large calculator that can answer more than just 'what is 2 + 2?' - its answers are concise and only answer the immediate question (probably because finding a consensus on small, concrete pieces of data is easier than large reams of data). What ever it's fate though, it will change search forever.

You can read more about Wolfram Alpha on their About Page.  

P.VIKTOR.COM Reloaded

Those that accuse me of changing the look and structure of my website as often as I change my clothes would be right. I get bored so easily, and to be honest, the pace of change on the internet is so lightening speed that a new design can look old before it's time. This is especially true of the world of blogging as bloggers put to good use the manifold design tools available on their chosen blog platform. Also, blogs have evolved massively since their ‘critical mass’ popularity of 2004/2005 (after which 90% of bloggers realised just how much hard work it is maintaining a blog on a daily basis and then promptly deleting their baby). The personal blog is no longer what it was - a simple blogspot.com or livejournal.com with sparse design and a post every other day. They had no widgets, no ads, and the content was added almost whimsically.

This simply isn’t enough for content hungry blog readers today. They want new, vital, current content on a daily basis. This is almost impossible to produce, except for those lucky enough to be able to make a living from their blog and post all day everyday, though admittedly these blogs are driven by various themes – celebrity, gay activism, fashion, or film. The only way I have found to combat this content starvation, in light of not being able to post everyday, is to include my Twitter stream on my site, which is updated on a much more frequent basis throughout the day, and also by making sure that there is enough content on my website other than just the blog - such as links to books I have written, pictures I have taken, links to favourite websites, and in the future, short stories, recordings, and hopefully even vlogs (video blogs to the uninitiated).

Working With Lulu.com

When fellow blogger The Amazon Iowan asked me about my thoughts on the print on demand publishing service Lulu.com, I wrote quite a detailed response, which I thought I would share on my website: My experience of using Lulu has been entirely positive, and you will find this positivity a lot from people who use it. It is very user-friendly, it's free (which is obviously an important factor – no up-front fees etc.) and you have complete control over your work. It's as simple as uploading your manuscript (which you may have written in a Word document) and then design your own covers, or use the customisable templates that Lulu provides. I think that designing your own covers gives your book a much stronger identity than the generic templates they offer, but I guess that depends on your technical capability.

What is great is that Lulu is a combined service. Once you have finished your book you can add an ISBN package (this option does cost money, but if you want to sell your book through the likes of Amazon, Barnes and Noble etc. then it is a must), they can help you market your book, they provide you with your own online store front, and people can order it straight from them - they do the printing, packaging, and financial transaction for you. The beauty is that because it is print-on-demand you incur no costs, and that's what's great about it. And I have to say, the quality of the books is very, very good. You can't tell the difference between a Lulu book or one you buy in a bookshop.