[Image via Flickr of a Beck fan]
When I subscribed to Portfolio magazine I never thought I would enjoy it as much as I am loving the current issue. Here are a couple of great quotes on the future of the music business:
“For-profit culture will move toward the nonreproducible, more thrilling aspects of music,” says economist [...]

Great news today with the announcement of a JV between MTV and Real combining the Urge music service with Rhapsody.
From a user perspective it might not make much of a difference, as Real had already caught up with MTV on Staff Picks and User Playlists.
Still, this will add much needed brand “coolness” factor and marketing [...]

In the midst of all the talk about DRM-free music, Fred Wilson tackles another major issue in the music industry: how scalpers have taken over online concert ticket sales.

The music business is so screwed up. They overcharge for music and undercharge for tickets. They handicap the sale of online music (the future) to protect the [...]

2. Living Room Convergence
Is this the year when the much taunted living-room convergence of online video will begin?
The Venice Project and the rumored Apple iTV, [...]

P2P is NOT evil image uploaded to Flickr by gruntzooki
I have argued before that one of the drawbacks to current streaming video distribution platforms (eg. YouTube) is that they are point-to-point downloads, making them expensive and prone to stream interruptions due to packet loss. Improving the way online users upload and share video content is [...]

OpenTable Restaurant Reservations
It’s Friday night and I have a problem. I want to have a nice dinner with my girlfriend but forgot to book, and she was really looking forward to going somewhere nice….
Enter opentable.com, a website that let’s you quickly see which restaurants have seats available and instantly confirm reservations.
I am a huge fan [...]

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Cringley at the PBS peers into the future of online video. This is a great article on the challenges of delivering online video of reasonable quality at a large scale.

Just carrying all the viewers of “Desperate [...]

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In the ongoing discussion of whether violent videogames are bad for kids or actually a great way for them to learn to focus, here comes an interesting survey:
The Entertainment Software Association, in conjuction with Peter D. Hart Research Associates, surveyed 501 parents with children between the ages of 2 and 17 to understand how videogames [...]