A place for the neat stuff the surrounds my life
Career-Op: Niche it up!
by Douglas E. Welch, ComputorEdge Magazine
Wandering through “The Grove”, a new shopping mall in Los Angeles, I was struck of some similarities between retail sales and your high-tech career. Long gone are the days of the “do everything” department store, hardware store, grocery store. Today, we have reached the logical, if not somewhat absurd, pinnacle of shopping…not just the niche market, but the ultra-niche market.
Free Culture - in print, online and audio
This story has been going on for a while, but I finally took it to its logical conclusion only today.
Lawrence Lessig's latest book is entitled Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. This book has been released under a Creative Commons license, which means that derivative works, such as electronic books and audio books can be created by anyone who wishes to do so.
The electronic version of the book, in PDF and other formats, is available from http://www.free-culture.cc/freecontent/. When this electronic version was released, a variety of people on the Internet came up with the idea to create an audiobook by having a different person read and record each chapter of the book. Te project surprised everyone in the swiftness of its completion. With a week, almost the entire book was available for download as MP3 audio files, or as streaming audio direct from the Internet.
I have been spending a lot of time in the car lately, and, on a whim, I decided to take this book along for the ride. After downloading the various chapters, I burned the first 5 to standard audio CDs that would play in my car. These disks worked perfectly and I was able to enjoy Chapter 1 and 2 as I drove through the Santa Monica mountains on my way to a client.
You can just as easily play these MP3 files on your iPod or other MP3 player, or listen to them on your computer.
Project Gutenberg, which collects and makes e-books out of public domain materials is also now creating audiobooks from classic texts. You can browse through their online library to sxee which audiobooks are already available.
Getty Photography Course - Space still available
I just called and reserved a place in this 3-part photography course at the Getty. Usually these courses tend to fill up quickly, but there are still some spots available. Call soon! -- Douglas
Photographers of Genius: The Science, Conservation, and Aesthetics of Photography This three-part course, led by Dusan Stulik, senior scientist at the Getty Conservation Institute, Marc Harnly, conservator, the department of paper conservation, and Viviane Meerbergen, project specialist in the education department, looks at the development of photography from early experiments to the digital age. Presentations in the studios and conservation laboratories will concentrate on scientific analysis and conservation practices, providing technical information for gallery discussions of select exhibition photographs. Complements the exhibition Photographers of Genius at the Getty. No experience necessary. Course fee $25. Limited to 40 participants; call (310) 440-7300 for reservations. Museum Galleries 05/05/2004 1030 am
