After resurrecting itself earlier this year, Arthur Magazine needs your help to stay afloat.  Here’s the communique:

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—Jason Gross

From a Perfect Sound Forever reader: “ARE YOU GUYS SERIOUS WITH THE NEW ISSUE JUST READING A 96’ DELTA 5 INTERVIEW AND I SEE SOME WEIRD STUFF FLOATING AROUND ON YOUR FRONTPAGE HOPE ITS A JOKE ALWAYS THE BEST KEEP IT UP.” And then a follow-up: “I guess respects need to be paid in some sense, but I thought the esoteric integrity seems shot (sublime, janet jackson, thurday).  All I am saying is, I love your guys articles, interviews, etc.. and I don’t want to be a jerk, but please, just don’t turn into Rolling Stone.” From another PSF reader: “Worst issue ever!” It’s probably the most controversy that Janet Jackson has seen since the Superbowl- her picture on the cover of a zine.  So, are they right and did I foul up the standing of my publication but giving virtual space to Ms. Jackson and other above-the-ground artists?

(continue...)

—Jason Gross

As a tech-head, I can’t resist the blissful imagination of articles like this one from PBS where they consider the idea of a Technological Sabbath for all of us to take.  For anyone else who is wired to the Net day and night, there’s definitely some appeal in such an idea.  When I go on vacation, if a cyber-cafe is around and it’s not too expensive, I admit that I go check my mail and news for a 1/2 hour or so- that’s not too bad, right?  But similarly, if I go with my friends to a cabin that’s far from any Net access, I don’t go through withdrawal if I’m not online- I just dread coming home and going through 100’s of messages, trying to sort out what’s trash and what I want to read.  Part of the problem for us overwired folks is that too much of our lives take place online, making it more difficult to disconnect.  As much as we may curse and complain about the Net, the fact still is that we’re heavily invested in it in many ways- we have a lot of friends and family that we connect with and a lot of work that we do online only.

The problem with trying to disconnect, even temporarily, is that technology is constantly chasing after you, looking to permeate your non-Net world.  It isn’t just that TV’s are becoming more and more wired (as explained in this recent Broadcasting Cable article) but also that we ourselves are spending more time online watching videos and less time with our ol’ TV sets as explained in these articles from Variety and Times Online.  ADDENDA: as is typical with the Net now, even though eyeballs are migrating online, as this excellent SF Gate story explains, there’s still confusion about how to make money there.

Add to that the cell phone companies that are trying to cram more and more music and video content into their products and there’s no escaping it- all forms of media are ready to take with you everywhere and anywhere (and we’re not just talking about iPhone either but also every other provider, especially Verizon).  And how much are we going to resist the temptation with the Net being portable?  Bored for a minute?  Want to find some info quick?  How easy it is to whip out a phone and just look up everything. 

I don’t think it’s necessarily for the worse though.  Not just the boredom factor but also the ability to look up useful info (weather, locations, events) is something that we all have a need for at some time or another.  The thing I wonder about is how it’s going to change our lives if we’re always wired and connected.  I’m not a conspiracy theorist who’ll tell you that da man is going to be able to track us but I do think there’s gotta be some implications about how it will effect us socially on a personal and societal level.  Lots of room for head scratching here but it’ll definitely be interesting to see how this pans out.

Back to the idea of the tech sabbath though… It’s a good idea in theory but it’ll be harder and harder to do obviously.  I do think we all need a break from our small screens every now and then throughout the day just so we don’t go loopy and our eyes don’t bug outta our heads.  A tech break is definitely warranted through the day and necessary, not to mention more realistic.

—Jason Gross

I know I’m a few weeks behind with some of my postings but that’s what happens when you have so many items you want to discuss in a blog and so li’l time...Anyway, I want newspapers to save themselves too but this Slate piece is just insane fiction.  The idea of Wal-Mart trying to help newspapers from going under is ridiculous because 1) Wal-Mart only cares about Wal-Mart, 2) they make rules that benefit only themselves, to the detriment of other industries (not to mention their employees who lack medical insurance), 3) they relish being a monopoly, 4) they have no compulsion about driving other stores out of business, 5) they’re probably happy that they can save on their advertising budget with less papers around.

A much saner alternative appears in this Seattle Times interview with Craigslist founder Craig Newmark where he proposes that he would OK to have links to newspapers from CL.  And there’s more reasonable hope to be found here where Google, a growing megalith, is actually proposing to help papers.

Addenda: now Monster.com is looking to get into the act by partnering with several newspapers.

—Jason Gross

So first Associated Press tells a liberal site that they can’t quote some 2 dozen words from a release and then they back off on it and say that they’re rethinking their policy. 

Not surprisingly, some website reacted harshly, saying that they’re not going to use any AP material at all (i.e. Techcrunch) while Daily Kos took the opposite tact, saying that they’ll quote as they please from AP, no matter what they say. 

As you read through the articles, particularly the Times article at the beginning of this post, you see that not only had AP made a bone-headed, short-sighted move but that they also probably don’t even have the law on their side.  Like record companies, they’re confused by the digital age and don’t know how to handle appropriation of their material so they over-reacted. 

I’ve quoted AP material before and will continue to do so in the future though I do like to make a point to link to them and not to over-quote.  They’re a great and valuable resources but again, going back to the label comparison, they need to be smarter about how to protect their material while also keeping their service alive- they’ve even been compared to Metallica (not musically of course but in terms of short-sighted net policy). 

—Jason Gross

Looks like Rupert Murdoch’s got a little to sweat about besides maybe not having the GOP stay in power next year.  According to Tech Crunch, Facebook is now catching up to MySpace in terms of the number of unique visitors (aka web users) coming to its site.  What that means is that FB isn’t the underdog anymore and now, maybe more than ever, is a potent force not just in online social networking but increasingly, it’s becoming a place for music heads to congregate, which its connections to Last.fm, Imeem, iLike and other music-related widgets that are popping up all the time.  That means not just more ad dough but also developers, fans and bands might be flocking to them more and making them more of a king-maker in the entertainment world.

Then there’s the fan-friendly guys of Metallica who have laid off demanding that web users get sued and are now somewhat more fan-friendly to blogs.  A recent scuffle occurred when some blogs were told to take down reviews of the metal-heads upcoming album.  Mind you, these were not negative reviews either.  Lars and friends decided that this was bad PR (which they know all too well) so they blamed their management and were gracious enough to let the blogs put out their nice reviews of the band.  It was definitely a boneheaded move to begin with and by using management as a scapegoat, if that’s the case, makes the band look better and actually heroic in stopping this madness.  That would be the story line if you weren’t a skeptic like I am.  Part of what makes me cynical is this tidbit at the start of their press release: ‘… rarely do we feel the desire/need to respond to the “blogosphere”’ Boy, that drips with contempt, doesn’t it?  Sounds like they think the blogs are a bunch of stupid bozos who they shouldn’t take seriously.  Kind of like the people who wouldn’t want them posting about the band in the first place…

—Jason Gross