Windows 7: Black Market Bound and Priced Against Progress

I was filtering my through TweetDeck the other day when I came across a tweet from a Ukrainian I follow on Twitter that captured something about Windows that has been bothering me for a long time. Microsoft often charges ridiculous prices that only serve to hurt developing economies.

@blogoreader: Скільки коштуватиме Windows 7 в Україні? http://j.mp/gIf0Y

Translated, it says, “How much Windows 7 costs in Ukraine”.

Since most people in the world can’t read Ukrainian (though I can), I’ve created a translated version in Google Translate.

What immediately jumped out at me is that Home Basic, the cheapest version of 7, and presumably what the average consumer would buy, is $113 USD in Ukraine (about the same as in the United States). This is an outrageous price, if Microsoft intends 7 to be taken seriously in Ukraine, and if they hope to draw even 51% of the revenue from sales of 7 there. (Why 51%? To say that you got more than the pirates.)

The Associated Press: “Free Riders” and A Question of Leadership

A friend of mine forwarded me a link to a post written by Tom Curley, CEO of the Associated Press, and Curley’s attempt to monetize the AP’s online content, and just as importantly, prevent others from monetizing it without his having a cut. I have to ask, “Am I missing something here?“

It seems the basic problem he is citing is that:

We content creators have been too slow to react to the exploitation of news content by third parties without input or permission. Random distribution of traffic by aggregators such as search engines directs audiences and revenues away from those who invest in original news reports. And randomness assures the aggregators and their ad networks a stream of revenue based on the aggregation and indexing of published news content.

Wait, but isn’t the AP a news wire service? As in, don’t they sell their news to news media, so other news media can publish it? As in, the AP researches news stories, writes them up, and bundles them for sale to news media, not for their own direct reporting to public audiences? Once their news hits the public, hasn’t it already been paid for?

WaPo’s Social Media Guidelines: Bad News for International Media Development

I understand why The Washington Post would want to come up with the social media guidelines they recently set for their journalists that greatly constrain their use of social media. At least, I think I do.

They want to remain a reputable source of objective news (if objective news is even possible). And, they’d like to discourage the potential for their journalists to go “rogue” with their opinions and personal lives such that it could digitally be traced back to WaPo, and damage that reputation. Understandable. Social media are still kind of in their “Wild West” phase, and the technology makes it MUCH easier to publish online than to consider the implications of publishing online. Definitely a recipe for potential disaster in an industry in which reputation can be everything.

However, there are implications of instituting the guidelines they chose that could dramatically impact the future of media in a very negative way.

New Media and The Middle East – Challenging Authority in Iran

This is another installment in my series of posts on examples of ways new media are being used to challenge authority in the Middle East. This post will focus on Iran.

Internet access in Iran has seen a particular explosion, growing faster than any other Middle Eastern country, according to Reporters Without Borders.  ”From 2000 to 2007,” reported Sepideh Parsa, “the number of users grew from 250,000 to 18 million, which accounts for 53.7% of users in the region”.

Within this explosion has been the rise of blogging in Iran, with the blogosphere becoming such a phenomenon as to warrant its current nickname, “Weblogistan”.  This rise in blogging is having political ramifications for the Iranian State.  “Blogs have become an essential medium for dissidence against the autocratic regime and its state-controlled media”, said Parsa.  “Iran has one of the strictest censorship policies in the Middle East. Thus, blogs offer Iranians the only platform to peacefully exchange their political thought, emotions, and opinions while overcoming the boundaries that have been imposed by the government”.

New Media and The Middle East – Challenging Authority in Egypt

New media, especially social media, are playing a significant role in challenging authority and states in the Middle East. This is the first post in a series I will publish on examples of how new media are being used toward this end. Egypt will start off this series.

Egyptians have begun using online social-networking tools like blogs, Facebook, and YouTube as tools of dissent against the existing authority.  This is significant given that the reigning president, Hosni Mubarak, is seen as a dictator—in fact, one of the world’s ten worst dictators—and his reign has been marked by human rights abuses and acts against freedom of expression that have warranted calling him one.

Music Tuesday: Bands That Have “The Switch”

My music friends and I have noticed something. There are bands that possess something that others don’t. And, we’ve noticed that possessing that something seems to very very often be a necessary condition for us really liking a band. Sure, we do like bands that don’t have it, too. But, for us to really like a band, that band generally has to have it.

I’m referring to something we’ve taken to calling “The Switch”.

You know how there are those bands out there that seem able to crank it up a notch? They can turn the groove or the energy or whatever it is they have up to 11? Or even higher? Perhaps they find themselves in the middle of a dying set, and right about the time when everyone starts noticing, the band suddenly corrects its course, righting the boat, almost as if it was a setup. Almost as if they have a Switch?

New Media: Not As Old As You Might Think

Not too long ago, I came across some social media marketing blogger (I can’t remember which) who said in his blog that he doesn’t like to call new media “new media” anymore, because new media are no longer “new”.

At first, I thought maybe he was right, and that maybe it was time I stop saying “new media” when referring to these technologies that really have been called new for quite some time now. Sure, it might make sense to call them that, since people usually know what you mean when you say those words. But, maybe it IS time, I thought.

Trying to find that blog post, I came across this digital marketing blogger who was saying as far as back as 2006, that “…new media are no longer new—everybody who is anybody is doing it”.

Right. So, I filed it into the back of my mind like everything else and went on about my “new” media work.

Until this past week. I realized something in that time. New media ARE still new. Here is my case (or at least some of it).

Rethinking “Sustainability” in International Media Development

As an international media developer, I am frequently bombarded with concerns regarding sustainability and evaluation. Media development, particularly journalism development, is a very tricky field to create project sustainability, and an even trickier field to evaluate using the tools of the day.

The difficulty with journalism development sustainability is that journalistic outlets – newspapers, magazines, radio, etc. – face a whole slew of economic, social, and political barriers, including limited advertising revenue due to an undeveloped marketplace, a culture unused to how such outlets operate in a marketplace, cultures that distrust information openness, governments with a history of censorship, the list goes on. There are a lot of forces working against them, and few if any working for.

Time to Put LiveJournal Out of Its Misery (A Note to International Media Trainers)

Normally, I focus more on promoting things done well rather than rail against things done poorly. But, I gotta say, there’s room for exception in some cases. Enter:  LiveJournal. I’m sorry, but I kinda think the world would be a better place without LiveJournal, given the available alternatives.

Sure, it would leave a huge number of people who use it to blog, express themselves, connect with others, create networks, social network, and whatever else they do, out in the cold. Particularly in eastern Europe, in places like Russia and Ukraine, where LiveJournal has a commanding lead in the blogging platform market. But, while my party line tends to be “try NOT to make things any harder in developing and transitioning countries, because they are hard enough already”, with LiveJournal I have to take a longview, pragmatic, and perhaps short-run heartless stance and say, “Cut the cord. You’ll thank me for it”.

Because, to everyone still on LiveJournal, I have to say:  in the end, all this platform’s doing is holding you back. It really is subtraction by addition. And besides, there are so many other options that are much, MUCH better.

Okay, here are my bones to pick with LiveJournal (and trust me, running through this is going to hurt me more than it is going to hurt you, LiveJournal devotees):

Music Tuesday: A Flashback to the First Rothbury Music Festival

[Since I didn't get to go to a music festival this summer, I thought I'd take a moment to relive the one I went to last year by republishing this post]

In about a month everyone’s going to be asking each other, “So, what did you do over the summer?” Mostly, people are going to be interested in what internships everyone did, and just as importantly, where they did them.

Sure, these are interesting questions for SIPA people. After all, some are out there working on climate change, food security, economic development, conflict resolution, HIV/AIDS, or human rights. They are doing it in places like Ghana, Uganda, Thailand, Brazil, and Nigeria. And so much of it is important work, in the name of helping others.

I, on the other hand, recently did something that was of pivotal importance to helping me. I got my head screwed back on right. It wasn’t until I pulled this off that I realized just how askew my head had become after a year of pushing my brains to their outer reaches at SIPA. For all the good it had done me, something just wasn’t right.