Microsoft is joining the online digital book-scanning race. But “instead of forging its own path in the book-digitizing business — a wilderness of tricky copyright laws and technical challenges — MSN is joining a group already at work in the area. The division will align with the Open Content Alliance, which is backed by Yahoo! and aims to initially focus on scanning and digitizing classic books not bound by copyright restrictions.”
Blog
Study: Men Are Drifting Away From Magazines
A study by Time, Inc, “the world’s largest magazine publisher, finds a new, noticeable slide in men’s magazine usage, while women’s usage is holding steady. A mere five years ago there was no gender gap. Time Inc.’s research found that men spend more time with new media than women, which may account for the decline. Thus the distortion of long-held media habits continues.”
Are Video Games Ready For Serious Work?
“‘Serious gaming’ is the idea of using gaming technology, gaming theory and those kinds of things to understand complex dynamic processes. For example, powerful computer hardware and software have been used for years to help train pilots and other operators of complex machines. And as graphical capabilities continue to expand, such simulations have expanded to other areas — virtual worlds where soldiers can learn how to fight in urban surroundings, or doctors can practice difficult surgical procedures.”
CBC Boss Faces Sharp Questions
CBC president Robert Rabinovitch appeared before a parliamentary committee Thursday to answer questions about the company’s recent lockout. “The questioning from the members of Parliament on the committee was sharp and accusatory, blaming Rabinovitch for locking out workers for nearly two months and breaking management’s commitment to CBC viewers and listeners, let alone to its workers.”
All Naxos, All Online
Naxos has made its catalog of 75,000 tracks available for downloading. “From the Music Library, subscribing institutions can stream any Naxos title, and the company hopes to make this service available to individual subscribers in the future. Naxos Web Radio streams 72 channels of music programmed by genre for an annual fee.”
NY Phil Merges With Louisiana Phil For Concert
“The New York Philharmonic entwines itself with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra in a joint concert to support the New Orleans-based musicians affected by Hurricane Katrina.”
Italy makes Claim On Met Museum Prize Vase
Italian authorities say they have irrefutable proof that “the most prized ancient Greek vase in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art was looted. The Euphronios krater, described as one of the finest antiquities ever obtained by the Met, has been a source of controversy since the museum acquired it 33 years ago. Italian authorities have long maintained that the vase was looted from a tomb north of Rome, but the Met has refused to return it, saying the Italians lack proof.”
Liverpool – Swamped By Outside Culture
Liverpool is 2008’s Capital of Culture and the money is pouring in – hundreds of millions of pounds. But some of the locals are getting irked. “It’s as if the people running 2008 have no confidence in what’s already here. There are lots of government agendas being worked out. People are getting grants because they are good at filling in forms. But money isn’t coming into the music scene: it’s going to consultants. The clubs that really fuel the music are unfunded and almost off the radar as far as the official bodies are concerned.”
Chronicling NY’s Downtown Theatre
Michael Feingold has written about theatre for the Village Voice for 34 years. “That so many Voice critics have been, openly, practitioners has often given uptown journalists pause. But it had to do less with the long-standing tradition of the critic-playwright than with the communal nature of what had evolved, by the early 1960s, into the Off-Off-Broadway movement. While Off-Broadway itself became more upscale and commercial minded, the Downtown theater had burgeoned into a large, loose pool of extraordinary talents that was a community in itself. Not to participate actively would have marked one as hardly more than a tourist in an audience where, it sometimes seemed, everyone was a practitioner, and usually a multitasker at that.”
Are Art Schools Wrecking Young Artists?
“It has always been the function of artists to tell the narrative of our times in a way that isn’t filtered through big-media spin or the historical revisionism of academic pundits. Recent and historical precedence tell us that it should be young people, and particularly the artists among them, who are most passionately voicing this narrative. But they’re not. In fact, there is a critical lack of voice among young artists, and I believe that art schools are to blame for this crisis.”