‘The Democracy Gap is a great chasm between this “hearing and deliberative” part of government (what people like to call “Washington”), and the rest of human civilization, and activists — left, right, and orthogonal are beginning to figure this out, and it’s beginning to really tick them off. People are using the internet to become increasingly more organized, but at the same time are becoming more and more disconnected from the mechanics of power inside Washington. Moreover, as the volume of voices grows louder, “Washington” becomes more disconnected — unable to hear the best solutions from the cacophony of noise.’

Sabrina asked local bands about their experience with Kickstarter, including me for the ‘Gate’ EP project funded on the site.

‘I’m asked sometimes for advice on building an internet presence, and I usually have to fumble for an answer ± because I haven’t pursued any particular strategy beyond the glaringly obvious: create original, relevant content repeatedly.’

“This is not something I entirely want to do or say. After this year has ended, Coma Cinema will end it’s run as a recording and performing entity.”

My first time on reddit, again about the cameramail.

This success story is almost entirely the result of efforts by my friend Mike Pooley, who works at Mountain Apple Company and is about to go free-lance to offer his digital marketing services to the world! “These efforts are a great example of how an artist can capitalize on viral buzz. By linking to their free-download offer from the YouTube video, Mountain Apple Company harnessed the video’s exposure to increase their fan base. Their store is beautiful & well-designed, and their marketing efforts drove direct-to-fan sales around the globe.”

“I should know better than to write this sort of post, because it will inevitably come across as a peevish and whiney response to being called a Snuggie. It probably is that to some extent, and I’m already sorry about it. I am really trying to transcend that though, because I think this stuff is so important. I wouldn’t have authorized Alex to reveal the horribly embarrassing revenue number that I can’t even comfortably mention here if I didn’t think that it would, to some extent, move this conversation past the point where people equate ‘Code Monkey’ with ‘Hamster Dance’ and call it a day. I’m disappointed that it did not. And it’s not about my personal ego. OK, maybe it is a little, but I truly believe that the sooner we all acknowledge the internet is not actually killing art, the sooner we can get back to making things that are awesome.”

Michael Nieling/Ocupop designed the icons icons/badges/logos/banners for this. On 8 June, 2011, Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Akamai and Limelight Networks will be amongst some of the major organisations that will offer their content over IPv6 for a 24-hour ‘test flight’. The goal of the Test Flight Day is to motivate organizations across the industry — Internet service providers, hardware makers, operating system vendors and web companies — to prepare their services for IPv6 to ensure a successful transition as IPv4 addresses run out.

Matt Haughey on successful Kickstarter projects.

“Public notices and inquiries should be moved from the newspapers and the bowels of the web online to where we are: networks like Facebook and Twitter.”

“Criticism is only useful when it helps us see something we are having difficulty seeing on our own; it’s not helpful when it tells us to stop looking. ‘But what if everyone pays attention to the wrong things? We have to guide them to the right things!’ Well, eventually everyone stops paying attention to everything: time is pretty effective that way. With that in mind, we should only worry about pointing the good out, and not worrying about the bad. And in the age of the Internet, this dictum takes on added force. Think of it as the Paris Hilton effect: talking about the bad just encourages the bad. No one has ever cured a celebrity of anorexia by posting photographs of her on the Internet, or has helped Charlie Sheen get off alcohol by getting exasperated at his stupidity. Trashing bad people and bad art does not make you a good person.”

“20-plus proposed rules for how to give away music creatively and communally.” This is great!

“Suffice it to say that Whois masking not only doesn't provide any real benefits to the domain holder but actually adds an unacceptable amount of risk.”

Copying a successful business plan is safe, and tons of companies are copying Groupon. The differentiating strategies of the more successful copycats are interesting, as is the arms-race and recursion of deal aggregators. I find it fascinating that people sign up for this stuff, because I find it wasteful. This is insane: “In just over two years, Groupon has accumulated 60 million subscribers, more than $1 billion in venture capital and $760 million in annual revenue to become the fastest-growing Web company ever. In December, it declined a $6 billion buyout offer from Google.”

FOMO is ‘Fear of Missing Out’ and it’s a major problem on the internet. “There is a company that sells radar equipment to the police as well as radar detectors to the public. Clorox is one of the world’s worst polluters of water, and also sells Brita filters to get the bad stuff out of the water again. Lawyers create mazes that you have to hire a lawyer to escape. Similarly social software both creates and cures FOMO. If you didn’t know that party was going on, you’d be home contentedly reading your latest New Yorker. But since you do, you hungrily watch each new tweet.”

“RSS is dead. Blogs are dead. The web is dead. Good. Dead means that they are no longer interesting to the drive-by technorati. Dead means that the curiousity factor has been satisfied, that people have gotten the joke.”

‘Ian Roger’s presentation from New Music Seminar Los Angeles, February 2011.’ A great overview of how bands have used Topsin and online marketing to great success. Some good takeaways here: a) Don't sell anything until you have a few thousand people on your mailing list, b) Until that point, focus most of all on getting known, c) Do something small every week and something big every month, d) Communicate honestly and treat your fans well.

Perspective on the perspectives on the internet: those of the Never-Betters, the Better-Nevers, and the Ever-Wasers. “…what made television so evil back when it was evil was not its essence but its omnipresence. Once it is not everything, it can be merely something. The real demon in the machine is the tirelessness of the user. A meatless Monday has advantages over enforced vegetarianism, because it helps release the pressure on the food system without making undue demands on the eaters. In the same way, an unplugged Sunday is a better idea than turning off the Internet completely, since it demonstrates that we can get along just fine without the screens, if only for a day.”

Move to NameCheap, which is cheap, and there is a discount code.

Former White House Deputy Chief Technology Officer weighs in, urging Egypt’s Minister of IT to help the people of Egypt and to not ruin his legacy with a human rights violation that will overshadow all of his accomplishments.

Anil explains how non-VC-funded, 'mom and pop'-style web startups have subverted the traditional path by cultivating slower, more manageable growth.

As Paul Ford says, “The fundamental question of the web.” Discussions about examples thereof, with Paul Ford himself contributing.

“What do you recommend is the best process for getting my music reviewed on Pitchfork? “The easiest way to contact us to email and mail something to me directly, not just to the office. I would also read some reviews, find out which writers might like what you’re doing, and try to contact them directly. Targeting people who seem open to your music is an easy way to help it along. If you do send CDs, I would expect that a one-sheet, while it could be read, is more likely going to be discarded, so if you send a promo CD you should make sure any information that anyone might want– your website, short bio if needed, contact info for booking or PR if you have it, is on the back of the CD case itself.”

Thoughts on the tendency of the internet to empower and break down niches. “You can be a niche, but you’re a public niche, so you can’t expect to be left alone about it, or understood on your own terms. The internet makes niches possible, but it’s also a massive space in which loads of different people communicate — and spaces like that tend to pull everyone toward the middle, developing conventions and enforcing a cultural center. So far, this hasn’t stopped plenty of corners of the internet from getting extremely insular and specialized, but it’s still a form of cultural policing on this front.”

A followup to the article 'Do Fees Rationalize/Incentivize Communal-Culture Ecommerce?' checks in with actual musicians using the site, and finds that they're more or less unfazed by the change, and don't think it's evil by any means.

Thoughts and collected quotations on Bandcamp's change of plans.

The world and the technology by which we take it in is becoming more and more "addictive" and what can we do about it? A concerted effort to stick to basics and saying no, says Paul Graham.

"Let me think about that." In other words: with a glut of information, we're trying to form opinions and take action on it all just as fast as it's coming in, and we're suffering for it.

This guy seems to have some family issues that his addiction to incoming data via screens is severely aggravating. I experience, on a smaller scale, some of the problems outlined in this article, and, though none of this is particularly new to me, it's frightening to see these habits taken down the slippery slope. Should all of us, and especially people like Kord, make a concerted effort to make screens less a part of our lives, lest we lose our humanity? Or is trying to avoid technology's increasing integration with our every second just being traditionally biased and counter-progressive? I think there is a middle ground where one can be hooked in and focused on doing work while still not ignoring ones' children. Food for thought.

Written with the opinion that this is necessarily a Bad Thing. Revisit; this is interesting.