Archives for April, 2005

Bush Signs Law Targeting P2P Pirates

File-swappers who distribute a single copy of a prerelease movie on the Internet can be imprisoned for up to three years, according to a bill that President Bush signed into law on Wednesday. The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, approved by the House of Representatives last Tuesday, represents the entertainment…

read more | digg story

04/28/2005 | Current Events, Life, Technology | 3 Comments

deviantART.com Listed Top Site Visited By Teens

Scott Jarkoff recently alerted me to the fact that deviantART.com was recently listed (1st) in a demographic research study of top websites visited by teens between the ages of 13-17 years old.

“deviantART is an online art community for artists and art lovers to interact in a variety of ways, ranging from the submission of art to conversations on a number of topics. In its purest form, deviantART is a means for expressing yourself in a variety of ways. deviantART was started by Scott Jarkoff (Jark), Angelo Sotira (Spyed) and Matt Stephens (Matteo), who launched the site on August 7, 2000. If you are interested in reading the full story behind deviantART, click here.”

Top Web properties visited by audience 13-17 years old
  Audience, 000 % of teenagers Composition index
Total Internet Population,
ages 13-17 		14,243 8.8 100
Deviantart.Com 276 29.5 335
Purevolume.Com 254 29.2 333
Freetranslation.Com 387 28.8 328
Buddyprofile.Com 623 26.5 302
Xanga.Com 1,693 25.4 289
Funnyjunk.Com 347 23.8 271
Quizyourfriends.Com 412 23.7 269
Picturetrail.Com 433 22.8 260
Sparknotes.Com 473 22.7 258
Bolt 574 22.5 257
Alloy 585 22.4 255
Neopets.Com 805 22.3 254
Limewire 885 21.8 248
Lyrics.Com 648 20.2 230
Livejournal.Com 1112 20.1 229
Source: comScore Media Metrix

From August 2000 to March 2003 (after which I took a 15 month hiatus from the Internet), I have volunteered a lot of my time at deviantART, Inc., as the Assistant Marketing Director. This particular job necessitated; advanced computer operational skills, excellent communication, salesmanship, and marketing ability. I was also responsible fascilitating healthy relationships between software developers, other website owners, community leaders, and deviantART, Inc., for the purpose of providing mutually beneficial services to all parties.

More of deviantART in the news:

deviantART: A Website Review @ BlogCritics.org
An iMac, a dream, a camera @ News-Leader.com
Top Web sites visted by US teenagers @ Blogs.ZDNet.com
Dress Up Your Desktop With Deviant Art @ NBC4li.com

04/10/2005 | General, Links, Technology, deviantART | 5 Comments

Goodbye CDs

Maybe you’ve read about it elsewhere, or perhaps even experienced it in your own life. The growing decline of Compact Disc usage in our lives has reached what some are calling a remarkable period. Perhaps this is the beginning of CDs truly becoming extinct, some say. Some people like Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban:

“Then it occured to me, that I haven’t used my CD Player, portable or at home, in a long, long time. That I rarely, if ever see anyone walking around with a portable CD player anymore. They have all been replaced by MP3 players. If everyone is switching to MP3 players, whether they are Ipods, in phones, in PDAs, in cars, whatever, then that means that everyone is going to have to go through a multistep process in order to get the music from where or how they buy it, to the place they want it.“

“MP3 players are changing peoples listening habits. We don’t carry folders filled with CDs anymore. We carry our library in our MP3 players. We don’t listen to CDs. We listen to playlists that we adjust all the time. We don’t burn CDs anymore, it’s too time consuming. We copy all our music to our MP3 players so it’s all available at our fingertips.“

That was just an excerpt from his longer blog post, and although I don’t agree with his point that CDs are too time consuming to burn (it takes me less than 3min to burn 200 mp3’s on a blank CD-R.), I would have to agree with him that I find the usage of CDs in my own life to be dwindling. I have a nice CD stereo system with AM/FM radio that I haven’t touched in over a year. Now, this goes beyond just the CD issue, it crosses over into the realm of FM radio. With my PC, I have music-on-demand. Any music I want, anytime I want it, how I want it. It’s completely in my control, no commercials, no mindless chatter. Why would I want anything less?

So you see, I agree with Mark Cuban, the CD is failing and so are many forms of media transferrence not related to wireless, medialess, and internet options. Thanks to my new Sony PSP, I can take my music anywhere, I can take movies, TV shows and games with me in the same device. The same can not be done with conventional media players, those being, CD players.

I urge you all to read Mark Cuban’s blog and read his personal account of this story, though, he’s more forgiving of the music industry, and sounds like he actually wants to see them do better, while I’m completely comfortable with getting all of my music, tv shows and movies off the internet. :|

04/06/2005 | General, Life, Technology | No Comments

  •  
  •  
FireStats icon Powered by FireStats