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Creators Don’t Get to Choose Which Business Model Works
As it becomes harder and harder to attack the logic of the CwF+RtB business model, I’ve seen a lot more people reaching for a kind of compromise or balance option. It goes something like, “Okay, I see how this model can work, but it should be the creator’s choice whether or not they use it.”…
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Here’s the Windup
We’ve got our second test on Monday, so this week I’ve been more and more occupied with studying and preparing for that. In other words, I’m going to be less busy starting this coming Tuesday. Last week our good friend Kyle (formerly of this now-defunct blog, currently with no internet home sans Facebook) made good…
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Computer Troubles—Yay!
Tess, my five year-old desktop PC, has been throwing all kinds of conniptions over the past few months. Macheads, I see your fingers poised over the keyboard: If you are interested in purchasing Apple’s overpriced hardware and gifting it to me, I will gladly accept. Otherwise, silence. Classes and my lab rotation are now in progress,…
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Lego’s Lost Trademark Case Is a Good Thing
My love of Lego goes back nearly as far as I can remember—Lego sets were some of the first things I saved money to buy, and one of my brother’s early sentences was him asking me to “pay dupo” with him. I’ve spent years on staff at one of the biggest Lego community websites around.…
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Quitting: Ensuring Everybody That Matters Loses
Game modding communities thrive on the free exchange of knowledge that ranges from the developers adopting a mod-friendly attitude to the hobbyists who share their work and knowledge with comrades. The community thrives on clever innovation, on people picking up a project where others have left off, and on learning by imitation. Yet interestingly, the…
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Free Culture’s Worst-Case Scenarios
Many of my budding artist friends appreciate their obscurity problem and want to share their work without the encumbrance of copyright. Yet they are worried about others using it for commercial purposes, the same fear that drives people like Cory Doctorow into the arms of Creative Commons licenses. This idea of somebody else, maybe a…
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Gaming’s Bigger Picture: Correcting Tim Buckey
I may not be the biggest fan of Tim Buckey’s opinions or comic, but there are so many things wrong in his latest post lambasting the “sense of entitlement” among gamers that I was compelled to respond. I can always rely on Tim to roll out some of the most rampant industry fallacies, so deconstructing…
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Seeing Past the Banner Ad
Crosbie Fitch added some good insights in response to my previous post about web advertising, noting that the internet is returning balance to communication, changing effective advertising strategies from monologues to dialogues. In addition to basking in the knowledge that he reads my site, I’d like to riff on his post a bit and look…
Matter, Energy, and Life of Michaela A. Castello.