cityofsound

Micropayments and Apple Music Store

Clay Shirky's recent essay asserts that micropayments simply will not work. It's difficult not to agree with Clay (as ever) given the clarity of his thinking.

Somewhat incidentally, some have noted that Apple's Music Store selling its 10 millionth song is a sign that micropayments could work - leaving aside Clay's compelling argument that it's essentially flawed model, I noted a small graph down the right hand side of this Music Store parody site. Anybody know if that is a real indication of sales over at the Music Store?

Shirky: Fame vs Fortune: Micropayments and Free Content

UK Govt e-Envoy quits

How interesting:

"Andrew Pinder, who has the job of getting UK government online, is stepping down. The e-Envoy will leave when his contract ends in spring 2004. Mr Pinder has been overseeing the process of making sure that government services are online by 2005. He took up the Cabinet office post in 2001 but his exit spells uncertainty for the Office of the e-Envoy (OeE)."

"An interim report looking at the effectiveness of how the government communicates - including electronic communication - in light of the Hutton Inquiry, was published last month. The full report comes out at the end of the year. Some proposed changes include the appointment of a new Permanent Secretary for Government Communications. However, the Cabinet Office spokesperson said they were not pre-empting the outcome of the report. She said any role of the OeE as part of the proposals would not decided until the review is reported in full. Under the proposals, the Secretary would head the central civil service communications unit and would be responsible for media and press communications, as well as "Strategic Planning and Development". Part of the responsibilities would also be to make sure there is better "two way communication" between the general public and the government, as well as improved resources for government websites."

Two way communication sounds a bit lame - not exactly enabling many-to-many. As noted earlier (and please check Louise Ferguson's insightful comment), there are many missed opportunities going on here, certainly in the current incarnation of interactive services, despite some smart people and some interesting ideas. Needs some experts in implementation within the tangled, overgrown ecology that is government methinks.

BBC News: Uncertain future for e-Envoy role

Audio maps

Andrew Otwell heard this great little item on NPR in the States last night, which is archived online for the rest of us. Called 50 Sound Stories and 466 Decibel Readings, it's an audio-based 'knowledge map' of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Rachel Thompson, the creator/curator says:

"Perhaps what we were trying to do with the project is suggest a different point of entry for visitors to the city, or a different way for residents of the cities to reconsider how they navigate or how they experience their city on a daily basis"

Bit like the work of Tony Schwartz, bit like NY Songlines ...

Part of a collection of 'knowledge maps' at the Twin Cities Design Festival (other maps apparently include one called Odorama, which plots the olfactory experiences of Minneapolis and St. Paul - I can't link to that because Macromedia haven't built plugins for that kind of thing yet, I guess). There are some other good maps, including one based around Scott Paterson's PDPal, which I saw him demo at Doors.

More on the maps here, though as Andy says, there's more about the audio map in the NPR item here.

Tropicalia

Excellent primer article by Will Hodgkinson in today's Guardian on Tropicalia, one of my favourite musical movements. Have a read if you've never investigated the likes of Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Tom Ze, Os Mutantes etc. ... even if the music doesn't grab you (and to be honest, Tropicalia is such a mixed bag it's unlikely there's nothing there for you!) the story itself is incredible: a late-60s binding of the modernist surges of Brasilia and bossa, tied to the tradition of the Aztecs and the Incas and the new psychedelic sound, wound up in a political terrain of both leftist and facist dictatorship, singing songs of outer space and broken fridges, dressed as conquistadors and witches, their own television show called Divine, Marvellous, across a musical landscape which veered from the avant-garde to pop with gay abandon, and an intellectual backdrop lifted from 1920's philosopher Oswaldo De Andrade.

More seriously, a tale of imprisonment, madness, torture, suicide and depression at the hands of a brutal police state, with some genuine casualties. The story ended (began again?) almost 30 years later, with David Byrne almost single-handedly rescuing the key figures from obscurity, with the exception of those that had somehow managed to ride the changes with integrity (Gilberto Gil is now Brazil's minister of culture, Gal Costa and Caetano Veloso amongst its most loved musicians, with the latter seemingly leading some kind of charmed, Wallpaper*-imagined existence).

Like Will Hodgkinson, I discovered this stuff thanks to 1999's Os Mutantes comp and have searched out Tropicalia ever since (particularly the incomparable Tom Ze, and Veloso's brilliant binding of bossa nova with Tropicalia). The spirit lives on, not just in the indefatigable spirit of those Hodgkinson tracked down for this article, but in the like of contemporary musicians like Arto Lindsay, Marisa Monte, and Arnaldo Antunes.

And you can actually hear all this in the radio programme Hodgkinson and Felix Carey made for BBC Radio 3, to be broadcast at 17.45 on September 14.

The Guardian: Jailhouse Pop
BBC Radio 3

ACME Novelty Datebook

Andrew Otwell writes about one of Chris Ware's new collections, Quimby the Mouse, and has some wise words on the genius of Ware. Like Andy, I'm a huge fan of Ware, not least due to his near-perfect examples of visual narratives and information design that leave Scott McLeod in the dust (with all due respect).

I just ordered another new Ware book - quite different to all Ware's published output thus far, in that the level of control exerted in his published work is (generally) absent here. It's his collected sketchbooks - The ACME Novelty Datebook. it should prove fascinating to see Ware 'show his workings', recording the fragments (both visual and character-based) from which he creates his fabulous worlds.

Andy also digs up a link to this pic of Ware's mural facade of Dave Eggers' community writing centre for children in San Francisco. Amazing.

Amazon.co.uk: The ACME Novelty Datebook.

eGov

Two recent contrasting views of what we in the UK euphemistically, and probably unhelpfully, call eGov:

Louise Ferguson in a usability-driven critique of the 'Quality Framework for UK Government Website Design'

Ian Kearns of the IPPR defends some successes in the project(s) thus far, in The Guardian.

I went to the iSociety event on SmartGov recently, at which Ian Kearns spoke. I found the event fascinating and depressing in equal measure, reminding me of the beleagured atmosphere and low calibre of thinking and ability I encountered when I worked in local government IT projects (and not just mine). To me, looking round the room at the iSociety event - and this is going to sound horrendously arrogant - I saw the same kind of people, saying the same kind of things. Nothing about how to actually build a popular public service website or digital service. And it's surely the general lack of skill and knowledge as to how to build genuinely popular public websites that will hold back the government's attempts here, as much as anything.

Even without the chequered history of goverment-led IT projects, I just do not believe that the current administration - I mean at all levels, from central through to local IT and information departments - is intellectually equipped to deliver. I don't mean they're thick - just, coming as they do from a traditional IT background, not experienced enough in, say, user experience design, information architecture, interaction design - whatever we want to call what goes on in informational product design these days.

While there are increasingly smart people in the government's strategy units - which is to be welcomed - until there's a root and branch upheaval of staff employed in these areas, or some serious 're-training', the level of thinking, the level of skill, the level of experience in building popular informational products is just not there. Compare the Inland Revenue site - which I attempted to use to do my tax return and gave up - with genuinely popular public sites such as Liverpool FC, Eastenders, BBC Radio 1, AOL Blogs, Google (add your current favourite here). Hardly comparing like with like in terms of content, but they just feel like two entirely separate industries at this point, and a little cross-fertilisation would surely help - which is kinda what Louise Ferguson is alluding to.

I don't think it's a question of investment or finance. That is there. As with all local government work in the UK, the problem is making this area of work appear worthwhile and potent, such that talented professionals are tempted to work there.

Interviews with architects

Matt found this, which is awesome:
Audio interviews with architects, on BBC4 site.
Denys Lasdun, Corb, Mies, Gropius, Rogers, Speer etc.

On the Radio 3 site, there's a bunch of audio interviews with some 'rising stars' of the British architectural scene:
BBC Radio 3: Architecture on 3: Rising Stars

Beyond Brilliant

Found this superb "double weblog", Beyond Brilliance, Beyond Stupidity, which takes a split-screen approach to collating and thereby contrasting positive and negative developments in "transportation, urban planning, design etc.". By Nick Astor.

Features this interesting thread on Centre Point, in London. I learnt a lot.
[via No Sense of Place]

Manhattan Types

Scott Steffen's Contact Sheet is a nice blog I found via Frownland's link to Zeldman's note on him doing a standards compliant rejig of Apple.com (I haven't read Zeldman for ages!), and then chancing across Zelman's link to this short piece on Woody Allen's typefaces.

Here's a great series of title screens, which also remind of great series of films. My favourite title, perhaps predictably, breaks out of the serifs and simply deploys the city of New York instead:

My current favourite typeface is the same as last year's: Gotham, which is what the new banner is in above (nb. this design/banner etc. is a temporary state of affairs, by the way. Everyone always says that.)

Oh, and coincidentally also over at Scott's site I found this post about the digital camera I now need to lust after.