AppleInsider reports that amidst the majors dropping away from iTunes, Apple is said to be creating a new label with the help of Jay-Z (a person who does better as a businessman than as a musician IMHO).

I think that this is a natural evolution of Apple’s stronghold in music. It’s the next step, but it’s exactly the next step because the majors are not happy with Apple and they force the hand of Jobs to take such measures. However, what I am hoping for is that this is not “just another label”. We don’t need more “labels”. What we need is a revolution, and thankfully Apple is good in delivering revolutions. Hopefully, Creative Commons licenses will be used for sane fair usage, and Apple won’t be stupid to just “sign away” random artists, but truly pay up for radio/PR for their best artists.

When I read this news yesterday, the first thing that came into my mind was Lessing’s talk at TED. He said that the last time that the music business situation was as shitty as today it was 1939, when ASCAP was raising rates by 448%. So radio businesses of the time created a new consortium in 1941, using only independent music, the one that became BMI. You can relate this to RIAA and the indie labels. The interesting bit here is that when BMI was created, ASCAP said “whatever dudes, this kind of music is not what people want, so you will end up coming back to us“. However, they weren’t. Listeners liked the “indie” music of the time, and a new generation of music business was created. As time goes by, each new state of being is getting corrupted (just like democracy does over the years), so at this second evolution of music, BMI/RIAA have become the new ASCAP. Which is why it’s time for them to go away for the new thing to come. For the next 20-30 years they will play good too, but then it will be time for them to get replaced too. We will go through the same strangle again, but that’s how life is.

If you are new into videography but you need a more powerful video editor, check this great offer at B&H, Vegas Pro 8 for $180. You will have to buy the old Vegas 6 version and then buy the upgrade to v8, but overall, it’s just $180 instead of $600. That’s a great offer.

My best video yet, I believe. Jellyfish look amazing. HD version here, highly recommended you download the originally uploaded HD file.

Several of the Monterey beaches. This video came out better than I thought it would. HD version here.

Also from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, sea anemones and the like. The shots are not as steady or as clear as I would want them though, not enough light in these chambers. HD version here.

Happy new year everyone! Thank you for continuing reading my boring blog this year too!

We went to Monterey for the weekend and shot 1.5 hours of video, which translated to 4 clips. This is the first one. Didn’t come out as well as I had hoped, but whatever… HD version here.

Update: Here are some before and after color grading examples used in this video.

“In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer. The industry’s lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are “unauthorized copies” of copyrighted recordings,” writes WashingtonPost.

I hope RIAA goes to hell. It’s as simple as that. As someone put it well:

“Making a copy on your computer is part of the normal process of playing a CD on an MP3 player – not fundamentally different from making a copy of the music in the RAM of an anti-skip CD player as part of the normal process of playing the music. I’m willing to defend the notion of copyright and the reasonable rights of copyright owners, but this is going too far in my opinion (and it’s stupid – by the time they argue that buying a CD and ripping it for your iPod is as illiegal as pirating the album, people might as well save the money and pirate stuff).”

Maybe the cause of this stupidity is indeed what this Stanford uni professor (and board member of Creative Commons) said: that both sides of the fence are going into extremes to piss each other off now, without any logic behind their decisions.

I have enough archived HD footage of the San Francisco zoo tiger that this past week got out of its cage, killed a teenager and hurt two more people. Some of you might have seen parts of that footage on my zoo video.

Tonight I got a message by a fellow videographer telling me that I should try and sell my footage to the news TV channels. I replied that this would be a bad idea, and he replied “why? why is this bad?”. And this is what I replied back to him:

“It is inappropriate because it’s an exploitation of the current unfortunate situation. IF I had been selling that footage for months before the accident happened, that would have been ok. But selling it now, after and because of the accident, that’s greedy and it shows a low quality person.”

I hope more people think about their personal ethics before they do the things they do. In the specific situation everyone lost: the tiger got shot, the kid died, two more visitors got hurt, the zoo was closed for days. Everyone lost. And then, here I would be, the smart-ass prick, selling footage and be the only one who gains something from it. Sorry, but no sir. I like my conscience to be clear as day. If shooting and selling footage was my job, I would have pursued a sale, but not under the current conditions.

Update: It’s amazing that there are such low IQ people in the world. Now the guy calls me a hypocrite, because my Vimeo Zoo video uses footage from that tiger. No matter that this video was put together MONTHS before the incident and so it has nothing to do with the ethical dilemma I posed… That guy is so unbelievable! He is either 10 years old, or someone with an IQ below 80. “He will pray for me”, he said… What a fucking joke.

Occasionally I’ve been asked which phones I believe they have the best usability. I’ve tried over 30 phones in my time as a reviewer in the past 3 years, so here’s my opinion on what’s intuitive:

Sony Ericsson’s non-smartphone OS tops the list, with Series60 from Nokia being close. Everything else in that market is mediocre IMO. In the touchscreen market, iPhone kicks everyone’s ass. PalmOS and Windows Mobile can kinda compete because they have been in the market longer than anyone else so they have fixed some mistakes over the years, but overall, Apple got it right, right off the bat. The funny thing is, that I consider UIQ having the worst usability of all touchscreen systems I ever tried (even worse than some half-baked Linux systems I’ve seen out there). Sony Ericsson bought UIQ this past year. And they went from having the best smartkey OS, to the worst touchscreen OS. Nice going SE.

UPDATE: A video grabbed by the Viewty, downloadable higher quality VGA version here.

I will be reviewing the Viewty on OSNews in a few days, it’s an interesting competitor to the iPhone. Is it as good though? Here’s a screenshot from the touchscreen system, rendering OSNews in windowed and fullscreen modes. The browser used is a 2005 version of Obigo (the company behind Obigo is out of the browser business for a year now btw).

Some amazingly-looking footage from the RED camera can be seen on this site. I especially like the “Engagement Clips” here. Looks great on an HDTV.

I published an article on OSNews with some of my favorite video clips out there, created by video enthusiasts. Solomon Chase’s “Rainy Day” remains my favorite such clip ever. Canon should send the guy a check, a lot of people bought the HV20 because of this clip alone.