Idiotprogrammer: Texas Literary Blog

Category: Open Media

  • Everybody Draw Mohammed Day

    Thanks to Molly Norris of  Midnight Corndog. For context, see this piece by Dave Itzkoff.

  • The media never lies (it just ignores the real story)

    Musings about why the media underreports certain stories (like climate change). By Robert Nagle

  • Charlie Brooker on ebooks

    A few weeks ago Paul Biba blogged about a hilarious Charlie Brooker video about how to report the news. Charlie Brooker is a kind of British Steven Colbert/Bill Moyers who analyzes current media obsessions with a cynical eye. (See his piece about mass killings and his pilot Newswipe episode and his take on American news…

  • Bequeathing images of myself to posterity

    While checking my referrer logs, I see that a CC photo I snapped of a family Thanksgiving is used ironically on a post about murdering family members.  I generally don’t care who uses my photos although probably it would be taking things too far to use images of children inappropriately (see this case). But as…

  • China and Freedoms

    Here is an amazing 90 minute panel about China and Internet freedoms in anticipation of Clinton’s speech.  Video streaming and mp3 download. Hilary Clinton gave a groundbreaking speech on Internet censorship a few days ago.  Well worth reading in its entirety. A data point: Now, these examples of progress can be replicated in the lives…

  • Interview with Lonah

    Recently writer and critic Robert Nagle made a list of 11 Incredible Musicians You Can Download for Free. Many of the musicians on this top list make their music freely available on Jamendo, a free and legal music sharing site. Several musicians  appearing on this  list also gave interviews to this blog  (Read the other…

  • Jamendo having problems?

    I’m in the middle of a long series about creative commons  music on Jamendo.  Definitely appearing on this blog this week. But I just wanted to alert people to the fact that Jamendo might go under – which would be devastating for artists all around the world. See this Techcrunch article as well as this…

  • Simple fixes for Messed Up Sunday Talk Shows

    Jay Rosen has an interesting solution for the partisan bickering you see on Sunday talk shows: a midweek fact check of what the guests said on Sunday. The results of the fact-check will be posted later on the web. He elaborates: The midweek fact check would also give David Gregory a way out of his…

  • Trolls (oops, I mean “Conversation Hackers”)

    Here’s a reason I can’t resist blogging. I have lots of browser windows open and it’s easier to record them on my blog instead of other mechanisms (delicious, etc). Olivier Morin on people who troll on websites and why they do it. A long fascinating read. We suggest, instead, that peace could be made between…

  • Paging Michael Barrett

    In my last post I alluded to a writer friend Michael Barrett who consistently refuses to set up a home base of operations on the Internet. He writes a lot and faces a lot of difficulties being found on the Web. For one thing, he wrote a few hundred articles for San Express News, whose…

  • Breaking News: Celebrities are Dying all around us!

    Joanne McNeil on the phenomenon of media outlets reporting a constant barrage of celebrity deaths. Every day on Twitter, news of another death. Les Paul, John Hughes, Farrah Fawcett, those big names, but also the editor at this publication, the founder of this startup, the people who we might not all know, but someone you…

  • How much money does the artist receive from a paypal donation?

    How Much of Your Donation Goes to the Artist Donation Amount Paypal (from U.S.A.) Paypal (From Outside U.S.A.)         Transaction Fee –> 2.9% + $.30 3.9% + $.30 $1 $.67 $.66 $2 $1.64 $1.62 $3 $2.61 $2.58 $4 $3.58 $3.54 $5 $4.55 $4.50 $10 $9.41 $9.31 $20 $19.12 $18.92 So, if you live in the…

  • Attention Larry King, Attention US publishers!

    Glen Greenwald deconstructs a New York Times piece on the wrongful Gitmo imprisonment of a Sudanese journalist. Greenwald writes: By stark contrast, the American public is, as Stelter notes, almost completely ignorant of what our government has done in this regard.  And why is that?  Because the same media that fixates endlessly on the imprisonment…

  • Public Relations, Monetizing and Niche Blogging

    I thought I had read everything notable by Paul Graham, but here’s his piece about Public Relations. PR is not dishonest. Not quite. In fact, the reason the best PR firms are so effective is precisely that they aren’t dishonest. They give reporters genuinely valuable information. A good PR firm won’t bug reporters just because…

  • Wikipedia Follies (Part 29)

    It probably comes as no surprise, but the fact that Wikipedia has an article about the musical career of William Shatner but not an article about one of America’s most talented authors underscores the project’s inherent inability to value cultural objects. See also: my takedown of Wiki-deletionists.

  • Embarrassments of Obscurity (Part 23)

    I usually never let it get under my skin when I hear that some young hotshot has published a book or some celebrity has gotten invited onto a talk show to tout a book.  I don’t let it get to me because I convince myself that people like Bret Easton Ellis peak early and never…