Readymade > Fontastic

From our DIY friends over at Readymade comes word of a uber nifty web 2.0 App. Made by the folks behind "Fontbook" a large online retailer of typefaces, it's an interesting business play and a natural extension of user-generated creative application:

Want to create your own logo or spice up the header for your blog? Create a personalized font that suits the project perfectly with Fonstruct. The free font-building tool lets you construct custom fonts by arranging geometric shapes inside a grid. The process is a little reminiscent of Tetris, but without the overwhelming feeling that sets in when the pieces start dropping at an impossibly rapid pace.

Once your creations are complete, they’re ready for any Mac or Windows application and can be proudly displayed via widget on your blog. Of course, if Times New Roman is about all you can handle, check out the site’s gallery, where other users’ “Fontstructions”—which carry such names as Structurosa and IronManic—will rock your pre-installed world.

To a certain extent this is classic Web2.0, democratized user-generated production tools, community-based ratings and filters, and of course, democratized distribution and sale of user-generated fonts.

I haven't tried it personally yet (hope to soon), but I tend to think of it as a Long Tail "Type" application ;)

ReadyMade || Blog Archive || Fontastic
Fonstruct

Netflix to Sell a Device for Instantly Watching Movies on TV Sets - New York Times

IPTV's slow march takes another step, and then yawns...

Given that the blog title tells the whole story, I'm not sure that this is really 'news.' The one bit of interest here? Long tail darling Netflix is fighting back against Apple & Amazon, to be sure. But... can they beat Blockbuster/Circuit City?

We're years away from meaningful IPTV applications... But that's because we're depending upon a LOT of legacy business infrastructure and the molasses of consumer adoption.

Netflix to Sell a Device for Instantly Watching Movies on TV Sets - New York Times

Canadian Copyright, From The Horse's... Pen.

h/t to Michael Geist - GREAT op-ed essay on Canadian copyright reform in today's Globe and Mail entitled Who Needs Copyright, Anyway?. Rather than being written by a member of the government, or a lawyer, or even a professor (sorry Dr. Geist), it's written by John Degen, head of PWAC - the Professional Writers Association of Canada.

"The panic merchants who continue to try to sell the idea of an epic struggle for control of our culture have an agenda functionally unrelated to how we all continue to interact with that culture. For the most part, they just want cultural product to be free - not free as [Lawrence] Lessig defined it, as in free of unreasonable access-constraints; but free as in we shouldn't have to pay for it. Name something we don't pay for, one way or another. We'll learn, and adjust."

It takes into account Lessig's Free (as in beer) vs Free (as in speech) concept, and delightfully brings it home, touching on fair use, piracy, and even the privacy fight! All in all, truly a must-read for those interested in these matters, both in Canada and abroad.

Link to G&M essay

Facebook | Mass Interpersonal Persuasion, or just a waste of time?

Fast Company is running an interview with Stanford Prof BJ Fogg, author of a new book about the social networking service. There are some interesting ideas, and also some rather outlandish ones. Of the more explorable is this tidbit:

"A lot of our exposure to services and products is now going to be socially mediated. It's going to be very hard to create a centralized broadcasting message about a brand or product... That's where mass interpersonal persuasion comes in. Through the newsfeed and my social network, interesting stuff now comes to me; I don't have to go searching for it."

Fast Company then (rightly) asks if this will flow into the Long Tail philosophies that are popular right now. Fogg's response is fundamentally correct, although perhaps not how he means it:

"As a brand, you can worry about all these micro niches and micro markets and the long tail, but I think at the end of the day you're not going to have enough resources to do that. You have to focus on creating a spectacular product or service, and your market will find you."

Whoa, wait a second... did I just read that in the future (according to Fogg), marketers are going to be out of a job? That if you build it (really, really well) they will come? Fortunately, not exactly:

"You don't have to pre-define your market right out of the gate. As long as you watch what's going on, you can adjust and go with what's working."

Phew. For a minute there, I saw long lines of well-manicured homeless folks trying to explain why the street is now REALLY where it's at.

The really interesting piece to Fogg's argument is that Facebook, or rather social networking in a broader sense, is going to democratize marketing. Thing is, I know a lot of young people for whom Facebook is yesterday's news, and they are looking for a place that they can call their own (the early appeal of Facebook). Facebook has responded with "lists," or the ability to create mini virtual Facebooks so you can keep your friends separate from uh, your parents. It's too soon to tell if this is going to play out, but I suspect it won't.

Here's the thing. People (the necessary component to the social networking eco-sphere), don't change that fast. Fogg is describing a wholesale shift from push to pull marketing. Anybody else remember Pointcast? How about lesser-known Backweb & Marimba (check out this 1999 Forbes article for some good irony).

At the end of the day, Google ads get closer to what Fogg is describing... While I agree that SaaS (Software as a Service) and grid computing are changing the landscape, and that products are, by their nature becoming iterative (think iPod, salesforce.com, and the still-in-beta GMail), I think that's a far cry from the marketing paradigm shifting so dramatically. Besides, the concept of engagement is just catching on...

Why Facebook Is Even Bigger than You Think | Fast Company

This is awesome

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

h/t to Greg McDonald for this one...

Link to original

Michael Geist | CRTC New Media Consultation

h/t to David Canton via Twitter...

Please add your comments about Net Neutrality to the CRTC's Consultations site.

Links:
David Canton's Commentary
Michael Geist - CRTC New Media Consultation

Ars Book Review: "The Pirate's Dilemma"

Referring back to my post about the merits of piracy ArsTechnica is running a book review on former UK Pirate DJ Matthew Mason's The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism. Mason argues, among other things that the US was largely founded on piracy, and not just of the Hollywood variety:

"During the nineteenth century Industrial Revolution, the Founding Fathers pursued a policy of counterfeiting European inventions, ignoring global patents, and stealing intellectual property wholesale."

...Americans were so known for piracy that they were eventually branded Yankees, from the Dutch "Janke," slang for a pirate.

The article takes a very centrist perspective on the matter, and follows up with an interview of Mason. One of the more interesting ideas put forward is a likening of the eponymous "Pirate's Dilemma" to the "Prisoner's Dilemma" from AI game theory. A paradox of market interests emerges and a grid begins to form, one where a circumstance of limited choice emerges and pirates/industry now move inside this artifice according to prescribed actions. It's not only a paradox, it's mostly a zero-sum effort. Mason suggests that the antidote is to have industry play against the pirates in the market (where they're making money) as opposed to the courts (where they're spending money and losing valuable goodwill and brand equity).

ArsTechnica balances this carefully, weighing the greater good against the interests of private enterprise through the lens of a Pirate's Dilemma:

...While piracy may be good for those who don't have to pay for something, it's less immediately clear how it might benefit the broader economy. And how could it help the very companies who are being hurt by it? Here is Mason's answer, one worth quoting at length.

By short-circuiting conventional channels and red tape, pirates can deliver new materials, formats, and business models to audiences who want them. Canal Street moves faster than Wall Street. Piracy transforms the markets it operates in, changing the way distribution works and forcing companies to be more competitive and innovative. Pirates don't just defend the public domain from corporate control; they also force big business and government to deliver what we want, when we want it.

It's an argument worth considering. Would we have iTunes, eMusic, Amie Street, and the Amazon digital music store without the pressure brought by the pirates? It's hard to say definitively, but... how much innovation would the labels have allowed without... KaZaA, Gnutella, and especially the original Napster?

As we begin to see open source content become a viable reality, and as pirate-like punk DIY finds an increasingly welcoming marketplace, the labels and the studios will increasingly have to compete, not with the disruptive influence of free pirate offerings, but with free, premium content operating under different monetizing models. I wonder if they'll be willing to pay to copy those models once the prove viable, or will they simply take them and use them for free?

Link to ArsTechnica Review
Book @ Amazon: The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism