mediageek

Month: April 2006

  • Political Economy by Any Other Name Is Apparently a Fresh, New Idea

    Perhaps this is nothing new, but I’m starting to really notice a severe lack of awareness of critical traditions within the A-list blogosphere/digerati culture. Back in March, Andrew took note of a proposal to create a new “interdisciplinary discipline’ of Critical Information Studies, which he concluded, “sounds very like the areas covered by Political Economy…

  • Want To Know What the Telcos Are Really Up To? Ask the Guys on the Line.

    Craig Newmark, of Craigslist fame, was in on today’s SaveTheInternet conference call, too, though he kept his few comments pretty short. But he brought one very interesting insight to the table, addressing one of the telco lobby’s loudest arguments against network neutrality: the likes of AT&T and Verizon haven’t discriminated against any internet content yet,…

  • A Right-Wing Perspective on Saving the Internet as We Know It

    I just finished listening in to a national conference call put on by the SaveTheInternet campaign. The call was advertised to reporters as a meeting of “strange bedfellows,” because in addition to usual suspects from Public Knowledge and Consumer Federation of America there was the inclusion of Craig Fields from Gun Owner’s of America. Fields…

  • Pushing Net Neutrality: Coalition to Save the Internet

    If one thing has become clear with this year’s session in Congress, it’s that some serious organizing has to happen if our congresscritters are going to be pressured into keeping the internet free of speedbumps and corporate-imposed taxes. Legislators might get the issues, but they need to be convinced that their constituents care about them.…

  • How Do You Sell Neutrality?

    Josh Breitbart of MediaTank and Clamor has been blogging lately, and raises a really good question about the framing of the network neutrality debate: Only a Democrat would think people could get excited about neutrality. What’s the opposite of “neutral”? Non-neutral… Partisan… In gear…? The same issue has been bugging me, but I haven’t been…

  • Happy 50th Birthday to Videotape

    I missed this story last week: Friday was the 50th anniversary of the debut of modern videotape. While there were many attempts at recording television to magnetic tape or record platters going back more than 20 years prior, April 14, 1956 was the first public demonstration of a videotape recorder using a rotating drum head.…

  • mediageek video blog #1: a minor pledge drive adventure

    WEFT‘s spring pledge drive started more than 10 days ago, but April 7 was the first pledge drive show for mediageek. I went early to help with hosting the Courier, which starts at 4 PM (mediageek goes on at 5:30), and decided I might drag along a camcorder to document a little of what goes…

  • Why Cable TV Franchises Are Important

    The main component of the telecomm legislations bouncing around Congress right now is the creation of a national franchise for new entrants in the cable TV market, aimed at smoothing the onramp for the big telcos like AT&T and Verizon to begin offering TV services over their broadband lines. One of the big problems with…

  • New Jersey Nostalgia

    FMU’s Beware of the Blog alerts me to a little piece of Jersey nostalgia in the form of the website of Randy Now, former promoter for the great City Gardens club in Trenton, NJ, where I went to college in the early 90s. And Randy’s still at DJ at WTSR, radio station for The College…

  • Sanyo Xacti HD Camcorder: “don’t get suckered”

    Camcorder Info is one of the best review sites for consumer camcorders. Unlike a lot of reviews you’ll read, they’re critical of picture quality and take a look a features like manual controls. Yesterday they took on Sanyo’s new Xacti “High-Def” camcorder that records to SD memory cards, and find that while it’s a good…