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ACTA aka Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is getting a lot of press recently, especially from the likes of TechDirt and Broadband News. ACTA is the most recent lightning rod for those who are critical of the music and entertainment industry intellectual property concerns.  ACTA is a good thing for the very reasons that the anti-RIAA and anti-MPAA crowd completely overlook – that artists who are not distributed through these publishing venues are being ripped off every day and the DMCA falls short in providing any sort of protection. Read the rest of this entry »

Several database driven sites that we manage, such as Content Creator’s Guild, utilize a fantastic content management system called Joomla. After having used Joomla since 2006 and gone through a painful Joomla 1.0.x to Joomla 1.5.x upgrade, I’ve put together a set of top ten tips to know before you start using Joomla. This assumes you are new to content managment systems and are just getting started with Joomla. Read the rest of this entry »

Debra Shinder wrote an article on the 10 Ways You May Be Breaking the Law with your Computer, which is a thoughtful recap of industry events that could have long term impact for computer users. Thoughtful because she doesn’t seem to pass judgment on each item she reports. On the other hand, its rare that you read responses other than from people who state their belief that any sort of federal penalty for intellectual property theft is wrong; that somehow its different than shoplifting.

I can accept that people have very little sympathy for very large corporations that derive exceptional, or obscene profits from intellectual property of all kinds (big pharmaceutical, large music labels), but that doesn’t jive with the photographer, musician or small content business that as a result of a lack of paying customers (but plenty of non-paying pirates) have to reduce or fire their creatives staff.

e-on software, the makers of 3D natural scenery software Vue and owners of the Cornucopia 3D content brokerage site have announced their support for Content Creators Guild by allowing CCG Independent Vendors to post their product releases on their Shop Talk forum. The only stipulation to posted releases is that the products are compatible with Vue, such as native Vue .vob objects, textures, materials or the like, or content that can be imported into Vue, including Poser props, characters – even more generic imports like 3DS.

Wall Street Journal covered some underhanded tactics employed by the organizers of the SXSW music festival against other organizations that try to take advantage of their investment in brand. For example – according to the article, free and heavily sponsored parties that aren’t sanctioned by SXSW were ratted out to fire marshals to be shut down. The article lists other unfriendly responses towards anyone that tries to leverage SXSW’s investment in branding.

There has been an inverse relationship between the friendliness of a brand and the size of the owning company’s pugilistic legal team when it comes to traditional marketing. Great examples of this are Mattel’s Barbie and anything created or acquired by Disney.

What I find particularly interesting about the SXSW revelation isn’t the tactics that they employ, or that they employ them. It is that some members of the press are either blind to modern marketing methods or just like to play along and smile.

WebKinz is a fascinating take on combining real world products with virtual  world services.  Your stuffed animal comes complete with a customizable certificate and a virtual reality version in the WebKinz online world – a sort of junior Sims environment. WebKinz has already introduced a trading card system as well.

An interesting northwest start up called Toonlet makes a fun set of online tools to rapidly create web comics. It gives you a lot of templates to start with, so that you can create mostly human (and alien) characters for your comics, add moods and the like. These types of characters aren’t the Batman/Superman type – more along the lines of what you see in the newspaper. You can also auto-generate character and then customize them.

The interface for building characters and comic strips is a very clever, easy to use set of tools that uses Flash – Flash without the pain of having to use Flash the product (vs Flash the player). It lets you resize, flip and make other transformations to your characters.

Toonlet is a lot of fun, and it has tools for sharing your creations with others – on your own website, through feeds and the like.

The Internet is being filled with comments on the recent passing of E Gary Gygax, the creator of the Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game. If you are between the age of 40 to 60, you probably remember the game’s first rise in popularity in the mid-late 70’s, and the various scandals it produced, including a terrible movie with Tom Hanks. An incredible number of conventions in both offline and online games – especially MMORGs like World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online. What is particularly interesting is that Gygax himself was greatly influenced by writers such as JRR Tolkien, writer of The Lord of the Rings; he then systematized the conventions of the fantasy genre into the first pen-and-paper role playing game – that in turn greatly influenced the mechanics of these computer games.

Roman Ormandy, CEO of Caligari has announced that Caligari Corporation has been acquired by Microsoft. Caligari TrueSpace is a Windows only 3D modeling and rendering product. According to Roman, the reason for this is to enhance Microsoft’s Virtual Earth.

I would also estimate that a portion of this will get rolled into Microsoft’s XNA game strategy for creating Xbox 360 and PC games.

The 3D graphics market has been in a constant state of vigorous consolidation following the early price wars between Alias Maya and Lightwave and the subsequent acquisition of Alias by AutoDesk – owners of Discreet and 3D Studio MAX.

In the 3D mid-market, recent years has seen the collapse of Eovia and the acquisition of its products by DAZ Productions and e-frontier. The majority of e-frontier America’s products were then acquired by Smith Micro.

This bloodbath will continue.

I was asked by chikako on the Meshbox NING about the controversy over the ArtZone terms of Service. ArtZone is a community site run by Daz Productions, Inc, a provider of high quality Poser compatible content and software vendor. The broad rights granted under the ArtZone Terms of Service to DAZ have outraged hundreds of artists who typically assume that ArtZone was governed by the same TOS as DAZ other sites. Let’s look at the section that is outraging people and why DAZ might require these rights. Read the rest of this entry »