Furth and Fortune blog by Will Murray

It appears to be an ordinary day at the food court in your local mall. You’re calmly eating your Hot Dog on a Stick, when suddenly something strange happens… The cashier needs a napkin. She breaks into a musical number asking for one, and before you know it, the whole food court comes alive with singers, dancers, and very surprised customers. Enjoy the charming and humorous thrill that is: “Hot Dog on a Stick, the Musical”

This video titled “What song is this?” seemed appropriate this month at the start of a new year, an election period in our country, and on a national holiday weekend.

Liked that? OneManSho has more. In the next one, he performs “200 Impressions” of people and animated characters:

Tags: art, design, foods, impressions, music, OneManSho, patriotic, videos, YouTube

Back in September 2006, Noah Kalina got his 15 minutes of fame by posting a video on YouTube showing his face photographed every day for six years (see my earlier post to watch that video). Somebody at The Simpsons must have seen that video, because in Sunday’s episode, we get to watch Homer Simpson’s life flash before his eyes in the same way over a 39-year period. It ranges from baby Homer, to his school years (improving from F’s to D’s), acne-ridden teenager, and beer drinking, balding Homer.

Watch the video after the jump.

Tags: animation, art, cartoons, changes, cool stuff, music, Noah Kalina, photos, television, The Simpsons, videos, YouTube

If you haven’t seen the World of Warcraft: Dancing video yet, you should. The combination of avatar dancers superimposed over dance clips is pretty cool, but what really makes it impressive to me is just how far desktop computer animation technology has come over the years. I still remember how impressive PONG, a first generation video game, was with a single blocky pixel bouncing around the screen in black and white. Fast forward 30 some years, and now there are these game characters able to dance with the likes of John Travolta or Michael Jackson.

Here’s the video and list of clips:

Tags: animation, art, computer animation, computers, dances, dancing, design, videos, World of Warcraft, WOW, YouTube

To compare Internet radio to traditional radio, satellite radio, or digital music channels on cable is ridiculous. Most Internet radio sites are just ordinary people who enjoy listening to music and they make it available for their friends to listen to, too. As I understand it, the sharing of music in this manner is protected by copyright laws, so long as the playlist is not divulged ahead of time.

Other stations are far more professional, actually sounding like “real” stations, with station identifications, sponsorship announcements, or even sometimes advertisements. But do not mistake them for profitable, traditional radio stations. These stations are popular for offering a free service to their listeners. As a result, the listeners use large amounts of bandwidth to receive the music. This results in a very real cost to the webcasters, and the ads often barely cover the costs. Many webcasters have to give up webcasting when they become popular, simply because it is too expensive to continue.

And now the music industry is attempting to capture more “lost profits” by taxing these people right out of business. Obviously artists and the people involved in making the music deserve compensation, but, as usual, the industry is going way beyond reason with their efforts.

As you probably know, the Copyright Royalty Board has decided to raise music royalty rates by 300 to 1200 percent. Worse yet, there is no “grace period” or “phasing in” of these new fees to allow webcasters the opportunity to develop new business models or attract advertisers to pay this new tax.

In fact, quite the opposite is true. The Board has made these taxes retroactive back to January 2006. This will utterly devastate most webcaster’s bank accounts, forcing them to shut down and probably declare bankruptcy. How extremely sad for people just offering a free service to people around the world.

The silencing of Internet radio would be a blow to listeners like me who enjoy the wide variety of choices only available via Internet radio. This will kill the great diversity of music that I hear over the Internet and all the independent artists who have a difficult time breaking through on other forms of radio.

I respectfully request that Congress look into this matter and take action to prevent it. Please understand that time is of the essence since the new royalty rates are retroactive to January 1, 2006 so they will cause immediate bankruptcies if they become effective for even one day. Please don’t let the music die.

Thank you for your consideration,
Will Murray

–
I am sending the above letter to:

• Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
• Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
• Representative Doris Matsui (D-CA 5th)

I will post any replies I receive as comments to this message.

You can send a letter to your Congressional representatives by visiting http://SaveNetRadio.org/

Tags: advertising, Congress, copyrights, digital music, Internet, music, net radio, politics, radio, webcast

Judson Laipply is one heck of a talented comic dancer. It brought back so many memories from Elvis movies to Justin Timberlake. What a trip. Thanks to my friend Joey for finding this, as he put it, “OHHH MAN, White men can dance, this is funny”. And he is right. Enjoy!

Tags: comedy, comics, dances, Elvis, Judson Laipply, videos, YouTube

It seems that a company called SpiralFrog is betting that people between the ages of 13 and 34 love free music and don’t mind commercials. Their press release and an article in the Baltimore Sun indicate that users will be able to download as many songs as they want for free—legally.

There’s got to be a catch, right? Yup. If you want to download a song, you have to sit through a 90-second commercial advertisement. Then you are free to download the song to your Microsoft Windows Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) enabled computer or portable device (sorry Apple iPod users). Watch ninety seconds of commercials to gain unlimited rights to all the music you want? Might be worth it.

But there’s still another catch. Note that I said the music requires Windows DRM, and that means you do not have unlimited rights to your newly grabbed music. In fact, you LOSE your rights to your music if you don’t return to the site and watch more commercials on a regular basis. Ick!

Another thing that is not mentioned, but knowing a bit about DRM, I’m guessing that you can play the music ONLY on your Windows PC, Pocket PC, or Windows Mobile device with the appropriate version of Windows Media Player installed.

That means: no burning the music to CD, limited transfers to other devices (and only Windows DRM compatible devices at that), and the license automatically expires, so even if you backup your files, they become useless without returning to the site.

Honestly, I’d be tempted except that it uses Windows DRM. So far, I have not found anything redeeming about WDRM—unless you are a music studio executive. It totally handicaps legitimate uses of products you purchase. So, what’s the point?

While I applaud SpiralFrog and the music studio that agreed to this creative way to distribute the music, I hope that the Internet community rejects the product so long as WDRM is used as the protection mechanism.

Tags: DRM, Internet culture, music, music industry, songs, SpiralFrog.com, WDRM, Windows

So, you’re sitting around this Easter weekend with nothing to do, right? (Not that I would know that feeling.)

Check out a few things that I found:
Darth Vader vs. the Japanese Police – So cheesy it’s kinda cute.
Matt’s collection of weird RC photos and videos – Reminds me of CCAMS
And Fosfor’s Gadgets always has nifty stuff to gawk at and/or drool over

Or, you could be like me and spend the weekend reviewing hardware and putting together quotes for clients and filing your income taxes. Yippee.

Tags: cool stuff, Easter, videos