learnandteachonline.com

This is funny! Market Watch picks up a Hollywood Reporter story on a report by Nielson Entertainment Research.

The report tells of the creator/seller split for audio and video downloads. A comment on the growth of on-demand media is the funny part: "The issue is how to best monetize the opportunity and understand the underlying economic models." The concept of "consumer as programmer" is a challenge for businesses, Nielsen said.

The reference is to entertainment programmer of course, not computer programmer. How many years since Cluetrain came out, and there's more enlightened talk, but no walk. I sure don't see any abatement in corporate command and control. They just try to keep it disguised.

The latest e-mail communication from my son's school district carries the subject line "NPD warns teens/parents about dangers of online blogs." (NPD is the local police department.)

The e-mail points to this article on stalkers, abductions and murders. Of course it's a good idea that the district is helping parents understand internet safety.

On the other hand I think that positioning it like this will give blogs in general a bad name. What happens when a gung-ho English teacher approaches her department chair about having her classes do blogs to get students more comfortable with writing, and the decision maker is afraid the administration and parents won't like the idea. Absolutely they won't, not now.

L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez complains in an NPR audio comment about the demise of newspapers and asks to be saved. But he doesn't offer any suggestions for making print newspapers more relevant in the new century, he just proposes doing TV commercials that tell people how great newspapers are just the way they are, a bargain for 50 cents.

Somehow I don't think that will turn the fleet around. Then he takes a pretty awful potshot at bloggers: "...'til all you've got to chose from are one of the thousands of fly-by-night internet news sites, or one of the millions of blogs posted by unapologetic biased hacks who haven't left the house in five years. Boy are you going to miss us."

The shirtiest bit (28 seconds) .mp3

Wired reports on the unveiling of Nicholas Negroponte's $100 wifi-ready laptop with power provided by a hand crank. It's part of Negroponte's plan to put a computer in the hands of every child on the planet by 2010.

You won't be able to buy these, a pity. They're to be made for government purchase and distribution to schools. Makes you think though, doesn't it? If Negroponte can commission these, couldn't something like them be made as a consumer product? Product design by Design Continuum which looks like an incredible organization.

It also makes you think about the power supply. If a kid can power this for 40 minutes with a minute of grinding, why don't toys and other devices use this method? Because it's free. Ralph Nader told me the answer to these kinds of questions the first time I heard him speak more than 30 years ago. He asked rhetorically why government spending for solar power research was a sliver of a sliver of dollars spent on petroleum research. "Because Exxon doesn't own the sun."