In the middle of awards season, major announcements in the media and entertainment industry defined February’s news. While Spotify prepares to ramp up its product offerings, new AI-powered tech is winning Grammys and helping make magic happen on the big screen. All this takes place in the shadow of some major policy announcements regarding copyright and AI.
As technology reshapes employment, artists face particular financial challenges, earning 30% less than their peers while lacking traditional benefits. This article examines how cities and organizations are testing new solutions—from guaranteed income programs to innovative pension schemes—to provide artists with greater economic stability.
Educators are grappling with the challenge of integrating AI into classrooms, fearing that these systems might replace traditional learning methods rather than enhance them. This brings us to the question: what barriers prevent educators from implementing artificial intelligence into their curriculum, and how can they be addressed?
January ushered in a new year with sweeping disruptions in media, journalism, and public humanities. Technology-driven partnerships, staff cuts, and mergers have redefined the online media landscape kicking-off 2025, calling into question journalism’s position in an age of generative AI. Read the highlights below.
The grant narrative has become one of the most high-stakes tools of communication in the nonprofit fundraising space, driving more than $150 billion in global expenditures. As grant writers adapt their appeals in response to changing funder values, this narrative network gives shape to the nonprofit ecosystem in which many arts organizations operate.
It was recently determined that a Second Life avatar uses as much energy as a real-life Brazilian. So try as you might to escape your polluted first life, you're doing even more damage as a Second Life user. The following campaign has been created in order to promote a campaign on the energy-conscious site Big Green Switch that urges Second Lifers to offset their avatar's carbon footprint.
Second Life users: Give a hoot and check out Big Green Switch.
Now in its 19th year, the MUSE awards competition recognizes outstanding achievement in museum media. The competition is an activity of the Media and Technology Standing Professional Committee of the American Association of Museums.
The MUSE Awards competition received nearly 180 applications from a wide variety of museums in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia. Entries included audio, cell phone, and interactive handheld tours, interactive kiosks and multimedia installations, podcasts, blogs, games, websites, online collection and image databases, videos, and e-mail marketing campaigns.
Thirty eight judges – museum and media professionals from across the county – were involved in the process of selecting the winners. Winning entries were expected to demonstrate outstanding achievement in content quality; interface design; functionality; production quality; visual appeal; the user’s experience; and the intent to which new directions were charted or old challenges resolved through technical innovation. A complete list of judging criteria and MUSE Award winners can be found on the Media and Technology website.
Josh Futrell and I are sitting in a Web usability workshop at Technology in the Arts: Canada at the moment, and I thought I'd share some notes from the session. The workshop is being led by Robert Barlow-Busch, director of product design at Primal Fusion, a semantic web startup in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Robert's overriding thought about usability testing is quite simple but very important: "Observe people using your Web site."
Josh looks please to be learning about usability.
Why conduct usability testing?
Aside from basic usability testing, Robert also just talked about projective exercises, which determine what type of emotions people attach to your organization. In the session's particular projective exercise, we were asked to imagine that a group of car manufacturer logos were members of a family. Who in the family would each of the logos represent? Robert's point was that this type of activity is more engaging than simply asking, "What do you think about Ford, Chrysler or Volvo?"
By the way, the entire group agreed that Ford was the drunk uncle. Sorry, Ford.
How does this translate to the arts field? An example that Robert presented was for an arts organization to use this type of activity to test how people view the organization's logo in comparison to the logos of other available activities (cinema, zoo, arcade, video games, Netflix, etc.).
Other resources:
The full set of slides from Robert's workshop will be available soon at TechnologyInTheArts.ca.
Seinfeld jokes aside... It is very important for arts organizations to remain masters of their domains. We were recently contacted by a relatively large arts organization that was having trouble accessing their Web site. Each time they tried to access the site, they encountered a message explaining that their domain name registration had expired and that they would have to bid to regain control of the domain.
I thought it would be helpful to explain what a domain name is and why you should never let yours expire.
What is a domain name?
Every site has an Internet Protocol (IP) address that looks like this: 206.187.23.211. However, it would be very cumbersome to always have to say: "Hey, check out my Web site! It's http://206.187.23.211." That's where a domain name comes into play.
A domain name is the memorable name used by most people to identify your Web site. For instance, if you go to http://204.194.30.217, you will get the Artsnet Web site. But it's much easier to ask people to visit "Artsnet.org" than "204.194.30.217."
To register a new domain name, you must use an officially licensed registrar, such as Network Solutions.
What happens when a domain name expires?
When a domain name expires, it is officially up for grabs. If someone were to buy your domain name upon expiration, they would have complete control of that Web address. Basically, three bad things could happen:
In fact, there are individuals who earn a living snatching up expired domain names and charging extreme prices for the original owners to regain control.
How does one remain master of his/her domain?
If you need assistance obtaining your domain name registrar information, please feel free to contact us.
(Please Note: The 'Seinfeld' image above was used without the permission of Sony Pictures. If they send me a cease and desist order, I will gladly comply. I will also brag about my first official cease and desist order.)
Recently, I attended a webinar from Patron Technology on how to effectively use the subject line in e-mail marketing messages. And they should know! Patron Technology, a sponsor of the 2008 Technology in the Arts Conference, has been on e-mail marketing with arts organizations for years with its PatronMail service. Why does the subject line matter?
According to Christine Blodgett at Patron Technology, "The subject line IS the marketing message. It is your first point of contact with an e-mail recipient. If they don't like it, then they won't open it. If they don't open it, then it won't produce the desired effect."
A recent survey conducted by Return Path reveals the subject line to be the third most important factor for determining whether or not someone will open an e-mail marketing message.
So how do can we best harness the power of the subject line?
Make every word matter - When you look at your inbox list, how many words do you typically see in the subject line? Not very many, right? So:
You arts bloggers out there should be on the lookout for a sinister Web prowler known as the "splog," or spam blog.
Splogs automatically lift the content from real blogs to increase their own search engine rankings and generate advertising opportunities.
Wired.com recently release a How-To Wiki for fighting splogs: Read it now.
And Lorelle on WordPress, a blog about blogging, has a post about identifying splogs: Check it out.
Be sure your blog isn't being ripped off by a splog, as it could be detrimental to your site traffic and Google ranking.
We just upgraded the Technology in the Arts blog to WordPress 2.5 and I'm jazzed. The new version has so many new features back here on the administrative side of things: an auto-save feature, a simpler interface, and access to great plug-ins (or widgets). The process was quick, painless, and transparent to our loyal readers. But, we didn't just trust to luck that it would be so. When performing major system upgrades, here are some rules of thumb I like to follow:
I have recently become interested in - nay, obsessed with - tracking down the most effective way(s) to manage my email inbox, and I wanted to share a couple things that really work for me.
I also noticed recently that Getting Things Done guru David Allen offers a free document, Getting Email Under Control, on his Web site. It isn't groundbreaking, but there are several good ideas and reminders.
How do you keep your email under control?
Thought I'd give a little teaser on our upcoming podcast interview with independent musician Jonathan Coulton, known by millions of geeks as the guy who wrote the song Still Alive for the award-winning console game Portal.
Coulton will be featured in Technology in the Arts Podcast episode 38 (to be published Friday, March 14) talking about how he's used Creative Commons and other online practices to build a rabid and connected fan base.
Creative Commons, Coulton explains, allows an artist to apply a standard copyright and then scale back the restrictions. While many musicians and record executives are trying to find ways to lock down their songs, Coulton has found a way to make money giving his music away for free.*
Coulton, and others like him, understand that once you establish a fan community hundreds of thousands strong who are deeply connected to your work, you'll have no problem paying your bills. And Coulton certainly likes people to pay if they can... After all, he has a family to support.
Check out our upcoming podcast for the full Coulton interview, and check out Coulton's songs here.
So what do you think? Can free work for musicians? Should musicians run their own careers?
*Free is fine, but you can also support Coulton's work. Find out how.
The U.S. Library of Congress has formed a partnership with the photo-sharing site Flickr to make more than 3,000 historical photographs from accessible to the public. As reported in a recent issue of Avisio from the American Association of Museums, "The photographs are from two of the Library of Congress's most popular collections, the George Gratham Bain News Service and the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information. They include high-resolution images—with no known copyright restrictions—of newsworthy events in the 1910s and color photographs from the 1930s and 1940s."
The collection is housed in an area of Flickr called The Commons, wherein the site claims, "These beautiful, historic pictures from the Library represent materials for which the Library is not the intellectual property owner. Flickr is working with the Library of Congress to provide an appropriate statement for these materials. It's called 'no known copyright restrictions.' Hopefully, this pilot can be used as a model that other cultural institutions would pick up, to share and redistribute the myriad collections held by cultural heritage institutions all over the world."
It will certainly be interesting which cultural institutions choose to make their photo collections available through The Commons. As many institutions derive revenue from granting permission to use their photographs for a fee, I wonder to what degree this project will take off beyond the Library of Congress...
Interesting little piece on AppScout.com today featuring highlights from Kyle Monson's interview with Google's user experience designer, Jon Wiley. The bit I found most intriguing is that Wiley discussed user feelings related to unintuitive Web user interfaces (UIs). According to Monson, Wiley mentioned that a frustrating UI can make a user feel bad about him/herself. Often in the design phase, there isn't much thought that goes into the psychological effects of a Web page or navigation, and I think this is another layer that deserves consideration.
This is especially true for arts organizations that typically have an aging constituent base. Do you really want to make someone feel ashamed that they can't figure out your online ticketing system?
An example Google UI:
All of my options are right in front of me and fairly clear.
An example of a bad UI:
No, I do NOT not wish to NOT unsubscribe... what?
Have a new design for your Web presence that doesn’t use standard Web safe fonts? Tired of boring old Arial, Helvetica, or Times New Roman? In the past, if you wanted to use fonts that weren’t Web safe, you pretty much needed to put the text into an image, like a GIF, to be sure that people would see your text the way that you intended. After that, changing text meant creating a new image.
Then came sIFR – Scalable Inman Flash Replacement – which essentially takes text and uses JavaScript to build it into a Flash movie (where it’s able to apply the font that you want). And, presto! A headline in Matura MT Script Capitals!
sIFR has been around for a while, and has cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility. And the great thing is, if an end user’s browser doesn’t have the tools needed to display the sIFR text, a Web safe font alternative that you specify will be used.
Learn more about sIFR and its implementation.
Other Resources: - sIFR in Action - sIFR Font Libraries
I am a big proponent of having an empty email inbox. There is just something Zen about a clean slate. But what do you do with those items that require follow-up work? I recently set up a free Gmail account along the lines of followup@gmail.com (that's just an example, so don't try to be clever and spam it!). Any time an email requires a lengthy, thoughtful response, I reply with, "I'll let you know by XXXX," and BCC my follow-up account.
I also have a rule set up in my email software that moves all messages sent to the follow-up address to a 'Follow-Up' folder. A few times a day, I review that folder and clear my follow-up items. It saves me time, ink and Post-Its, and it also gives me a Zen-fully clean email inbox!
CTC Vista - The deadline for non-profit organizations to apply for the CTC Vista Project is February 22, 2008. Essentially, this program places IT savvy Americorps*VISTA members in non-profits around the country to help with their technology planning and needs. I've had the pleasure of talking to and working with one such VISTA member, Morgan Sully, who is currently contributing his talents to the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC). Mobile Giving - the Mobile Giving Foundation is working with major cell phone carriers in the US to make donations collected by SMS text messaging more feasible and profitable for non-profits. Read more here. I think larger arts organizations, who might have the resources to mount and support a successful mobile giving campaign, may want to keep an eye on this.
Net Neutrality - Comcast has admitted to purposefully slowing down internet traffic on its network. For those of you not familiar with net neutrality, you can visit Save the Internet.com or check out the Wikipedia article. The FCC's investigation into Comcast's network practices is ongoing.
Recently, the American Association of Museums published The Digital Museum: A Think Guide, in which twenty-five leading thinkers in the fields of technology and museums explore the impact of new technology on all aspects of museum operations, from interpretation to conservation. Topics range from the use of handheld devices, websites and digital games to open source technology and real-time learning.
Beginning on Tuesday, February 12, AAM will launch "The Digital Museum: Transforming the Future Now" - a four-part series of monthly webinars further exploring areas identified in the publication and facilitated by leading practioners in the field. According to AAM, "The Digital Museum webinar series will help you explore how recent innovations in technology are transforming museum operations of every kind, from exhibitions and content delivery to education, audience evaluation, and institutional planning."
For more information on each webinar and to register for the series
I sat in on a webinar yesterday, courtesy of NTEN, which gave a whirlwind, back-end tour of Google Apps. What is Google Apps? Google Apps is an online collection of communication and collaboration tools, such as Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, and Google Docs.
What’s it cost? The free Standard Edition has access to most Google Apps functions, but there are limitations: 6.32 GB storage, no 99.9% uptime guarantee, text-based ads on certain screens, no 24/7 assistance, no Postini, no email migration tools, and so on.
Non-profit organizations are eligible to receive the free Education Edition, which gets you some of the benefits missing from the Standard Edition, but you still don’t get a 99.9% uptime guarantee or Postini.
The Premiere Edition, which gets you the whole enchilada plus 25 GB of space instead of 6.32, costs $50/user account/year.
For more detailed breakdown of the different editions, click here.
Is it a good idea for my organization to start using Google Apps? Well, that depends. If you are a small office that's connected to the internet and want to take advantage of the collaborative tools that Google Apps provides, then maybe it's worth looking into. Google Docs, for example, is a very strong, collaborative resource that doesn't require an organization to pay for, own, or manage server(s) to share documents. The free Google Apps Education Edition gets you some nice features, and cost of the Premiere Edition isn't astronomical. However, there are some things to consider.
Though it may happen in the future, I don't think Google Docs or any other online document creation and management software is robust enough, at this point, to replace MS Office. Personally, I’ve been using Word since I had to write my first school report (on the state of Arizona) and I can't quite come to grips with the idea of never using it again. Yet.
Google Apps and other "Desktop in the Sky" applications (see a previous post by Brad on ajaxWindows for an example) are worth keeping an eye on. Case in point: if you visit Google Apps site, you'll see that almost all of the product's logos have the term "Beta" included in them. As the presenter explained yesterday, Google is constantly improving and modifying Google Apps. In a few years time, Google Apps could become powerful and all-in-one enough to woo me away from MS Office. We'll see.
If you have any other questions about Google Apps, feel free to either check out their site or post a comment and I’ll do my best to answer.
More resources:
A few years ago at my previous job, I engaged in a debate with some colleagues over whether or not we should set the staff up with the ability to send instant messages (IMs) to one another. I argued that instant messaging would allow us to communicate with each other more efficiently, but my boss argued that instant messaging would reduce productivity and weaken the staff's interpersonal connections. Needless to say, my boss won out. Not that I was bitter about it. When I transitioned to my current position with the Center for Arts Management and Technology, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the staff had incorporated instant messaging into the office's culture. Rather than calling each other's extensions or sending short e-mails back and forth, staff members send brief IMs to one another. In fact, instant messaging proved to be quite a valuable tool during my job transition. I frequently used IMs to ask questions of and gain clarity from my predecessor.
So has my experience with work-related instant messaging validated my argument from years ago and proven my boss wrong? Yes...and no.
Instant messaging has indeed proven to be wonderful tool for informal workplace communication - asking brief questions, sending quick reminders, sharing internet links, etc. The real-time rapid exchange not only fosters an immediacy of communication, but it also gives the user the feeling that they are engaging in a more personal conversation than e-mail. Correspondingly, the personalities of the users are often infused into the exchange. Rather than weakening interpersonal connections, instant messaging can actually strengthen these connections by providing the messengers with a personal medium for communication.
It hasn't replaced my use of e-mail or face-to-face meetings, but instant messaging has changed how I use these other means of communication with my colleagues. Now, I tend to use e-mail for formal messages as well as messages containing important details or information that the recipient may need to access later. While I still chat informally with colleagues in-person, a great deal of my face-to-face meetings with co-workers are used for brainstorming, problem solving and other collective business activities.
Now for the "No" part. I must admit that I do feel some pressure to interrupt my work throughout the day to answer instant messages as they appear, and it has impacted my productivity to some degree. There is a solution for this. I can change my online status to indicate that "I am currently unable to reply," or I can log out.
It sounds so simple, yet it truly requires a shift in my work habits. Over the years, I have developed the habit of responding immediately to incoming email and IMs. (I also do this with returning voicemail and answering incoming phone calls.) Now, I realize that in order to focus on particular tasks and work items, I need to turn off my IMs, close my email and turn off the phone. After all, if it's really important, they'll leave a message... Right?
Related items:
I can't remember where I first heard this lovely bit of advice, but I figured I'd pass it on (especially since one of my New Year's resolutions is to make silly pictures of myself more often).
When looking at your organization's Web presence, it sometimes helps to ask yourself, "Would a man from Mars understand this? Would he be able to figure out what we're about?"
If a casual, first glance at your home page does not make it clear what your organization does or where a visitor can find needed information, then it might be time for an overhaul.
Klaatu barada simple.
It's amazing how many people still don’t, at the very least, BCC their recipients when sending out mass emails. BCC stands for blind carbon copy; this means that any address listed in a BCC field will get a copy of the email, but their email address will not be displayed to anyone else who is sent the email. That includes anyone in the TO or CC fields. Before I continue, I want to offer this to all of those out there who have been victims (I thought about putting that in quotes, but ultimately decided not to) of non-BCC’ing. Whenever your email address is exposed in a manner you wish it hadn’t, send a friendly response to the sender of the email and point them to this post. I have composed a reply with this post’s link here.
Since September 2007, I've received at least 5 emails where I my email address is listed right out in the open in the CC field (along with a total of 406 other individual email addresses). My email address has been leaked on audition notices, a Holiday "goodie guide" from the couple who made my wedding cake, a local performance group's new show announcement, and other emails.
So what's the big deal?
Security. Pure and simple. If you have email addresses for patrons, artists, donors and so on, it is your responsibility to protect those addresses and use them wisely. Due to the faux pas of the aforementioned emails, I now have access to over 400 email addresses of people who have shared interests. I could add them to my own email distribution list, send them my own announcements, spam them, track them down, flame them, or worse. To borrow an analogy..."Look at it another way, would you send your entire holiday card address list out with each card you sent?"
Nobody wants their email addresses shared in this way. Nobody.
How do you BCC?
It’s simple. When sending a mass email, first put your own address in the TO field (1). I know this sounds weird, but trust me, this is the thing to do. Plus, you’ll receive a copy of the email in your own inbox for your records. Then, put all of your other addresses (the ones you want to hide) in the BCC field (3). You have the option of adding addresses in the CC field (2), but keep in mind that everyone getting the email will see these addresses.
All of the recipients in the BCC field will get a copy of the email with the same address in the TO and FROM fields (in the screenshot above, myown@emailaddress.org) and no other addresses.
Pretty nifty, huh?
The specifics of using the BCC field, like getting it to show up in your email composition area in the first place and the formatting used to separate email addresses (commas or semicolons) can differ depending on what software you are using. If you need help figuring it out, I’d suggest using either the help resources of your email program, the links listed at the end of this post, or an internet search.
What other mass email options are out there?
This BCC business is the bare minimum that you should do to protect your recipients’ privacy. But, if you’re a group or organization that is currently or will be sending out lots of mass emails (or eBlasts, if you prefer the hip and trendy terminology), consider utilizing one of the many bulk email software/services out there. Here’s a list (in alphabetical order) to get you started in your searching.
http://www.constantcontact.com/ http://www.icontact.com/ http://www.lsoft.com/ http://www.patrontechnology.com/
Anyone out there use one of the services mentioned above? Or are using a different one and want to tell us about it? Please leave us a comment.
Related links http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~watrous/Bcc-for-privacy.html http://www.iwillfollow.com/email.htm
Make Your Nonprofit Website a Top “Hit”: A 30 Day Step by StepGuide to Dramatically Improved Search Engine Optimization Part 4 of 4 By Lance Trebesch and Taylor Robinson Lance@TicketPrinting.com http://www.ticketprinting.com/
Let’s Get Started:
1. Link Recruitment Email- Unless you have a personal friend within the site you are trying to contact, the first step you should take is to email requests for links. To do this you will want to make sure that your email contains the following:
Link Negotiations- After you have made contact with the organization; you will negotiate the terms of the link. Use the information you collected in week three with your primary and secondary link objectives to discuss the link placement. Again, your goal should be to get a link on their homepage, or within a part of their site that is topically relevant. Other points of negotiation will likely be how long the link will be posted and the appearance of the link. Use varied anchor text with your links. For example, do not ask for a “click here” link, but rather one that is topically relevant such as the organization’s name or main purpose.
2. The Future
Staying current with the latest technology advancements will make your nonprofit more successful. Below are three technology changes that will have a direct impact on your organization. By understanding what these key changes are and how you can use them, your organization will be better positioned for the future.
Review- Let’s now review your progress over the last four weeks.
Congratulations! You are on your way to vastly improved search engine optimization. Remember that great SEO is a continuous process and should be perused with diligence for as long as your organization is on the internet.
Week 4 Checklist:
