Red Herring closing up shop

AP story: The Red Herring tech mag is folding. March will be its last issue. The Herring follows on the heels of Upside and the Industry Standard. Thanks to BoingBoing for the pointer.

Familiar faces at DRM conference

Just got back from a daylong conference at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business on the subject of DRM, or digital rights management. In many ways it was the West Coast version of the I-Law conference at Harvard's Berkman School last July. Some 300 folks jammed into the hall for most of the day (the conference runs three days, but today was the big enchilada).

Lot of familiar faces here, many of whom I've interviewed for the book I'm writing on digital rights: Cary Sherman, Larry Lessig, Edward Felten, Sarah Deutsch, Dave Farber, Donald Whiteside, Chris Murray, and others. Media folks in attendance included Dan Gillmor, Drew Clark of the National Journal, Katie Dean of Wired News and I think Amy Harmon of the NY Times. The blogger crowd was also out in force, include EFF's Seth Schoen, Lisa Rein, Aaron Schwarz and others.

Bloggers who did a terrific job of blogging the conference live -- yes, they had a wifi connection -- included Dan, Bryan Alexander, Lawrence Solum and 16-year-old Aaron, who's wise beyond his years. So I wound up taking more photos than notes (though I tape-recorded the proceedings). So I'll share some here.

Cary Sherman, president of RIAA (click to enlarge):

Dave Farber, whose mailing list at the Univ. of Penn. is over 30,000 strong:

Sarah Deutsch, VP and associate general counsel of Verizon:

Prof. Edward Felten, left, and Prof. Larry Lessig:

Google's free newsletter

The Google Friends mailing list offers a free email newsletter that goes out every two months or so. Thanks to Sree for the pointer.

Followup on Projo's fire blog

Steve Outing at the Poynter has a followup to the items I posted Monday here and in OJR Editors Log on Projo taking down its registration fence for its new nightclub fire blog. He comes to the same conclusion: In news of this magnitude that attracts lots of new visitors, it makes sense to lift the Iron Curtain.

ActiveWords in two flavors

Looks like Buzz has been busy revamping the ActiveWords lineup. You can now get ActiveWords (which I highly recommend -- it supercharges your PC) in two flavors: the SE version at a new low price of $9.95, or ActiveWords Plus, for $49.95. Check it out. I've been using it for almost a year now and it's been a life-saver in helping me manage the thousands of files on my PC.

More on blogrolling.com

Jason DeFillippo answes my query about blogrolling.com's background with a pointer to his resume. He's a programmer who lives in Chicago and works as chief technologiest for Faction Creative in Beverly Hills. Here's more about blogrolling (the outfit, not the term, which I believe was coined by Doc Searls).

Year of the Matrix

Marc invites us to post something to The Matrix, one experimental outgrowth of the Internet Topic Exchange. Check out, among other things, the Matrix Phone and Joi and Marc's colloquy about micro-content, the blogosphere and getting beyond links to achieve total meshdom.

Have online media bottomed out?

Jimmy Guterman in Biz2: Has Online Media Bottomed Out? Maybe, but it's going to take more than a jump in advertising to build a strong recovery.

Squaring off over media consolidation

AdAge.com:

Consumer groups are girding for a major fight today as the Federal Communications Commission holds its first and only formal hearing before drafting new rules that could have a far-reaching effect on media consolidation and ownership. ...

The Center for Digital Democracy yesterday accused the FCC and the largest media conglomerates of trying to overturn the "checks and balances" that have long governed American media.

Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.

Be your own wireless network

NY Times: Be Your Own Wireless Network ... with a Net-enabled cell phone.