Beyond the Apple vs ‘Apple’ (the Beatles’ music label) settlement, comes the refreshing news that Apple has partnered with EMI to unlock music, so to speak. As the BBC puts it, this will ‘take the locks off’ music.

It’s an interesting strategy, not just because Steve Jobs has side-swiped the rest of the music industry, but because it basically challenges them to respond. He has put into place two models: DRM-free music at the premium price of $1.29, and the standard version (with the ‘locks’ in place) for the same $0.99.

Choices in music is what we have been waiting for, since the MP3 file came to stay.

From a marketing perspective, it makes a lot of sense. Like regular and premium gas, people will figure out how they derive value out of a product. This is a good start, even though the authors of "The Future of Music," a powerful book that advocated a radical change in the pricing model, appear to think it is still a bit lame.

More needs to happen, though because music is going to jump platforms even more, now that it’s ‘escaped’ the CD straitjacket. It’s going to move to newer MP3 players that perhaps won’t even resemble the ones we have now, and phones, and other personal portals or digital hubs that we surround ourselves with. What then? Zune could introduce a DRM-free model soon? Besides Jobs’ music strategy, independent artists may come up with more creative ways, and I hope they do, as we see in places such as Accident Hash, and RedEye.

It may be apt to quote the words Revolution, by, um, the Beatles here, who seem to talk of a ‘plan.’

You say you got a real solution
Well you know
we’d all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well you know
We’re all doing what we can

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It’s always a welcome thing when alternatives to the mainstream pop up. I loved Wikipedia, because it proved to be a a malleable alternative, albeit sometimes flawed and insufficient. It’s grown up to be a phenomenon in its own right, and is now what, er mainstream folk turn to.

So Conservapedia looked interesting, but when you look closer, it’s a bit too obsessed with being the uncola, to Wikipedia’s real thing. If you look at some of the debates, where editors battle over the creationist/evolution argument, they seem to be tripping over themselves as in this article pending deletion, how ‘quote mining’ is the problem.

Just for the record, some of the inaccuracies of Conservapedia are highlighted in, where else, Wikipedia, here.

But more hilarious –or pathetic –is the fact that Conservapedia doesn’t live up to it’s objective, by inviting lame explanations, as observed by Comic Variance, and Wonkette.

As for freedom from bias, take a look at this entry for John McCain, and the subhead ‘electability,’ and you be the judge.

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Location-based social networking, geo-tagging using digital sticky notes (via a mobile phone), micro-blogging and tagging, via Twitter. Just a glimpse of the social media explosion that is taking marketing and communications into a whole new era.

I’ve just signed up with Twitter, that’s going to change the game of mobile blogging.
Then there’s Flagr.com, a way for mobile users to ‘flag’ a location by sending a text message (or image) that is tagged with a description to a map.

I’ve seen a lot of neat small-group uses of Twitter. From simply saving your own list of URLs (from a cell phone via text) to your Twitter site, so you could visit the link later, to adding an RSS feed of your favorite Twitter site. The technology has had so much potential that there’s a Twitter screen at the South By Southwest conference going on in Austin, TX. My personal favorite is a Twitter site by BBC tech.

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Despite my use of Wikis, I can see why Google Docs can become a sharing tool in instances where a Wiki would be overkill. Forrester‘s Charlene Li has a few good examples.

Here at ASU, we have opened up to Google Apps since last year which includes calendar, email, and IM. Google acquired a Wiki platform JotSpot, and Writely, a sort of web-based Word processor platform.

As for Wikis, I am impressed with Wetpaint, and have started using it for my IABC column, that my editor can visit while it is being written, to throw in comments, ask for clarification, and avoid the back-and-forth emails that all writers face. I figured that, at some point, I have to hand over the reins to someone smarter than me, so why not do it while it’s being worked on, rather than a few minuted before the deadline.   

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