PS: did you know that the Chief Programmer and dude behind WFG is also named Chris?

It was a case of assignments for Uni getting in the way. *doesn’t like assignments*

I’m the friend Rose mentioned in her post and we finally got the site up a few days ago, Muse’s Success. Right now, it’s running off a modified version of WordPress but eventually I want to replace that with a custom solution as I’m concerned that WordPress won’t scale so easily.

~ Chris

According to the original post, it would “be up in a week or so” and I think it’s been more than that. It would be interesting to know if that’s programmer related (“this turns out to be harder than I thought”) or if she hadn’t known about Web Fiction Guide.

Either way, I’d be interested to hear about what’s happening.

And then there’s rumours that Apple is planning and even smaller, even lighter net notebook for release in the near future …

I’d say that increasingly the computer world has become about the Internet. It’s like the Gutenberg press. And we’ll be seeing the changes and the opportunities soon enough.

You bring up a belief that I’ve long held about the illegal downloading and the music industry. If bands are suffering at this point in economic history, it’s not a direct consequence of illegal downloading. Rather the markets are in transition and hence vulnerable. Bands have long been slaves to record labels, especially when record labels flourished in a fixed market (that they themselves created). Whenever there’s transition and change, there’s pain and panic.

Alan Giles takes a much more enlightened attitude on the issue of piracy. (Why has it taken us so long to realize this fact!) As far as the music industry goes, we can make no absolute claims on the negative effects of piracy. (The movie industry might bode different results; but then again, maybe not.)

Let’s talk about the print industry. Another industry in grave, gloomy transition. The variables slightly change, but there are similarities to draw. I see a new generation of online writers emerging; writers who view the New York Publishing world and its coterie as a dusty artifact. There may have been a time when young writers sought to find an agent and squeeze their way into the publishing houses or newspaper rooms just to make friends and build connections, but I believe the Net is making that old way of doing things obsolete. Furthermore, the money isn’t there to attract young writers, and the industry can’t afford to display bold, daring voices anyways.

So where does that leave us but with online publishing; new rules, new game. I don’t even think you Eli, or anyone reading Novelr, fully understands these rules yet. But we’re excited, that’s for sure. Hell, I don’t get many page views but I’m glad that I’m publishing and that’s enough for me right now.

The music industry will eventually learn to coexist with torrents just as the publishing industry will learn to coexist with online publishing. My prediction: the later will outpace the former. We can see the tide already turning in favor of open-source software. And you know what? The best things are free. I don’t need to pay for blogging software because the best one is free. I don’t need to pay for podcast software, and I also get the best technology. This is what Microsoft and Sony do not understand. They are relics of the past unable to adapt themselves to the future. Proprietary software, like the outrages of the music industry when illegal downloading first began, is a sign of an unwillingness to change.

Television, music, print, software, movies, virtually all media, will eventually give way to a new Web interface.

Lethe