Creative Commons

          The aim of the Creative Commons, founded in 2001, is to enable users to use and build on pre-existing media and projects. This is important because it encourages growth and sharing of media and software. The idea of free to use media is very different from media that we have known in popular culture run by big business. In some ways it's like wikipedia in that it's user generated content available to everyone for free. This is important because it counter balances the closed internet, the internet where images are copy written and cannot be used by anyone except the one content creator. 


          Within the Creative Commons there are different levels of rights, allowing the content creator some control over the use of their media or project. These Creative Commons are just another way we are evolving on the net. 

Optical Drives on Their Way Out

Optical media is on its way out thanks to services like Netflix, iTunes, and Amazon’s streaming. What we will be seeing in the years to come is all of your content tied to an account, stream-able to your TV or PC. I believe strongly in this because services like Netflix and Valve’s Steam for video games are huge right now and only getting bigger.

Once you purchase a digital copy of a game or piece of software on Steam, for example, you can access it and re-download it on any computer. If you have a Mac and PC, you can play the titles and software on both as long as you’re logged in. I think this gives the power back to the consumer (which will make them less likely to pirate software because getting software like this is convenient and easy, and most importantly it's theirs forever, no need to ever re-buy anything!). You don’t have to worry about scratched discs when you want to install something, and if you want to free up hard drive space you can just uninstall something and just re-download it when you want to use it again.

We see this switch happening now with Amazon and iTunes, huge services with music and movies with one click purchasing. What’s great about this is it un-clutters everything. No stacks of DVD cases or other optical media. Streaming content on Netflix might also introduce you to something you might not otherwise watch (with thousands of stream-able titles).

Optical media is restricting. You can have X amount of space on a disc, the DVD or blu ray player can only hold 1 (or few / many) disc(s), it’s more expensive to purchase the physical copy than having a streaming service like Netflix. All bullet-points favor streaming and account based downloading vs. optical media. The only thing I can think of that might hinder someone switching to digital / streaming is if they’re a collector and like to collect the movies and art books that come with special editions of movies and things, similar to how people collect records.

The streaming will likely happen either in a small set top box (Amazon just announced a new one) or it will be embedded in your TV. I think our cell phones will act as a remote and a hub to our digital accounts to select and stream / play the content we want to watch. 

Abandoned Software

           Abandoned software, or “abandoned-ware” can be a difficult idea to understand, especially if you’re using that software. Being a part of the software’s development and being tied to the abandoned-ware is a permanent mark on your background with the Internet we know today.

            Xtranormal was a seemingly cool web application that let you convert text to animated movies. You could make pigs act out plays, or send inside jokes voiced by animals to co-workers. Their application showed up on viral YouTube videos and even commercials on TV until one day it was taken down and a temporary site was put in its place. Then the temporary site was taken down too.

            Xtranormal’s development team had abandoned their software. What I don’t understand is why they didn’t just keep what they had up for the public? If they wanted to work on mobile apps, that’s fine. The reality is their Xtranormal software was popular (I remember using it when it was online) and they could’ve slapped a few ads on their site and let it ride a gravy train online. Web and mobile apps are huge right now, like $50,000 a day off ads on flappy bird huge.

            The studio abandoning their web application has received nothing since August 2013 when the service was shut down. Not only that but the developers have to acknowledge on their resume that they worked on that abandoned product. If I’m a tech company I’m not sure if that will change how I feel about hiring.

            Gabe Newell of Valve software recently did a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” and commented on the question: “What do AAA gaming companies look for when hiring”.

            “We look for a history of shipping things. There is no substitute for shipping things that make your customers happy.”

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1zkfmv/wearea_videogame_developer_aua/cfugurv

            It’s hard to identify what projects might follow the abandoned software path. Some of the more famous applications like Napster were reborn and merged with another company. I think potential software to be abandoned might be Adobe’s flash. They’re making pushes to modernize it and make it work better with other plateforms but you can kind of see HTML5 taking over that web application space.