Morning Thoughts

Last night I was at a Marketing Soiree, organised by Hugh McLeod and with a good speech by Seth Godin. I wish I’d taken notes on it, but there were plenty of people who were and I think it was recorded by Lloyd as well, so there’ll be something around later.

Things that caught my eye this morning include the decision to go ahead with the .mobi TLD, which should be available in the first half of 2006. Immediate impact for me will be explainging why some of the areas I work with need yet another domain registered; then actually getting content for it.

The BBC are getting slated for providing all 9 Beethoven symphonies for download. Over 1 million files have been retrieved, but the record industry are (as expected) unhappy with this and complain that a publically funded orgnaisation should not be doing this as it devalues music recorded. Ok, so recordings of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra (funded by the the public) should not be made available on BBC online (funded by the public) because we’re not paying for them? I’ve paid my fees and the BBC are supposed to make it’s programming available – so I think the record industry should just shut up in this case..

An Arizona school has decided to ditch text books and go all online next year. They will provide laptops to 350 students for the year. They appear to have done their research…not. Calvin Baker, superintendent of Vail Unified School District:

It’s not clear how the change to laptops will work, he conceded. “I’m sure there are going to be some adjustments. But we visited other schools using laptops. And at the schools with laptops, students were just more engaged than at non-laptop schools,”

He’s obviously never attended a conference where everyone is typing on laptops and not focusing onthe speaker.