No, this is not about the beloved NYC rock-opera musical. It’s about the differences (and benefits) of access vs. ownership; and a look at just what will have value when so much is available for free.

Kevin Kelly over at KK.ORG has just posted a very interesting essay on this topic, called Better Than Owning: Access is better than ownership. Take a few minutes and read it. Here’s an excerpt:

Very likely, in the near future, I won’t “own” any music, or books, or movies. Instead I will have immediate access to all music, all books, all movies using an always-on service, via a subscription fee or tax. I won’t buy – as in make a decision to own — any individual music or books because I can simply request to see or hear them on demand from the stream of ALL. I may pay for them in bulk but I won’t own them. The request to enjoy a work is thus separated from the more complicated choice of whether I want to “own” it. I can consume a movie, music or book without having to decide or follow up on ownership.

For many people this type of instant universal access is better than owning. No responsibility of care, backing up, sorting, cataloging, cleaning, or storage. As they gain in public accessibility, books, music and movies are headed to become social goods even though they might not be paid by taxes. It’s not hard to imagine most other intangible goods becoming social goods as well. Games, education, and health info are also headed in that direction.

In fact, take a few more minutes and read this piece posted by Kevin Kelly in January, 2008: Better Than Free. Here’s an excerpt:

The internet is a copy machine. At its most foundational level, it copies every action, every character, every thought we make while we ride upon it…

…Every bit of data ever produced on any computer is copied somewhere. The digital economy is thus run on a river of copies. Unlike the mass-produced reproductions of the machine age, these copies are not just cheap, they are free.

When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.
When copies are super abundant, stuff which can’t be copied becomes scarce and valuable.

When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.

Well, what can’t be copied?

And finally, if you’ve got 43 minutes to invest in getting a glimpse of the future of the Internet, watch this Kevin Kelly presentation at Web and Where 2.0+ in February 2008.
(The presentation is about ~23 min. and the Q&A, the other 20 min.)

Kevin Kelly’s “Web 3.0″
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J132shgIiuY[/youtube]

Whoa!

If you love music, but don’t know about SomaFM yet, you’re really missing something special.

Based in a warehouse in San Francisco, SomaFM broadcasts 14 unique channels of listener-supported, commercial-free, underground/alternative radio.

But SomaFM isn’t a station that you listen to on a regular radio. They stream their music over the Internet, and you listen on your computer. (More about how to do that in a minute.)

SomaFM’s founder Rusty Hodge started the station in 1999 with one channel, and they now broadcast 14 unique channels of music, 24 hours a day. SomaFM’s commercial-free streams are listened to in over 200 countries around the world!

Listening to SomaFM gives you access to music and formats that aren’t available on commercial radio, or formats that are “not being done right” as Rusty puts it.

To listen to SomaFM you use a music (or media) player program on your computer. Mac (and Windows) users can use iTunes. Winamp for Windows plays both aacPlus and MP3 streams. Windows Media Player users can get the Orban aacPlus plugin to hear aacPlus feeds right in Windows Media player.

Just go the SomaFM listen page, to see the different music channels, and get links to the different players and streams.

Here are the 14 fabulous channels they have:

1. Groove Salad: A nicely chilled plate of ambient beats and grooves. (My favorite!)
2. Secret Agent: The soundtrack for your stylish, mysterious, dangerous life. For Spies and PIs too!
3. Drone Zone: Served best chilled, safe with most medications. Atmospheric textures with minimal beats.
4. Indie Pop Rocks!: New and your favorite classic indie pop tracks.
5. cliqhop idm: Blips’n'beeps backed mostly w/beats. Intelligent Dance Music.
6. Beat Blender: A late night blend of deep-house and downtempo chill.
7. Tag’s Trip: Progressive house / trance. Tip top tunes.
8. Illinois Street Lounge: Classic bachelor pad, playful exotica and vintage music of tomorrow.
9. Space Station Soma: Tune in, turn on, space out. Spaced-out ambient and mid-tempo electronica.
10. Doomed: Dark music for tortured souls
11. Boot Liquor: Americana Roots music for Cowhands, Cowpokes and Cowtippers
12. Lush: Sensuous and mellow vocals, mostly female, with an electronic influence.
13. Digitalis: Digitally affected analog rock with a DIY mentality.
14. Sonic Universe: NuJazz + avant-garde EuroJazz. Transcending the world of jazz with experimental takes on tradition.

SomaFM is the soundtrack to my day here at TheoreticalKen. For example, Groove Salad, Secret Agent and Illinois Street Lounge are medium/up-tempo energy, great for listening during the day. Space Station Soma, and Drone Zone are great for those quiet post-midnight working hours!

But try ‘em all! You’ll hear an amazing diversity of music, artists and genres!

I do a lot of searching on the Internet. And many times what I’m looking for is NOT in the top ten search results on Google (or any other search engine for that matter).

Even if I do find an item on page one of the search results, I usually like to review several results, and I find that paging through the search results ten at a time is annoying. I don’t just want to see the tip-of-the-iceberg, I want to see the whole thing at once!

So here’s how to make your Google searches 10x more efficient:

Just go to the preferences link next to the search box on the Google homepage. Then set the Number of Results per page to 100, instead of the Google default of 10 per page. That’s it! Yahoo works the same way.

Now each search yields 100 results per page, and you just have to scroll down to see them all. No more clicking forwards and backwards through all those pages.

And if you use Firefox, and employ my recent tip, Firefox Browser Tip: Single-key Search, then you can just type your search term and Firefox will instantly jump-to and highlight your term if it’s anywhere on that page of 100 results.

Now that’s 10x more efficient or more!

If you’re like me, and you type by hunting and pecking (looking at the keyboard, and not the screen), then you may occasionally find that you have ACCIDENTALLY HIT THE CAPS LOCK KEY, AND TYPED A WHOLE SENTENCE OR PARAGRAPH IN UPPER CASE. (DOH!)

My left hand’s position obscures the Caps Lock key, and its little indicator light, and I don’t see the (tiny) visual warning that the Caps Lock function has been activated.

But I worry about it no more, because it’s CAPS Warn – 3.1 to the rescue!

CAPS Warn is designed for anyone who presses the Caps Lock or Num Lock keys frequently by mistake.

CAPS Warn is a Preference Pane that provides: A) on-screen indications of when the Caps Lock, Shift, Function (fn), Control, Option, or Command keys are pressed (or stuck on by Sticky Keys) or B) warnings that: 1) you have turned on the CAPS Lock and/or 2) you have typed a specified number (default 5) of keys with the SHIFT key (or Sticky Keys SHIFT) or CAPS Lock and/or you have turned on the Num Lock. CAPS Warn warns you regardless of what application you are typing into.

I have mine set to emit a super-creepy low voice through my speakers that warns me; “Caps Lock On!”

This saves me several precious seconds of time each day formerly spent undoing all caps text; time which I now devote to my new distraction of choice: X-Plane 9.

CAPS Warn – 3.1 Warns you if caps lock, num lock, or modifier keys are on. (Mac only)

Blue has always been my favorite color. (Take look around this site!) So the news today that Pantone has selected BLUE IRIS as its color of the year for 2008 really caught my eye; and I like this color a lot.

According to their press release, Blue Iris is “a beautifully balanced blue-purple,” that combines the “stable and calming aspects of blue with the mystical and spiritual qualities of purple.” Additionally, “Blue Iris satisfies the need for reassurance in a complex world, while adding a hint of mystery and excitement.”

Ahhh, that’s nice!

You may already use the “Find in This Page” feature of the Firefox browser: pressing Command+F on a Mac, or Control+F on a PC brings up a FIND toolbar at the bottom of the browser window, which allows you to search for words or phrases in a web page that you are viewing.

But here are two neat single-key shortcuts to the Quick Find toolbar for finding text on a web page.

If you press the Forward Slash key (the one that shares a key with the question mark), it brings up the Quick Find temporary toolbar at the bottom of the screen. Type a word or phrase, and if that text is on the page it will get highlighted in your browser window; just like using the Find in This Page toolbar. Wait a moment and Quick Find disappears on its own. Press the F3 key to tab to the next instance of your word, if any.

If you press the Apostrophe key (the one that shares a key with the quotation mark), it also brings up the Quick Find temporary toolbar, but now it will only search for text that appears in a link. If you find what you are looking for, just hit the Enter key, and you’ll be taken to that page.

Neat, huh?

I’m not sure that many people even know about searching within a page that you are already on. Many times you’ll come to a web page after doing a Google (or other) search, but that page may contain a lot of text. Rather than trying to read or scan the page looking for your search term, just use the Find in This Page feature. If your word is there somewhere, it’ll get highlighted and the page will jump down to where your word is. You can usually choose to jump to the next or previous instance of your word. Most browsers have an on-page search feature. The tips here are for Firefox.

Now shaving a keystroke off the time it takes to initiate an on-page search may not be a big deal to most people, but I do a lot of searching for information on the Internet; so the faster I can find what I’m looking for the better.

PS: You can set a preference in Firefox to automatically bring up the Quick Find toolbar if you type ANYTHING while you are on a page. (As long as you are not already in a text or form field.) Go to Preferences (or Options on a PC) > Advanced > General> Tick the Search for text when I start typing box.