Firms seek online copyright pact

Firms including Viacom, Walt Disney and Myspace unite to set guidelines to protect copyright online.

BBC

Instacritique: Why Pan Creative Work When You Can Get A Nifty Web Applet To Do It For You?

Award season is in full swing, and the Andy's have taken an amusing approach on their website with the instacritique. This neat little interactive applet allows you to pit your creative genius against a panel of world-class creative judges. My recommendation: Let Jose Molla confuse you from his hammock, its a breathtakingly beautiful story of subtlety and dense metaphor about albino's and interior decorating.

U2 Tower

What a week for music!

So Radiohead and NIN went DIY, Madonna is consolidating her music revenues with Live Nation and the RIAA is still suing housewives.

With music downloading firmly established as the distribution method of choice and the significance of record sales as a revenue generator diminishing, it seems musicians are being forced to redefine their careers, expand their thinking on what they're marketable assets are and reconsider how they manage their income sources.

Is it any wonder then, that the Band U2 has gone into real estate.

Teaming up with, apparently Great Britain's only employed architect, Sir Norman Foster, the Irish foursome of Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen won the contract to build Dublin's first skyscraper. The tower is a 600ft shiny tilted triangle full of luxury apartments with an egg-shaped recording studio suspended at the top.

The Telegraph

MySpace and Skype to Announce Partnership

In November, MySpace will add the Internet telephone service’s features to its instant messenger software, which will allow users to make free calls from their computers.

New York Times

Blogged with Flock

High Impact: Impact Jackets (a.k.a. Wearable Airbags) Finally Make It to the US, and Are Immediately "Tested"

Impact Jackets, originally designed to save Japanese construction workers from long falls by inflating prior to impact, have finally made it to the United States. Only instead of construction workers, it's our motorcyclists that seem to be reaping the benefits. And it didn't take too long to see some results.

Gizmodo

Does Your Building Need A Social Network? Why Not.

New York-based LifeAt wants to create a social network around your residential building. Do you need one? Nope. But maybe you’ll use it anyway. And perhaps you’ll even get to know some of your neighbors.

TechCrunch

Gore's Current TV enlists Web users to shape news

SAN FRANCISCO, California (Reuters) - Current, the television network backed by Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore, is embarking on a new Internet strategy to enlist viewers in submitting video and commentary to create broadcast TV news.

Reuters