It had to happen at some point, but no one was sure quite when. The US FTC (Federal Trade Commission) has set forth new laws governing how bloggers and other authors need to handle their relationship with vendors. According to the new rulings, the “FTC will require that writers on the Web clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products. The commission also said advertisers featuring testimonials that claim dramatic results cannot hide behind disclaimers that the results aren’t typical.”

In other words, your testimonial can’t say you lost 150 lbs using a diet drink if the typically expected result of use is a loss of 20-30 lbs. And now, if you write a glowing article about MacBooks or Windows 7, then receive a free notebook or licensed copy of the OS as yours to keep, those “gifts” have to be disclosed. There are several reasons for this latter ruling, in fact. First,there are tax and ethical implications to accepting “professional gifts” from people whose products you regularly help sell in the marketplace. Second, there’s the perception that the blogger or writer is simply being paid for their services…fewer people are aware they can get expensive toys by recommending product.

Basically, the transaction needs to be honest. The company is up front about selling the product, so you the blogger need to be equally upfront regarding the pay and “considerations” you received in your role as a spokesperson. That’s just fair, above-board advertising.

The problem that elicited these laws is clear: “what some consumers might not know is that many companies pay reviewers for their write-ups or give them free products such as toys or computers or trips to Disneyland. In contrast, at traditional journalism outlets, products borrowed for reviews generally have to be returned.” This makes bloggers much less honest brokers of information and reviews than traditional journalists, who must follow established practice regarding gifts and other honoraria.

Many bloggers have already stepped up to the plate, and are disclosing such situations already. This is the way it should be, after all. The Internet is supposed to be all about providing accurate information to product seekers and researchers. Bogus reviews written in order to obtain a gratuity of some type disrupt the honesty of the system. Disclosure clears the air, helping the system as a whole retain its credibility.

Good for the FTC for laying out the rules in an unambiguous manner.

Amazingly enough, if you look deeply enough on the Internet you can actually find worthwhile, educational material. I know that’s shocking, what with all the porn and financial scams one could peruse first. However, here’s the link (iTunes required) that will take you to the lectures. They’re a set of 8 public events commemorating Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday, and they aren’t bad. Apple iTunes maintains these for free, so you can just download them charge free

This is the type of information sharing for which, startlingly enough, the Web was actually created all those years ago. The first uses of hyperlinking and embedded data were related to scientific study, and were designed to get users from text matter in a document body to footnotes or even a link to another document with related data. Now we’ve evolved (sorry, had to) into a more sophisticated model in which we’re not just linking flat ascii text, but whole multimedia productions.

The cool thing about this case is that access and storage for this purely academic, non-profit lecture series is being provided by an application usually used to download music for which there’s a cost basis. However, the people at Apple are also providing free access to certain, well deserving works. The Darwin lectures certainly apply. Here’s hoping we see more such lectures made publicly available from other institutes or universities.

There’s also PLoS, the Public Library of Science. This is a web site where academic research papers are freely available, rather than encapsulated in journals that cost $10,000 a year to subscribe to (many are read by no more than a dozen researchers). So if you really want to learn about Darwin and his theories — and I will note that most people who claim to understand them are totally wrong — here’s a good place to get started. The lectures are interesting, they’re not dry or boring, and they actually show what it’s all about.

Maybe you’ll learn something. High technology being used to provide free academic access. It can’t get any better than this.

I know a number of people who enjoy ripping their DVDs into MP4 or some other format so they can store them on their PC hard drives. One of the ongoing complaints I hear from them is the amount of time required to re-encode a movie into a format they can actually store on disk. Another is that they really don’t care about many of the DVD “extras” (language options, etc.) and hate the fact that they’re stuck with storing this info on disk as well.

Happily, one just stumbled across a package called DVD2One, which allows users to “make a movie-only or full disk copy of your DVD for personal use on a single DVD-Recordable.” It does so without requiring the intermediate re-encoding everyone hates, and is available both for Windows and Mac.

If the company’s promotional material is accurate, this little package is a user’s dream come true. Not only can it make movie-only copies, but also provides a “join mode” that lets you stitch (for example) multiple episodes of a TV show together, or even parts of a movie that were split between multiple DVDs in the original packaging.

It also provides the ability to make full-disk (e.g. bit-by-bit) copies of a DVD, so you can copy your masters to cheap DVD-R discs and store the masters away for safekeeping. Obviously no one should use this software to make illegal copies (pirates certainly use commercial grade multi-disc duplicators anyway since they’re in a high-volume business), but having a duplicate is handy if you’re traveling or just don’t want to risk your pristine commercial copy of some prized movie.

As a handy plus, you can use it to copy your audio collection to DVD media.

The package is apparently composed of all new code — the developers say it’s not based on old software or existing open-source libraries. It’s also relatively fast, and is “multi-processor, multi-core and multi-computer (grid) compatible” so apparently it’s able to use multithreading to speed up processing. Not a bad deal overall at 40 Euros (about $50 at the exchange rate in place when this was written).

In a move that’s sure to increase its market share even further, Apple announced today that all 10 million songs in its immensely popular iTunes library will be offered free of DRM (Digital Rights Management) by the end of the first quarter of 2009. That’s quite a New Year present for music fans, and seems to mark a welcome shift in the attitude of media companies.

Everyone probably remembers the great Napster debate in the late 1990s. The original software, it was claimed, was responsible for widespread music piracy and an associated loss of revenue among music vendors (obviously they weren’t listening to some of the total rubbish being produced by various artists). As a result, these vendors launched major legal assaults against online services like Napster.

These companies often sued their own listeners, many of whom were just trying to take advantage of the availability of online music by ripping their CD collection into MP3 files. Napster was shut down. Other song-sharing services went underground or vanished. Vicious and badly thought-out DRM legislation was passed. Recording industry executives hated online music, since all they could think about was selling CDs and other hard media. Everything was about control — over the artists, production, distribution, and other aspects of the business.

When iTunes first appeared, everything on it was subject to DRM. Recording companies were paranoid that users would break the management algorithm and start sending songs to anyone who wanted them. They seemed to envision some Faustian nightmare of totally unregulated music-sharing that would deprive them of their livelihood.

Now, half a decade later, DRM seems to be on the wane. Amazon and other companies are selling more DRM-free music. This latest announcement frees up the whole iTunes song library. Have record executives seen the light? Have they realized that customers are generally willing to pay for a quality product, while the few who insist on “sticking it to the man” by stealing will never be defeated by DRM or any other technological barrier?

I can’t answer that right now, but this is really good news. It means your iTunes library will be easier to manage and back up. You’ll probably be able to move it more easily from one machine to another without worrying the RIAA police will descend on your house. So sit back, relax, and listen. You might be able to hear the tiny sound of market forces at work.

Hardware “Media Server” systems have become popular recently, as more people have opted to dump their media collection into a digital format. I know one guy who’s ripped his entire video (DVD) collection and has it stored on a central server at his house. He can watch movies from anywhere he wants. As a bonus, he’s put his whole DVD collection (which is pretty large) into storage. The media is safe from damage, and he doesn’t have a wall dedicated to racks of discs in oversized plastic boxes.

Another friend bought one of those turntable units that allows you to move your old vinyl (LP…yeah, those analog things your parents own) to MP3 format. She’s spent whole weekends copying files from the turntable unit to a central server, and (as with my DVD fanatic friend) never has to touch an LP ever again.

The bad news is that commercial media servers can be expensive. The good news is that they don’t have to be. You can build your own using a cocktail of open source software, such as the Jinzora streaming media system. This is a Web-oriented package that allows you to access your media collection from any Internet-connected device. Traveling in Europe and need to update the selection of songs on your laptop? Just connect to your home video server, and grab what you need. Or connect directly to the server from your phone or PDA and listen to that old Floyd song that’s been running through your head. What could be easier?

Of course, before you use such a streaming system you’ll first need to rip some media. This is generally quite easy, though it’s time consuming and might require a lot of disk space. Many free and commercial ripping packages are available, but you need to make sure you’re saving the files in a format that’ll produce good fidelity without a lot of loss.

MP3 is pretty good (serious audiophiles like my brother hate it because it compresses certain areas of the auto spectrum). AAC and other formats are more or less “lossy” due to their compression algorithms. Don’t be cheap about disk space. Generally, the larger the file once ripped, the better the audio quality will be.

So rip away, then set up your own streaming server. Use an older PC with a copy of Linux and lots of disk space, and you can probably set up a decent system for $500 or less. Just be sure not to break any laws, or the Entertainment Police might pay you a visit.

In a bit of good news for non-US TiVo fans, Nero AG and TiVo Inc. have teamed up to produce a kit that’ll allow anyone with a PC to make use of full TiVo capability. The new “Liquid TV” kit will include a tuner card, remote control, and all the software necessary to allow your TV to record TiVo broadcasts.

It’s not on the market yet, but it’ll be good news for TiVo fans outside the US and UK. Currently, there are no TiVo users elsewhere in the world (even in Germany, where Nero’s headquarters are located). Rather than having to buy a separate set-top box and dealing with voltage or other issues, anyone with access to cable will be able to capture programming on their existing PC. Naturally it’ll require a fair bit of disk space, since even compressed digital video streams can take up large amounts of storage.

It certainly looks like it’ll be worth the expected $199 price tag, though. Not only will users be able to capture and watch video on their existing machine, but they’ll also have the ability to burn DVDs and send streams to their iPod devices and other portable players. Concerned parents will have full parental control over the available content, which is practically a necessity for anyone who has young kids.

The price tag also includes a 12-month subscription to the TiVo service, so the actual cost of software and tuner are really not that bad. And of course, the system will handle both standard and HD programming…it would have been very disappointing if HD wasn’t part of the package.

TiVo will probably profit quite nicely from this new product, since it’ll open new markets with no requirement for them to produce new hardware that’s compliant with local electrical or regulatory standards. They win, consumers win, and everyone gets to watch even more TV on demand.

If you’re like me and remember the days before digital media hit the streets, you probably have some amount of old analog stuff lying around. By “analog” I mean: LPs (yeah, those funny things that went on turntables), cassette and VHS tapes, and so forth. This stuff is all recorded using non-digital methods. The funny, and somewhat sad thing is that today’s digital media actually is of lower fidelity than good quality LPs. Digital compression tricks and other encoding methods are “lossy,” and true audiophiles hate them with a passion.

CDs were the first real digital media to hit the streets, and within a few years LPs were relegated to a tiny section of your local audio store. VHS was annihilated by those pesky DVDs that showed up starting in the late 90s. I think of it as just desserts, since the Betamax tape (a better technology) was killed off by VHS. And so it goes.

Moving this material from analog to digital requires some sort of interface. I ran across a recent article that describes some of the handy devices currently on the market — everything from interface cables for VHS-to-DVD burning duties to special turntables that convert LPs directly to MP3 format. A friend of mine has one of these, and has slowly been converting her extensive album collection to digital media.

You can also buy special VHS + DVD player/recorder units that can be used to dub tapes to DVD (or, for that matter, DVD to VHS if you ever want to try it). However several things should be kept in mind where commercial tapes are involved. First, most commercial tapes cut after a certain date are encoded using “Spectravision” anti-duplication technology. This prevents copying, being a pre-DMCA piece of paranoia foisted upon the video community by profit-mad media moguls. It can be bypassed using special image-restoring hardware, but I’m not aware of any software that can deal with it. If you try copying a tape to DVD and end up with a bunch of wavy lines, the tape is probably copy-protected.

The other obvious issue is, well, copyright. Don’t dub anything from one format to another for anything other than personal use. You can’t copy that old Gandhi VHS tape to DVD over and over again and sell it to friends. That’s piracy. Moving your already purchased collection from one format to another is perfectly legal. At least until the media moguls decide it isn’t.

Faked photos have been part and parcel to photography since the first images were generated on tin and glass plates in the 19th century. People have added elements to photos using a number of methods, and in one case even started a long-lived tall tale about fairies living in a forest. In this case they used cut-outs from a book as stand-ins for the so-called fairies. The photos were basically judged “authentic” because, it was argued, the young girls who took them were obviously not capable of producing fakes!

Today, digital photography has opened a whole new range of opportunity for fakers. Tabloids can generate faked photos (one person’s head atop another’s body, or Godzilla rampaging down the streets of New York) more or less at will. Anyone with Photoshop and some time can produce photos that could only have been created in the pre-digital age by experienced darkroom technicians. Still, however, it’s possible to detect fakes if one pays close attention to detail.

The easiest way to detect a fake photo involves light. As the article cited above notes, light enters a photo from a given direction (front, side, back, or some other angle). The position of the sun or another light source determines how a photo is “lit.” If you spot light hitting some objects in the photo from one angle, and other objects from a totally different angle, then some of the objects aren’t original. As the article notes, a number of techniques can help a user tell whether a photo has been faked.

I saw some interesting “UFO” photos on the infamous “Coast to Coast” radio program’s site last year. They’re very well done, but elements are still wrong if you know where to look. One eagle-eyed viewer posted an enhanced copy of one showing how the fakers missed elements when merging the images together.

At the file level it’s sometimes possible for specialists to examine the image data itself to determine if certain bits “don’t fit.” This is generally a complex process that requires a lot of skill. The FBI and other law enforcement agencies certainly do it all the time.

In a stunning reversal of earlier policies, Comcast announced today that it will stop “interfering” with users of file-sharing software by sending TCP/IP reset packets to throttle bandwidth consumption. The announcement came after they apparently held talks with representatives from BitTorrent (maker of a popular file-sharing application).

External pressure from other groups certainly had an effect. According to the article, “consumer and ‘Net Neutrality’ advocates have been equally vigorous in their attacks on the company, saying that by secretly blocking some connections between file-sharing computers, Comcast made itself a judge and gatekeeper for the Internet.” This also sets a precedent, since other providers have been experimenting with similar bandwidth-throttling techniques. I suspect, but obviously can’t prove, that Comcast received additional pressure from media companies that were worried about the effect of throttling on their own business models.

BitTorrent spokesmen agreed that “service providers have to manage their networks somehow, especially during peak times.” If they didn’t, parts of the Internet would slow to a crawl. Discriminating against file-sharing and streaming video users was the wrong way to go about this task. If consumption in a given area requires throttling of some type, it should affect all types of traffic and all users equally.

In fact, most underlying (on the wire) network protocols do this automatically. Ethernet networks use contention-based backoff algorithms to manage consumption. If two systems try to send packets simultaneously, one backs off for a random period before trying again. Only one machine on a given network segment can use the wire at any given time. Since Ethernet and its successors (Gigabit Ethernet, etc.) are largely responsible for local sections of the global Internet, there’s already a built-in system to limit bandwidth consumption.

I suspect the larger problem involves the rapid growth of online media resources in comparison with expansion of network infrastructure. I’d bet the amount of data traversing the net is growing faster than providers can expand their networks, so they’re desperate for solutions that’ll slow the pace somewhat.

Maybe media companies should pay up; they could help providers expand their networks in order to support large-scale streaming media applications. Hey, it’s just an idea.

Even though we’re now in the era of RIAA suing everyone and (literally) their mother over free music downloads, you can still find lots of free tunes on the Internet. No, I don’t mean you can freely download MP3 files without paying for them. What you can do is listen to full length streaming audio tracks. It’s like radio, which means it doesn’t violate the horrific and Draconian DMCA standards.

The free sites include BoomShuffle and Jango, both of which provide numerous free streams in a variety of genres as well as the ability to create mixes of your own. Another is one of my personal favorites: Pandora, AKA “The Music Genome Project.” Here, once you’ve registered with a user ID, you can create your own “station” based on your personal tastes. Enter the name of an artist, and Pandora will play a tune or two by that performer.

This is when the “genome” fun begins. The site’s creators try to lead you from your selected artists to others whose styles are similar in some way. I started off with Venus Hum (what I refer to as “happy techno”) so Pandora introduced me to artists like Olive, Depeche Mode, and other bands with similar (according to the “genome”) tunes.

At any time you can vote on a song (thumbs up or down). If you vote “thumbs down” the song stops and the next one on the list gets cued up. Your choices are retained, so theoretically the software should learn your tastes over time.

The other fun thing about this is that, at any time, you can click on a song and be taken either to the relevant CD on either Amazon’s store or iTunes. Like a particular artist? Click on the link, look over the CD, and buy it if you want.

Even the RIAA can’t object to this model. You get to preview new artists, listen to full songs, and buy them if you want. Isn’t that what it’s all about?