About the Theme

This theme was designed specifically for this site’s Tumblr offshoot. The interface is intended for media in particular (such as videos and images), but it is still plenty flexible to handle all other types of Tumblr content. The grid will definitely not appreciate large-copy posts, but it will not break. The theme uses jQuery for just about all of the Javascript and should be very easy to follow. My hope is to continue improving upon the theme when it seems both useful to myself and to the community members using the theme. The most recent version of the theme (that is not customized particularly for myself) will always be at franklinstreet.tumblr.com.

Short Video Run-Through

Basic Features

Here are a few reasons you may like using this theme:

• Fully customizable color scheme using Tumblr’s appearance tab
• Various javascript interactive effects to make the experience a bit more enjoyable
• Images in image posts open up in a lightbox
• Uses Cufón font replacement library for better looking headers
• Handles all Tumblr media formats appropriately, including video (tested with YouTube, Vimeo and Flickr embeds)
• Support for notes (new as of 0.9.1)

Use This Theme

If you have a Tumblr account and want to install this theme, just go ahead and preview, then install the theme through Tumblr’s interface. Otherwise, download the source file and manually paste the source into the custom HTML field under the theme tab.

As if the RIAA did not look bad enough as it is, when you have high profile musical artists that does something this progressive, the organization looks even worse. With a very forward-thinking marketing campaign, allowing the public to freely listen to the album before its release, not to mention absolutely amazing music, Trent Reznor is basically showing the rest of the music industry how things should be done. Year Zero has easily been the biggest music-related event on the internet this year – for good reason. I myself have already listened to the album and have pre-ordered the album and I suggest you do too.

Very few of us enjoy the close-boxed mentality of big media. The whole mindset essentially flies right in the face of how the web works and continues to ignore how society interacts with media. I just ran across an example of how media 2.0 and the internet’s open model has seemed to influence an independent film titled Revoloution.

The premise is quite simple – moviegoers can watch the movie for free and then decide how much they wish to pay after they have finished watching it. We all have gone to movies and have felt quite robbed from the experience. Many people do not frequent theaters as often because it is not worth the gamble to spend a sizable chunk of change on something they may not like. Big-business media will almost assuredly never sign onto something like this for various reasons – one being that their product is, well, bad. Hollywood is already losing money, this would just speed up the process. Nonetheless, this model could be a much more beneficial model for aspiring filmmakers to garner an audience and begin to create buzz on a particular piece of work.

I could see a more hybridized version of this type of payment where less is paid up front and a ‘tip’ is requested after the movie is over. If I only had to pay $4 to $5 to get into a movie, I might just start going to movies again. Additionally, if the movie is decent, I definitely would provide a tip. Of course this model is more risky than the pay-up-front model, but with declining ticket sales, they may want to consider taking a few risks and getting creative. One thing I do know, hiking up the price of tickets is not going to work.

For more details on this experiment, watch the video below:

Much of the media online is free without even the slightest hint of payment. Even for the lucky (and talented) individuals publishing high-quality work exclusively on the web, compensation still is a challenge. However, people are making it and some are doing quite well for themselves. With the rise in popularity of web media with its low overhead and much less profit, big business is going to need to rethink payment models and the content they are willing to spend millions on to produce. (Many) people know crap when they see it – sadly, the majority of all media (internet or not) falls into that category. However, on the web, I do not have to pay $15 or sit through 20 minutes of commercials to see it.

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