I can remember releasing music from Minusbaby several years ago on some of my first own netlabel experiments, (i.e. here and here). His music was always a little bit of extraordinary and just like today never to put into genre-categories. Well, meanwhile I switched from releasing music to developing and writing, but Minusbaby still makes music and releasing it as well.

The latest work “Left” is tight and magic at the same time and from his 8-Bit-People release emerged a “community-driven remix project”. Extravaganza! Creative Commons galore! Best directly head over to the mini-site, enjoy, do, create and share the magic!

Development-speed of the indie-world as a whole is always impressing. Only some months ago, people where like “hey, having more art-games, that would be cool”. And now look at this trailer here. Deep stuff, for sure…

It’s a trailer of “Hazard: The Journey of Life“, a mod made in Unreal Tournament 3. It about life, it’s about choices. I haven’t installed it, more about the inside of this package at Indiegames.

Voxels are a little more complex to build, like they look.

Having fun with voxels. Or sort of voxels. This is, what the “Voxelart Project” is all about. You can select colored cubes and place them with the mouse. And build really nice voxel-worlds. I like that style.

Joi Ito wrote an interesting article about the difference about the “traditional sales model” and the “venture investing models”. His view is mostly from the side of invensting and the production risks overall.

He wrote:

Normal sales oriented companies and organizations have sales that grows month on month if the organization is doing well. While there is a tremendous amount of energy spent on increasing sales, typically sales are capped by some reasonable growth rate over time.

On the other hand, the downside of a company is nearly unlimited. Projects can cost nearly an infinite amount of money if mismanaged and there are a myriad of risks that can cost an operating company tons of money.

The larger and more established the company, the more the organization, as a whole seems to be focused on mitigating risk and minimizing costs as a way to increase earnings and protect itself.

Venture investing, on the other hand, is typically a fund or an individual with relatively limited downside. The most that you’re going to lose is the money you’ve invested and your time.

You can see two things from there: The web confronts us with a complete new way logic of thinking businesses. Although every exponential growth make me very sceptical, you will also see, that there seems to be a “break-even” in the venture investing model. In opposition to this, the traditional sales model gives us constant feedback on good work. The venture model won’t. It could be wise to keep that in mind.

Paniq is back. Once again with a new and absolute unique album, that is once again technically at a very high level. “From Zero to Hero” is some sort of concept album, dedicated to the German “Pirate Party“. It’s a mixture of techno and electro, that lends inspiration from game-music, music-experimentation and “pirate-music”, produced in a very compact way. The album is free for download, released under a creative commons license. So why hesitate? Download this album for free. You will get high quality mp3 and flac as well. Oh, you may have noticed, that we have the election here in Germany next week…

Time Fcuk was released. And it is abolutely brilliant. Great storytelling. Lovely gameplay. And full of details. A must see!

You can also read a little more about the background of Time Fcuk.

Yes, this is somehow a confusing title. What is Capitasim 2.0? It is the global-reaching money-machines, made by global companies we see today… according to Peter Barnes, author of “Capitalism 3.0“. I haven’t read this book yet, but it seems, that there are some interesting thoughts included, that are maybe interesting for Creative Commons enthusiasts. For example:

Common wealth is like the dark matter of the economic universe-it’s everywhere, but we don’t see it. One reason we don’t see it is that much of it is, literally, invisible. Who can spot the air, an aquifer, or the social trust that underlies financial markets? The more relevant reason is our own blindness: the only economic matter we notice is the kind that glistens with dollar signs. We ignore common wealth because it lacks price tags and property rights.

It’s time to notice our shared gifts. Not only that, it’s time to name them, protect them, and organize them. One way to do this is through common property rights.

He criticized the recent politic, to give the global companies too much institutional and property rights, while at the same time narrowing the commons. It seems, that we need to reinvent the wheel at this place, in order to build a new, updated system. In his words, Capitalism 3.0 is a new operating system for our economy. It preserves what’s best about capitalism while fixing several tragic flaws. Oh, before anyone asks. The book was already published in 2006.

Some thoughts in this book remind me on the discussion upon the “Kulturflatrate”, mostly from the perspective I’ve heard from the Green Party (please correct me, if I’m wrong) like that (the quote is from the book again):

What we need is a parallel economy for non-corporate art. Fortunately, models of such an economy exist. For example, there’s the San Francisco Grants for the Arts program, funded from a tax on hotel rooms. Since 1961, the program has distributed over $145 million to hundreds of nonprofit cultural organizations. It’s a prime reason the city pulses with free concerts, murals, film festivals, and theater in the park.

But the book would not be about capitalism, if the private sector would not be able to establish a system like that, too (well, that’s a guess from me now). Like private funding of the commons or the like.

(via KarmaKonsum)