Creative Tip: Working Across Time Zones - The World Time Server

A truly useful resource in the internet age where we collaborate across Time Zones and are constantly confused by date and time and trying to find a location and way to collaborate is the World Time Server, a free internet service that you can use to schedule online meetings or check out times around the world.

Take a bit of time to peruse the link and then bookmark it in your browser or add it as a tab (in Firefox) or a Favorite in IE, you will find it is very useful. We use it to help us shedule meetings with people working across many differnt time zones. It features a Time Converter, a World Meeting Planner (which we use regularly) and a number of other useful features that help us to locate a suitable convergent time for creative collaboration and business meetings. Fantastic tool to facilitate getting things done. No, we’re not sponsoring them, nor do we own share, we just like the service and use it to create and do business.

Update: MySpace removes pirated NDK Creative Artist article from website

MySpace has notified NDK Creative Artist by email today that his article Traditional Model Music Industry Shows Increasing Signs of Collapse which was misappropriated by MySpace user and BMI Songwriter/Producer Colin Preston, as mentioned in the Allforart News Flash of 22 September 2007 in the Free Articulator has been removed from MySpace.

No apology, as requested, has been received from Colin Preston to date.

News Flash: Free Articulator Catches Intellectual Property Thief Stealing NDK Article and publishing it on MySpace

It’s not hard to reprint intellectual property licensed under a Creative Commons License. As we declare in the footer of every page of the Free Articulator, the content published on this site is Creative Commons licensed. We encourage other publishers around the internet to reprint our content, enhancing the value of their site and bringing publicity to our contributors. But we do have a few conditions, as stipulated by the Creative Commons license:

The content must be attributed and link back to the Free Articulator - a standard practice in any field.

The content must not be a derivative of the original, but an accurate and unchanged copy.

The content must not be used for commercial purposes.

Today we discovered plagiarism and intellectual property theft of our content by a fellow named Colin Preston on his MySpace blog. The article that was ripped off was NDK Creative Artist’s “Traditional Model Music Industry Shows Increasing Signs of Collapse”, and the plagiarized version can be found here, until MySpace takes action as requested. Screenshot here.

Mr Preston failed to attribute NDK Creative Artist and link back to the Free Articulator, he made a derivative by modifying the content, and it is arguably a commercial use of the content as his MySpace profile is clearly a promotional tool for his services as a musician and producer.

“I’d be flattered and grateful if he had just done the right thing,” said NDK Creative Artist, who wrote the lyrics for the tuneback “Creative Commons for the Common Man“.

The article in question is, in part, an anti-piracy piece, and Mr Preston has pirated NDK’s work in order to make himself look reputable and anti-piracy. The gall, hypocrisy and lack of integrity of some artists is undesirable.

The Free Articulator has notified MySpace and Allforart, the Free Articulator, NDK Enterprises Limited and NDK Creative Artist will take further action as necessary.

We offer our content to the world with only a few stipulations; it’s not that hard to reprint Creative Commons material. Do the right thing.

If you would like to learn how to protect yourself in similar situations, click here to subscribe to the Free Articulator now - we’ll be publishing a series on intellectual property for artists soon.

Creative Tip: Reading leads to riches…

I read an immense amount of material. I read because I have an insatiable desire to know things, and I once coined the term infomaniac to describe this compulsion to know. Reading leads to riches, the riches of understanding and realization.

I just read this article about creativity and I recognized every single point in a subject I have spent a great deal of time researching, studying, considering and experiencing. I think readers of the Free Articulator will recognize them, and as I did, find affirmation in what Do you recognize these 10 mental blocks to creative thinking? has to offer; read it now.

Creative Tip: Vocabulary Building - One Word A Day

If you’re a songwriter, a poet, a storyteller, a journalist, or indeed anybody who works with words or wants to improve their literacy, there is no better way to consistently add to your intellectual toolkit than by subscribing to A.Word.A.Day.

This fantastic free educational service is one of the longest surviving email deliveries in the world. Every day it brings in a new word, with definitions and often a little history about word origins that fleshes out your understanding of context, which can be very useful for those engaged in historical novel writing, as but one example.

I’m committed to lifelong learning (well, who can avoid it?), and I find that learning just one new word every day, can help me:

• remove a creative block
• stimulate new ideas
• enrich my knowledge of our culture and civilization
• refresh my knowledge of meaning and definition (aiding memory)
• help me write and create the precise desirable effect I want to have with a reader

When I’m editing the work of others, having a veritable cornucopia of words, definitions and meanings in my intellect’s databank makes me an organic thesaurus, banishes the overuse of the same words in repetitive fashion and thus keeps my writing and that of those I edit lively and engaging, rather than repetitive, stultifying and boring.

If you’re not already a subscriber to A.Word.A.Day, but are working creatively with words, then get on over there and begin refreshing and expanding your existing vocabulary. You won’t regret it. Language competence is a highly sought after and extremely valuable skill and even if you’re not creatively inclined, knowing what words mean improves how you work and communicate. Words and their meaning enhance our ability to experience and enjoy life.

Traditional Model Music Industry Shows Increasing Signs of Collapse

The entire creative industry (not just the music industry) has been creaking at the seams for some time now, but it’s not really the seams that are creaking (rather they’re rotting), it’s the skeletal structure of the industry that is showing signs of fatigue. The structure has been disenfranching both the creative side of the industry and consumers for quite some time and those predatory policies are now coming home to roost. The industry (in denial) wants to blame this collapse on piracy, but piracy is not the only factor. It’s just another lever used to Read more

News Flash — Allforart Takes Immediate Action to Protect Creative Artist in Copyright Infringement Case

The generosity of Creative Artists is a rather marvelous thing to behold. What is not so marvelous is now others seek to exploit or take advantage of that generosity through various types of chicanery. One of our Creative Artists has recently been told by someone for who he created an original work of art, that he does not own that work and that he “may at some point” get it back.

This is a most serious matter and Allforart is taking immediate action to manage this situation and achieve a satisfactory outcome for all concerned. As things develop we will keep you informed, and while we wish we could say more at the moment, we would prefer a softer approach for a worthy cause. However, if this does not work, then we’ll publish the full story so that other Creative Artists are not burned by similar attempts and can learn from the experience.

US Corporate Censorship of Political Statements by Artists — Pearl Jam

If you monitor the art & entertainment industry closely you’ll see how careers are often destroyed simpy by denying access to broadcast channels and the opportunity to address the public in talk shows and current affairs programs. In America such censorship is emerging in a number of different ways, The Dixie Chicks’ statements about George Bush was but one example. The most recent example is to do with Pearl Jam and AT&T. Read more

There and back again - World Building for Storytellers - The Fargoth World Building Project

Through the miracle of modern technology today, it is now possible for a story to be realized and constructed as a virtual world and this has changed the nature of the marketplace and opened up tremendous opportunities for those writers who embrace the idea of not just telling a story, but realizing entire worlds, multiple cultures and races.

Tolkien captured it best when he wrote the immortal lines of “There and back again” for they capture beautifully and simply what is at the the heart of the reader experience when they fall in love with or become immersed in a story; the desire to go somewhere other than this world, and experience what it would be like to be someone else, live in any time, any place, and under conditions far removed from the real world in which we all live. Time travel? Read more

Pain & Suffering: do we need it to create great art? Part 2

This article is part 2 and follows on from Joel Falconer’s original where he finished off with this…

“So long as the traditional industry (and society) can point to the popularly propagated idea that ‘artists must suffer’ they have a reason to keep us in the dark, abuse us, rape us of our rights and suck us dry of every dollar, every word, every melody and every stroke of the brush that lies within us. Stop this myth now. Artists do not need to suffer to produce great work.

If you really believe “Artists need to suffer for their art” is a true and valid concept worthy of merit then next time you’re at the sex shop or visiting the CIA’s secret torture bases, pick up some whips and other instruments of torture, perhaps a waterboard and a set of fingernail pullers and bring them home to work over your local writers group, the garage band down the road who so obviously need help, and the painter whose delicate hands just beg for some knuckle crushing and thumb screwing and make them suffer, because the resultant works they produce will be guaranteed hits, oh, yeah. Success is just a whipping away. And of course, it’s firmly known by women and children everywhere that emotional and intellectual abuse makes them better people. Read more