hahtango has posted some links to videos from the poptech conference. I definitely intend to check these out.

Quoted: Designverb: Get Inspired! Covering mind-provoking elements in design that captivate, inspire, excite, and rattle our goofy curious minds. Designverb is a blog by Aaron Tang

Quoted: Literary feuds don't come more poisonous than the 30-year stand-off that's divided those giants of Latin American letters, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. And the real reason it all began is only now emerging. Paul Vallely reports

Author Jonathan Lethem has decided to option his most recent book to a filmmaker with some interesting terms. He is requesting that the filmmaker relinquish all rights five years from the movie release so that others may produce derivative work without fear of reprisal.

Quoted: Lately I’ve become fitful about some of the typical ways art is commodified. Despite making my living (mostly) by licensing my own copyrights, I found myself questioning some of the particular ways such rights are transacted, and even some of the premises underlying what’s called intellectual property. I read a lot of Lawrence Lessig and Siva Vaidhyanathan, who convinced me that technological progress – and globalization – made this a particularly contemporary issue. I also read Lewis Hyde’s The Gift, which persuaded me, paradoxically, that these issues are eternal ones, deeply embedded in the impulse to make any kind of art in the first place. I came away with the sense that artists ought to engage these questions directly, rather than leaving it entirely for corporations (on one side) and public advocates (on the other) to hash out. I also realized that sometimes giving things away – things that are usually seen to have an important and intrinsic ‘value’, like a film option – already felt like a meaningful part of what I do. I wanted to do more of it.

The Emerald City ComiCon is March 31st -April 1st. I think I'll be going there to cover things for The Puget News if anyone is interested in checking it out.

Quoted: Was Flaubert bored by Madame Bovary? Was Proust's Albertine a man? Did Tolstoy kill off Anna Karenina too soon? Milan Kundera reflects on the history, secrets and future of his craft - and asks if literature itself is under threat from mediocrity and pointless proliferation