Tag: tech

Microsoft’s next monopoly

MDJ has a dead-on assessment in today’s issue of how Microsoft is seeking to co-op the online music market:

Nonetheless, even more companies are jumping into the fray, helping Microsoft’s attempts to portray its completely proprietary and highly-restrictive Windows Media format as “standard” and QuickTime as “proprietary.”

[…]

The proliferation of “music stores” pleases Microsoft greatly. The company wants to point to about a hundred different services, all selling songs at US$0.99 each, and say that 9 of them use Windows Media and only one does not – iTunes Music Store. This is how new monopolies are born, and Microsoft doesn’t even seem to be leveraging Windows to do it. The company simply added capabilities for highly restrictive and revocable rights into Windows Media, and content creators are flocking to it, pleased at being able to keep purchasers from using their songs or video how they please.
Fortunately, Apple has all the bulk of the mindshare right now when it comes to buying music online. Magazines, polls, sites, et al are lining up to declare the iTunes Music Store or the iPod as product of the year, or including them in some sort of Top 10/20/50/100 list. Not to mention that while files downloaded from the iTMS do contain a form of digital rights management (DRM), said form isn’t anywhere near as restrictive as that of the Windows Media format. Not to mention that what some of the other online music services are peddling are nothing more than revamped subscription formats.
People who buy digital music don’t want to subscribe to it. They want to buy it, download it, pop it in to a MP3 player, burn it to a CD, and get on with their lives. They don’t want to keep paying for the same song again and again. This is the life those services trumpeting WMA are trying to lock consumers in to.
Personally, I haven’t bought anything from the iTunes Music Store. I like my CDs, with a physical item that contains the mastered AIFF files. I like my liner notes. I like being able to rip my CDs at any rate I wish, rather than have to take the rate an online service delivers in. The dirty secret of the iTMS is that you can pay just a couple of bucks more for a full album from Amazon and get all of that. Michael and I have had variations of this conversation on more than one occasion, and he is of like mind.
That said, if I were an online music buying fiend, there is no doubt it would all be from the iTunes Music Store. Best selection, even if it’s not complete. For a DRM system, it’s pretty fair. Quite simply, it’s the best, Chairman Gates can’t stomach that, and Matt D. & company take Microsoft to task over it.

You want to jack in to my what?

Unlike Lee, I don’t think I’d appreciate this new trend of non-verbal, can-I-listen-to-your-iPod-for-a-moment “communication” with perfect strangers. With someone I know, even on an acquaintance level, I’d feel much more generous. I’ve known my new boss less than two weeks, and we’ve already listened in to one another’s iPods. But we’re the only two people in our department, both total Mac heads, both love our iPods, he’s a major music geek, etc., etc. We have a lot of stuff in common outside of our work relationship. But I would likely balk if someone just walked up to me on the street and wanted to plug in…

Jobs: Rolling Stone

A good interview with Steve Jobs over on RollingStone.com. Having had discussions about the music biz with folks who have worked in it, including my new boss, I have to say that I think Steve’s remedy for the music biz to increase its profits is dead-on.

Back to space

It will be interesting to see if the President issues a call to go back to space later this month, or next. This is very sobering:
bq. Every American who has died in a spacecraft has done so within one calendar week: The Apollo 204 fire on January 27, 1967; the Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986; and the loss of Columbia on February 1, 2003.
Perhaps NASA should take note of the above dates and scrub that portion of the calendar from any future misisons.
Naysayers should take note of a myriad of advancements in their daily lives that would not be possible without the United States’ involvement in space exploration. And I’m not talking about Tang…

The real reason behind IT purchasing

In the most recent Macintosh Daily Journal, Matt Deatherage & Co. take Information Week to task over their recent PC Vendor poll and rankings. MDJ correctly points out what’s really behind the buying decisions of most corporate IT managers:

IT buyers list many important factors, but when Apple meets them, they ignore them because Apple is not the “standard.” The most important consideration for IT buyers is not cost, customer service, quality, reputation, or proven technology, even if the magazine’s survey said so. The most important factor is that the PCs be Intel-compatible so they can run Windows, but no one wants to say that because it makes them look inflexible. Windows is the elephant in the middle of the room, and rather than talk about it, InformationWeek made up reasons why Apple doesn’t meet criteria when it obviously does. It’s hard to see how that is information, even if it does come out weekly.

Dell product “designers”

Have you seen the commercial being plastered across the airwaves by Dell featuring the interns and Dell’s product “designers”?
The thought that Michael Dull employs product designers in the first place is tremendously laughable. It becomes more humorous when you notice the products said “designers” are handling:

  • a PDA–designed and produced by an OEM, with Dell’s logo planted on it
  • a printer–Dell has never made printers, does not make printers, and won’t make printers, so there’s no need to employ a printer “designer”
  • a flat-panel display–designed and produced by an OEM, with Dell’s logo planted on it
  • Inspiron notebook computer–the only item featured that actually is designed by Dull’s product “designers,” and is about as inspiring as a Michael Jordan Hanes briefs commercial.

Truly pathetic. Unfortunately, I’m sure Joe Consumer has no concept of how Dull operates, and is buying this hook, line, and sinker.
You want truly innovative product design? Come on over.

Content Search on Amazon

How do you know you’re the father of a three month-old? When you don’t have much time to read your favorite blogs, and note what you read.
Lee posted on Amazon’s new Book Content Search feature, and this is just a bit of all-right, as Austin P. would say.
I’m not so impressed with the new feature in an of itself–I doubt I will personally use it much–so much as I am by the technological feat of processing 120,000 books, not to mention the man-hours Amazon put in to the project. Kudos, Bezos and Company!

iStockphoto praise

iStockphoto saves the day for Eric. Though I haven’t had much use for it lately, I have been a registered member since late last year and think it’s a wonderful service.
I have even thought about contributing photos myself, though I don’t believe a majority of mine are at a high enough resolution to warrant inclusion.
(via Michael)

Font fights cancer

Speaking of Dan, he has hooked up with one of my favorite cartoonists, and all-around nice guy (have met him twice now!), Michael Jantze, creator of The Norm, to produce the Jantze font. The font is the handwriting Michael uses in The Norm comics.

Jantze font graphic

Not only is it a great font, but Dan & Michael have decreed that all royalties earned from this font’s sales will go to the Lance Armstrong Foundation, which “provides financial grants to researchers working to improve our odds against the disease, individuals stricken with cancer, and survivors of the disease that are advocates for survivorship issues in their communities.”

East, West, Texas

“Now see here…you gotcher East power grid–you know, the one that danged near blew up yesterday–and you gotcher West power grid–you know, the one with all them rollin’ blackouts and brownouts–and then you gotcher Texas grid, which has been hummin’ along since we went on our own after our energy crisis in the ’80s…”

U.S. power grid graphic

“And you people think we’re just jokin’ when we say Texas is like a whole ‘nother country. Heck, we did it twice before…”