Why text messaging rules: #3

I can do it in a restaurant and nobody gives me the so called evil eye balls stare.

online promotions

dear papa johns,

If you put promotions on your website, please let your franchises know about it so that when we call and ask for the promotion, they know what we're talking about and we don't have to waste 10 minutes trying to "locate" said promotion. It would make our lives a lot easier.

Gary

myspace sucks!

myspace sucks!

No witty insight or commentary on how they could improve. They just suck. I'm sick and tired of waiting for their pages to load......

Why text messaging rules: #2

Multi-tasking. I can text and listen to music/watch tv/carry on a conversation (kind off) all while texting.

Why text messaging rules: #1

I hate checking my voice mail. I hate it so much. I have two messages on my voice mail right now. I know who they are from, and what they are about. I can't bring myself dial in and erase them. It seems so archaic.

rock on bishop

rock on bishop
Originally uploaded by garyowen.

Got some pictures up bout phil and lacey's wedding.

New Harleys

hmmm, this is interesting. Perhaps my search starts all over again. I'll have to call the dealership and see when they are getting the new models in.

Vista

Yeah I gave up on that. I didn't do it early enough in the process and now it would be a pain to backup the macbook pro before doing it (sounds like their is a bit of partition hacking you need to do).

Maybe by the time the release candidates roll around...

MacBook for Jon

Jon got a macbook. That's cool... Maybe we can put ours together and they can fight... see which one heats up faster.

Apple "Marketing"

Now I like the macbook, I like it a lot. But stuff like this really annoys me.

Why does the battery charge seems to run down faster when using Windows XP than when using Mac OS X?

Mac OS X includes power management optimizations that are not available in Windows XP.

The reality is that windows xp has had this type of technology (intel speedstep) for a long time. Really what happened is that apple didn't include the appropriate drivers in the bootcamp beta. Or perhaps the appropriate drivers don't exist yet (although I find that hard to believe since there are windows machines running on core duo now). Maybe they're they're talking about some other kind of optimizations... spinning down the HD... shutting down the monitor... I think the reality is that some Apple marketing person is trying to take an extra, unnecessary jab at Microsoft. Come on Apple marketing person, stand up for what you're good at, making computers "Cool" and stop trying to belittle your competition when anyone with a little experience with technology can see through your spin.

Vista on Macbook

Found some instructions here. I'll try it out tomorrow (or so).

Windows on a Mac Book

Finally got it installed today. Wasn't very difficult once I had the proper CD. For some reason the eject button doesn't work though, which was supposedly included in the driver dvd. It's easy enough to eject through explorer if an external mouse is plugged in though. I hope apple keeps working on bootcamp. It's probably 90% there.

I tried to apply all the latest updates from MS, except I can't proof my copy of windows is "genuine" without activating, and I'm not sure that I want to activate this machine yet. Hopefully by tomorrow vista beta 2 will be finished download and I can try installing that instead... I'll have to do some googling first to see if there are any tips out there.

Layout on Defence

Layout on Defence
Originally uploaded by timblair.

This is why ultimate is fun.

ultimate frisbee

ultimate frisbee is very fun. If anyone hasn't heard of it, check out the wikipedia entry.

We've been playing the first and third thursdays of every month at 41st and Fremont.

Harley Softail Standard or Low-Rider

What do y'all think.

This or this?

I like the lines of the standard with the hidden suspension, but the shocks are kind of cool looking on the low rider. They are pretty close in price. Both have a seat height around 25.5 inches which is probably right for me. One is rigid mounted with a balanced engine, the other is rubber mounted...

Both are nice looking bikes.

Macbook day 2

Well I had a false start with installing Windows XP on the macbook pro tonight. Turns out you need the XP + SP2 install disk and I only have the original XP install disk. Perhaps I can burn a copy from work tomorrow and use my existing install key.

Leadership and Belonging

There are 2 types of people in the world.
1. Those that want to belong to something bigger than themselves.
2. Those that want to create something bigger than themselves.

Number 2s are leaders, Number 1s are essential?

New macbook pro

Purchased a new macbook pro last night.
First order of business: 500 megs of updates from apple. [completed]
Second order of business: Bootcamp and windows xp.
Third order of business: probably also 500 megs of updates from microsoft.

Work is hard

Working hard is hard work.

Josh Ottum

Josh Ottum is the shiz. Gwen say him at the Sunset Tavern on friday (or so) and picked up his "Big Red EP". It's super great and awesome. I don't think it's available in stores, but it should be.

By the way

Gwen and I went to Europe. It was fun.

Wedding Time

_MG_0724
Originally uploaded by garyowen.

It's wedding time.

Ryan and Bonnie's Wedding pictures

Radish

IMG_2654
Originally uploaded by garyowen.

I love this picture.

Fremont

_MG_8274
Originally uploaded by garyowen.

Eliacin and I took a picture tour of Fremont today (technically it was saturday). Check out the Photo Set

Canon 50mm F1.4 for real

I finally broke down and bought this lens. I've started tagging my pictures so you can see some of the new ones taken with this cool prime lens. I likes it.

We traced the call

It's coming from outside the house!?!?!

Pier O

_MG_7896
Originally uploaded by garyowen.

Took a few pictures tonight after work.

Gwen's Tron Birthday Party

_MG_7588
Originally uploaded by garyowen.

New photoset up for Gwen's birthday party tonight.

Canon 50mm F1.4

_MG_7139
Originally uploaded by garyowen.

Rented a lens for my camera this weekend. I just posted 33 new photos using it. Pretty good for low light situations (which I find myself in a lot).

Pretty seriously considering getting it. I really want to try out the 35mm lens that is the same aperature, but it's 1,200 to buy, so I'm not sure that I want to get attached to it.

We traced the call

It's coming from inside the house!!!

Trav's Ordination

TravsOrdinationDay0002
Originally uploaded by garyowen.

A new photo set up for Travis's Ordination.

blog'n blog

Not sure what this blog should be about anymore. It started as a place to record some ideas about an "ideal" music distribution system. Seems like I've lost some focus. Not that I need to focus on music distribution. But what should I focus on?

Lately I've been into 2 things. Photography and Business. You can see the photography represented in the flickr links I keep posting. Perhaps I should figure out what our company's blogging policy is...

Does anybody still read this thing anyways?

TheologyPub-HalesAles0013

TheologyPub-HalesAles0013
Originally uploaded by garyowen.

New photoset up from tonight's theology pub.

Phil and Lacey

_MG_5897
Originally uploaded by garyowen.

It's a Phil and Lacey photoset.

Jumping cats

_MG_5480
Originally uploaded by garyowen.

Jumping cats are the strangest cats of all.

Our cat radio is insane-crazy-nuts about catching that toy.

performancing

So far, not impressed with the workflow. Blogthis was a better extension, but for some reason it got all tinted fogged up sparkely and weird.

myspace

So yeah, I signed up for myspace.  I feel kind of dirty... and the dirt's not coming off.  I've resisted myspace for a long time, but I thought I should at least use it for a little while before I continue to complain.  Man that site is jammed full of adds.  I've added like four or five different high level domains to adblock and so far it hasn't been enough.  How annoying.  Anyway, if you have myspace you can like, try and make me a friend or something.

www.myspace.com/owengary

Performancing

Performancing for Firefox | Performancing.com

Performancing for Firefox is a full featured blog editor that sits right within Firefox. Just hit F8 or click the little pencil icon at the bottom right to bring up the blog editor and easily post to your Wordpress, MovableType or Blogger blogs.

Just downloaded performancing for blogging. I wonder how well it will work?

Microsoft closes Metafile hole with early patch

Microsoft closes Metafile hole with early patch: "With computer experts rating the security flaw as 'extremely critical,' there's little doubt MS had teams of software engineers working overtime to get this new hole closed."

Thanks for all the hard work that was put into this patch.

On kids

Dear parents,

I don't mind so much when your kids make noise in restaurants. It usually brings a little smile to my face because I know you're raising a family and hopefully, in some small way making the world a better place by trying to be good parents.

I do mind when you smack your five year old kid across the face and proceed to tell him "I hit you so you'll know who's in charge".

Sincerely,
Gary Owen

MASSIVE, et al.: a glimpse into the mind of a mad-woman.

MASSIVE, et al.: a glimpse into the mind of a mad-woman.: "i finally discovered how to make an animated gif."

I've been really sick lately, and so I went to bed "early" last night. I guess Gwen stayed up to make this awesome animated gif.

Gwen Claws

_MG_4464-small
Originally uploaded by garyowen.

Well, as you can see from my previous post, I'm getting aquanted with flickr. I got a Canon 20D for Christmas and it's time to get my photo sharing all setup.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Sony caught in another DRM snafu

Sony caught in another DRM snafu: "At this point, I don't know what I can say about the whole sorry mess that hasn't already been said, so I'll close with this: if Sony is trying to alienate its customers, expose itself to massive legal liability, and get the general public up in arms over DRM, it's doing a fine job. If the music label has some other goal in mind, it needs to change its tactics quickly."

Poor misguided Sony...

Fogbugz Feature Request

I was going to post this over on the fogbugz support forum, but halfway through I realized it might not be a great feature request and could probably use some debate, so I thought I would post it up here instead.... cause this is where I post my crazy half thought out ideas. Feel free to skip if you're not interested in software development or bug tracking systems.


Here is something I've noticed about software development in general that I would like to address. Hopefully Fogbugz can help.

First some background:

Typically when new bugs are entered into a bug tracking system, a priority is assigned. The priority is typically based on the "severity" of the bug, for example, a bug that causes data loss would be categorized as a 1. A bug that stops the user from accessing a part of the application but has a simple work around might be a 2. etc... etc...

Typically the prioritization of a bug takes into account the characteristics of the bug itself. What has happened in our fogbugz system is that all the open bugz are in one list, "undecided". Some of these are of high priority, we fix all of those issues before each release. There are many other bugs below the top that we don't always have time to fix. Prioritizing within those cases can be difficult. If we increase the granularity of the severities, then it becomes more difficult to enter bugs, if we use a more course listing of severities, then we loss some of the subtelies of prioritization.

Now onto the meat:

Most development shops would say that the source of a bug report matters. A bug coming from your biggest customer usually carries more weight than the bug entered by a small shop.

Here's what's interesting, in most organizations, bugs entered by internal QA get more attention than bugs entered by your customers. This makes sense during the early stages of development, when a customer hasn't seen the new features (fix bugs as close to their introduction as possible) but makes less sense as the product matures. During the beta period, bugs encountered by the customers should typically be given higher priority than the ones entered internally, as they are more likely to reflect issues that the customer base at large will experience.

The feature request basically boils down to an ability to keep track of the source of a fogbugz case. Before migrating to fogbugz we used a home grown bug tracking system that allowed us to associate a particular customer with a case. This way, when the bug was resovled, the original customer could be notified. This might require too much of fogbugz (it would need to interface with, or support buiding a customer list) but I'll admit that is probably the one feature I miss most since upgrading to fogbugz.

Spitzer shakes finger at Sony

Spitzer shakes finger at Sony: "Despite the fact that the XCP rootkit has been in the headlines of late, it's important to note that Sony uses other forms of DRM as well, some almost as nasty. SunComm's MediaMax software also comes as a free bonus on selected Sony discs, and because SunComm knows how much you want their DRM on your computer, they've gone ahead and given you an early Christmas present: MediaMax installs itself on your PC even if you decline the license agreement."

So yeah, I guess that means I should never buy a Sony CD again. Not that I have recently anyway, but now I have to be intentional about it.

Joel on iTunes

Joel on Software: "Econ 101 says that they should raise the price on these ultra-popular movies. As long as the movie is sold out, why not jack up the price and make more money?"

I thought of another reason that the record industries argument doesn't make sense. With movie theatres, there are a limited number of seats. To maximize profit for a particular movie, you will want to get the theatre as full as possible with people willing to pay as high a price as possible.

Unfortunately the iTunes music store doesn't work that way, neither does any of the web actually. So long as Apple is able to cover their bandwidth bills, there is no addition cost if one song sells more than another. Say 100 people buy song A, and 10 people buy song B. Obviously we should charge more for song A right, because only 100 people can buy..... wait a minute, that's not true. There aren't 100 copies of song A, there is the potential for unlimited copies of song A. There is no such thing as scarcity.

This cuts back to the core of the argument I've been making on this blog. The old model seemed to work because the intellectual property tax was tied to something physical. So nobody needed to know about the difference. But when you are talking about something that is almost infinitely cheap to distribute, all of a sudden people intuitively understand that copying a CD from a friend doesn't decrease the amount of music available in the world. They intuitively know that the physical model doesn't quite work anymore. The problem is, we don't have something to replace it....

Congress gives Fair Use legislation a hearing

Congress gives Fair Use legislation a hearing: "In the meantime, the MPAA and RIAA want to nudge consumers towards their ideal marketplace: where we have to pay for the privilege of viewing or listening to content more than once. Consumers have let the industry know through decreased CD, DVD, and movie ticket sales that they are not finding the industry's value proposition very compelling. But instead of responding to market forces, the movie and music industries are continuing their attempts to legislate the market. If your elected representatives are not willing to support your Fair Use rights, don't support them next election."

hmmm, more arstechnica on DRM.

Sony sued over DRM "rootkit"

Sony sued over DRM "rootkit": "This entire fiasco could be one of the best things to happen on the consumer's technology rights front in recent years. A few well placed law-suits may raised consumer awareness to the oncoming onslaught of unfriendly technological measures supposedly aimed at curbing piracy, and may even prompt a re-evaluation of tactics similar to those used by Sony."

Sony: what you don't know can't hurt you

Sony: what you don't know can't hurt you: "Thomas Hesse, President of Sony BMG's global digital business division, showed up on NPR to try and sweep the entire thing under the rug.

'Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it,' he asked? 'The software is designed to protect our CDs from unauthorized copying, ripping.'"

Most people don't know what mesothelioma is either. Doesn't mean they want to get it.

Telegraph | News | Bush will veto anti-torture law after Senate revolt

Telegraph | News | Bush will veto anti-torture law after Senate revolt: "The Bush administration pledged yesterday to veto legislation banning the torture of prisoners by US troops after an overwhelming and almost unprecedented revolt by loyalist congressmen."

hmmm. I thought torture = bad.

Kansas education board rewrites science

Via Kevin Schofield
Kansas education board downplays evolution - Science - MSNBC.com: "In addition, the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena."

Who knew the Kansas Board of Education had the power to do that....

Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life - Google Desktop is Back with a Vengeance

Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life - Google Desktop is Back with a Vengeance: "The highlighted requests are requests to URLs of Atom & RSS feeds that were in my browser cache by Google Desktop. I did not configure the application to fetch these feeds. So not only does Google Desktop flood websites with feed requests in a manner bordering on the behavior of a malicious application, it also does this automatically without the end user explicitly subscribing to the feed."

Dare Obasanjo (who knows a thing or two about how to build rss aggregators) criticizes google desktop's behavior.

Why is iTunes better than Windows Media Player

Which is easier, hitting the space bar, or hitting CTRL+P. What's harder, hitting F10 or Ctrl+Up.

It's the little things sometimes. If I alt tab over to iTunes it's really easy for me to pause the current song by hitting the space bar, unlike windows media player which requires Ctrl+P. Volume control is also easier in iTunes because I can use Ctrl+Up or Down to change the volume.

I'm sure I could come up with a bunch more. Maybe I should point WiMP at my itunes directory and just try switching for a little while... course then I would have to give up podcasts... I wonder how good WiMP would be at syncing up to my ipod nano...

IT energy crisis reaching critical mass

First read this:
Intel announces major 2006/2007 roadmap changes: "At any rate, if this widely linked shootout is to be believed then Opteron does indeed wallop the new Xeons in terms of raw performance, and if one factors in performance/watt then it's absolute carnage."

The read this:
IT energy crisis reaching critical mass: "The old ways of throwing equipment at IT problems -- more air conditioning units, servers, UPS units -- is going to have to be revisited. And IT pros are going to be asked to find more efficient ways to increase reliability and computing capacity."

Interesting eh? Not exactly a good time for Intel's plans to fall apart. It would really be fascinating to see some analysis about Intel's performance over the last couple of years.

Torres Talking: Friendster is STILL creepy

Torres Talking: Friendster is STILL creepy: "Friendster apparently thought it was a good idea to send mail to all of the 'friends' I invited a year and half ago who decided to delete my invitation instead of joining. Of course, Friendster did this without my 'OK'."

I've never really liked friendster. Course it doesn't really make me feel any better to have that dislike validated.

Judge rebukes Microsoft over WMP bundling

Judge rebukes Microsoft over WMP bundling: "Last week, it emerged that Microsoft had submitted a draft marketing agreement to digital music player manufacturers that would have prohibited them from bundling any software other than Windows Music Player with their devices in exchange for installation CDs for Windows Media Player. One of the manufacturers cried foul, and as a result, Microsoft was given a harsh rebuke by Judge Kollar-Kotelly. "

Whoops.

CC in Review: Lawrence Lessig on CC & Fair Use | Creative Commons

CC in Review: Lawrence Lessig on CC & Fair Use | Creative Commons: "As life moves online, 'free uses' shrink. Because every act on a digital network produces a copy, and 'copies' trigger copyright law, there are vastly fewer 'free uses' in digital space than in analog space."

A good primer in why creative commons is good and why copyright law is getting wacky in the new digital age.

ArsTechnica: Anti-game activist Jack Thompson under investigation

Anti-game activist Jack Thompson under investigation: "Jack then reneged on his promise of a US$10,000 donation to the charity of the modder's choice, saying that his original bounty had been 'satire', and therefore not a legitimate promise."

I actually watched this one unfold on penny arcade. You can't make this stuff up. :-)

Apple steps up iPod 'tax' push | CNET News.com

Apple steps up iPod 'tax' push | CNET News.com: "Apple Computer is stepping up its push to get iPod accessory makers to pay for the right to connect to the popular music player."

Some would say that's as crazy as charging Sony a tax on the walkman because it wouldn't exist without music.

Firefly (aka best show ever)

Brian and I are watching firefly tonight. We saw the movie on opening day, I had seen the series first, Brian hadn't so we're catching him up.

I think this was the best show ever.

If you like any kind of sci-fi at all you should watch this.

Here is a good review of the movie Serenity (firefly movie) by Orson Scott.

Microsoft and Real Networks

Joel asked a question in my comments here.

It's tough to say what will happen now that Real Networks and Microsoft have teamed up. What usually happens when two mediocre players get together to try and make something great...

My prediction is that nothing interesting will happen. Microsoft doesn't have the whole platform, and neither does Real Networks. I don't think real has been a significant player in the online space for many years. (At least they haven't been in my conciousness for a long time)

Apple is definitely focused on the music platform. It will take something radical to blast Apple out of it's position as market leader. I think Apple has positioned the itunes music store very well. The store is designed to support the iPod. An iPod is something tangible, sure music has higher profit margins because the distribution costs are next to nothing.

I would predict that in order to replace the iTunes conglomerate there would need to be something that really addresses the rub of online music distribution.

I wont buy songs through the itunes music store because I am more restricted in how I can use it. Since Apple's DRM limits what I can do with the music, it is less valuable to me. I recently bought a CD at Sonic Boom that cost 17 bucks. I could've gotten the same music from iTunes for about 12 bucks. The extra five dollars were worth it to me though because I could put that music on both Gwen and my laptops, as well as have a hard copy in case those digital files are lost.

What does that mean for iTMS? How many people are not buying music because of that? Hard to say really. Why wont I encode my music as AAC or WMA? That one is not so hard. MP3 is a de-facto standard. Every portable music player supports it. Choosing another media format does nothing but benefit the owner of that format. By choosing WMA, I give Microsoft more business. By choosing AAC, I give Apple more business (the business I'm talking about is codec licensing, if I have a ton of WMA I'm going to demand that my audio player plays WMA, which costs the hardware manufacturer to license).

Ok so what does all this mean... I guess it means it's friday and I'm rambling. But it also means that your music player doesn't matter, your audio format does. Choose the platform with the widest support to encode your music in, and then pick the player that fits your model of how you work with music. I choose itunes to play my music because I have an iPod and an Airport Express. If another equally awesome or better set of peripherals come out for Windows Media Player, I can simply pick up my library and move it over to that player.

Now is the time where I would normally proof-read my post... but instead I'm going to not.

PC Pro: News: Warner chief threatens to scalp iTunes

Via Slashdot: PC Pro: News: Warner chief threatens to scalp iTunes: "A Warner Music executive has threatened to cut off Apple if Steve Jobs continues to refuse to give ground on iTunes Music Store pricing."

Personally I couldn't care less if the record labels pull out as I've never bought anything from the iTunes music store, and I don't plan on ever doing so as long as they ship their music DRM encumbered. But this really is crazy. Apple is the only online music store that has been successful at getting people to adopt DRMed music.

Nash's comments echoes those made last week by Warner CEO Edgar Bronfman, who called for Apple to adopt variable pricing and share out revenues from iPod sales. (emphasis mine)

Do the labels honestly think they own all the music in the world. Did they make the same demand of Sony when the walkman became popuplar... because after all, without tapes to put in those walkmen they would've been useless.

I didn't realize just how strong the sense of entitlement is at the record labels until now.

Software ( + Hardware) can do anything

Kevin Schofield's Weblog: "People here really believe that software can do anything -- it's fundamentally built into the culture, all the way up to Bill."

Some support for my "Microsoft expects somebody else to build their iPod for them" theory. Gotta come up with a better name for that. Maybe it's the "Hardware doesn't matter" way of thinking.

Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life - Open Letter to Google: Please Fix the RSS Reader in Google Desktop

Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life - Open Letter to Google: Please Fix the RSS Reader in Google Desktop: "However it is clear that not only is Google Desktop fetching my RSS feed every 5 minutes it is also not using HTTP Conditional GET requests. WTF?"

That is horrible horrible behavior for an aggregator. Who made that decision on the google team? Hopefully it's just a few misconfigured users out there and not the default behavior of google desktop. Even if it is a misconfiguration (the 5 minute thing) why aren't they doing conditional gets? I can't come up with a plausible reason you would ever to do this?

Why can't Microsoft make it's own iPod Nano

Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger: "Byron thinks that Microsoft should buy all of its employees an iPod Nano and then have them report back a week later on why they can't make a product like that. "

Why can't Microsoft make a product like that? I was having a conversation with a co-worker the other day about how Apple is able to provide such a slick user experience and how Microsoft keeps struggling to provide the same experience.

I think it comes down to a limitation built into Microsoft's vision. Microsoft sees itself as a software company. Sure they dabble in hardware (mice and keyboards... boring) but they fundamentally see themself as a software company and that software is what makes computers useful. (paraphrasing from Bill Gates' channel 9 interview)

Apple doesn't see itself as only a software provider. Apple used to see itself as the provider for the digital hub, but they've gone beyond. Not only did they create a digital hub, they went ahead and developed the components that connect to the hub.

Microsoft should wake up and realize that nobody is making anything worth connecting to their hub (Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center Edition). If they want their hub to be the hub of choice for most users then they need to embrace the reality that nobody out there is going to make an iPod for them.

It could be this artificial focus on software software software that prevents Microsoft from realizing it's vision of becoming a digital hub....

or maybe they could just start supporting the iPod in Windows Media Player...

CoolTechZone::Column: Apple’s Strategy Behind ROKR

CoolTechZone::Column: Apple’s Strategy Behind ROKR: "He doesn’t want a cell phone that doubles as an MP3 player to become too popular as that would cut straight into Apple’s bread and butter product, the iPod."

hmm, if this is true, then Apple's demise may be much quicker in coming than I originally thought. (Just so everyone knows, I don't actually want Apple to die. I would actually prefer that they turn into an even better company).

If Apple is unwilling to cut it's legs out from under itself to branch into a market it knows will be successful (a marriage between the phone and the ipod) then it will lose it's ability to remain an innovative, visionary company.

Here is something Steve doesn't get.

"You're not the first, nor the last person to come up with <insert idea here>."

Steve's talk about how lucky we are as an industry because he dropped out of college and took a caligraphy class illustrates this gap in Steve's vision. Of course somebody else would've come up with the idea to put publishing quality fonts and graphics on the PC. Others would've seen the potential and acted on it. Apple was simply the first out of the gate.

Apple has a significant leg up in this whole portable music player war, but they need to face the fact that it is a war. The other side has been lobbing softballs at them, but some up and coming company could come out with a killer implementation of a Phone/Music player combo that simply kills any other combo.

Now this is all based on some random website's conjecture about Apple's motives. Maybe their A-team was working on the ipod nano and the B-team was working on the ROKR... or maybe they left the specification of the product up to motorola and did nothing more than license their look and feel and access to ITMS.

iTunes feature request

You know what would be handy? To be able to separate the contents of the iTunes library from their reviews. Here the use case.

My wife and I share a library of music. We both want all the music available to use on our home computer, but our preferences are different so we need to be able to set our own ratings for songs.

Both OSX and XP support a type of user switching so there no reason it isn't theoretically doable right?

Apple unveils the iPhone, iPod nano

Apple unveils the iPhone, iPod nano: "...Windows users can synchronize calendars and contacts from their iPods to Outlook or Outlook Express."

That sounds like an awesome addition to me. I don't have a USB sync cable for my ipod yet (the last generation didn't ship with them) but now I'm very inclined to go pick one up and complete my itunes migration from my powerbook to my dell. I've been craving a better portable calendar solution than an ipaq. A smartphone would probably be my first choice, but an iPod could be another good option.

Scripting News: 8/19/2005: Steve Jobs

Scripting News: 8/19/2005: "At lunch today with Scoble and Dean Hachamovitch we spotted Steve Jobs leaving the restaurant. We all went out and shook his hand. Don't think he knew who I was. He was giving Dean shit about how they were copying all their features in IE7."

It's a good thing that Steve Jobs went to Tabbed Browsing class after he dropped out of college, otherwise the entire industry never would've thought of tabs because Steve Jobs never would've thought of it. </sarcasm>

update: Scoble recounts the encounter here.

Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life - Some Thoughts on MSN Filter

Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life - Some Thoughts on MSN Filter: "think it is pretty cool that MSN is allowing folks experiment with ventures like MSN Filter. However my personal opinion is that in its current incarnation it's a lame knock off of the stuff coming out of folks like Nick Denton and Jason Calacanis and it doesn't have a chance of making much [if any] money for us since they are eschewing targetted ads. "

I just finished Built To Last last week. This reminds me of some discussion they had about 3m. The company pushes evolution in their products, setting up incentives for departments to take risks and branch out into new areas and products. That strategy requires a good framework for deciding what projects should be encouraged and which should be cut. It sounds to me like MSN Filter is a project that should've been or should be cut rather than invested in. I wonder what mechanisms exist in Microsoft to encourage new experimentation with products, and how they determine whether to pursue them or not.

A company like Microsoft should be encouraging new product growth, but they also need healthy mechanisms to determine which projects to pursue and which to leave alone.

Instructions in user owned fields, or, your message is ready sir

After getting every emails from people saying "The message is ready to be sent with the following file or link attachments:" I got to wondering. Why do I get so many emails like this. The message is not ready to be sent, it's already been received by me. Am I supposed to send it somewhere else now? I had a similar connection when I saw a blog post by Yaron on the aardvark blog titled [Headline Goes Here]. I thought "am I supposed to enter the headline for this topic for him?".

I've seen enough of these types of messages to realize fairly quickly that the message wasn't intended for me, rather it was intended for the creator of the document. So what is that message doing in the body of the content? My thoughts: If you're going to put a message to the user in your software (which they probably wont read anyway) don't put it in the area that they own. I'm ok with combo boxes that say "needs value", or "select blah here" because at least those values aren't usually submitted if the user forgets to select them. They typically cause a warning "you forget to select blah there".

Here's another thing... obviously "[t]he message is ready to be sent...". I'm looking at it aren't I. Actually no, it's not ready to send, there some stupid generic message in the body of my email.

Apple may still have legs, but who's legs are they?

David RD Gratton: Apple may still have legs: "I believe Malcolm Gladwell would say that Powerbook, in the hands of a business connector like Darcy, is going to be highly infectious to other business people."

I think apple has a lot of potential. I wouldn't invest in apple however because of one huge problem. As I predicted before, I still think, when Steve Jobs dies (or retires) Apple will die with him. The company will not survive the transition to the next CEO.

Now I could be surprised. Steve may be spending his time building an organization that aligns with the values that made Apple successful in the first place. Or, he may just be spending all his time criticising the powerbook and ipod design teams efforts until they produce the devices he envisions.

Here's the thing I've observed about Steve Jobs. His ego requires constant inflation, otherwise it goes flat. My hypothesis is that Steve is incapable of building an organization that would survive after he left because that would be a huge blow to his ego. Now things may have changed since Steve's brush with mortality. Hopefully he's begun to realize that Apple computers is more important than him, and it should be strengthened to withstand his eventual retirement. Here's the rub though, without that information, I wouldn't invest in Apple computers on any kind of long time line. Without changing how the company works, Apple, as a successful company, will end sometime in the next 20 years.

Wired News: New Diet Trick: Induce Bad Memory

Wired News: New Diet Trick: Induce Bad Memory: "'A few things would need to be ironed out before you could take this out to the real world. You would have to show that the effects are longer-lasting than just an hour,' Loftus said."

Like you would need to figure out how to most effectively strap the subject into a chair, exactly which images to show on the projector, and don't forget to put drops in their eyes to keep them from drying out... that'll cure that ultra-violence... I mean food craving.

I couldn't help but think of clockwork orange when reading this article.

Sony's dirty little secrets

Sony's dirty little secrets: "He doesn't exist. Colombia Pictures made him up."

A good little summary by Ars of Sony's recent ethical "issues".

Microsoft and DRM

Top Arguments To Microsoft and DRM (Really Just To DRM): "Many of you are trying to place Microsoft as the “DRM bad guy” when all they are trying to do is allow you to actually use the media you purchase! If you want to lead the reform on DRM, more power to you! That’s where the fight needs to be, at the root. Microsoft is not the root here;"

If Microsoft decided to become an organization championing against DRM and in favor of fair use, then they could make the industry swing back in an innovative direction. The problem here is that nobody with creative ideas to apply to content "protection" appear to have the resources to make this kind of thing happen.

Microsoft is in a good position because they own "the VCR" so to speak. If Windows media center favored user experience over content protection, we (Microsoft and I, the consumer) could start exploring some new and innovative ways to add value to content. It seems unlikely though, my guess is that Microsoft has too much vested interest in their current relationships with content owners. The types of ideas I would like to see explored are probably too disruptive to the industry.

Why can't I just pay 100 bucks a month to download any TV show I want without commercials? Or, how much would I have to pay per month to download any TV show I wanted without commercials?

The definition of insanity.. The Music Industry - Blog Maverick - www.blogmaverick.com _

The definition of insanity.. The Music Industry - Blog Maverick - www.blogmaverick.com _: "There is an old saying that the definition of insanity is, “Doing the same thing over and over again expecting the outcome to change”

I think of this saying everytime I hear about music industry efforts to impact piracy."

I like it when Mark takes on the music industry.

scooblog by josh ledgard : Two Ideas to Cut off Duplicate Questions in Online Forums

scooblog by josh ledgard : Two Ideas to Cut off Duplicate Questions in Online Forums: "So what we have to do is bring back search results dynamically on the new post UI page. Here is the work flow I’m imagining and some pictures to illustrate it."

This is a really cool workflow idea from Josh Ledgard. I wouldn't mind seeing some of the forum open source projects or even commercial products picking up on this idea and incorporating it into their products.

I also like how focused Josh is on solving the user's work flow problems. I think that as software people, this is something we need to do more often than we do. Look all the way back to the root of a problem and try to solve it there. Often times we get more focused on the particulars of our solution rather than focusing on the root cause.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Downloading 'myths' challenged

BBC NEWS | Technology | Downloading 'myths' challenged: "Rather than taking legal action against downloaders, the music industry needs to entice them to use legal alternatives, the report said."

BBC is covering the same study. Good stuff.

I would enjoy the challenge of trying to figure out how people want music. I've proposed one solution on this blog, but that is primarily based on my desired interaction with music. How do other people want to have music delivered to them? What type of payment system works best for them?

Arstechnica: P2P users among music industry's best customers

P2P users among music industry's best customers: "A new study published today claims that users who share and download music files online also buy four and a half times more music online than your average music listener"

What am I missing Macrovision? - Blog Maverick - Revisited

What am I missing Macrovision? - Blog Maverick - www.blogmaverick.com _: "So if Macrovision can’t stop the bad guys, just what exactly is their purpose in life?"

heh.... I was rereading this post by Mark because it's so darn good. To answer his question:

To make movie executives feel safe and cozy in their warm beds.

Yeah I'm being a little condescending, but really. That's why those movie studios pay big bucks to macrovision. To make themselves feel safer because "we have technology that make sit virtually impossible to copy your movies. Isn't that great, we have nothing to fear from pirates."

A false sense of security is much much worse than feeling insecure. I challenge movie studios to stop paying Macrovision and spend their money on researching new and innovative ways to capitalize on the content they own. Like by making and selling software that allows you to easily copy any DVD onto a PSP, or Windows Media Center PC. Make it a smooth and streamlined experience. Better yet, sign up people for a subscription service (a-la netflix) that will allow them to download any movie in the catalog for a small monthly fee.

That false sense of a security just prevents them from really tackling the challenge that the internet has given them.

Review: Soul Kitchen Studios

I wanted to relate our experience with Soul Kitchen Studios so that anyone out there considering using Mark for a project could be well informed.

Here's the thesis of the review: "Mark is awesome."

Mark took the rough mix that we did in our project studio and turned it into something that is a joy to listen to. He took our feedback in stride and accomodated all our requests, whether they were as specific as "The vocals need to be like a half DB louder here", or as vague as "I don't know, the beat just needs to be more... 'there'". Not only that, but he was able to work within our budget. To Mark the most important thing is making the client happy. And he definitely made us happy with this project.

HoustonChronicle.com - Is being generous good for business?

HoustonChronicle.com - Is being generous good for business?: "'it's better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder.'"

Sounds like costco's priorities go like this.

1) Customer
2) Employee
3) Shareholder

Cool.

"On Wall Street, they're in the business of making money between now and next Thursday," he said. "I don't say that with any bitterness, but we can't take that view. We want to build a company that will still be here 50 and 60 years from now."

Even Cooler.

Maybe I should go get me a costco card.

David RD Gratton: Little Richard to The Mars Volta: It's all new music

David RD Gratton: Little Richard to The Mars Volta: It's all new music: "Finding obscure or unique music will become a valuable service. And we're talking obscure in 2020 which could mean Ram Jam, Boston, The Statler Brothers, Interpol, Blondie or Neil Young. "

Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman: "'Where do you get your Ideas?'
Essay by Neil Gaiman - 1997"

An interesting essay. It makes me think about how in software, as in writing, the execution is the most important thing. I think that's what Neil is really getting at here. Ideas are fun and anybody can have them. What everybody doesn't have is the ability to turn that idea into a compelling story.

How about this: Everybody has an idea for the next big online service, or piece of software. The difference is in how well they execute the idea.

If that's really true, then it makes software patents less important. It also means that software (like writing) is going to be difficult for the duration of a product, not just for it's inception. I think most product managers would agree that the 1.0 release is just the beginning. The first hard part. A products success will depend just as much, if not more, on it's second release as it does on the first. The first release might get people interested, but the second release shows them whether you are up to the task of making this software viable for the long haul.

Search Engines

Scoble posted on MSN's recent improvements. Made me realize that I have both google and msn keyword links in firefox. Using that method I can enter either "g " or "m " in my firefox address bar to do either a google or an msn search. Firefox replaces the G with a link to google and the M with a link to msn search, meaning that there is no effort necessary on my part to switch search engines than to use my right pointer instead of my left pointer... and I'm right handed so you would think that MSN would have the edge.

All that is to say that my vendor lock in to search engine is very low. One letter difference is all it takes for me to switch. That's very good for me. The minute MSN is better than google (it could happen I suppose) I could even remap my G key to search MSN, meaning I wouldn't even have to learn to hit a different letter. What if all of my services were this way? What if I could take all my apps and run them on my powerbook when 10.4 came out because the OS was much better suited to my productivity.

I think Sun is pushing that direction. They are big on open standards vs. open source. I think Sun wants to be the provider. They want to out executed on providing people with the platform, or sell compute cycles like electricity is sold today.

Eh, I thought I was going somewhere interesting with this... maybe I'm not.

Auto Trackback

A conversation I had with Josh Ledgard is echoed by scoble.

I want auto-trackback. It would be a great way to level the blog-*sigh*-osphere even more. That could be a really good service for technorati or bloglines to offer. A link on every blog post would be a great way to push traffic onto their sites.

OpinionJournal - Windfall for Washington

OpinionJournal - Featured Article: "And if most of the extra tax income is coming from capital gains and dividend payments, that would have to mean that the rich in America are paying more taxes, not less, as a result of the 2003 tax cut."

Interesting analysis of the 2003 tax cuts. Is this one of those "drop the price and sell more units" but for taxes?

Space/Time shifting Content = Web Services

This analogy probably wont help anybody in the music industry to understand but I thought it was worth pointing out.

When I buy a DVD and I can copy it onto my PSP, the DVD becomes more valuable to me. I've bought 2 different tv series on DVD only because I could space shift it onto my DVD and take it to the gym. That's money that the studios wouldn't have gotten if there was no way for me to space shift the content. The studios see this as an opportunity for them to extend their offering and increase the price. To keep this opporunity available to themselves they are fighting tooth and nail to keep control of their data.

Google maps recently published their API. There have been some very interesting combinations of listing services like craigs list being combined with Google maps to show customized maps of very interesting content. Google could've seen this as an opporunity to extend their offering and have fought tooth and nail to control what is done with their content. They instead decided to allow the end users to embrace and extend their service.

Space and Time shifting content is the same type of thing. It's users like me, taking something cool (a tv show) and using it in a way the originator didn't envision.

The Clicker: Microsoft’s OPM for the masses - Engadget - www.engadget.com

The Clicker: Microsoft’s OPM for the masses - Engadget - www.engadget.com: "Microsoft is quick to point out that many content providers have agreed to not totally block all analog displays. Instead they have agreed to compromise and allow the constricted (down-sampled) versions to pass through. Still — this is a far cry from enjoying the unmolested goodness of hi-def content."

*sigh* What is this really going to do? Who has the business case for all this technology? Where are the numbers to back up this massive investment in R&D?

I think we should return to the core. Content distribution as it exists today is an implementation detail. The core is creative people doing creative works. You can't embrace a new model of content distribution (the internet) without giving up the old model. I understand the desire to lower your distribution costs to near zero by embracing the new model, but doens't that mean that maybe your prices should go down as well? Apple can make a profit off of the iTMS and they even have to pay a large percentage of their take to the copyright holders. Last I recall Apple only made 37 or so cents per song, and they can still keep the thing operating. How much of the 62 cents actually goes to the artists. Why can't we just cut out the middle man. If the record labels are not doing distribution (now internet) and promotion (blogs, word of mouth, itms) just what are they doing?

SCO in 2002: "there's no infringing code"

SCO in 2002: "there's no infringing code": "Now it is apparent that SCO and its pugnacious CEO McBride have known that there is no infringing code since the summer of 2002."

Clinton steps into the GTA: SA debacle

Clinton steps into the GTA: SA debacle: "If Rockstar left that content in the game, however hidden away, then they should be apologizing, and not blaming the mod community. Maybe it was an accident, or maybe it's supposed to be quite the Easter egg. It doesn't matter. It's putting the ratings process in jeopardy, and while some of you might prefer Washington step into this matter, I don't."

Good commentary on the issue at Ars. I've got about 10 more seconds of patience for this particular story though. I hope it stops escalating soon.

Blogger = Teh Better

It seems that whatever problems had been nagging blogger over the last few months have finally been cleared up. It's been a long time since I've had significant delays when trying to post. Kudos to the blogger team.

Microsoft and Claria

Sounds like the whole Microsoft and Claria thing was blown out of proportion. That's good. I'm behind the ball on posting an update on this because things have been very busy at "the work." Code code code. I got to write some really challenging stuff on monday. I wont go into the details any further until I get some clarification on the blogging policy here at work, but on a personal level it was nice to stretch my brain out a little bit. Hopefully it wont shrink back down to normal size. :-)

Microsoft Downgrades Claria Adware Detections

Via Slashdot: Microsoft Downgrades Claria Adware Detections: "Microsoft's Windows AntiSpyware application is no longer flagging adware products from Claria Corp. as a threat to PC users."

I'd love to hear from somebody at MS as to why I shouldn't be worried about this. To me it seems out of character for Microsoft.

Crossroads Dispatches: Dot's Flowers: Lack of Ethics? How About Lack of Imagination?

Crossroads Dispatches: Dot's Flowers: Lack of Ethics? How About Lack of Imagination?: "I'm too jaded to be appalled by lack of ethics, but I am amazed by the lack of imagination. Paying bloggers $5 for a blog mention (assuming transparency)? Original, huh?"

Evelyn is cool. Sometimes her writing is a little hard to read, but I like the point she's highlighting here.

Some people don't get it. Blogs are compelling because they cut through the marketing BS. They are "the people's voice". That's what makes them compelling. Some marketing folks see them as nothing more than another place where they can yell their message. They want to treat them like radio, tv, or print advertising.

Here are my thoughts about "using" blogs to promote a product.

Step 1: Engage in what your customers are already doing.
Step 2: Make something completely awesome. Using what your learned by engaging your customers.
Step 3: Support the hell out of your customers.
Step 4: Don't try to control the message, learn from the one that takes shape.
Step 5: Act on the message that takes shape.
Step 6: Profit?

I used to think not everything could be marketed through blogs. But Joel seems to be marketing fogbugz through his blog pretty well. I suppose if you are marketing into an industry that doesn't blog you might find it harder.

Only slightly related question:
How transparent is too transparent?

As a customer, how would you like to hear "We couldn't fix your bug because the dev team went out last night and they're all hung over, we'll do it tomorrow."? Or "We want to fix your bug but this other customer pays us more so we have to do their bugs first"?

I can't imagine there's a company out there willing to be that transparent, but is there anything wrong with it?

Coolest blog of all

I forgot to mention the coolest blog of all. The one that belongs to my wife Gwen.

Some cool blogs

Usually I link to other people when they have something I want to comment on. I thought I'd devote a post to just listing a few blogs that I'm finding to be good reads .

Gretchen Ledgard's Jobs Blog: A good look at recruiting at Microsoft. She usually has something interesting to say about the world of recruiting talent.

Josh Ledgard: Josh is doing some interesting things to get the community at large involved. I especially liked his reader rewards program.

Mark Cuban: I don't always agree with Mark Cuban (and I don't really care about basketball), but he gets points for being pretty pointed in his criticisms of the RIAA and the like.

Joel Spolsky: A must read for anybody in the software industry.

Project Aardvark: It's been fun to watch the interns at Fog Creek build some new software. I definitely want to see how this product turns out. The fact that Joel can set these interns up to succeed speaks volumes about his skills as the head of a software company. I wonder if Joel is trying to build a visionary company or if he just happens to be a visionary leader. Will Fogcreek software produce more Joel Spolsky's?

Scoble: Also known as "never miss another blogging related piece of news ever".

Wil Wheaton: Cause it's Wesley Crusher! ;-) Actually Wil is just an interesting person. His posts are almost always a good read on several levels.

Those are my must reads at the moment. (except that Josh has been posting a bunch of stuff about the MSDN forums that doesn't interest me)

DVD-Audio copy protection "cracked"

DVD-Audio's CPPM can be got around with a WinDVD patch - CD Freaks.com: "but instead pipes the decrypted audio output to the hard drive instead of the sound card"

That's part of the fundamental problem with trying to secure bits. They must be available for playback, which means the customer has to have the key to unlock the bits available to them. This isn't a very sophisticated crack from what I can tell, but it's effective.

(Side note: Part of what is so frustrating about this is that this method is very inefficient for everyday users that would like to copy their music onto their computer for convenient listening, but mass "pirates" will have no problem waiting an hour for their one perfect master that they can stamp thousands of copies from)

I've wrestled with similar problems before, and what I've seen is that this false sense of security tends to be worse overall for the producer of the content than the removal of all barriers.

When there is a weak security system in place, those that don't understand the technical limitations tend to think "This solution is so great, I don't understand how it works but I feel secure". This false sense of security tends to make them take more risks because they think they're covered.

Perhaps those in the content industry actually think that the copy protection they've put in place is working. "We" all know (anecdotally) that copy protection doesn't stop hard core pirates from stealing and distributing illegitimate copies of content. But do the executives in charge of these decisions (like including macrovision protection on a DVD) know that it doesn't actually "work"? Do the technical people at those companies have a voice?

Has somebody stood in front of the leaders of the major labels and said "Here is what copy protection is doing for us and here is what it is not doing for us." I'd love to work with anybody in that kind of position on putting together a presentation of the costs/benefits of a copy protection scheme. :-)

Note:
I think it's very important for artists to be compensated for their work. I'm an artist, as is my wife, and I like getting money for the work I do. The more money I make the more time I can spend on my music and the more inclined I am to make more of it. But I also recognize that the old model is broken. That's why we released our music under a creative commons license.

Vespa

My wife and I bought a Vespa ET2 about a month ago. Turns out that a 50cc motor is not quite enough to pull two people around Seattle's many hills. So we're considering adding a granturismo to our garage. (I don't actually have a garage).

Vespa GT 200 (warning: flash)

I was able to drive one once and they are pretty darn fun. If we do end up getting it I will be sure to post up pictures of the pair.

Living in the city is cool.