Tuesday, February 28, 2006
iPod HiFi: Woot asks: does it come in silver?
Ok, I gotta throw this out. Those hilarious fellas at Woot, though hucksters, have launched a pretty good one at iPod Church Rev. Jobs. I'm sure you've seen the new ipod stereo/boombox/HiFi/Life accessory announced just today (or maybe yesterday. Who can keep track?). It's pretty. It's white. I'm sure they'll sell tons. That's what they do down there in Cupertino.
Anyway, Woot nailed it (him?) with their pitch of an "iPod-compatible" Denon home theatre. The timing itself is no mean feat when you consider Woot's business model and the usual lack of lead time from Apple on product announcements. It's not like they (woot) have a lot of products on the shelf they can whip out at leisure (seemingly unlike apple. what's next?). BTW, if you didn't know, Woot has this wacky e-commerce model where they sell one product each day and when it's gone, the store is closed for the day. Next day, new product. Disclosure: I'm not a customer but could be some day.
I just read it again and still love it ... here's a snippet for your reading pleasure, but check the whole thing:
Anyway, Woot nailed it (him?) with their pitch of an "iPod-compatible" Denon home theatre. The timing itself is no mean feat when you consider Woot's business model and the usual lack of lead time from Apple on product announcements. It's not like they (woot) have a lot of products on the shelf they can whip out at leisure (seemingly unlike apple. what's next?). BTW, if you didn't know, Woot has this wacky e-commerce model where they sell one product each day and when it's gone, the store is closed for the day. Next day, new product. Disclosure: I'm not a customer but could be some day.
I just read it again and still love it ... here's a snippet for your reading pleasure, but check the whole thing:
- "In response, I ask only one question: is your precious Denon system white? (pause for stunned epiphanies throughout audience, followed by thunderous ovation) Because if youÂre still listening to silver audio components, youÂre listening to the past. Besides, who watches DVDs anymore? Nowadays weÂre all staring at album art on our 2.5Â iPod screens, right? I know I am, and IÂm what you might call a stereophile."
MS Virtual Earth: Street Level ... and Books?
Proof that someone at Microsoft is working (it's not the lazy-B yet): The Windows live local virtual earth street level demo is pretty cool.
My first thought is "neato." My second thought is, "big deal, what would you do with it?" which is quickly folloed by wow, this could really be useful for something." The more integration of gps, mapping, and video we have, the more we're going to see these hybrid apps. Some of them are going to stick -- they've gotta. Thanks for MS to throwing this one up against the wall.
OK, so I'm all of a sudden thinking about how an application like this could be used in the, stick with me, library world. OK, thinking out loud here. One of the problems with catalogs (and online searching) is that you lose the browsability (serendipity they like to call it) of the stacks. The idea that you may think you want one title, but when you go to get it from the stacks, you find another document that you didn't think you need, but is the best match for your need. Well, in online catalogs you have access a bunch of titles that correspond to your search, but their context to each other is (other than fitting your search terms) non-existent. You read that document electronically (and context free) and go on your merry way. Poof! So much for serendipity.
But, what if you could do your searching in the catalog, and then, when you went to electronically retrieve your document, you could "browse" -- via a technology like virtual earth street level -- the other items shelved with your document... Then to take it a step further, would if you could flip through the scanned pages of all those books and make your serendipitous choice (via the-- insert your favorite search engine name - Books project).
I'm sure if I thought about this for more than 15 minutes I could shoot some holes in it, but just for a second, it sounds pretty compelling. Cool.
My first thought is "neato." My second thought is, "big deal, what would you do with it?" which is quickly folloed by wow, this could really be useful for something." The more integration of gps, mapping, and video we have, the more we're going to see these hybrid apps. Some of them are going to stick -- they've gotta. Thanks for MS to throwing this one up against the wall.
OK, so I'm all of a sudden thinking about how an application like this could be used in the, stick with me, library world. OK, thinking out loud here. One of the problems with catalogs (and online searching) is that you lose the browsability (serendipity they
But, what if you could do your searching in the catalog, and then, when you went to electronically retrieve your document, you could "browse" -- via a technology like virtual earth street level -- the other items shelved with your document... Then to take it a step further, would if you could flip through the scanned pages of all those books and make your serendipitous choice (via the
I'm sure if I thought about this for more than 15 minutes I could shoot some holes in it, but just for a second, it sounds pretty compelling. Cool.
Sunday, February 26, 2006
iTunes Piracy Victory? Phfftttttzzz!
"Over one billion songs have now been legally purchased and downloaded around the globe, representing a major force against music piracy and the future of music distribution as we move from CDs to the Internet." -- Steve Jobs
Hmmm…. 42 Million iPods, another 60 million other digital media players (probably a low estimate), with say, an average of 1000 songs/each on them. I’m not a math major, but my uniformed figures lead me to believe around 100 BILLION songs (and that's not even thinking about the terabytes of music on computer hard drives) are floating around on mp3 players. Hey, Steve, where’d those other 99 billion songs come from? Vinyl?
I don’t know. I’d have a hard time calling that a major force against music piracy.
Hmmm…. 42 Million iPods, another 60 million other digital media players (probably a low estimate), with say, an average of 1000 songs/each on them. I’m not a math major, but my uniformed figures lead me to believe around 100 BILLION songs (and that's not even thinking about the terabytes of music on computer hard drives) are floating around on mp3 players. Hey, Steve, where’d those other 99 billion songs come from? Vinyl?
I don’t know. I’d have a hard time calling that a major force against music piracy.
Friday, February 24, 2006
SPL DVD Policy encourages Copyright Scofflaws?
So, the Seattle Public Library has decided to implement a new checkout period for DVDs: one week. I kind of have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, the old policy where you could keep the DVD for fourish weeks, was a bit much. I mean, if you haven't watched the dang thing in a couple weeks, then really, are you going to?
On the other hand, the library never has anything on the shelves that you want to watch so you have to play the online reserves game. Basically, the strategy is like this: You try to guess when the new releases for next month you may want to see will be entered into the SPL catalog. At that point, even though the item is on order, you can place a reserve. If catch this window right, you will be in the first 50. If you wait until you notice the DVD is out of stock at your local Hollywood, God help you. Case in point, the 792 people waiting to see Bill Murray in Broken Flowers.
The big problem is you never know when these things are going to come in -- and they seem to arrive in batches. My problem is that I have time to watch one, maybe two movies a week. When six DVSs (plus a full season of the Sopranos; another 4 discs) show up, they aren't going to be watched within a week. So then, you are stuck with late fees (admittedly, at 10 cents a day, vastly cheaper than video rentals), because dang it, if I waited four months for say, Party Girl, little Parker Posey is not going back until I watch it.
So what's the solution? Well, for some I'm afraid it's going to require the blatant flaunt of copyright and some technology that isn't going to sit well with DRM, DCMA loving Hollywood: Copy the discs. I mean, and keep in mind, this is just a hypothetical guess about what people might do, a blank DVD is now runs about 20 cents on sale. Programs like DVD Shrink are easy to use and pretty much only take a few minutes and then, boom, you've got the DVD to watch whenever you feel like it. Of course, you'll handle this in an ethical manner and destroy said disc once you do get around to watching it. Problem solved, right?
Well, I don't know about that. I'm a little uncomfortable putting users in a situation where they are even accidentally encouraged to violate copyright, just for the sake of cycling through the holds a bit faster. Sometimes you may have a legitimate need to have a DVD for a month (Like the Sopranos box set I mentioned). Who could work through a whole season of Sopranos is a week? Someone with too much free time. Or, what about kids' DVDs that they can truly watch 20 times before tiring of them? A month is about perfect for those.
Sorry, if you waded through all this and were hoping for an easy answer. I don't have one, but I promise to think about it more. Once I finish watching that stack of movies, that is!
On the other hand, the library never has anything on the shelves that you want to watch so you have to play the online reserves game. Basically, the strategy is like this: You try to guess when the new releases for next month you may want to see will be entered into the SPL catalog. At that point, even though the item is on order, you can place a reserve. If catch this window right, you will be in the first 50. If you wait until you notice the DVD is out of stock at your local Hollywood, God help you. Case in point, the 792 people waiting to see Bill Murray in Broken Flowers.
The big problem is you never know when these things are going to come in -- and they seem to arrive in batches. My problem is that I have time to watch one, maybe two movies a week. When six DVSs (plus a full season of the Sopranos; another 4 discs) show up, they aren't going to be watched within a week. So then, you are stuck with late fees (admittedly, at 10 cents a day, vastly cheaper than video rentals), because dang it, if I waited four months for say, Party Girl, little Parker Posey is not going back until I watch it.
So what's the solution? Well, for some I'm afraid it's going to require the blatant flaunt of copyright and some technology that isn't going to sit well with DRM, DCMA loving Hollywood: Copy the discs. I mean, and keep in mind, this is just a hypothetical guess about what people might do, a blank DVD is now runs about 20 cents on sale. Programs like DVD Shrink are easy to use and pretty much only take a few minutes and then, boom, you've got the DVD to watch whenever you feel like it. Of course, you'll handle this in an ethical manner and destroy said disc once you do get around to watching it. Problem solved, right?
Well, I don't know about that. I'm a little uncomfortable putting users in a situation where they are even accidentally encouraged to violate copyright, just for the sake of cycling through the holds a bit faster. Sometimes you may have a legitimate need to have a DVD for a month (Like the Sopranos box set I mentioned). Who could work through a whole season of Sopranos is a week? Someone with too much free time. Or, what about kids' DVDs that they can truly watch 20 times before tiring of them? A month is about perfect for those.
Sorry, if you waded through all this and were hoping for an easy answer. I don't have one, but I promise to think about it more. Once I finish watching that stack of movies, that is!
Running Hot and Cold
Boy, I wish I could be more regular about this blogging stuff. It just doesn't fit my academic schedule too well. Back in the day when I had a desk job and lots of hours to kill -- that's when I should have been blogging. Funny, I don't have as much time to do web errands these days either. I gotta shop for a new cell phone on my own time, I suppose.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Microsoft, Model of Openness?
OK, let’s not get carried away, but this is really interesting watching all filtering madness unfold (unfilter?). First, MSN and Yahoo get nailed in the press because they turn over search logs to the feds. Then, Google gets skewered for actually behaving like a rich American corporation (ah, so much for my innocence). And now Microsoft (MICROSOFT!) is getting a tiny amount of positive sping for coming up with, at least on the surface, a filtering policy to use in China and other evil, censoriffic states (Hmmm…like this one? CIPA anyone?).
Anyway, according to Information Week, MS would “remove access to blog content only when it received a government-issued, legally binding notice indicating that the material violated local laws.” Of course there’s some question about how high of a bar that is (threatening note from local party official scrawled on an underling’s forehead?), but still it’s a start. Other stuff: They only block info in the country in question, they’d notify users why the content is unavailable, and they’d give you a free copy of Windows Vista just for playing (OK, I made that last part up).
I’m thinking if Google (or Yahoo 2001) had come up with this, there’d be dancing in the streets of Mountain View. But, sigh, it’s Microsoft and we already know they’re up to no good.
Coincidentally, in 15 short hours I’m doing a presentation on internet filtering and other 1st Amendment squashing for one of my library science classes. It’s supposed to be US-focused, but all this international intrigue is killing me and can’t keep my eye on the ball.
Anyway, according to Information Week, MS would “remove access to blog content only when it received a government-issued, legally binding notice indicating that the material violated local laws.” Of course there’s some question about how high of a bar that is (threatening note from local party official scrawled on an underling’s forehead?), but still it’s a start. Other stuff: They only block info in the country in question, they’d notify users why the content is unavailable, and they’d give you a free copy of Windows Vista just for playing (OK, I made that last part up).
I’m thinking if Google (or Yahoo 2001) had come up with this, there’d be dancing in the streets of Mountain View. But, sigh, it’s Microsoft and we already know they’re up to no good.
Coincidentally, in 15 short hours I’m doing a presentation on internet filtering and other 1st Amendment squashing for one of my library science classes. It’s supposed to be US-focused, but all this international intrigue is killing me and can’t keep my eye on the ball.
Making an Oil Pledge
Making an Oil Pledge
"America, we've got to get our fat asses off for-een oil! Sorry, no detail. I've gotta run. My Suburban motorcade is driving me to the airport where I'll board Airforce One and fly to my ranch (where I'll get another motorcade) and then take a manly truck out into the back-40 where I'll pretend-cut scrub-oak with a bigg-ass gas chainsaw. While I'm gone, do you folks mind carpooling and opening some new nuke-u-ler reactors?"
Sigh....does any really believe this crap?
"America, we've got to get our fat asses off for-een oil! Sorry, no detail. I've gotta run. My Suburban motorcade is driving me to the airport where I'll board Airforce One and fly to my ranch (where I'll get another motorcade) and then take a manly truck out into the back-40 where I'll pretend-cut scrub-oak with a bigg-ass gas chainsaw. While I'm gone, do you folks mind carpooling and opening some new nuke-u-ler reactors?"
Sigh....does any really believe this crap?
