Apple is Finally Evil

In case anyone cares, this is my 800th post. Unfortunately, I'm late with it! There's so much to talk about that I can't even get to all of it, but I guess that means that I'll be covered the real cream of the crop news though.

Note: In retrospeect, I think I should explain my title just a bit better. Apple never came out like Google did and said that it wasn't evil as part of how it explicitly branded itself. However, they always maintained the image that they were the good guy pitted against the monopolistic giant known as Microsoft. See the 1984 ad for proof of how early this image started. Their Mac vs. PC ads indirectly promotes this image with the hip, smug Mac being better than the stodgy, but omnipresent, PC. I don't pretend to believe that there is a single corporation that does not do bad things to increase shareholder value, but I feel like Apple is stabbing its own brand in the back, which doesn't upset me because I'm not a huge Mac geek, but I don't like the side effect.

Apple Pisses On Developers

Ok, the gloves are off. What the fuck, Apple? I know how they solve their problems now, they throw an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) at it. Keeping everything they do top secret: an NDA for each employee with terrible consequences informally implicit for breaking it. Keeping the problems with their iPhone SDK secret: have its users (i.e. the developers) sign NDAs. Choking back the bad press because of their biased, conveniently ambiguous, and insulting iPhone application approval process: slap an NDA on the reasons why they reject iPhone apps. In my last post, I mentioned that a guy who made a podcast application was rejected because it competed with iTunes, but since then another guy had his app rejected because his Gmail application "competed" with Mail! My source on the story has since censored that part because of the stupid NDA, but I don't care. Suck it, Apple, I didn't sign an NDA. Oh, and they're not at all consistent: there are applications in the app store that duplicate other things that Apple has on the iPhone more closely that those two apps.

Usually, I don't get this excited, I know. I've just about had it with this nonsense though. I hate seeing developers treated like crap like this. I am incredulous at how they so freely bitchslap the developers who freely devote time to making the iPhone better. To be honest, I think that their NDA is illegal. I honestly think someone should consider legal action. I'm saying this because of the double standard it imposes: you have to keep quiet about your own application and how you created it but they can talk about it as much as they want and even practically steal it! Are developers really so in love with their applications and iPhones that they're willing to keep developing apps for the iPhone? The sad truth is probably. It would take a large scale boycott to try to effect any change whatsoever, but that still probably wouldn't work. Apple is notoriously stubborn and iPhone users simply wouldn't care as much. What it would really take is an awesome Android phone. A true competitor to the iPhone with the rich platform that Android is. It's just sad that the only way for iPhone users, who pay quite a premium in their cell phone bills every month for their iPhone, to realize the phone's full potential is to jailbreak it (i.e. hack it to run any application developed for it, regardless of whether Apple has approved it). That's as if you have a 50" HD TV and a Blu-ray player and the studio behind your favorite movie has the movie but Sony won't sell it to you so you have to go pirate it instead of being allowed to legally buy it (or, to be more realistic, it's like having to pirate Spore so you can play it without dealing with DRM).

Just to even out the above rant against Apple I'll include one in this section in Apple's favor: they've done a great thing in their hard stance against selling songs that must be bought with an album rather than individually. Some artists are stupid and want to force consumers to buy their whole albums because they thing the songs fit together. These artists need to get over themselves and give the people who support them what they want. I don't understand why you wouldn't want to give your customers what they want in as saturated a market as music. That's like if Amazon told people they could only write positive reviews even though one of the main reasons they may use Amazon is for the mix of good and bad reviews. The main reason people use iTunes is that it's convenient, but in close second is the choice it gives them in buying individual songs when they don't care for the rest of the songs on an album. It's market forces at work. Telling them they can't do that partially defeats the purpose of using iTunes! It makes as much sense as when the government subsidizes local companies who are less efficient at making certain products than foreign competitors: if they were good at what they did they people would buy their stuff so the government is doing a disservice to the market and the people by undercutting a superior company. If artists sell albums because one song is good and the rest suck then they get an inflated ego, people get ripped off and will want to pirate, and it doesn't create the kind of competition that forces artists to record the best quality music they can possible create. Without the idea of competition you likely have an aristocracy or communism, and neither one would sound right for the music industry. These artists need to start whining and start earning their paychecks like many of their peers do.

T-Mobile G1

The HTC Dream has been renamed to the T-Mobile G1, but it is still the first Android phone to hit the market. Engadget has some pretty great close-ups of it, but it looks pretty unremarkable. For a phone that's likely intended to compete with the iPhone, it has much to learn. For example, it has a proprietary headphone jack! The memory leaves something to be desired (1 GB internal, expandable to 7 or 8 GB, I believe), too. I have to admit that the software itself looks pretty slick though. I hope that Android really is as solid as videos like these make it look. I don't think this will be the Android phone to buy, but I imagine that this time next year the G1 will be in better company.

The best news about it though is that it will include an Amazon MP3 application to download music directly to the device directly from Amazon! You can only buy songs over WiFi, mind you, but at least you can browse them and listen to samples where ever you have a signal. At the least, it'll help you note down songs you want to buy later. This is the first phone with a direct interface to Amazon MP3 like this, now all it needs is a normal audio jack and support for stereo bluetooth.

Before I move on I just want to quickly note that Mozilla is promising a mobile Firefox by 2010. I don't understand what platform it'll run on though. Will it be for Android? There's no way that Apple will allow it on iPhones with its stringent app store policies, and I can't imagine it would be better than the Webkit-based creation for Android that comes with the platform. Palm OS is probably a dying OS nowadays, but maybe it'll be for Blackberry and Windows Mobile?

Chrome Hangover

Let me stay on browsers for bit longer. There were reports after Chrome's release of its rapid growth, which still amounted to less than 1% market share of the browser market, though it was nothing to scoff at for a nascent browser. Now the reports show the opposite trend: it looks like people aren't using it as much anymore. Take this with a grain of salt because it's hard to gauge this sort of thing over such a short period of time for a browser with such a tiny piece of the pie, but I think it honestly does show at least a small degree of boredom with the browser. It's like when beanie babies were cool and everyone wanted one, except that "everyone" in this case are computer geeks. I personally stopped using chrome because it didn't make sense to use it for work purposes and it was really unstable on my home machine after waking up from sleep mode. Plus, except for select AJAX applications it really isn't faster than Firefox, but which is faster changes with each performance comparison you look at. I kind of feel like I'm not the only person who has experienced these problems, and I'm sure that enough people didn't see a reason to fully switch that they just stuck to their tried and true browser of choice (likely Firefox because IE users wouldn't be ones to dip their feet in the Chrome pool). We'll have to see if Chrome can really hold its own in such a competitive market.

Does Obama Really Support Net Neutrality?

EDIT: Thanks to Ian for pointing out the Obama fact sheet that still features the explanation of net neutrality on page 2. Either they were careless and didn't update that, too, or (more likely) they wanted to focus the short form on the website more on education and other issues.

I almost made this into a rant, but reconsidered and decided that I was overreacting. The issue at hand is that he (i.e. the people representing him who manage the site) changed some content on his website regarding his platform for science and technology to remove a good chunk about net neutrality (watch my video if you don't know what net neutrality is). I was at first upset, but realized that he didn't remove the sentence saying that he supports net neutrality, but rather the portion explaining what a tiered internet is and why net neutrality is important. Granted, this is still terrible and very likely on purpose given that Joe Biden has definitely not been one to support net neutrality, but I really hope and don't think that he now is all for the telcos.

This is a big issue for me though, and would cast doubt on who I vote for if it turns out that he has changed his stance. For one thing, I'd be severely disappointed in him, but for another I'd be scared for our future when two candidates both have the wrong stance on one of the most important, but least understood, issues facing this country. I know what you're going to say, don't we have a war and a mortgage crisis and the biggest bank failure ever right now? Yes, we do, and I do not at all want to downplay those issues, but rather I want to highlight the severity of not keeping the Internet neutral. It is one thing to not support legislation and another thing to give the telcos what they want. Aside from putting a lot of people out of jobs it will severely limit the American dream when it comes to the wild west that is now the Internet and put us farther behind in the world economy. When you look at the Internet, American companies are putting out better companies and products online than any other country, and that's important. It creates a very valuable portion of our economy for our long term growth when you think long and hard about it. It's something that we have a competitive advantage in and it's one of the few things that can be a reliably positive part of our economy if we let it. The dot com boom sucked, but it created some great, enduring companies and inspired the creation of many more in its aftermath.

The bottom line is that any candidate that does not support net neutrality does not support the forward progression of technology one of its most important pursuits. He wouldn't believe in people being able to purchase cheap computers like Netbooks that are dependent on online content and give consumers more disposable income and spread computers to more people to help them improve their lives and improve e-Commerce (which supports big companies like Amazon and average people through sites like Amazon and Etsy). Just please, think about this the next time you take a shower.

The Xbox 360 Debacle

This is kind of old news, but I just have to plug it: VentureBeat has an incredible article detailing the problems with the inception of the Xbox 360 that has led to the now infamous red ring of death problem (i.e. its high defect rate). If you bought a launch console then your odds were better than flipping a coin and getting heads that your console would break: 68%. It's a long but fascinating read, and what it boils down is that Microsoft made several compromises in creating the console in being the first to market. Was it worth it? We don't really know. We know that the $1 billion they had to pay to replace defective consoles was more than a couple of things, like the savings in creating their own GPU rather than buying it from someone else and in turn causing some issues. It's kind of a hidden scandal when you really think about it, but did it strategically give Microsoft a foothold that they would've been screwed without? After all, they were facing off a technologically superior console in the PS3, and its launch kind of flopped compared to the Xbox 360 launch. To date there are more Xbox 360s in households than PS3s, but which console is really better and who will go down in the books as getting second place compared to the Wii? I don't think we really know yet, but I imagine that it'll be the Xbox 360 (though I personally like the PS3 better for the Blu-ray player, LittleBigPlanet, and Metal Gear Solid 4). Of course, the Blu-ray market isn't looking too great. I'm happy with my Kill Bill on Blu-ray! I agree that the higher prices for Blu-ray movies aren't always warranted though.

Quick Last Notes

Ok, it's past 1 and I have to get up in like 6 hours, I have to wrap things up here:

Gizmodo has a funny list of great gadgets to have for shady hotel rooms. It's just fun to look at.

eBay is no longer going to accept any forms of payment except for PayPal, aside from big ticket items like cars. There has been a lot of doubt over the years cast over the security of PayPal, and it eBay's roots are in taking money order and checks. I think people really just aren't going to be happy with this level of control being taken away from them, ultimately, rather than the fact that it's PayPal that they have to use. So much for eBay being a big rival to Amazon! This is just one part of a laundry list of things not going well for them in the past few months.

Popular Science has a surprisingly terse article about how computers will get faster via electron spin, graphene sheets, and a better form of memory storage known as memristors. It's a neat read.

I finally got a LittleBigPlanet beta code so I'll likely be posting my thoughts on the game later this week. For your chance to win a code, you may want to tune into X-play tomorrow night. Until then, stay out of trouble everyone!

The Roots Rock UT

**UPDATE** The Daily Texan actually has a great article reviewing the concert as well that acts as a nice supplement to what I say below.

NOTE: below the embedded video, you'll see your dosage of tech news to cover the past 2 weeks.

I have to say that Austin has had a pretty fortunate Spring. The weather is still pretty nice outside, despite being April, Barack Obama has come to speak here at least 3 times, we hosted the latest Clinton-Obama debate, Bill Gates visited us, Bill and Hillary Clinton both spoke here, we're home to the current Turing Award winner, and The Roots blasted their incredible fusion of rock and hip hop from Main Mall throughout the lower half of campus.



They were the very definition of indie Austin rock, in my opinion: weird, intense, but always fun. I was disappointed that they didn't acknowledge The Roots at all, but I forgive them. If you looked close enough, you could spot Captain Kirk, Owen Biddle, and I think Tuba Gooding, Jr. Feel free to comment if you can spot more of them (it's like "Where's Waldo"):



I tried to keep track of the songs they played, so here's the best set list I could come up with, in roughly the order they were played:

Star
Unknown song from Game Theory (I think)
Quills
Step Into the Realm
Act Too (Love of My Life)
1-minute covers: In a Gadda Da Vida (Iron Butterfly), Jump On It (Sugarhill Gang), Roc Boys (Jay-Z), Get By (Talib Kweli), Just a Friend (Biz Markie), a Wu-Tang song I didn't know, Who Am I (Snoop Dogg), This is Why I'm Hot (Mims), Snap Yo Fingers (Lil Jon and Sean Paul), Sexy Back (Justin Timberlake), Push It (Salt N Peppa)
Extended cover: Masters of War (Bob Dylan)
I Will Not Apologize (off of Rising Down)
You Got Me
Here I Come
cover of Jungle Boogie (Kool & The Gang)
Don't Feel Right
The Next Movement
Web
Encore: The Seed and some song I didn't know (it sounded like the hook was "Men at Work", it was not Thought @ Work)



And again, that doesn't even cover all the songs they actually played, it's just the ones I knew. It made for a great set that covered over 2 hours. They came on stage one-by-one starting off with a song I didn't know, but as always The Roots crew started building up the crowd's energy until the crowd got wild and excited after the Masters of War cover. Speaking of which, you can see a video of it on YouTube from another concert. So picture that but with an insane guitar solo and a longer drum solo. It was seriously worth waiting 2 hours just to see that cover: it was absolutely incredible. The buildup in the show's energy was definitely noticeable though as Black Thought periodically introduced each member of the band giving them a short solo, especially as they went through that long slew of covers that the crowd went crazy over. I don't even like Jungle Boogie and I thought it was amazing when they played it.

What was interesting is that even though The Roots and Common are both hip hop, and have both blazed the stage that is Main Mall, there's something fundamentally different in their music that really fascinates. Common is more reflective, soulful, bare bones hip hop whereas The Roots is this rock-driven hip hop experience that revitalizes ever song they play as well as any covers they play. I had seen them live before back after the release of Phrenology, and so some of the band members have changed since then, but the show stayed true to being really high quality. Hell, they even put up these poles where the flag poles are that did something crazy with the sound echoing at some points. I've never seen so many white people go so nuts over 6 black dudes (+ a white guy) taking a stage; I thought it was interesting. I had no idea how cross-cultural The Roots' pull was. It's not hard to see why though when they put together a live show that you'd think was choreographed to the second with perfect harmonies but remixes of songs that most people there had never heard before. Anyhow, the concert was so mind-blowing that I pre-ordered Rising Down so I can give you guys the full review when I get that at the end of the month. In the meantime, here's a video that I took at the concert of the guys dancing on stage, which was started by F Knuckles:


The Roots Dance on Stage from Eptiger on Vimeo.

Ok, so it's time for some tech news! Amazingly, they flow pretty well into each other, so I'll start on the musical track since we started out talking about The Roots. PC World recently updated its list of top 10 Flash-based mp3 players, and I think the order is debatable but from my experience of shopping for one I'd agree that those are pretty much the top 10 out there right now except for the Cowon D2. My lesser known Clix2 (see yesterday's post) made the #5 spot just below the iPod Touch but above SanDisk or the Zune.

Where do you shop to load up these fine mp3 players though? USA Today had a refreshing article pointing out that Amazon's mp3 download service is now number 2 in digital music sales right behind iTunes. They're also tied for the number 4 spot in top U.S. music retailers with Target behind Best Buy, Wal-mart, and iTunes, which is number 1 now (on both charts). I'd say that given that Amazon MP3 was just a whisper a year ago, it's incredible that it has grown to be so popular and I'm excited to see if its greater selection of DRM-free music than iTunes will allow it to overtake Apple's FairPlay-controlled service. I personally have grown weary of iTunes and have switched to MediaMonkey for organizing my music and Amazon for digital downloads because it's just better overall.

(Note: I have no non-public knowledge of the AWS group,=; I did not work in that group.) Amazon also garnered a bit of negative press that I'm almost afraid to link to because I think it's kind of ridiculous. Basically, GigaOM put up a commentary on a thought from Dave Winer that gained popularity (probably more than the Winer original did). No doubt that both guys are smart and know what they're talking about in general, but I don't think there are enough companies that would want EC2 and S3 and such for free like this. Consumers are cheap and love free stuff, but enterprise-level software is all about support. So there's two ways Google could go about this: supporting it with ads or just hoping that one of the companies they back strike it big and Google can acquire them. For the former, I can't imagine that there are a lot of companies who would want to be forced to have big parts of their infrastructure supported by advertising. For the latter, I don't see how the fruits of this would be good enough to warrant providing these services. It's not like the AWS prices are insane anyway. I'm going to be bold enough to say that Google would be stupid to try to compete with AWS with a free model. AWS does pretty well as it is, and Google's style and past success are based in investing in growing markets without a clear leader.

Of course, a well-established leader is no obstacle to Microsoft who took on Sony in the console wars for the past couple of generations and is still trying to buy Yahoo in its war with Google. They've become so impatient that they're giving Yahoo 3 weeks to surrender before they take the fight directly to the stockholders. This could get real messy real fast. As I've mentioned before, Microsoft really does not want a proxy fight here because Yahoo's talent base is very important to them and a proxy fights typically result in casualties and lowered employee morale, but Ballmer has made it abundantly clear several times before that they will stop at nothing to takeover Yahoo, so I'm still appalled that Yahoo is still fighting this so irresponsibly. My opinion is that they told Microsoft they wanted more money because they wanted to stall for time from their shareholders because they knew that Microsoft wouldn't pay up. Either that, or they're delusional (which I also mentioned before).

I have a friend working on the Windows 7 team so I'm always excited to get news on that front because he's a smart guy and I think that he'll help guide Windows back on the right path. There's already rumors that Windows 7 will be modular, meaning that it'll come out in pieces so that it can be developed monolithically while providing the flexibility of a highly customizable OS (this is a similar idea to people who use Linux so that they can tinker with it). Also, Bill Gates let slip that Windows 7 will be out next year, but he didn't say much other than that. It's likely a beta that will be ready late next year since the release timeline for 2010 hasn't changed, but I hope that they are trying to pick up the pieces of Windows Vista and build something truer to what people really want.

Alas, I have one more piece of news from Redmond: the Microsoft Surface will be in AT&T stores in a few select cities to show off cell phone models by just placing them on the device to help sell the phones. It's an interesting application for the product, though I'm sure quite expensive. I wonder if AT&T bought them outright or if they're on loan? We have no idea whether it'll only work on the demo models or if your own phone could be placed on the Surface to be played around with, but it's launching April 17 so we'll know soon enough. Despite my initial skepticism, I think that the Surface could be really cool in retail stores and bars and restaurants.

The CEO of the Mozilla Foundation is leading the herds of people who are disgruntled that the Apple Software Update application, which PC users typically use to get updates to iTunes but Apple users use for other applications, automatically puts Safari on the list of updates it will provide to you and check the box by default so that if you just click "Install" whenever it bugs you about upgrading you'll have one more browser that you may not want (I certainly wouldn't want it). While I think it shouldn't be checked by default, I think that John Lilly is getting too worked about it. People shouldn't be clicking on things they haven't read or don't understand, anyway, because it could be a virus. That's why people should use ZoneAlarm and SpyBot. I personally think that anything that auto-updates is evil and should always ask you first, but nagging you can also be problematic. Still, it's the lesser of two evils, and so at least Safari doesn't actually install itself without asking you. Of course, what Lilly should keep in mind that if Safari is worse than Firefox (which it is) then he has nothing to worry about. The only helpful feature I ever found in it was the Activity window, which is like Down Them All but not as good. Oh, and Firefox 3 Beta 5 is out for all you hardcore nerds and developers out there.

Azureus, creators of the famed torrent application of the same name, have released a plug-in that will allow you to determine if your ISP is throttling your connection for using torrents. It may sound useless because you'd know if you were being throttled, but it will then send that information to Azureus to help compile a list of such terrible ISPs and I presume help your case in suing them.

Now, I have several high points I'd like to hit real quick because this post is taking way too long and I have other things to attend to. GigaOM put up something more enlightening than what I mentioned above: a guide to what makes a good mobile application great. Having dealt with horrible ones, I can attest to this list's validity. The New York Times had an excellent editorial about how Hillary Clinton is dragging along this battle because she feels like she politically deserves the nomination and will drag the party through the mud to get it. Clinton supporters: don't fight me here, there are field reporters attesting to shady tactics at conventions here in Texas alone. I'd vote for her if Obama loses, but I don't think it will come to that and she needs to start to realize that before we lose people to McCain and the arguably more decisive Republican Party. The SciFi channel put up a really neat recap of the first 3 seasons of Battlestar Galatica for those who want to get into the show but haven't been keeping up. It makes me want to go out and rent these first seasons, but unfortunately it's down momentarily. I'm sure it'll be back soon (it's called 'What the Frak is Going On?'). Lastly, in my hunt for Seattle apartment I came across HousingMaps, a Craigslist/Google Maps mashup that will map out housing ads in various big cities. I love it and am using it constantly so I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a new place.

Hopefully I'll have another post up early next week, but until then I have much work ahead of me this week so wish me luck!

The Bid For Yahoo

I'm clearly crazy for writing this post since I've been awake for more than 60 of the past 72 hours. Regardless, the pile of stuff I want to talk about is growing and I just have to let it all out. Let's start the most jaw-dropping news this week: Microsoft offered $44.6 billion to buy Yahoo, which is a 62% over-valuation based on the current market price of its stock. The point? That shouldn't be too hard to figure out: Google has been threatening Microsoft for years with its heavy stake in Internet search and Microsoft is hoping to strike back by purchasing a company that fell from on high and never fully recovered. Google, naturally, is not happy. That's an understatement: they're so displeased with this deal that they've become conspiracy theorists claiming that Microsoft's control would bring "inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet" and that this is a "hostile bid". Plus, they implicitly suggest that it'll create a monopoly. So first of all, Microsoft has been on the Internet for a while (even though they got on board a bit late), so their influence hasn't really been inappropriate so far. I don't know how illegal a merge they r would be with Yahoo because I'm not sure if their combined market shares would be enough to be considered so, but that's something for the SEC to figure out. Essentially, Google is trying to cast doubt on the deal and shovel dirt on it in hopes that they won't have competition. I, amazingly enough, agree with MSNBC though: Google is going to stay king of search. Ignoring the huge hurdles Microsoft would have to overcome with cultural differences is the enormous momentum that Google has to the point that their brand has created a barrier to entry in and of itself.

Yahoo and MSN actually have cool stuff (have you ever tried Live Image Search or the bird's eye view in their maps?) to back up their search portal, but no one is looking because their eyes are glued to Google. This merger, I hate to say, would greatly benefit both companies. Yahoo may be reluctant just because being bought out by a company like Microsoft is a bit of a shock, but I don't imagine that anyone else will take them and years of mismanagement have shaken the foundations of the companies core technologies. The people there are smart they're just not acting quick enough to put a dent in Google's empire and they need a lot more resources if they hope to take on Goliath. I know what you're thinking, Microsoft is evil and if they get Yahoo then they get the PC market and the online market, and then Microsoft will rule the world. It's not that simple. Much like no one has toppled Windows as the predominant OS to more than a niche market no one has really dented Google because both brands are too ridiculously strong. Yeah, Mac and Linux have gained steam and are doing better and better, but they're not going to take over any time in the foreseeable future unless Windows just completely implodes. Even with this merger, it'll just create competition for Google and we, the consumers, will get more fun tools to play with. It will likely hurt Google's revenues, but it won't screw them over and it won't give Bill Gates the keys to the Internet. If Yahoo is smart though, they'll take the offer and try out something new. They've had plenty of time to adjust and have gotten nowhere. Steve Ballmer is really focused on winning this deal, so don't expect it to end just because Yahoo holds out or says 'no'.

There has magically been a breakthrough in the Writer's Guild strike: there were actaully some talks on Friday and we may see some good news before next week. It was a leak so we don't have details, but let's cross our fingers because I miss The Office, 24, and Heroes, damnit!

Of course, sports don't require writers and plenty of people still tuned in for the Superbowl; almost 98 million to be exact. It was the best ratings ever, probably because people were praying for New England to lose, and the Giants thankfully came through. The ads were pretty funny, in my opinion, and my personal favorite was the FedEx one with the giant pigeons. That was legendary. You can see them all here, organized by quarter. Once again, the GoDaddy one was really dumb. One of the things mentioned that I never saw a press release for was Pepsi's promotion with Amazon MP3. Much like Coke's alliance with iTunes, Pepsi has codes on the bottle caps for points for Amazon MP3 downloads and other stuff from Amazon.com as well. I think it's a really smart promotion to help showcase Amazon's newly acquired selection of DRM-free mp3s with deals from all 4 major labels. I hope it helps Amazon MP3's exposure! A lot of stuff like this will be necessary to even touch iTunes. While I'm on Amazon though: they recently acquired Audible.com and I totally missed this. Audible.com is an excellent service and I guess this will just lengthen the Amazon Mp3 arm to more audiobooks, but I wonder if it will be used at all in connection with the 2G Kindle (whenever that gets made)?

What you see on TV now that the game is over though is election stuff. I should disclose that I really support Obama and I can't imagine that so many Democrats support Clinton. Anyway, I wanted to plug this Obama video because it was just really well done:



If you have any Democratic inclination, I strongly urge you to watch it. Please, watch it for me! It combines words from his speeches with various artists who sing them (including the awesome John Legend). I'm not alone in the Obama boat though: the Times in the UK claim that Obama is the Democrats' best shot at the White House for various issues including the fact that she really pisses off the Republicans and helps unite them. It's an interesting read, and I'm plugging it because I think that it's important that people educate themselves. No matter who you vote for, make sure you understand the issues and not stupid smear campaigns or other nonsense.

Here's another big topic I need to address: the 700 Mhz spectrum and open access. So what is open access? Engadget explains it better than I can, but it allows interoperability of cell phones so that you can easily take your cell phone to another carrier because they can buy pieces of the spectrum as well and also that any applications must work on the spectrum regardless of your carrier. It should be obvious why the telcos hate this: it means they have to compete rather than just lock you in to their service. The iPhone wouldn't exist, for example, on this spectrum because you couldn't take it to Verizon or Sprint. The telcos are lumping it under net neutrality and fighting it as being "antiproperty". This is bull though: the point of open access is not to give up ownership of the network so that no one can make money, but rather so that to make money your service has to have value and actually competitive functionality rather than schemes to force you stay with them for crappy service. Anyway, what's really cool about this spectrum is that you'll be able to make/receive calls from anywhere because of its ridiculous range, and the fact that the FCC agreed to open access and open applications is a great victory for net neutrality proponents.

Speaking of phones though, there's news from Cupertino. Apple quietly started selling 16 GB iPhones. We all knew it was coming because of the 16 GB iPod Touches, we just didn't know when. This bad boy only costs $100 more than the 8GB at $500, and we don't know if anything had to change internally for the form factor to remain the same. I guess we just hope for the best.

So I think that this is a pretty huge deal: the 2007 Turing Award winners were announced yesterday. Usually it's one person, but 3 people collaborated on Model Checking so they all get the award. Dr. E Allen Emerson, an endowed professor here in UT CS, is one of these three people. This award only pays $250k (split 3 ways in this case), but the point is the prestige since this is the highest honor in CS in the world. I'm proud of this department for having him on board, and I'm sorry I never took his course but I was just tired of theory last year. Their research was a procedure for quality assurance, used to verify formal systems. This is a lot easier to do in hardware than software so this drastically improved the quality of chips from the semiconductor industry and the rest, as they say, is history. This unexpectedly boosts the stock of my Bachelor's degree though, but I really wish I could do the 5-year masters program that the department is putting together now. Even better is the new curriculum they're coming up with. I'm so glad that UT CS is really adapting itself to the needs of today's world and recognizing barriers to entry in getting a masters degree for applying to grad school and such. Very exciting stuff.

I don't know about you, but solving a Rubik's Cube has always been a great mystery to me and now there are some great videos online to explain how to solve it step-by-step. I'm keeping this for later when I have the time to try it all out.

I'm going to end with some humor here before I hit the sack. You're sure to chuckle while reading this redux of questions from FAQs that probably weren't asked. My favorite one is whether it's safe for a dog to chew gum. If you are feeding your dog gum then you have serious issues. The other thing is that Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Conan O'Brien have been having this whole tiff about who created Mike Huckabee, that then evolved into who created Stephen Colbert, which snowballed into who created Jon Stewart and Conan. A quick summary: Colbert and Conan both claim to have created Romney, Conan claims to have created Colbert, Jon claims to have created Conan (and, hence, Colbert), Colbert decided that he was John McCain, and Conan later claimed to have created Jon and Colbert in a very compelling photo. And here's just a really funny scene from all this commotion:



You can see more at the Comedy Central site and NBC.com if you look at all three shows from February 4.

Victory for Digital Music

A belated 'Happy New Year' is in order! I would've posted sooner except that I've had a fever since Wednesday evening and I'm only now starting to recover from it. It did give me a chance to pop open my Veronica Mars Season 2 DVDs though. I think my recent posts have been on the attacking or cynical side, but I think it's amazing news that Sony has caved and so now all the major music labels have switched to DRM-free music downloads. I cannot emphasize how big of a deal this is. After years of issues with mp3 players only playing certain mp3s and rootkits and breaking DRM schemes and all that jazz, the big guys have finally admitted that DRM-free is the way to go. Why? It's not altruism. Rather, they're scared of Apple. Amazon made a bold move when they decided that they only digital music they'd offer would be DRM-free. Some probably thought it was stupid for a nascent service to be so greedy. Funny how in less than half a year they brought around every major record label, huh? I don't know how many of the labels (besides EMI) is selling DRM-free through iTunes, but some have been selling to others as well (e.g. Rhapsody and Wal-mart, whose pompous site insists you use IE). Somehow, Amazon mp3 has been the common denominator. I really want to meet that team when I get back to Seattle to find out how this all came to be.

The point is, this was a huge risk for these labels. They're making a huge statement in saying that they'd rather risk feeding piracy with DRM-free music offerings than let iTunes remain the #1 digital music source with no close competitors. Think about that for a second. It seems a little paranoid, doesn't it? There's probably more to it than that, but I'm really curious as to what was going on behind closed doors for Apple to piss these guys off so much. It may very well be true that the labels saw the error in their ways in sticking with DRM for so long (especially the bad PR that geeks like me spared no time in propagating). It may even be true that they crunched numbers and thought that selling DRM-free may make them more money. Or maybe they did surveys or something. It's tough to say. There's no doubt in my mind that at least one factor in their decisions was to diversify who receives their content, and the fact that Amazon Mp3 now has claim over a library formidable to Apple means that my prediction from way back when may be true: Amazon can give iTunes a run for its money. They're finally proving that Apple is not invincible, something that companies like RealNetworks and Napster never accomplished. We just have to wait and see what the numbers say at time progresses. Amazon can still blow it, no doubt (though I've only seen the UI get better). But the fact that they've made it this far is a pretty big deal, in my opinion. One more thing: if this DRM-free thing works out for music than we can hope to see it spread to movies and television shows as we see mirroring trends in putting content online.

Of course, not all is well in online music. Napster has raised its monthly rate by $3 to $12.95. Mashable likes to be melo-dramatic and claim that this signals their downfall, but I think that's a premature statement. I think they still have a chance, but I do think it'll be hard for them to attract more subscribers with a higher rate. Also, Apple is being sued, again, for having a monopoly in digital music and mp3 players. Given that there are some sizable competitors though that are doing decently well (not gangbusters, but not bad either), I can't see this lawsuit going far.

Warner Brothers has decided that it will not sell HD-DVD discs, only for Blu-ray. Why? Well, Blu-ray sales were apparently strong in Q4 last year and they claim that the numbers are not in HD-DVD's favor. Could this be the start of a Blu-ray victory? Over the past year there was never really a clear winner, as there isn't still, but rather one would just inch in front of the other. If what Warner claims is true though, then maybe HD-DVD won't exist this time next year. We'll have to wait and see.

I have some bad news: Intel has decided to put an end to their involvement with the One Laptop Per Child program. Sounds kind of weird, right? I don't know if Intel is fully to blame here as the OLPC project asked them to not work on any other platforms but OLPC. Anyway, they've had issues working together for a while and Intel has its own low-cost laptop platform called the Classmate PC. It's not a total loss, but the impasse is still mildly tragic.

Seth MacFarlane made a speech at one of the WGA rallies and I thought it was interesting enough to share with you all:



It just gives a very real viewpoint from their side as to why the strike makes sense and why it's not about being greedy. Plus, he does his Stewie voice at the end.

I have a couple of quick things. There's a new torrent site called YouTorrent that searches the torrent search engines for the good stuff. It's pretty good and worth giving a shot. The other thing is that Google has had a couple of high-profile defections including their UI designer for Gmail. These probably don't mean anything because it's not unusual for young talent in the tech industry to move around, but it just shows that Google isn't a paradise for everyone, despite popular belief.

To compensate for not posting in a while I figure that I'd share a video I took on New Year's Eve after we finished setting up my brother's house for the New Year's party. The featured drinks aren't out yet (mojitos and pomegranate martinis), but it still looks nice:


Shawn and Selina's New Year's Eve Tour from Eptiger on Vimeo.

Lastly, I haven't played in a meme in a while, which is kind of a shame. I thought I'd give newcomer Saturday 9 a try:

1. Do you have a dishwasher?
I do, but I never use it.

2. What noise do you hear?
The TV behind me. I swear cable is the devil.

3. Next concert you hope to go to?
I don't have one in mind, but I still need to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

4. When was the last time you said I love you and meant it?
To be honest, I'm not sure. Maybe a week ago? I used to say daily, and I usually say it to my mom on the phone, but since I'm here in Houston I don't talk to her on the phone.

5. If all of your friends were going on a road trip, who would be most likely to over pack?
Me, I'm sure.

6. Who is the youngest in your family?
I guess my cousin Sherylann's son, who is not even two months old now.

7. Do you know anyone with the same name as you?
Kind of. I know this guy is out there. ;) If you just mean by first name: I know there's Elton John, but I don't know anyone personally.

8. How many shoes do you own?
Probably 6 pairs.

9. Do you mind flat soda?
I don't drink soda period, except with alcohol. Even then, I don't think I'd mind terribly.

Amazon's Unveilings

Full disclosure: I worked at Amazon this summer, for those of you who didn't know, and I was not a part of creating the new mp3 store or the new site navigation. I did see the new navigation, and had some time to play around with it, but I didn't actually tell anyone about it or blog it, for that matter, because it wasn't public.

Amazon finally opened their music store, and I was pleasantly surprised. My earlier impressions of it were that it would end up being an unfortunate mess, but I think they've really come a long way since what I had been hearing about it. All the music is totally free of DRM and features UMG, EMI, and tons of indie labels. The only reason they're missing Sony BMG and Time Warner, I imagine, is that they haven't let go of DRM yet.

There are a few reasons why I really like it and have faith in it. You can basically download the music from anywhere, you just need a browser. Strangely, you need a downloading tool to get an entire album, but this is nice because it doesn't require additional software (though I wonder if Amazon is working on an iTunes-like player to supplement this) to get a random song. This means that smartphone users could probably download music from Amazon MP3 and sync with their computer later, so this would even better compete with iTunes. I like how easy it is to preview tracks: you can forward through them after hitting "Play All", you can hit the play button next to each track, and it's much more responsive than iTunes is. These previews aren't just available for an album or artist, they're for search results also. The pages overall are clean, and the album pages have direct links to the CDs in case you want to buy those instead (the CD pages now have the same preview functionality, much better than what it was like before). To top it all off: the top 100 songs at any given time are $0.89 (with songs usually priced at $0.99) and the top 100 albums are $8.99. Overall, it's an easy shopping experience.

There are some problems though. For one thing, if albums can cost as much as $11.99 (maybe higher, I haven't browsed thoroughly), won't they be as much as the hard CDs? Then all you're saving on really is shipping. You can't re-download tracks once you've bought and downloaded them once, which isn't that big of a deal since it's not like you could on iTunes and if you could then you could just give out your account information to friends and they could all have your music very easily. I'm sure they are tracking your purchases for recommendations though, which is another thing they should flesh out more (and knowing Amazon, I'm sure they are). Why do we need software just for album downloads? That's weird. It's kind of like Down Them All: it only appears when you click to download a song or album. It sounds like bad design, to be honest, that you can't download full albums from the site, but maybe there's a better reason or maybe it's something they'll hammer out now while in beta.

Why are their odds good? They're Amazon. They have a huge brand name, they have really smart people, and they can probably personalize, recommend, and cross-promote stuff better than iTunes can without being obtrusive and, hopefully, while staying fast, convenient, and cheap. I think they're very well aware of the business model, so I believe in them.

I have to go pretty soon, but real quick: Amazon has started a Web Lab for their new global navigation. Basically, only a portion of visitors will see the new design, and they'll use data from these visitors' clicks to determine if it's good or bad or needs tweaking or what before they roll it out. I was at first very stubborn about the new design, but it didn't take me long at all to embrace it whenever I went back to the current Amazon site. It makes a lot of things better and easier. You always have access to the entire site in the corner of the screen, the top bar gets a lot smaller, you can see what's in your cart without clicking to it, etc. They put a lot of time, thought, and effort into this design, so don't discount it as some overnight impulse change or anything. They're really focused on making the site easier to navigate, faster to use, and more visually appealing. If you manage to see the new site, definitely play around with it. In my opinion, it's their largest overhaul of the UI since Amazon.com first opened its doors over 10 years ago, and it probably actually is.