Apple Undercuts the Zune

Apple's Rock and Roll Event

I hate to say it, but the biggest news from the past couple of weeks is Apple's event. This isn't unfortunate because I have a vendetta with Apple products (I think they're very high quality, in fact), but it wasn't a very exciting event. Not every year can be an iPhone year, but it sounds like it was still a good event. You can get all the juicy details here but the gist of it is: new iTunes, new Nano, and new Shuffle. The new iTunes 9 allows you to share music across multiple machines, has a re-designed store (geared more towards sharing than before, in a legal way), features endless genius mixes, and adds iTunes LP for enhanced liner notes. The only brand new feature here really is the home sharing thing, but this doesn't seem very different from what Windows Media Player already does. The new Nano is kind of nifty, I have to admit.



It comes in some beautiful colors, features a camera (for pictures and video), has a larger display, includes a pedometer, and allows you to pause live radio. Interestingly enough, it also has a mic and a speaker. More than ever, the Nano feels like just a small iPod. It's not a mind-blowing update to the Nano series, but it does look great overall.

The Shuffle update was much less eventful: it supports normal headphones (like it always should've) and comes in 5 colors, plus a limited edition stainless steel.

What I really wanted to get to were the prices: they're lower and come at an inopportune time for Microsoft with the Zune HD looming in the very near future (as in, tomorrow). The Shuffle is $60 for 2 GB and $80 for 4 GB, the new Nano is $180 for 16 GB and $150 for 8 GB, and the iPod Touch was dropped down to $200 for 8 GB, $300 for 32 GB, and now there's a 64 GB flavor for $400. Comparatively, the Zune HD is $290 for 32 GB and $220 for 16 GB. This definitely takes away some of Microsoft's thunder, and Apple may have timed this event for the purpose of undercutting the Zune HD's great price points. In the end, this is all great for consumers, but I hope that Microsoft doesn't get sidled out of the market by an event proclaiming only incremental updates. I'd like to see some real competition for Apple aside from just Sansa, which has a pitiful share of the market compared to Apple's more than 75% share, which leaves Microsoft with a single digit share of the pie. I'm not a fan of Sansa's showings and I'm a little afraid that if the Zune HD fails that we won't see innovation in portable audio for years. So here's to hoping for a clean fight!

Palm Pixi

Who is this guy that Palm is hiring to name their products nowadays? I mean seriously, is this guy high out of his mind? Treo and Centro were good names, I thought, but the Pre and Pixi are really bad names. It's pretty emasculating for a guy to carry around a phone named 'Pixi'. Anyway, it's official now and it's what we suspected: a candybar webOS phone akin to what Centro was to the Treo. Unfortunately, it'll be exclusive to Sprint, but it will be out this holiday season. To be fair, I'm on Sprint and don't think it's as bad as people say: my coverage, especially 3G, is excellent, the pricing is fair, and I love the new Any Mobile feature (free calls to any mobile phone in the country with an Everything Plan), but their customer service sucks. Still, I was hoping that Palm would expand to other carriers in the spring with webOS. They still can, but I don't think Pixi is going to do a whole lot for Palm or Sprint.



The software is pretty much what you'd expect from seeing the Pre; the only major difference is that it now adds LinkedIn and Yahoo to the list of sites it can sync contacts from, and will include a Facebook app that looks better than the terrible website Facebook has for webOS. On the outside, it definitely looks slick. It's even slimmer than the iPhone 3GS, has the nice back plate that you normally only get with the touchstone for the Pre, and keys on the keyboard are higher so they're supposedly easier to type on than the Pre (mind you, I'm quite comfortable typing on my Pre so I have high hopes for the Pixi keyboard). Under the hood, it's less powerful than the Pre but looks like it performs quite well from Engadget's videos.

I know I started out negative on the Pixi, and while I don't think it'll be groundbreaking (since it's staying on Sprint), I think it's going to turn more heads and bring more people into webOS who were turned off by the Pre's slider or keyboard or the fact that it was first generation. I'm really concerned that Palm won't make it to Verizon with webOS before the iPhone, or that it'll never be a success on AT&T because of the iPhone, but I do hope it flourishes because I'm really loving it. I still haven't had time to play with the SDK, but I'm liking the apps on it so far (new ones every Friday) and all the basics of the phone have worked out great for me with very few glitches compared to my old Treo 650. Plus, it looks like the app store really isn't going to be crazy strict like Apple's despite a media player being turned away. Palm reached out stating that it was only rejected for use of unsupported APIs and they'd like to find a way for the application to get released but have nothing against it being a homebrew application freely available outside of the app store. Now that's how you're supposed reject an application, not with smoke and mirrors like Apple does.

Government Control of the Internet

A cybersecurity bill has been proposed that gives the government the power to control the Internet (e.g. cut people off) in an emergency situation, and the Internet was not pleased. I agree with them: this bill is flat out stupid. I'm not a big proponent of big government, and I don't think the government has the technical expertise to manage the Internet in a time of crisis. Does it really need to, anyway? The Internet is bigger than the power of the U.S. government, and it's not really clear, as far as I can tell, what the use case for this really is. I feel like it gives too much power in the case of a situation that's hypothetical. There are cyber security threats all the time that are handled by private companies, and of course the military handles cybersecurity threats against them, but I can't envision a situation where the government would need to be involved, especially since the Internet isn't a public utility.

Best Buy Employees Spread Misinformation

This story was too crazy for me to not talk about it briefly. It's been confirmed that Microsoft has provided training documentation to Best Buy employees that attacks Linux and, by most Linux users' account, slanders Linux. Like the "I'm a Mac" ads, the information provided wasn't full of outright lies, but anyone familiar with Linux would be able to explain why the claims aren't true. It's disappointing that Microsoft is standing on the cusp of their best product release since XP and yet they're doing crap like this. This came to light a couple of weeks ago when a Best Buy employee leaked the training documentation, and Daily Finance then followed up and got an official statement from Microsoft on it.

I have two points I'd like to make. First of all, this shows that Microsoft is scared of Linux. If they didn't feel threatened they wouldn't bother with this. 5 years ago they scoffed at the mention of Linux, but with the popularity of the open-source operation system growing every year (albeit, not to a mainstream size yet) I guess they decided that it had reached a critical mass. I think Linux contributors should take this as a compliment, to be honest. The second point is that this shows why brick and mortar stores are losing business. Retail is a crazy industry and if you're not going to raise the bar and you're going to choose to provide a bad customer experience by spreading questionable information then you deserve to lose business. I haven't been to a big box electronics store in months and since I joined Amazon Prime I literally have had no desire to do so, especially since (as I mentioned a while ago) a Fry's employee try to pimp Monster cables to me with bullshit. Ok, time to get off my soapbox.

Quickies

I have a few more stories I'd like to cover before I start preparing for my recruiting trip this weekend (Longhorn CS majors should stop by the Amazon booth next Monday at the career fair, for sure - I've got some fun questions lined up for people).

Google has announced a plan to develop a syncing service for the Chrome browser to sync bookmarks and other browser data to the clouds. Clearly, they're gearing up for Chrome OS.

YouTube is looking into movie rentals, which is just one more avenue Google is investigating in its longstanding hunt to monetize YouTube. It doesn't seem unreasonable that we could see movie rentals on YouTube next year given that you can already rent movies digitally from the Playstation 3, Netflix, and Amazon Video on Demand, among others.

More solid rumors surfaced regarding an Apple Tablet and the possibility of it coming out as soon as November. It seriously does sound real this time, but only time will tell.

Tech Radar has a really cool article up about OLED highlighting its advantages and disadvantages. If only it was cheaper to produce!

Sony pushed out version 3.0 of the PS3 firmware (aka XMB, the Cross Media Bar), and it may be the most drastic change yet with animated themes, a fancier default theme, a better notification area in the top right corner, improvements to the friends list and trophy section, simultaneous output across audio connectors (still not sure what that means), more avatars, and a What's New that the PS3 boots up to that features new updates in the store and the games you recently played. Very cool stuff (I'm a fan of the simple elegance of XMB).

I don't know if I'll be able to post next week since I'll be in Austin Friday through Tuesday morning, but I'll do my best to get something up here next week.

Are Netbooks Killing Notebooks?

Netbooks vs. Notebooks


Microsoft and Intel (and I'm sure others) contributed part of the blame for their weak Q4 results to increased netbook sales (see my last post), but is this really true? Computerworld is not convinced. I'm inclined to agree with them. I can't remember the last time I've seen a netbook, and I've spent the past year and half in several cities: Austin, Houston, Seattle (current), Paris, Rome, Brussels, Florence, and many others. No matter where I've gone though or how many buses I take, I haven't seen anyone using one of these things. Given how techie Austin and Seattle are, it's hard to believe that there's all of a sudden this huge shift towards netbooks. After all, how many people realize what a netbook is?

So what's to blame for weak OS and PC sales? For starters, we're kind of in a down economy. People are scaling back large purchases, including new computers. I don't think that means that they're going to go and buy a computer that worse than the one they currently have (a netbook) because it's more portable - the idea of owning a netbook seems to just be a cheap luxury item rather than a replacement or an upgrade. I can't imagine anyone thinking that having such a tiny keyboard and screen would be an upgrade, even if they don't notice the weaker specs. Let's be honest though, what's the point in upgrading unless your computer is totally falling apart? My home laptop has been flaky lately (Firefox not loading pages and forcing me to restart the browser or the computer), but I'm still not prepared to replace it. My reasoning is that Windows 7 is going to be out next year (most likely) so to get a new Vista machine wouldn't make sense, but I think for most people they just don't see a much better machine out there that's affordable that they really need. How much do people do nowadays on their computer that isn't browsing the web, word processing, e-mails, listening to music, or looking at photos? There haven't been any great advancements in hardware to make these things better. I think that chip makers should really be optimizing their architectures for these things because my laptop is supposed to be a home entertainment machine but I don't think it does multimedia especially well (aside from having a nice screen).

The other factor to consider is that people really aren't interested in buying desktops anymore. I can't think of any reason to buy a desktop unless it's strictly for office use or you're a hardcore gamer. Of course, when I say strictly for office use I think if you only have one computer for work it's going to be a laptop so you can take it on trips and work from home and stuff - I'm referring to your second work computer. I think that Apple had the right idea with their latest MacBooks: optimize for the notebook market. They put in batteries that aren't replaceable but give you twice the battery life: people are willing to upgrade their laptops because of something like that. They're not going to upgrade just because you make the case shinier or something. It's really all about innovation and knowing your market. You need to bring out the features that your audience has a use case for and then price it competitively. The problem is that not enough people in the market are doing that right now, and Microsoft is going to be in a rut with Windows until Windows 7 comes out.

In fact, the impending release of Windows 7 has probably dealt a bigger blow to notebook and PC sales than netbooks have. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), this may not influence enterprise users that much. On one hand, they haven't been marketing it very well at all for businesses and have instead been trying to generate excitement from general consumers. I don't think this is a terrible thing, and maybe they'll pull more features out of their hat later in the year. On the other hand though, Windows 7 will probably work on older hardware so businesses can afford to buy lower-end or older computers. So this goes back to the innovation part: computer manufacturers need to be cost-effective and need to really think about how to satisfy their customers. The only way to survive this economic downturn is to innovate, not to point fingers at external factors and hope that it inspires investor confidence. We'll see how well everyone does this in the next couple of quarters. Speaking of which...

Grim and Good Quarterly Results

Sprint Nextel had a terrible quarter and have decided to cut 8,000 jobs and possibly replace some of them through outsourcing. Plus, they've frozen 401(k) matching for the year as well as any salary increases. Their 2008 net loss was $1.1 billion and lost 1.3 million customers last quarter. While I feel bad for the people who lost their jobs, Sprint had this coming for a while. Aside from the fact that they have crappy phones so AT&T probably drained a lot of subscribers from them, their service is unimpressive as is their customer service (I currently am on Sprint). They haven't been trying at all as far as I can tell over the past year to make anything better for their customers, and I almost quit a while ago for AT&T. I decided to wait a bit longer to see who gets a phone I really want, and hopefully the Palm Pre will be that phone. Sprint really needs the Pre to not fail. Given that they're at the point of selling off Nextel, I don't know how many pieces they'll be in this time next year if the Pre fails. It's not going to single-handedly save them, but it'll at least stop the bleeding.

The other company that announced a bad quarter last week was AOL. They saw a decline in revenues that has led them to lay off 700 employees. AOL has been going downhill for a long time now though and could stand to be acquired by someone who can cut it up and make its pieces work well separately. It really is sad to look at the list of companies laying off employees, and I really hope and pray that this year will see some sort of rebound. I know things won't be vastly different this time next year, but I'm hoping we can see the start of an upturn before the end of the year. More realistically though, it could take 2 years.

It's not bad news all around though: Netflix posted a ridiculous 45% growth in profits with a 27% growth in their subscriber base to over 9 million people. They say that people don't tend to cut out entertainment from their budget though when times are tough because it's an escape from reality, and I guess paying $9 a month for Netflix is just a lot cheaper now than renting from Blockbuster is. Even I'm extremely tempted to sign up with them and I'm never lacking in content on my DVR (Motorola or TiVo HD).

Another company to post gains was Amazon.com with an 18% growth in revenues and 24% increase in gross profits worldwide, partially thanks to lowered tax rates, and a customer base of over 88 million people. However, gross profit margins didn't get much better. You can read all the gritty details, including the Q&A session with Jeff B and friends, here. It's quite an epic read. I think people are just gratefully and happy that our hard work through Q4 really paid off, and it's a testament to the strength of our customers. Amazon truly does focus on the customer, and I think that's an enormous part of why we're able to survive this downtown. We'll keep working hard on making our products better and better and hopefully our customers will continue to support us. I can assure you that Amazon is not going to be squandering these profits - they're going to be invested wisely.

DTV Transition Still On

This is a short story, but I thought it was kind of funny. Remember a while ago when I said that Obama wanted to push back on the Digital TV transition because the coupon program was underfunded and he didn't think people were ready for it (and it would look bad for people who were uninformed if their TVs stopped working soon after he took office)? Well, the Senate had no problem agreeing with him. A lot of techies weren't happy with this though citing that it'll only create more confusion to change the date and if people aren't prepared now then a few more months won't help. After all, people will just go to their local electronics store I'm sure and figure it out, or read a newspaper or something. In a rather shocking move, the House agreed that changing the date would be futile. The margin it lost by isn't that big, but only 6.5 million being unprepared isn't that big of a deal. That means that it's likely that they'll talk to a neighbor on the morning of February 18 or a co-worker and figure it out. I don't expect riots in the street or anything. Coincidentally, I'm getting my TiVo's CableCARD installed on February 18, so I'm sure it'll be super easy to get in touch with Broadstripe to find out when the cable guy will be coming.

This Week in Google

There was a decent amount of Google news last week, so let's start with the bad: YouTube users are pretty unhappy about the audio being muted on their videos. YouTube has been flooded with protest videos and profanity against Warner Music and YouTube. Some people are even hoping that Warner Music folds. It's gotten so ridiculous that even some of Warner's own artists (like Metallica) have had to move their content off of YouTube onto their own websites. There is such a thing as fair use for this copyrighted music, and this purge is completely ridiculous. Hopefully they'll come to their senses, but I don't see how discouraging people from listening to the music you're trying to promote is going to help you survive the current economic climate.

Google is responding to the economy by increasing the number and frequency of some of their advertising. Some of their products have little or no advertising as it is, so I think it totally makes sense to experiment more with those properties. I guess that we'll see what happens at the end of the quarter in their earnings call.

Now onto the really good Google news: they're trying to help in the fight for net neutrality by backing M-labs in providing free tools to see how net neutral your ISP really is by checking how your connection responds to BitTorrent traffic. Aggregating this data could prove to be very useful in giving consumers more information in choosing their ISP and discriminating against those who unfairly block or restrict certain traffic on their networks.

Lastly, Google has released offline Gmail access as a Google Labs extra. I haven't tried it out yet personally, but I know that this is going to definitely push Outlook huggers to the edge when they realize how much lighter and accessible Gmail is. It basically syncs with Gmail regularly and stores items locally when offline to be sent when your Internet connection is restored.

Free Your Phone

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is tired of locked cell phones and the way that gross telecommunications monopolies dangle them as carrots in front of their customers. They've started a campaign to add a clause to the DMCA to make unlocking your cell phone a legal act. It's actually pretty disgusting that it's considered copyright infringement to be able to use that $300 phone you bought however you want. It sounds like Apple's locked-down app store is also in their crosshairs. I'll definitely keep you posted as more develops on this battle, which I'm very excited about.

One more quick piece of cell phone news: Congress is trying to ban the sale of cell phones with cameras that do not make a sound when you take a picture. It wouldn't take effect until a year after it's passed, but it doesn't sound like it's even near being up for a vote. I think it's a pretty good idea. Granted, you can buy an ultracompact camera that can be muted, but that's harder to aim under women's skirts and people who own those don't have them nearly as readily available as their cell phone. Only two small things that should be considered: people should be able to at least choose the sound (they've already thought about this) and the camera should not be such that it can take pictures accidentally in your pocket even when it's on vibrate (my old phone always took pictures in my pocket).

Last Notes

Ok, time for the one-liners!

Network World has a great list of online privacy tips that are just as applicable for adults as they are for teens/tweens. It's amazing how much information people who should know better volunteer online without giving it a second thought.

Kind of related to that: you should always log off of your web accounts when you're using a computer that someone else has the potential to use. College Humor has a fun series of pictures about what stands to happen to you if you don't.

Seattle is now the most wired city in America, according to Forbes! Eat it, Atlanta! Also, Austin has finally made the list at the #30 spot. That's great news for two of my favorite cities in the world!

So much for theories that Apple doesn't want Flash on the iPhone: they're working with Adobe to get Flash working on the iPhone. So I guess iPhone users will have to continue to be patient and keep hope alive.

Lastly, I got my computer working as a home media server for my PS3 after 6 months and I'm really stoked! I thought I'd share this forum post that may help other PS3 owners who have had the issues I've had. I actually had just turned off my firewall because my TiVo was having issues playing music from my computer (though transferring videos from my TiVo works wonderfully), and all of a sudden Windows Media Player asked if I wanted to let "Unknown Device" see my media library as soon as I turned on my PS3! Unlike TVersity and PlayOn, it wasn't laggy for me at all. I just figured out that in Zone Alarm if you go to "Alerts and Logs" you can see the IP addresses that are being blocked and add them to your trusted zone if you want to. My PS3 was one of those IPs. Just a fun tip for any other Zone Alarm users having home media server issues.

Have a fantastic week, everyone! I'm on call for work so I'm counting on a rollercoaster of a week ;)

Slumdog Millionaire

Got a Camcorder!

After the snow storm cleared up, I headed to Houston for Christmas and didn't really get a chance to sit down and blog about the news I had marked (you can blame a House marathon), and I don't want to talk about month-old stories so I'm going to fill this short post with original content and do a normal post next week. My coolest Christmas gift was this baby to the right here (in black): the Flip Mino HD camcorder. It's a pretty sweet pocket-sized camcorder that shoots in 720p HD, and I love it so far. I want to keep playing around with it and do a full review probably before the end of this month. I didn't post last week because I was skiing in Whistler, B.C. with my brother and his wife, but I took plenty of video so I'll try to post one big video with all that footage stitched together next week - all shot with my Mino HD. I'm trying to see if I can put it together for free using Avidemux and Windows Movie Maker, but we'll see how that works out in the days to come. I'm also going to be getting the tripod for it soon, so hopefully I'll be able to do more video content on this blog, which is the most exciting thing to happen to my little corner of the web since I got a digital camera a couple of years ago.

Who Wants to be a Slumdog Millionaire?

Rather than try to set up the plot of this movie, I think I'll just show you the trailer:



The trailer may even give you more information than it should, but if it motivates you to go see this movie then I'd say it was worth it. Essentially: it's about a bum who rises to become a millionaire through a famous TV show that was all the craze in India shortly after it was big in the US. Other than being set in India, I never felt compelled to see this film, especially after the Totally Rad Show's verdict was not to seek it out, but my sister-in-law loved it enough to convince us, and it was definitely a pleasant surprise.

Though the director isn't Indian so technically this isn't a Bollywood movie, I really wish that we had more Bollywood movies like this. A movie like this could definitely make an Indian man feel more proud about his country's cinema. I understand that Bollywood musicals have their place and I'm fine with that, I just wish it would produce films like this that cast India in this light that the world doesn't see: ugliness and beauty all at once permeating the streets. Any scenes that were set on the streets definitely gave me that vibe, and the cinematography was a big part of that. I didn't like how often the camera tried to give the audience a vertigo effect, but other than that it was quite impressive. The casting choices reminded me of Pan Labyrinth in that each one seemed to fit perfectly since these are actors/actresses you've never seen before and they do such a great job of portraying these characters that you don't imagine them in a world outside this movie. The music in this movie was also something that stood out to me: every song really held its own and they've since been stuck in my head at random times because their poignancy really resonated with me.

If all those things weren't enough, it was one of those movies where we were talking about it long after we left the theater and debating motivations and plot points and such. Even though it can try to be too obvious at times with themes and symbols, you can forgive it because it tells the story so well. I was worried that parts of the movie would feel contrived, but I thought that things flowed rather smoothly. If I had one complaint about this film, it would probably be that the pacing felt a bit off. It definitely felt like a long movie, and it was only 2 hours long. I strongly recommend running out and catching this movie if it's playing in your city, or keeping it in mind to rent later this year if you can't see it now. I give it an A+ and say that it's worth seeking out because I feel like it tells a very unique story in a great way and it does suspense so well that I'd compare that element of it to the likes of 24.

The Dark Knight Live Chat

I mentioned a while ago that The Dark Knight blu-ray had a special live chat for 100,000 people with director Christopher Nolan, and I did, indeed, attend it. I was pretty satisfied with it overall.

It was text only, not video. At first I was disappointed, but actually text chat lets you enjoy the movie fully and only tune in to what Nolan is saying when/if you want. It's actually a text box at the top of the screen that's readable without being too big and has a somewhat transparent background so that you can see whatever part of the movie it covers. We asked questions on the WB BD Live site (you had to be logged in, so only people in the chat could ask questions), and Nolan (or perhaps a third-party moderator) goes through and asks as many of the best as quickly as possibly.

Sometimes, he picked ones that I thought were kind of dumb or already answered in other features on the disc, but there were a lot of insightful questions answered about the casting, nuances of the story, origins and inspirations, etc. I didn't get any of mine answered, unfortunately, but the event could only support 100,000 people and with 600,000 copies sold on the first day alone (I imagine a significant number from pre-orders), I imagine a number of people were excited about this event a week afterwards.

I don't know how often they're going to be doing this, but it was cool. It was the only BD Live feature that I thought was creative and on par with some of the stuff Disney is trying out. I'd love to see them do more live events with actors from the film or even Batman comic experts.

For the curious, some have posted rough transcripts of the chat, but here are my highlights (beware of spoilers if you haven't seen the movie):

-Heath Ledger improvised certain voice qualities and gestures (like clapping for Gordon's promotion).
-The Hong Kong tanker plane was real.
-Nolan admitted that Rex Reed is his worst critic.
-The joker card in the judge's papers is how the Joker sources her DNA (this was a big mystery to me).
-The Long halloween and Batman Year One are Nolan's favorite Batman comics
-The assassination sequences were inspired by the Godfather
-Nolan's favorite scene was the very last one
-He took some funny questions, telling "spencer, [to] get over floren", and admitting that "it’s a 2-pee movie - I gotta make a shorter film next time".
-Someone proposed during the chat (and it worked)!
-A lot of people asked about casting choices and how good they were.
-Two face is dead.
-Dent killing 5 ppl (aside from the 2 cops) is still a mystery.

Prince of Persia First Impressions

I just wanted to real briefly talk about Prince of Persia since it's a new game that has probably been lost amidst all the December releases. I really like it so far. I've only past the prologue and healed one area, but the game is gorgeous and the animation is wonderful. I'm also impressed by the short load times. I have to admit that the game mechanics take some getting used to because action-adventure fans, including those of previous games in the 3-D leg of this franchise, will probably hit jump twice and end up jumping three times, for example. Once you get used to them though, the game feels like a ballet of parkour and stylized fight sequences. The fighting may not be very difficult or very varied, but I liked that the focus is on exploration and puzzles rather than fighting because I see it as more of a platformer/adventure title, and adventure games that rely too much on combat end up failing in that regard. This game definitely isn't for everyone, but if you can appreciate the finer points then you'll probably enjoy it. We'll see if my opinion changes as I get farther in the game.

Randomness

And now for some random last notes:

I finally created a Listmania list of my top 10 favorite movies of all time, which typically changes a couple of times a year so this ought to be a good, central place to keep it. This is not the 10 best movies of all time, just the 10 that I enjoyed the most. A movie's quality is subjective anyway, so I judged them for my list just based on watchability rather than technical quality. For example: Traffic is an awesome movie that I never want to see again because it's too depressing.

Has anyone heard of a site called Honeyshed? I saw a commercial for it on TV and was disturbed when I finally visited it. It's a digital home shopping network targeted at teenage hipsters that seems like a giant joke. It is a real site, unfortunately. I can't imagine how it got funding to be created, but I'll give it credit for being somewhat polished.

Now that Konami is releasing Silent Hill and Metal Gear Solid for the iPhone, I have to admit that it's actually trying to compete with the PSP and the DS, because now it's going past the standard cell phone game fare. By the way, has anyone played the Metal Gear Solid pack for Little Big Planet? I'm thinking of downloading it.

VHS is dead, but will not be missed. Well, not by me, anyway. I never bought stuff on VHS because I never saw the point in it, but I remember being convinced by DVD because of the quality and extras. It's kind of funny how times change like that.

I didn't want to mention this, but I feel compelled to since everyone else has been: Apple will no longer be at Macworld after this year, and it's because they always wanted to, not because Jobs is retiring. I thought that making accusations like was irresponsible on the media's part. Jobs is obviously going to retire in the coming years, but that doesn't mean in the next couple of months just because this is his last Macworld.

Hope you all have a good, snow-free week (it snowed a bit tonight in Seattle)!

Yahoo's Struggle Continues

On MGS4 and Zach & Miri

Before I get to the news, there were a couple of things I wanted to talk about. I beat Metal Gear Solid 4 last week, and a part of me wants to write a review for it but I think that it's past the point that it needs reviews. Still, I wanted to say a few words. I felt like it I may have enjoyed the first game best just because it was so revolutionary to me, but this was by far the the best game in the series. The gameplay took the concept of a cinematic experience (especially with the score) where you always feel connected to the main character to an entirely new level. There was never a cutscene where I didn't think I could be dropped in any second, and yet I was invariably excited with terror at what I had to do next. It was not very predictable and once the game had convinced me that basically anything could happen (that didn't take long), I was convinced that this was one of the best games I'd ever played. The story I think suffered at some points, especially with cutscenes that focused too much on unimportant details leaving vital details ambiguous, but the animation throughout the game was incredible with very little glitchiness or hints of aliasing. The presentation was impeccable and even though I felt like the gameplay elements I had come to love in the first half of the game started to degrade as I got closer to the end, I thought it was great how it incorporated elements from multiple action games (including past entries in the series) to the point that it had something for everyone. Speaking of which, the boss battles were always enjoyable and cute in how they were homages to the past games. Anyway, if you have a PS3 then you should at least rent this game but I think it's worth buying. It's really a hallmark of the system's capabilities and how to do espionage action right.

All I want to say about it though I went to Austin over the weekend and had a blast. The first thought I had when I entered Texas was that I was home, but I really do feel at home right here in my Seattle apartment. Maybe there's just a difference between home and comfort though. Or does that sound crazy? It was nice to enjoy Tex-mex and visit 6th Street and see friends and watch a movie at the Alamo Drafthouse. Speaking of which, I saw Zach and Miri Make a Porno.



I have mixed feelings about this movie. I kind of went in with high expectations because I'm a fan of some of his other recent movies (Clerks II, Clerks, Dogma, Mallrats), but I was let down overall. The premise of the movie is that Zach and Miri are best friends that live together and when they need money to pay the rent they decide to make a porno, and hilarity, theoretically, ensues. I didn't have a problem with this plot, but I feel like they could've done a lot more with it. For 80% of the jokes I felt like I just chuckled rather than laughed. Even though it's a romantic comedy, I kind of expected more on the comedy part of that equation. More than the friends I went to see it with, I thought that it was kind of sweet in the end, which reminded me of The Girl Next Door, a movie that I admit to really enjoying and even owning. However, unlike that movie I felt like this one was wholly unmemorable other than a couple of moments and didn't feel as real or as fun. Despite all these gripes, this is still really good for a romantic comedy, and half decent as just a comedy, but I'd say that it's really more of a rental. I give it a C+ because I liked the cast, it had some good jokes and sweet moments, and the movie was happy overall, I just wish it was more of a Kevin Smith movie.

Yahoo Gets Desperate

Yahoo's situation this year has been under much discussion this year, and if you look back in my archives from this spring then you'll find plenty of information about what happened. In a nutshell, they played hardball with Microsoft in their bid to acquire Yahoo, and Microsoft backed out from the deal once they were eyeball to eyeball.

Things haven't gotten much better for them since. They tried to cut costs and ultimately had to layoff over a thousand people, and rumors sprouted up last month (which ended up being true) that more layoffs would be on the way. This is definitely not the happiest pf times for Yahoo employees. Talks were in motion that Google would partner with Yahoo to offer their ads on Yahoo's searches, but Google decided against it last week in fear of possible ensuing litigation. Some people believe that this was always the intention since it seems a little out of character for Google, but I don't think that this is the case and there's probably more afoot here than any of us are aware of. Maybe Google believed previously that it was a legal case they could win and later came to the conclusion that it wasn't as likely to be a worthwhile thing to fight for.

Part of the reason why I don't believe in that theory is that Yahoo clearly was not prepared for it. In a seemingly desperate move, CEO Jerry Yang has stated that they would be willing to re-consider another offer from Microsoft. He says now that they would've been willing to make a deal with Microsoft this spring, which is very different from the image that the media seemed to have that Yahoo was trying to stick it out for the long haul and didn't want to be acquired by them. I'm pretty disappointed in Yahoo's leadership. While I didn't think it made sense for them to ask for money from Microsoft and it seemed to me like this implied that they really didn't want to go to the boys in Redmond, it makes much less sense for them to come out when they're most vulnerable and signal that they don't feel they're competent enough to steer this company (#2 in online search, mind you) to a bright future. Instead, they want Ballmer to raid Yahoo's resources.

Yahoo is a profitable, billion dollar company despite what their ridiculous stock price may hint at, so this move is disappointing. I was hoping that they'd come up with a plan to focus on what has made the company successful in the past, but instead it's like they're throwing in the towel, or at least that's the public perception of things. That's not quite the image you want to give to investors, especially with Microsoft being coy about the possibility of making another offer to buy Yahoo. I feel that it's less likely to concern regulators than Google partnering with Yahoo, and I still think that it would be better for Yahoo than letting its current management deteriorate what made Yahoo the top search engine and one of the best Internet companies in the world once upon a time.

More on Windows 7

I found a few more articles that kind of supplement what I went over last time about Windows 7, though I'm still unclear about what lives in the clouds vs. what's on your desktop. Anyway, Neowin posted an excellent video from PDC going over what makes the new taskbar special, and it blew me away just a little. I won't be fully convinced that it's better than the current taskbar without using it for a week, but it really does seem like a lot of time was invested in making it something that really enriches the user experience.

It's also slightly faster at booting than Vista and much faster than XP, which may help build the case in weening Vista haters off of XP.

I mentioned last week that a public beta could be ready before the end of this year (though more likely will be available early next year), and it looks like they're looking to release the whole thing next holiday season. They're being smart to not commit to such a timeframe yet, and I think that it could be a possibility given the positive feedback as far as stability goes from the PDC build that was distrbuted. It'd be smart for them to have it out before summer 2010, which gives Vista a healthy 3 years as the Windows OS as opposed to the 5 years granted to XP. I think this would not only help save the Windows brand but help compete with Mac OS X, which has a more frequent (and regular) release schedule.

Meanwhile, I think we should all pay our respects to Windows 3, for which Microsoft will no longer issue licenses. I think that Windows 3.1 is one of those software releases that will be in a book of computing history that our children will read, and with good reason. The fact that it's still used in embedded systems today is either impressive or depressing (because it implies that nothing better is widely used and/or available, but I don't know a whole lot about embedded systems so I can't speak to this).

Spotlight on YouTube

It's no secret that one thing no one has really figure about YouTube is how to properly monetize it. Adding in advertisements without alienating your user base is not as easy as it sounds. and YouTube has been wrestling with it ever since Google acquired them. After all, you can't provide contextual ads for all user-submitted content in case they're contrary to the brand advertised or inappropriate or infringe a copyright.

They're now in negotiation with multiple movie studios to stream full-length movies or sanctioned clips from them, with royalties provided by ad revenues. Not only that, but they've started testing the waters with full-length TV shows. The main gripes about these shows are that the quality still isn't that great, there's quite a bit of advertising tacked on (pre-, mid-, and post-rolls, in some cases), and they're not in a centralized location. The combination of these two deals means that they stand to be in direct competition with the likes of Hulu and Joost, and while these two companies came after YouTube it definitely seems like they have a better handle on how to properly deliver this content. Still, they don't have the user base that YouTube has so it's not improbably for YouTube to end up on top, but selection is important so this is all pending more finality on these deals.

CNN Has Holograms?

Meanwhile, has anyone noticed that CNN started using holograms? I saw one last week when I tuned in during the election coverage and saw the words "Will.i.am via Hologram" at the bottom of the screen, but I wrote it off as an old technology that I hadn't seen before because I don't watch CNN generally. I was wrong though, it is new. It was the least of my concerns that night though as opposed to witnessing history (not because Obama won, but because someone other than an old, rich White guy won), but it piqued the interest of many people in the aftermath of the election. Is it really a Star Wars-esque hologram? Some people don't seem to think so. Apparently, they're really tomograms since they're just images that are recreated in 3-D for your television screen and were not projected live in studio. that would help explain why the interviewee always seemed shorter than the person who was actually in the studio. Still, I think that this is a stepping stone to having holograms, so it's still noteworthy.

Quick Notes

I'm pretty sleepy so, per normal, I'm going to run through the other stories I have tagged here rather quickly.

Amazon is started to use frustration-free packaging on certain products that are easier to open and more environmentally friendly. I thought that this was a pretty creative innovation and can't wait to see it on more products.

Firefox has hit a record 19.97% market share in the browser market, which means that it almost has a fifth of the market that used to largely belong to Internet explorer just a few years ago.

Comcast has been experimenting with P4P, which just optimizes P2P based on physical locality, and found an 80% performance boost in P2P file downloads. This was a small trial though and more have to be done to verify these findings, but it's refreshing that Comcast is doing something right.

For a trip down hacking memory lane, check out this list of the 10 worst computer viruses of all time.

Enjoy the rest of your week, everyone! Hopefully, it won't rain too much here in Seattle (yeah right).

The Promise of Windows 7

This is my first post in a while where you won't find any mention of Apple news. Instead, the spotlight turns to Microsoft, and it's about time. I'm by no means a Microsoft fanboy, but they have a lot of smart people there so I'm always interested to talk about what they're working on, especially since we don't get news like this from them very often. It's been a long weekend of on call work for me (I hate DST) so let's get right to it.

Windows Azure

Last week, at the Professional Developers' Conference, Microsoft unveiled a glimpse into Windows 7, which they have codenamed Windows Azure (I love that color, but Longhorn was a good codename, too). What's kind of funny is that I was just listening to a podcast a couple of weeks ago speculating that the next version of Windows would be in the clouds whereas I thought that it's more likely that consumers aren't ready and Windows 8 would be that OS. I was mostly wrong, it turns out.

I'm trying to put together the things I've read about Azure, so please correct me if I'm wrong. It sounds like it will be an OS that will live on Microsoft's servers, but I think that there will still be need to be installed on your computer, probably off of a download, or else it would be really slow. I think the point of it living in their data centers is that it makes it easier to distribute applications, and it gives rise to thin clients (computers with cheap hardware that are typically used as simple Internet machines or as workstations). They're really trying to grow the Live platform here and get into hosted computing, something that Amazon pioneered (at least on a large scale) with Amazon Web Services including the Simple Storage Service (S3) to easily, cheaply, and efficiently store/fetch data and Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2) for on-demand processing power. I think this is less of a jab at Amazon then you might think because it feels like it's really targeted at enterprise clients. It'd make it easier to maintain a secure network in your company and setup everyone with the same stuff. I have no idea if this means that you can't run Azure without the Internet (probably so, I imagine it would be slightly similar to Google Gears) or if you can even buy it on a CD. I haven't seen such details revealed yet. I think you can think of it less like a remote desktop like a VNC server or Meebo and more like a different way to distribute and store software. I wonder if they'd make it so that you could remotely shut down your laptop then in case it was stolen? Imagine how much easier it would be to change computers if your software lived in the clouds. Even cooler would be syncing across multiple machines. Also, they could handle security patches so you wouldn't have to be as concerned about security. I wonder if it would act as a sandbox environment?

I still have a lot of questions, but I found some answers as I dug around. ZDNet posted a rundown of the features they noticed in the pre-Alpha build given out at PDC: device stage to make it easier to interact with your devices, action center to actually help troubleshoot issues, multi-touch and gestures (probably similar to Surface stuff), some sort of streaming media application called StreamOn, an improved animation framework (I suppose this would be Aero v2.0), and the ribbon UI stuff we see in Office 2007 (affectionately known as Office 12). Apparently, we'll have a public beta this December, which is more ambitious that I was expecting and I'm concerned that they're opening themselves up to what happened with Vista where people expected too much and then were disappointed when features got cut.

I know it's kind of superficial, but I like the new taskbar they're showing off:



The UI improvements unveiled so far are subtle, but nifty. On the taskbar, rather than text they're just big icons, which can be re-arranged, and mousing over a program icon lets you view screencaps of the windows open for it so you can select on. I hope there's an option to disable that because I don't like my windows being grouped, but if they pull it off right maybe it'll be easy to get used to. The really sweet addition though is something called a jump list, found by right clicking a task bar program icon or an item on the start menu, and just provide quick access to common features for an application. Applications can add custom entries to this, so that's just another way that they're trying to make Windows 7 more accessible for developers. To top it off, they made radical improvements to window management that let you focus on letting you give your attention to just a couple of applications at a time (hopefully this will scale to multiple monitors).

There's also Windows Media Player 12, which has vastly improved library management (I don't think anyone voluntarily uses the clunky library management that WMP 11 has), lots of little UI improvements, more codecs included right, out of the box, and support for networked media. Windows Media Player hasn't seen anything that has actually made it better in a very long time, so I feel like this is definitely an overdue change. Finally, Microsoft is really implementing what users have been wanting.

(EDIT: I accidentally forgot to bring up this article that mentioned a couple of important points. Windows 7 will, allegedly, improve laptop battery life and will run faster on Vista machines than Vista currently does. So aside from all the visual touch-ups, you will feel the improvements they made at very low levels. Other improvements are better memory management, improved crash resilience (i.e. learning how to run applications such that they don't crash), a sandbox for device drivers to avoid some of the ugly issues from Vista's launch, and it will be more reliable from day 1 rather than requiring a service pack to make it usable. I've actually heard from TWiT that the PDC build feels more like a beta 2 than a pre-alpha, which is an excellent sign compared to the trainwreck Vista build from 2003. Oh, and they couldn't name the 6 prior Windows versions but I think I can: 3.1, 95, 98, 2000, XP, and Vista.)

The kinds of changes we're seeing here are reminiscent of the jump from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 because they represent an entire paradigm shift in how you interact with Windows. This is really ballsy stuff from a company that I feel has become known for making safe bets on its core applications and simply hasn't been innovating enough unless you count what Microsoft Research is working on in a basement somewhere. I'm excited to see what Windows 7 will bring as we get closer to release candidates and my hopes are officially set high. Please, Microsoft, don't let us down.

Android Roadmap Out, but Sprint Not Impressed Yet

The good folks at Google have released an actual roadmap for their open-source, open mobile platform known as Android. It includes better support for localization, support for SIM cards, and an API for software-based keyboards and text completion (for on-screen typing). They don't have a time line for these features, but it's great that they're loosening the reigns on discussing Android and that they've been accepting patches from the community.

Sadly, the Sprint CEO sucks and feels like the platform isn't good enough for him to want to sell a phone that has the Sprint logo on it that runs Android. As a Sprint user, I can assure you that this is laughable. Sprint has the absolute worst selection of phones, and the Sprint brand is ok with the Palm OS, which I absolutely hate. This is clearly a ploy to play hard ball or some other such stupid tactic to earn leverage with Google. They're going to have to carry an Android phone next year if they don't want to lose customers (I will definitely leave Sprint if a good Android phone comes out on another carrier). I think he's bluffing, but it's still kind of funny that he's so bitter that T-Mobile was first to the punch.

Quick Notes

I'm really tired and need my beauty (yeah right) sleep, so I'm going to briefly go over the remaining news items I had tagged.

Google Labs has released more features for Gmail, this time in gadget form. They're actually pretty useful and include calendar integration and a to do list.

Netflix has allowed streaming movies to its PC subscribers for a while now, but it has now migrated this player to Silverlight from Flash and so it readily supports Macs (Intel-based, that is) and PCs. Now it just has to work on Linux and it's set!

Wal-mart took down its mp3 store, a DRM shop, a couple of weeks ago to the dismay of its customers because they said they'd be shutting down the servers that distribute the keys for you to be able to play this music on other computers. They later extended the lifetime of these servers and have now unveiled a DRM-free mp3 store, like Amazon's but with less content, lower prices, and a worse UI (which tends to crash my Firefox to the point that I'm afraid to visit it). Is that not a strange series of a events? What an excellent way to confuse your customers. At least it's DRM-free though.

If you want to see the Internet through the eyes of a Chinese citizen, there's now a Firefox plug-in that can get you as close as possible to the experience without the long flight. So check it out if you want to feel the sting of censorship.

I now have LittleBigPlanet and it's really really awesome - even better than the beta. Yes, I do plan on posting a review for it, but rather than doing what gaming magazines do and rush through playing it, I'm going to let it linger in my mind for a few weeks and see where I stand after all this hype has died down and it's just another game on my short shelf of PS3 games (see my beta review until then). I want to give a big picture of the game. Anyway, the developers are going to be supporting it with more levels in the near future, presumably free since you can copy the levels you play online to your moon (your planet for your creations)), and downloadable content, both free (but limited in time available for download) and paid, in the form of costumes and level editor tools.

See you all back here next week! Be good until then.

The LittleBigPlanet Beta

LittleBIGBeta

Like every week, there was a lot going on last week. In my week though the biggest thing to happen was that I got a beta code for LittleBigPlanet (LBP), and I was ecstatic (I still am, actually). It was so difficult to get a code though that I felt like I had to punch a 12 year-old in the face to get one, but I got it fair and square. I'm sure that their distribution of these codes made perfect sense in theory, but it was terrible. They gave codes to various online video game magazines and LBP fan sites with the number of codes given in proportion to the site's overall popularity and/or importance. So it ended up being a mad rush for those sites (most contests were first come first serve) that crashed GamePro and the LBP news blog entirely, among others - a true life denial of service scenario. Ideally, they should've just distributed the codes themselves and/or given them to those who pre-ordered, but fortunately the LBP news blog later just gave them out to whoever tried to get them in their giveaway.

In case you don't know, you get to control Sackboy in the game. That's this guy:



He doesn't generally look that scary though, he's actually super cute. I wish I had screenshots and videos to show you, but It's just been hard for me to get anything that would do the game justice and between showing you crappy videos and not showing you anything at all, I prefer the latter. I'll leave the videos to Mm, but G4 did a great special as well. It's a platformer at its core and the basis of the game is that it kind of exists in our dreams and imaginations. Games have evolved so much into these full cinematic experiences that have deep stories (or attempt to have them), high budget graphics, and very advanced control schemes. What I love about LBP is that it aims for simplicity, a high sense of art direction, and just having fun. It reminds me of games from back in the day when the story didn't matter, it was all about the experience of the gameplay (not that I hate storylines, simplicity is just appealing). All you need to know is that you are a burlap sack person, which is really a blank canvas for you to customize into whatever you want: a bunny (my Sackboy right now), a pirate, an astronaut, a Victorian lord, etc. It's all about giving the user the ability to customize nearly everything with extreme ease and trying to put you in this fantastical world that's often all about just being happy. And this is just the beta, it's not even the full game yet. It's not really very stressful, either.

The beta only includes 3 levels (which kind of double as tutorials), what appears to be a full-featured level creator, and the ability to play the levels others have submitted online (you can submit yours as well, of course, which will be available at launch) on your own or co-operatively (on your PS3 or with others online). It looks like it only outputs in 720p (it's under 1 GB, so that's not too shabby, actually), but it looks in-freaking-credible. On my Samsung Series 7, I can be extremely discerning of video/sound quality and I was completely blown away. I sometimes sit closer just so that I can fully appreciate the level of detail they put into the graphics. The graphics may not be as big budget as Metal Gear Solid 4, but they impress me just as much and I find them more inspired than Devil May Cry 4, which arguably does technically have a better graphical engine. I don't see any artifacts or jaggies or anything like that. It's visually flawless, especially the ridiculous lighting engine. When you see a golf ball, it looks like a a golf ball, and when you put a sticker on it it looks as if it was printed on the ball like a logo - that's how fine tuned it is.

Ok, moving on to more important things: the controls. It's extremely simple: left stick to move around, x to jump, and R1 to grab. Yeah, that's it. Cool, huh? Now they have sensitivity adjustments, but that's essentially it. I keep citing how I played Dead Space at PAX and was really turned off by how many freaking buttons it required, so I love this. There are other fun things though: holding the back shoulder buttons give you control of your Sack person's arms, moving your controller around lets you control their head or torso, and the D-pad buttons let you control their emotions (happy, sad, scared, or angry). Oh, and square brings up your popit menu to use stickers (which can be stuck on anything, even you, and have no limit to their use) and customize your character and kill yourself (to go to the last checkpoint). It's used extensively in the level editor, too. The few levels that were available were definitely fun to play, but not very difficult since they're the very first levels in the real game. The art style was a joy to take in though and I loved the incentives of finding stickers and costume items and bonus levels - it's what keeps the game engaging since it doesn't seem to have an over arching cohesive storyline, though I believe that there are mini-stories throughout the game. Nerds love to collect stuff, but I think people do in general, as well. There was also a cute mini game where I had to jump over a king's tie as it spun around to collect points.

The level editor is nothing short of incredible. People are going to love this thing. I have to admit that it can be a bit daunting after you see the levels that other people have created since they're often quite clever, but they have some great, simple tutorials to get you familiar with the tools, and the fact that you can hover around makes it so much easier to create levels. It feels pretty much as intuitive as they could've made an editor with so many options. I feel like you can create anything you can imagine whether it be spaceship or a dinosaur or a horse or the theme to FFX (totally badass) or a conveyor belt or whatever you want. It really is a lot more expansive than I had ever imagined, and it gives you a lot of options to not only make it functionally extensive but as visually appealing as you want. I definitely underestimated it. You can even control the sounds that things make as they're destroyed, it's just really fun. The tutorials can sometimes be slow, but I actually really love their voiceover guy so it's not so bad. I still can't wrap my head around how perfect the physics engine is: it adds real physics to everything you create, and it's just as you would expect these things to function in this fantasy world. I would've loved a mode where you create levels based on challenges to get better acquainted with the editor, like a level editor mini-game I guess, but it's not anything sorely missed.

There are a few problems with the game, but they're pretty minor. I've experienced serious lag, but this is still a beta and I haven't played online co-operatively a whole lot for a few days so it may have gotten better. I sometimes end up jerking around my analog stick a lot in user-created levels because of slick surfaces, but I think that just means I suck at those levels. ;) I do see some collision detection issues and other weird issues in the tutorials, but they haven't been very often. I'm more worried about how finding levels is going to work after release: there are already so many levels and many where it's peoples first levels that really suck. There's nothing wrong with your first level sucking, but why put it online if it's not a polished product? Why not keep working on it? I wish there was a better way of navigating all the levels other than just the search box and tags, or flipping through pages of worlds, but it's not a problem that easily fixable. I've played some levels though where I was just blown away and it really did inspire me to want to create my own levels to try and match their brilliance. By the way, you can give away prizes in your levels that you create, like stickers or level editor parts, so the ability to play a bunch of levels and then use their created parts to add to your level editing toolkit gives the level editor even more possibilities. It's like the concept of code re-use in programming - you literally don't have to re-invent the wheel.

In conclusion, this is going to be a must-have game for the PS3. I don't see how you can go wrong with this game, I feel like it appeals to casual and hardcore gamers and that it has unlimited playability alone or with friends. It's one of the best, most polished games I've ever played, and this is only the beta. It follows a very important mantra in this industry: easy to get into, hard to master. Every truly great game is great because it's easy to learn but hard to be the best at, and with the level editor that truly means something for LBP. I recommend pre-ordering it if you have a PS3 - there are a couple of exclusive costumes out the first week (astronaut and an LBP shirt) that you can only get the first week, by the way.

The Ongoing Saga of Music Industry Stupidity

There were threats early last week that the Copyright Royalty Board would raise the royalty rates on digital music to nearly double (9 cents to 15 cents) for the artists, which would likely come out of the pockets of the proprietors of these digital music services since studios are so stingy, so iTunes threatened to shut down. I don't know if it was an empty threat or not, but it would definitely operate at a loss for Apple given their already razor thin profit margins. The Board did not end up increasing the rate, though they did set a rate for ringtones (at 24 cents). I wanted to bring this up because I'm kind of surprised that the government has this kind of power. Even though I think they ended up ruling for the best, it flies in the face of a free market, in my opinion. Even more disturbing is the prospect that music studios will do whatever it takes to bring up their short term profits, even if it means long term losses in grounds like digital distribution and Internet radio.

Speaking of the latter, Pandora also spoke out early last week begging fans of the service to write in to their Congressmen so that they wouldn't pass the ridiculous bill that would raise royalty rates for Internet radio to a stupid rate that no existing Internet radio service can possibly afford to pay now or in the forseeable future if they expect to stay in future. Terrestrial radio do not pay royalty fees right now since their playing the music already promotes it to an equal effect, but that's also been discussed in the past. Fortunately, Congress decided to extend the period of time for royalty negotiations with SoundExchange for Internet broadcasters to February 2009, but this doesn't guarantee anything.

It makes me so mad that this is an industry that is clearly in trouble and just pissing all over itself in trying to fix its problems by creating more of them. Pandora and Last.fm and others are better than terrestrial radio since they're often easier to listen to at work, they're more likely to get you listening to other artists that you'll actually like, and they make it painfully convenient to buy music. What the Hell do these music studios want?! The RIAA already has a black eye from their case against Jammie Thomas. I don't know how a group of executives get together in a board room and decide that they way to save their asses is to shut down the companies that have been breathing new life into their sales. I predict very bad things for music sales if there end up being royalty hikes, so continue to support Pandora and cross your fingers - they seem to be the front runners of this battle.

The G1 is Getting Closer

There's a lot of mixed opinions about the G1 among people in the know. For me, I'm not convinced that it'll be an amazing device, but I'm excited that Android can't be vaporware at this point and can only get bigger and better, even if the device it starts out on isn't likely to be a blockbuster. Motorola is already interested in Android. By the way: the naysayers harping on the lack of Exchange support seem to be forgetting the iPhone's release last summer - things didn't turn out too shabby for Apple. Gizmodo has a very positive spin on the situation in case you've fallen victim to a lot of the bad press. That article is mostly an exploration of what the success of this truly open mobile platform can mean (I know, you can't do tethering and a few other things, but these are minor details compared to the restrictions of other mobile platforms, including the iPhone's). It's going to pump more innovation in the smartphone market, and that's really important. Apple shouldn't get too comfortable - no one should. They should all be constantly innovating, and I hope that the G1, as lacking as it may be in certain areas, will help provide a boost. Just remember that it's not an iPhone replacement, it's something else altogether. If you really want a touch screen comparison though, Tech Radar compares the G1 to the iPhone and the Nokia Tube, but it's a bit long.

Back to the iPhone real quick: Apple has decided to drop its Non-disclosure Agreement (NDA) for released applications, but this doesn't seem to be as exciting to me as it does to everyone else. I am pleased by it and it's a step in the right direction, but the fact that when you're developing an iPhone application that your lips have to stay sealed just doesn't make sense to me. Now that the SDK is out in the open, why seal any lips about it? Why not encourage further collaboration even among unreleased applications? At least this will allow the publication of books. I'll close this section with good news for Apple: Mac market share has grown to 8.2%, which has shrunk Microsoft's share to 90.3%. Bravo, Apple: you've really squeezed a lot out of this run of MacBooks and iMacs and MacBook Pros.

Quick Notes

I'm really tired, so it's time to wrap things up with a quick list of the other items I flagged but just don't have time to discuss in depth.

CNet has an article about net neutrality claiming that the solution to the ISPs' proclaimed problem of infrastructure costs of Internet connectivity is to charge consumers for tiers rather than having content providers foot the bill. I've said this before and I'll say it again: the ISPs are hoarding their money and could've easily upgraded their networks had they invested properly all these years. Tiering the Internet is dumb and people around the world who have to deal with it are not happy with it (anecdotal evidence, I have nothing to cite on that).

YouTube bumped its video upload limit to 1 GB, which is much better than 100 MB, especially with many point-and-shoot cameras' level of craptacular compression.

Did you know that Gmail has an activity monitor at the bottom? Check it out, it's super nifty.

PC World has a fun roundup of the 10 most mysterious cyber crimes.

Computer World has an even better roundup of famous tech myths. My perpetual favorite is Al Gore inventing the Internets.

And to wrap things up back to the start of this post: get some creative inspiration from these bus stop ads.

Whew, that was a long one! It'll probably be shorter next time. Have a great week, everyone!

X-Files and My Semi-Glorious Return

I'm back to blogging! I meant to write this post yesterday, but opted for Rock Band instead (sorry). I should be posting at least weekly, but I'll shoot for bi-weekly. I'm still getting adjusted to living in Seattle, and I am a bit homesick, but I am enjoying the scenery out here.

X-Files: I Want to Believe

Full disclosure: I can't remember the last episode of this show that I saw, but it was probably the only one I've seen. This show was on when I was pretty easily scared of stuff in general so I never got into it. I'm sure it was a good show, it just wasn't my cup of tea and now I'm on to bigger and better shows (Burn Notice is currently rocking my socks).

The movie revolves around one big missing persons mystery (an FBI agent) and a psychic, so given the psychic's involvement the FBI have called on Dana Scully to call in Fox Mulder, who requires her to help if he's going to help. They've basically been going on with their own lives (Mulder's being as a recluse) so this is kind of a major reunion for them. The more I think about the story though, the more I have problems with it. I walked out of the theater feeling no better or worse than when I walked in, and the movie seemed pretty good but not amazing.

Let me start out with my issues. They had a psychic helping them and they called in Mulder because they were stuck. Anyone see a problem with that? They have a psychic, which is hard for them to believe naturally, but why does this mean they need to call on Mulder? It seems like he's been estranged by the FBI, so I don't see why they require his help. Even if you're ok with that though, I just never believe the chemistry between Mulder and Scully. Their reunion in the movie seems to have been after a long time and yet they weren't very affected by it. Their love story progression seemed like an after thought they clumsily wove into the movie, which is strange because I had heard in an interview that the movie was supposed to center on them. I also hate that we never connect with the antagonists at all, and the motive involved isn't all that compelling.



I don't know if fans really loved this movie. It seemed to drag on a bit. There wasn't a whole lot of thrill moments or action, and I never really got pulled in. Granted, I had no investment in this series and only went to see this movie in the first place because a friend wanted to, but I figured that it would be good. It could be that I'm dealing with a hangover from The Dark Knight and any movie I see will pale in comparison, but I watched Ratatouille the other night and still managed to enjoy it.

I definitely wouldn't say that the movie is bad though. I think it could've explained things better and tightening itself up a bit on time, but it was still entertaining. I think you should rent it if you're at all intrigued by the series or murder mysteries. It's definitely nothing out of the ordinary though (if you really want a great murder mystery just go rent Mystic River), and there are certainly better movies out there right now (obviously The Dark Knight, but I loved Wall-E and I've seen good reviews for Mamma Mia and Step Brothers). I give this movie a C-, because I can tell that they were trying to reach out to fans rather than people's wallets, but I think that they've probably just run out of ideas. It probably would've benefited from not being released right in the middle of a competitive summer for films.

The Dark Knight's $300m Dash

I counted on Box Office Mojo that The Dark Knight had topped 23 of their charts including biggest opening weekend ever, biggest second weekend ever, and biggest opening day gross. The one everyone is focusing on now though is that it is the fastest movie to hit $300 million (it's already at $315 million domestically, but over $350 million worldwide) with a record of 10 days. The third Pirates of the Caribbean movie had the title before at 16 days, and now people are predicting that The Dark Knight may beat Titanic's $600 million record for biggest total gross. I think that it can probably pull it off since it is past halfway there in its 2nd weekend. By the way, how the Hell did that movie make so much money? It wasn't a bad movie, but I saw it once and never want to see it again because it was so heavy and depressing. Anyway, this movie deserves the massive amount of money they're making. It seriously is a good time to be a nerd when something this phenomenal comes out that literally must seem like to many people, including myself, that it's straight out of their childhood fantasies. (I wasn't that dark as a child, but darkness always intrigued me)

Up-marketing Vista

In case you haven't noticed, Windows Vista has been taking a beating as far as publicity goes ever since its released because it didn't deliver on several of the promises that was made of it early in its development (always a fatal mistake). It took Microsoft far too long, but they're finally gearing up some positive marketing for Vista. They tested the waters by showing a "new OS" to people called Mojave and seeing how they liked it. In the end, it turned out that Mojave was Vista with the "Vista" name stripped from it and people were pretty shocked because most (or all) of them had the impression that Vista sucked. I'm personally glad about this because I'm freaking tired of having to defend my computer: it's a great machine and Vista works very well on it. It is no worse than XP and I admit that it sucks that you need a good computer to run it but if you do then the extra features (including the massively re-vamped search functionality) are pretty cool. The only problem I've had is that my downloading can sometimes impact my computer's overall performance, but I don't think that's necessarily Vista.

That's just one component for their response to Apple's smarmy Mac vs. PC ads. They're not going to do the same thing in reverse to attack Apple, but they're going to stop being such a sleepy giant and try a pro-Vista message. Some have seen the ads and are already excited about it, but they have not yet been made public. For the record: I don't hate Apple or Microsoft, but I do hate Apple taking advantage of its underdog status to continually take low-blows at Microsoft. Their ads are often unfair and prey on stereotypes, which bothers me. I'll admit that they're clever, but they've gone on far too long.

Open Xbox

One more quick piece of Microsoft news: they've decided to open up the 360 platform! That means that you don't have to be a big studio to write your own Xbox 360 game and put it out on Live. Not everyone will be allowed to put their game on Live, but the fact that they're encouraging this is just a massive step in the right direction. I wish that Sony would do the same. It's just going to breed more competition and produce higher quality of games that rely more on just flashy graphics and big budgets to attract attentions.

Yahoo! Music Store Folds

In another giant stab to DRM, Yahoo has closed up shop in the digital music game. They are the second DRM music service to go down this year (MSN was first), but the difference is that in a couple of months their key servers are going offline! What does that mean? The what DRM music often works is that they're locked by a key (in the case of subscription based services, these keys usually need to be renewed monthly) and you need these keys to be able to open these tracks. If you transfer them to another computer, this computer asks the server for the appropriate keys using your login information and it obliges, but in Yahoo's case you can't move your songs to another computer so if your computer dies then so does your music. Lame, huh? That's why you should use Amazon MP3: I still personally thing that it's the best digital music around and something like this would never happen to its customers. I wonder if enough people used the service for this to impact Yahoo's image? I kind of hope so, because it's a pretty raw deal (MSN's key servers will only be up until 2011, so they're not much better).

Comments and CS Concepts

I just wanted to briefly mention a couple of articles that I liked. The first one is concise and talks about why comments in code are appropriate and why. It's a great read, even if you do use comments in your code.

The other one is a list of the top 10 concepts that all software engineers should know. With the exception maybe of layering, I think that your success in the IT industry is doomed without an understanding of these ideas and a willingness to flesh them out throughout your career.

Streaming Torrents

EZTV, a huge group for trafficking torrents, has started putting up content that can be streamed using Swarmplayer, which streams content using bittorrent technology to distribute it. This is an excellent idea and I think could seriously revolutionize how we stream multimedia online, if it's harnessed in legal uses. This would really cut a lot of overhead out of putting things like TV shows online because a media company would no longer need to keep them on a centralized server and pay for the bandwidth to deliver it but rather could just seed a show well (i.e. have a few powerful machines dedicated to serving up the shows) and let everyone watching the show upload the show to others as they watch it. Couldn't someone compete with Hulu if they harnessed this technology? I imagine that you could put out HD-quality content with this sort of infrastructure. Only time will tell (assuming that this technology does get picked up by someone big).

One-Liners

I have a couple more articles that I want to talk about but they're just one-liners:

Legendary hacker Kevin Mitnick was part of a panel recently at a hacking convention and told some great stories (including a live prank). He's probably the father of social engineering attacks (tricking you into giving up sensitive information or making yourself vulnerable).

CNN has a pretty good article on how to prepare yourself for the transition to digital TV. If you're on cable or satellite, then you're ok. Otherwise, read that article.

Rock Band

I just wanted to conclude by proclaiming that Rock Band is an incredible video game. As expensive as my 80 GB PS3 was, I'm really glad I got it. I'm excited to start buying Blu-ray movies (especially Iron Man and The Dark Knight), Metal Gear Solid 4 is beautiful, the Playstation Network store is just how things should've been on the PS2, and Rock Band is by far one of the coolest games I've played.

I never thought I'd like it that much because I never got into Guitar Hero, but it's definitely worth checking out. The closest any game has come to replicating the kind of co-operative play you get from this game is probably Wii Sports, but this game tops that. You really do feel like you're part of a band because when you play hard song it's rewarding and you start patting each other on the back and stuff. Also impressives are the nuances: the presentation is flawless. They had my band name (Elton and the Fun King Band) on a tour bus, on CD album covers, and in neon in the World Tour mode! Plus, the load screens are customized with your band! Any musicians will really be impressed with this game (or non-musicians), because I think that it handles guitar a lot better, as well.

*deep breath* Ok, enough of that. I'm going to go read Salem's Lot for a bit. Have a great week, everyone!