Archive: Posts from October, 2004
October 30th, 2004, 23 Comments »
A while ago, I was pleased to discover iPodDownload, a utility that let you move audio files from your iPod to a computer. Apple doesn’t want you to do this, because it apparently encourages piracy. While I’m a sometime pirate, all I wanted to do was use my iPod to move my audio files from my desktop to my laptop computer–a totally legal and legitimate application of the technology.
Unfortunately, as BoingBoing reports, Apple has released iTunes 4.7, which breaks iPodDownload. I’m displeased, but Cory Doctorow is very upset:
What’s the lesson here? Well, Apple’s not on your side, even if you’re an Apple customer. If you buy into a proprietary platform where the music industry gets a veto, you’re scr0d. Every time you buy an iPod, you are financing legal and technical countermeasures aimed at taking away legitimate features that enable you to do more with your lawfully acquired music and hardware.
As Cory’s fond of saying, “no consumer wakes up in the morning and wants to do less with their technology.” Thanks a lot, Apple.
UPDATE: Cory Doctorow has more to say on the iPodDownload business, as does Dave Winer.
UPDATE #2: Further evidence that Apple acted intentionally, and a fix. C’est bon. Thanks, Unofficial Apple Weblog.
23 Comments »
October 30th, 2004, 3 Comments »
Earlier in the week, I chastised you if you still use Internet Explorer. I also wrote about the Mozilla Foundation’s campaign to raise money to run an ad in the New York Times. Their target was 2,500 names. Instead, they recent donations from over 10,000 people from 80 countries, raising over US $250,000. There’s an interview in Red Herring with the Mozilla marketing dude, and a discussion on Slashdot. From the interview:
The ad will cost just under $50,000, and the left-over cash will be plowed back into the Mozilla Foundation. SpreadFirefox.com is the Mozilla Foundation’s community marketing effort–a volunteer-run web site sporting the fiery motto “Igniting the web.” The rabble-rousing call to arms appears to be working, as close to 7 million people have downloaded the Firefox browser and are anxiously awaiting the scheduled November 9 release of Firefox 1.0.
The Slashdot thread includes some debate about how much money should be spent on further development. If the Mozilla folks know what they’re doing, the answer to that question is zero. Every cent of that money should be spent on effective marketing to convince people to switch to Firefox. They’ve already demonstrated that they have a superior product–now they need to tell people about it.
3 Comments »
October 29th, 2004, 1 Comment »
Business people sometimes ask me “if I started a weblog, who in my company should blog?” My first answer is “everyone, from the janitor to the CEO”. That’s not always practical, as generally the janitor’s too busy, and the CEO’s too lazy. I’ve often thought that, in software and hardware companies, technical writers make natural bloggers. After all, they are:
- Familiar with the development process.
- Usually customer advocates within the company.
- Hopefully good writers.
- Aware of sensitive areas. That doesn’t mean they won’t blog about bugs, but they’ll know how to do so in an upfront and helpful manner.
- Unlikely to devolve in marketing-speak.
- Likely to provide useful information to users.
I mention this because today Lockergnome directs us to the exceptionally-named BPI UE Team Blog, which is brought to you by “the badasses who document Microsoft BizTalk Server, Microsoft Host Integration Server, and Microsoft Commerce Server”.
1 Comment »
October 29th, 2004, No Comments »
No theme, again. Just too many links, too little time.
- Ah, but does your
Halloween costume store photos?
- An amusing game
for all you aspiring physicists. Things get complicated once you hit the covalent
bonds.
- Don’t
panic. Slightly augmented version of classic Infocom game.
- "As a general rule, don’t solve puzzles that open the portals to Hell."
This, and nineteen
other useful tips for living in horror movies.
- All the creepy video
clips you’ve ever wanted. Plus, plenty of horror
desktop wallpaper. I love a nice
flesh-eating zombie or possessed
little girl behind my icons.
- Learning to drive? Every
highway marker on the planet. Well, not quite, but lots and lots.
- The increasing problem of people watching
porn in their cars (registration required). The article reports that there
are screens as big as 17 inches in some vehicles (and we’re not talking RVs
here).
- The ten
worst (mostly British) cover songs. Come on, Ronan Keating, how dare you
cover the Pogues.
- If she doesn’t win
best costume, something’s rigged. We all know somebody like this. You
know, the who gets a little too obsessive about their Halloween costume.
- Star
Wars Galaxies wedding. Look for the dirty honeymoon shots at the end.
Enough said.
No Comments »
October 29th, 2004, 4 Comments »
Jeremy C. Wright has a new project called ResumeWiki.:
ResumeWiki is a community edited resume centre. You post your profile (goals, etc) and assume the community of peers will give you comments and possible edits. It is about harnessing the power of lots of eyes to help you get your job. It is kind of like Open Source’ing your resume. Less bugs, more potential, less work for the individual (you).
This sounds like a great idea to me, and might actually encourage me to update my deeply out-of-date resume. Here are a couple of samples.
4 Comments »
October 28th, 2004, 5 Comments »
As you may know, the figure skating season has begun. As my wife is a former competitive skater and now coaches on occasion, I know more about figure skating than any heterosexual male rightfully should. I have been interested to watch the implementation of a radical new judging system that attempts to make the sport less fraught with scandal. This article, which argues that the new system isn’t scandal-proof either, has a succint description:
In the old system, judges scribbled a few notes as they watched a skater for four minutes, then said to themselves, “That’s 5.7, 5.8.” In the new system, judges continually touch a computer screen to evaluate every jump, every spin, every spiral. The Olympic judge showing me the new system, Joe Inman, announced 50 different items as we watched a four-minute program.
There are more judges, they’re anonymous, and the best and worst scores are thrown out. Importantly, there’s an agreed-upon difficulty level for each element, and the execution is compared against that level. In short, way more data points and far less opportunity for block (or is that bloc?) judging.
Read more…
5 Comments »
October 28th, 2004, 10 Comments »
Yesterday I walked by from our office (here, at Quebec and East 2nd) back to my apartment, along False Creek (MapQuest more or less gets it right). I happened to have my camera with me, so I took a bunch of photos that ended up being all about sun, glass, reflection and refraction. Nothing earth-shatteringly brilliant. If nothing else, it was a heck of a nice day.
I note that Flickr shrank all of my photos to a maximum of 500 pixels wide. Is that a limitation of a free account, or a setting I can modify? Regardless, if you want a screensaver size version of the ScienceWorld TELUSphere photo, here it is.
10 Comments »
October 28th, 2004, 5 Comments »
Cross-posted to my day-job blog.
Today I got my latest edition of National Geographic Traveler magazine. It was enshrouded in a paper cover advertising a couple of products (what’s the print industry term for that kind of thing? Like what’s on the New Yorker, except that it stretches all the way across the cover. It’s stuck on with that great glue that’s fun to peel off the spine of the magazine.) One of the products advertised was the Kodak DX7590, a ‘pro-am’ digital camera. I was curious to look up its features and price, so I entered this query in Google.
Kodak’s product page was third in the search results, preceded by two reviews of the camera. Both reviews are pretty positive, but imagine if they weren’t. Every potential buyer using Google starts their evaluation Google with two reviews that encourage them to look elsewhere. That’s why every company, large and small, needs to care about search engine optimization.
On a technical note, I’m guessing that the search results reflect Google’s increasing reliance on the value of incoming links. Clearly, Kodak’s site has been around for a while and has signficant search engine whuffie. However, more people are probably linking to the reviews that to the product page itself.
5 Comments »
