iTunes Music Store Replies – More than Two Years Later

Dear Garrick Van Buren,

Thank you for your interest in iTunes.

After careful consideration of your application, we believe that the most efficient way to get your content up on iTunes in a timely fashion would be for you to deliver the content through one of the several digital service providers with whom we currently work.

For your information, below is a list of several companies that can encode and deliver your music content to iTunes. Should you be interested, please determine which digital service provider is appropriate for your particular content. For Audiobook content, see below.

Please note that the companies listed below, regardless of their location, may be able to deliver content for global Artists and Labels
…

Huh, where the did this come from?

The best I can figure:

Sometime between October 2004 and June 2005 – before iTunes had a built-in podcast directory – I filled out an browser-based iTMS application to sell the First Crack Podcast through their store.

Not getting a response in a timely fashion – say, within 27 months – I forgot about it. Completely.

As you see, the email give no context (i.e. ‘RE: your the application – submitted on Nov 23,2004’) and it even has a ‘do_not_reply’ in the ‘Reply-To’ field.

My opinion of iTunes has dramatically decreased over the past year and getting bizarre emails like this don’t help.

I wonder if I’d feel the same if Apple bought Audion instead of SoundJam.

What Do You Think I’ll Like?

Aaron, one of the masterminds behind FeedRinse, asks that all RSS Reader provide feed-recommendations.

While I agree there is value in RSS readers making it easier to add relevant sources, my experience with the recommendation engines like Netflix and Amazon has them batting .30. It’s rare that I purchase or rent anything either of those engines think I should. It’s far more likely that I’ll be inspired by another person providing a recommendation.

It’s not the engines fault. Star-rating, past purchases, and high-level genre categories don’t provide enough information to generate a quality recommendation.

That said, RSS is a pretty good recommendation engine itself. Nothing like email, but still pretty good. It could be better sure, and I’ve got some ideas around that.

LATER:
I just received an email from Ben Moore pointing me to Tim O’Reilly’ s post about Yahoo’s new Pipes service. Ben thought there might be some similarities between Pipes and some of the projects I’m working on. Ben’s probably right (the site’s down right now).

While Pipes sounds interesting (“Pipes opens up mashup programming to the non-programmer” – Tim’s words). What’s more interesting to me is that Ben pointed me to it. A relevant, personal recommendation.
Thanks Ben.

The Power of 1 Slice of Bread

Every wonder why there aren’t as many open-face sandwiches for sale in your local supermarket. No?…..well, it’s political:

“USDA inspects manufacturers of packaged open-face meat or poultry sandwiches (e.g., those with one slice of bread), but FDA inspects manufacturers of packaged closed-face meat or poultry sandwiches (e.g., those with two slices of bread).” – U.S. Government Accountability
Office, High Risk Series: An Update

The upshot is – by adding one more piece of bread, sandwich manufacturers can sell their product without explicit approval from a government acronym and get inspected every 5 years – rather than daily.

Can I Celebrate New Years on Feb 1?

Like magic, all the crazy stress and pressure I’ve been working through the past 8 weeks evaporated at the stroke of 12 last night. Seriously, magic. I have no other explanation. Then again, I have no explanation for why January was that tough either.

Things feel like they’re right back where they should be. Mind if I celebrate the new year 31 days later? I feel like I missed it the first time around.

RELATED:
David Seah is asking for Groundhog’s Day Resolutions.

Relevance not Determined by the Beholder?

“Relevance is determined by influence.” – Norman Mailer

That was Mailer’s response to: “Has your writing had an impact?”

While Mailer was referring to the larger influence of who controls the past determining what is relevant.

The same is true on a much smaller, person-to-person scale. Perhaps relevance is like identity – defined by everyone else. Individuals can only filter and prioritize.

Home Roasting Hack Method #2

“BREAD MACHINES AND HEAT GUNS WERE NEVER DESIGNED TO ROAST COFFEE”

There are three problems I’ve run into since roasting with the Poppery

  1. Small batch sizes (a maximum of 1/2 cup at a time)
  2. Inconsistent roast times (the Poppery continually gets hotter – shorting roasts, burning beans)
  3. The ambient temperature needs to be warm. So, no roasting in the Minnesota winters

Looks like a new roasting technique solves all three problems at once.

Like podcasting, I’m pretty sure I’ve got all the necessary gear in the basement. More later.