About time. And product. And being more deliberate.
Fresh off the Sony rootkit fiasco, EMI/Virgin Records has commanded that no one listen to the new Coldplay album – but they won’t tell you that until after you’ve given them money.
via BoingBoing
From what I can tell, the album is available from within the iTunes Music Store – seemingly defeating all those restrictions. Wondering if ‘digital booklet’ is the same list of warnings.
Phew, good thing it wasn’t on my shopping list.
While getting a few things done this holiday season I paid special attention to what was keeping me from staying focused, on-task. To kick this year off right, I’ve made some dramatic changes to my OS X desktop.
From the menu bar, I’ve removed applications that change just enough to distract me. Including:
In addition, I’ve removed all the applications from my dock and ‘turned automatic hiding on’.
All of these small changes make the PowerBook a quieter place to work.
Update 6 Jan 2006: Sam asked for a screenshot of the menu bar
We’ve been a TiVo household for about a month now. Excellent service, I’m glad we got it. What we don’t have is a satellite or cable service. As I mentioned on my other blog, this omission is very challenging for TiVo.
To me, the most interesting television isn’t on television. It’s the videoblogs or video podcasts or vlogs, or video clambakes, or whatever you like to call them. After watching a handful of TiVo recommendations, I’m confident in saying anything you can do with a video camera and iMovie is on par with most over-the-air offerings.
Right now, TiVo is only recommending programs based on what it can see with the decade-old rabbit ears on the top of my non-HDTV. But it’s artificially handicapping itself. The TiVo is on my home network – so its recommendations should be based on all the video across the internet.
This means because I prefer watching video on my TV rather than my computer, I’m way behind on Minnesota Stories, RocketBoom and without an incentive to dig deeper into video.
Now, despite the TiVo being a Linux box and hooked up to my network – I can’t easily send video to it. To be clear – I don’t want to get video off it – I want to put video on it. Easily. As easily as setting up a Season Pass. This seems to be completely outside current capabilities – these are the capabilities keeping TiVo alive, out from under the thumb of television advertisers, and provide a reason to accelerate the TiVoToGo rollout.
Just as Apple has embraced podcasting as a way to sell more and bigger iPods, copies of GarageBand, and podcasting servers, TiVo could do the same and one better – put a recommendation layer on top of all this video, a la AmigoFish.
Let’s take this one step further: Each TiVo is a Linux box, with Apache running and a Firewire/USB2.0 port in the front – it provides an easy way for people publish their video to the rest of the world. Turning TiVo into a social medium and a full-fledged citizen of the Read/Write Web.
In early December, TiVo started a very slow rollout of Online Services – including podcasts. Baby steps to their survival. But, my box hasn’t been upgraded for the TiVo Online Services yet. So it remains less used that it could be.
Yesterday, I had a great conversation with Matt and Jon about the benefits blogging for business. Out of it Matt brought up the very attractive ‘blogging as business backporch’ metaphor. I’ll attempt to paraphrase:
Let’s say a business is a house, and the website is it’s front door – the formal method of greeting visitors – strangers or customers.
The blog then is the backporch. More informal. Probably can’t be seen from the street. Lots of voices and lots of conversations. A place where friends, customers, and colleagues all hangout together.
Yes, some people with come through the front door – and become customers – on their way to the grill. Others, the people in the know, will come around the side yard, straight to the conversation. These people might not be customers. That’s OK.
On a happy note, this post means the migration to WordPress 2.0 is complete.
On an apologetic note, I’d like to apologize to everyone who has left a comment that completely got lost in the overly aggressive spam filter.
Scott McGerik, Dave, and anyone asking questions about the plugins – sorry for not responding. I wasn’t ignoring you, just didn’t get the message.
Wow. I feel like I just woke up and there was a party going on in my backyard without me.
Phew.
After what felt like 7-to-10 days without my laptop, I picked it up from the Roseville Apple Store this afternoon.
It was a complete zoo there; line half-way to the door, people packed in the aisles, boxes of iPod Nano cases everywhere.
Crazy.
Anyway, the PowerBook is all shiny and clean, speakers work, mic works, modem is recognized, SuperDrive is burning a back-up as I write this. Yeah! Almost like it’s my birthday.
Oh, Sam – if you’re curious, PowerBooks go to Texas.
A couple weeks after Cooper was born, Sam sent over National Geographic Around the World Lullabies. Of course, it went straight into Cooper’s playlist on the iPod.
Tonight Cooper was inconsolable. None of the usual settling down techniques were working and we were scratching our heads with what to do. Attempting to think strategically between screams is a very useful skill in times like this.
And when the going gets tough, the tough…refresh their RSS aggregator?
Well, I’m glad I did – in it, a well-timed reminder from Sam:
Brilliant.
I cued up the lullabies in iTunes, flipped the speakers to the radio (thanks to the Airport Express) in Cooper’s room, then ran down to rock him into it.
Update: Cooper slept through the night. Rock on.
Yes, Sam’s a genius.
Oh, and Sam on your cassette-to-MP3 problem: try connecting the cassette players output to the audio input of your iBook using a common 1/8″ jack (might need something like the Griffin iMic) and record into Audio Hijack Pro.
AHP can automatically start a new track when it hears the silence between tracks in whatever format you’d like. After that it’d just be a matter of burning the CD.
Just thought you (those of you that aren’t my mom) should know.
I don’t know about my other blogs – so you should be safe commenting there. 😉
Aside from making me think I should stop posting some of the more technical topics, I’m happy for it.
Blogging is shorthand – right. Those of you that keep up with this site know what’s on my mind when you bump into me at the bus stop and vice versa.
Mom, seriously, when you want to start blogging, gimme a ring.
Hitting shuffle on the ‘unlistened podcast’ playlist this evening I hit Steve Gilmor’s conversation with Doc Searls on Attention back in November and the just published On the Media on the NSA eavesdropping on Americans for the last 4 years.
Yes, in fact, I would like to see an AttentionTrust badge at nsa.gov (btw – why does the NSA have a Flash intro?).
“That’s not an idea that’ll make you a million dollars tomorrow, that’s an idea that’ll make you a billion dollars some day in the future” – Patrick Kuntz