Jan 23, 2007 | blog
It could happen as early as this year according to this article in the NYT. While it would certainly take some time for the entire recording industry to come around to the idea, it sounds like at least one record company will try marketing tunes in unrestricted MP3 format in the next few months.
Again, I echo what I said in The Inevitable Death of DRM post, that DRM is doomed to fail. Give the users what they want – don’t keep trying to rape them on price and keep control of how they can use the product. Give your customers control and you will win accolades on usability and working with customers.
Set the user free and see how it pays you back in return.
Via: The New York Times – Record Labels Contemplate Unrestricted Digital Music
Jan 22, 2007 | blog
How did I miss this? Robert Scoble captured the visit that Bill Gates had with a number of technology and gadget sites.
Some of the sites participating in the discussion are Engadget, Gizmodo, Kotaku, and Joystiq.
The discussion was fantastic in the depth of categories of technology covered. As usual, Bill Gates is a fascinating person with some great ideas of where technology is or should be going. Good stuff – and the best part being a short discussion of Bill’s fun with his Porsche 911 in Albuquerque in the late ’70s. 🙂
Also, if you haven’t seen Robert’s work at PodTech, you should check out his ScobleShow site – there is a lot of great information he’s got posted.
Via: ScobleShow – Exclusive lunch with Robert Scoble and Bill Gates
Jan 15, 2007 | blog
Starting today, Cingular will start to publicly become AT&T in print, radio and television ads. Though not all existing adds will be changed immediately, you may start seeing the transformation. Also watch for signage changes at the Cingular stores, and on the billing and communications from Cingular.
So if you were a former AT&T Wireless customer, welcome back to the fold! Hehehe, once thing is for certain – the absolutely shitty service that the old AT&T Wireless service had prior to being bought by Cingular Wireless is, thankfully, only a painful memory.
So, what goes around, comes around – ‘ma bell’ is still around and is now you’re cell provider.
Via: PC World – AT&T to Replace Cingular Brand Monday
Oct 28, 2006 | blog
So now I hear Pluck is shutting down their RSS Reader(s). While I gave up Pluck and other client-side news aggregators in early September, I had used Pluck for a long time.
The rich feature set, ability to share my feed list automatically between multiple computers and browsers was its biggest draw. Also, I really enjoyed the format, where it plugged into your favorite browser as a side-panel where you could scroll through the list of feeds and click away reading easily through each category.
Since I’ve moved to Google Reader, I won’t be moving back to a client-side aggregator. I’ve got my feeds in one spot that I can access from practically anywhere. The “River of news” views, either by category or by date, has won be over. The ability to quickly scan the most recent conversations is a huge productivity boost.
Still I will miss Pluck, and I have to apologize to everyone that I recommended it to as they will now need to move on to another reader. My latest recommendation on that? Google Reader of course!
Via Read/Write Web – Pluck RSS Reader Shuts Down: Consumer RSS Readers a Dead Market Now
Oct 18, 2006 | blog
I’ve stopped using Pluck a few weeks ago, and finally have removed the last vestiges of it from my machines. Did IE7 cause this? Not exactly.
While the RSS/ATOM support in IE7 and Firefox contributed to this, it really is Google Reader that drove home the last nail in the coffin. The simplicity, performance, and accessibility of GReader just can’t be beat for my needs at this time.
So, it is with sadness that I am currently removing Pluck from my last machine before installing the IE7 gold release. I’ve used Pluck for 2 years and will remember it fondly.
