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No DRM!
For the uninitiated, DRM stands for "Digital Rights Management". It is usually some sort of encryption put upon content to restrict the usage of data. For example, DVDs came with encryption that was intended to make sure you didn't copy it. Music from Apple's iTunes music store comes with DRM that only allows you to play it on 5 computers and burn it 10 times (or something like that). DRM on Microsoft's new Zune player allows you to send a song to your friend's Zune, but it will not work after 3 plays or 3 days.
The biggest seller of DRM'd music is Apple with their iTunes Store. They announced early this year that iTunes was now outselling Amazon.com at the rate of 58 songs per second. We all thought the reason they used DRM was because then you can only put your purchased music on an iPod and run it with iTunes. But, apparently that is not the case. Two days ago, the head of Apple, Steve Jobs, published an open letter to the music industry calling for the removal of DRM from music.
Why would Steve Jobs try to throw out the DRM completely? Doesn't it help him sell iPods? Apparently not. The real reason he's realizing this is because of lawsuits and regulations against Apple and iTunes over in Europe. Last week, the government of Norway declared iTunes illegal. There have been lesser statements made against iTunes in a couple other countries. The past couple weeks, Steve has found out what the record labels and movie houses refuse to believe:
Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That’s right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player.
In 2006, under 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide by online stores, while over 20 billion songs were sold completely DRM-free and unprotected on CDs by the music companies themselves. The music companies sell the vast majority of their music DRM-free, and show no signs of changing this behavior, since the overwhelming majority of their revenues depend on selling CDs which must play in CD players that support no DRM system.
To be honest, I'm not so sure that we should let Steve Jobs off the hook this easily. It seems that selling DRM'd music has been to his advantage, and now he looks like he's blaming it all on the record labels. On the other hand, Steve still has a bit of that "free-for-all", hippie spirit, so he could be telling the truth. Either way, he's right.
If DRM did not exist, I might buy more from iTunes. Right now I only buy from iTunes if it's an exclusive I cannot get anywhere else. However, the bigger reason I don't buy from iTunes is the audio quality. Although I usually rip my music at 128k for space-conserving purposes, I expect there to be some day in the not-too-far future when I can re-rip all my CDs in good audio quality. That's why I still buy good ol' CDs whenever possible.
Sometime in the future, the labels will figure out that Steve Jobs is right. If not, they will simply die and independent labels that don't use DRM will become the majors. We just don't know when it will happen.
One of these days we'll talk about the movie industry, DRM, and the AACS encryption system built into HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Disc. Stay tuned.
FireBug: A Must-Have For Any Developer
Holy Crap! The folks at the Lullabot Podcast were talking about development environments for Drupal. One tool they referenced as "indispensable" was FireBug. I haven't tried it out too much yet, but man, it looks useful.
Squarely in the category of "mega-plugin" such as the Web Developer Toolbar, this FireFox plugin looks amazing. It's a JavaScript debugger. It's a DOM inspector. You can edit any part of the HTML, CSS, or JavaScript and see the instant results right in your browser. It also looks like it puts a validation thing in the bottom-right corner of my browser. The only thing that I might worry about is that it makes FireFox too bloated and slow. Find out more at the GetFireBug.com or download it from the Mozilla site.
The Best Super Bowl XLI (2007) Commercials
After reviewing most of the commercials another time, I decided that these are my favorites:
#1: The fan-made Doritos commercial. Brilliant.
#2: "The Fist Bump" is so last year. Even Matt can be seen on Google Chat slapping me.
#3: Everyone was pulling for the poor factory robot.
#4: Coca-Cola redeems GTA
#5: But he has an axe!
Podzinger Audio Search
One technology that has not yet matured is talking to your computer or the computer understanding what you have said. Well, at least it is not working very well on desktop computers yet. But apparently companies have been working on it for the bigger, higher-paying customers. BBN Technologies, apparently a leader in the speech-to-text field, has been running Podzinger for a while now. Podcasters can sign up their podcast to be automatically transcribed by their computers and made searchable. Services such as Odeo are doing the same thing, plus it seems that Odeo has a better-looking interface.
About a month ago Podzinger announced that they're scraping the audio of YouTube videos. Speech recognition, of course, is an emerging technology, so it remains to be seen when it will really catch on.
The Super Bowl XLI Ad Game
The big event this weekend is the best night in television: the Super Bowl commercials. (The rumor is that some people watch the football game that happens during the commercials, but most smart people know that's the time to go get more burgers, brats, and chips.) This year companies are spending $2.6 million for a 30-second ad, and none of them are guaranteed a touchdown in reaching their audience. Here's some interesting information:
- This year marks the first time in 10 years that Coca-Cola has purchased ads at the bowl game. Expect Coke and Pepsi to go head to head.
- As usual, Anheuser Busch is buying 10 ad spots for Budweiser and Bud Light.
- Apple has purchased a spot and no one really knows what they'll be promoting. One likely candidate could be that, due to the settled lawsuit with Apple Corps., The Beatles are soon going to be on iTunes. But as Leo Laporte said a couple weeks ago on GeekBrief.tv, they have to announce something bigger than "you can buy The Beatles online now." Leo thinks it may be a Beatles themed iPod with all their music on it or something. I hope it's actually an iPod that looks like an iPhone and has an 80GB hard drive.
- In other tech news, of course GoDaddy.com is going to have a rather risque advertisement. The fun twist this year? Many of the stars of podcasts that GoDaddy sponsors will be in the commercial spot.
- There are two tech-related newcomers to the big ad game. The first, Garmin, is one of the bigger sellers of GPS electronics.
- The second newcomer, SalesGenie.com, better get their stuff together. Although they may have an ad, their homepage looks like crap in FireFox. Oh wait, nevermind. Their product is only for business people that use Microsoft products exclusively anyways.
Well, that's my wrap-up for now. Thanks to this great news article on Newswire and the always-informative Superbowl-Ads.com for all the latest information on the only night of TV worth watching. An interesting note from the Newswire article:
Why so expensive? One of the main reasons companies pay as much as $2.6 million for 30 seconds is that the Super Bowl is the only true mass media outlet available today. If you want to reach a very large audience of males and females, young and old, the Super Bowl is the only game in town.
FireFox Smart Keywords
Here's one of those things that will bind your heart to FireFox and make you vow never to go back to that boring Internet Explorer even if it does have tabs and RSS in it: Smart Keywords.
Yes, after a quick look at this page (or, for those who need a complete walkthrough), you too can make it easy to search your favorite sites. I just type wiki Derek Webb to find the latest on a favorite artist. Or, I also type whois inreview.com from time to time because I kinda want the domain. And, as the FireFox page points out, any movie fan should have imdb Stephen Tobolowsky to look up those obscure actors that are everywhere and have cool names.
Bill Gates and Windows Vista with Jon Stewart
A couple people have been checking out the brand new Windows Vista. So what do I think? It's too bad that Jon Stewart didn't get Bill Gates' password:
John Reuben Is Frickin' Awesome!
Ha! I think that picture's hilarious. John Reuben is my guilty pleasure, if you know what I mean. I know he's not the best rapper ever, but I identify with him a bit, he's my type of humor, and he's definitely not afraid to push the boundaries. Just to show you all the fun, here's a couple things on YouTube (after the jump):
If you're in Minnesota, spend your $8 wisely to check out his February 9th show at Club 3 Degrees. Hey, I'll probably be there, but that's not why you're planning on going. Also, check out Word of Mouth, in stores and online February 6th.
OpenID Distributed Authentication
Many companies have tried to make a universally-acceptable login system. Microsoft tried to promote their .Net Passport for years. Google owns so much it feels like a universal login for almost everything. It's the same with Yahoo! But, in each case, they were doomed because everyone was afraid for security reasons. If I give Microsoft my payment information so that I don't have to put it in on sites again, just how much does Microsoft know about me? How much information are they collecting and sharing about me? No one really knows.
Open-source advocates always say that the solution is an open-source thing that is tested by the community for security reasons. But creating a decentralized system is really hard. Thankfully, some people have started such a decentralized and secure system.
OpenID is a specification for a decentralized login system.� You can register for an account at any number of places such as LiveJournal and MyOpenID.� Also, if you're a bit tech savvy, you can create your own OpenID server to authenticate yourself.� (I just installed it in 20 minutes through phpMyID and it works great.)� An encrypted version of my password is stored on my server and therefore no OpenID-enabled site even gets a password from me.� The OpenID site redirects to my site to be authenticated.� I can also give the OpenID sites information such as my language, time zone, etc.
Who knows if it will catch on, but it seems to be a good idea.� Just to help it catch on, you can now post comments on my blog with your OpenID (thanks to the WPOpenID Plugin).
Google's Hidden Features
Did you know that you can do many things in the Google search box? Sure, it might search the web for it, but the real answer comes up first. Here's some examples:
20+1.234piand other such queries turns Google into a calculator.10.95 British Pounds in US Dollarswill tell me how much a delirious? CD would cost if I import it.define:christiangives me definitions from around the internet.AAPLwill give me a quick look at the stock information and plenty of places to research more.Curse of the Golden Flowerwill show me some movie times of nearby theaters if I give it a location.John Smith Minneapoliswill return a list of phonebook results.Population of Minnesotawill spit out the answer to the question.541will tell me where an area code is located in.1Z9999W99999999999will get me to the status page of my UPS package quickly.site:cmusicweb.com the elmswill give me a search for "the elms" but only on cMusicWeb.com.
Use those and more to power your searching and research.