Robot Loves Kitten

Lists are basically magazines’ way of telling you that you’re stupid, and that just like crows, you are easily distracted by shiny objects — in this case, big numbers and the word ‘Best,’ usually bolded in red, sometimes overlaid on a pair of breasts. It’s holiday time, folks, so get ready to be patronized — to the EXTREME!!

It’s still early — we’re not seeing the buying guides just yet — but apparently the next new thing is “best of the year,” which is actually easier to do, since editors don’t actually have to cull all that contact and pricing information, or ensure that the product is either available for purchase or doesn’t actually suck big fat air. [note: I did the first Wired Tools gear supplement, so I have some experience in this arena.]

For brevity’s sake, I think I’ll just point out the really stupid items, it’s more fun this way.

1.
1) The iTunes music store isn’t that cool: $.99/track for DRM you don’t own and Apple doesn’t actually make any money off it. 2) BeoLab 5speakers: I like Bang & Olufsen as much as the next guy, but $16K for speakers doesn’t make them cool. 3) The NeCoRo robotic cat is freaking me out (I say: cage match between the robo-cat and the lobster). 4) The Gibbs Aquada is the stupidest f*cking product of the year. How much of an asshole do you need to be? 5) Invisible Tech: You have to be perfectly in line with the video camera for the illusion to stand muster. ’nuff said.

2.
PopSci is an interesting hybrid, trying to bridge its old-school astronomy-loving audience, with the new breed of tech-loving readers. Not an easy challenge, by any means. Their best of list goes more traditional (defense tech, auto) than most.

1) There’s that damn aquacar again. Why do people think that’s cool? 2) iTunes Music Store: still a raw deal. 3) Computer manufacturers selling digital CE isn’t that revolutionary, if you actually think about it. 4) Sharp LCD TVs: $1700 for 15 inches. Wow. Cool. 5) Garden Groom Hedge Trimmer: Trimmers are exactly the wrong way to trim your hedges. Seriously, ask those This Old House guys. They’ll tell you.

3.
NYT has a pretty typical grab bag of products, nothing really outstanding, though I have to point out the strange love letter to Mac accessory-maker Griffin Technology (I like the company myself, but why so many products?).

Standouts: Recommending satellite radio just seems weird to me (some people love it however, I’m sure. People loved Who’s the Boss?) Sidetalkin’ Nokia 3300 — guaranteed to drive away potential dates and mates. Kid’s stuff is all basically crap, but they’ll break it anyway, so who cares? Pacific Digital MemoryFrame digital photo display (LCD in a frame) — and you thought technology couldn’t be pretentious. And finally, ’cause I’m tired of this, not cause I’m at the end of the list, the Sharp Aquos Mobile: Yes, Virginia, Wifi is cool — ground-breaking even — but it’s a 15-inch TV for $1800. Seriously, people wake up.

4.
OK, I have to immediately take points off for using the word ‘gizmo’. It’s not me, these are the rules. But beyond that, I have mostly positive things to say: partly because I don’t have the print mag in front of me right now, and partly because it was put together by Shoshana Berger (Readymade founder) who knows what she’s doing and is pretty damn cute to boot.

Shana has products grouped into several typical user types (also typical B2 reader types, I imagine). I didn’t really feel like the products picked for the “CEO” were that good — but they did tend to scream “asshole”, which is probably appropriate. All in all, one of the best gift guides I’ve seen this year.

more to come …

It’s hard to believe people still eat up this garbage.

“More than a million households deleted all the digital music files they had saved on their PCs in August, according to new information released today by The NPD Group. NPD credits the ongoing RIAA anti-piracy campaign and related media attention as having had a measurable effect on the actions of many consumers in regard to the illegal sharing of digital music. In a related survey of consumer perception, however, NPD found that consumers’ overall opinion of the recording industry is suffering as a result of the record industry association’s well-publicized legal tactics.”

Their methodology consists of 40,000 volunteer computer users. People who know they’re being watched. I guess we’ll let that one go for the moment.

Second, deleting files can mean anything. An increase in the number of garbage Kazaa files, for instance. Or an increase in HD swapping with friends, leading to the removal of duplicate files. Or more errors using CD ripping software.

Third, NPD reports that 80 percent of these ‘deleters’ retained fewer than 50 music files on their hard drives. These are not music lovers, people. These are newbies, and if history has taught us anything, it’s that you simply cannot predict what a newbie is going to do or why they’re doing it.

Full Release:

I am a hug fan of Best Buy. Why? Because in their pseudo-infinite wisdom, they have deemed it *acceptable* for consumers like me to buy items from their stores, open them, play with them, and then, after every button has been pushed, twiddled and tweaked, take those items back to the store — no questions asked. Honestly, it’s kinda cool.

*Big Box Retailers*
All the big retailers — Best Buy, Circuit City, Good Guys (the “bad guys”) — have these no-hassle return policies. I’ve brought opened cables back to Best Buy and they’ve happily accepted them and refunded my money — not store credit, mind you.

When you’re considering a new purchase, you want to take the product for a test drive. Do not trust some marketing copy off a manufacturer Web site. You have to make sure it’s going to plug in to all your different components correctly, that it does what you think it does, that you like the remote, etc. These devices are complicated, if you’re spending the money, you might as well get something that works.

When you find something you like, simply take a spin around the Net and see if you can get it cheaper. If you can, you just saved some cash. If not, well, your product’s already installed and creating happiness.

When returning items, for God’s sake, do it on a weekday, preferably early in the morning. Take a little time and save a lot of time. The customer service folk are generally nice, but they’re rarely fast.

*The Warranty*

OK, I’m going to go out on a limb here. In some situations, you might actually want to consider that in-store warranty. I know, I know, it’s sacrilicious. But consider what you’re buying.

Take the iPod, for instance. It’s expensive, extremely difficult to repair, and comes with a 1 year warranty. And while Apple is generally very gracious in repairing product defects, once you’re beyond a year you are sh*t out of luck, my friend. One year just doesn’t cut it for as expensive and vulnerable a device as a portable iPod.

Many manufacturers have tightened up their warranty repair processes as well. You’re either going to have to shell out to ship the item to some facility several states away (this gets muy expensive), or dump it at some seriously disreputable repair shop from which you can pretty much forget about seeing your product again. Dropping your product off at the local Best Buy is looking pretty good. It’s much more convenient, it covers your product all the way through its expected lifespan, and there’s no shipping costs.

If there was a better option out there, I’d certainly consider it, but after my receiver crapped out on me, I took it back to Best Buy after refusing to drop it off at the authorized repair center, which looked like it was run by someone who’d died in the early 70s. I was expecting to get reamed, but to my surprise, I had already purchased a warranty. I can only assume, after a few rounds of product returns (I had tried out several receivers), that I had ended up with a credit balance that I decided to blow on the warranty. They fixed the receiver, at no cost to me, within a week.

That’s a much happier ending than I got with my 2nd-gen iPod and its crappy broken headphone jack (a recallable design flaw, in my humble opinion).

i kinda have to disagree on this one – good design is always welcome, but i feel that digital electronics needs a special touch, that not only involves a product’s evident aesthetics, but its interface design – both hard and soft. it’s a complicated equation, and i don’t doubt that Samsung gets it. But it’s not about shiny silver paint, or making “better looking” — it’s about better working.

icon | november | a sea of ugly banal objects

Wired has finally jumped into the fray — everybody blog! The magazine still doesn’t have a Web site, but whatever. Let’s ignore that for the moment and focus on what’s really wrong with this:

First, they’ve got only one blog up:
Beyond the Beyond — i guess it’s a celebrity blog? It doesn’t have much focus beyond that, plus it’s way ugly.

Second, is this (from Sterling’s first post):

Note that there is NO COMMENTARY ALLOWED in my pristine, high-toned blog here. Why? Because you might be a spammer, that’s why! When I have a big red anti-spam button I can push that will cause Homeland Security to arrest you immediately and deport you to Guantanamo, then you may comment. Until then, no blog-reader of mine will ever be forced to endure your lame illegal product pitches, and that goes double for you harebrained flamers and trollers.

Blogging is about community. Community is about linking and commenting. There are lots of good people that are working hard to improve the community and deal with the comment spam issue. In fact, there are several simple strategies for addressing it. I just can’t get past the subtext “blogging systems suck”. If it’s so bad, why not use a better tool?

Third, and most important:
Wired blogs will fail. Why? Because they already have a much larger and compelling space from which to share their ideas and prognostications — it’s called the magazine. And let’s face it, Wired magazine is cooler than a blog. Given the choice, what are you going to work on? Your 3500 feature for the magazine (complete with cool design, pictures and everything) or a blog entry?

[disclosure: i worked at Wired back in the days when it was just as disfunctional, but way cooler]

I like this item by Jeff Jarvis, in which he expounds on the possibilities inherent in a world where AOL subscribers are spending 60-70% of their time with audience-generated content.

I think most will agree that the foundation of this “citizen’s media industry” is already in place — blogging tools, search engines, digital cameras and cellphones. But what’s most important is the implementation of social-type networks — increasing not only the ease, but the importance of linking resources together. Hell, I’m doing it now with Movable Type using html links, xml, and trackback.

And for a change, all this power *doesn’t* come at a huge price. These technologies are all democratizing the space for individuals. Even I get a little excited wondering what’s next.

Many people are surprised by this, but I have to agree with Jobs, there’s little market for media-center PCs, outside of dorm rooms and cramped manhattan apartments — both of which are awash in activities far more immersive than watching taped sitcoms on a 17″ LCD.

The truth, for Apple at least, is not so much whether an iMediaPC would be cool, it’s whether it would make $$. Consider the Gateway with the streaming media functions — it’s $200, people. Apple can’t beat that.

The point being that it is extremely easy to design new circuit boards and pop chips on them. And upgrading functionality through firm/software (read: Linux) is easy too.

It’s becoming clear that the PC, though still necessary as a central management/storage device, is actually too complicated for most media applications. An entertainment center is ruled by the remote — if you can’t fit your interface on it, forget it.

A short analysis on the US Copyright Office ruling that Lexmark cannot prevent reverse engineering of its printer cartridges under the DMCA, since by selling its printers, the company made its printer/cartridge control chip “readily available”.

The suit isn’t over yet, but it’s nice to see that the judge applied the concept of interoperability which, suprisingly enough *is* protected under the DCMA. [Ouch! Lexmark, that musta hurt.]

I am kinda bummed that I’m not doing

– national novel writing month – this year. I did it last year, and it was quite good. Not that I’m into the commiseration, yahoo groups and all, I just liked writing every day. I think I only missed a couple days over the course of the whole month, and if you’re budgeting 1500 words per day, missing a day adds up fast.

I still haven’t read (completely) what I wrote and I probably never will, but that’s ok. I wrote 50,000 words in a month. And I can do it again, too, dammit. Don’t push me. :)

There’s a new kid on the block, . Cast in the same mold as Apple’s Music Store but tailored to indie labels, Lunchbox sheds a slightly clearer light on the whole a la carte MP3 business model (no Apple worship).

Now, I really like the presence of Lunchbox in the market — diversity is good. Their site has some design issues, but those can be worked out, and its library is small, but that will grow. My main issue is that I just don’t think their product is that good a value.

Now despite all the talk of market-making for digital audio downloads, we’ve really got 3 camps: Apple DRM, Microsoft DRM, and no DRM. And these 3 camps can really be broken down into 2: proprietary and open formats.

The Apple Store sells protected AAC files, which only work through iTunes or on the iPod. Not so flexible, even with the loose DRM. You also can’t resell your tracks, which is HUGE.

Buymusic.com, Musicmatch, and others all sell protected WMA files, which don’t work in iTunes or iPod and pretty much lead you into the waiting arms of Windows Media Player 9, which I’ll let others argue about. The DRM here can be more restrictive than Apple’s.

Now, for my money, the best of the lot are Emusic and Audio Lunchbox, both of which sell unrestricted MP3 files. Emusic used to have a monthly “all you can eat” plan, now a monthly fixed # downloads plan (which is still damn good). Lunchbox is a la carte — .99/track and $10/album on average.

On quality, I can speak only to these two stores, since I have yet to find an album I want on Apple’s store. Emusic sells VBR MP3′s which tend toward 160Kbps (my experience only), while Lunchbox sells 128Kbps MP3′s (no VBR).

Of course, I also like the indie bands and labels these two services cater to. If you’re a BigMusic fan, then you’re out of luck. Still, you should take the time to peruse their aisles, you still might dig up something good.

Can you float my boat for .99 cents?

When choosing where I shop, I have to rule out the stores selling DRM-protected files.
1. Proprietary formats preclude me from using files on whatever device I choose. MP3 is the most open solution right now. Hopefully, Ogg will follow.
2. Cost is just too high. I will pay $1 for my musical freedom in a CD.
3. Quality is questionable. Why not sell higher bit-rate files (or higher quality in general)? Fear. The industry is still short-changing you, you just don’t realize it. I will pay $2 for the best available quality song.

So, I’m pretty much back buying CDs now. I hate myself for saying this, but check out the online shop at MTV.com. They actually have some really good deals on CDs (< $11 for some titles).

For downloable music, I like the Emusic model best. It fits my tastes, my budget, quality is good, format is ubiquitous, and my consumer rights remain intact.