Archive for the ‘technology’ Category

The Rapid Demise & Eminent Death of Music DRM

Friday, January 4th, 2008


Digital Rights Management (or DRM) has been a controversial subject against which I have pontificated for years, starting with the whole Napster thing in 2000. Ironically, in that article, I slammed Edgar Bronfman Jr. who is quoted prominently in this new Businessweek article about Sony BMG being “The last major label (to) throw in the towel on digital rights management…” Thanks for the link to this article goes to the TechCrunch postmortem, “Ding, Dong, The Music DRM Witch is Dead.”

I have to admit that the death of DRM is coming even more quickly than I expected, but we can all be glad that she is dying (and, I guess, that Bronfman is waking up).

If you really want to understand this subject, I highly recommend Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity by the wise and articulate Lawrence Lessig.

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Revolutionary gPC is a $200 Web-facing Computer with no “Microsoft tax”

Friday, November 2nd, 2007

This makes so much sense it’s scary. A $200 computer, by Google, on sale NOW at WalMart that leverages the power of the Internet with browser-based and open source software (thus no “Microsoft tax”).

I might just be geeky enough to go out and buy one. We’ll see. Meanwhile, click here for details of the Everex gPC as covered by John Biggs in the NYTimes.

This kind of “webtop” computer has been a long time coming, but frankly I’m a bit surprised that it’s finally here. That said, in the world of the Web, surprises never cease. Bottom line, I agree with TechCrunch‘s comment, “The Webtop is going to be a classic disruptive technology, starting out cheap and at the margins, but slowly working its way up the food chain.“

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Digital Photographer Transcends Parkinson’s Disease

Friday, September 28th, 2007

A buddy of mine just got written up in our local paper for his talented transcendence of what others view as a disability. In fact, he’s dealing successfully with nothing less than Parkinson’s disease. Why aren’t your photos in a gallery? Read Clear vision, shaky lens: Fairfax photographer hasn’t let Parkinson’s slow him down and be inspired by the “Movement Disorder, Tremor Enhanced Photography” of Alan Babbitt.

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Obama’s Grassroots Support Shown in Web Traffic & more

Friday, September 7th, 2007

If you use website traffic (rather than polls which are probably more scientific) as an indication of voter interest, then the latest Hitwise statistics show Barack Obama well ahead of his Democratic competition.

Like the rest, he’s also using YouTube, among other online grassroots techniques. For example, it’s an indication of the word-of-mouth impact that many of his traffic referrals come from email systems (which translates as individuals forwarding links.)

Along those lines, this video clip references his huge crowds as evidence of something more meaningful. Frankly, I’m encouraged. Maybe it really can be different this time? What do you think?

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Steve Jobs & Bill Gates Together, The Complete Coverage

Friday, July 6th, 2007


I don’t think there are two better visionaries on the planet (of course, I’m partial to Steve Jobs), and while their joint appearance with Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg was covered in the news, I just discovered the complete coverage including transcripts and video clips (an edit of video excerpts is included below). Good stuff!

Special thanks to Dr. Mac, Bob LeVitus for this link via his most-excellent Mac e-newsletter. You can subscribe here: http://www.boblevitus.com/

Here’s the video highlight reel:

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Windows on the Mac Making Moves Toward Totally Transparent Integration

Friday, June 8th, 2007

ParallelsMacs with Intel chips have been progressing toward total two-platform (Windows and Mac OS) integration on one desktop. Unfortunately, Apple’s BootCamp requires you to reboot.

Parallels Desktop 3.0 for Mac is just released and offers significant new features that really seem to enable a legitimate, simultaneous two-platform environment. Way cool! Now I just need to time to buy and install Windows XP on my Intel Mac and then to get Parallels going. As I like to say, “Time, not space, is the final frontier.” ;)

Anyway, The NYTimes’ David Pogue has written a pretty definitive review of the new version of Parallels Desktop for Mac including tests using powerful Windows voice recognition software. Bottom line, use Windows XP, not Vista!

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Google Audio Ads Ramps Up Radio’s Reach

Thursday, May 31st, 2007

It’s been widely understood and acknowledged (ever since Google’s January 2006 acquisition of dMarc Advertising) that Google would be launching an interface to sell radio advertising based on it’s widely popular Google AdWords platform.

Well, the wait is over. It’s here. Now, anyone with an AdWords account can buy targeted radio advertising via a new tab at the top of their AdWords interface.

The impact of this innovation on the radio advertising industry cannot be overstated. Google facilitates the production of the spot as well as its placement (you can pick radio stations by audience demographic as well as geographic location, etc.). Thus this new service is truly revolutionary because it makes the whole process of advertising on local radio a whole lot easier and far more accessible than ever before.

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How Google Earth Killed Santa !

Saturday, December 23rd, 2006

This arrived via the blogosphere… a geek humor goodie, all in good cheer.

Click here to read the sad but true story of how our world has changed such that our little ones are being given a new, albeit perhaps less magical view of so-called “reality” ;)

Merry merry and happy happy!
JL

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Microformats: The Future of Microcasting?

Friday, September 8th, 2006

I’ve been around long enough to come from the cable TV daze when narrowcasting was a revolution. When I was at USA Network, MTV, CNN, ESPN etc were breakthroughs as channels for what we now call vertical audiences. I like to call the web’s quantum leap into far more finely defined audiences “microcasting.”

Technorati‘s Chairman, Peter Hirshberg (shown here) thinks that the organized tag technology called Microformats will provide important accessbility to the millions of video clips on the web… via tagged indexing. As you might expect, there’s a video clip to explain it.

What do you think?

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The Truth About How Web Pages Are Read

Thursday, April 20th, 2006

My favorite and most highly recommended book on the subject of web usability (or in plane folks speak, the science and art of how to make web pages more useful) is Steve Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think.”

But, arguably the “grandfather” of books on this subject is Jacob Nielsen. Another interesting info-tidbit is that people are now studying how people read web pages with eye-tracking visualizations like the one shown here. Nielsen’s comments on a new eye-tracking study include the discovery of an interesting “F” pattern.

His insights also include the not so eye-opening (common sense) insights that web designers and writers should realize that: “Users won’t read your text thoroughly in a word-by-word manner.” And, “The first two paragraphs must state the most important information.” As well as the suggestion to “Start subheads, paragraphs, and bullet points with information-carrying words that users will notice when scanning down the left side of your content in the final stem of their F-behavior.”

If this is news to you, you might want to read more…

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