bill gates takes a seat in your living room at News.com(.com) is probably the best and most insightful interview with Bill Gates i've read.
he talks about blogging (he'd like to do one) , the next generation of XBox live (it's going to get better), the ipod (it's what will get people hooked on digital music, but not necessarily apple's) and of course search (it's going to get better and be more integrated into Windows).
it's clear that this guy will never check out of microsoft no matter how many billions he amasses, so it's also clear that msoft isn't done yet - and that's scary.
It seems Amazon is going to get into the DVD rental by mail game, going up against the established leader Netflix, who also announced going into new territory by partnering with Tivo for video on demand services.
Walmart already does this, but methinks the venn diagram of Walmart customers and Netflix customers best resembles a pair of john lennon type glasses.
Amazon and Netflix however, probably do compete for the same customers however, so this will be Netflix's first real challenge.
The key will be pricing, and it seems that Amazon will attack this a little differently, offering a limit to the number of DVDs that can be rented per month in exchange for a lower fee. Netflix currently allows one to rent an unlimited number set to a fixed queue, that is you can have 3 or 5 out at a time, but can rent an unlimited number of times.
well, when bluetooth first came out, my collegues and i tried to think of all sorts of innovative applications that could be developed, and always always at the top of that list was "things that would happen when you moved into another bluetoother's personal space".
well here ya go, no application but what comes on the phone, and a community around it. austin powers would be proud. this puts the "grr in swinger, baby".
wired news on "toothing"
apparently, this morning, the policy on united airlines for which wireless devices you can use changed. i say that because yesterday it was the old "anything with an on or off switch can't be used within 10 minutes after takeoff, or 10 minutes before landing. cellular phones can non be used at all during the flight until you land".
this morning, it got way more specific. i can't remember verbatim what the slightly disgruntled flight attendant on my 7am flight was reading off the card, but i do remember some of the details:
No cellular telephones may be used on the flight at any time (until landing).
No laptops with centrino or "wi-fi" technology
No devices with bluetooth may be used at any time
No "Blackberry" or "Palms with email capability" may be used at any time.
No "video gaming phones" even with "flight mode" can be used
oh, and no "noise reduction headphones" can be used within 10 minutes of takeoff or landing because those are electronic devices
at least they don't mention calculators anymore.
i was on the way back from CTIA, so maybe just maybe this was special but that seems odd.
does this stuff really interfere with communications? shouldn't that be solved by the spectrum used on the planes? if it's dangerous to use wireless devices on a plane, isn't that a fundamental problem in itself?
any why the stupid rules against using them even with "flight mode" on? what the hell is flight mode for?
we've all heard all the stories about cell phones in the air confusing towers on the ground, but why would united airlines care about that? we all know cell phones work from the air - on 9/11 many of the unfortunate victims made calls from the air - and i used to always keep my mobitex blackberry on in flight, well, so i could get email throughout my flight.
i've also heard rumors it's because they want you to use the on-board verizon airphones.
and wait a minute, wasn't boeing working on putting wi-fi on planes? i thought the DC-Frankfurt Lufthansa flight was wi-fi enabled. do 777's use a different radio technology than my 737? (i kind hope so).
being an american, raised in this culture of fear (if you believe michael moore in bowling for columbine) - i have no choice but to assume this change in policy is a direct result of what happened in Madrid ( 11-M ).
it's pretty scary, but we've all heard what happens when you put a GSM phone next to a speakerphone on a conference call, and you get an SMS. there's a definite pattern of interference that is generated. and that could be used any number of ways. there's also a some evidence that suggests al queda and it's affiliates are using cell phones to detonate devices, just using the alarm feature on these phones.
unfortunately, this makes all too much sense. the modus operandi of al queda so far has been to use the very infrastructure created by the western world against it. but an airline telling people not to use their n-gage isn't going to stop a terrorist who wants to do damage or inflict harm, and banning such devices from being carried on an airplane doesn't seem like the right answer either.
so what's my point? i'm not sure. i think my point is to see if anyone knows the real reason behind these seemingly silly and contradictory policies. anyone?
when apple music first came out i thought it was great. in the first two weeks that it launched i was able to save myself a trip to best buy by purchasing all the new releases i wanted straight over the net and get high quality digital music i could then listen to on my iPod, my turtlebeach audiotron (more on that in a bit), or of course my powerbook.
since that i think the service is slipping. most of the new releases i have looked for aren't available on applemusic, or only as the dreaded "partial album". who wants to buy a partial album?
in addition, i think the price is still a little too high for the albums i do want. is it really worth $9.99 for a new release without the media? especially when i could rip it, and turn around and sell it on amazon or ebay for $5-6 if i had the media? the price of a digital music album should be $5.99.
as the story goes, apple makes no money off apple music, it all goes to the wholesalers. apple has apple music to sell iPods. give away the razor, sell the blades. sure.
of course, i also don't like that the songs come in a proprietary AAC format, although i will admit the sound quality per MB is way better than MP3, i love the openness of being able to play MP3s on almost anything. i have my whole music collection ripped into MP3s, and i have 5-6 devices that i play them on, myself.
it seems to be easy enough to get around AAC copy protection though. can't you just burn the album to a CD-RW, then rip it as mp3s? seems to work for me.
[editorial note: if arriving here via a google or yahoo search, please make sure and also read full review which supercedes what's written here]
i decided today to check out what i was hoping would be the killer app for bluetooth - the Acura HandsFreeLink(tm) system - which provides bluetooth integration of the audio system with your bluetooth enabled mobile phone. it's available from acura on the 2004 acura tland now also the 2004 lexus ls from lexus.
the way the system works is pretty cool. you can pair up to 6 phones with your car audio system, and when you bring your phone within range, your phone's vitals such as signal strength, battery life, and caller ID show up on the instrument panel. to make a call, you press the "talk" button (which also allows for other voice enabled commands such as controlling the navigation system) - say "dial" and then dial your number by calling out the numbers such as "eight six seven five three oh nine".
when an incoming call is received, the audio system is muted, and the caller id is displayed on the console. pressing "talk" on once again answers the phone, and you can talk to your party through the audio system.
so it came time to try it. i brought along my Sony Ericsson T610, which seems to always play well with bluetooth headsets. alas, after 2 tries, we could not get the phone to pair with the car. the salesman then became afraid of trying more, as he didn't know how to unpair the phone from the car. so he went into the service department to ask.
when he came back, i asked how bad the technical support has been. after all, bluetooth is hardly the most user friendly technology out there...and the salesman said "yeah, we've already had a few of these in the service department. there's a few glitches, one problem being there isn't any way we know of yet to unpair a phone with the car. and some other people have had the same problem we had with your phone".
i wasn't sure how much of this was on the level and how much was them not knowing the answers, or not wanting my phone permanently paired with their demo car. at any rate, when i have another chance to try this out i'll post with more details.
i still think this is a great application of bluetooth that will start to force bluetooth application programmers to make this technology easy. not to make any generalizations, but how much experience does your average car salesperson have with using bluetooth? my salesman was pretty mobile tech savvy - but i would expect him to be on the front of the curve and he would have a hard time selling this feature to most potential buyers methinks. i can see people holding up their old nokia 8290 and asking "show me how it works" and him having to explain "no, you need one of the latest phones for this to work" - which is what he said to me before i whipped out the T610. and we still couldn't get it to work easily.
i had the good fortune of getting a freebee upgrade from hertz this week...six days with a sirius satellite radio. i've often been curious about satellite radio - seemed like a cool technology, and i've migrated away from radio in the past ten years or so as commercials got out of control, and i got a little tired of hearing the same creed song every hour. so the idea of cd quality, commercial free music has been intriguing.
i must say - now i'm even more intrigued. six days, and i maybe heard a repeat once (after all, repetition is what makes you like songs). I hovered around the "alternative nation" station which is a good mix of new and old (old as in the wonderstuff "radio ass kiss") and never really heard a song i didn't like. there are still DJs, but they don't say much - just informational bits about the songs themselves. there are talk stations, and kids stations, neither of which i spent much time on.
the technology itself seemed pretty stable - it seemed to work as well in thunderstorms as it did in clear weather, and the addition of having the artist and song title on the screen in front of you for every song is a huge plus.
what i really wanted was a way to "bookmark" the songs i liked, and be able to access them from the web or my phone for next time i felt like buying some music. that would be especially cool in an iPod form factor if it weren't in the car.
i'm not going to rush out and buy a satellite radio, but i'll definitely equip my next new car with one if it's a factory option, which i think is the only way that sirius and their major competition XM are going to get the traction they need. i don't need to tell them that, it's all over their annual reports.
also, i definitely recommend adding this to a rental car...when you're in a new city, no more fumbling with the radio as you pull out of the awkwardly designed airport exit.
good-bye mancow - at least until there is a "mancow nation" station on satellite radio, which won't be in my package!