Monday, April 04, 2005

Things are quiet - too quiet…

What’s happening?

  • Because of the right people quitting, I’ve got 3 jobs now - webmaster, project manager (3 projects) and Visibilities “manager”. I put the last in quotes since there’s no real job, only real work - I have to get all the displays working in a scheduled, coordinated fashion. Ever been to my employer, Media Plaza? If you have, please post back below… Am I enjoying it - mostly. If only that I finally - after 3 years of misdirection and mismanagement - get my hands back on the portal and the web projects. The political football that is our website has landed back in my lap, years after our 2001 award-winning design. So I’m generally happy to be developing this site again.
  • No home system right now. After the debacle of the 12“ Powerbook I’ve decided to go to a 15” model for the better screen. Alas I wanted a different keyboard - like the US model with the larger shift keys on both sides (like a real keyboard) but I can’t get one from Apple here in the Netherlands. Imagine my surprise.  So I’ll have to pick on up later this month while in New York for the yearly “pizza & bagels pilgrimage”. Once I’m equipped, I can begin moving on - I’m eager for that. I hate detritus, which means…
  • Site updates are coming - yeah, my interest in this experiment in blogging is shifting. I do love to write, and occasionally find I have readers who post back (even if only to bitch) but the intrinsic value of blogging is still undecided to me. There’s too much signal-to-noise on the web already, and I’m not big on self-promotion, so unless this comes to some proper usage I’m going to chalk it up to experience. Yet I need my resume and portfolio online, and perhaps I can wrap this all a bit better, a bit less like a blog and more like a resource.  We’ll see - the paper’s already being drawn. Maybe we’ll see some Flash - yeah, like the web needs more of that!
Posted by Admin on 04/04 at 01:10 AM
Posted in: Idle Chatter  
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Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Microsoft in violation of patents on Windows Media?

“(Is) Sony and Philips considering round two with Microsoft over codecs?”, asks ReThink. 

If you were Sony or Philips and you found that Microsoft had been not just using technology that you invented to invade your markets, but had been giving it away, would you want to sue or negotiate?

Seems Microsoft’s WMV may be liberally taking components of MPEG for use without paying for the intellectual property. I know I wouldn’t like that if I were Phillips.

This is certainly worth a read since, if you follow the logic they’re employing, it could mean billions and billions in potential damages:

Damages might be estimated in two layers - one based on how much benefit Microsoft has got out of giving the media player away, and the other on how much loss of business the $200 billion-a-year Consumer Electronics market has suffered because of this. 
Assuming that 400 million devices carry the codec now and that, over the past decade or so, the total number of devices that have carried it, including obsolete and discarded ones, was close to 1 billion, then that might be the multiplier for the first set of damages. An MPEG 2 license costs $2.50 per copy, so assuming a similar licensing regime, that could mean that this act should have cost Microsoft $2.5 billion in licensing fees. 
If perhaps the same amount again was lost by the collective CE firms in missed sales (not to mention what putting a free codec on a PC has done for piracy) then perhaps this doubles the fee to $5 billion. Apply triple damages?

So - if this is the case, or even remotely the issue, then MS will have to either charge for a license, a la QuickTime Pro, or absorb the costs internally. Either way, it’s gonna be painful.

(hee hee!)

Read the entire article at ReThink

Posted by Admin on 03/01 at 05:51 AM
Posted in: IT notes  
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Monday, February 28, 2005

3

Are weblogs inherantly unethical? (UPDATED)

Blogs are either the greatest boon to the voice of the people or the greatest tool to create unsubstantiated rumor, for those inclined to do so. Before you can answer of bloggers are really replacing journalists, you have to ask if the methods employed are legitimate to that end. Is that blogger operating in an ethical and non-abusive manner?

“Journalists—the people who actually report the news—are acutely aware of the potential for abuse that is inherent in their system, which relies on support from businesses and power brokers, each with an agenda to promote. Their ethical standards are designed to delineate the journalist’s responsibilities and provide a clear code of conduct that will ensure the integrity of the news.”
- Rebecca Blood

Of course this is only the first step - a discerning and interested public is required to complete the handshake. If we, the public, care to rise to the level of Journalist, perhaps we need a code of ethics ourselves.

Rebecca Blood has proposed 6 bylaws for blogging to help define what’s missing. Next time you read a blog, ask yourself this question:  Are they a reporter or a fanboy?

And consider this with the news that Sony has now decided to support Gawker Media to the tune of $25,000 US a MONTH (AdAge.com, January 31, 2005. Print subscription required to view article). Big bucks for a weblog, and peanuts to what polictical parties pay. For now.

At what point does corporate or political support color weblog journalism? Do the folks at Gawker Media,  producers of Gizmodo, Defamer and more, need to know the 6 rules? (Based on their previous fanboy opinions of Sony-based technologies like Blu-ray and the PSP, I would argue a hearty “oh yeah…”)

UPDATE:
By all measures they do and I don’t - I confused Weblogs Inc’s Engadget with Gawker’s Gizmodo, which I do strongly favor. It may be that they look too damn alike to me, or that with the advent of RSS readers, you sometimes don’t know which content come from which source, or the incredible similarities between both sites when it comes to some features. 

I don’t know who copies whom (although my money’s on Engadget copying the clearly more-creative Gawker brands) but the fact remains that they BOTH more resemble templates than anything else. Change the header, change the color, change a bullet or character graphic and you have a new website. (Another note - Gizmodo changed their look just days after they commented here. Power of the press - hoo hah!)

Still, my faux-pas before is an unwittengly-good example of why blogs need to be considered opinion pieces first and not journalism. They need to earn that right. I just thank god daily that Matt Drudge doesn’t use this site as a source…

Read Rebbecca Blood’s “6 blogging bylaws”...

Posted by Admin on 02/28 at 03:13 AM
Posted in: Idle Chatter  
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Monday, February 14, 2005

Parts is Parts

You might remember this from an old commercial for chicken. I thought of it alot this weekend, sorting out a color problem with my new Powerbook - perhaps you’ve been bitten too?

Like all good bloggers I’ll write little tomes of nothingness about my daily experience, but last thursday I happily had something decent to set to page: The new Powerbook arrived and there was much celibration (yay).

If you’ve experienced upgrading machines in the past, get ready for some new goodness - the Apple Upgrader. I had mirrored my system to a 60Gb portable drive, so I could work off of my girlfriends’ laptop by booting off of the portable. When the new PowerBook came, the 3rd screen in asked if I had an older system to get data off of. All you’d need would be the computer, placed in Target-Disk mode. For the uninformed, Target-Disk boots your computer up as a FireWire hard disk - your computer’s pretty much asleep while it’s disk controller does all the work.

Not having the old iBook anymore, I just plugged the firewire drive and off it went. The proceedure is simple - it asks which profile to import, if you want the applications, document and all preferences and then one click and it does its magic. It took about 20 minutes for the data to be copied over. Once finished it asked that the firewire drive be unplugged, which was odd, and then went on through the registration steps. You’ll see your familiar login and then, voila - it’s like you’ve never changed machines! Everything carried over perfectly except for Flash MX, which is failing on start-up (probably a font problem, I guessing). But this new Apple tool is fabulous.

One small side problem which I attribute to the process - the internal DVD didn’t work. It wasn’t seen on the bus and didn’t respond when a cd was carefull pushed into the slot. Ultimately I rebooted the machine and heard a “klick-klunk” as the dvd head reset itself and voila! It was seen by the system and burned 1 cd and 2 DVDs like a true pro. I believe the plugging-unplugging of the FireWire drive might have hung the bus, and since I never, ever have to reboot the Mac, I just forgot to give a reset a try. When was the last time a Windows user said that?

But it’s not been a perfectly wonderful experience so far. While the machine is wicked-fast, expecially compared to my iBook and G4 tower at work, the screen color is waaay off. There’s very poor contrast on the screen compared to the 6-month old 15” PowerBook of my girlfriend, and most annoyingly a smudgy magenta cast over the entire display. The poor color immediately caught my eye on poweup and no amount of calibration would solve it. I asked 2 other designers to try and that didn’t work. I borrowed a Spyder 2 screen calibrator and even it couldn’t improve the visual appearance! I was bummed beyond bummed.

So now I have a problem - how do you design on a screen whose color is just terrible? After a frustrating weekend reading about a spattering of similar complaints from other 12” users, I was about to launch into a fight with the Mother Ship on what I should expect. I called Apple and…“Sorry ot hear that, but hey - no problem. We’ll send you a new one. If you don’t like it, you’ve got 10 days from THAT one to call us and we’ll refund your money.” I’m paraphrasing of course, but it was a pleasant and supportive experience. Damn Apple - I so *wanted* to get a good fight in.

So the new one will arrive and the old one gets used for the time being, as per Apple. In a week I hope I can end writing in my lonely blog about aluminum dreams lost, But on the whole you can still count me in as an Apple fan.

Posted by Admin on 02/14 at 03:42 AM
Posted in: Gadgetry  
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Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Yah - yaaak.

Hmmm…delivery time has been extended past one monday to the next, on Valentine’s Day (Well that says it all)...

Seems I was optimistic on the delivery time since I thought it might have come by some modern form of transportation. Apparantly it’s being shipped by yak from Shanghai, through Europe to somewhere in the Czech Republic for redistribution, carried by Harker and the vampire bat to Ireland OR Holland so they can include the iWork package in the order, then rolled on the cheese-wheel by the kaas meijses to my office here in Utrecht, which can take as much as 2 additional days since there are no deliveries on the weekends. At any price. So, if I’m a really lucky boy, I’ll have my Mac on Monday the 14th.

5 words - Apple. Fed Ex. Use ‘em.

Posted by Admin on 02/08 at 06:47 AM
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