Category: Microsoft

Hi-Def DVD's – Hate to Love Them

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The DVD world has done a super-duper “bait and switch” on me. It sucks. When I thought I was purchasing my final definitive copy of Braveheart for the rest of my life, i was dead wrong.

The studios have been working on Hi-Definition DVD’s for the past 5 years and they are finally here. They look great and it sucks. I have a very large DVD library (as do many) and was pretty happy with it. Now, I realize that my DVD’s our inferior and especially for my favorite DVD’s, i’m going to have to update/replace them so I can have the best, most beautiful version of these classics. Who wants to see Lane Meyer take the K12 down in lame Enhanced-Def which is what DVD’s are now? Not me. I need to see every possibly pixel of his $2-oweing ass.

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Today marks the day when my old babies are officially out of date as Sony announced the first 7 DVD’s to come in the new High-def format. Of course, the old battle that raged in the 80’s of Beta vs. VHS is back in the form of HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray. They represent 2 different formats that are essentially the same thing: a DVD in Hi-Def quality. The reason for the battle is that whoever owns the format makes a lot of of money. The movie studio Warner Bros. owned many of the patents and technologies around today’s lame-version DVD’s and I read that they make roughly $1 Billion a year on the royalties. So, not wanting to miss out on the next round of DVD’s – many companies are competing to own the next DVD format.

Both are basically the same but the supporting cast is different. Blu-Ray is a format created by Sony and is backed by Apple, MGM, and Disney. And, HD-DVD is a format created by WB and Toshiba and is now backed by Microsoft NEC, and Intel. Note: Blu-ray refers to the type of “laser beam” used to read the DVD. Of course HD-DVD’s also use a blue ray but they thought they’d use the super sexy “HD-DVD” name instead.

Who will win? Well, my theory is that Blu-Ray will be the victor simply because of the Playstation 3. The initial players are going to be very pricey and most people will be hesitant to purchase one as who wants to own a player for the losing format. However, the PS3 will also be a Blu-Ray player so immediately there will be over 10 million people with a blu-ray player in their home. If Microsoft has used HD-DVD in the XBox 360, it would have been a better fight but they couldn’t wait for it to be ready and botched HD-DVD’s chances.

Oh well, i guess we’ll just have to wait and see. What do you think?

Google Spreadsheet Coming

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As i've stated before, i really believe that Google's looking to offer their own browser-based PC (past article here).  And, to strengthen their browser suite, they announced today that they'll be launching a browser-based spreadsheet application

I for one, couldn't be happier about this.  Quite often i've emailed around a spreadsheet for comments and discussion. To be able to share and solicit comments on it is a great thing.  Let's just hope it delivers.

Subscription Music Breakdown

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In the past few months, i've had quite a few questions about what "subscription" music is. This is my attempt to explain it.

Napster, Rhapsody, MusicNow, MTV, and Yahoo! all offer services where you can get unlimited music for about $10 a month. The one caveat is that the tracks you download with these services are all "rented" – meaning that as soon as you stop paying for them, you can no longer play them. The way this works is that each file requires a license to play. When you download a track you get both the file and the license. For a track to play in a player the license must be valid. Whichever service you use, they automatically renew all licenses every 30 days. If you're no longer a subscriber, the license doesn't get renewed and the files don't play. Another company, EMusic, is a little different – you get 40 downloads of mp3's for $10 bucks a month. While you don't get as many files, you get them in mp3 format and can keep them forever – you truly own them.

Why it hasn't worked? This model hasn't worked for two BIG reasons:

  • Can't find enough music to satisfy $10 a month. What do you want for your birthday? Tell me now. It's hard isn't it. Everybody knows they want something for their birthday, but when they have to think about it NOW, it's tough. It is the same with subscription music. Everybody knows they like a bunch of music and want to download it, but when you're at the front page of Napster, it is hard to remember what you want. Trust me, i've done countless focus groups – this is a big problem. If you can find what you want to download, you don't download and the value of an unlimited download service lessens.
  • iPods and iTunes. iPods are not only pretty to look at, with the iTunes player, they are insanely easy to use. As a device, they are so much easier to use than other subscription compatible devices. Using them, users don't have to ever worry about licenses and they don't have to worry about other media players or connections or anything. An ipod works with – and ONLY with – iTunes which means that it is designed to be simple. Microsoft is a platform company. They make platforms that any vendor can use to sell devices or services. Which is great, but it means that both the devices and the WindowsMedia format itself is going to be much, much more complex – and unfortunately for them, it shows. Until that extra functionality MS allows is really useful, it's only a hindrance.

Will subscription ever be a good way to get new tunes? I believe it will. It is very easy to create music now, and the amount of music being created is only going to keep growing. There is a need for people to find and explore the expanding universe of music. Once there are better searching techniques, I believe the utility of subscription music will rise.

Ian Rodgers, who works at Yahoo Music provided (in this podcast) a great way to think about the advantages of subscription music. It went something like this….

users care about 2 things regarding music: playing music and owning music. If you want to own music, you're best bet is to purchase the CD. You get the music in a lossless format which can be burned into any format at any bitrate indefinitely and also receive associated images, liner notes, etc. If you want to play music, your best option is a subscription platform which allows you to play as much as possible for pretty cheap.

I like that thought, but that doesn't account for iPods, nor the convenience of purchasing only a track vs. an entire album.

That's the theory – what do you think?

A funny sidenote that i like. WMA files (non iTunes) are protected by a technology called in the industry Janus, and by marketers "Plays for Sure." Check out a past blog post of mine which describes why this is a clever reference to a muppet.

Ajax Project Management System Needed

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As someone who works with a diverse staff and likes to keep a tight schedule, i online project management tools. I also love gantt charts. The current product i’ve been using is dot project – but this is a pretty cumbersome app. Seeiing that there are so many people who are taking web 1.0 tools and spicing them up for 2.0, can someone please do this for the Project Management tools?

It makes sense for click-intensive tools like mail, calendar, bug reporting, and maps – see: gmail, new Yahoo Mail, Google Calendar, CalendarHub, 16Bugs, and Google/Yahoo Maps – why can’t someone do this for PM tools?

Anyone know of some good stuff? Talk to me

Browswer-Only Google Computer

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GoogleHP2.jpgToday if you look at www.Google.com on IE, you'll see an ad for users to get Firefox. If you look at Google on Firefox, there's nothing. I think this is super ballsy. They are giving the double birds to Microsoft. Why would they do this? It is my belief that this is because Google will release in the next year a browser based PC for consumers to buy at an incredibly low price (say $100).

Google is building a world where all that is needed is the browser. All their services – Video, Search, Mail, IM, etc. – all work only in the browser, there is no concept of an application to them. This is the exact opposite of of what MS does, which is to create almost exclusively applications – Word, Excel, Outlook, etc..

Think about this:

  • A $100 computer that has no hard-drive, just 500 MB of flash, a keyboard, mouse – and you can pay extra for a monitor if you want one
  • OOBE: Upon bootup, which only takes a second because there's no hard-drive you get a Firefox browser which loads Google.com and a suite of applications:
    • Writely for text docs
    • Gmail
    • Google Chat
    • Google Calendar
    • Google Video
    • Google SocialNet (whatever this is – Orkut?)
    • Management of Google's Wimax connector to get internet anywhere

This would change the world. People could get 4 of these for around there house. Anytime you have any question or comment, you boot up a browser. With HD tv sets, you could have a browser available at every TV set. I'm telling you, this would be awesome and it's completely doable and looks to be what's coming. You heard it here first.

More Netvibes & Browser Desktops

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Following up on last week’s post about Netvibes, i just noticed that they have added a few very SWEET features:

1. They now have tabs so you can set up different views of feeds. I personally have a work related tab (internety blog feeds), a sports tab (deadspin, sports guy, others), and a personal tab (moose, mowery, barbero, flickr photos, best week ever blog)

2. They have a module you can put in there from box.net which allows you to put up to a gig of files. It just a hosted storage area as an rss feed. It’s totally sweet.

What does this all mean? Basically, we’re approaching a world where the desktop is replaced with a browser. Instead of applications like Word, Excel, Outlook, iTunes, and Windows it will be a world of Writely, NumSum, Gmail, mp3tunes, and things like Netvibes. All you need is a browser and you can get all your docs, music, email, etc. All signs point to this: Google’s acquisition of Writely, Windows browser replacements like Goowy and Netvibes, more and more bandwidth being available to users, the growth of server processors (AMD Dual-Core). It’s coming…i’m telling you.

WMA / Janus – the Muppet?

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Everybody knows itunes and how it works. But, the 2nd most popular format forjanice_trans.jpg music is Windows Media Audio, aka WMA. Why? Because with WMA you can protect it in very sophisticated ways. You can rent the music by the month (like Napster and Rhapsody) or you can purchase it outright to be played back on 5 computers (like on Buy.com). Any way a distributor wants to protect an audio file, you can do it with WMA. The industry term for this protected format is Janus.

10-12playsforsure_lg.jpgThis is a neat technology for business (although quite clunky for users) and it is being used all around the internet. The codename “Janus” however was never meant to be mainstream, so, starting early in late 2004 Microsoft started branding all protected WMA devices and files as being “Plays for Sure” – all devices were Plays-For-Sure compliant, all files, all everything had this attached. For Sure

janice.jpgI always thought the “For Sure” part of this was strange. I stared thinking about it more and eventually realized that it reminded me of the muppet that always ended phrases with “For Sure!” For the longest time i couldn’t remember the muppets name, then it came to me – her name was Janice! Even better, Janice was the musician Muppet. On TV, she regularly jammed with Linda Ronstadt, Elton John, and Linda Lavin.

You see: Janus -> Plays “For Sure” -> Janice. All having to do with music. Am i reading too much into this? Maybe, but i think it’s a terrific coincidence.