Pay 2 Play

"There’s a gold rush in the fledgling market for downloadable music. Now comes the test: how big will the fan club be?...

Industry executives are hoping that all the new legitimate services will reintroduce order to the frontier free-for-all that’s cutting so deeply into their revenues. 'We are giving consumers the benefit of the doubt to develop the market,' says Thomas Hesse, BMG’s chief strategic officer." [Newsweek]

I guess we can count BMG in the "still clueless" category. They're damn well not letting me contribute to developing the market. I want to download single songs from Rhapsody (or any other online music service) without having to jump through DRM hoops to play it on any of my stereos or devices. And I shouldn't be forced to use Windows Media Player to do it.

Until then, keep your patronizing "benefit of the doubt to develop the market" quotes to yourself, because your actions prove you are actually "doubting the benefits of developing the market" instead.

Update: It looks like BMG wants to further solidfy its "clueless" reputation:

Halderman Dissects New CD Copy Protection

"Alex Halderman has published an interesting technical report analyzing the newest CD 'copy protection' technology. Alex, who is a graduate student here in Princeton's computer science department, also wrote the definitive paper on the previous generation of CD copy protection.

Alex's paper explains how the SunnComm technology works and why it won't help the record labels fight copyright infringement. Despite the usual claims by the vendor (SunnComm) that the technology provides 'an incredible level of security for the music', Alex found that it is quite weak.

This technology is going to end up in the hall of fame beside the previous Sony technology that was famously defeated by drawing on the CD with a felt-tipped pen. This time, the technology can be defeated completely by holding down the computer's Shift key while inserting the CD." [Freedom to Tinker]

Ha! BMG probably spent more money on the licensing fee for the DRM software plus whatever additional steps it added to the production process than they would have lost due to piracy.

Five Amazing New 3G Cellphones from KDDI in Japan

"Five hot new 3G cellphones from Japanese carrier KDDI today, including one, built by Casio, that has a digital camera with a resolution of two megapixels. The Sony Ericsson handset can play back TV shows recorded onto a Memory Stick (presumably with the PEGA-VR100K, Sony's video recorder for handhelds), the Sanyo phone has a built-in FM tuner, and the Toshiba model can record video and then connect to a TV to watch it. All the phones feature KDDI's new EZ Navi Walk GPS navigation service, which offers real-time scrolling and voice guided directions, as well as a feature which help you figure out how to get back home if you get lost. Read." [Gizmodo]

Dang - two megapixels in a cameraphone?! If there was even a prayer of one of these showing up here in the next six months, I'd wait to buy my new camera!  :-P

Sorry, Aaron, but we just have to hope we see something even approaching this in late 2004. I really need those real-time, voice-guided directions based on GPS now, too....

Spotting Hot Spots with a Cell Phone

"The Wi-Fi Alliance announced Monday that individuals with cell phones or other devices that use the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) will be able to wirelessly search for and download lists of nearby hot spots wherever they happen to be. Users can access the list by entering 'wap.wi-fizone.org' into their WAP-enabled device. The application can't be accessed from a computer.

The new application is part of the group's efforts to connect more people to hot spots and Wi-Fi networking technology. The group has over 6,000 locations in 50 countries on its list." [CNET News.com]

This is a great idea, but I don't see any libraries listed (at least, not in Illinois) so maybe it's not really supposed to be customer-centric. They also desperately need a librarian on board for quality control of their indexes....

Carving Pumpkins

"Some of the most popular 'extreme pumpkin' photos." [SnipURL | Most interesting snipped URLs]

Posted for SLS folks, who will understand why tomorrow....

" A friend tells me that Intel is giving away stuff to schools and that they still have allocation left in their 'Model School' program. So, here's a good way to get your school some modern equipment." [The Scobleizer Weblog]

*cough* libraries *cough* sigh

One of the things I really appreciated about BloggerCon was Dave's recognition of librarians as educators, and I think the conference and discussions were the better for it. Schools don't make learners (especially researchers!!) in a vacuum, you know. The only institutions more poorly funded than schools are libraries.

I can't find a mention of a "Model Library" program on Intel's web site. Has anyone seen a similar offering for libraries?

I'll post the last of my notes from BloggerCon later tonight. It was a great conference, and an especially great group of people. Dave and the Berkman crowd should be proud. The first day panels were good, but I really hated the second day's format. Having to choose between AKMA against Jon Udell against Phil Wolff was horrible, but having to choose, I went to Jon's excellent session on Aggregators. I'm sorry it didn't go on longer - AggregatorCon 2004?

I hate when a great trip ends badly, and I think Doc Searls luck rubbed off on me. I took my digital camera because I had planned to be a total picture whore, but I actually ended up talking more than clicking. I had put my camera in my suitcase for the ride to the airport, and I forgot to take it out before checking my luggage. I realized it right after the suitcase disappeared around the bend. I thought about asking if they could bring it back for a moment so I could retrieve the camera, but I figured I'd be put on a watchlist, searched, prodded, turned upside down, and my pockets put inside out. I wanted to get home to see my family, so I gambled. I lost. Some jerk luggage handler picked the one time there was something in my suitcase to go rifling through it. I was so depressed on the drive home I actually listened to commercial radio.

I actually don't care so much about the camera as the memory stick that was in it. I didn't want to do it, but I played the role of stereotypical fan perfectly, and now my money shot with Adam Curry is gone. I mean, when am I going to be in the same room as Adam Curry ever again? (And for the record, he's even cuter in person!) I was going to blow the picture up to poster size and send it to my brother to make him jealous. Argh and double argh.

So I'm soliciting recommendations for a reasonably priced 3+ megapixel camera, preferably one with a fast shudder. Thanks!