SLIMMING DOWN ITUNES

Apple's software for Windows has been causing problems on more and more of my clients' computers. I've been wrestling with bluescreens caused by iTunes, file extensions hijacked by Quicktime, and now I'm suspicious that an uninvited service has been causing problems in Outlook.

An iTunes installation includes far more than a music library that syncs to your iPod. There are multiple services and kernel mode drivers and program addins, with very little of it included in any disclosure or presented with any options. Apple also installs its "software update" framework, which it has used to install additional unrelated software without adequate disclosure, notably when it used the update service to install its insecure Safari web browser a few months ago.

The last few releases of iTunes install "Bonjour," a service that's only used if you share iTunes libraries across a network or use AppleTV. You don't do that. Why is that running on your computer without your knowledge?

You've also got "Apple Mobile Device Support," which syncs with iPhones and iPod Touch. If you don't have one of those devices, you don't need that software.

And if you're running Outlook and iTunes, you're probably running an Outlook addin named "iTunes Outlook Addin" or "Outlook iTunes Sync Addin." Take a look! In Outlook 2003, click on Tools / Options / Other / Advanced Options / COM Addins. In Outlook 2007, click on Tools / Trust Center / Addins, and click on "Manage COM Addins / Go" at the bottom. Now how did that get there! Make it go away. I suspect it of causing Outlook problems for several clients in the last few months.

There is a way to install iTunes without most of that unnecessary bloatware but be warned - it's not for the faint of heart. If you have to install iTunes, this guide will lead you through the process of locating the installation files for its individual pieces, so you can install only iTunes (and Bonjour if you need it), and leave the rest of it behind.

It doesn't help that the latest version of iTunes breaks the connection between J River Media Center and iPods. You're now forced to install iTunes if you get one of those devices, because Apple creates closed, unfriendly platforms and fiercely locks out potential competitors. Here's more info about that.

I hope my iPod Classic doesn't break - it connects to J River Media Center and I will never install iTunes or Quicktime on my computers. Apple is moving way up on the list of vendors helping send my kids to college.

Labels: Apple, audio, mobile, Outlook, phone, software

posted by bruceb at 10/07/2008 12:13:00 AM | permalink

REPORT ON RIAA LAWSUIT STRATEGY

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has put together a fascinating article summarizing the history and effect of the RIAA's five-year battle against online music sharing. The conclusion is compelling: every single move made by the recording industry has backfired. The RIAA has filed more than thirty thousand lawsuits and threatened even more people, turning public opinion overwhelmingly against the RIAA and the labels, and has accomplished nothing.

"The RIAA's lawsuit campaign against individual American music fans has failed. It has failed to curtail P2P downloading. It has not persuaded music fans that sharing is equivalent to shoplifting. It has not put a penny into the pockets of artists. It has done little to drive most filesharers into the arms of authorized music services. In fact, the RIAA lawsuits may well be driving filesharers to new technologies that will be much harder for the RIAA's investigators to infiltrate and monitor."

Public respect for copyright law has plummeted and the use of peer-to-peer file sharing programs has soared in the last five years, in large part due to the unforgivable tactics used by the recording industry. Currently the RIAA is openly engaged in protection racket shakedowns: it sends "pre-litigation settlement offers" to students, offering to take a few thousand dollars in exchange for not filing a lawsuit. It has set up a web site, http://www.P2Plawsuits.com, where the payment can be made by credit card. (When one student attempted to negotiate the proposed $3,750 settlement because she was already in debt for tuition, the RIAA representative suggested that she drop out of school in order to pay off the settlement.)

The EFF article focuses on the procedural aspects of the RIAA lawsuits, with detailed information about the various tactics used over the years by the RIAA to obtain the names and addresses of alleged offenders. When you share files with a P2P program, your IP address might be visible but only your ISP can tie that IP address to your account. The RIAA exploited a loophole in the DMCA to issue thousands of subpoenas to ISPs before any lawsuit had been filed; eventually the courts rejected the industry's interpretation of the law (referred to somewhat proudly by the industry as "driftnet fishing), but not until more than 3,000 subpoenas had been issued, followed by hundreds of lawsuits and many more settlements. The RIAA then began filing massive numbers of John Doe lawsuits, and more recently has tried to intimidate colleges into voluntarily forwarding the threatening pre-litigation letters to students.

Perhaps the RIAA are not the worst and stupidest people in the world - there's a lot of competition for that title - but I think they would make it into the finals, anyway.

Labels: audio, DRM, file_sharing, law

posted by bruceb at 10/06/2008 12:05:00 AM | permalink

GOOGLE ANDROID

T-Mobile introduced the first cell phone based on Google's Android operating system to much fanfare a few days ago. Although Android has some interesting features and much promise, I don't expect to see anyone holding the T-Mobile G1 in Sonoma County for a while, since T-Mobile is a fringe player with limited coverage up here (and certainly no connection anywhere nearby to its high speed 3G data network).

Android is a work in progress; comparisons to the iPhone are inevitable and at the moment Android comes up a bit short, but it's early to make any decisions. In this first iteration, Android is tied in very closely to Google's online mail, calendar and contact services, which are fully integrated and reportedly work smoothly. It's not as smooth for everyone else, since the integration is thin or nonexistent for other sources of mail and there is essentially no support for other calendar/contact programs.

In particular, businesses should be aware that there is no support for ActiveSync, the software that connects a mobile device to an Exchange Server. A Google Android phone is not currently a good choice for an office using Small Business Server. It's the same situation that an SBS user faces with a Blackberry - a solution for email can be cobbled together from forwarded messages and BCCs and the like, but it is clearly a kludge compared to the true integration provided by a Windows Mobile phone or an iPhone running ActiveSync. (It bears repeating that using an iPhone with ActiveSync causes it to suck battery power so fast it actually makes slurping noises.)

There's one other design decision for the T-Mobile device that has caused a fuss - instead of a standard headphone connector, they chose an oddball, mostly proprietary "ExtUSB" headphone connector that requires a weird dongle for every kind of headphone or earbud except the terrible earbuds that come with the phone. No one knows why but everybody hates it.

Somebody - Google or a third party - will likely make the financial arrangements with Microsoft and write an ActiveSync connector for Android, and the other carriers will be releasing their own Android devices with different hardware designs. We'll talk more about it then.

Labels: Apple, audio, Google, mail, mobile, phone, SBS

posted by bruceb at 9/29/2008 12:05:00 PM | permalink

AUDIO & VIDEO MYSTERIES

A few final thoughts about file formats for audio and video and how that affects a Vista Media Center Extender. This is the place where strong people are humbled and the whole project can be brought down with screams of frustration. I can only touch on a few of the myriad details.

There is a single overriding principle that you can put to use right away: make a conscious effort to avoid any file format that is locked up with any DRM (digital rights management, the schemes used with "licensed" content to prevent you from making full use of it), or that is even capable of a DRM layer. Don't buy songs from iTunes in Apple's proprietary AAC format, which can't be played in many places; instead, buy MP3 files from Amazon, which can be played absolutely everywhere. Set your audio software to rip CDs in MP3 format and throw away files in other formats from well-meaning friends. Here's a recent article that describe's one person's frustrating encounters with DRM-laden media files.

You can get a sense of how quickly this area gets ugly if you look into how many different formats there are for music, and how strongly people hold opinions about them. There are uncompressed formats that are more or less well supported (WAV, FLAC, OGG VORBIS), there are many competing formats for compressed audio (with and without DRM), and there are ways to compress MP3 files that result in terrible sound quality. I wrote some notes about music files here and I've worked hard to be sure that my library is 100% high-bitrate MP3s. If you have other formats in your music library (especially songs from the iTunes store), assume that you will have trouble playing them in Vista Media Center, much less an Extender in the living room.

Working with video is exponentially worse than audio. There is no accepted standard, no format that is a safe guarantee. Your camcorder will record files in a format that you likely didn't think about when you bought it and you have no way to be sure what will be required to play it on your own computer, much less in the living room. I'll throw out a few of the details that I ran into, but it's just a taste of what lies ahead.

There are several programs that rip DVDs to your hard drive in their native format, with all the files in the VIDEO_TS folder. Most of them will compress a dual-layer DVD into 4.7Gb, the size of a single-layer DVD. In this age of huge, cheap hard drives, it makes sense to create a library of entire DVDs on a big hard drive to have the best video quality when movies are played back, plus continued access to menus, special features, and chapters. Oddly, Vista Media Center won't display those DVDs ("folder is empty") until the registry is hacked per these instructions, at which point it displays a lovely DVD Gallery.

I put a 750Gb hard drive in my new Dell Inspiron and started ripping DVDs, using Nero Recode (and AnyDVD, which is required to unlock commercial DVDs). I brought the Vista Media Center DVD Gallery to life and looked at blank spaces where thumbnails ought to be until I manually found the cover art for each DVD online and copied the file as folder.jpg into the parent folder for each DVD. (J River Media Center will display a thumbnail for the DVDs if the folder.jpg file is in the VIDEO_TS folder, not the parent. Sigh.) I still think that's a good choice for assembling a movie collection that will be played back on a computer.

But then I got the Extender and - no DVDs! The Vista Media Center interface didn't have the DVD Gallery icon and the Extender claimed the folders were empty when I browsed to them. J River Media Center displayed the names but greyed them out as if they were inaccessible.

Much research ensued before I learned that Vista Media Center Extenders have been crippled so they cannot play DVDs in their native format under any conditions, presumably the result of a compromise to satisfy the dark lords in the movie studios. A separate DVD player is required in the living room to play a disc and there just isn't any way to stream a DVD from a computer through an Extender.

Converting movies is a science and a black art. A comparatively new format, H.264, is gaining acceptance as the "one true format," in Paul Thurrott's words, for high quality in a reasonable file size - roughly 1.5Gb for a two-hour movie. I had already found out that Nero's version of MPEG-4 (which is but isn't the same as H.264) has some funky proprietary issues, so I did more research and bought a copy of DVDFab to convert DVDs to a generic H.264 format, creating files with AVI extensions. I merrily proceeded down that path for a week or so, ripping movies right and left, before I realized that Vista Media Center Extenders can't play H.264 files either. Oh, I'm still not sure of the details of that - they don't play in the Vista Media Center interface or in the J River Media Center interface, but they sometimes play in the HP Videos section of the Extender, probably just to be malicious and mess with me. But clearly it isn't a universal format, at least not yet.

At the moment, I'm using DVDFab to rip DVDs to XVid format, which also results in files with AVI extensions because this wasn't confusing enough already. If you're trying this at home, these settings produce high-quality XVid videos that can be played on a Vista Media Center Extender: Mobile setting generic.avi.xvid.audiocopy; high quality encoding (2-pass); fixed bitrate 1200kbps; frame resolution roughly 768 x something.

Thanks for coming along with me into the living room! I'll return to your office now, where I belong. Good luck with your home theater!

Labels: audio, computers, DRM, video

posted by bruceb at 9/23/2008 12:11:00 AM | permalink

THE MEDIA CENTER COMPUTER

Running a Vista Media Center Extender in the living room requires a computer in the house running Vista Home Premium or Vista Ultimate. Your home computer can send your photos and music to the living room without working very hard, so it's quite possible to use the same computer that you're using at your desk.

There is a caveat, though. The most important trick for a Vista Media Center Extender is delivering TV shows to the TV, and your home computer probably isn't ready to do that without an extra bit of hardware to plug in the Comcast cable and act as a TV tuner. Once the hardware is set up, the Vista Media Center software is easy to set up - it automatically identifies your cable provider and channel selection, downloads a program guide, and handles program recording.

There are inexpensive USB devices that add TV tuner functions and are reported to work quite well, but I got an ATI TV Wonder HD-650 for a hundred bucks to put inside the PC, since it seemed to have the fewest trouble reports. In this category, as with so many others, there are always reports of horrible problems on Amazon and the online forums, requiring an intuitive weighing to decide which ones can be discarded because you're luckier or smarter than those people.

When shows are recording and being streamed into the living room, the computer is working a bit harder, enough that it might slow down your work on the computer occasionally. I also wanted to set up the Media Center computer to do some time-consuming, processor-intensive jobs - converting DVDs into files that could be stored on the computer's hard drive and played on the Extender. My desktop computer gets restarted pretty regularly as a side effect of testing too much software, which would play havoc with recording a show and might interrupt somebody's experience in the living room.

That's why a lot of people set up a separate computer that is dedicated to doing the Media Center chores. It can be a home-built PC, if you want to save some money. I opted to buy a Dell Inspiron 530 with a lot of memory, since basic computers are so absurdly cheap. I got a good video card but that's optional - I don't plan to ever have it hooked up to a monitor. It's sitting off in the corner and my interaction with it is all done from my desk using Remote Desktop.

A new dedicated computer and the HP Extender gives me a rock solid foundation for more living room entertainment than I have time for. It looks and sounds fabulous.

One more part of the story before we're done - a few scary notes about audio and video formats tomorrow.

Labels: audio, computers, hardware, photos, video, Vista

posted by bruceb at 9/22/2008 01:39:00 AM | permalink

HP MEDIASMART CONNECT

HP has been creating devices for years to bring Windows Media Center to the living room. There are two new Vista Media Center Extenders being marketed under the "MediaSmart" name that have some very interesting features. The HP MediaSmart Connect is sitting in my living room doing exactly what I was hoping.

The previous living room occupant was HP's Z558 Digital Entertainment Center, a computer running Windows XP Media Center in a box with a full complement of inputs and outputs for audio and video. It was fairly quirky to set up - getting the display to fill the screen took long experimentation, for example, and it wasn't very good at finding media stored on a different computer. It worked for several years but it always ran hot, which eventually doomed it - the proprietary video card died once from overheating and was almost impossible to replace, and the fans have lately been getting louder and louder until they became an unbearable distraction.

There are several new Vista Extenders on the market which overlap in their primary purpose, to bring Vista Media Center to the TV from another computer in the home. HP has developed an HD TV with the MediaSmart technology built into the guts of the TV - an interesting idea that would make setup much more simple if you need a new TV, but it requires a firm belief that the technology running a Vista Media Center Extender will last as long as the TV. I don't know if I would make that bet.

The HP MediaSmart Connect stood out for me, though, when I read some favorable reviews. It's a small box, 8 1/2 inches square and less than two inches tall, and completely silent. It has the right outputs to connect to my TV and audio receiver - HDMI, component video, and analog and digital audio. It has built-in wireless networking but I have a network cable running to the living room so I never had to find out if the wireless connection would be jerky or slow, a frequent complaint. HP is reportedly going to lower the price in the next week, giving it a list price of $299 and a likely street price of $249. (Gadgets like this require exactly the same calculation as software: if you get the wrong thing, it doesn't matter if it was cheap; if you get the right thing, the price is almost irrelevant in the long run.)

The remote control bristles with buttons, since there are just too many functions for it to be simple, but at least the remote is sturdy and solid in the hand, which is not always true of the competitors.

The Vista Media Center experience is satisfying but it would be more or less the same with any Extender. What sets the MediaSmart Connector apart is the proprietary software added by HP.

HP has built an interface that includes seamless access to Vista Media Center in its entirety - but there's also an attractive, simple interface that provides access to photos, music and videos that runs completely apart from Vista Media Center. HP provides optional software to run on the home computers that delivers the photos, music and videos to the MediaSmart Connect. Browsing photos with Vista Media Center is quite nice, for example - thumbnails, the ability to browse by tag or folder name, etc. - but some people will prefer to browse the same photos with HP's software, shown at left. Both views are available at any time.

HP then gave its box one more ability that was important to me: the HP MediaSmart Connect is able to connect to other software running on a home computer in addition to the program supplied by HP. It can display lists of media from any standard UPNP or DLNA server.

That means the HP MediaConnect can display music, photos or video sent around the network by a wide variety of programs, including some of the ones I mentioned yesterday. In my case, that means it connected immediately to the UPNP server built into J River Media Center, the program I depend on to keep my embarrassingly large music library organized. I've spent hours sorting my music by genre and creating playlists and smartlists, and in just a few minutes, there were those playlists on the TV, ready to be played at the click of a button. I started playing one ("Audio -- Recently Imported -- Two Months -- shuffle") and wiped a tear from my eye, because I had never been able to go back and forth elegantly between Windows Media Center and J River Media Center before.

That probably isn't important to you. There are a hundred reasons why this works for me and might not work for you. Maybe you'd be frustrated that the experience is not troublefree - I can't see cover art for music albums, I've wrestled with video formats (that story comes later), and the interface is sometimes a little slow, for example. You might be fiercely interested in streaming high-definition video or 5.1 surround sound, which I can't tell you about because I don't care.

The good parts far outweigh any negatives in our living room. Vista Media Center has a tremendous program guide for live and recorded television that I can reach with a single click of a button. I can browse through thumbnails and start a slide show of last month's family photos. I can play my video and music collection. All of those things are handled by an interface that's easy to navigate from the couch with a single remote control. That's good stuff!

All of this requires a computer in the house doing the work, and some hard experience to discover which formats work and which don't work. I'll tell you more later about how I'm handling those things.

Labels: audio, hardware, network, photos, software, video, Vista

posted by bruceb at 9/19/2008 12:59:00 AM | permalink

MEDIA CENTER EXTENDERS

Since the market for living room computers never developed, Microsoft decided to focus on "extenders," a different way to deliver media to your television.

Huge numbers of people already have a computer in the house running Windows Vista Home Premium, holding photos and music. An "extender" is a small box for the living room that connects to the computer over a wireless or wired connection to display the photos on the television and play music on the living room speakers. If the computer is set up for it, the extender can also handle all the TV programming and record TV shows like a Tivo. It works exclusively with a remote control - no keyboard or mouse! - and looks great from across the room. Here are some cute animations from Microsoft about how it works.

Extenders are not a new concept, and Microsoft is not the only company offering products that work this way. Apple TV is a box that streams music and video from your computer's copy of iTunes to the living room, hemmed in by Apple's fairly restrictive selection of supported formats and features. There is a rich selection of third party software and hardware that will send streams out onto a home network - Twonky, Tversity, music devices from Roku Soundbridge and Sonos, and much more. Tivo supplies software to send photos and music to the Tivo in the living room. Do-it-yourselfers and gadget freaks and technical types are having a wonderful time squabbling about the pros and cons of various setups.

Microsoft gets more attention in the mainstream because the technology it has chosen is elegant and because, well, because it's Microsoft, I guess. Media Center Extenders are based on a simple concept. The small living room box connects to the computer over the home network and displays the Vista Media Center interface, exactly as if it was running directly on the computer. Under the hood is a specialized version of Remote Desktop, which many businesspeople use to connect to their office computers from home.

All the work is done on the computer, but the computer can stay in the room suited for it. Multiple extenders can be connected to the same computer, and the computer can be used normally while it's sending media to the other rooms. The physical connections to the television for audio and video can be difficult but mating the computer with the extender is pretty straightforward.

Some people already have this technology without knowing it, because an XBox 360 can be a Media Center Extender. Chances are the XBox 360 is already on the home network to get updates and play online, so the only setup involves a bit of fumbling to bring a new blade to life in the XBox dashboard, full of photos and music. Microsoft recently announced that the XBox 360 dashboard would be completely overhauled to make it look like Media Center.

In addition to the XBox 360, there was a first generation of extenders from Linksys and others for Windows XP Media Center Edition, but they were slow and cranky and became obsolete when Microsoft rewrote everything for Vista. A new generation of extenders are now being introduced with some attractive features.

I don't have an XBox 360 - noisy things that fail a lot. (If you're interested, a good article appeared a few days ago about the XBox 360's sad history of hardware problems.) Instead, I'll tell you tomorrow about HP's MediaSmart Connect, which is the best of the extenders on the market now.

Labels: Apple, audio, hardware, Microsoft, network, photos, software, video, Vista, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 9/18/2008 12:05:00 AM | permalink

MEDIA IN THE LIVING ROOM

Your photos are on your computer.

Your music is on your computer.

It makes sense that computers should be able to record TV shows - it's kind of a computery thing to do, right?

It's probably occurred to you that it makes sense to store movies on a computer instead of buying them or getting them from Netflix.

Your new HD TV is basically a big computer monitor.

So why don't you have a computer in your living room?

You have no idea how many people have tried to figure that out. Microsoft introduced Windows XP Media Center edition, intended for living rooms, and no one cared, so it built an updated version of the Media Center interface into Vista, and still no one cared. (If you have Vista Home Premium, look around for "Windows Media Center" on the menu and start it up. Never seen it before, have you? The interface is designed to be seen from across the room. It's quite a nice design, just a little pointless on a desktop PC.)

There are lots of manufacturers making living room computers running Vista Media Center - Niveus, Avideus, Alienware, VelocityMicro, and many more. Many of them are very expensive and some of them are only sold through audio/video specialists, because it turns out that getting your media into the living room is frighteningly complicated.

Your needs are different than mine. Nobody will have the same setup, which is part of why this is so difficult. The best I can do is tell my story in the next couple of days and hope that it helps you think things through if you decide to go down this road.

For today, let me just give you a few of the considerations that make this so hard.

• Computers are noisy. A fan that's acceptable under your desk can quickly come to sound like a jet plane when you're watching television.
• Your living room doesn't have room for something that's shaped like a computer. The media center PCs have to be designed like a piece of audio equipment. That makes them too small to have adequate ventilation, so they run hot and need big fans, which gets back to the noise problem.
• Normal people find it virtually impossible to hook up a new television to cable and speakers, which is why Best Buy and the other retailers are getting deeply involved in sending installers to your home. A media center PC adds a new tangle of cables, each with its own quirks and requirements and possible incompatibilities - HDMI, component video, optical audio, S-video, and oh so many more. Your television connection might be analog cable or digital cable, it might require a converter box or a CableCard (a hellishly complex bit of equipment in its own right), it might be DirecTV, you might have an antenna for HD signals, and the setup will different for every one. Trust me - the Best Buy geek isn't going to set up your media center PC.
• You don't have a network cable running into your living room. Sure, all the new stuff claims to work over wireless connections but maybe you've noticed - wireless connections are not the most stable, troublefree items in our tech toolbox, are they?
• There are an endless number of proprietary formats and programs that will become barriers to making everything work. I'll touch on this more later. You'd like to think that someone could give you instructions for how to get a movie from the camcorder and see it in the living room but there is no guarantee that anything will work - and if it works today, it might not work tomorrow.

Pretty depressing, huh? There, there. I feel your pain. But I'm a survivor - I've got pictures running in a slide show, I've got music playing from my library, and I've got a lovely collection of movies to browse through, and it's all down in my living room where it belongs. It took some money and some persistence and things aren't perfect but it can be done! More to come.

Labels: audio, computers, Microsoft, photos, video, Vista, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 9/17/2008 01:35:00 AM | permalink

THE BIG MONEY, SOUNDUNWOUND

Two new sites have been added to the bruceb favorites page.

• The Big Money is a business web site created by the editors of Slate, intended to be an authoritative source of business news combined with interesting business blogs. It will be trying to stand out from the other big business sites - Forbes, CNN Money, and the rest. Here's a New York Times article about the new site. (Look under Finance / Markets on the favorites page.)
• SoundUnwound is an online music encyclopedia created by Amazon and IMDB, the huge movie database. SoundUnwound starts with a lot of information and links to Amazon for purchase information and reviews, but is also open for editing by users, similar to Wikipedia. The companies hope that a community will grow up to feed information into it and make it authoritative and complete. Since that has already happened on Wikipedia, which has extraordinarily complete information about music (and roughly everything else), it's hard to predict whether SoundUnwound will find its own niche. But it's interesting and nicely presented, and that counts, right? Here's some background information about SoundUnwound. (Look under Music / Artists on the favorites page.)

The bruceb favorites page is meant to include the most useful web sites, the ones that you're looking for most of the time. If you find dead links or if you find yourself at a site that's well known and has some general interest, I hope you'll let me know so I can keep the page up to date. Thanks for your loyalty and support!

Labels: audio, bruceb, business, Internet

posted by bruceb at 9/15/2008 12:35:00 PM | permalink

APPLE BLUESCREEN FOLLOWUP

Apple reacted quickly to the reports that the latest iTunes update has caused some Windows systems to crash badly. Last night Apple posted another version of iTunes that rolls back the offending hardware driver to an older version. If your system is blue screening, all you have to do is uninstall iTunes, uninstall Apple Mobile Device Support, and then reinstall iTunes from last night's release.

That's absurd, of course. As one person commented:

"A kernel level device driver (like the USB driver that Apple installs rather than using the one built in to the OS) will always have the ability to take down the OS.

"This is true for any OS since a kernel level driver is the interface between the OS and hardware.

"That's why it requires Administrator level permission to install (it did), why it needs to be very well written and tested before it gets sent to users (it wasn't) and why the installer should notifiy users that a device driver is being installed (they weren't) and only be installed if absolutely needed to support new hardware (it wasn't)."

You might want to take my suggestion: uninstall iTunes, uninstall Apple Mobile Device Support, uninstall Apple Software Update, uninstall Quicktime, install J River Media Center for your iPod, and return your iPhone.

Incidentally, are you aware of what a disaster the new iPhone has been? iPhone users are screaming bloody murder about absurdly short battery life, dropped calls, AT&T's terrible coverage with its much-vaunted 3G network, and much more. New software was released for the iPhone last night but there is little confidence that it will actually fix the list of problems it purports to address. Apple promises that this update will deliver all of the following improvements, each one of which has been a source of anguish for iPhone users for the last couple of months:

• Decrease in call set-up failures and dropped calls
• Significantly better battery life for most users
• Dramatically reduced time to backup to iTunes
• Improved email reliability, notably fetching email from POP and Exchange accounts
• Faster installation of 3rd party applications
• Fixed bugs causing hangs and crashes for users with lots of third party applications
• Improved performance in text messaging
• Faster loading and searching of contacts
• Improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display
• Repeat alert up to two additional times for incoming text messages
• Option to wipe data after ten failed passcode attempts
• Genius playlist creation

Labels: Apple, audio, mobile, phone, software, Vista, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 9/12/2008 10:43:00 AM | permalink

iTUNES 8 UPGRADE CAUSING CRASHES

New slogan for Apple: iTunes ain't done till Windows won't run!

After its iPod conference this week - more of a non-event than usual for Apple - a new version of iTunes started to roll out to Windows users. For some people, it's causing crashes and even causing blue screens after it installs broken drivers without any disclosure or warning.

The problems don't affect everybody - like so many computer problems, these are likely to be caused by unfortunate conflicts with other programs if they're installed on the same computer. It's still being investigated but one writer suggests that any of these factors might cause the iTunes upgrade to crash the computer:

• Roxio disc burning software
• An HP USB printer
• Logitech software/hardware

This writer thoroughly investigated the 80Mb (!) download delivered by the iTunes installer and discovered that it was installing two hardware drivers, including one that has a long history of causing blue screens (fatal crashes) on Windows systems. Apple is also delivering the MobileMe software and a program set to automatically load the MobileMe software when your computer starts up, whether you're using the service or not. That's the service that was a disastrous failure for the first few weeks after it was released a couple of months ago, and is still barely limping along. It's irrelevant to most people.

Apple was roundly criticized a few months ago when it used its "software update" service to distribute its buggy and insecure browser, Safari, without adequately warning people. This time it's taking the approach of not giving any warning at all that this upgrade includes anything other than a facelift for iTunes and Quicktime.

If you use iTunes, you can't really avoid this update - about all you can do is hope for the best. Personally, I'm happy to stick to my longstanding conviction not to install any Apple software on my Windows machines. Apple has proven over and over that they write crappy software for Windows. Ed Bott comments:

"Nice marketing strategy: Tweak Microsoft for an operating system that crashes, then ship code that crashes Windows. Thank goodness I'm not a cynic or I'd think this was a deliberate marketing strategy."

Labels: Apple, audio, computers, mobile, software, Vista, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 9/11/2008 12:05:00 AM | permalink

WHAT I USE

On the assumption that my choices are endlessly fascinating to an ever-growing number of people - really, really bored people - I've added a page with details about the hardware and software that I use here at the high-tech headquarters of bruceb consulting. I'll try to keep it up to date. Heck, my computers are happy - you could do worse than follow my example in precise detail.

Click here for all the prurient details!

Labels: audio, backup, broadband, bruceb, computers, file_sharing, hardware, mobile, phone, photos, printers, SBS, security, software, video, web_services

posted by bruceb at 7/30/2008 01:02:00 AM | permalink

BLUE JEANS CABLE STRIKES BACK

This is for my lawyer friends and clients - and anyone who enjoys seeing a lawyer smack down a company that deserves it.

Monster Cable makes high-end, expensive audio and video cables. It's not obvious that Monster Cables are worth the price - recently blindfolded audio aficionados could not distinguish between audio delivered on Monster Cables, on the one hand, and coat hangers, on the other hand.

But Monster Cable just loves suing people to protect its trademarks and patents. In fact, some people have suggested that maybe, just maybe, Monster Cable uses litigation bullying tactics to intimidate competitors and browbeat them into unwarranted settlements. (It makes Monster's CEO sad.)

Monster Cable sent a cease and desist letter to Blue Jeans Cable, a small competitor, alleging that an audio cable made by Blue Jeans Cable infringes on various Monster design patents and trademarks. Little did they know that Kurt Denke, president of Blue Jeans, had been a litigator in his former life and that he was not only perfectly capable of pushing back but would do so in public. He gave permission for his response to be posted online and promises to make future correspondence public.

His letter to Monster is long but worth reading for entertainment - someone at Monster's law firm was soiling their pants by page three. Skip the details if you like, but don't miss the last few paragraphs! This closing comes after a detailed recitation of facts and law:

           "I have seen Monster Cable take untenable IP positions in various different scenarios in the past, and am generally familiar with what seems to be Monster Cable's modus operandi in these matters.  I therefore think that it is important that, before closing, I make you aware of a few points.

      "After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1985, I spent nineteen years in litigation practice, with a focus upon federal litigation involving large damages and complex issues.  My first seven years were spent primarily on the defense side, where I developed an intense frustration with insurance carriers who would settle meritless claims for nuisance value when the better long-term view would have been to fight against vexatious litigation as a matter of principle.  In plaintiffs' practice, likewise, I was always a strong advocate of standing upon principle and taking cases all the way to judgment, even when substantial offers of settlement were on the table.  I am "uncompromising" in the most literal sense of the word.  If Monster Cable proceeds with litigation against me I will pursue the same merits-driven approach; I do not compromise with bullies and I would rather spend fifty thousand dollars on defense than give you a dollar of unmerited settlement funds.  As for signing a licensing agreement for intellectual property which I have not infringed: that will not happen, under any circumstances, whether it makes economic sense or not.

       "I say this because my observation has been that Monster Cable typically operates in a hit-and-run fashion.  Your client threatens litigation, expecting the victim to panic and plead for mercy; and what follows is a quickie negotiation session that ends with payment and a licensing agreement.  Your client then uses this collection of licensing agreements to convince others under similar threat to accede to its demands.  Let me be clear about this: there are only two ways for you to get anything out of me.  You will either need to (1) convince me that I have infringed, or (2) obtain a final judgment to that effect from a court of competent jurisdiction.  It may be that my inability to see the pragmatic value of settling frivolous claims is a deep character flaw, and I am sure a few of the insurance carriers for whom I have done work have seen it that way; but it is how I have done business for the last quarter-century and you are not going to change my mind.  If you sue me, the case will go to judgment, and I will hold the court's attention upon the merits of your claims--or, to speak more precisely, the absence of merit from your claims--from start to finish.  Not only am I unintimidated by litigation; I sometimes rather miss it."

Lovely! It makes me want to buy something from Blue Jeans Cable.

Labels: audio, business, law

posted by bruceb at 4/16/2008 12:55:00 AM | permalink

DIGITAL MUSIC NOTES

There have been a lot of changes in digital music recently, many of them favorable for consumers.

People are recognizing the value of the MP3 format, free of any licensing restrictions. If you are ripping your CDs, make sure you use the MP3 format at a high enough bit rate to preserve the quality of the music! This requires a simple change in the settings, regardless of what software you use. Here's my notes about that process.

Amazon.com is selling high-quality MP3 music from all major labels. The recording industry decided to use Amazon to break the de facto iTunes monopoly on online music, so Amazon was given the rights by all four major labels to sell music with no restrictions for less money than iTunes. Amazon just announced it will be selling online music internationally, just ahead of the publicity blitz that will be launched during the Superbowl for its music giveaway with Pepsi. If you're using iTunes, Amazon's software will automatically insert your new purchases into your iTunes library. It is a very appealing way to get new music! Click here to explore Amazon's MP3 store.

Media Jukebox is the perfect software for your music. It is completely free, it has the Amazon MP3 store built into it, it supports iPods and all other handhelds, and it has the best features of any music software - better than iTunes in many ways. Its big brother, J River Media Center, is also able to work with photos and videos, but many of you might prefer Media Jukebox for its simplicity and focus on music.

If you listen to music on a computer, treat yourself to good speakers or headphones. You spend hours at a computer every day. Treat yourself to a big monitor and don't overlook the difference that it makes to have your music sound full and rich. Logitech's new G51 5.1 speakers not only sound great, they have a well-designed desktop console with well-chosen controls for volume, balance, mute and headphones, plus a very satisfying matrix mode to create surround sound from your 2-channel music.

I've never regretted indulging in a nice pair of headphones. It's a very personal choice but for what it's worth, these Grado SR60 headphones are an incredible value for well under a hundred bucks. I opted for these Sennheiser HD595 headphones for myself; I can wear them for hours without fatigue and the sound is crisp and pure. (Amazon is selling them for $250 today. It's unclear why they were significantly less a few weeks ago. Prices seem to jump around oddly on headphones - shop around!)

Enjoy the music!

Labels: Apple, audio, business, software

posted by bruceb at 1/28/2008 12:51:00 AM | permalink

SPEAKING GEEK

The Wall Street Journal's site All Things Digital has a useful article that translates some geek jargon into English. It's a nicely written collection of common-sense explanations of terms used to describe digital cameras, mobile devices, televisions, and more. Sample:

"DIGITAL CAMERAS - Megapixels: This term describes the highest resolution photo a camera can take. Often mistaken as the most important factor in a digital camera, a high megapixel count - such as 10MP or more - isn't necessary for the average user unless he or she plans on heavily editing or enlarging photos. Most new digicams offer between five and eight megapixels, which is usually more than enough."

Labels: audio, mobile, phone, photos, video, wireless

posted by bruceb at 1/10/2008 01:05:00 AM | permalink

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2008!

In 2007, we started to work with Windows Vista, bought lots of handheld devices, and started to move things online - our mail, our photos, our movies.

What will 2008 bring? It will start with lots more of the same. Many of you will get your first Windows Vista computer and discover that it's quite a nice operating system. There's a flood of new handheld devices on the way inspired by the iPhone, although my guess is that Apple will stay a step ahead by releasing the iPhone version 2 with better data speeds and support for corporate e-mail systems - making it look very tempting for almost anyone who can stomach an account with AT&T. And the online sites for photos and videos will continually improve their ease of use and security; this should be on your mind every time you hear a story about someone who didn't have a backup of the family photos when the computer crashed.

2008 will bring an update to Microsoft Small Business Server - too early to know what the impact of that will be. I sense virtualization in my future - software that allows multiple computers to run on the same piece of hardware, each one convinced that it has exclusive control of the machine. That allows changes to be tested without risk and might even allow a business to run multiple servers in a more secure, less expensive way. We'll talk about that just as soon as I understand it even a little tiny bit.

With luck we'll talk less in 2008 about the recording industry and confusing DRM restrictions on music and video files. Slowly but surely the entertainment industry is being forced to consider new business models based on trusting consumers instead of suing them. Warner Music just began offering part of its music catalog in MP3 format through Amazon.com, joining EMI and Universal, and leaving Sony as the lonely holdout. My second favorite news item at the end of 2007 is the latest over-the-top assertion by the recording industry, this time in a brief filed by the RIAA last month in one of its acts of litigation terrorism against consumers. The RIAA now asserts that it is illegal for you to rip a CD to your computer, even if you purchased the CD and the computer files are only for your personal use. This is what it looks like when an entire industry dies a horrible self-inflicted death.

But my favorite end-of-year news story should warm all of our hearts. Wal-Mart announced that it has closed its online service for downloading movies. The service was opened in February with the endorsement of all major movie studios and TV networks, offering movies with intense DRM restrictions.

But that's not the good part.

The good part is that when Wal-Mart posted the announcement that the site was closed, no one noticed. In this world where everything is observed and commented on, it took a week for the closure to be mentioned in any blog or news article. It was such a cruddy, overpriced, difficult, restrictive service that literally no one ever looked at it. I love that!

Let's take it to be a good sign for 2008. My wish for you all is that in 2008, cruddy services and software will be ignored and valuable services and software will rise to the top, making you richer and more productive and happier. We can hope, right?

All my best wishes for a happy new year!

Labels: audio, business, DRM, Internet, mobile, phone, photos, SBS, video, web_services

posted by bruceb at 1/02/2008 12:05:00 AM | permalink

DAVID BYRNE & THE FUTURE OF MUSIC

David Byrne, former leader of Talking Heads, has written an article for Wired Magazine about the long-term prospects for the music industry when the costs of producing and distributing music are both approaching zero. What is the role for a record company when an artist can produce professional-quality music with laptop computers and distribute it worldwide through an inexpensive web site?

The answer is fascinating - there are big changes ahead, but there are still many business models out there for a business to team with an artist for financing and promotion. The article is remarkably insightful about the future of music distribution and may help you interpret the rhetoric from the recording industry, which only stands to prosper itself from a few of the options available to artists.

"What is called the music business today, however, is not the business of producing music. At some point it became the business of selling CDs in plastic cases, and that business will soon be over. But that's not bad news for music, and it's certainly not bad news for musicians. Indeed, with all the ways to reach an audience, there have never been more opportunities for artists. . . .

"The fact that Radiohead debuted its latest album online and Madonna defected from Warner Bros. to Live Nation, a concert promoter, is held to signal the end of the music business as we know it. Actually, these are just two examples of how musicians are increasingly able to work outside of the traditional label relationship. There is no one single way of doing business these days. There are, in fact, six viable models by my count. That variety is good for artists; it gives them more ways to get paid and make a living. And it's good for audiences, too, who will have more ? and more interesting ? music to listen to."

It's a must-read if you're at all interested in the entertainment industry or the business of business. The companion piece, a conversation between Byrne and Thom Yorke, leader of Radiohead, is also fascinating for a level-headed evaluation of Radiohead's online distribution of its new album - the unique conditions that led to Radiohead's success with the experiment and the implications for other artists.

Labels: audio, business

posted by bruceb at 12/22/2007 12:24:00 PM | permalink

PLAYSFORSAYWHAT?

Microsoft has a name problem.

I used to think that Microsoft had learned a lesson from the years of confusion and frustration caused by the similar names for "Outlook" and "Outlook Express," two programs that were not even remotely related.

The same people must have been on the committee that decided "Windows Mail" (the free program included with Vista) would be on the market at the same time as "Windows Live Mail," the similar but not identical free program for Vista and Windows XP. Not to be confused with "Windows Live Hotmail," the final name for Microsoft's webmail service. Which can sync with Windows Live Mail but not Windows Mail.

"Windows Photo Gallery," the free photo browser included with Vista, can wind up installed side-by-side with the virtually identical "Windows Live Photo Gallery," the free photo browser for Vista and Windows XP.

Now Microsoft has renamed another product in such an aggressively baffling way that the only reasonable explanation is that Microsoft is just screwing around with us for fun. Follow along!

Microsoft introduced an audio format built on DRM restrictions, marketed as "PlaysForSure." Partners were invited to build online stores and hardware devices based on the format. Sony, Creative and Sandisk built handheld devices, MTV partnered with Microsoft to build an online store, and lots of big players committed to the format. The marketing pitch: "PlaysForSure" was a comparatively open format and consumers would have lots of choices compared to Apple's closed world.

After a couple of years, Apple still dominated the market for online music and handhelds and Microsoft had decided that its partners were stupid, so with no notice it ditched the PlaysForSure format and put the Zune on the market - its own handheld device, supported by its own online store, that can't play "PlaysForSure" files. Microsoft stopped putting any energy into its "PlaysForSure" format and started competing with its own partners, essentially abandoning them and trashing the environment that Microsoft itself had created.

That was weird. It just got weirder.

Microsoft should have killed the "PlaysForSure" format but perhaps some of the partners felt they could still find a way to make money despite Microsoft's slap in the face. Last week Microsoft decided instead to change the name of the "PlaysForSure" format. The new name for Microsoft's audio format and DRM scheme is (drumroll):

"CERTIFIED FOR WINDOWS VISTA"

"Certified for Windows Vista" files play on Windows XP, but they do not play on Microsoft's Zune, which sells music from its online marketplace that is also classified as "Certified for Windows Vista" and marketed with the identical logo - but those files won't play on the "Certified for Windows Vista" devices that used to be "PlaysForSure" devices.

Even the kindest articles find this to be bizarrely confusing.

Microsoft's partners in the "PlaysForSure" world might not make public statements about their hatred, but they have to be seething. They counted on being part of a coherent marketing strategy, got shafted when the Zune was introduced, and now Microsoft is removing any possibility that any consumer will give them a second thought.

The story has one more twist.

Microsoft just announced this week that it has developed an audio format built on DRM restrictions specifically designed for mobile phones. Its first partner, Nokia, is going to build online stores and hardware devices based on the format. Chirpy press spokespeople promise that oodles of companies will sign up for the new format next year.

And what name did Microsoft choose for its new format? What name does Nokia believe holds the promise of a bright future as a committed Microsoft partner? What name was announced a week after the tattered remnants of "PlaysForSure" morphed into "Certified for Windows Vista"?

Are all these people nuts?

Labels: audio, DRM, hardware, mobile, phone, software

posted by bruceb at 12/20/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

J RIVER MEDIA JUKEBOX 12

J River Media Center is the only important program on my computer developed by a small company. J River just released Media Jukebox 12, a simpler free version focused on music that you might want to consider if you're not already using Media Center.

Media Center is the only program I use for music. Media Center organizes and tags music files, it syncs with iPods, it burns music CDs, it holds playlists and ratings, it downloads podcasts and Audible audiobooks, and it serves up music to other computers in other parts of the house. It's been a friend for years.

Media Center is also designed to work with photos and videos. Personally, I don't think it's as well suited for photos as dedicated programs like Adobe Photoshop Elements. I use Media Center for organizing and watching videos but not for many other tasks - it's not designed for editing videos like Adobe Premiere Elements, and other programs seem easier for converting formats and ripping DVDs.

Now J River is offering Media Jukebox 12, which is focused on music. All the references to photos and videos have been removed. That makes it less complicated, without giving up any of the features that make it so good for your music library.

Most people use iTunes. It's easy and perfectly fine - if you're happy with it, keep using it!

Media Jukebox is for people whose libraries are getting larger - iTunes is not very good when you've got a couple of thousand songs or more. Media Jukebox is also a welcome relief for people who find iTunes is increasingly annoying and cluttered with advertising. And Media Jukebox will seem like a breath of fresh air if you've been using Windows Media Player or any other program to manage a growing music library.

You only need one program for music. Media Jukebox can be that program. It's the only third-party program that can sync with iPods as well as any other handheld device on the market. (Not Zunes. You didn't get a Zune, did you? Oh, dear, I hope not.) An iPod can only sync with one program - if you sync with Media Jukebox, you're leaving iTunes behind.

Media Jukebox is free. Try it!

Labels: Apple, audio, software

posted by bruceb at 12/11/2007 10:17:00 AM | permalink

MP3s AND THE FUTURE OF MUSIC

The music industry is in complete disarray; the shift away from CDs is irreversible and most consumers simply expect music to be free. The recording industry's hostility, arrogance, and litigation tactics have alienated everyone, making it harder for the industry to imagine a business plan that works - especially while it's controlled by executives who freely admit they don't understand these new-fangled Internet tubes.

It's no surprise that many different plans for distributing music are under way, and it shouldn't be a surprise that the reporting is frequently confusing or wrong. Let me give you the shortest of refresher courses so you can follow the headlines.

You'll see the term "MP3" used freely and not always accurately. MP3 is a file format, one of the original formats for storing music that's been compressed to make smaller computer files while still preserving much of the original sound quality. It's not completely free - there's a patent and license fees change hands - but it's neutral because an MP3 file does not have any bits devoted to restricting use of the file. In other words, MP3 files are essentially not capable of being locked down by DRM restrictions.

When music first began to be played on computers and Napster was flourishing, almost all music files were in MP3 format.

The recording industry doesn't like MP3 files. If you buy one, you can copy it, you can transfer it, you can use it in multiple ways (on a CD, on a handheld device), all without paying any more money. That interfered with the entertainment industry's plan to reinvent copyrights to deliver unlimited streams of revenue by requiring new payments every time your use of a copyrighted item changes in any way.

The industry demanded files that could be controlled and the explosion of file formats began - Microsoft's WMA, Apple's AAC, and others - all devoted to playing music only if certain conditions were met.

• Pay for the file and it plays for a week, or a month, or a year, then stops unless you pay more money.
• Pay for the file and you can play it on your computer but not burn it on a CD or play it on your friend's computer.
• Pay for the file and you can play it forever on this computer but not on the computer you get to replace it unless you engage in a complicated wrestling match with licenses.
• Pay for the file and you can play it on an iPod but not on any other handheld device.
• And a thousand more variations that have been infuriating consumers for years.

The press typically refers to all of these files as "MP3 files," in the belief that the term is synonymous with "music file." It's not.

There's some momentum now towards delivering files that do not have any DRM restrictions, since consumers have become well-informed enough not to want them. Much attention was given to Apple's announcement that it would begin selling DRM-free music in its iTunes store. Although the files do not have any DRM restrictions, they are still in Apple's proprietary AAC format, which some software will not play and which cannot be used with any handheld device other than an iPod.

EMI and Universal were the first to open their libraries (reluctantly) for sale in MP3 format. Amazon took advantage of that as a marketing wedge for its music store selling genuine MP3 files - universal acceptance in all software and all devices and no DRM (and a clever bit of software that automatically adds purchases to your library if you're using iTunes, making it almost as convenient as purchases from the iTunes store).

During next February's Super Bowl, Pepsi and Amazon will advertise a massive year-long promotion where codes under bottlecaps can be exchanged for music downloads. The twist is that the downloads will be MP3 files from Amazon - and Pepsi will be distributing enough codes for 1 billion free downloads. That's a lot of music, and a lot of consumers being introduced to Amazon's music store!

Some analysts wonder if we are approaching a tipping point that will force the other labels to agree to distribute their music in MP3 format and leave ineffective DRM restrictions behind. WalMart is pressuring the labels to sell their catalogs in MP3 format, and Warner Music Group and Sony are considering MP3 tests, previously unthinkable.

All of this is good for consumers but not the whole story. The labels are getting enthusiastic again about subscription services, where a fixed monthly fee opens up access to all the music you want. Most recently it turned up in a breathless announcement from Universal about "Total Music," a service to be bundled with cell phones and priced so low that carriers won't even bill for it separately, giving the impression that the music is free.

"With the Total Music service, Morris and his allies are trying to hit reset on how digital music is consumed. In essence, Morris & Co. are telling consumers that music is a utility to which they are entitled, like water or gas. Buy one of the Total Music devices, and you've got it all. Ironically, the plan takes Jobs' basic strategy-- getting people to pay a few hundred bucks for a music player but a measly 99 cents for the music that gives it value--and pushes it to its extreme. After all, the Total Music subscriber pays only for the device--and never shells out a penny for the music. "You know that it's there, and it costs something," says one tech company executive who has seen Morris' presentation. "But you never write a check for it.""

Swell! Except for the teensiest bit of ambiguity about DRM restrictions - but there was room for optimism. After all, Universal is already experimenting with MP3s, right? Why not generate some goodwill by giving consumers the format they want in this situation where a flow of income is guaranteed?

The optimism lasted about a month until the details became available. Universal's "free music" will arrive in Microsoft's WMA format, meaning the files can't be played on iPods or Zunes. (That's right - Microsoft's "PlaysForSure" WMA is a format that Microsoft designed and promoted before abandoning it - its own handheld, the Zune, can't play the files.)

Universal's first partner is Nokia, and other labels may get involved. You'd be able to download music to your cell phone, which presumably will have the specs to be a good music player. The music won't turn off when your cell contract runs out, which is good. But there will be DRM restrictions - you won't be able to burn the music to a CD, for example, and it's still unclear whether the tracks are transferable and playable by anyone else.

There may be a "tipping point" ahead but there's still a long way to go before the recording industry stops trying to build its business around crippled products and concedes that informed consumers want unrestricted files in generic formats.

Labels: Apple, audio, business, DRM, Microsoft, mobile, phone, web_services

posted by bruceb at 12/07/2007 01:13:00 AM | permalink

THE WIRELESS FUTURE
Wireless technology is a blur of confusing acronyms and frequent frustration, but we are making progress and there continues to be hope that more and more wires will disappear in the future.

Wireless Internet connections for our computers are slowly becoming more comprehensible and easier to manage, although the word "wireless" is still used for too many different things. Wireless keyboards and mouses are far more dependable than they used to be, and battery life has been significantly extended.

One company just announced new technology for setting up wireless connections to speakers and headphones. Previous attempts to beam sound across the room have performed badly and this announcement is just a press release, but we can hope for the best.

Another development: IBM announced a plan to develop ultra high speed chips to transmit wireless high-definition video between computers, televisions and handheld devices. One of many hurdles that stops people from hooking the living room into a home computer network is the difficulty of getting video working smoothly over a wireless connection; this might help get past that bottleneck. (Another difficulty is that most people can't make heads or tails of the technology required; there's nothing on the horizon to change that, despite a flood of announcements of "media center extenders" and the like.)

Labels: audio, network, video, wireless

posted by bruceb at 10/26/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

RIAA SUES USENET.COM
The first rule of Usenet is, you don't talk about Usenet.

Careful observation of that rule has allowed Internet newsgroups to avoid getting involved in the entertainment industry's freakish litigation war on its customers. Now a new lawsuit suggests that the RIAA can't stand it any more.

It's time to talk about Usenet.

Internet newsgroups predate virtually everything on the Internet. Using specialized software, you can display messages posted in "newsgroups," with each newsgroup devoted to a particular subject matter that is more or less observed by the people posting messages. Anyone can read and post messages in any newsgroup; most are unmoderated.

Some newsgroups are very active, with hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of messages posted daily. Some were created years ago and remain on the list even though they are completely dormant. There is a rough organization to the groups - the "sci" (science) category contains newsgroups named "sci.math" and "sci.physics," for example. There are newsgroups for every interest, hobby, profession, religion, sport, everything you can think of and oh so many things that would never occur to you.

There are currently over 107,000 newsgroups.

The newsgroups contain text messages, and only text messages. But years ago some clever technology arrived that permits any kind of file to be converted to a text message and posted to the newsgroups; the software at your end then converts it back to a picture or a PDF or a music file or a program.

The architecture of Usenet is unlike anything else. It is global and decentralized. Servers run all over the world; basically, each one holds all the contents of Usenet and forwards new items and changes to all the other servers, in a constant flow of data in all directions.

At one time, virtually every ISP maintained its own Usenet servers and offered free access to Usenet to its subscribers. As the volume of traffic on Usenet grew, many ISPs did not want the burden of maintaining the huge servers, so they began leasing Usenet access from several large global companies - primarily UsenetServer.com, Supernews, Giganews and Usenet.com. From Wikipedia:

"A news server is one of the most difficult Internet services to administer well because of the large amount of data involved, small customer base (compared to mainstream Internet services such as email and web access), and a disproportionately high volume of customer support incidents (frequently complaining of missing news articles that are not the ISP's fault). Some ISPs outsource news operation to specialist sites, which will usually appear to a user as though the ISP ran the server itself. Many sites carry a restricted newsfeed, with a limited number of newsgroups."

Windows has built-in software for Usenet. You've heard of it; it's Outlook Express (and Windows Mail on Vista). It's terrible, but it works for text messages.

But that's not what Usenet is about.

A flood of music, movies, and pornography is posted to Internet newsgroups every day. The volume is staggering - terabytes of data arrives daily. So, for example, a subscription to Giganews, a license to use Newsleecher and its "Supersearch" service, and a fairly steep learning curve opens up access to a constantly-changing vault bursting with music and movies.

Late last week the RIAA sued Usenet.com, one of the larger Usenet services. Here's another article about the lawsuit.

Usenet.com has some intemperate language on its web site, boasting that its service "gives you access to millions of MP3 files and also enables you to post your own files the same way and share them with the whole world."

The fear is that a victory over a company making overbroad statements will lay the groundwork for pursuing the hundreds of universities, ISPs and global companies offering Usenet access. Newsgroup traffic would be difficult to control and has obvious non-infringing uses, but that doesn't mean the RIAA can't disrupt the established patterns and shut off access through some of the current providers. At this point we hardly need more evidence to realize the RIAA is clinically insane and capable of anything.

The RIAA deeply believes that the battle to protect copyrights is the most important issue facing Western civilization. Make sure you take a moment to watch this anti-piracy video, which dramatizes the depth of their commitment.

Labels: audio, DRM, file_sharing, law, video