Thinkcorps

Keyspan : News : Press Release :

This is probably the biggest announcement in the smallest package from CES. The ability to easily create networked USB peripherals is huge. Network-attached storage, backups for your media pcs/devices, etc. Storage now only needs to be storage, instead of a server. Very cool.

Sure, big boys like Sony are gonna keep ruling the roost, but given the nature of the biz, I think you gotta start looking beyond the obvious suspects to new, more innovative manufacturers. The stuff coming out of Southeast Asia from all manner of manufacturers is pretty amazing. (Apex, Aiptek, Sampo)

The reason is simple – most manufacturing is outsourced these days. These no-name (to US consumers) Korean, Singaporean companies are making tons of products and components for traditional big name manufacturers. You didn’t know this because there was a nice stratification between those companies with international marketing expertise and those without. But today, there’s English-speakers in every country, Internet and Web pages in every country, and easy distribution. (Thank you, Ebay)

I imagine all these SEAsian manufacturers hanging out together, sharing info, and building new products – not via marketing reports – but via conversations over dinners, drinks, golf, steams, etc. on what new chips & components are coming down the pipeline. They’re doing everyone’s work, so it’s natural that they have access to much information first.

And since things are digital, cheap, and available, I can imagine these no-names taking huge portions of low-end market share in digital cameras, DVD players, cell phones, etc. Look around, it’s already happening. So what’s left for the big boys? I’m not sure. I think they have brand, they can do higher-end products that are better realized, and they can do integrated systems (though again, not low-end). Anything where analog quality is important (camera lenses, speakers, etc.).

There’s a great deal of leveling that’s going to be happening soon. And don’t think any of these companies give a sh*t about Hollywood either. If consumers want it, they will build it. Heck, if they think consumer might want it, they’ll build it. It’s gonna be fun, in any case.

So, my thought for the day is that someone should build up a database of all these companies, kind of a no-name shopping guide – i bet there’s one around somewhere, I just haven’t found it yet.

Been perusing posts from Joi Ito’s blog regarding blogs and fairness. All very theoretical and such, (‘cept when Dave Winer comes in and pops the big thought bubble, deflating the intellectual mousse, as it were). Now, I think I’ve got a handle on what they’re talking about, and it is an interesting question, inasmuch as it reveals a community of technology architects wrestling with the implications of what they’ve wrought and how, perhaps to make it better, or at least to maintain itself.

There’s a lot going on in there, much of which I don’t understand and don’t feel like breaking down, but it’s good that they care.

So for my personal mental exercise:

Blogs are both a publishing tool and a content platform (from the consumer side).

As a publishing tool, blogs (especially when extended to include all the future possibilities Joi envisions) lower costs to an extent that you have to expect that a) they’ll beat out many traditional publishers AND micropayment schemes (simply because the micropayment overhead itself is too great, like for-pay WiFi), and it will increase the potential pool of content producers.

As a tool, blogs do not address content quality, creativity, frequency, etc. – that’s left to the creators. This is called fitness, as I understand it, and it can vary across blogs and across time. This instability is much much greater than in traditional publishing, which as a business, is about eliminating much of that instability both for producers and consumers.

Additionally, blogs should be as dumb as possible, just like the Internet. Now, ‘how dumb’ is the big fat question, since determining what it is that blogs should do in its most abstract form is probably a fairly difficult question. Then again, it may be very simple. Probably depends on whether you fall on the publishing or consuming side.

The consumer side of blogs is where the current action seems to be. This looks at how blogs affect the consumption of content – the linking and such. A big part of the argument seems to be that there’s a power law that reinforces the position of popular blogs, as it pertains to linking. I can definitely see this, but as many have already pointed out, blogs are not necessarily designed to aggregate popular links, increasing their own popularity—some are, to be sure, and we’ve already experienced the first wave of blog spam designed specifically to exploit this.

So, I suppose, in light of spam, this ‘fairness’ discussion, might be more aptly termed a ‘fitness’ discussion on how best to architect a blogosphere that can best sustain itself—and it’s best qualities. Of course, no one could ever agree on what the purpose of the blogosphere is (not individual blogs, mind you, but the community as a whole) or what its best qualities are.

Much of these discussions will probably evidence themselves in better search apps and aggregators, both consumptive tools. I think very little has been done yet (though much seems to be in the works) toward empowering readers of blogs to find new authors and threads. The work being done with Web-based aggregators and OPML, etc. seem to point to a bright future for navigating the blogosphere.

Then again, when you think about it, how do you judge a 3rd degree link? Your basic FOAF question. With imperfect information, how do you judge an unknown link outside of the power law? And would ‘power’ even reveal anything in a weak link? The resolution of weak links is by definition weak.

But every link at its genesis is weak, and its only through cross-linking, comments, and trackback that an individual link gets strong. A blog generates strength through each successive strong link. Creating the power law, mentioned previously.

So if every good link generates power, I’m not sure that there’s anywhere very interesting to go with this discussion.

People will gravitate toward ‘influential’ blogs because there’s good, frequent content and good personality (plus, the time saved by relying on an editor to find interesting content). I also really like the fact that there’s personalities behind these sites, people like me. I also think that there’s some topics that will always be more popular: political blogs seem to do great.

Compared to traditional media, there’s so much diversity in the mix of sites, stories, and voices that get heard on these dominant blogs. I like reading the random thoughts of some kid getting ready for their prom or somesuch, but I’m not gonna read it every day. That’s the whole fun of it.

If people keep wanting to write, then I think blogs will do fine.

End of rambling for the day. I’m gonna go buy some DVD-Rs now and do bad bad things.

I spent the weekend (while not watching playoff football) backing up some DVDs, partly for sport, partly because I’m probably not supposed to. Turns out, it’s quite easy – much easier than it was a few years ago to try and create Video CDs. The software is amazing, and the hardware is, well, appropriate (DVD burners). In sum, Hollywood is screwed – seriously. You thought ol’ Jack Valenti had lost his marbles? Not quite.

The Drive
I bought a DVD burner last week for around $150 (I picked a new LG 4081 drive). Could have gone cheaper, (LG’s earlier 4040 got good reviews) but I figured I’d go with an 8x capable drive [WARNING: turns out its 8x on DVD+R only, though I suppose firmware update could change this]. Shoved it in my PC and XP immediately recognized it and installed drivers. That was too easy.

The Media
Bought some DVD-R media at Staples. I bought small packs to test, since I have an old Panasonic A300 DVD player which has been finicky in the past with CD-R/RWs. Staples had a Memorex 10pk/$10 deal they sold me on. I should have paid more attention though. Turns out, it’s only 1x media. Speed is important people, make sure you’re buying what you want/need!

Testing media is very important, both on type (DVD+-R/+-RW), speed (1,2,4x), and brand. Brand is important because most manufacturers outsource DVD production and often change manufacturers, affecting quality. There are also pirates selling slow (1x) discs marked at high speeds (4x).

The kicker is that you can’t really tell which manufacturer made your discs until you physically insert the disc in your drive and run an ID program like the free DVDIdentifier. Given all these factors, I can’t see how to safely navigate the purchase of media. There doesn’t seem to be any way to tell which is really good media – different packs (5/10/50) could be of different ages, thus it could conceivably be of different manufacturing origin. The only mitigating factor is that the manufacturers are getting better at producing good media over time.

Backing Things Up, Overview
There are a few different scenarios in DVD burning, which seem complicated but aren’t.

1) Protected or Unprotected Content (Rip)
If you want to back up a movie, chances are it’s encrypted (CSS) and most DVD backup software won’t touch it for legal reasons. Luckily for us, CSS is crappy encryption and was broken in short order (all praise hackers and the Internet). There are several DVD “rippers” available that will decrypt DVD files onto your HD.

I am not a lawyer, so I don’t know if DVD backups are legal. I am not recommending you do this. However, since you didn’t break CSS yourself, I don’t think the DMCA applies, and backups seem to fall under fair use, especially if you have children in the house (teething or otherwise).

2) Will it Fit? (Recode)
Many DVDs are DVD-9 (dual layer, 9GB), while all burning media is single layer DVD-5 (4.7GB). Keep in mind that disc capacity is measured like hard drives, kilobyte = 1000 bytes, while your PC measures a kilobyte as 1024 bytes. This means that the effective size of a DVD-5 is 4.38GB. Doesn’t matter much, so go unbunch your undies.

What this all means is that you’re gonna have to do some scrunching to make the movie fit onto one disc. Wait! Aren’t most DVDs full of tons of extras? Yes, Virginia, yes they are. You can easily trim the fat (special features, extra language tracks, menus, etc.). If this isn’t enough, you can recode the movie to make it smaller. There’s software available to do this as well.

3) Putting it onto a DVD (Burn)
There’s two basic choices here, either clone the DVD or burn the movie only. Cloning means making an exact copy, movie only means that you include the movie, one audio track, and one subtitle track (I think subtitle may be optional). When you put a movie only disc into your DVD player, it simply starts playing the movie (chapter info is retained).

There’s a lot of flexibility/options I haven’t gone into, but these 3 steps are the key. Rip, Recode and Burn—the holy trinity.

[Note: I am not authoring DVDs, creating new menus and such. I wanted to start simply and just work with the content at hand. However, for a stripped down DVD, I can see the usefulness of a simple menu. I’m going to try this next.]

The Walkthroughs
Next, I thought I’d walk through 3 different scenarios I imagine you might experience.

a) A recording you made on your DVR (unprotected, no recode, full cloning)
b) Backup with movie only, no menus or extras (protected, recode, movie only)
c) Backup with menus, most extras removed (protected, no recode, stripped & cloned)

A. Backing Up A Homemade DVD
This is the easiest scenario. You’ve a got single-layer (4.7GB) DVD with unencrypted content. You don’t have to decrypt it or resize it. It just fits. For this, I tried a program called CloneDVD. It’s super-friendly to use, down to the cute sheep mascot animating every step. It also can preview video files, so you don’t select the wrong one. Very nice. I’m not going to go into too much detail, you can get that in other places (like the manual).

I selected ‘Clone DVD’, and created an ISO image file on my HD, ready for burning. I did this just to be safe. CloneDVD will burn straight from DVD files or an ISO image. Then I burned the disc, and when it was done, I had an exact copy of my original DVD. Easy.

For clarity, the DVD files is a folder with all the data files that are going on your DVD. The ISO image is a single file containing exactly all the information and structure that would be burned onto the DVD. You can read ISO images using your DVD player software.

B. Backing Up A Movie Only
For this (theoretical discussion), I first had to decrypt the DVD files. I used DVD Decrypter, which just cracks the CSS encryption and copies all the DVD files into a directory on your HD. Then I opened up DVD2one, a recoder (transcoder), that shrunk the original movie down to a size that would fit on one disc. I selected the movie file, an audio track, and a subtitle track, and DVD2one output new DVD files into a new directory I specified. Now, I could use CloneDVD. I chose ‘Copy DVD Titles’, then selected the directory created with DVD2one. I then created an ISO image, then burned the ISO to DVD in CloneDVD. Easy.

C. Backing Up A Movie, But Including Some Extras, Like Menus
This is the complicated scenario, since you have to choose yourself what to include, and some of the files aren’t that well labeled. You can always write the ISO image file first, then test it on your PC’s DVD player software. [You will need Daemon Tools to mount the ISO as a virtual disk]

Software Options and Links
There’s a lot of different packages out there, and many different packages that will handle the 3 steps (rip, recode, burn). But as long as you have each step covered, you’ll be fine. I haven’t tried everything, but suffice it to say, there is a totally free combination out there if you so desire. I am personally very impressed with CloneDVD, but it doesn’t rip.

To learn more, I like DVDRHelp.com. This site has tons of resources and reviews on DVD media, players, recorders, and software, as well as many many guides on burning DVDs (as well as VCDs, etc.). A very comprehensive site.

In my research, I found myself hitting articles on CDFreaks.com quite often. This article Copying DVDs, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly gave me a great introduction.

Captain Kangaroo has died. I used to love this show. Bunny Rabbit was awesomely subversive.

Takin’ it to the wires.
hiphopmusic.com: A (Sad) New Chapter in Blog History

Sometimes, you just can’t let it go. I’m jotting all this down for my benefit, since I see the Apple music story becoming one of those hardy tech journalism perennials, like the “DSL/cable” is the best stories that seem to oscillate every 6 months.

So, without further ado, Businessweek on Apple.

“Apple is once again in the business of changing the world”
I love my iPod, but seriously. It’s not that radical. It’s the natural shrinking of components and increasing power/$ that’s always driven PCs. A large-scale community sharing dynamic playlists is much more radical (coupled with the celestial jukebox, a la Rhapsody).

“the trend may one day spell the end of the compact disk”
OK, seriously, people have been saying this for more than 10 years now. Give it a rest. Dis(c/k)s are great backup and transfer media. They’re the corrugated cardboard boxes of the digital space. They’re not supposed to be glamorous.

KEY OMISSION: Jobs has admitted that Apple doesn’t make any money from the iTunes store. Even revolutions need funding.

“Jobs’s other company, Pixar Animation Studios, is turning the movie business on its ear”
Pixar’s films have been huge hits of late, but hits are never guaranteed. Pixar also doesn’t pump out much footage per year. Too many animated features in a year, and the magic would tarnish quickly as Disney knows all too well. Pixar is extremely calculating in what it does. You can’t just franchise that into every film genre.

“He has the pieces”
WTF? I guess this is where the reporter got down on his knees. Apple is small fry in the computing business. iTunes makes no money and could be Napsterized in moments. Blockbusters are never guaranteed, as Pixar knows.

“Increasingly, content—that magical lifeblood of movie studios, record labels, and publishers—is being transformed into digital form. At the same time, the Internet and wireless networks are evolving to deliver those bits almost anywhere, at speeds never before possible. Couple all that with disk drives, semiconductors, and high-resolution displays that are growing ever smaller and more powerful, and technology is liberating entertainment from its past.”
I love starting a sentence off with “increasingly.” So awkward. “Transformed into digital form,” that’s 2 forms, buddy. Apparently, all these advances apply only to Jobs, and not the entire marketplace. Not Dell, Sony, Wal-Mart, nor a thousand other no-name Asian manufacturers. Just Steve.

“How we watch movies, look at photos, listen to music, even read a book promises to change profoundly in the next decade.”
Umm, seriously, the vast vast majority of America doesn’t know how their TV sets work. How does that change just because the set is digital? Truth—people will “watch movies, look at photos, listen to music, even read a book” exactly the same as we did before. If there’s differences, they ain’t gonna come from Jobs, they’re gonna come from the user community, and more specifically, they’ll come first from users tied to open source.

“One advantage Apple has over rivals is its retail stores”
Gateway said that too.

“Near term, an iPod for viewing digital photos would need nothing more than a color screen. Then, with its design skills, Apple could create a compact entertainment hub for the living room.”
AWESOME! Why didn’t someone think of this sooner?? :P I can’t wait to drive my family, relatives and neighbors to suicide while I regale them with my virtuosity on the piano, playing “The Entertainer” replete with electronic backup courtesy of Apple’s Garage Band.

“There’s no company in the world that’s better at making complex technology simple”
Jobs said this, and I actually agree. But read it again. Again. Yeah, “complex … simple.” How complex can something that you do while resting on your ass truly be? Seriously, America is a fat people. If listening to music was really complex, we’d see a lot more stairclimber accidents. BTW, aren’t there hundreds of competing MP3 players on the market right now?

“Apple’s iPod mini, a $249 player introduced on Jan. 6, is a lower-priced version of its current hit.”
Umm, some would argue that $50 isn’t really all that lower for a device with less than a third of the storage.

Next Story: Which Format Will Win?

“Is there a difference between the music sold at different music sites? No, the music is the same. But each song you buy off the Net comes wrapped in two important pieces of software: copy-protection software to prevent piracy and compression technology so it can be downloaded quickly. This combination is called a format.”
Do you think perhaps that when someone asks if the music is “different,” they actually mean, you know, “in general.” Just curious. So, the music is the same, but it’s different. Perhaps someone from Apple should have written this article. They are the experts on making the complex simple, after all.

“It’s only when people start buying music online that they may run into compatibility problems”
Except of course if you’ve ripped your music collection into WMA files, then buy an iPod. Hey, those folks at Apple are good, but they’re not magicians people! There are limits.

“Even then, you end up with lower-quality music because MP3 lacks the fidelity of new compression software.”
Totally wrong. The reason you get lower-quality music is because your that song you downloaded is already in a lossy format, recorded at a suboptimal bitrate. When you transcode lossy to lossy, you’re losing even more fidelity. So, basically, it’s your fault for buying crappy merchandise in the first place.

“Will there end up being one standard for digital music? Yes, eventually.”
Wow, talk about prescient. Where’s the burning bush? News flash: there’s no need for a format to win, since decorders will all be software based, a necessity in multifunction digital devices (you can’t stick in a chip for every format and keep the device small/cheap). The most open formats will win, look at the success of MP3. If there’s ever any trouble, people will simply shift to Ogg Vorbis, Divx, Xvid, or any number of open source alternatives that are being build into hundreds of devices already.

The Awful Truth

I think the iPod mini is a huge misstep. Apple doesn’t need another hard-drive player, they need a flash memory player. They also need to make iTunes work with multiple players and (notably for the mini) subsets of your stored music database. Who has only 4GB of music anyway? Regardless, you’re gonna end up filling up your iPod, and then you have to manage it manually, which sucks currently. Worst of all is the time and money wasted on the mini that could have been better spent on some of that innovating everyone’s talking about.

As far as openness goes, Apple’s never been too good at this. For a company who’s new OS is built on BSD, they’re not too open source friendly. It’d be good to see support for Ogg and others. The format of the music should be irrelevant to the player (and the user).

The iTunes music store is great and all, but again, it makes no money and consumes resources. I doubt it’s even profitable when you add in the incremental iPod sales it’s brought in. As I mentioned, the store could be Napsterized in a matter of moments. Public/Private P2P and CD/DVD/HD sharing will keep the illegal music flowing and it’s not going to stop.

Finally, people laugh at them now, but no-name Asian manufacturers are turning out some really interesting products. (I’ve mentioned this in a past post.) They are riding the leading-edge trends in manufacturing, and aren’t saddled with annoying marketing or legal departments. Their products are coming off the line with just about every port and format support you can think of. And they’re getting better. These are the guys to watch out for, ‘cause they’re going to be making everything you see in Wal-Mart’s electronics dept’s. Wait and see.

Somehow, this one slipped through the cracks. So much for liberal media bias. (I admit there’s a pandering bias, but liberal? Not so much.)

Through most of 2002, a staffer of Sen. Orrin Hatch, Utah Republican, was intercepting Democratic computer traffic after discovering a “flaw” in the computer system.

If you did this over your cable modem, browsing your neighbors files, you’re ass would be so in jail, your house would be turned upside down, and every spare law officer in the county would make it a point to come over to your house that day to glare at you and bust up your stuff—just ‘cause.

But apparently, things in Washington have mellowed considerably.

“Those documents that I did read were, in my view, not obtained in any way that was improper, unlawful or unethical,” [Manuel Miranda, former staffer] said. He described them as “inadvertent disclosures that came to me as a result of some negligence on the part of the Democrats’ technology staff.” His only obligation, he said, was to see that the Democrats were told that the computer system had a flaw that allowed Republican aides to read some of their memorandums.

“I knew our people had told their people about it,” Mr. Miranda said. “Once I knew that, I had no further obligation.”

This is why Republicans will continue to kick the Democrats’ asses. They’ve got hypocrisy down to a science—do what you want, then do a short conciliatory ‘it’s no big deal, i repent, i repent’ dance under the guise of being a good Christian, which of course if you really were, you wouldn’t have gotten into this mess in the first place.

Democrats are still trying to wrap the American flag around themselves. How quaint. The GOP’s abandoned “America” for God, ‘cause like it says, ‘one nation , under God’—and isn’t that exactly where those f*ckers want us?
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I love how business writers, well most every biz/tech writer actually, fall so easily into the whole “Holy Grail” trap, penning stories touting the search/battle/discovery of the bestest winningest winner of all time.

Ever notice how those prognostications almost never come true? Ever notice how totally wrong they are? It’s like when Wired puts a movie on its cover, you know it’s gonna dog at the box office.

Newsflash people: there’s not going to be a winner in the digital home entertainment category. No one’s gonna care about “hub” or “spoke”, since those are totally 80s network analogies anyway.

Is it impossible for a reporter, the person charged with following an industry segment, to synthesize some of the info they’ve collected over the months into a more holistic point of view? Would it be too much to ask for any of these mongrels to read what they’ve written and perhaps push the story in a more productive direction?

I’ve read a lot of Dean Takahashi stories over the years, and he’s generally good and capable. So maybe he just packed it in on this one. Can’t say I blame him, it’s mostly dumb analyst quotes.

Two major major trends completely destroy the hub/spoke model in this story.

First, hardware is on a cheap, powerful curve, meaning that processing power, storage, etc. will be plentiful within your home network. This trend influences not a consolidation of power, but a distribution of power. This directly contradicts the hub model.

Second, intelligent wireless networks are the future. From 802.11g to Apple’s Rendezvous, the trend is in self-organizing networks. Take the emergence of new devices that allow your run-of-the-mill USB device (HD, scanner, etc.) to access an Ethernet network. Again, the Hub is being disintermediated.

The future is about flexibility, about the ability for a rag-tag set of components to deliver more functionality together than they could ever do apart. It’s P2P, baby.

Think about this: What could you do with a keyboard that had 128MB of flash inside it? What if it was Wifi and you added it to a Wifi Internet connection and a Wifi TV? Could you perhaps do all your email/surfing on a regular keyboard and any enabled display in your house?

The only thing holding us back right now is the non-ubiquity of digital displays in the home. And that’s a hurdle we’re already in the midst of clearing.

From the San Jose Mercury News: Everyone wants to be your hub
(this is a little old, but i generally don’t read biz sections)