Tuesday, May 11, 2004

All you need to know

Sony's new "iPod killer" only plays Sony's own ATRAC3 tracks. No MP3. No Ogg, No Real. No AAC.

When is one of these companies going to come out with a player that's truly agnostic and agile about the formats it records and plays? When will somebody get serious about Ogg and save us from this misplaced greed and inanity?

I have a Sony MiniDisk recorder. It's extraordinarily handy. Small. Tough. Great battery life. It also records only in ATRAC3. It will convert to MP3 only with shitty Windows software that I'm in no position (or mood) to use. It has a UI from hell. It interoperates with nothing I own (and I have a lot of candidates, many bearing the Sony brand) I can only transcribe its recordings by dubbing them over to cassettes. I hate it severely.

This new thing looks just as hateworthy. Dig:

The device sports Sony's G-Sense interface which maps sectors of the display onto a series of 25 buttons.

Whoa! Gimme that!

Such a waste of good pixels even to be talking about it.

Bonus link: Real's Helix Community gives grants for doing Good Things in this neglected space. The latest went to the creators of Ogg. Bravo.

Just don't blame the stars for the gas

George Packer in The Revolution Will Not Be Televised:

The constellation of opinion called the blogosphere consists, like the stars themselves, partly of gases.