Saturday, February 4, 2006

Gang podfare

Memeorandum's Gabe Rivera joins the latest Gillmor Gang.

I think that meant he's okay

Dean Landsman was sick the whole month of January. I'd call, and he'd say rrnnbvmm rrggbvvd rr ccchht bvt nn. Or words to that effect. I have no idea. Somewhere in a stream of those sounds he'd make clear, somehow, that he was fubar. And to call back later.

Eventually, he became intelligible. Then, intelligent. By now it was February. Somehow, conversation came around to Whitman. I said "Whitman was the Beethoven of writing." Dean replied, "Does that mean he couldn't read that which he wrote?"

I had to blog that.

One of these decades, they'll learn that

Jon Udell gently recommends that Apple open iTunes and then confronts the wrath of Mac zealots. I have nothing much to add to either, other than to point out that Apple also has the same pointless crippling built into stream identification in iTunes Radio. And that the Urge To Cripple seems to infect many companies, sometimes where it makes no sense at all.

Like, with iTunes Radio.

Let's say you want to listen to WDET (Detroit's main public station). It's there in the iTunes radio directory, under the "Public" heading. And it sounds terrific. But you can't discover the source URL. If you "get info" and got to "summary" you get a URL that looks like this: http://pri.kts-af.net/redir/index.pls?esid...(long bunch of letters and numbers)&url_no=1&client_id=7uid=(long bunch of letters and numbers)&clicksrc=xml .

Meanwhile, if you go to the WDET listenlive page, you can right-click on the MP3 stream link and get http://141.217.119.35:8000/listen.pls .Which brings down a clickable file that opens iTunes and plays the station. Do "get info" and there's a stream that looks and sounds the same. Do "Get info" and there's the same URL listed, with an "Edit URL..." button as well.

I'm not sure the only purpose is to keep users from copying and pasting the URL into another player, but that's certainly the effect.

Meanwhile, on my ThinkPad Linux laptop, I have a variety of options. I can click on the top MP3 link, which is set to bring up Kaffeine, so I can listen that way. Or I can download the same .pls file from the listenlive page and bring up Music Player. Either way I can copy and edit the URL. Both apps are good Net citizens. None try to "control" or "manage" my options (excuse me, "user experience"). All are just trying to do a good job in the marketspace we call the Net.

Next, value subtraction through PR-driven tech restrictions.

The other day, when I was writing The Producer Electronics Revolution, I wanted to look at what different keynoters said at CES. Thankfully, CES provided a page with transcripts for all the keynotes. Here's how they stack up:

Microsoft's Bill Gates, html text and Windows Media audio/video filesCEA's Gary Shapiro, .pdf textSony's Howard Stringer, html textIntel's Paul Otellini, .pdf textYahoo's Terry Semel, no text, QuickTime video via direct link or download (registration required)Google's Larry Page, html text.

The obvious flies in this ointment, of course, are the absence of a text "transcript" in the Yahoo case, and the entrapment of text in .pdf files, in two other cases. But that's not all. Larry Page's transcript excludes the whole (very entertaining) Robin Williams sections, including the Q&A. That annoys me because I'd like to quote my exact question to Larry from the floor, and Larry's (remarkably frank, if not entirely encouraging) answer. I'm guessing that Robin's jokes were protected by some kind of paranoid entertainment industry restriction, so I'm inclined to forgive that. But not the Otellini .pdf, which has copy-ability turned off. You can highlight text, but not copy it. wtf is that about? Really, why? It's so damned annoying. In fact, Intel's whole presentation was, as I said in my report, creepy. Most of the presentation was on —

its Viiv "technology" for doing what dozens of companies — including Microsoft, with WebTV — have failed at for the last 10 years: stuffing the Internet genie in the TV bottle.

So many of these companies seem to think, deep in their paranoid recesses, that growth in an industry comes from control. It doesn't. It comes from openness and generosity.