More on the iHPod

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The HP iPod

More details of the Apple/HP iPod agreement are starting to come to light. Many people have expressed surprise that the announcement wasn’t made during the Macworld keynote, where it would have made quite a splash. Apparently, the simple reason for that is that the Macworld keynote was on Tuesday, and negotiations were “completed only after an extensive bargaining session that ran long into Wednesday night,” according to the New York Times.

The agreement…represents a significant departure for both companies. For the first time, Mr. Jobs has stepped away from the self-enclosed Apple-only strategy he has pursued since he returned to run the company in 1997. Meanwhile, Hewlett, the second-largest computer maker in the world, has put its software partner, Microsoft, on notice that it will not necessarily follow its lead in every case.

The back of the HP iPod

Additionally, one (and only one) report — that at the moment, doesn’t seem to be taken terribly seriously by most people — claims that HP “will be working with Apple to add support for Microsoft’s superior Windows Media Audio (WMA) format to the iPod by mid-year.” Now, first off, the claim that WMA is a “superior” format is questionable in and of itself (I’ve seen people on both sides of the WMA vs. AAC argument being equally rabid), and tossing that adjective into a single-sentence rumor shows enough bias that many people are discounting this rumor immediately. Additionally, the rumormonger is none other than Paul Thurrott, author of the WinInfo Super Site, who has been known to make some highly questionable claims when comparing Mac OS X and Windows in the past.

However, I’m not sure that this would be an entirely bad move on Apple’s part, if it’s true and if HP can talk them into it. Just as their partnership with HP will be opening up more potential avenues for the iPod and the iTunes Music Store, allowing Windows based iPod users to mix in previously-imported or downloaded WMA files along with their .mp3/.m4a library could give Windows users even more reason to jump on the iPod bandwagon. I wouldn’t be suprised at all if Apple has lost some iPod sales simply because there were people who were interested, but already had a large library of music encoded in WMA format, and would rather go with a competing .mp3 player than face having to re-import their entire music library.

While this may be nothing more than a Windows fanboy’s rumormongering, I’m not so sure that it should be dismissed so casually and out of hand. There may not be any way of knowing the truth until an official announcement is made one way or the other, but I think that there are potential upsides worth paying attention to.

(via MacMinute and MacRumors)

iTunes: “ToriMix v2” by DJ Wüdi from the album Difficult Listening Hour (2001, 46:37).

Kodak moments

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Mr. Man says he hears a knock.

Yup, it’s a faint knock.

I open the door a crack and it’s Eric. Eric is from the Sierra Club “our nation’s oldest environmental group” and did I know the Bush administration is a total disaster environmentally and the Bush administration’s policies are “raping our forrests and …”

ME: One question.

ERIC: Sure.

ME: Did you vote for Nader in 2000?

ERIC: Yes sir!

ME: Get off my fucking porch.

The good news is – Mr. Man learned a new word tonight.

Picture me, standing up and applauding.

On the one hand, I have more respect for someone who votes — even if they voted for Nader — than for someone who doesn’t vote. I also can’t really argue with someone voting their conscience, if they cast their vote for the candidate they truly thought would best lead the country.

However.

Last election (and the three years since then) should serve as an example to any and everyone. Much as people may wish that a third-party candidate could come out of nowhere and win, realistically, it’s not going to happen. At this point, any vote that does not go to help the Democratic nominee gain the Presidential office will just help Bush retain his position, and that’s the last thing we need right now.

I’m a Dean supporter. But in the event that Dean doesn’t get the nomination, the bottom line is simply anybody but Bush. And by “anybody”, I mean anybody who can realistically have a chance of defeating Bush — and by that, I mean the Democratic nominee.

It’s got to happen.

ecto beta available

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The creator of blogging client Kung-Log has rewritten, updated, and renamed it, and has just relased the first public beta of ecto, which I’m playing with now. While I was never completely pulled in by Kung-Log, ecto so far seem to be fairly impressive. Quick response time, supports about everything I’d want it to (trackback pings, categories, file uploading, etc.), and has a decent number of useful extras (an option to prevent uploading posts that don’t have a category set or a summary written, and a live preview that can even tie into your site’s stylesheet so that it actually looks the way it should once posted), plus some “fun” goodies (like the ability to automatically insert what track iTunes is currently playing).

I’ve gotten so used to just using the web interface that I’m not entirely sure if I’ll be coaxed away from that or not, but I’m always willing to give one of these things a try. We’ll see how it goes.

(via Lane)

iTunes: “Difficult Listening Hour – 02v2” by DJ Wüdi from the album Difficult Listening Hour (2000, 1:04:41).

About that iPod mini

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When Steve Jobs made the announcement of the iPod mini during the Macworld SF keynote, I wasn’t overly impressed.

…the biggest news on the iPod mini will be the price — no matter how happy people are about having the smaller player available, and no matter how cool it is, too many people were hoping for the \$100 price point. At this point, the 15Gb full-size iPod is only \$50 more than the 4Gb iPod mini…is this really going to go over well? Only time will tell, I suppose, but I have to say that I’m fairly skeptical. It’ll be a bit sketchy as to whether the smaller form factor and colors will be enough of a draw to offset the reduced capacity.

After thinking it over for a few days, though, I think I need to revise that.

See, I currently have a 2nd generation 10Gb iPod, which I bought for \$399 (it was the midrange model at the time I bought it). I also have an unusually large music collection: upwards of 1200 CDs, which will take up somewhere upwards of 80Gb of space once it’s all ripped onto my computer. Even if I had the money to spring for the top-of-the-line iPod, at 40Gb it would still hold less than half of my entire music library, so I’m not in a position of being able to carry around my entire music collection with me at all times.

Because of that, I’ve been looking at how I do use my iPod — and, quite simply, I really don’t use much more than a quarter of the 10Gb that I have available to me. I’ve gone into my listening habits in more detail in the past, but essentially, I carry around one 1Gb playlist, and occasionally toss one or two other specialized playlists on when I’m in a mood to, and that’s it. Right now, I’m currently using a whopping 2.12Gb of my 10Gb iPod for music, leaving around 7Gb free.

Now, say my iPod dies (heaven forbid). The more I think about it, if I do end up in a position where I need to get a new iPod, the iPod mini is perfect for my usage habits. Sure, it’s “only” 4Gb — but when I’m more than content with using just over half that space right now, why should that bother me in the least? I could spend \$50 more than the iPod mini, get the bottom rung iPod, and have 15Gb available…but chances are, I’d still only use around 2Gb of it for music, essentially wasting the other 13Gb. On the other hand, I could spend only \$250 (a full \$150 less than the 10Gb iPod I have now, incidentally), still have about twice the drive space than I’m likely to use, and have a smaller, lighter iPod that does everything that I use mine for now.

Sounds like a damn good deal to me.

So, contrary to my initial opinion, count me fully in the camp of the iPod mini supporters. If my current iPod ever dies — which hopefully won’t happen for quite a while yet — the iPod mini will do quite well for me.

U.S. Treasury: Anonymous until we change our mind

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I hope none of you sent any comments in to the Treasury if you were actually expecting your comments to remain anonymous:

The U.S. Treasury Department plans to publish nearly 10,000 e-mail addresses on the Web, violating its privacy promise to Americans who used e-mail to comment on a government proceeding.

In March 2003, the Treasury Department’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) asked for e-mail comments about a proposal (.pdf link) that could raise the price of malt beverages like Bacardi Breezer and Smirnoff Ice. At the time, the department said that the text of comments would be made public–but assured people that e-mail addresses, home addresses and other personal information of individuals would be removed first.

“For the convenience of the public, we will…post comments received in response to this notice on the TTB Web site,” the initial notice said. “All comments posted on our Web site will show the name of the commenter, but will not show street addresses, telephone numbers, or e-mail addresses.” The TTB is the successor to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, portions of which are now part of the Department of Homeland Security.

As news of the proposed regulations circulated around malt beverage aficionados online, word-of-mouth took over and comments started flooding in to nprm\@ttb.gov. By October, the Treasury Department had received about 9,900 e-mail messages, plus 4,800 comments sent through the U.S. mail or fax–and decided it could no longer keep its promise.

“The unusually large number of comments received…has made it difficult to remove all street addresses, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses from the comments for posting on our Internet Web site in a timely manner,” the Treasury Department said in a follow-up notice (.pdf link), published last month in the Federal Register. “Therefore, to ensure that the public has Internet access to the thousands of comments received…at the earliest practicable time, we will post comments received on that notice on our Web site in full, including any street addresses, telephone numbers, or e-mail addresses contained in the comments.”

(via /.)

Announcing the…iHPod?

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In an unexpected (and potentially extremely lucrative) partnership, Apple and HP announced today that HP will be re-branding and selling Apple iPods and including iTunes pre-installed on HP branded desktop computers.

Working to provide consumers with the most compelling digital content whenever and wherever they desire, HP and Apple® today announced a strategic alliance to deliver an HP-branded digital music player based on Apple’s iPod™, the number one digital music player in the world, and Apple’s award-winning iTunes digital music jukebox and pioneering online music store to HP’s customers.

As part of the alliance, HP consumer PCs and notebooks will come preinstalled with Apple’s iTunes® jukebox software and an easy-reference desktop icon to point consumers directly to the iTunes Music Store, ensuring a simple, seamless music experience.

ZDNet provided more details:

Apple will manufacture the player, which will not have the iPod name but will have the same design and features as Apple’s third-generation iPod players, Phil Schiller, senior vice president at Apple, said in an interview. Also, the HP music player will come in “HP Blue,” he said.

“The way we look at it, HP will be reselling an iPod device,” said Schiller, who noted that the device will display the Apple logo at start-up and will work with all of the accessories made for the white-hued Apple varieties.

I can’t see this as being anything but an incredibly good deal all around. Apple, iTunes, and the iTunes Music Store get a lot more exposure than they had previously with the bundling agreement, Apple also has a far greater potential sales base for the iPod from customers who might not look at something obviously from Apple but won’t mind looking at something with the HP logo on it, sales of both iPods and iTMS songs rocket upwards, and even more people get to experience Apple’s high standards of quality and ease of use. Talk about a win-win scenario!

(via MacRumors)

Photoshop CS won’t do money

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Adobe Photoshop CS apparently has special image-recognition code built in that will detect someone attempting to work with scanned currency, and then refuse to work with the image (“login as guest” to read the thread). Instead, it pops up an error message, and directs the user to the Rules for Use website.

We received a TIFF image from a customer, of a \$20 bill. The image does not violate any laws regarding reproduction of currency (it’s not even close to actual-size, and it’s not a “flat” portrayal – it’s wavy, as if it’s fluttering in the wind. Nor is it real-color.

However, Photoshop CS refuses to open the image, and provides an error message regarding the (il)legality of currency reproduction and an “information” button that takes you to the web. (Photoshop 7, of course, has no such qualms).

What the hell is this? In my book this is completely unacceptable – Photoshop is an image editor, not a censor, government policy enforcer or anything else.

Adobe, you’ve got some explaining to do.

Further testing by users has determined that the limitation affects the new US \$20 bill and several European bills, probably through as series of image-recognition algorithms (that, incidentally, must be applied to every image brought into Photoshop), at least one of which is probably the “EURion Constellation” method. Adobe has yet to comment on the issue.

Most likely, though, this was done at the request/strong encouragement of the government in an attempt to prevent counterfeiting of currency. The problem is, while the intent may be noble, this is enforcement at entirely the wrong end of the process. There are many, many legal uses for altered versions of the images on currency (advertising, promotional or informational purposes, parodies, and so on), all of which are covered by the fair uses clauses detailed on the very site where Adobe directs the user.

The Counterfeit Detection Act of 1992, Public Law 102-550, in Section 411 of Title 31 of the Code of Federal Regulations, permits color illustrations of U.S. currency provided:

  1. the illustration is of a size less than three-fourths or more than one and one-half, in linear dimension, of each part of the item illustrated;
  2. the illustration is one-sided; and
  3. all negatives, plates, positives, digitized storage medium, graphic files, magnetic medium, optical storage devices, and any other thing used in the making of the illustration that contain an image of the illustration or any part thereof are destroyed and/or deleted or erased after their final use.

Adobe have taken entirely the wrong step with this approach. In an effort to crack down on counterfeiters, they have summarily denied any and all users of their software the ability to perform legal operations on images of currency — and in cases such as that detailed by in the post that started the thread in Adobe’s forums, this can and will cause problems for those people who have a real and legitimate business need to work with such images.

(via /.)

[Update:]{.underline}

A response, of sorts, from Adobe.

I’m going to be an uncle!

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Wow.

My brother and his fianceé just found out that Emily is pregnant!

hello family. here it is. we are excited. we went to the docter yesterday. em is 11 weeks along. this is a big suprise to us. sooner than the original gameplan. oh well nothing left to do but celibrate. i love you all. keep us in your prayers. kevin, em and ?

Many, many congratulations!

A new Hanscom!

This GarageBand is a hit

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Analysts said they expect Apple’s new GarageBand music creation software to greatly benefit sales of Macs in the coming year. “You look at an application like GarageBand — you can’t get that on another platform at any price,” said Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter Media. “People will buy Macs on the basis of GarageBand.” Tim Bajarin, an analyst with market research firm Creative Strategies, also thinks the same. “GarageBand might even have more long-term effect on Apple’s sales [than the new iPod mini],” Bajarin said. “Steve has taken the consumer application layer to its next level from playing music to allowing you to be part of making music.”

(ripped shamelessly from MacMinute)