One of my World of Warcraft guildmates posted an interesting link on our forums today.
Virgin appears to be launching their music service, Virgin Digital with a little contest.
Find the 74 bands in this picture.
It’s an interesting mental exercise. You can follow our progress in the original forum thread.
As a (spoiled) multi-computer user, one of my small annoyances is keeping tracks of my bookmarks on different machines. I’ve tried the Firefox extension that syncs bookmarks via FTP with mixed success, and a while back I signed up for a Del.icio.us but didn’t make great use of it.
Well, now Del.icio.us built a Firefox extension that makes it a cinch to keep track of all your bookmarks via their service. Use it to find new sites, see what others think is popular, or just keep to yourself and keep track of your own bookmarks.
I’m adding bookmarks like crazy, and may just wait for the import service to kick back in as it seems to be down. I highly recommend del.icio.us.
I’m back from my weekend of fun, if you were wondering where the blog updates were.
We had a mini get together, as we tried to keep the group (and more imporantly, the LAN party) manageable, especially as it’s the holiday time of year.
A few folks flew up from Texas, a few drove over the border from Wisconsin, and the core MN group got together. Friday night we hit Sportspage, with the best wings in Minnesota. The owner of the bar let us hook up a Xbox 360 on one of the plasmas, while the other plasma had the Gopher – Badger hockey game going. (Good job this weekend Badgers!)
Saturday saw a very relaxed LAN party, with Quake IV, UT2k4 (Bombing Run & CTF) and CS:S all played. And we wrapped up with some poker.
A good time was had by most… let’s say all but one, and he knows who he is. 😉
Michael Robertson has done it again. Mr. Robertson founded MP3.com in the mid-90’s before selling it, and went on to found Linspire (I’ll give him credit for owning a Linux distribution, especially one built off Debian, but still…) as well as a VoIP company, and now he’s back in the music business with MP3tunes.com. He was in the news a few weeks ago for hiring DVD Jon, aka Jon Lech Johansen, who cracked the DVD encryption a few years back, as well as iTunes DRM.
What is MP3tunes.com? From their FAQ:
Q: What is the MP3tunes Locker?
A: The MP3tunes Locker gives you unlimited online storage to back-up your entire personal music collection, including your playlists. You can sync your music collection in your MP3tunes Locker with your computers, portable players and devices. You’re able to webload free tracks you find on the Internet directly into your MP3tunes Locker or sideload with one of our partners. You can play your music collection and playlists in iTunes and anywhere you have an Internet connection. The MP3tunes Oboe Software Suite is free and includes Oboe Sync, Oboe for iTunes and Oboe for Firefox.
The Basic MP3tunes Locker includes webloading, sideloading, MP3tunes Oboe Software Suite, and streaming inside iTunes on the Internet at a medium quality bit-rate (56k).
The Premium MP3tunes Locker is $39.95 per year and includes back-up with unlimited storage, syncing, webloading, sideloading, MP3tunes Oboe Software Suite, and streaming inside iTunes on the Internet at a high quality bit-rate (128k).
Do you remember when MP3.com got hosed by the RIAA? Basically, they had an idea that you inserted a music CD in to your PC. Their website said, hey look – you own that CD, thanks for verifying it. Now we’ll stream it to you wherever you are! Well, the RIAA went through the roof, and they took that feature out.
It looks like Mr. Robertson has brought that idea back, but in a much, much bigger way. This time you’re the one uploading your music – and while it may take forever to upload a large collection, you’ve proven that you’ve sent over your files. And now, you can “sideload” – buy music from another provider and have it synced.
Check the site out, and read the FAQ. While some of it will require using their syncing software to get the heavy lifting done, I do give MP3tunes.com credit for having Windows, Mac and Linux clients, multiple music format support, such as MP3, OGG and WMA, as well as a plugin for iTunes and Firefox ready to go at launch.
I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this.
Today’s quote of the day, from a Page 2 article on ESPN.com looking at the last 10 teams to start the season 10-0. The quote is from the last paragraph of the article:
ESPN.com: Page 2 : Ten and oh and then …
In 1998, Broncos backup QB Bubby Brister’s 99.0 QB rating was higher than John Elway’s. Brister, who was an ace sub for the injured Elway early in the season, completed 78 of 131 passes (59.5 percent) for 986 yards and 10 TDs. Brister also outran Elway, carrying 19 times for 102 yards. (Elway finished with 94 yards rushing.) According to Sports Illustrated, Brister motivated his teammates in the huddle by saying, “All right, [expletive], I’m not John, so get your asses in gear.”
It appears Peony, the server Silenae.com and Apatheia.org live on over at my webhost, Site5, has had a hard drive fail.
If you’ve come here for an update, you can track the status at the Site 5 forums here.
If they can’t restore the hard drive, they’ll load backups from last night.
I don’t think of myself as a neophyte when it comes to Linux or Ubuntu, but the All About Linux Blog covers 10 things that make Ubuntu great for a new Linux user.
I won’t cover them here, as he does a great job of explaining them. And I whole-heartedly agree – Ubuntu is the only distribution I would recommend for someone new to Linux. Or even to a user who’s used Linux for a while. By far the best distribution I’ve ever used, and it’s still my day to day OS at home on my two primary machines.
Thanks to gout to FreeCulture.org’s RIAA-free CDs Holiday Gift Guide. FreeCulture.Org has put together a list of bands whose labels are not members of the RIAA. (You know – the group that sues 13 year old kids for things they didn’t do, and when they can’t pay up, blackmails them).
Suprisingly, there’s some really good bands on the lists. A few notable selections:
And plenty more I didn’t name. And check out their blog post making and submitting your own RIAA-free CD Holiday Gift Guide.
So if you’re in the mood for some new music this year, check out one of the above artists – they get that it’s about the music, and the artists – not one of the Big 4 labels and supporting big media’s pockets.
I don’t know if I should laugh or cry at this article on Gamasutra. Recapping a talk given at the Montreal International Game Summit last month, Rich Vogel, VP of Product Development at Sony Online Entertainment spoke about marketing directly to players in game, and managing their community outside of the game.
The fact that the industry is now talking about marketing to players within a game makes me want to cry – especially as almost all MMO games are roleplaying. Marketing and advertising take you out of that context. Whether it’s fantasy like World of Warcraft or Everquest (1 or 2), or sci-fi like Eve Online, Anarchy Online or Star Wars Galaxies, market to the players outside of the game – on their forums, fan sites and other gaming websites. Leave it out of the game.
He does have some really good points on managing a MMOG community.
Vogel insisted that separate game-related web sites be run by developers, not marketing or PR personnel, and that the writers try to keep their style very human and accessible, joking now and again, and seeming informal and down to earth. Another piece of small advice that added to the sum: color code the writers of forums to their status, be they player, moderator, or developer. That way, readers of the forum can easily scan the boards for pertinent information from appropriate people. “You need to have clear lines of responsibility,â€? he says, noting that a clearly color-coded community manager on a forum doesn’t have the same powers that a dev has.
Vogel says MMOG owners do well to admit their mistakes. “Win over your community so that they are forgiving of you when you really screw up,â€? he said. He also gave some advice about distracting the players when making a change to the game, not answering controversies that arise, as it just feeds them, and not taking too seriously the forum rants of hardcore players, who don’t represent the silent majority. You can get feedback from the quieter majority, however, by simply administering surveys. However, the hardcore, verbal players are the people who generate word of mouth marketing, Vogel admits, “so keep them happy, too.â€?
Now I don’t know if I agree with the distraction comment above, but I do agree in not catering to the vocal minority. It’s interesting to see where Sony Online Entertainment may be going with their games.
I haven’t done an Evil Corporations story in over two years, and it’s definitely time. The focus: Macrovision.
From their About Us page on their website:
Macrovision helps solve the global need for content protection, DRM and software licensing solutions.
Now we all know that I’m no fan of DRM or Digital Rights Management, and right there in their company description Macrovision makes it a point to let you knwo that’s exactly what they’re about.
Macrovision’s claim to fame was protecting VHS tapes in the 80s – did you ever try and copy a videotape from a rental store, and got those rainbow lines at the top and bottom? That’s them.
Even though it’s legal for you, as a consumer in the United States, to make one copy for backup and archival purposes, they make sure you can’t.
The latest story hitting the web today, is a follow-up to one from June. In June, Macrovision sent a cease and desist letter to Lightning UK!, makers of DVD Decrypter. DVD Decrypter lets you strip the DRM off a DVD so you can archive to a hard drive or make a physical copy. Macrovision claimed the ability to strip the DRM violated their patents.
Well, the latest story has Macrovision claiming they’ve bought out Lightning UK!, and sending takedown notices to websites hosting DVD Decrypter. I’m sure they paid off the original developer thinking if you can’t beat ’em, buy ’em (ala Microsoft).
This is unfortunate for two reasons – one, reverse engineering should not be illegal, and in the U.S., under the DMCA, it now is. Two, if the developer had released this under a free software licenses, such as the GPL, the code would be in the wild. Now, due the evil greed of one corporation, we’re going to lose the ability to back up our DVDs. I know, as the father of 2 (almost three!) children, that I want to back up the movies they watch a lot and put them on a home theater PC. No more scratching and wrecking movies – which has happened with a few already.
But no, I’m no longer allowed to. And that’s why Macrovision is being added to my list of evil corporations.
