Digital Impulses

Setting up an iPod for Isa

So the evening after work today was consumed entirely by going to Best Buy with my sister, buying her a set of speakers, going to her house, installing the speakers and then getting to work on setting up her brand new green iPod Nano.

Installing iTunes 7.7: NOT
The first snag I encountered was that my sister's PC is horribly put-of-date in terms of MS security patches and service packs and was still running XP SP1.  So, the iTunes install failed immediately because it needs for XP to be running a minimum of SP 2.

Getting Windows XP Service Pack 2
Upon hitting the MS Windows Update web site, I was informed that my sister's copy of Windows XP was "not genuine* and thus Service Pack 2 could NOT be installed. I was then offered a link to a web site where I could purchase a *valid* Product key for $149.00 instead of the regular $299.00 that MS charges for a retail, boxed copy of Windows XP Pro.

I clicked on the link, filled out the form, provided a CC and purchased the valid Product key.  Once the transaction was authorized, I was re-directed to a web site where a tiny applet was downloaded and installed on the computer that upgraded or "legalized" the copy of XP Pro currently installed on my sister's PC.

Once all of that was done (MS will be shipping me a CD of Windows XP Pro SP2 for the cost of the product key I just bought, btw), a reboot of the computer followed by once again visiting the MS Windows Update web site allowed me to being the process of downloading and installing Service Pack 2.  about 15 minutes and 75 MB later, the download finished and the process of updating XP to SP 2 began.

That took another long while but eventually finished without incident.  Of course, REBOOT YET AGAIN, and this time i was able to launch the install of iTunes (+ QuickTime, of course) 7.7

Installing iTunes 7.7: Yes!
This time, the install of iTunes proceeded without a hitch and all was well with the world.  Once the install completed, it trundled for a little while and then was ready to be used.  I created an account for my sister at the iTunes music store and then gave her a quick demo / tutorial of using the iTunes music store.

Connecting her iPod Nano
Once iTunes was ready, I connected up her Nano and it was recognized without a hitch. iTunes synced it up nicely and my sister was able to listen to the demo songs that were put on her Nano by iTunes.  From there it was just a matter of ripping a couple of my sister's music CD's to her PC so that iTunes could put some more content on her Nano for her.

All in all, it was a long and boring and (expensive) process, but my sister now has a modern MP3 player that I think she is going to get a lot of pleasure out of.

Good for her.

An iPod for iSa

This afternoon after work, my sister came by the house and we drove to Verizon to have her exchange her ear piece for her cell phone.  She bought another one and HATED IT immediately.  She decided to return it right then and there and we ended up spending more time on it than she wanted.  Isa left the Verizon store very frustrated.

Dinner at Islands
After Verizon, we drove over to Islands to have dinner.  The food was OK, but the service was so,so, with my sister's chicken sandwich not being cooked to her specifications.  The ensuing complaints and mini drama was par for the course.

A visit to the Apple Store: Isa get a Nano
After dinner at Islands, we walked over to the Apple Store to look at the iPod Nanos. After a little shopping , my sister decided on the green 8 GB iPod Nano and I took it up to the front to pay for it.  Now it's a matter of setting up the iPod for my sister and introducing her to the world of iTunes, the iTunes music store, rented movies, tv shows and other media.

Apple releases 16 GB iPhone and a 32 GB iPod Touch

Earlier today, Apple very quietly and unceremoniously released an updated (in terms of storage capacity) iPhone and iPod Touch.

• The new 16 GB iPhone will retail for $499
• The new 32 GB iPod Touch will retail for $499 also.

Both units are available for immediate purchase from the Apple Store.

Awesome Father's day

Neato.

Started off by a wonderful, friction-free breakfast with the family.  Before breakfast, my son and I stopped by the bakery to see his mom, and also ran into my mom there. 

Ritz Camera is AWESOME
After the bakery visit, we stopped by Ritz Camera in Manhattan Beach, where I picked up a spare battery for my camera and my son bought me the Quantray  Yellow, Orange and Warm filters for my Nikon D40 digital SLR camera.

Why the need for a spare battery?  Well, like a big dummy, I had left my camera on the entire day before and drained the battery.  So, of course, the new battery I bought was also not charged. 

In a brilliant fit of wonderful customer service, the lady behind the counter at Ritz offered to let me borrow the (charged) battery in the floor model Nikon D40.  So, I simply traded batteries with her and we agreed that I would just come by the store again after breakfast and swap batteries with her.

The Ritz Camera store in Manhattan Beach, CA at the intersection of Rosecrans and Aviation simply rocks.  If you are ever in the South Bay in Southern California and need anything in emergency photographic equipment, stop by and see Dan Purdy or anyone else there.  Highly Recommended

More CONCACAF Soccer
After breakfast, we stopped by Ritz again and swapped camera batteries. We then went home to watch Mexico beat Costa Rica in an exciting match in which Mexico prevailed 1-0, thereby earning a spot in the semi-finals  against Guadalupe, who later in the day beat  Honduras  2-1.

Seagate MyBook 320GB Hard Disk for my Mac Mini
Right after the match, I took a quick ride over to Best Buy to get myself a Father's Day gift of a Seagate 320GB External 'Essential MyBook' hard drive for $89.99. This was intended to hang off the back of my Mac Mini, whose internal puny 60GB hard disk had gotten full to capacity over the weekend when I transferred my Dodger Stadium images into my iPhoto library.

Watching The Departed
After the Soccer match and my trip to Best Buy, my son and I went to my room to watch The Departed, 2007 Oscar winner for Best Movie and Best Director for Martin Scorsese.  Although a bit long and somewhat confusing, the movie once again proved to be ultimately satisfying to see again.  My son seemed to enjoy it very much also.

Screwed by iTunes
After watching The Departed, I retired into my office until well after 11:00 P.M. to install my new external hard drive on my Mac Mini.  What took place over the next 4 hours is something worthy of a post in and of itself. Grizzly is one way to put it, I think.

Thus concluded one of the funnest, most satisfying Father's Days I can remember having in a long, long time.

Steve Jobs: Thoughts on Music

Steve Jobs has posted a long treatise on the current state of Music on the Internet over at the Apple website.  In it he explains that Apple sells DRM-laden music only because it is forced to do so by the "Big Four" music companies: Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI.

Incredibly, Jobs is advocating the abolishment of DRM.  To quote Jobs:

"...Much of the concern over DRM systems has arisen in European countries.  Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free.  For Europeans, two and a half of the big four music companies are located right in their backyard.  The largest, Universal, is 100% owned by Vivendi, a French company.  EMI is a British company, and Sony BMG is 50% owned by Bertelsmann, a German company.  Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace.  Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly..."

Very interesting read. We certainly do live in interesting times, indeed.

iPhone Reality: The day Apple changed Cell phones forever.

This is one of those nerd moments that you never forget.  You know, like everyone knows where they were when the Challenger shuttle blew up, when 9/11 happened, when the Iraq war started, etc.

Well, I will be able to tell my grandkids where I was and what I was doing the day the iPhone was introduced to the world.

This morning, Tuesday,January 9, 2007, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA, Steve Jobs simply rocked the world of consumer electronics and personal technology to its very foundations.

It was a complete paradigm shift of historic, utterly epic proportions.  Instantly, with the unveiling of this gadget, Jobs and Apple have made all other cell phones obsolete and utterly unimportant and pathetic in comparison. 

When he revealed the 1st images and specs of the device, I immediately looked at my phone (a bulky, heavy, battleship grey, butt-ugly Cingular 8125) and saw how utterly primitive it looked and felt.

My god.  In one fell swoop, Jobs and Apple swept aside the entire cell phone industry and "leap-frogged 5 years ahead" (as Jobs claimed) of everyone else.  Really.  Smartphones, flip phones, Blackberrys all seem hopelessly trinkety and toy like next to the sleek, beautiful, thin, iPhone.

Some specs:

• 160ppi Super High Resolution screen
• Wide-screen Video iPod with touchscreen controls
• Internet communicator that includes full rich-text HTML email and SMS Texting
• 4 or 8 GB of Flash memory ($499 for 4 GB, $599 for 8 GB)
• 4.8 ounces
• 11.6 mm thin (thinner than the Cingular Blackjack or the Motorola Q)
• 5 hours battery life for video watching and 16 hours for regular phone use
• Runs OS X
• Runs a full version of Safari, the Mac web browser
• Runs the same Widgets available on the Mac in OS X
• Access to Push Email in partnership with Yahoo!
• Access to Google Maps in partnership with Google
• Visual voice-mail, a feature co-provided with Cingular that allows you to visually pick and choose what voice-mail messages you want to listen to without having to listen to them sequentially
• scrolling Cover Album Art from with your iTunes library

The device has a single button on the front; the 'Home' button, that controls navigation to the main features of the phone, like the iPod library, email, SMS texting, widgets, etc.

Everything else is pretty much software-based, including a technology called "multi-touch" that allows you to "touch" your music, scroll through your library, zoom in to web pages and pictures, etc.

Of course, the feasability of just 5 hours battery life if you watch videos, the workability of extended typing on the on-screen virtual keyboard, "only" 8 GB of storage, 720i video only, etc.  These are all things that remain to be reviewed when the iPhone makes its much anticipated debut in June 2007.

In the mean time, judging by the soaring of Apple's stock as Jobs spoke and the plunging of the stocks of Palm, Motorola and RiM, I suspoect that there will be a whole lot of "back to the drawing board" in the labs of many a hi-tech firm in Silicon Valley and other places around the planet.

Meanwhile, Apple has truly upset the "Apple" cart with this annoncement.  It sure is an exciting time to be alive, let me tell you.

Speakers for my iPod

I *HATE* the ear buds that came with my 80GB video iPod.  With a passion.

So, this morning, after having breakfast with my son and dropping off some breakfast for his Grandma and also dropping off breakfast for Talia, a friend of the family, we drove over to the Apple Store in the Manhattan Village Mall in Manhattan Beach, CA, where I bought an iHome iH6 Dual Alarm Clock for iPod for $ 99.00.  I bought the black version.

I got it home, unpacked it and set it up.  It was a snap to setup, works great, charges my iPod and sounds really good.  It even includes a tiny remote control that works great also in controlling the unit and some of thr iPod functions.

It offers a sleep mode and a gentle wake mode that allow me to wake up gradually to the sounds of either the iPod itself or the radio.

This thing rocks.  Highly recommended.

Canada Fulbright Chair Speaker Series: Cory Doctorow

USC
Annenberg School Center for Public Diplomacy
Room 207
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
1837 Hrs

I am sitting at USC in the Annenberg School for Communication waiting for the talk by Cory Doctorow to begin at 1900 hours.

Because the original speaker slated for this evening had to cancel and subsequently Cory did not promote this event, only 4 people showed up aside from myself and so we had the whole room to ourselves and got to listen to Cory give a really interesting talk on the evils of DRM, Intellectual Property rights, his work with WIPO  Copyrights, Trademarks and how all of this affects the developing world.

As usual, Cory was at his articulate best, riffing on a wide-ranging palate of topics and kept me engaged from beginning to end.  I attempted to record the talk via Audacity on my IBM Thinkpad T60 but the integrated speaker was much to weak to pick up Cory's un-amplified voice from across the room.

So, that part of the evening didn't work out so well.

I am really enjoying these talks, and seeing as to how Cory is scheduled to be the Fullbright Chair at USC until July of 2007, here's hoping he keeps inviting interesting people from around the Tech industry to come and speak at USC.  I will be at each one, time permitting. 

If you are in the Los Angeles area, drop by USC when one of these talks are scheduled.  Highly recommended.

Help a LOST iPod find its way home

Dave Berlind has posted an item in his blog about finding a 30GB black IPod and he is trying to get it back to its rightful owner.

You can read the post here or you can contact Dave directly at david.berlind@cnet.com.

Canada Fulbright Chair Speaker Series: Steven Starr

USC
Annenberg School Center for Public Diplomacy
Room 207
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
1837 Hrs

I am sitting at USC in the Annenberg School for Communication waiting for the talk by Steven Starr to begin at 1900 hours. 

Cory Doctorow is holding an animated discussion with two gentlemen on the evils of DRM and what the MPAA and the RIAA in lockstep with the hardware manufacturers are planning to foist on the public in terms of DRM and your ability to do what you want with the media you pay for.

Cory just stated that if you update your Creative MP3 player to get the newest firmware, it surreptitiously disables the ability to record from the built-in FM receiver, all this under the guise of “added functionality”. This is precisely the reason I am here tonight.

 Here we go:
 (1903 hrs) 

• Steven Starr is the co-founder of a company called Revver.
• Revver pays MORE the MORE a media file gets played
• He just mentioned the sale of YouTube to Google
• Revver sets up technology to allow the distribution of media files
• They have developed ‘Super Distribution’, where media files fly through the      Internet, reporting back to Revver “Hey, I'm being watched! Send me an Ad!”. So people get paid on those terms.
• Revver splits ad revenue 50-50 with the media creator
• The Mentos and Coke creators got:
  • 5 – 6M views and
  • got $70K in Ad revenue that they split with Revver, thus
  • making 35K on a 2.5 minute video that cost
  • $100-200 to make
• Revver has a set of tools and technologies, with an API that allows you to create      your own site and become an affiliate of Revver that makes money as a      re-distributor who makes 20% of the Ad revenue
• Content creators can opt out of Ad categories that they do not wish to be associated with
• Revver released its BETA 11 months ago
• They do NOT allow copyrighted video
• Revver has been seen as a company that has taken UGC to the forfront of the ‘free media conversation”.
• Revver uses CC licenses. Every piece of video flies out with a 2.5 version CC license.
• Revver is NOT a video portal destination site, per se. They differentiate themselves as a tools and services company

All in all, it was a great talk, where a lot of very good questions and issues were raised on the legalities and dangers of content creation and rights retentions/ownership in the world of UGC or User Generated Content.