Kindle 2 Text-To-Speak Might Cause Copyright Issues
The developers of Kindle decided that it would be a great idea to add in the ability for the books to be read through text-to-speech in an attempt to not break your concentration and allow you to do what needs to be done. Forget bookmarking your place and coming back to it, now you get to hear a computerized voice say what you’re too busy to read. The issue here is that this infringes on the audio rights of the author, which are “derivative under copyright law,” says Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild.
It’s safe to assume that there was some oversight in this issue ever coming to light, as Amazon does own Audible which is responsible for more audiobook sales than any other source. There’s a huge difference between an audiobook and the test-to-speech experience that the Kindle 2 brings to the table.
via Kindle 2 Text-To-Speak Might Cause Copyright Issues – mediabistro.com: MobileDevicesToday.
At first glance, this might seem like a silly argument, but I can see where the Authors Guild is coming from.
If you look at the recent fights the Writer’s Guild of America and the Directors Guild of America have had with Hollywood, a lot of the conflict were over things like DVD residuals that at the time they were negotiated didn’t seem to be very important, but as technology changed, came to be significant revenue situations. and once the genie is out of the bottle, it’s hard to fix the problem.
How’s this relevant to the Kindle? Well, today, Kindle’s text-to-speech audio capability isn’t going to be a serious competitor to current audio books — but five years from now? Look at how technology improves, it’s not hard to see speech technology improvements that could turn this into a viable alternative to buying an audiobook. As a consumer of books, I like the idea of buying the book once and being able to read or hear it as I prefer. As a once-and-maybe-future author, I can certainly understand why the AG is worried about this cannibalizing the audiobook market (and its revenue stream for authors).
I think, however, that this is a fight the Author’s Guild should lose. I think Neil Gaiman covered it well, and I agree with his view — ultimately, I don’t see either a rights derivative conflict here OR any kind of implied guarantee that just because audio books are a viable revenue stream now that this has to be guaranteed to continue existing. I’d encourage the Author’s Guild to start laying the groundwork for rationalizing rights purchasing for the time when these things bundle back together, not trying to prevent it from happening — because ultimately, they’ll lose (and should).
3G Wireless Routers
Following up on my post the other day on three technologies I’m hoping mature this year, one of the commenters noted that Netgear announced a product at CES that does what I’m looking for. You can see the product details here. That’s pretty much what I was thinking of, and it’s available via Amazon (Product Page here) for about $120.
Now, I’m going to need to decide which network I want to use; do I do this with AT&T on my current account, or someone else? Some more research to do, but this seems to be the solution I was looking for; only real question is when I’ll feel comfortable that the network will be reliable and fast enough to warrant turning off the DSL and the landline.
Three technologies I’m hoping mature this year.
There are three technologies I hope get to the point where I’m willing to buy into them this year. They’re all things I’ve been watching and wanting to buy, but every time I look, they’re not quite where I want.
First — the eBook reality. the first Kindle intrigued me, but I’ve seen the “future of electronic books” before, and so I decided to wait and see. the Kindle actually surpassed my expectations, and now Amazon has introduced Kindle 2, and it’s much better. My primary interest here is to have a good, easy to use/read electronic library, especially of technical stuff, that I can carry around. Reading for recreation on an eReader is less insteresting to me, but couldn’t hurt.
Unfortunately, even thought the new Kindle comes closer, at its current price point, it doesn’t make the cut. I’ll keep waiting. Maybe the rumored Kindle software on mobile phones? We’ll see. but we’re nearing a tipping point where electronic books will make sense, which three years ago, I wasn’t sure we’d ever see. Kindle at half the price? I’d buy it. Today? I am staying on the sidelines.
Second — the convergence of electronics in the living room. I keep waiting for Apple to upgrade the Apple TV to be a real living room dominator. And I guess I’ll keep waiting a while. They’re doing a survey on possible features to a limited audience right now, which indicates to me that they’re now trying to figure that device out and get serious about a “non hobby” product — and I honestly expected to see that product at the last Macworld. So Apple’s product timelines and my expectatons are still in sync. The big limiter here is availability of content, still; for netflix streaming to my Xbox, only about 10% of the items in my queue are avaialble for online delivery. A quick look at iTunes shows that’s not any better. That makes this convenient — but not an option. Yet. And whatever Apple does needs to have 5.1 built in so I don’t need a separate home theater box to drive the speakers…
Something tells me this year is the year companies dive in and seriously try to own the living room. My short list: Apple, Microsoft and Nintendo. One of them will get it right in the next couple of years. If someone else wants to come in and distrupt the market, the window is closing.
Third — For the last few years, we’ve had internet in the house via DSL. This is our third generation of network in the house, going back to 1998 or so when that means leased lines and expensive routers, so it’s amazing how far it’s come. But now, I’m starting to look at what comes next. And what I want is a home network based on EVDO or 3G, a dongle I can carry iwth me when I travel and plug into a device at home to drive the wireless network, with real broadband speeds and reliability. This would allow me to finally dump the landline/DSL (and their monthly payments), and carry my network with me, since when we’re not home, do we really need the netowrk there? Not really. Unfortunately, I’m just not convinced this is ready for prime time — the dongles are there, but the home network interfaces aren’t yet. Unless you know something I don’t know, of course.. I mean, seriously. We use (and are really happy with) DirecTV. The idea of installing cable just to get a modem and fast cable modem speeds instead of DSL irritates me — but that my mom’s home network is faster than mine annoys me. Even though, in reality, I rarely notice my network’s speed, which implies it really isn’t “slow” as much as I’m realizing it’s been a few years since I upgraded….But isn’t that part of being a geek? Oh, and I’d love to do the portable dongle, but I just don’t want to add one more monthly charge to my budget. Unless I can remove one I don’t need, and the logical one seems to be the DSL line, no?
Honestly, I’ve been waiting for Wimax for a while, but the rollout is — problematic, painful and slow. So maybe I’ll stop waiting.
MobileMe Notes — Matt Mullenweg
First, the notes application on the iPhone is handy, but please sync this to a quickie app on Me.com so I can put stuff in and out of notes easily. Second, and this is a stretch, I know you don’t like to-do applications, but I also have an inkling you could do something that would make me stop using paper and pen for to-dos. And synchronize it.
Yes, please.
My MobileMe is going to need renewing soon. I’ve been taking some serious looks at whether to move everything to google/gmail or MobileMe. Optimally, I want ONE personal email and ONE work email, but right now, I have three personal accounts that mix and merge, and I hven’t decided the best way to fix that. There are things about both that I like, and both that I don’t like — and to be honest, there are things about what Yahoo is doing with their mail I like, too, but I need to be comfortable that Yahoo’s bottomed out, so I’m holding off.
For now, I’m doing to go with MobileMe and the tight integration with the iPhone. A year from now, I don’t know. Lots can change between now and then… But Matt’s noted a couple of significant weaknesses with that approach. Another is a good bookmarking tool that ALSO works with firefox on the desktop, not just safari. Not there yet.
Have a (Mac) notebook “dock”/stand you really like?
A few days ago I ordered a top-of-the-line 15” MacBook Pro and a 24” LED Cinema Display (which means I have a Mac Pro, a MacBook Air, and a 23” Apple Cinema Display for sale; email me if interested), and am now on the hunt for a “dock” or stand.
When I say “dock”/stand, I’m not referring to something to place the notebook in/on when it’s not on my desk (e.g., something like Belkin’s CushTop, for which I wrote a glowing review last year),1 but rather a stand to use when it’s on my desk and piped to the external display.
via Justin Blanton | Have a (Mac) notebook “dock”/stand you really like?.
I investigated this a few months back and ended up going “whole hog”, installing a dual arm monitor stand from Ergotron. One of the arms holds my 25″ Samsung monitor, the other has a tray that holds the laptop. That allows me to use both screens and adjust them to my preferences.Not cheap — it’ll cost you a couple of hundred dollars, but the ability to move things out of the way, especially UP, freeing up desk space for non computer use when I need it, is wonderful. It’s built like a tank, nicely adjustable, pretty easy to install, and has worked like a champ for the last six months. Only weakness, and it’s minor, is cable management, easily solved with a supply of tie wraps.
I finally decided, once and for all, to solve this problem and quit working around it, and I don’t regret it. My one wish, since I used the through-the-desk install point and drilled a hole in the desktop, is that I wish I’d moved it about 6″ to the left. Oh well, live and learn…
Does Google Friend Connect have a point?
Yet – and I’m sorry if I seem ignorant, but I really do want to know – I still ask: What’s the point of it? Why would I want to be part of Google Friend connect on someone’s blog, or someone join it on my blog? Once we all do that, then what?
via Does Google Friend Connect have a point? — NevilleHobson.com.
I’m glad it’s not just me. When I set up the new blog, I installed both Google Connect and MyBloglog widgets, mostly to experiment with them and see hwo they work and what people use them for.
As far as I can tell, the primary purpose of these things is to give you a way to show the universe just how popular you are. Which, if you’re into counting numbers and telling people how popular you are can be a really useful thing. Probably also useful if you’re trying to convince folks you’re an A-lister.
But honestly, that’s not me, so last night, as I was tweaking the sidebar and navigation based on watching the first couple of weeks of use of chuqui.com, I pulled both of them. I considered putting them on the About page for a while, but to be honest, I just couldn’t see any real advantage to me to having them.
Your mileage may well vary. But since I’m more interested in whether people find my writing interesting and not crowing about how many people “connect” to me, I don’t see a lot of use to either setup — for now. I am, however, going to see how Google enhances it down the road, because there’s still a need for a good, centralized common profile technology. This, however, isn’t it yet.
(MyBlogLog? well, it’s pretty much what it was when Yahoo! bought it. I’m not sure what plans, if any, Yahoo! has for it — and what I’m looking for these things to be seems to be something Yahoo! is trying to build into it’s account profiling and email platform. We’ll see. But the real story here, like Feedburner, is that being bought may pay off the founders and VCers, but it’s also almost a guarantee that a site will grind to a halt, because, of course, the first priority after being bought is revamping everything to fit the new corporate standards and migrate to their data center, technologies and servers. And that, the way the internet goes, is almost a guarantee to being irrelevant once you surface and try to figure out how to innovate the technology again…)
Apple Drops Hints About Netbooks
On the other hand, Cook hinted that there might be a netbook in the future — but don’t stay up nights waiting for it. He echoed and expanded on some of Jobs’s previous objections to the category: The hardare is underpowered, software isn’t that good, keyboards are cramped, displays are small. And, says Cook, there isn’t really that much demand.
But he added: “It’s a category we watch, we’ve got some ideas here…. ”
via Apple Drops Hints About Netbooks, iPhone Nano – Apple Unvarnished – InformationWeek.
I’ve been thinking about this a bit recently, because I’m leaning towards upgrading the laptop this year. The current one is headed towards 3 years old, and doing fine, but life marches on.
A netbook, as the geeks seem to define netbooks today, interests me not at all. But the concept behind the netbook interests me a huge amount: a portable device that carries my life with me that I can use on the run (well, on the shuffle). What I want, though, is more than that.
Which got me thinking about one of the memes running around: with the Mac hitting it’s 25th birthday (you look marvelous! Not a day over 22!), people are talking about their first and favorite Macs. I’ve owned — god only knows how many — lots of macs over the years, in fact my life with Apple goes back to an Apple II. And when I think about what my favorite mac was, it goes back to one model:
The Apple Duo, the one with the tiny screen and the dock that turnd it into a desktop. Especially that first PowerPC model, since that design was one of the designs that made the 68K -> PowerPC transition.
Why did I like that model? Itw as one of Apples true “subnotebooks”, very portable. It what the first CPU that you could carry with you, and yet plug it into the dock and use it as your laptop. I’ve always preferred using a single machine over having a “real” machine and a “carry” machine, because of the hassles of making sure the right data is on the right machine at the right time at the right revision. gah. And “cloud” living isn’t the answer, because you dno’t always have network.
The Duo allowed me to do that. And in thinking my way to my next computer, I realize the power of the current Macbooks (especially with the nice nvidia video cards) more than fits my needs. A 13″ screen for my moving around times is fine, and I can plug into a monitor at home (where I have a 25″ screen) serves pretty well. With wifi, ethernet, USB2, Firewire, it’s easy to wire it up to secondary “things”, and the promise of USB3 makes it even easier when that comes to reality (note: wifi is nice for most things, but if you’re using a net disk or NAS setup, wired ethernet is still faster).
So 2/3 of my computing wishlist is solved through a unibody Macbook 13″ and a large monitor on my desk.
But that last 1/3? It’s something nobody seems to be doing yet, but what I really want. What I want is a 15-17″ LCD screen that I can pop into my laptop bag and carry with me. Call it a hotel-room monitor if you want. 13″ is okay for on the run, but when I sit down (to work on photos, on video, to code, etc), I want a larger screen. It can be a mirror configuration, doesn’t have to act as a second screen (but that’d be nice!), and it has to be designed to be carried, so if I’m at a conference or on a photo trip, I can haul it out and use it, and it’l transport in a bag on a plane, not in a trunk.
THAT would make “netbooks” useful, because one of the acknowledged tradeoffs of netbooks is a limited screen. For me, lightness and size aren’t as important as utility — but I’d be more willing to make that tradeoff if I could get away from it when I’m not in a coffee shop. At home and in the office, I can, but not travelling.
And that, I think, is one of the keys to making the Netbook a practical system; Go back to what made the Duo great, but with the changes that have happened in computing over the years, you don’t really need the dock now; it’s just a couple of plugs and away you go. But it’s what’s at the other end of the plug, and to me, that big missing piece is the monitor I really want in the hotel room at the end of the day, when I just don’t want to squeeze my life onto a 9″ screen any more…
Sony Expects $3 Billion Loss for the Year
Sony, the Japanese electronics company, said Thursday that it expected to post a record annual operating loss of nearly $3 billion because of the rapid deterioration of the global economy.
via Sony Expects $3 Billion Loss for the Year – NYTimes.com.
That’s an awful lot of zeros
– Gil Amelio, when Apple had it’s first billion dollar loss quarter
It should be noted that way back when, Apple was expected to be (and close to being) sold to both Sun and Sony. And today, the Mac is celebrating it’s 25th birthday and Apple is doing quite well, while Sony is, well, not. Neither is Microsoft, who back in the day was the evil nemesis Mike Spindler tried to take on head to head and almost killed the company doing so — and if you look at the numbers, Apple could buy Sun outright from the profit from this last quarter.
If nothing else, this is a good reminder that EVERYTHING is cyclical. Apple, too, will some day slip or someone else will sneak around them and take the lead in the race for a while. Companies we now think of as dead or fading will — some of them — revitalize themselves and move forward again.
None of this is forever. And that’s a good thing. Apple is one of those rare companies that has really put it all together and continued to push an innovate, but other companies innovate, too, so it’ll be fascinating to see what we’re saying about all of this in another five years, no?
(via daringfireball)
Open Source Communities – Push cx
Open source projects should be judged as much by their community as by their technological achievements. The code tells you what it’s good for, but the community tells you what its future is.
Communities need to be active to continue improving the project, deal with bugs and changes to their ecosystem. If no one is interested enough to talk about the project, none of that will happen. Newcomers need to meet experienced users to be sold on why to use the software, to get help as they learn their way around, to maybe be drawn into contributing to the project itself.
I nice view of the dynamics of communities by Peter Harkins. One of the aspects of this, I think, is that from the communities I’ve been involved in over the years, the smaller the set of people actively involved in the decision process, design and implementation, the more sensitive that project is to fading or falling apart if the life or motivation of a key member changes. For that reason alone, communities really need to foster new members into the project and ways to recognize and enable the most effective and capable into the “inner circle” where they’re ready and able to step up and move a project forward. If you don’t do this kind of “succesion planning” from the start, when you need it, it won’t be there.
Geeks tend to think you don’t need marketing, but they’re wrong. Marketing, even of an open source project, is key to enable adoption and convince people to evaluate it and join the project. projects really should consider community growth as a key metric in he success of a community, and communities really need to look at outreach, evangelism, and recruitment to be tasked out the same way bugs, features and documentation are, and those members should be part of the “core team” whether or not they actually code.
One reason it looks to me that Rails has taken off faster than django is simple: the rails guys did a lot of talking and promoting and evangelizing of rails, where the django folks have been quieter and less self-promoting of themselves and the technology.
A technology nobody knowss about may be great, but it won’t change the world.
A really nice resource guide
Here’s a very nicely done, concise set of resources by a web designer. I really like the concept and the implementation; I believe I’ll come up with something similar for this site. Well done!
(hat tip: Ajaxian)
and any purchases you made will be treated as referrals by us.
