MacBook Air

Who gives a fuck if the damn thing fits in an interoffice mail envelope? I mean those things are kinda spacious anyway. You can fit about a quarter ream of paper in them. You can actually fit a regular fat-ass MacBook Pro in one. Plus, do the young whippersnappers even know what an interoffice mail envelope is anyway? Stuff a laptop in a standard #10 business envelope and I’ll be impressed.

I bet some douchebag designer is gonna make a fabric laptop shoulder bag to look like an interoffice mail envelope. If so, I’ll expect a check.

iPhone for Business? Hopefully!

As soon as the iPone supports MS Outlook, I’ll buy one. It looks like that day is coming. As a small business owner, I need my cellphone to ActiveSynch with Outlook, so my Outlook calendar and phone calendar are on the same page. I also need my corporate email to “push”, Blackberry style, to my phone. I hope Apple delivers these capabilities.

Steve Jobs, since you are reading this, I bet there are many other just like me.  Let’s get Outlook on the iPhone!

MacHEADS: the Trailer!

Information wants to be free . . .

. . . as long as there is a contextual ad placed next to it!

It’s interesting to note that the seemingly counter-culture, huckster-aware web audience is so willing to embrace advertising on websites. At first, the web was viewed as a medium like public broadcasting: it was better because it lacked ads. Websites that had ads, or were ads in and of themselves where shunned. Now they are embraced by content consumers and creators alike. We all hate spam in our in-box, but don’t mind it at all when it appears as an ad on a webpage!

Despite the web becoming a giant platform to offer ads on its every nook and cranny, it has not lost it’s cool factor. People have not complained about the noise that these ads create, even if they are contextual. It’s always fun to hear people say that contextual ads offer value to the viewer and are just as relevant as content. Call it the cynic in me, but I laugh a little every time I hear/read that.

The ad industry had finally figured out how to convince people that its creations are not fluff. And for the first time in history, though not absolutely true, it is more true than ever.

Google, touchy-feely, perpetual do-gooders?

From Google’s TOS:

11.1 ….. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

11.2 You agree that this licence includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

That’s some scary-ass shit. And not just because the Google legal department can’t spell license properly. It means they can legally take your content off your Google Site and share it with the world and monetize it long before you can. I’m taking down my “Cure for Cancer” Google Site asap!

Microsoft may want to control how you manage your data, but Google actually wants to take your data from you and make it their own.

Or not, the legalese is clearly designed to allow Google to take anything you put up on a Google server and use it as an example of how Google’s services are used. To be able to put your content in Google marketing collateral. But the language is vague enough to allow more nefarious uses of your data. I am surprised they did not say: “Once you post documents on a Google server, you forfeit your copyright to those documents and irrevocably transfer all rights upon them to Google, ha ha! Gotcha!!”

MS, Apple, Google, Linux? Some thoughts . . .

IMHO:

Windows is the best and cheapest OS for pro apps like Avid, Scenarist, Maya, Photoshop. And for enterprise software and disk raid management. Linux has a long way to come before it will satisfy the needs of the average home user, let alone a hardcore business user. Right now it is a product for enthusiasts & hobbyists, not for people with mission critical work at hand. Apple products are too expensive and don’t allow much modification. They also lack in certain features while offering ones of questionable use. If Microsoft and “Billy” are so evil why is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation one of the biggest and most effective charitable organization the world has ever seen? Why has Warren Buffet decided to contribute a large percentage of his net worth to the foundation? Microsoft is not standing still, it continues to innovate and adapt in the ever changing tech world. Individuals and business will pay extra for peace of mind and increased productivity. The initial out of pocket cost is not the only cost to measure when considering the efficiency of anything. Google is trying to look like Microsoft just as much as Microsoft is trying to look like Google. Ads in Google Sites, a productivity suite, won’t that be distracting? The last thing a productivity suite needs is distractions! Cloud computing is fine if you don’t give a damn about security, privacy, packet loss, or data mining.

Digital Films?

As an old fart in the world of film and video (17 years in the industry) I always find it odd that people say digital film and digital film making when they are really referring to video. Movie film is chemical process. Video is an electronic process. Video used to be strictly analog, now it’s mostly digital. All the arty filmmaker types would never think of using video back in the day. When video cameras were almost exclusively of the analog component type as exhibited in Sony’s ubiquitous BetacamSP product line, film makers would never use it. To them, BetacamSP was for TV news only. Then miniDV came along. MiniDV is a consumer format of digital video that is, in the very best cameras, equivalent in quality to BetacamSP. In most cameras, miniDV produces a lower quality image than BetacamSP. But because it was digital, and because of the hype and the price, it was embraced immediately by arty, indie film makers. It was given the stamp of approval which BetacamSP never got. But it could not be called video, God forbid. Because video was for hacks and film was for artists. The same people that dissed BetacamSP for its lack of imaging resolution and latitude when compared to film wholeheartedly embraced a technology with even less imaging power than film. I always chuckled at this.

When some one would invite me to watch the “digital film” they made, I’d always respond with a smart-assed “you mean your video”. I was surprised at how many confused and dirty looks I would get. It as if the person really did think that the DVD they where about to show me was actual something other than a standard NTSC video signal. As if it was really film in digital form.

To me, for a program to be called a digital film, it needs to have been shot on film and scanned digitally into a computer using a real film scanner (not a telecine film-to-tape transfer method) at either a 2K or 4K file protocol. That’s digital film, as it has never been converted into a video signal, standard, or protocol. But again, I am an old fart, old school moving image purist who sticks to the old nomenclature. I know that the word “film” nowadays means any kind of motion picture, especially a narrative one. I know it’s a semantic issue. But film still is an imaging technology that really has no other name to use for it. A motion picture camera that shoots on actual film, is called a film camera, not a chemical video camera. There is no other term for a film camera other than film camera. So I kinda feel we still have to respect the differences between film and video cameras.

If you shot your motion picture with a video camera, it’s a video. If you shot it with a film camera, it’s a film. In fact, the only true circumstance where you can actually say you are truly watching a film is when you are in a movie theater watching a movie that was shot on film and is being projected with a film projector off a film print. Everything else is video: TV, DVD, HD TV, HD-DVD, Blu-ray, Apple TV, Windows Media, Quicktime, etc., these are all forms of digital video.

I also found it odd that YouTube decided to use the word tube in its name. Tubes have been gone from video cameras since the 1960’s, and new computer displays and TVs have abandoned CRTs. Again, a semantic issue. But nostalgia rarely finds a place in high tech these days. Also, until I actually went to the website for the first time myself, I assumed it was uTube, and still often type it that way.

Anway, this is what is going through my head right now in these early hours of leap year day.

Two Sites

I came across two interesting sites on the web. First is Scroogle, which is described as “An ad-free Google search proxy which prevents the searcher’s data being stored by Google, a Firefox plugin, and tools for webmasters” on their site. Scroogle uses SSL, you’ll see the SSL lock logo on the far right of the url window in your browser. Cool, huh? The next is zml.com which is a movie download service. Each movie is $1.99 to download. It’s kind of like iTunes, only it’s just for movies. And, it’s illegal since all the movies are pirated. Brazen huh?

Music Industry Solves All Its Problems

All of the major music studios, the RIAA, and Apple Inc. have all announced an agreement on how to prevent music piracy. The idea of digital rights management (DRM) has been dropped entirely. All future mp3 tracks will have no form of DRM whatsoever. Instead, all parties involved have adopted another technology: the play button will be disabled on all digital music tracks. “You’ll be able to download your music to your computer, move it to your iPod, and also copy them to any hard drive you want. You can then share them with anyone. You just won’t be able to play them,” Steve Jobs said. “You’ll still be able to pause, stop, rewind, and fast-forward to your heart’s content,” he continued.

Industry experts expect that music will flourish with this new concept. It’s expected that music downloads will double in the next five years. With the inability to play the downloaded files, music piracy is expected to disappear completely within a few months of adopting the technology. And at the same time, the music industry expects that people will start to share music much more freely, which will spur interest in the the art form and grow the market overall.

But audiophiles are concerned. “I can totally hear the difference between these new mp3’s and the old ones,” said Steve Hirst of Stearling Mastering, an audio production studio in New York City. “They lack the fidelity, the warmth of the old ones,” Hirst said. “It’s like night and day. I’ll tell you one thing, I’m still gonna hold on to my vinyl lp’s, even if I can’t play them on the subway. I honestly prefer them over the non-playable mp3’s.”

“We expect download times of the non-playable mp3’s to be cut in half, if not more,” said Ian Stanfield of AT&T. “The burden on the internet backbone will be reduced tremendously.” It’s expected that the newly available internet bandwidth will be consumed half by bloggers and half by spam. “This is a bright day in the history of the internet,” Stanfield asserted.

“I’ve been waiting this day for a very long time,” said Lars Ulrich of the heavy metal-band Metallica. “A very, very long time.” When asked whether or not he thought the new non-playable mp3’s would affect his listening pleasure of music, he responded by saying, “What? Did you say something? I’m the friggin’ drummer of Metallica, I can barely hear anything anymore.”

AOL and Yahoo! ?

Yahoo disses Microsoft and reportedly decides to talk to AOL about merging. Huh? AOL?? Why would anyone want to merge with AOL? Acquire AOL, sure, for AIM, but merge with AOL? AOL is one of the biggest boom-to-bust companies of all time. Surely you gain no management expertise by joining forces with AOL, as AOL has not been a talent-magnet since, oh, maybe 1999. 1997? I’m sure Time Warner is scratching it’s head: “sure take it, you got $100 million in your pocket?”

Can Yahoo really afford to take on AOL’s problems? It’s hottest property, AIM, Yahoo already has a strong alternative to with Yahoo Messenger. So what does Yahoo stand to gain by merging with AOL other than the company of misery? At least Microsoft could infuse Yahoo with cold hard cash and talent, two things Yahoo desperately needs. Of course Yahoo can and may consider a partnership with Google, but that would probably face strong anti-trust scrutiny. Plus, wouldn’t that really be admitting defeat worse than a merger with Microsoft? Despite all it’s fundamental economic shortcomings, Yahoo still has fantastic brand equity and an enviable user base. What they need is some fresh ideas at how to effectively monetize those assets, something AOL cannot deliver. Of course, as we’ve just seen, these negative growth companies tend to overvalue themselves and hold out for more money than anyone is ready to give them. Perhaps Yahoo should simply sit tight and try to right itself on its own. Perhaps trim down a bit and surely bring on board a world-class CEO rather than let Yang continue on. Let’s face it, Yang is way too close to the problem and way too sentimental to face and make Yahoo’s hard choices. Flickr is actually one of the largest social networking sites, and if Yahoo can figure out how to leverage it without diluting its core function as a photo sharing site it stands to gain big time. Maybe Filckr should start allowing users to share video clips as well as photos. Or else expand some of its social networking features. Keep Flickr as it is, and allow users to upgrade to more media sharing and social networking features, right? Seems like a no-brainer to me. Flickr is the the type of asset than neither Microsoft, Google, or AOL have. Yahoo should be making huge profits off it.

Also, why is the focus soley on building a better mouse trap in trying to create a targeted ad system that rivals Google’s? There has to be another way to make money off website traffic other than with ads and data mining. I don’t know what it is, but why not get some smart dudes in a room and force them to think outside the box of the Google business model? Targeted advertising has been around for quite a while, and Google certainly has perfected it. Isn’t there something new we can think up?

In any case, it’s been refreshing to have the tech press obsess about something other than Apple and its tiny laptop!

Microsoft Mobile

Microsoft is experiencing trouble getting a greater internet presence with its (for now) failed acquisition of Yahoo, but it moves ahead in getting traction in the cellphone OS market. It has agreed to buy Danger, the maker of some of the most user-friendly mobile OS’s, like the one used on the Sidekick. HOPEFULLY Microsoft will use this technology to improve the very clunky Windows Mobile! The iPhone still rules when it comes to ease of use, but it does not let you run Outlook or interface with Exchange Server, two major business applications that most businesses use. I’d like to see the iPhone run Outlook and synch with any Windows PC. And run on 3G networks. Or: I’d like to see the Windows Mobile OS work as easily and fast as the iPhone OS. Why can’t we have the best of both worlds? Units like that would sell like mad!!!!!!

Comm 101

With all the new forms of written communication — email, text messages, IM’s, blogs, etc. — it’s amazing to see how ineffective most people are at writing, even by professionals in the business world. Sure we can communicate instantly, but it often seems that the true message is not conveyed accurately. Speed is half the game, accuracy the other. Too often people write so poorly that the speed of communication is irrelevant due to the ambiguity of the message itself. Often many more messages are required between sender and receiver to simply clarify the intents of the first message. Senders routinely ignore basic English language parameters like capitalization and punctuation. People write in fragments and phrases and cliches. Pronouns and not properly qualified, and indefinite pronouns are used in a way that mind reading is necessary to suss out what they refer to. People often use incorrect grammar and then argue “well you know what I meant”. Yet no one would ever type “2+2=5″, then plead “well you know I really meant 4, duh,” and thus blame the receiver for being unsure of the sender’s true meaning. So here’s a tip: don’t be so lazy and spend the extra second or two and get your messages properly written out the first time. Especially if you are the Vice President of Global Communications for a multi-national corporation. Thanks!

FAT32

So you’re running XP Pro SP2 and some nut job gives you a hard drive with media on it that’s formatted HFS+. XP Pro SP2 will not show the drive on the desktop, but you can see it there in Disk Management, without a letter or path. What do you do? Find a Mac. Now you know your NTFS drives will only read and not write on this Mac. So you cannot copy your files on the HFS+ drive to a NTFS drive. So you go get yourself another drive, a blank one, and hook it to the Mac. Format it FAT32. Then hook the HFS+ drive to the Mac and copy its files to the FAT32 drive. Move the FAT32 drive to the XP Pro SP2 machine. Now you can access the files. If you’re feeling super-cool, copy the files to a NTFS drive.

Sidebar: so some nut job gives you a hard drive with P2 card DVCproHD media on it. The drive has multiple P2 card folders, with one CONTENT folder in the root folder. Your Avid only sees this folder during P2 import. What do you do? You know you cannot have two CONTENT folders in the root folder. So . . . you have to go to all the other CONTENT folders elsewhere on the drive and manually move (yep, it sucks) the contents of all audio, video, voice, icon, and proxy files in their corresponding folders to the same-titled respective folders within the CONTENT folder in the root folder of the drive. Be sure to not mix up your audio and video MXF files. Note that the audio files have “00″, “01″, “02″ and “03″ just before the extension. Now you can point the Avid to the CONTENT folder in the root folder on the drive and all your media will now show up in a bin in your project.

Moral: Digital video tape for acquisition is not yet dead! Real time capture is good time to log, plan, and take notes. No technology will eliminate proper planning from the workflow.

Apple TV still sucks!

It still can’t achieve 1080p HD quality, and only achieves 720p HD and 480i SD by skimping on bitrate. It uses MPEG-4 Part 10 (H.264), lol! I mean, guys, it’s all about SMPTE 421M (VC-1) these days. And 4 or 5 bucks to download a file with a 24-hour viewing window? No thanks, even if it were HD. $2 gets you Blu-ray at Blockbuster with no late fees. And $20 gets me all the HD-DVDs I’ve got time for in a month via snail mail from NetFlix. Yeah, I was an early adopter of HD-DVD. I don’t care if it dies and I have to buy Blu-ray soon. HD anything is the only way to use my Sony Bravia to full effect. I’ve gotten ever dollar’s worth of all 350 I spent on my Toshiba player. Upscaling SD DVD players look lame. HD-DVD looks amazing. And Blu-ray is just a touch better still when encoded properly. It’s the best image I’ve seen outside of an editing bay or shooting studio. Ever see HDCAM SR with 4:4:4 color space on a 1:1 pixel HD-SDI mointor? Or else an HD-SDI tap straight off the chip block of a RED ONE camera on a JVC DT-V24L1DU lcd monitor? How about a 4k image stream with about five times the image quality of 1080p HD? I’ve seen these things. They make you drool and wet your pants simultaneously. It’s as if the Ziegfeld did IMAX. It makes HD-DVD and Blu-ray look cheap. It’s like watching VHS once you’ve seen Digital Betacam. Hopefully Bayer compression with wavelet transforms will replace DCT one day, once the hardware can keep up and not cost a fortune. It’s DCT versus DWT for now, but DWT is sure to win in the future. Still, HD-DVD is noticeably better than cable or on-demand HD, which has way too much compression applied for my taste. But even cable’s overly compressed HD kicks Apple TV’s ass when it comes to image quality. And neither can promise zero packet loss, so I’m sticking with optical discs instead of wires for now, ’cause Blu-ray and HD-DVD releases have been QC’d up the wazoo. Apple is becoming the greedy big brother it once rebelled against. But with its newspeak TV ads and hip product design, the sheep stay fooled: “cable tv bad, Apple TV good!” Pay more for less. $1 is too much for .mp3, drm or no, btw! Especially when there’s free p2p content at higher bitrates to be had. When are they gonna start pricing media by the byte? Because once that happens, flat-rate per month access is next, imho. Just look at the telecoms and voice calls for an example. That’s why the telecoms are drooling over video delivery: they can return to the per-call pricing model. Apple has always been good at turning cachet into cash. Who knew the hipsters could be fooled by a black mock turtleneck?

MacBook Air Hot Air?

The Fujitsu Lifebook Q2010 is .8 pounds lighter, .9 inches narrower, .01 inches shorter, has Gigabit Ethernet, a fingerprint reader (good to have on an ultra-portable), and a replaceable battery. It also has an optional media dock that adds a dual-layer DVD burner, four additional USB ports, an Ethernet port, VGA out, and it replicates the headphone and microphone jacks.

Why Apple chose to enter this small market sector is odd. And again Apple insists on locking the battery into the unit, ignoring the fact that battery technology advances. Okay, the unit is wireless. Until the battery dies. Then you’ll have to pull out the power cord and find an ac outlet to connect to, rather than swap a fresh battery for a dead one.  And no FireWire port.  That’s right, no FireWire port, so don’t expect to capture footage off your video camera to post on YouTube.  Also, no ethernet port? Did that really save size, weight, and cost? Now you’ll need a wireless network at home and at work. And while away from either, you’re now forced to rely on unsecured wi-fi hotspots, and purchase a cellular network card with monthly data plan for more remote areas without wi-fi. Plus, $3100 tricked out? I’d buy a Mac Pro and an iTouch for the same money!

Jet Set on Global Warming

There is a whole lot of talk about alternative energy vehicles when it comes to ground transport, but take to the skies and your going to have to burn fossil fuels. As of now there is no substitute for jet engines, and no substitute for jet fuel on an energy density basis. There is no electric or hydrogen powered airplane. There is not going to be any in the near or not-so-near future. Jet engines create contrails, long artificial clouds that contribute to global warming. Jet engines create massive volumes of carbon dioxide, a gas known to contribute to global warming. Sucks, huh?

Apple and Windows

Sure, a new Macintosh can run Windows via Parallels Desktop, but the fine print says: “Requires Windows or other operating system (not included)”.

YouTube Revolution?

When it comes to the YouTube Revolution, as some call it, I feel what it has really revolutionized is people’s ability to accept poor image quality and dull content as entertainment worth spending a lot of time consuming. Who knows how this audience will react when you give them world-class content that is free or nearly free. Clearly there is always an audience for junk, but no one can survive on junk alone. I feel what people really like about experiencing YouTube is not its content in and of itself, but rather the ablility to share that content with others. “Look at how cool I am, look what I found and/or created,” is the unspoken mantra underlying every YouTube link you receive. Just check the one below for proof!

Of course this not to say that there is not high-quality content to be found on YouTube. But it certainly didn’t make its name with it! When was the last time you saw something really profound on YouTube? To me, an HD cable box with a DVR inside is a lot more fun and fufilling than YouTube.

It’s interesting to see how the computer and the internet have become a communication tool more like the telephone than the movie theater or TV. I remember in the mid to late 1990’s everyone was predicting how video was going to be the next big thing on the web. But what actually became the next big thing on the web were blogs. Text. No one was predicting that simple writing like I am doing now would become a big thing on the web and affect mainstream media, especially mainstream news media. Did anyone predict blogs? I may be wrong, but I don’t think so. Yet look at the impact blogs have had. And no one saw it coming! Blogs are arguably the single most influential thing on the web. A blogger started the chain of events that led to the U.S. House of Representatives vote to impeach a standing U.S. president. So beware of predictions and those who make them. Surprises will never be obsolete.

I do believe the internet will continue its growth as a way for people to communicate with one another. But until there is a huge increase in internet bandwidth for the home user, to say 1 Gbit/s, I do not see the internet changing fundamentally. And even at those speeds and greater, unless some brand-new form of media is invented, computers and the internet will only then be able to match the media viewing experience of technologies that already exist like HDTV and film. Technologies, it should be noted, that aren’t static and are changing and evolving themselves. I am willing to bet cold hard cash (and in a way actually have) that 70-inch and greater HD flat-screen monitors in the home will cause a sea change in the media consumption habits of people. But of course I may be unpleasantly surprised!

Lest we forget, the only true new form of media that the internet has been able to offer has been websites. Everything else on the web is merely existing media distributed in a new way. So: “Don’t believe the hype, it’s a sequel.”

Mark Cuban Can’t Spell(check)

Dead and Bloated Internet

Geek Speak: Headphones

Yeah, headphones baby!

So my dog chewed off the plug to my main set of cans, a Sony MDR-V600, and I was forced to buy new headphones after I realized that I could not repair the cable myself. The research for the best new set began. I had three main qualities I needed in these headphones: they had to be under $100, they had to be really good, and they had to be available at a store within a ten minute walk from my studio. Turns out that Tekserve sells cans! They have Sony MDR-7506’s for $99, the same price as at B&H. It’s always good when a store has the same price as B&H. And Tekserve is right around the corner. Mission accomplished.

But why I am writing this is to mention just how good the 7506’s are. I’ve used these headphones before as they are the industry standard studio reference headphones. I always meant to get a set, but I figured the V600’s where good enough to the point where I would not notice the difference. Wrong! I still have another working pair of V600’s as I need two sets, one for home and one for work, so I did the old side-by-side comparison. It’s amazing how different the two are. The V600’s are muddy and wet against the 7506’s, whose brilliance and clarity is amazing. You hear everything. With the 7506’s you get this nice flat response where no one frequency is favored. I never realized just how bass-heavy the V600’s are. It’s all mud covering up all the good stuff. The 7506’s are so nice and true that you can hear things in tracks that you NEVER heard before. Things like: the artist’s breathing, guitar pick noise against the strings, doubled vocal tracks that you always thought were single, and all sorts of fine nuances in the layering of tracks like very subtle panning and flanging. In fact these cans are almost too good as MP3’s of low and even normal quality sound like ass. You really need to replace all your MP3 files with nice fat ones if you are going to use a pair of headphones like these. Sure there are even better headphones out there (think Ultrasone) but none can make this claim: there’s a really good chance that MDR-7506’s were used in the recording and mixing process (when headphones were called for) of the music you are listening to, more so than with any other set of headphones. So why not listen to this music as the artists, producers, and engineers did when they were making it?

The only thing is that the form factor of the V600’s is definitely more comfortable than the 7506’s. That is not to say the 7506’s are uncomfortable per se, it’s just that the V600’s are better if you ask me. (But these 7506’s are far more comfortable than their main competition, Sennheiser HD-280’s.) Of course, my V600’s are old and entirely broken in to the shape of my head. The new set still feels a little clampy, if you know what I mean. The 7506’s are definitely of better build quality, with far less plastic parts than the V600’s. And all that plastic tends to creak and squeak, and transmit more cable knocking noises like a bad stethoscope. This may seem like a nit-pick, but when you use headphones to QC audio, it’s a real issue. Many parts of the 7506’s are held in place with bonafide screws! And they came with an exploded parts diagram, something that I thought was a goner in the disposable age we live in.

Anyway, I could not be more happy with the Sony MDR-7605’s. Good stuff. Get yourself a set if you need great, affordable cans. One caveat: you may find yourself listening to all your music all over again!