RasterWeb!I saw this KFC commercial on the television, and the background music was the song Sweet Home Alabama. Does the K still stand for Kentucky? Perhaps they should have used My Old Kentucky Home for the background music.
Hmm, upon further thought, with lyrics like “the people are gay” and “they hunt no more for the ‘possum and the coon” perhaps My Old Kentucky Home is not the best choice…
I really don’t have anything against the guys behind Odeo, but I can’t help find it curious that we didn’t hear from them back in 2004 when things were happening. An iPod Lounge interview with Evan has this bit:
…we sorta stumbled on the idea of podcasting (although we weren’t calling it that yet) around the same time others did…
I can’t help but think to myself “Why didn’t you get involved?” I mean, I know we have to expect companies to pop up and “take advantage” (?) of the potential of podcasting, but this just makes it seem to me like some guys saw what was going on, went into super-secret mode working all on their own (perhaps tracking what was going on, and “borrowing” all of the ideas) and never contributing antything back. Well, until the company launches anyway. As I’ve said before, I lack business sense, so maybe this is just the way it always works…
The old line about “Would you trust a mechanic who doesn’t own a car?” comes to mind. I still don’t know of any podcasts done by the guys behind Odeo, do they create podcasts? Have they? What do they know about it? Am I being too critical? Maybe it doesn’t matter, but where I come from programmers scratch their own itches and eat their own dog food. Again, maybe they are doing all the right things, and we just can’t see it yet.
I really shouldn’t be so cynical, I mean, they do say things will be open, and there will be no DRM, so I really should just wait and see. My view of their goals is that they want to be the Blogger of podcasting, which, I suppose, is a noble cause. Maybe I’m not really the audience they’re after then, since I’m not really a Blogger user.
Things I really don’t want/need in my life:
(See Also: web geek sez)
Ok, I’ve never really used the iTunes Music Store to purchase music, mainly because they really don’t carry much from the artists I like, and I still have at least 500 pieces of vinyl and cassettes to digitize, but anyway, as a favor I purchased a few songs for someone. It didn’t turn out so well…
I was already registered, I’m sure I did that when the iTMS came out, or for some contest or something, so I managed to login ok. (Even though Apple still thinks my old email address should be my user id, though I’ve tried to change it, luckily it forwards to my current email address.)
Alright, so I purchase the music, it loads into iTunes, I can play it, and I now attempt to burn it to a CD. The user experience quickly goes to hell.
First iTunes tells me that “at least” of the songs in the playlist can’t be burned to a CD. So I try deleting one, then another, and another, soon there are no songs in the playlist. I assume that none of them can be burned to a CD. Did I miss a memo? Can you still burn songs you purchase from iTMS to an audio CD?
And still, some in the industry wonder why people don’t like DRM.
Now keep in mind, this is a favor for someone, and I said it should take 15-20 minutes. More than enough time I figured to download the songs and burn them to a CD, right? Well, now I’m searching for software to break the DRM, just so I can put these freakin’ songs on a CD. No luck there. I end up using Wiretap (old free version) and Soundflower to play the songs on my Mac and record the output right back to non-DRM’d files. This added 30 more minutes to the process.
In the end it did work, though I was told the sound quality seemed to lose something, which I will chalk up to preconceived notions about re-recording the audio to non-DRM’d versions, and nothing else.
Note: As I’ve recently received an iTMS gift certificate (Thanks Lenzies!) I’ll be trying this process again. I’m hoping to skip the whole “breaking the DRM” part this time though.
That’s right folks, I’m headed on a road trip. I’ll attempt to drive from somewhere between Milwaukee and Madison all the way to Bloomington, Minnesota. (As I mentioned, I’ll be attending the No Fluff Just Stuff Java Symposium.)
So where do you come in? Well, if you’re near Bloomington or going to the No Fluff Just Stuff thing, let me know… And, if you are looking for a ride from the Milwaukee/Madison area to the Minneapolis area the last weekend of April, I might be able to provide transport for you.
Keep in mind that I cannot guarantee my vehicle will actually make it all the way there, but hey, that’s part of the adventure! The journey is the reward, right? I mean, you’re never really guaranteed to make it to your destination anyway, so if the RasterMobile dies on the way, we’ll just go with the flow and play it by ear. (Or something like that…)
Any takers for a road trip?