Category: Gadgets and technology

One of the big items from last week’s Macworld convention was Apple’s announcement that it was moving away from digital rights management on the music it sells on the iTunes Store. Apparently, Apple was able to win this concession from the large music companies in exchange for selling song tracks at different rates, including 69¢, 99¢ and $1.29.
A friend kinda scoffed at the move especially Apple’s plans to let users pay to “upgrade” their iTunes purchases to the new service. I think this is big news. I didn’t think Apple’s DRM policy was particularly onerous although ultimately your music was tethered to up to five computers, iPods that were paired with those machines and burned compact discs.
This applies to iTunes Store purchases and not music ripped from your compact discs or other sources.
Although I’m happy with the previous iTunes system, I will be upgrading my library to remove the DRM for one simple reason — there’s no way to know if Apple will keep its DRM service active for music. If you’re on a new computer and want to listen to your DRM’d music, you have to log in with Apple’s DRM service. Usually, it’s not a problem, but it could be if Apple ever decides to turn their DRM computers off. If there’s no way to log in, there’s no way to listen to the purchased music.
This nearly happened with several defunct online music stores. The retailers sent notifications that it was going to turn off its DRM service — and leaving customers in a lurch. Many of the companies backed off from the move, but it does point out the scary possibility that you might not fully own or control the music that you purchased online unless there is no DRM strings attached.
This doesn’t mean that DRM is going away — there are some pretty ridiculous technological strings attached to online video purchases, but ultimately moving away from DRM’d music is a good thing.

It was interesting taking my first long-distance trip outside of California recently. I decided to take Amtrak’s California Zephyr from Davis, Calif. to my hometown of Salt Lake City, Utah.
The eastbound train ride was exceptional and it arrived in SLC an hour early. Caveat emptor — the train will more than likely be delayed at least at little bit. For example, the westbound train into SLC was six hours late.
I didn’t turn my cell phone off during the trip and took a phone call from my dad shortly before arriving at a stop in Nevada. This call had me rethinking my thoughts about allowing cell phone use on airplanes.
My call seemed perfectly natural. After excusing myself from the companions I was occasionally speaking, I leaned toward the window and had the conversation quietly. Earlier, another passenger was texting and making phone calls and I could barely notice.
If I could have a reasonable conversation while aboard a train, couldn’t people do the same on an airplane?
Maybe 95 percent of the time, people will be discreet on the phones while flying. As people against on-board phone calls will point out, there are always going to be louts, loud-mouths and people who otherwise will be intrusive. My thinking is that they will be intrusive anyway and cell phones will probably add little to the equation.
After all, two young children boarded the train and they were plenty loud without the need of a cell phone. For what seemed like hours, the pair loudly commented on matters such as the price of the on-board meals and unwillingness to eat dry cereal for breakfast the following morning. Heaven forbid what would happen if they were given cell phones.
Of course, the train truly is a different beast than other forms of transportation. Driving in a car is a distinctly individual experience or one done with families and friends. A plane or a bus is often just a means of getting from Point A to Point B. They turn the seat belt light off, but how many people really feel like moving about the cabin? Most people remain restrained in their sardine-like seats.
On a train, the accommodations are more spacious and people mingle and converse more freely (if they choose). If people get really loud, one can easily move forward in the train and sit in the lounge (which I did at least once).
Despite my earlier reservations, I think cell phones could have a place on board airplanes — provided it costs less than it does to check a bag these days.

I’ve seen the dumbest thing on the Internet this week. According to the UK’s ITN (via Yahoo!), two groups are adding padding to light poles to see if they will reduce injuries.
Injuries from what, you may ask. From inattentive people too focused on sending text messages from their cell phones to bother looking up. One of the groups, directory-assistance provider 118 118, claims a survey showed 1 in 10 people have hurt themselves whilst gazing into their cell phones.
That’s not the dumbest thing. To me, the dumbest thing is the photo that accompanied the story. The photo appears to be posed as the camera just happens to snap the gentleman walking kerplunk into the padded lamp post. However, I might be willing to give the benefit of the doubt — if the man was unaware that a photographer was snapping pictures, he may have not noticed the post.
This whole thing has to be an elaborate hoax, an early April’s Fools Day prank or perhaps an article from The Onion‘s UK bureau. The two groups mentioned in the article seem legitimate (although there’s no mention of this initiative on their respective homepages).
Their cause seems obscure. Because, really? Ten percent of people have injured themselves while texting? Really?
Not only that, but their solution seems like total overkill. Let’s take all these lamp posts and wrap completely ludicrous and gaudy amounts of padding on them. However, let’s only put the padding on one side of the post. I guess the people on the other side of the lamp post will have to fare for themselves.
Speaking of how the padding would supposedly be deployed, take a closer look at the photo. I counted several potentially lethal objects:

1. Exposed lamp post – As previously mentioned, it’s a visible menace.
2. The rubbish bin – The rubbish bin (English for “trash can”) is just hanging out there at waist level, waiting to prey on some hapless traveler.
3. Vehicles – There’s an entire street running alongside this sidewalk. Won’t someone think of the cars? Unless the cars come padded on the outside, I don’t know if people should walk the street.
4. The sidewalk – Sure, it’s a stretch. Since we’re padding everything else, why take chances?
5. The pedestrian – Unless this man is wrapped in comparable padding, he may be a risk to himself and others.

I thought of a way of implicating the cell phone in this sordid affair, but I really couldn’t. After all, it’s just a piece of technology not capable of making decisions. After seeing this story, I may start to doubt the ability of humans to make decisions at all, much less wise ones.

Back when the Web was young, the United States government set up a clearinghouse Web site. This site was geared to tie all of the various services and institutions to one address so people wouldn’t have to search the FTC or the DoD for an IRS tax form.
It sounded good and still does. What didn’t sound good was the site’s Web address — firstgov.gov.
It was a silly name — “gov” is in the address twice, for crying out loud. I could barely remember the name tonight when I was trying to find some financial information on a company.
Thankfully, the U.S. government has eventually wised up and changed the name to a much-simpler one. All those services are now available at USA.gov.
I originally thought the address should’ve been America.gov. It seems the U.S. State Department is now using that as a news and information site.
Similarly, our friends up north have both canada.ca and gc.ca go to the same place. Apparently “GC” stands for “government of Canada” (or “gouvernement du Canada”), but who’s going to remember that?

It’s been quiet here lately. There are lot of things on my mind that will make their way to this page soon.
Oh, and I’m slightly tickled to discover what was screwing up my RSS news feed (the way I let others know my blog has been updated). For some reason, a strange character got inserted into one of my posts. That was enough to throw my news feed into disarray.
I’m glad it got fixed.