Every Monday morning I appear on Andrew Bartlett's 4ZzZ breakfast radio show to discuss some of the current public and political issues of the week. This week we discussed federal Australian politics, the Apple-Samsung patent battle, vegemite chips and competition law, and I defended FoxNews:
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Every Monday morning I appear on Andrew Bartlett's 4ZzZ breakfast radio show to discuss some of the current public and political issues of the week. This week we discussed the debate over prostate cancer screening, depression and Beyond Blue, Steve Jobs, the Brisbane International Film Festival and federal politics:
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Every Monday morning I appear on Andrew Bartlett's 4ZzZ breakfast radio show to discuss some of the current public and political issues of the week. This week we discussed Libya, American Presidential politics, federal politics, State politics, Steve Jobs and choppergate:
(And my apologies for the bad audio. Please contact me if you have any ideas as to how I can better capture the audio each week.)
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AustLII has released an iPhone app:
AustLII for iOS is the official App released by AustLII.
AustLII puts the power of Australia’s most popular online free-access resource for legal information right into the palm of your hand. Have access to law on your iPhone or iPod touch wherever you are.
Browse legislation from the Commonwealth and from every Australian State and Territory, and cases from over 140 courts, tribunals and boards. Search over four million documents with the power of AustLII’s SINO search engine.
AustLII for iOS resizes content from the AustLII website to fit the exact dimensions of your device’s screen, resulting in an optimised reading experience. And when you’ve found what you’re looking for, you can email it to anyone right from within the App.
AustLII for iOS requires a data connection to load content. Use of the App does not constitute the provision of legal advice. Your use of AustLII content is subject to AustLII’s standard disclaimers and its usage policy.
You can download the app here.
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Every Tuesday morning I have a regular weekly segment on Breakfast with Spencer Howson on 612 ABC Brisbane talking about technology and how it frames our world. In the segment this week we talked about Quora, 10 billion iPhone and iPad apps, web addresses running out, and new research showing that texting actually improves spelling:
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In the New York Times Magazine, Professor Jeffrey Rosen has a thought provoking essay on privacy on the internet, "The Web Means the End of Forgetting":
Four years ago, Stacy Snyder, then a 25-year-old teacher in training at Conestoga Valley High School in Lancaster, Pa., posted a photo on her MySpace page that showed her at a party wearing a pirate hat and drinking from a plastic cup, with the caption “Drunken Pirate.” After discovering the page, her supervisor at the high school told her the photo was “unprofessional,” and the dean of Millersville University School of Education, where Snyder was enrolled, said she was promoting drinking in virtual view of her under-age students. As a result, days before Snyder’s scheduled graduation, the university denied her a teaching degree. Snyder sued, arguing that the university had violated her First Amendment rights by penalizing her for her (perfectly legal) after-hours behavior. But in 2008, a federal district judge rejected the claim, saying that because Snyder was a public employee whose photo didn’t relate to matters of public concern, her “Drunken Pirate” post was not protected speech.
When historians of the future look back on the perils of the early digital age, Stacy Snyder may well be an icon. The problem she faced is only one example of a challenge that, in big and small ways, is confronting millions of people around the globe: how best to live our lives in a world where the Internet records everything and forgets nothing — where every online photo, status update, Twitter post and blog entry by and about us can be stored forever. With Web sites like LOL Facebook Moments, which collects and shares embarrassing personal revelations from Facebook users, ill-advised photos and online chatter are coming back to haunt people months or years after the fact. Examples are proliferating daily: there was the 16-year-old British girl who was fired from her office job for complaining on Facebook, “I’m so totally bored!!”; there was the 66-year-old Canadian psychotherapist who tried to enter the United States but was turned away at the border — and barred permanently from visiting the country — after a border guard’s Internet search found that the therapist had written an article in a philosophy journal describing his experiments 30 years ago with L.S.D.
According to a recent survey by Microsoft, 75 percent of U.S. recruiters and human-resource professionals report that their companies require them to do online research about candidates, and many use a range of sites when scrutinizing applicants — including search engines, social-networking sites, photo- and video-sharing sites, personal Web sites and blogs, Twitter and online-gaming sites. Seventy percent of U.S. recruiters report that they have rejected candidates because of information found online, like photos and discussion-board conversations and membership in controversial groups.
Technological advances, of course, have often presented new threats to privacy. In 1890, in perhaps the most famous article on privacy ever written, Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis complained that because of new technology — like the Kodak camera and the tabloid press — “gossip is no longer the resource of the idle and of the vicious but has become a trade.” But the mild society gossip of the Gilded Age pales before the volume of revelations contained in the photos, video and chatter on social-media sites and elsewhere across the Internet. Facebook, which surpassed MySpace in 2008 as the largest social-networking site, now has nearly 500 million members, or 22 percent of all Internet users, who spend more than 500 billion minutes a month on the site. Facebook users share more than 25 billion pieces of content each month (including news stories, blog posts and photos), and the average user creates 70 pieces of content a month. There are more than 100 million registered Twitter users, and the Library of Congress recently announced that it will be acquiring — and permanently storing — the entire archive of public Twitter posts since 2006.
In Brandeis’s day — and until recently, in ours — you had to be a celebrity to be gossiped about in public: today all of us are learning to expect the scrutiny that used to be reserved for the famous and the infamous. A 26-year-old Manhattan woman told The New York Times that she was afraid of being tagged in online photos because it might reveal that she wears only two outfits when out on the town — a Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt or a basic black dress. “You have movie-star issues,” she said, “and you’re just a person.”
We’ve known for years that the Web allows for unprecedented voyeurism, exhibitionism and inadvertent indiscretion, but we are only beginning to understand the costs of an age in which so much of what we say, and of what others say about us, goes into our permanent — and public — digital files. The fact that the Internet never seems to forget is threatening, at an almost existential level, our ability to control our identities; to preserve the option of reinventing ourselves and starting anew; to overcome our checkered pasts.
Read the rest here.
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According to Google Analytics, one of the most common search terms that lead people to this blog is "Porn 2.0". That is because of these two posts from a few years back: Porn 2.0 in April 2007 and Porn 2.0 on the rise in January 2008. So it is with a mix of trepidation (as well as secret delight that this provocatively titled post might also generate traffic in the future), that I draw your attention to this post on GigaOM that explains why porn and the iPad are key for HTML5:
Apple’s move to ban Adobe Flash from its iOS has opened a huge window for any technology that can deliver a top-notch multimedia experience on the iPad and other Apple gadgets. And as I discuss in my weekly column over at GigaOM Pro, porn purveyors are starting to tilt the balance in favor of HTML5.
Increasingly, it looks like HTML5 will inherit the torch from Flash. The emergence of HTML5 is largely being spurred by the iPad and its big, high-resolution screen, which offers a far more immersive (read: porn-friendly) experience than any handset can deliver. So adult sites are moving quickly to re-encode their video content for the new, video-friendly device. YouPorn.com announced a few weeks ago that it’s targeting iPad users by re-encoding its entire video archive in HTML5. Pink Visual has launched a pair of sites (barely safe for work) that offer HTML5 video content for both straight and gay consumers, and the gay site RocketTube was iPad-ready before the device even came to market.
Mobile porn has never found much of a market here in the U.S. thanks to carrier prohibitions and handsets that make for poor platforms to view it. The rise of the iPad will change that, though, providing an easy way for users to access adult content online wherever they are. And there’s no question that demand for online porn is immense: the worldwide adult web industry has an estimated value of $37.2 billion. The rise of the iPad will only fuel that fire.
Read it here. I remember reading somewhere years ago that the adult entertainment industry generally leads the way for new technologies before they are embraced by the mainstream, and it appears that the early embrace of HTML5, even if fueled by the success of the iPad, is another example of the adult entertainment industry being just ahead of the curve.
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QUT PhD student, Jan Seeburger, has developed a new iPhone app called Dispo Maps:
DispoMaps enables you to add contacts from your iPhone’s address book and share your location with them. If a contact has more than one email address, you can select which email account you would like DispoMaps to use. You can also add email addresses to existing contacts. Once you have selected the contacts you want to share your location with, press “Publish your Location.” DispoMaps then notifies your selected contacts via email that you are sharing your location with them. The email contains a unique web link, which DispoMaps generates for you. Your selected contacts can then access your real-time location information which is displayed in Google Maps. Your privacy is protected: The web page does not contain any information that would reveal your personal identity. DispoMaps allows you to stop sharing and dispose of your map whenever you want.
Download Dispo Maps via iTunes here.
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ZDNet has a review of MacHEADS:
Prominent sex blogger and renowned Apple fangirl Violet Blue declares passionately that she'd never sleep with a Windows user. Dozens of Mac fanboys and girls drink and dance together at an Apple-centric party, jubilant that, for another year, Apple still exists. Girls hug their iMacs before tentatively handing them over to be repaired, while another caresses her Cinema Display, gently offering up a kiss to her Mac Pro's tower.
Apple fans are passionate people, both with each other and with the company's products. MacHeads, a new Chimp 65 Productions documentary from writer/director Kobi Shely and producer Ron Shely, documents the history of these Apple-lovers, looking at what underpins their fanatical obsessions. At just under an hour in length, this unbiased, unnarrated documentary takes a balanced approach to peeling the onion of Apple fanboyism. With insightful commentary from the likes of Apple Inc employee number one Daniel Kottke and ex-Apple employee and Mac evangelist Guy Kawasaki, some of the compulsive fanboyism on display is mellowed by observations of what made an Apple fan an Apple fan in the first place.
Read more here. And watch the trailer:
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Ben Kremer (who blogs at Lawfont) has created an iPhone and iPod Touch application that contains the text of the Australian Constitution. You can download the free application at the iTunes Store here.
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Last month I used Intersquash to "optimise" Freedom to Differ for the iPhone and iPod Touch (see here). However based on the feedback I have received since this change, I have decided to turn it off. So from now on, if you visit this blog on your iPhone or iPod Touch you will once again only be able to view it as a webpage.
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Tim Barribeau asks looks at those crazy Apple fans (of which I am one):
That said, their fanaticism occasionally masks a hardware and software set known for amazing design aesthetic, durability and ease of use. As with any devotee to a single brand (see Holden v Ford), the fanboy arguments are hilariously inane. Watching Apple fans go at it against Windows users, while the occasional bearded Linuxer sticks in their oar, is a daily occurrence of deliciously sad comedy.
Because, when it boils down to it, Apple products look a little better, are a bit easier to use, and cost a little more. And that's it. If that's what you want, buy it.
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Thanks to Intersquash there is now a version of Freedom to Differ for your iPhone. Now if you visit this blog on your iPhone or iPod Touch you will automatically be forwarded to an optimised version of this blog.
intersquash demo from jon on Vimeo.
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This video shows some of the many cool ways you can use a Mac set to the song of "Again & Again" by the Bird & the Bee:
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Boing Boing offers another good reason to own a Mac I suppose:
Glenn Fleishman says,
Two alleged thieves were found with stolen computer and A/V gear taken from three roommates in White Plains, N.Y., because one of the victims is a Mac expert. She used the notoriously hard-to-get-working Back to My Mac feature in Leopard which allows single sign-in to .Mac for remote, secure access to all computers on which you've signed in. (It uses UPnP/NAT-PMP, wide-area Bonjour, dynamic DNS, and IPsec's IKE coupled with IPv6 tunneling. Any surprise it's wonky? It's cool when it works, though.)
The unnamed victim in question was able to use remote screen sharing to capture a picture of one alleged burglar via the machine's built-in iSight camera, and copied photos on the computer that apparently were of the other alleged thief.
One of the other roommates recognized the two alleged perps from a party at their apartment (they were friends of a friend), told the police, who tracked them down, and made the arrests, finding all the stolen gear in the process.
While I've heard of plenty of Webcams-lead-to-capture stories, this is the first story that ties in IPv6 and recovered gear that I know of.
Link.
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Newsweek has a fascinating interview with Professor Jonathan Zittrain:
If you say that the iPhone is the greatest invention of your lifetime, few would bat an eye. If you stay up all night playing Halo 3 like some deranged supermarathoner bent on blasting strangers a continent away on your Xbox Live, few would question your sanity. But dare to claim that devices like the iPhone and the Xbox are killing the Internet as we know it, you'd be laughed out of town.
But this is the central argument of a new book, "The Future of the Internet--and How to Stop It." Jonathan Zittrain claims that the very thing that makes the Internet great--its "generative" or innovative nature--is being locked down in a new wave of closed devices like the iPhone, Xbox, TiVo and the OnStar system. Zittrain, cofounder of Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, claims the Internet's ability to serve as an open platform for innovation is being undermined by these "tethered" toys that can't be easily modified by anyone except their vendors or selected partners.
"The Internet has been a collective hallucination," says Zittrain, who is also a professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford University. Zittrain spoke recently with NEWSWEEK's Brian Braiker about his qualms with Apple, Facebook applications, spam and government filtering.
Read the interview here.
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Gizmodo drew my attention to this clever parody ad:
Most parody videos are lame in the sense that they take one joke and stretch it to 60 seconds, but Lenovo's one joke actually works when properly executed. Not to spoil anything, but it's a send-up of the MacBook Air in favor of Lenovo's own X300.
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Information Week drew my attention to this Marketplace public radio story on the typical Mac user:
It was technology's turn in the earnings barrel today. After the bell, Amazon reported a 28 percent rise in first quarter profits. Apple said its profits jumped more than 35 percent. That's got to have shareholders thankful for all those iPod and Mac owners out there, thankful for the advertising and marketing teams, too, They've made a splash with those commercials, the ones where the techno-hip Mac guy triumphs over the clueless PC guy.
Andrea Gardner reports Mac owners might be a little clueless themselves.
ANDREA GARDNER: You know the commercial.
MAC COMMERCIAL: Hello I'm a Mac --- And I'm a PC.
Apple rolled out these ads to make you think Macs are much cooler than PCs. After all, the Mac guy wears designer jeans and sneakers, and the PC guy is overweight and balding, but over time, many consumers have found themselves charmed by the bumbling PC, and irritated by the lofty Mac. Marissa Gluck is a marketing analyst with Radar Research.
MARISSA GLUCK: The character of the Mac guy is almost too perfectly cast. He is smug. He is condescending. He's just that uber-hipster you love to hate. It just makes you want to slap him.
According to a new marketing study, if you own a Mac, you might want to slap yourself. Mindset Media surveyed 7,500 computer users in 20 different personality traits, such as self-esteem, pragmatism and modesty. They found that Mac owners pretty much personify the Mac guy from the commercials. Among other things, they think they're more extraordinary than the average Joe. That's according to Mindset co-founder Sarah Welch.
SARAH WELCH: This is a group that is not afraid to shout its accomplishments from the mountaintops. They're happy and proud to talk about their successes and their accomplishments, and that can come across as possibly a bit conceited.
The survey revealed that Mac users often describe themselves as perfectionists. They're also more likely than PC users to whiten their teeth, drive hybrids, drink Starbucks coffee and eat organic food.
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Wired explains how Apple got everything right by doing everything wrong:
Google's famous catchphrase, "Don't be evil," has become a shorthand mission statement for Silicon Valley, encompassing a variety of ideals that proponents say are good for business and good for the world: Embrace open platforms. Trust decisions to the wisdom of crowds. Treat your employees like gods. It's ironic, then, that one of the Valley's most successful companies ignored all these tenets. Here's how Apple succeeds by defying five core Valley principles.
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CNET's Beyond Binary blog considers whether Apple's "I'm a Mac" ads have hurt Microsoft's brand:
A new ranking of global brands shows Microsoft's reputation sinking in recent years. Among the possible factors: Apple's "I'm a Mac" ads.
Microsoft lands at No. 59 in the rankings for 2007, down from No. 11 in 2004, according to the survey from CoreBrand released Wednesday.
"The effect of Apple's 'Hi, I'm a Mac' advertising campaign may have taken its toll on Microsoft," CoreBrand CEO James Gregory said in a statement. "The launch of a series of new products, following a long, relatively dormant period, will be closely watched to see if it will have a positive impact on the Microsoft brand."
...
In fairness to the folks in Redmond, they have fared far better in other recent brand studies. They were No. 1 on a list of Britain's top "superbrands" last year, and No.2 in an August BusinessWeek ranking of top global brands (trailing only Coca-Cola).
I don't know how much stock I put into the study, or its thesis that Apple is to blame, but it is an interesting question. How has Apple's rise affected Redmond's overall image beyond just a few points of PC market share?
When Apple occupied a smaller niche, it could be argued that what happened on the Mac side of things was less relevant to how Microsoft is perceived. But now that Apple has a larger role, is it affecting how Microsoft as a company is seen?
Read more here.
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Wired covers a report that suggests a crime wave in the US might be caused by iPods:
It's easy to see why iPods would be alluring targets for criminals: The music players are valuable and easy to resell, and people absorbed in their personal soundtracks can be vulnerably oblivious to their surroundings.
But could the temptation for stealing iPods be so strong that they're behind an increase in the crime rate? Researchers at a public policy institute say yes.
They argue that the tantalizing gadgets are perhaps the main reason U.S. violent crime rose in 2005 and 2006 after declining every year since 1991 - although a close look at the findings suggests the hypothesis has holes.
The Urban Institute, a Washington think tank, first raised the subject of an "iCrime wave" last September, and held a panel discussion Tuesday to explore it further. The researchers don't blame iPod maker Apple Inc. or any other device maker for crime, but they do say consumers should demand technologies that would render stolen gadgets useless.
Read more here.
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Kim Weatherall had two particularly interesting posts over at Lawfont yesterday. The first was noting an article by my QUT colleagues Dale Clapperton and Professor Stephen Corones arguing that the technological tying of the iPhone in Australia may contravene the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth):
All over the press today that QUT people Dale Clapperton (of Defending Scoundrels) and Stephen Coroneos have published a paper arguing that a deal that saw the iPhone locked to a single telephone network could breach competition laws.
I’m not a competition lawyer, so I’m not really in a position to assess the validity of the argument from a legal point of view. Nor am I an economist, so I’m not able to tell you whether a deal like the iPhone one would actually pose a danger for competition. But Joshua Gans is, so head on over there for his views.
Read more here and read Dale and Stephen's article here.
Second, Kim asks for discussion on whether the Fanatics Songbook is a fair dealing for the purposes of parody or satire under Australian law:
I’ve been reading through the Australian Copyright Council’s publication, ‘The 2006 Copyright Amendments‘ (B129v01, December 2007), and I found an interesting couple of paragraphs on parody. They discuss the ‘Fanatics Songbook‘ - a songbook produced for Australian cricket fans that took, and twisted, popular songs to make comments about Australia’s cricketers and the cricketers on opposing teams. The songbook was specifically cited in an opinion piece by the then Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, as an example of Australia’s sense of humour, newly protected by the new parody defence to copyright infringement.
According to the Australian Copyright Council however,
‘It is doubtful … that The Fanatics’ use of the song lyrics constituted parody or satire, or was ‘fair’ in the circumstances. The purpose of using the lyrics was to support members of the Australian team and/or to taunt members of the English team. This is not parody, and it is difficult to categorise it as satire - unless, perhaps, the desire of the English team to win the match could be characterised as ‘folly’ [he he - Ed.]. The songbook reproduced some of the lyrics in full [’Some’ of the lyrics ‘in full’? What does that mean? - Ed], without any changes, which would make it difficult to characterise the use as ‘fair’, given that the reproduction of song lyrics is an activity normally licensed by music publishers.’
So, people, whaddaya think?
Read more here. If I had time this week I would discuss, but instead I'll echo Kim's call and encourage others to enter the debate. (But for the record, I would argue it is a fair dealing for the purposes of parody or satire.)
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Alexander Wolfe asks, what is that song in the new MacBook Air commercial?
You can't teach cool. Fortunately for
Apple , Steve Jobs needs no instruction, as he's proved once again with his company's new TV ad for the DVD-less notebook I've taken to calling the MacBook (Hot) Air.As my three regular readers know, I went nuts last fall for the iPod "Fatty" Nano commercials, which propelled Canadian singer Feist to stardom by showcasing her wonderful tune, "1234."
The current Apple MacBook Air ad features a song called "New Soul," by Israeli singer Yael Naim. It's a charming number, as you'll see in the YouTube video at the bottom of this post. It's funny; I now consider the debut of a new Apple commercial more important than the introduction of its latest piece of uber-cool, overpriced hardware. I'm unlikely to buy the latter, but I rush to check out the music spotlighted in the former.
... [I want to] talk about Apple's status as both an arbiter and definer of cutting-edge culture. And, yes, I realize that Steve Jobs doesn't pick out the music for his commercials himself, but he clearly inspires enough fear in his ad agency that they'll never come back with something as hack-like as a Rolling Stones-scored commercial.
Consider that at most companies, they'd simply designate a chief coolness officer, she'd pick something unhip -- Sammy Hagar doing "I Can't Drive 55," maybe? -- and then everybody'd have to fall into line or be considered unteamlike. Luckily for Jobs, his picture is in the dictionary next to "unteamlike," and he presides over a publicly traded company as a dictatorship of one.
Read more here (from Information Week) and watch the clip:
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Wired takes a look at eight of Apple's most notorious flops. Find out what makes the list here.
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At the Geek Gestalt blog on CNET News.com Daniel Terdiman writes about the upcoming movie MacHeads. Read about the movie here, visit the official site here and watch the trailer:
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Blogging for Bits, Saul Hansell asks where is Apple's rental service for music?:
One quick last word on Macworld and what Steve Jobs didn’t do. The technology that enables movie rentals also could enable music rentals — or, in other words, a music subscription service like Rhapsody.
The technology behind this is that iPods need to have a tamper-proof clock in them so that content can be vaporized after its expiration date. The first models didn’t have this feature; the new ones do.
Mr. Jobs said on stage at Macworld that he didn’t originally support movie rentals because he believes that people want to own content. He has changed his mind about movies, but not about music, at least as far as I can see.
This came up yesterday for me when I had lunch with Ted Cohen, one of the most thoughtful people on digital music. Mr. Cohen has worked for EMI, the big record label. But he has also consulted for the original Napster and, much later, Limewire, makers of the rogue peer-to-peer software. Now he is on the board of Imeem, the advertising-supported music service and social network.
Mr. Cohen sees the world from lots of angles, and like most people I know in the music industry, he believes that subscription services are the best answer to the industry’s problems.
The logic is powerful.
Read why here.
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iTunes movie rentals, one of the big announcements from Macworld this week, will not be coming down under any time soon:
APPLE has unveiled its much-anticipated online video rental service, which lets viewers rent movies directly from their television. But the service will not be available in Australia.
Chief executive Steve Jobs said all major Hollywood studios had signed up to offer their movies. They include Paramount, Universal, Walt Disney, Warner Bros, Sony Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Lionsgate, New Line and News Corp's Fox (News Corp is the owner of News Limited, publisher of The Australian).
...Apple has bad news for Australian movie lovers, however. ''The video rental service will not be introduced in Australia,'' Apple Australia spokesman John Marx said.
This stance will come as no surprise to long-suffering local Apple users.
The company's iTunes music download service, for example, took the best part of a year to make it Down Under after it was launched in the US and then Europe.
Australian iPod owners are still awaiting the ability to buy more than music video clips, long after US owners were able to purchase entire episodes of television shows such as Lost and Desperate Housewives for their portable players.
Then there's the iPhone, launched with great ballyhoo in the US this time last year. This innovative phone has only in recent months become available in Europe, much less Australia.
Read more here (from The Australian).
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Mahalo’s Veronica Belmont the 90 minute Macworld Keynote from Steve Jobs in 60 seconds:
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Information Week has a good recap of Steve Jobs's Macworld Keynote. Read it here.
(Of course, you can always watch it at Apple's official site here.)
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This story from the New York Times is just over a week old, but I thought was particularly illuminating about the difference between Mac users and PC users:
Macintosh owners are far more likely than PC owners to have recently paid for a music download, according to the NPD Group, a market research firm. In the third quarter of 2007, exactly half of Mac owners paid to download music at least once, while only 16 percent of PC owners did. The data was derived from an online panel of 4,915 people and weighted to reflect the United States’ online population.
In part, the disparity reflects the ways Apple Macintosh and PC owners use their computers: Mac owners are more likely to listen to music on their computers and to upload music to digital music players. The Mac is marketed as an entertainment machine, and music and video are tightly integrated into the operating system. And, of course, the iPod is an Apple product.
“The whole concept of using the Mac as an entertainment tool across the board is much more woven into the fabric than with PCs,” said Russ Crupnick, the senior entertainment industry analyst at NPD.
It does not hurt that the most popular peer-to-peer file-sharing programs, which allow for free downloading, have generally introduced Mac versions later than PC versions, if at all.
Read it here.
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Mashable observes that Apple iPod ads are the new hitmakers:
It seems that if you’re a band, and you can get your song in an Apple iPod commercial, you can expect a surprising amount of success.
The most striking example of this is when Nick Haley, an 18-year old university student in England, made an amateur commercial for the iPod Touch. He paired his images with a song named “Music is My Hot, Hot Sex” by a Brazilian band called CSS (short for Cansei de Ser Sexy which translates to “tired of being sexy”). The commercial impressed Apple and they brought Mr. Haley to Los Angeles to to professionally make his commercial and they kept the same song.
Since the ad debuted, the critically acclaimed band, which had no commercial success in the USA, has climbed the charts, selling thousands of albums. Feist has also seen similar success with their song “1234″ being used recently in ads for the iPod Nano, and has since sold tens of thousands of albums and landed a spot on Saturday Night Live.
There has been no mention of how Apple choses their songs, but it is sure bands are going to try to crack that mystery.
(via SF Gate)
Read more here. And this is Nick Haley's ad:
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Robert Scoble rants on the brand promise of Apple:
So, last night I was out to dinner with a bunch of smart people. Folks who run their own companies. Folks who have helped many companies get started. Tech companies.
Of course people started talking about my Apple problems. Everyone at the table is a Macintosh user. What was fun is that at one point people started telling me about the problems they have had with their Macs. Many with far more serious problems than I have had.
I tried to turn on my video camera. They all instantly shut up and said “no video.”
Why not?
I dug a little more. It was because they all blamed themselves for the problems of their Macs and I think they also bought into the “Apple cult” which says that if you use a Mac you must be cool. Heck, look at that ad again. Who is cool? Not the PC user.
Now THAT is “brand promise.”
We believe Apple’s marketing so deeply that we aren’t willing to question it.
And then there’s something else. Apple has an ARMY of people who are anonymous who will come and call you every name in the book. I know. They hit yesterday here. I deleted them all, but, dozens, if not hundreds, of comments calling me every name in the book.
They hit over on Andy Beal’s site too. He got tired and just closed the comment thread over there.
The common thing about most of these comments is that it’s MY FAULT that my Apple machine is having trouble.
...
Just remember the brand promise of Apple, OK?
1. If your machine behaves badly it’s your fault.
2. Any idiot can use an Apple machine (that’s what they tell you before you buy one) but if your machine crashes then you must be a “genius” to fix it (they have bars at stores now where you can “borrow” a genius, but only after waiting in line — my son twice has been turned away from genius bars because they were too busy and was told to “come back tomorrow at 10 a.m.”). Oh, and if you are having problems at 10 p.m., and dare tell people on your blog about your problems you’ll get tons of abuse back “how DARE you be an Apple user and not know you needed to flash your PRAM.” Translation: any idiot can use a Mac, but not really.
3. If you dare complain about the brand promise you’ll get pounced on by hoardes of annonymous astroturfing Apple FanBois.
4. If you don’t get the brand promise of Apple don’t attempt to point out that the ads are ridiculous. Instead, just leave the cult and go back to using that “inferior” machine you used to use.
5. Check out my new Mac, with its cool brushed metal surface and the light-up Apple logo.
6. If you use an Apple machine you will be as cool as Kevin Rose....
I guess I just am not cool enough to like my Mac. I’m back on my Sony Vaio, which has never crashed the way my Mac did the other night. It also never has needed to have its memory and graphics controller replaced the way my Mac did. And its USB ports work, unlike those on my son’s computer. But it decidedly isn’t cool.
It doesn’t come with the brand promise of Apple.
Read more here.
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The Fox Business Network made an embarrassing mistake on Friday morning. From TV Newser:
Anchors Peter Barnes and Alexis Glick were coming back from a commercial break when Glick said, "There's some news coming across the tape right now. We're seeing from Wall Street Journal that Apple is buying an 8 percent stake in AMD." It took nearly a minute for the anchors to correct the error; it wasn't Apple that was buying into AMD at all, and even the corrected information was dubious.
Read more here. Lost Remote describes it as "every anchor/reporter/producer’s worst newsmare on display" and Valleyway has the video here.
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Greg Whitby's Bluyonder considers the recent decision of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) to have its own YouTube channel:
The University of NSW recently launched its own channel on YouTube – the first Australian institution to do so. It’s no surprise given most students entering university today have virtually grown up online.
While it’s a great marketing strategy, it recognises where today’s students are. Although the channel will broadcast some lecturers in an attempt to reach potential students, it captures the ubquitous nature and popularity of Web 2.0.
This is the democratisation of knowledge - no longer contained within lecture theatres or classrooms but shared. Learning becomes accessible, anywhere, anytime. Transportable, transparent, relevant and exciting.
The University of NSW is to be applauded but we still lag behind. iTunes has developed a store dedicated to education called University. It’s ‘the campus that never sleeps’ - allowing universities across the US to upload audio/video lectures, interviews, debates, presentations for students - any age, anywhere. And it’s free. It’s astounding and exciting to think that a cohort of students and teachers from a school western Sydney can watch a biology lecture from MIT.
The challenge for us is to open our K-12 classrooms to a new audience - to share knowledge as professionals and to showcase quality learning and teaching as we move from isolated classrooms to a connected global learning environment.
Read more here. I agree with Greg's comments. In the Law School at QUT, which is where I work, we have for some posted audio recordings of our classes online so that students can download and listen to their classes anywhere, anytime. But we post these classes only on our Learning Management System (LMS) - previously OLT now Blackboard - which means that they can be accessed and downloaded only by our current students. What UNSW and others institutions in the US are doing is fundamentally different because they are making their classes available to the world, not just those students who have paid for the privilege to attend that institution. I don't know what QUT's position would be if I wanted to place my lectures online for anyone to watch and/or listen to, but I would like to think I would be able to do so.
I believe that opening up the classroom to a much broader audience has rich educational potential as it widens the perspectives and discussion that can had on the topic being taught or considered by the teacher and the students. In a small way I've noticed this with a blog I have run with John Swinson for an LLM unit we teach - Legal Regulation of the Internet. In addition to our students posting comments to the blog, we have got comments from people all over the world. Often these comments approach the issues in a different, but very relevant and interesting, way from the students in our class. Thus it is enriches the class debate and discussion and as a result the broader educational experience. Posting whole classes online can only take this further.
Therefore, I'd suggest that posting classes on YouTube (or elsewhere on the internet) is not just Web 2.0 trendiness or good marketing for the institution, and that there are in fact sound pedagogical reasons for doing so.
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Jonathan Zittrain reminds us that Macs get viruses too:
But the fact is that (1) Macs have their own security vulnerabilities; (2) interoperability creates avenues for infection that can cross platforms; and (3) the core problem is that generative platforms — where people can choose what code to run — are all vulnerable to people being tricked into running the wrong code. For example, now there’s a fake codec floating around targeting Mac users. Being only 5% of the installed base can only go so far to help one avoid the baleful attention of malware authors!
Thus our efforts at StopBadware …
Read more here.
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In a piece for Slate, Ivan Askwith wonders about the future of iTunes:
Since the iTunes Store opened in 2003, Apple and the world's top media companies have happily shared the profits from consumers' increasing appetite for downloadable songs and videos. This summer, the four-year honeymoon ended. In July, Universal Music Group announced that it would be downgrading its licensing contract with iTunes. Universal then revealed late last week that it has been in negotiations with other major labels to launch a rival service. Two months ago, NBC announced it would be pulling the network's shows from iTunes and relocating to Amazon Unbox. And in the last two weeks, Radiohead sidestepped both iTunes and the major record labels by allowing fans to purchase its new album online for whatever price they choose. Does all this mean that Apple's dominance of online media is coming to an end?
Not just yet.
Read why here.
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Good news for Australian consumers (via The Age):
In the market for a new video iPod? Head to Hong Kong or, if Europe-bound, stop off in Switzerland. But best avoid Brazil.
The Commonwealth Bank, has used the latest version of Apple's music player - the slimline 4GB Nano - to compare global currencies and purchasing power in 55 countries.
Along the lines of the Big Mac index launched 20 years ago by The Economist magazine, the survey prices the recently launched 4GB Nano in U.S. dollars and found Brazilians pay the most for an iPod, shelling out $US369.61.
...
Australia, where the local dollar has surged to 18-year highs, jumped 11 spots into 8th place with the Nano costing $US175.42, cheaper than Germany ($US211.62), France ($US225.82), South Korea ($US180.60) and even China where the machine is manufactured.
Read more (including the full list) here.
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Writing for Slate, Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu explains why unlocking Apple's iPhone is "legal ethical and just plain fun". He describes the process of unlocking it and then examines his conduct in doing so:
The worst thing that you can say about me is that I've messed with Apple's right to run its business exactly the way it wants. But to my mind, that's not a right you get in the free market or in our legal system. Instead, Apple is facing trade-offs rightly beyond its control. When people unlock phones, Apple loses revenue it was hoping for, but also gains customers who would have never bought an iPhone in the first place. That's life.
And what, exactly, is Apple afraid of? In the short life of the iPhone, its fans have built surprisingly good, if unauthorized, third-party programs, ranging from Sudoku to a great app that uploads your photos directly to Flickr. As economist Eric Von Hippel teaches in Democratizing Innovation, much product improvement comes from users who monkey with and enhance the products they use every day. Apple's aggressive upgrade strategy is not just blocking unlocking but also shutting down its "Think Different" customers. Apple is making its product less valuable to its most loyal fans, and that's a big mistake.
Read more here.
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PC World wonders if Apple is becoming the new Microsoft:
Ten years ago, Microsoft was the company everyone loved to hate.
The most vociferous Microsoft haters slammed the company for being a greedy industry bully that used its monopolistic, clunky, copycat operating system to force software on users and coerce partners into unfair licensing deals.
Don't look now, but the role of the industry's biggest bully is increasingly played by Apple, not Microsoft. Here's a look at how Apple has shoved Microsoft aside as the company with the worst reputation as a monopolist, copycat and a bully.
Read more here. I thought it was Google that was becoming the new company everyone loved to hate ...
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Web video stars Randi Zuckerberg of Valleyfreude and Facebook fame, Irina Slutsky and Nora McDevitt of PodTech, and a rapping David Prager of Revision3 have banded together to make a parody music video:
Also, the New York Time's David Pogue has joined in with some iPhone singing and dancing:
(Hat tip: NewTeeVee.)
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Mashable investigates the most hyped of 2007:
Despite hundreds of new sites and services launching each week, it seems that some products are talked about ceaselessly. We’ve taken a look at four of the most (over)hyped tech stories so far in 2007 – Facebook, Twitter, Pownce, and the iPhone – and used a wide variety of publicly available data tools to see who is garnering the most hype.
Read the whole piece here.
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The iPhone will not be "the next iPod" according to Lost Remote's Steve Safran:
Forget, right away, the many times you’ll read “Is the iPhone the next iPod?” It isn’t. It can’t be. It won’t be. The iPhone, even if it is a runaway hit that everyone wants, can’t be universal. That’s because Steve Jobs threw in his lot with AT&T.
Read more here.
And here David Pogue of the New York Times looks at the features of the new iPhone:
And this College Humor's first iPhone parody:
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Writing for The Guardian, Bobbie Johnson has a thoughtful column on whether there is a difference between privacy and anonymity?
That depends who you ask. Online privacy has been big news this week, with two of the net's most powerful names finding themselves at the forefront of rows over privacy issues.
But despite being closely related, the two are often separate problems that become confused.
Read it here.
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This year's Worldwide Developers Conference opened with a surprising announcement by the PC guy pretending to be Steve Jobs:
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Recently Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Apple CEO Steve Jobs took the stage at the D5 conference:
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