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Lotsof Zune chatter for the coming day.  First, an articleby the Seattle Weekly profiling J. and team.   Scoble ofcourse weighs in. As does NathanWeinberg at Inside Microsoft. Now the www.comingzune.com sitehas a decidedly unusual, MTVish, yet intriguing video up (Flash intro, WMV downloadonce you watch the intro).  At first I worried about PETA raising up in armsbut watch it all the way through- it's worth it.  The song is a new title, 'TheSecond Coming of the Monkey God' by AshtarCommand - definitely one for my 'Gym Rock' mix.  I'm sure we'll be hearingmore Zune. (sorry, I couldn't resist) :).

Just checking.... Seems I can carry nail clippers but not pop under the new rules for flying. And a Father can't take food for his baby. The rules only allow mothers to carry formula, and only if they are willing to drink it. Which is also stupid. I can think uppp lots of things that blow up real nice that would be perfectly drink able.

I don't think they should be able to arrest people until they have done something. Not that I think plotting to blow something up is healthy or good, but it is a big difference between owning a gun and being willing to kill someone. Watch Minority report.

EARLY SEASON WINTER-LIKE STORM POSSIBLE FOR THE SIERRA NE...

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SACRAMENTO CA110 PM PDT TUE OCT 3 2006

...EARLY SEASON WINTER-LIKE STORM POSSIBLE FOR THE SIERRA NEVADAMOUNTAINS...

.THE LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM DEVELOPING OFF THE COAST OF NORTHERNCALIFORNIA CONTINUES TO DIG SOUTHWARD AND ITS MOVEMENT ONSHORE HASBEEN DELAYED. THIS HAS AFFECTED THE TIMING...LOCATION...AND THEPOSSIBLE EXTENT OF THE STORM IMPACT. WITH THE STORM CENTER SHIFTINGSOUTHWARD...THE FAR NORTHERN PORTION OF THE SIERRA NEVADA MOUNTAINSHAVE BEEN DROPPED FROM THE WATCH AREA AND THE STORM SHOULD NOTBEGIN TO EFFECT THE REMAINDER OF THE SIERRA NEVADA RANGE UNTILWEDNESDAY.

WHILE THE EXACT TRACK OF THE SYSTEM IS STILL UNCERTAIN...ITAPPEARS THAT THERE REMAINS A GOOD CHANCE FOR ACCUMULATING SNOW ATTHE HIGHEST ELEVATIONS SOUTH OF THE LAKE TAHOE AREA LATE WEDNESDAYTHROUGH THURSDAY.

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MSN Video Download  apparently went live today with a choice of two membership types  Premium and Basic.  Premium is $19.95 a year and has more content than the free Basic membership.  Not wanting to commit myself to a membership yet I signed up for the Basic membership, thinking I could load some videos on to the miniSD card in my smartphone....

Sign up was easy, I used my passport account, agreed to the terms and installed the download software.  The download status page showed content was downloading from Fox Sports.  In order to sync content to my phone I needed a smart playlist so I followed the instructions to download one.  This was the first problem, the instructions used Windows Media Player 9 and I'm using Windows Media Player 10, a little strange, but not a huge problem.  With the smart playlist in place I thought I'd be good to go...

That wasn't going to be the case though.  I started by trying to play a video in Media Player directly and got prompted for a username and password which was being requested by 'admin.theplatform.com' not 'msnvideodownloads.com'.  I tried my Passport email address and password which might not have been a great idea, but it didn't work anyway.  Meanwhile I could see that Activesync had been trying to sync the content to my phone so I checked the Sync page in WMP.  Nothing had been synced, instead  there was an error message 'Windows Media Player can not synchronize the protected file.  Protected files can not be converted to the required quality level or format'.

Now I have almost half a gigabyte of content (and it's still getting downloaded) and I can't watch any of it.  If anyone gets this working I'd love to know how.

The overnight flight to Oslo was uneventful and the weather on arrival Monday morning was as rainy as it was leaving New England -- Norway is 59 degrees north latitude (and ten degrees east longitude) so it is not too far north of home. Opera Software is a short cab ride after taking the clean and comfortable train from the airport to central Oslo.

After the board proceedings a some follow-on meetings, it was time for a taxi ride to the Holmenkollen Park Hotel where a special dinner would be held for my friend and Opera chairman Christian Thommessen who will be leaving the board to take on an important position as a diplomat at the United Nations Development Program at U.N. Plaza in New York. I am sorry we will be losing him from the board but am happy that he will be putting his time and energy into some really important work and also that he and his family will be close enough for more frequent visits.

During my last trip to Oslo in February, I was determined to find the "Troll's View" geocache which is hidden across the street from the world famous Holmenkollen Ski Jump. The first jumps at the "Holmenkollrennet" took place in January 1892. The world's skiing elite meets at Holmenkollen every year and 50,000 spectators watch the jumps from the 180 feet high spectacle. The view of Oslo and the fjord below is breathtaking. The cache is in the woods near the famous Kollen Troll but it was so cold and there was so much snow and I was not dressed for the hunt. I finally had to give up.

Yesterday when I got to Holmenkollen, the rain had stopped and the weather was perfect. I remembered where to have the taxi stop to wait for me. It did not take too long to follow the needle into the woods and find a blue bag hanging in a tree exactly at the latitude and longitude where it was supposed to be. I signed the logbook and headed back to the taxi and on to the hotel. It was a late but delightful evening with my colleagues from Opera Software. Results for the first quarter were posted during the day.

After finding four official National Geodetic Survey benchmarks during an interesting walk around downtown New Orleans, it was time to meet at Antoine's for dinner. The famous restaurant has been continuously operated by the same family since 1840. Through wars, the Great Depression, epidemics and storms, the culinary treasures continue to be served. The French Quarter, where the restaurant operates, was fortunate to not have any water damage, although the winds took a toll and repairs are still underway. After dinner, my son and his friends headed for the music they wanted to hear. For me, there was only one place I had in mind.

I had not been to Preservation Hall for more than thirty years but I remembered exactly what to expect. The sound of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band is unique and inspiring. The musicians are polished and professional. I talked with the trombone player during break and he told me he was a professor of music at a local college. To hear him and his colleagues play you would never see a piece of music. It seemed to come from their soul. The saxophone player told me he read music when he was a boy but that now it comes from the soul. From their web site are a coupe of great quotes. "Musicians in New Orleans are born to entertain. There's nothing wrong with that, because I'm happy when I play. I love what I do". "We play gospel music here. We play old spirituals. We play military marches. There's no end to the variety of music that we play. But we play it all our way. And the more we play, the more the level of happiness rises. Just to watch our audiences go wow when we play, that gives me a good feeling and makes me want to put out more."

The amazing part to me is the coordination. There is no sheet music, no conductor, not even subtle leads from one of the members. All seven -- trumpet, two trombones, tuba, drum, tenor saxophone, and piano -- played as one. Soloists knew when to stand -- at times several would stand -- the crescendos and decrescendos were perfect and soft harmonies were flawless. These are truly great musicians. Walking a half mile down Bourbon Street back to the hotel there were dozens of "bands" playing at peak volume. It was a different world than Preservation Hall. I prefer the latter.

After Sunday brunch overlooking the mighty Mississippi River, it was time to head for JazzFest. The temperature was 90, the humidity was 100%, the crowd was 100K+ and there was no place to sit. In spite of this it was a great experience. The Paul Simon performance, in particular, was worth the price. Nice to see the 60+ performers -- he was amazing in every respect. Digital music is great but nothing compares to a live concert. The big screen made you feel like you were in the front row (even though there were no chairs). Regrettably, Fats Domino (78 years old) cancelled at the last minute for health reasons. Lionel Richie took took the stage instead.

On Monday morning it was a pleasure to make a presentation to a group of networking and IT executives at the English Turn Country Club. The topic was, guess what, the future of the Internet. With the incredible humidity, I do not regret not being a golfer and staying for the afternoon.

With regard to New Orleans,I found a mixed story. The water marks, damage, and debris were staggering. One can see why a huge number of people have been displaced and why housing is the main issue on many people's minds. I spoke to a number of residents who were working in the service industry. The common thread was that they were hopeful, courteous, and wore smiles on their faces even though they had every reason to be bitter. One person told me there was three feet of water in the second story of his house. He and his family moved in with a cousin -- eight people in a small home. The only good news is that there are plenty of jobs. The biggest tragedy may be that there are only five schools open in a city that was once more than a million people.

Technology writer, Peter Svensson, wrote an interesting story called "Will video break the Internet?". From a technical point of view there are many factors to consider. If a large number of web "surfers" were using the Internet as their primary way to watch TV, there would be a problem. More capacity is clearly needed, especially as HD-TV becomes more prevalent. The pessimists -- and some telecommunications operators -- see rising fees to pay for the bandwidth expansion. Optimists know that various technologies such as multicasting, caching, digital video recorders, etc. are dramatically improving the Net's ability to deliver video content and in parallel the cost per unit of technology continues to decline. History would suggest the optimistic view is the right one.

During the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta there was a bomb blast. Native Atlanta ex-patriots living in Japan and Germany and other parts of the world wanted to get as much news coverage as possible about the status but had few choices (there were no blogs then). The Internet Technology team at IBM in Southbury, Connecticut was running a large web infrastructure for the Games at the time and one of the engineers, Andy Stanford-Clark, got the idea to "stream" a local Atlanta radio station over the Internet using an IBM technology called Bamba. It was a very successful project but only a handful of people could listen simultaneously due to the limitations of the technology and the Internet. Some people thought that if there were large numbers of listeners "audio would break the Internet". Today millions of people consider audio over the Net as commonplace. (Listening to crystal clear classical music from KUSC-FM in Los Angeles through my Sqeezebox as I write this). Based on the tens of millions of daily visitors to YouTube, it is clear that video has also become commonplace. Another leading indicator is what is happening on campus. A number of universities have decided to use the Internet to deliver cable TV to their dormitories.

One of the issues Mr. Svensson raised in his story is "net neutrality", a term that means different things to different people. The fear is that the really large telecommunications companies that provide parts of the "backbone" of the Internet may decide to not only raise fees but also to be discriminatory. In the extreme it would mean that Verizon would block access to Google because they made a deal with Yahoo! or visa versa. The telcos have never been successful in getting into the content business so a new angle for them might be to make deals with content providers that would make their video move through the Internet backbone at a higher priority in return for fees. These fears have gotten the attention of lawmakers who are now talking about legislation to insure net neutrality. Legislation is the worst possible way to address the issue.

What is really needed is more competition. In Japan, the Internet service available to consumers is significantly faster than in the U.S. and significantly less expensive. For example, Yahoo! Broadband offers 8 million bits per second for about $20 per month. Up to 100 million bits per second is available. What technical breakthrough have they had? None. The breakthrough was to separate the various infrastructure elements of Internet service and allow "Adam Smith's invisible hand" to go to work. More competition means higher speeds and lower prices. In the U.S. we have legions of lawyers and lobbyists at work doing their best to gain protections for themselves and to slow the spread of innovation such as municipal wireless and voice over IP. Will video break the Internet? No. The biggest threat to freedom of choice for content at competitive prices is a lack of competition.

Misguided or overly-prescriptive legislation can have unintended consequences. It can often fix one problem and create two new ones or add yet another layer of protectionism. Mike Nelson, former Director for Technology Policy at the Federal Communications Commission (and former colleague at IBM), says "a lack of competition which lets companies exert monopoly or duopoly power is probably the biggest damper on innovation". Not all legislation is bad. It is possible to use it to increase competition and decrease regulation, to fund e-government pilot projects, "connect the unconnected," or fund university education and research.


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Uninnovate.com hasan interestingarticle on Apple's new support of 'Reverse syncing' of content with the iTunes7 release yesterday:

Today, Apple released iTunes 7.0,among otherthings. In earlier versions of iTunes, Apple didits best to prevent users from being able to copy music from an iPod back to adesktop computer. Now, Apple has changed course and is marketing “ReverseSyncing” as a new feature of iTunes 7.

But there is one giant catch:

1. Music and media not purchased from the iTunes store only syncs one way, fromyour computer to your iPod.

This is uninnovation in its most frustrating form. It’s easy to spot and avoid drm-saturatedjunk, but these kinds of subtle limitations in an otherwise great product frustrateusers and drive them to alternative applications.How about trusting the user enough to let them get at their own files without thesechildish restrictions?

WMP11 added reverse filetransfer support back in March which works with purchased, and clear content.(It’s also had album art matching in WMP9, dramatically improved in WMP11). I thinkthe author is being a bit overzealous however in his claim of “uninnovation”- it'salways been easy to transfer music off your iPod, it's just a little hidden. Here it’s a little less hidden.

I’ve seen lots of chatter on iTV - Apple's Media Center Extender-esque device forstreaming video to the living room.  It feels like we’ve been here before. LongZheng at istartedsomething.com hasa good recap of the relative strengths and weaknesses of products in this space.  It seems a bit odd that Apple would break from long-time tradition and givea 'sneak preview' of a product that won't be available for at least Q1 '07, particularlywhen they could have held the announce to availability around MacWorld in January.It's clear they had to do this to try and spur purchase of movies from theirnew store- with no rental model, people just don't want to buy movies towatch on their portable players. Tell them they'll be able to play it in other placesas well around the home and their likelihood of purchase is higher.  It’s the battleof cognitive dissonance - buyer's remorse. After all, you're already dealing withthe psychological barrier in that the user is buying an intangible good, somethingwithout physical form that perceptually has less value than physical media such asDVDs. But... you're going to charge about the same as a physical DVD. Without theBonus DVD content.  Oh and the 640x480 video quality people are downloading isgoing to be between VHS and DVD quality (which offers 720x480p).  Never mindthat it will be potentially less for letterboxed content since the new iPod doesn'tsupport 16:9 (widescreen) display.  In the time it will take most customersto download one of these movies, I could have gone to the store, bought the DVD, popcorn,a 6-pack of Coke, dinner, come home, cooked dinner, and be ready to watch. Ina rental model, all of these issues can be forgiven for immediate gratification anda lower price, as witnessed by the popularity of Video On Demand and InDemand services.

The challenges in streaming TV from the PC aren't just the hypothesized need for higherspeed wireless (802.11n) which should be provisionally approved in early 2007. This might be delaying their launch, but streaming 640x480 video across the home hasbeen possible with Media Center Extender for just about two years now.  A challengeis going to be convincing consumers to buy and set up yet another single-purpose devicein the living room, another remote, another input on the TV for this thing.

Today, you can get an Xbox 360 that includesMedia Center Extender at no additional cost. Over 16 million Media Centercustomers can use this today, no additional charge. Even if you don’t have a TV tunerin your PC, you can connect a USB tuner and record TV or HDTV (OTA today, DigitalCable with equipped PCs with Vista). No additional fees.  As announced at CESlast year, multiple HDTV manufacturers are putting Media Center extender into theirdesigns, something that costs less than a night at the movies to implement.

As for another box in the living room, the Xbox 360 does HD gaming, DVD/HD-DVD Playback,Music, Photos, Video, TV/HDTV playback, runs rich media apps from a multitude of providers,and delivers an increasing amount of media content via Xbox Live, including HD.  And it's going to get significantly better with WindowsVista Premium's Media Center features – automatically updating your Xbox 360 tosupport in the family room with the same level of animation and experience. 

Either way, a saying comes to mind: “A rising tide raises all boats” and for thatI welcome Apple's foray.  But if Apple's iTV costs the same as an Xbox, offers nothing more than a 'simplified remote' and fewer mainstream features whichreally makes more sense when competing for  consumer dollars outside the Job'sfaithful?  With Sony and Nintendo's Wii also vying for that same space, it'sabout to get a bit more crowded. Or perhaps just noisy.  So begins the 'Great FamilyRoom Battle of 2007'.

(Disclaimer: I used to work on Media Center, but haven't for over a year, andspeak only for myself.)