I rent movies because I might watch them once. Maybe twice. I have about 40 DVDs of movies I know I’ll watch more than a few times. The way I consume movies is much different than the way I consume music so renting or subscribing to Netflix makes sense. Music matters to me. I have over 5000 tracks in iTunes, most of which are from my CD collection, and all of that music matters. The very idea of being able to listen to all the music ever made in exchange for a subscription sounds ridiculous. There’s only so much music a person can enjoy. And if you are the type of person that needs to hear the latest and greatest song by whatever hot teen the labels are pimping then you aren’t the kind of person that really likes music. You like synthetic garbage.
So I hope that this plan the Financial Times is reporting isn’t a mandatory thing. I hope they keep pushing for more songs to be in the non-DRM iTunes Plus format for purchase. I don’t ever want my music hijacked by a company because I don’t want to pay the monthly extortion for their subscription anymore.
UPDATED: 3/24/07: According to CNet, sources say it’s Universal who is putting this on the table. I seriously should have know that, after all Doug Morris would love nothing more than to put his hand in every music buyer’s pocket every month for the rest of their lives. Here’s my favorite quote:
“These guys at Universal,” said one music insider, “are so obsessed with this subscription thing…but there are publishing issues involved with bundling and I don’t think they make much money off it.”
Craig Hockenberry notes:
It takes several months of actual iPhone development before you eventually realize that the iPhone requires a completely different mindset. Until that happens, you’ll make assumptions based on desktop experience, and that in turn will lead to a lot of bad designs.
This sounds a lot like what I just wrote about the move from print to web design. People know what they know and until they experience something different, they’ll try to shoe-horn what they know into something else, even though it doesn’t work. I think a few developers will nail their applications for the iPhone. But I also think there will be more useless applications for the iPhone when the App Store launches. It’ll probably be a while before it’s full of really useful, iPhone-only applications. Anyone that trys to simply “port” their application to the iPhone will probably fail.
I was watching a video of the new gestures for the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pros and noticed that they are touting the ability to swipe from right-to-left to go “back” in a browser or go left-to-right to go “forward” in the browser. And that got me thinking, have I ever used the forward button? I started to think back on all the years I’ve used web browsers from Netscape to IE to Firefox to Safari and I can’t remember a time when I ever even thought to use the forward button. And that got me thinking about the behavior of other people and whether or not they use the forward button. If people do find that button useful, how do they use it? And what percentage of web users find the forward button useful? I’m very curious about this because ever since the introduction of tabbed browsing I barely even use the back button.
Do you use the forward button? How do you use it?
I had a choice to make when I took my job at Janus Capital Group (Janus). I had another offer from Newsgator and I was excited about Newsgator’s potential. In fact, I really wanted to work for Newsgator ever since I found out they were based in Denver. My interview went well and I liked everyone I spoke to at Newsgator. I was taken by surprise when I got a call from Janus and they thought I was a good match for their web designer position. I took the interview because I didn’t want to leave any stone unturned and the interview went as well as any I’ve ever had in my life. There was something about the place that felt right to me and in the end, with all factors being pretty much equal, I decided to go with Janus because of the way the place felt to me.
So I’m proud to see that Janus gave Denver Public Schools their largest-ever corporate gift of $3 million dollars. It illustrates that “feeling” I got from the place, like it’s more than just a job.
I just read an article about the new beta of IE 8 on CNet:
One of the new features, WebSlices, allow users to break a Web site into parts and only get updates from the part they want.
Boy, that sounds familiar. I wonder where Microsoft gets their ideas?
