Month: December 2005

My Take on the Grammy Nominations

grammysAbout the only benefit I get from being a member of NARAS (the Grammy organization) is that I get to vote for the Grammys. Here’s my take on the nominations in those genres that I know something about.

Field 4 – Rock
Category 21 – Best Rock Album
(Vocal or Instrumental. Includes Hard Rock and Metal.)

X&Y
Coldplay
[Capitol Records]

In Your Honor
Foo Fighters
[RCA Records]

A Bigger Bang
The Rolling Stones
[Virgin Records]

How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb
U2
[Interscope Records]

Prairie Wind
Neil Young
[Reprise Records]

Coldplay and Foo Fighters came after my musical time, which means one of those two will win for sure. I think U2 is just OK (sorry, but I do). The Stones would be a good choice just for longevity. My vote will go for Neil, but there is no way he wins.

Field 13 – Blues
Category 66 – Best Contemporary Blues Album
(Vocal or Instrumental.)

Make Do With What You Got
Solomon Burke
[Shout! Factory/The One]

Twenty
Robert Cray
[Sanctuary]

Bring ‘Em In
Buddy Guy
[Silvertone/Zomba Label Group]

Cost Of Living
Delbert McClinton
[New West Records]

Electric Blue Watermelon
North Mississippi Allstars
[ATO Records]

Good slate here, although I’m not certain I’d classify the Delbert record as blues. My vote will probably go to Buddy Guy, but I think the Delbert record is the best one of the bunch.

Field 14 – Folk
Category 68 – Best Contemporary Folk Album
(Vocal or Instrumental.)

Chavez Ravine
Ry Cooder
[Nonesuch/Perro Verde]

The Outsider
Rodney Crowell
[Columbia Records]

Why Should The Fire Die?
Nickel Creek
[Sugar Hill Records]

Fair & Square
John Prine
[Oh Boy Records]

Devils & Dust
Bruce Springsteen
[Columbia]

Easy choice here- I thought that John Prine record was excellent. He gets my vote but Bruce (Devils and Dust was average, in my opinion) or Nickel Creek will win.

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ScobleFeeds A-Z: The D’s

This is part four of my A-Z review of Scoble’s feeds. The rules and criteria are here.

We have another tie for the best of the D’s:

Dare Obasanjo (RSS Feed)

Down the Avenue (RSS Feed)

Dare Obasanjo has exactly the kind of blog I love to read. There’s a lot of tech stuff, some current events, a little music. Good stuff, and going onto my every day reading list.

Down the Avenue is about PR, marketing, blogging, VC and other interesting stuff. I’m not all that interested in VC stuff anymore, having lost a lot of money back in the dot.com bust, but I find this site interesting.

Honorable Mention:

Doc Searls (RSS Feed) (ineligible because I read it every day, but most of the time I have no idea what he’s talking about)

Dan Gillmor’s eJournal (RSS Feed)

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The Persistence of False Memory

I am very skeptical of the whole recovered/repressed memory thing. You know, when someone, usually someone with a lawyer, suddenly recalls being abused by someone else 30 or 40 years ago. I’m not saying this doesn’t happen, but I don’t think it happens nearly as often as it is claimed to have happened. For one thing, I have yet to hear about someone who had a repressed memory about something good (“wow, I just remembered that I went to Disneyland when I was nine”). It’s sort of like how everyone who believes in reincarnation used to be somebody famous.

Another reason I have my doubts about recovered/repressed memory is because I have a false memory- something that seems exactly like a real memory. Only I know it didn’t happen. Ironically, it is a pleasant memory. Since it’s Christmas-related, here goes.

videogame-710323I have this memory of getting an arcade-like, multi-game video game for Christmas. It was maybe 6 feet tall, light blue on the sides, with a some black parts where the knobs and coin slots were. It had a single joystick with a red ball at the end of it and a few black buttons. This is a drawing of it. I got it for Christmas, and my memory of getting that game is as sharp now as it would have been the week after I got it- except I didn’t.

For one thing, I have no memories of ever actually playing the game, or even what games were on it. I have no later recollection of it in my room or house. I don’t remember getting rid of it. My only memory (and it’s a vivid one) is of getting it Christmas morning, and later that day having it moved (by people or forces unknown) upstairs to my room.

Additionally, this would have been around 1970 or so and I’m pretty sure these sorts of games didn’t exist then, and if they did, they would have cost a lot more than my mom would have spent.

I can’t recall exactly when this memory made its way into my consciousness, but it’s been there at least 10 years.

Very strange indeed.

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Yahoo Does VOIP, But Will I?

Om Malik reports that Yahoo is about to launch a big VOIP initiative. eBay buys Skype, everyone’s favorite VOIP service and now everybody has to get in the game. Here’s my experience with VOIP and a list of what I would have to have to make the switch.

voipI used VOIP in my office for about a year. My setup was via a Cisco phone and a service out of Dallas that was hoping I’d love it so much I’d talk my firm into switching to VOIP. I didn’t take up the banner and no one at my firm gives a hoot what I think anyway, but I did note some benfits and some drawbacks to VOIP.

The Good: the sound quality was excellent; it was cheap (it was free to me, but the regular rates were cheap; I could take the phone home, plug it into my network and use it just like I could at the office; and the phone had a lot of neat (but complex) features I never got around to learning.

The Bad: I had to use a new phone number, while everyone in the world still used my regular office number; even with VOIP there was very little computer/phone interactivity (I’ve longed for years to be able to dial from Outlook by clicking on a number); the phone was a corded phone and I hated being tethered to a phone (I use a wireless headset with my other phone); and it was too big to lug around with me (making me think Skype or some computer based service might be a better fit for me).

I like the idea of computer/phone convergence, so what would it take to get me to switch? I would have to be certain of these things:

1) That I can port my existing number there and if I later want to I can switch it back, easily and quickly.

2) That the 911 thing has been completely and permanently addressed- I need to be completely convinced that if I call 911 I will always get someone who knows where I am.

3) That the loss of service when the power goes off is not as big of a problem as I think it is. My power goes off several times a year. My phone service has never been off.

4) That the computer and the phone are effectively converged without me having to install a bunch of extra software on my computer. The Skype (or competition) program is fine- but I don’t want to have to rely on add-ins to dial from Outlook, etc.

5) That I could find a bluetooth headset/headphones that work and are durable and reliable. Make them double as headphones for listening to music, and make them work with my cell phone too- all without a dangle. My laptop and my cell phone are bluetooth-ready- just connect to them the way the Motorola earpiece connects to my cell phone.

6) That email, voicemail, text messaging, IM and file sending would be seamlessly incorporated into the program.

7) That the service would be cheaper and stay cheaper than regular phone service.

Give me this and I’ll give VOIP a whirl. Otherwise, the potential gain is not worth the hassle. At least not yet.

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3 Things I Remember About: 1971

This is the 7th part is a series.

Antique Acres 1971 A-717401

(1) Our neighbors across the street had this huge antique steam engine festival where people from all over came to display steam engines and other old machinery. The festival lasted all weekend and was about the biggest thing that had ever happened in my hometown. We snuck in by wading through the creek and spent all weekend running around, watching the steam engines and whatnot. It sounds mildly boring now, but at the time it was really fun. A year or so ago I saw this newsletter for sale on eBay.

(2) I moved from Robert Smalls Elementary to Cheraw Elementary (I believe that was its name) for the 6th grade. It must have been an uneventful year, because about all I remember from that year is playing marbles at recess. I can’t even remember who my teachers were.

(3) I won some sort of DAR essay contest. We had to write an essay about the revolutionary war. I wrote about the Green Mountain Boys (I have no idea why). I got this little medal that hung in a frame on the wall at my mom’s house along with my Eagle Scout medal and some other approbations until my mom died.

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More on MPEG-4

hdsat-716668HDBeat has a concise summary of the status of DirecTV’s MPEG-4 conversion that will soon turn my $1000 a pop HD TIVOs into restarting, jittering doorstops (they already restart and jitter, but the doorstop thing will be new to them).

Of course we still know next to nothing about when the HD recorders will be available.

I can’t believe I’m about to type this, but I have started thinking about considering the possibility of returning to cable.

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Why the Grateful Dead is Right

gratefuldeadI thought the brouhaha about the Grateful Dead’s misguided, not to mention technically impossible, attempt to remove all of their live show recordings from the internet had blown over in light of their change of heart.

Now I read a Thomas Hawk (who based on his jukebox posts listens to almost exactly the same sort of music I do) post where he quotes this post from Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing. Cory argues that the Dead’s change of heart is merely a smokescreen since the superior soundboard recordings will only stream (e.g., play over the web), but cannot be downloaded. Cory writes:

“Now the rightsholders want it both ways: they want to profit from the goodwill that fans retain for the band due to its generosity, but they want to revise that generosity downwards. They want to change the deal so that fans continue to do just as much evangelizing, spend just as much money on shows and shirts, but get less in return.”

I disagree. For one thing, goodwill is great, but is doesn’t pay the bills. The Dead have already given up tons of cash by making so many of their recordings freely available for so long. In addition, they can’t create any new product, since Jerry Garcia has shuffled off this mortal coil. The band has done more than any other organization in history to give its fans free music. Nowhere does it say that being progressive and consumer-centric requires you to give up all of your valuable possessions. If a restaurant feeds people for free for a while, but stops when its paying business slows, is that somehow worse than never giving away food in the first place? I think not.

Cory supports his point by noting that the Dead control the copyright in the non-soundboard recordings every bit as much as they control the soundboard recordings. Perhaps they do (no legal analysis here- that’s not the point), but that just means the band has elected to give away some of its property but not all. If we want to start bashing bands for being mercenary and greedy, there are a lot of other bands we should target first. Moreover, a sense of entitlement will make other bands weary of taking similar progressive positions on audience recording, trading and downloading.

Then of course there’s Total Recorder and its brethren- but that’s also not the point.

I was all over the band when the news first came out. But I think the current plan is a fair compromise. Fair to us and fair to them. Remember, win-win or no deal.

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ScobleFeeds A-Z: The C’s

This is part three of my A-Z review of Scoble’s feeds. The rules and criteria are here.

Here is my choice from the C’s:

Conversations with Dina (RSS Feed)

Conversations with Dina is an interesting mix of tech, blogging, travel, philosophy, etc. Most of it’s interesting, but what put her over the top is her take on Plaxo. Her experience with Plaxo sounds like mine when I stupidly signed up on Classmates for one day, which was a piece of cake compared to when I signed up on Ancestry during the only 10 minutes of my life when I wondered about my ancestors. People from Ancestry called (yes called) me at my office more than my wife until I screamed at them to stop.

Honorable Mention:

Cyberspace People Watcher (RSS Feed) (Very enjoyable social computing, blogging, etc. resource)

Chris Brooks (RSS Feed) (Great game content and a very well designed website)

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Windows Live Mail Update

I received an email invitation to join the beta test of Windows Live Mail (the pending overhaul of Microsoft’s Hotmail service) today. Having poked around a bit, it looks like my outside-looking-in impression may be correct- it looks like the easy winner in the three horse race for online email domination. Of course since, unlike Gmail and Windows Live Mail, I have not wrangled a Yahoo! Mail beta invitation, I can’t really compare all of them. Enough whining- here are my impressions.

1) It looks a lot like Outlook, which I and a zillion other people use for our email. This familiarity will give it a head start in getting people to use it over the other less familiar applications.

2) In addition to the usual email folders along the left side of the window, there are tabs for Calendar, Contact and Today at the top- again similar to Outlook (though in Outlook these tabs are at the bottom left of the window below the email folders). The Calendar tab doesn’t work in my account, but this is a beta version so that’s not unexpected. The Contacts tab works, though I could find no import feature to import my contacts from my desktop Outlook application. That may be a feature reserved for the paid upgrade version (Outlook Live)- I don’t know. The Today tab shows links to a tutorial and a feedback page. In sum, the look and feel is an improvement over Hotmail and more intuitive than Gmail’s conversational structure.

3) You can add topical folders to store mail by clicking a link at the bottom of the standard email folders. I didn’t see a way to create rules to direct email into chosen folders, but that may be coming.

The issue in my mind is how many features will be added to this free version and how many will be held back for the paid upgrade. Clearly, it’s a work in progress, but add some features (RSS functionality, perhaps) and Windows Live Mail will replace Hotmail, its predecessor, as my web based email of choice.

I’m going to use Live Mail and Gmail regularly over the next few weeks and I’ll report my impressions from time to time.

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From My Netflix Queue

I watched two horror films this weekend, here’s the report:

theyfilmThey: Nothing special film about night terrors that chase some kids into adulthood- until the alternate ending (a special feature), which was pretty cool. 2.5 stars (out of 5). If you really like horror movies and you’ve run through your queue, this one might be work a look.

Night Creatures: Anything by Hammer Studios is going to be at least pretty good. This one stars Peter Cushing. A little slow moving, with a very interesting ending. 3 stars.

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