New Amazon Store

Amazon.com has gotten into the music download business, having already been in the CD selling business for some time now.
The store features 89c single tracks and albums from $5.99 to $9.99.

I won't go into the actual workings of the store as other sites are doing that. However I've been thinking about some things here. Is it possible that the Record companies are engaging in unfair competition against Apple?

From what Steve Jobs has said, the Apple Store uses DRM because they are under contractual obligation to record companies to do so. If that is the case why are the record companies allowing Amazon to sell the same tracks sans DRM? It would seem to me that is an unfair business practice. I would also point out the price difference but it is entirely possible that Amazon is taking a hit on their end rather than the record companies taking it on theirs.

Still though, it smells like collusion against a company to me. I mean it's not like the record companies are incurring extra cost to get product <i> to</i> Amazon. And it is pretty clear that Amazon doesn't currently have the retail moving power that iTunes has, so it's not like they are getting some kind of bulk discount. The only thing I can see is that record companies simply decided to give Amazon different terms for the same exact product in order to put pressure on one particular retailer. I thought such things were illegal. I'm probably wrong since lawsuits haven't flown but it still smells pretty bad to me.

Jilly is Released y'all

Getz ta downloadin'

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=264572714&s=143441

Firmware update may break hacked iPhones

So it appears that Apple will be upping the ante on the iPhone hacks:

"Apple has discovered that many of the unauthorized iPhone unlocking programs available on the Internet cause irreparable damage to the iPhone's software, which will likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iPhone software update is installed,"

Lest we N800 users get too happy, we should note that every N800 update has resulted in a wipe of all installed apps. But still at least we are allowed to install apps on our devices.

Privacy What Privacy

The NY Times has a report on a company that will offer you free phone service, should you be willing to have your calls monitored.

The Web-based phone service is similar to Skype’s online service — consumers plug a headset and a microphone into their computers, dial any phone number and chat away. But unlike Internet phone services that charge by the length of the calls, Pudding Media offers calling without any toll charges.

The trade-off is that Pudding Media is eavesdropping on phone calls in order to display ads on the screen that are related to the conversation. Voice recognition software monitors the calls, selects ads based on what it hears and pushes the ads to the subscriber’s computer screen while he or she is still talking.

Absolutely frickin not.

Let's just say that once you've given up your expectation of privacy, the government is soon following behind.

[update]

Besides, Mr. Maislos said, he thought that young people, the group his company is focusing on with the call service, are less concerned with maintaining privacy than older people are.

“The trade-off of getting personalized content versus privacy is a concept that is accepted in the world,” he said.

Translation: Young people are too wrapped up in being cool to consider the long term implications of giving up their privacy. So we target them, like any other marketer and wait for older people with sense to die off.

Skype UI updates

If you have an N800 and have Skype installed, Check your application manager. Apparently there is a Skype UI update available.

Technorati Tags: N800

Check That E-Mail

A very good read for anyone who is suspicious of a "loved one."

Most of these stories do not end amicably. This year, a technology consultant from the Philadelphia area, who did not want his name used because he has a teenage son, strongly suspected his wife was having an affair. Instead of confronting her, the husband installed a $49 program called PC Pandora on her computer, a laptop he had purchased.

The program surreptitiously took snapshots of her screen every 15 seconds and e-mailed them to him. Soon he had a comprehensive overview of the sites she visited and the instant messages she was sending. Since the program captured her passwords, the husband was also able to get access to and print all the e-mail messages his wife had received and sent over the previous year.

What he discovered ended his marriage. For 11 months, he said, she had been seeing another man — the parent of one of their son’s classmates at a private school outside Philadelphia.

My partial story: Chick was acting strange. I got hold of the computer checked the cookies. She'd been using mapquest to go to Rutgers Campus in New Brunswick. Odd, we don't know anyone there and she's in school elsewhere. Checked the cell phone records. All numbers lined up except one. Did a US Search and got the name and addresss of the person. Person has the same last name as a person working at Rutgers.
Mapped out the time and days of calls with "known" activities. Turns out places she said she was going such as the hairdresser" was a front since you can't be calling the hair dresser from the hair dresser.

IMAP stored e-mail revealed a birthday meet up with "side piece" that was told to a girlfriend. I was asked, via e-mail for cash for "birthday hairdo" to occur same day.

Hope he was worth it.

Enough With The Pop Ups

First I follow this link and get a huge advert.

FIne. I've gotten used to that from the NYT and Salon. FIne.

But next I got this slide out/ pop-up flash advertisement that was activated by mousing over a "sky scraper" page ad. What was most infuriating about this roll over advert was that it was on the right hand side of the screen meaning that if you wanted to use your mouse to scroll (because perhaps you don't have a scrolling mouse) up or down with the scroll bar you roll over the ad and activate the flash animation which, of course, obscures the text you were attempting to read.

How stupid!

That's worse to me, than those obnoxious drop down adverts that have no close box. And webmasters wonder why people had advert blocking software installed on their browsers.