Khoji On Tech (and more)

What is the value of mass-distributed media when its distribution effectively costs little or nothing (if distributed virally via BitTorrent)? And how does this value correspond to the value of the work that went into producing it? In fact, does it correspond at all any more? If ten million people want to buy a song that I wrote, does the money they pay for that song really belong to me? Did I work for it, in the sense that the money paid corresponds to my labor? And if it doesn’t belong to me, who does it belong to?

I have utopian vision on this: At the moment the “big sellers” in the media world get an obscene amount of money for their work and countless other artists get almost nothing. Suppose we create a new media distribution model called “Equitable Artists” (yes, that’s a reference back to United Artists) that works like this, using a new record label as an example:

• All the money received for all the sales from the label’s artists goes into a big pool
• The big sellers get more money than the small sellers, but using a key that still distributes the money more equitably
• There is a maximum limit on income anyone working for the label can get, including both artists and label owners
• All the money left over goes to the promotion and development of new artists, young artists etc.

There are a lot of stumbling-blocks to this, among other things whether artists would actually sign for a label like this. However, people also said that open source wouldn’t work, and it does. Just an idea for the day…

For a long time I was frustrated that I couldn’t access the media files on my Mac with my PlayStation 3, which has everything needed to be a great multimedia center, in addition to being one of the best BluRay players around (and incidentally allowing you to play some pretty good video games as well). Recently I discovered Nullriver MediaLink, which comes close to making Apple’s own AppleTV unnecessary. With one small but important restriction, MediaLink is a perfect solution for accessing all the media on your Mac on your TV. At just $20, it’s worth every penny and more.

The restriction? MediaLink can’t (yet) play anything with Apple’s copy protection on it, which means all movies, TV series and videos bought in the iTunes Store, in addition to any iTunes tracks you still haven’t converted to non-DRM. This is currently where the AppleTV still has a major advantage, but I’ve corresponded with Nullriver and they indicated that they’re working on a solution. My guess would be they want to somehow make it possible to register the PS3 as one of the up to five “computers” that are allowed to play your iTunes protected content. If and when they manage that, MediaLink is going to be the kickass solution for PS3/Mac integration.

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Geeks and tech users tend to be junkies. Literally. I’ve noticed that in myself recently in connection with the issue of whether or not to get an iPhone. There is no good reason for me to get one, but my inner geek has developed what is quite literally a physical craving for one. Dealing with this has become my ongoing Zen koan over the last few weeks and it’s a very interesting experience.

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The operating system debate is so dated that it’s getting to the point where it’s embarrassing when people get heated up about them. Nowadays being passionate about a particular OS makes you look about as cool as those people who used to build their own bomb shelters during the Cold War. Get over it, it’s over and everybody won.

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If you use Fring, the Skype client for the iPhone, iPod Touch and numerous other mobile phones, have a look at your Skype privacy settings on your computer after running Fring. You will probably find that all your incoming settings have been reset to “Anyone” can contact you for both chats and calls, no matter what you set before. This gets reset every time you run Fring to use your Skype account — you don’t actually have to do anything, just Fring starting up and logging into your account to display your active buddies is enough.

I’ve been getting a lot of Skype spam chats (”Hello Dear…”) and I finally discovered that Fring is the culprit that’s opening Skype up. There are quite a few annoyed messages about it on the Fring forum but the Fring programmers don’t seem to have responded yet.

Brilliant little idea suggested by SeanFX, use makeup bags transparent on one side for adapters, small cables etc:

I’ve been playing around with Windows 7 for ever a week now and I have to say that this time Microsoft really got it right. It’s everything that Vista should have been and it’s probably the best operating system that Microsoft has ever produced. The only downside is Internet Explorer 8, which is worse than ever. Hopefully the errors are bugs, if not life is going to get a lot harder for web designers, yet again.

With Apple working so hard to piss off their users (matte screen on 17″ only and costs more, no more firewire on the Macbook, only one firewire port on the 15″, non-removable battery on the 17″) Windows 7 is a welcome breath of fresh air. If Apple don’t clean up their act I may be switching back to Windows machines again real soon.

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I’ve now been using Office 2008 for about five days and I’m already ready to remove it from my Mac. It is painfully, embarrassingly, frustratingly bad. Either the Microsoft Mac team screwed up completely and lost all track of what they were trying to do or Microsoft is consciously trying to force users away from the Mac and back onto Windows. Possibly a little bit of both. This isn’t just my opinion — c’t, Germany’s most reputable professional computer publication, comes out very strongly and warns all users against installing Office 2008 in their new issue due to be published on Monday.

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I just got a nifty little gadget from Gear4 called the BluEye that adds Bluetooth, an FM radio and a wired remote to my iPod Touch and effectively transforms it into a phone with voice dialing. When calls come in anything playing on the Touch is automatically paused and you accept the call by pressing Play on the remote. If your phone supports voice dialing you can use that too, you just press the Bluetooth button on the remote once and speak the name to dial. This means that you can leave the phone in your pocket pretty much all the time and you don’t miss calls because you’re listening to your iPod. You also have the added advantage of the wired remote, so you can pause, skip tracks and adjust the volume without having to futz around with the touchscreen.

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You often hear about how tough it is to get good information from software support desks. What you don’t so often hear is how tough it is for software support staff to understand the mails that they get from some users. Many users write clear and comprehensible mails to support, but there are others.

In addition to my other work I often have to answer questions in technical support mails from users of a professional authoring system for technical writers. Before I started doing this I thought that it would be relatively easy — after all, I thought, they’re writers, I’ll only be getting well-written, comprehensible questions. Don’t you believe it — the Dilbert cartoons on software documentation are not only close to the truth, they are actually the opposite of an exaggeration. When I read some of the questions these “help authors” and “technical writers” send in I often wonder how they manage to tie their shoelaces in the morning, let alone produce comprehensible documentation.

So let me give you a few little tips that may help you to be a little more successful when you write an email to a support desk:

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