It’s not surprising, given that Andy has written quite a bit about Apple technologies. But in this scathing review of the Zune, he actually compares it to Toshiba and Sandisk’s offerings, as well as Apple’s. This is also the first article I read about the Zune Marketplace’s use of points, though a co-worker had already mentioned it and we were both scratching our heads as to why Microsoft thought it was a good idea. Andy’s remarks on the install process seem pretty consistent with the Engadget blow-by-blow that I linked to earlier.

Defective by Design has the story. As far as I can tell, these guys are the real deal. No hidden subscription fee, like eMusic, and just USD$ 1.35 per track. It looks like they are encoding at an un-godly 320kbps, too, which is just icing on the cake.

Their browsing interface could use some work, but I did spot Aphex Twin, The White Stripes, Franz Ferdinand and Bjork, so I suspect there is some real gold to be mined, here.

UPDATE: Found a catch. Not all works are available in all locales. I was checking out the Franz Ferdinand album and notices it said not licensed for sale in the US. Crap. Time to see if some judicious browser spoofing and/or TOR routing can circumvent this ridiculous restriction.

The BBC reported on a Juniper research study that really goes to bolster a point Jon Gruber made in his Why 2004 Won’t Be Like 1984 post from two years ago. Namely that a usage that almost everyone has discounted for portable media players in general, and more specifically iPods, and that all too often goes overlooked in the arguments over legitimate downloads, DRM and piracy is that of legitimately purchasing and ripping CDs.

After my decision to stop purchasing media from the iTunes Music Store this past six month, that is absolutely what I had in mind. Ripping of audio CDs is trivial and at most a one time hassle. On the upside, I can rip at whatever quality I choose and can play the compressed media files on any device I own. Video DVDs are slightly less trivial to rip and I have fewer devices to play the further compressed media back on, but I believe the argument still holds, even though the act of ripping is technically illegal in many jurisdictions, thanks to laws like the DMCA.

Came across this on Cory Doctorow’s web site, craphound. It’s hard to compare successes like these to traditional copyright and media publishing, but isn’t that the point? I’m more amazed at the new connection these crew mates made in the process of sharing creative commons licensed material. Regardless, it is a great story for many reasons.

I a huge fan of User Friendly. Iliad is running a great arc at the moment that has Sid Dabster, his old school gray beard character, advising Congress on the issue of Network Neutrality. Oh how I wish they had someone so mercilessly clueful knocking their heads around.

We had a blast! There was an EFF track, which I think I mentioned before I left. I have lots of notes from that track to go through, as well as tons of advice to digest to improve the technical production of my show, from the podcasting track.

I did not get any new audio. The Audio Technica Pro-24 mic I bought to go with my new M-Audio MicroTrack 24/96 needs a little modification to get a cleaner sound. I tested it in the hotel room and it is just too darn sensitive. I didn’t think to bring the stock mic that came with the MicroTrack which may have worked better as a stop gap.

I am thinking I will compile my EFF notes into one or a few, short special episodes. I am also planning on registering as a guest and volunteer, next year, to participate more heavily in the podcast and EFF tracks.

I have already gone through all my photos and posted the podcast related ones to the shows flickr photo stream.

I was already thinking that my next console would probably be a Wii! It seems more kid friendly and to be honest, like Nintendo is still innovating, even when doing so would seem risky, instead of throwing more horse power at their platform and locking you even tighter into online play. But After Nintendo pulled this stunt, I think that pretty much clinched it.

As with the PSP before it, you know someone would bring porn to the 5G iPod. Bless SG for not only doing so, but leveraging the great podcast support in iTunes and making it freely available. It’s pretty much just “girls washing cars”, but it’s cute goth and geek girls with decent production quality and great music. Yeah, I bought Alive and Amplified because of Tegan’s video.

This would be more newsworthy if they didn’t have a track record of doing so. I can’t think of any recent examples, but back when the intarweb was still an infant, I still have vivid memories of Fox chasing down every last Simpsons fan site and shutting them down. While this is a pretty compelling example of Fox not understanding the value generated by a good balance on IP issues, it is pathologically intertwined with their entire apparent corporate decision making, which I can sum up in one word: Firefly.

I guess I was not the only person to ding Fox Music for their DRM’ed, Windows only online release of the Firefly TV series soundtrack. I got an email from them this morning announcing the availability of MP3 files for Mac users. Mac, Linux or people who hate DRM, whatever, they did the right thing here. It is a shame they didn’t do it this way, first, but I’ve got my fix, so I ain’t gonna complain too hard.