Code and Coffee

I have been a huge Barenaked Ladies fan for many many years, and I have no idea how this slipped under my radar. Recently the video that is entirely staring YouTube celebrities has been released, and I must say it’s a great video. This is one of the reasons I really like the Barenaked Ladies, they are very much fan oriented. The band have been releasing albums on USB flash drives with no DRM attached to the songs. The band also recently completed the Ships and Dip’s tour that was 100% fan oriented, and they were joined with another favorite band of mine, Guster.

BlogBridge,the multi-platform desktop RSS reader is planning to launch service plans in addition to a restricted free plan. The service plans come in several tiers with $25 for 3 months being the highest. It’s noted that BlogBridge reserves the right to change the prices/features at any time.

It appears that BlogBridge is trying new ways to drive revenue in a market that is becoming more dominating by online RSS readers like Google Reader.

Toshiba is showing off the “world’s smallest hard drive” measuring only 0.85-inches in diameter, just about the size of a postage stamp. Apparently they are marketing it toward PDA’s, cameras, and mobile devices. The question on the table is, does it matter? With flash memory getting larger these days, it seems Toshiba is after market that is already spoken for. Furthermore the fact the it is a hard drive means that it can be damaged by dropping it or shaking it, as appose to flash memory which is solid state. Flash memory is making a larger grab at the portable music players for this very reason, customers want to run or jog with their iPod’s which they can’t do with the hard drive based iPod’s.

Unless this hard drive has the capacity of normal hard drives I do not see much point, even then I do not want to have to worry about mis-placing my hard drive.

Ahh… comment spam, as if email spam wasn’t enough you also get to look forward to spam-bots going wild on your blog comments. Wordpress has a slew of plug-ins to help you combat blog spam, but I have found a two tier solution that eliminates spam without consuming any of your time. The two plugins I use here at Code and Coffee are Akismet and Did You Pass Math?. Akismet scans all comments that come into your blog,  runs them through a series of rules and determines if the comment is spam or not. If flagged as spam Akismet can hold the comment for your approval to be accepted or deleted. Akismet has worked wonders for me with a very little false-positive percentage, and so far Akismet has blocked 4,425 spam comments for this blog since I last reset it about four months ago.

Most recently I decided it was time to reduce the amount of spam comments that were even getting submitted. Some tactics in doing this include hard to read images and required libraries on your web server to generate those graphics. I was directed toward Did You Pass Math? a simple Wordpress plug-in that gives your users a simple math question to answer before the comment is submitted. This tactic helps eliminate those spam-bots from even getting the comment through. On the off chance that a spam-bot or two is smart enough to do so, Akismet is there as a backup.

I only recently installed Did You Pass Math, and have reset the Akismet counter and will post the compared results. The new system already has a much lower percentage of spam comments even coming through.

Lately there has been so much fuss about DRM in the news, ever since Steve Jobs wrote his now famous memo. It appears that all it takes the the master mind behind the most successful online music store to create waves, and everyone signs on board. Now, apparently, music executives are jumping on the bandwagon and starting to criticize DRM. Well I think this is a great step, and to me shocking. I am very disappointed that it’s taken so long for them to get aboard the “clue train” and finally learn what the consumers have been telling them for so long now. I am hoping that this is not only lip service, and that action will soon follow but time will only tell.

DRM gets in the way of allowing consumers to not only do what they want, but what they are entitled to do with their purchased music; like stream a song to another computer in the house. Additionally DRM stands in the way of letting manufactures create peripherals and gadgets that the consumers have long wanted. No longer will consumers be tied to a certain platform or accessory, and maybe it will become easy enough for more parents to start enjoying.

While we are at the stage of potentially eliminating DRM, maybe it’s time to take it a step further and solve some of the other problems with digital music sales. For example the quality of the audio track. That’s right, no more variable bitrate or for that matter anything less that CD quality. You want to justify the cost of your digital audio files and compare them to CD’s, then start making them the same quality as CD’s. Yes, when you are not listening to the music on little white earphones you can tell the difference in the bitrate, and with broadband more accessible than ever there is no excuse.

The media companies are always complaining and trying to justify the price of digital downloads, but they have no imagination on how to expand the business. Music downloads have very little over head, yes you have the “inflated” cost/value of the artist and producers and marketing; but asides from that it’s really just some software and a bandwidth connection… every sale is a copy. You want more revenue? Take some notes from the software industry. Software vendors have been offering “digital download protection services” that will protect the download for up to a year in case they ever lose the software they just purchased. Charge an extra $1 for each music download sale, and offer a service like this. I can almost guarantee consumers would eat it up. Aside from the protection they have in case they have a hard drive failure or a lost iPod (or Zune), the simple fact that the consumer could get access to that song download at any time is the reason they will pay the extra money alone.

It seems like these media companies have no clue, and will just follow what ever the next Steve Jobs shouts off. If you do not get it, hire someone who does. There is a lot of money to be made in the “new” digital world , and the majority of those pickings will go to the one who “gets it first”. What would your dream digital music store offer to you?

uTorrent has always been my favorite BitTorrent client for some time now. It’s small, is not over whelming with features and options, does not take long to setup, and has a very small memory footprint. Recently uTorrent has released a new update, 1.6.1, which ads a bunch of new great features.
uTorrent has added a new encryption option in the Speed Guide, which makes it easier than ever to encrypt your traffic. uTorrent has also made several small, but useful, user interface changes; like a speed selection the context menu. uTorrent has also patched a serious security flaw that existed in the previous version.
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I have been addicted to YouTube lately, never was really a fan but most recently have been finding all sorts of great videos on the site. Today I have selected some great videos of Steve Jobs.

• Steve Jobs giving a graduation speech, very great speech
• Steve Jobs on Microsoft, straight to the point
• A collection of Apple Ads, great video showing Apple’s marketing history

I am still searching for a plug in that will allow me to embed these videos right inside of Wordpress WYSIWYG.

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I came across an article in my RSS feeds today, that linked back to a post on Netscape. I don’t really use Netscape, I tried it out a little when it was launched and had a lot of buzz but it never really caught on with me. I remember that the navigation throughout the site was horrible, and using it this morning I swear it has gotten worse. Can someone tell me why Netscape will not oink the title of the story out to the actual story, instead you have to click the tiny “view story” link below the title and the description? My only guess is that they actually do not want you leaving the site. Proof lies when you actually click on the story you get this really annoying sidebar that wraps the actual page. It just doesn’t compare to Digg’s easy to use and clutter free layout.

My frustration with using Netscape this morning had me curious on just how popular Netscape is after all of the clouds and buzz has cleared from it. A simple search with Alexa, shows that Digg is miles ahead of Netscape with traffic numbers. Yes, there are flaws with Alexa’s numbers but at least it gives you a good idea. I wish we have some membership numbers to compare, but it looks like Digg has the lead.

Maybe Netscape would take some notes from Digg’s book, it seems they are too stuck in their ways to actually fix anything that would actually help the site grow.

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If you are one of those people that celebrate valentines day with your significant other, and your head has been under a rock for the last week (on snow in my case)… today is valentines day. Luckily for you, you can order flowers and gifts from the comfort of your office chair in between changing RSS feeds, some arrangements and gifts can even be delivered on the same day… otherwise you will have to blame it on the snow.

• 1-800-Flowers
• FTD

I have used both of these services before, and recommend 1-800-Flowers over FTD, they do a better job of delivering what you order, and not just some look-alike. If you are looking for something a little bit cheaper and more sentimental, create your lover a screen saver just for her. Axalias Professional Screensaver Producer makes it a breeze.

If you have never been over to Howstuffworks, you need to check it out. The site is a great educational resource that will show you the inner workings of just about anything you wanted to know about. Recently the company dissected the popular Nike iPod Sport Kit, and explained how everything works together. It’s a great article, and very interesting to see how the magic works inside the small contraption.