pennwarrantylitigation.com

Not one has ever denied it.

This kind of good-faith effort from the music industry wasn’t always guaranteed, remember? I’ll get back to that.

As for albums, there’s nothing sacred about this format–at least not to consumers. Angus should look around. Hardly anyone in the music business advocates for albums anymore. That’s because digital technology has rendered the album obsolete. Consumers are free to buy tracks they like and aren’t forced to shell out money for those they don’t. Years ago, after the rise of CDs, if a fan liked a song, he or she had little choice but to buy the entire album.

You can find AC/DC's new album on the band's Web site or Wal-Mart but not at iTunes.

I want to give AC/DC, one of the best-selling rock & roll bands of all time, the benefit of the doubt. I want to believe they really do consider their work art and that the forthcoming album, which debuts October 20, will reflect a legitimate attempt to deliver a hit with every track.

The truth is the album was anti-consumer.

I stopped buying music in the early 1990s after reading a Rolling Stone interview where Kurt Cobain suggested that this wasn’t an accident. Nirvana’s legendary frontman implied that music labels would take a band’s best tracks and scatter them over multiple albums to squeeze more money out of consumers. In the two years I’ve covered digital music, I’ve had the opportunity to ask a number of music executives about this.

“Maybe I’m just being old-fashioned, but this iTunes, God bless ‘em, it’s going to kill music if they’re not careful,” Johnson, 61, told Reuters. “It’s a…monster, this thing. It just worries me. And I’m sure they’re just doing it all in the interest of making as much…cash as possible. Let’s put it this way, it’s certainly not for the…love, let’s get that out of the way, right away.”

“When you look at the whole picture, we make a lot of money through iTunes,” Morris said. “We consider (Jobs) a friend…I talk to him about once a month. I like him very much. I have dinner with him occasionally, and he’s the kind of guy we’ll be talking about 100 years from now. He’s a brilliant guy.”

Johnson implied that iTunes is all about money and thus this commercialization is hurting music. Let me state the obvious: plenty of people profited off of music long before iTunes was formed, including AC/DC. What, is Wal-Mart donating Black Ice profits to charity?

By requiring Black Ice be sold as an album, AC/DC is trying to cram it down the throats of fans. Why not offer the music on iTunes and be confident that the individual songs will sell themselves?

This was obviously a poor way to treat customers, and it’s not a stretch to suggest this is why many people felt justified in downloading songs off Napster in the late 1990s, and why so many continue to pirate music to this day.

The band refuses to offer music at iTunes because it isn’t interested in selling individual songs. The only places to acquire the album, Black Ice, is at Wal-Mart Stores or on the band’s Web site. In an interview with Reuters, lead singer Brian Johnson said the band is trying to protect the album format.

First, I couldn’t care less if the band doesn’t like iTunes. Plenty of people don’t. Other artists, such as Kid Rock, choose not to distribute via the country’s largest music retailer. It’s their music–they can do what they want with it. What offends me about AC/DC’s comments is that in the band members’ attack on iTunes, they completely ignore history.

(Credit:
Acdc.com)

If iTunes is such a threat to the music industry, you couldn’t tell by listening to Doug Morris, CEO of Universal Music Group, the largest of the four top recording companies. Billboard asked him recently who he thought was the smartest person in music. He named Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

Angus Young, who co-founded the band with brother Malcolm, told The New York Times last week: “It’s like an artist who does a painting. If he thinks it’s a great piece of work, he protects it. It’s the same thing: this is our work.”

AC/DC, the iconic Australian rock band, has been talking to reporters as part of the promotion of its upcoming album. The group has also used the opportunity to take swipes at Apple.

The company made a delightful gesture for Earth Day, when it faded its home page to black. Might it not consider doing the same for other great causes? You know, going blue for the Democratic Convention, red for the Republican Convention, and green against global warming.

This, apparently, is a picture of money making the world go around.

And I prioritize the ketchup over the fries. I eat it raw and unsullied, guzzling it straight from the bottle, as if it were cabernet.

They began on August 14th, when I read these words from Google’s Eric Schmidt, in response to a question from CNBC’s somewhat-comatose Jim Kramer as to whether the company would consider placing ads on its home page: “People wouldn’t like it. We prioritize the end user over the advertiser.”

I have only just managed to get my severe involuntary chuckling fits under control.

I’m astonished that anyone would have even the smallest flicker or twitter of doubt that, one day, Google will slap ads from the highest bidder on its home page.

Now it is published in tabloid (or, if you prefer the posh word, compact) form. Indeed, The Times has similar dimensions to The Sun, the paper that made its name with half-dressed girls on its third page. And as for advertising, well, this week’s front pages seem to have heavily featured, in type far larger than the news headlines, the words “Save 70 pounds.”

Of course, it could always go green for its third-quarter results, too.

Has YouTube’s owner prioritized the YouTube user over the advertiser? As much as Russia has prioritized world peace over its need to poke someone in the cornea.

I’m not entirely sure why people are so fussed about Google’s home page, anyway. Does anyone go there any more? Don’t they just use that little search box thingy, placed conveniently top right of their browser?

I can remember The Times, the one further east of New York, often declaring that it would always be a broadsheet newspaper. Anything else, the editors would mutter (Brits always mutter, right?), would be like passing wind in the Queen’s presence.

In the interests of thoroughness (a Kafkaesque cry for sanity, more likely), I did a little more googling and discovered that the company is intending to experiment with display ads on, what do you know, its search pages.

What makes Mr. Schmidt’s declaration so gigglifying is that if he asked just five of the users of, say, YouTube, at least four of them would tell him that they would rather eat their own socks, dirty ones at that, than have ads besmirching their three minutes of pleasure.

(Credit: CC Bohman)

I am entirely confident that searchers, who already admire how Google has made text ads look like search results, will experience the same delightful levels of uplift when they witness Google’s prestidigitation with display ads.

That’s embarrassing. And Twitter can’t seem to fix the problem or even communicate why it’s a problem at all. I don’t want to bash Twitter, and I have enjoyed my time there when I wasn’t beating my head against the wall with rage at its internal server errors. I know we all have a lot of community goodwill toward Biz and Ev, and I’m not trying to be nasty. It’s just that I don’t see a lot of clear signs from Twitter that it’s taking the problem seriously or working on some real solutions. In a product based on communication, they’re just not doing a great job of communicating. Hence, the contest. Someone, please, build a better Twitter.

Is Twitter down?

The premise: What other tool do you use in your life that’s unusable almost as often as it’s usable? And how is that acceptable? For months now, Twitter users have been asking what’s going on with the service, and why it’s down so often. Andrew Baron created an art gallery about it. By February, the headlines read Twitter Down; Sky is Blue. In more scientific reporting, Pingdom ranked Twitter dead last in social networking uptime from January through April. How bad was it? Twitter was down more than 37 hours in four months. And that’s compared to social networks with many multiples more users than Twitter. The biggest of them all, MySpace, was down just one hour and five minutes in the same period. Now we’ve even got Is Twitter Down, that will let you know if you should even bother. Currently, no surprise, it’s:

Now, before I went shooting my mouth off about this, I consulted some actual software engineers (who wish to remain anonymous) about whether this could be done. One said, of course, “you can architect a better system.” One acknowledged that, “knowing what I do about how it’s set up, I think it’d be damn hard to keep that m******r up.” However, he agreed that scaling Twitter in its current form is “non-trivial,” because Ruby on Rails, as Twitter developer Alex Payne himself noted, is easy to develop with, but hasn’t ever proven particularly scaleable. So, OK, Twitter underestimated scaleability. It wouldn’t be the first time, right? But yet another of my experts noted that you can build a better Twitter. He said, “It requires memcached, or some other open source cache…it would take hours to do. Hours!”

I have had it with this Twitter situation. I know it’s a free service, and I know that a lot of you are frankly sick of hearing about it, but I cannot keep pretending that Twitter is the savior of the modern Internet, the message-bearing standard of Web 2.0, and the most important thing to happen to online communication since Gopher, when the site itself is only slightly more reliable than a late-model Saab. And I’m sorry, but being down all the time is not excused by the fact that people who think they’re cool think Twitter is cool. Therefore, I would like to hereby officially announce the Totally Unofficial Build a Better Twitter Contest.

I will go there, for a test period of not more than 30 days, and I will beg all of my followers to join me for this test period (as of this writing, a nice round 6,700). My colleague, Tom Merritt, says he’ll go there, too, and hopefully bring his followers along for the scalability test. I’ll ask everyone else I know on Twitter to come along (I’m talking to you, Leo Laporte), and we’ll see if it’s really as hard as all that to build a Twitter that can stand up to the awesome pressure of being Twitter.

So, I’m thinking someone out there has some hours to devote to this, and I am hoping you will do just that. As motivation, I pledge the following, totally unofficial and un-endorsed by CNET (or CBS) not-really-prizes prizes:

I will also throw in a motley collection of MP3-player accessories, a CNET windbreaker, some CNET stickers, and an autographed photo of the CNET personality of your choice, all not to exceed whatever value it is that triggers The Lawyers. Plus, if it works, you’ll probably make bajillions of dollars. Or, at least, you would if there were any discernible business model for Twitter. You should probably try to think of that, too. Get to coding!

I find Zoho Writer 2.0 to be a strong word processor that’s incredibly easy to learn and use, even more so than Google Docs. The dangerous collaboration function means I can’t recommend this product, yet, as a workgroup app. But I wrote this review solo in Zoho, and it didn’t give me a minute of confusion or trouble.

The new version has good sharing options for documents. You post directly to a few different blogging services from Zoho Writer, which is a very nice feature for bloggers. You can also edit in a print view, which shows you page breaks an margins. It’s a good working display; even if you never plan to print the document you’re working on, you may find the extra white space and page breaks help you focus on your text.

The interface change is a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too experiment. The new “MenuTab” UI gives you drop-down choices from the top level of the menu, but you can also press on a top-level menu choice to display an icon bar with identical options. The icon bar is nothing like Micrsoft Office 2007’s tab bar, which supports many more options and has more complicated different ways to use it.

Zoho Writer 2 is really easy to use in spite of a redundant interface.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Rafe Needleman / CNET Networks)

Zoho is improving its online word processor, Writer, with a revised user interface and a few new useful features.

MenuTab is a curious design, but it does work. And users who grow accustomed to using the system in one mode likely won’t see much of, or be bothered by, the parallel other mode.

Zoho Writer users Google Gears to give users offline access to their files. Users can sign in using Google or Yahoo credentials. Real geeks may like the embedded LaTeX equation editor.

Zoho is said to offer simultaneous collaborative editing, as Google Docs does, but when I tested the app I found it far too easy to over-write another user’s edits. I do hope this gets fixed very soon. The service also offers a text chat window for collaborating editors. And there’s full revision and change tracking in each document, should you ever want to undo the changes someone has made to your doc.

Say you just captured an amazing video of your cat doing something funny. It’s time to upload it to YouTube right? Why stop there? HeySpread, a service from the folks at Particles was just updated Thursday morning to take the video you just captured and push it out to nearly 20 different video hosts at once.

In case you’re already entrenched in YouTube, a built-in tool called YouClone will let you copy all your videos off YouTube and post them to other services without having to track down the original. All you need is your YouTube password and it will do the rest.

Better yet, it keeps track of the views once they’re there. You can view each video with daily-stats analytics, view breakdowns, and comparison charts to see how the same video is doing on different services. It’ll also let you compare it with other videos (even if they’re not yours).

Hey!Spread - Video Distributing Web Service from Bruno Celeste on Vimeo.

The service is not free, and uses a credit system that charges one to three 5 cent credits per video uploaded, transferred, watermarked, and tracked. If you’re a videographer looking to get a video out there it’s not a bad deal when you think about how much your time is worth.

If you’re a cheapskate like me, there’s also a free video stat-tracking service called TubeMogul that will do the tracking without the small fee. As for uploading to the rest of the services, though, you’re on your own.

How better could one delve into this important issue than with the help of the Almighty? Yes, Google. Surely, I mused, Google is the repository of all true, intimate information. So I will slip myself in front of Google Trends at periods throughout the day and will examine humanity in its immediate living and breathing form.

I found no trace of: “Lord, what does it all mean?” Or even: “Is there a rap about the Rapture?” This is a pity, as there are some very fine church-related Web sites like Generationchurch.org, which offers excellent Twittering and Flickring options.

But then I was struck by the hideous news that U.K. retailers were trying to launch their sales online on Christmas Day.

It’s “waste management.”

I wanted a quiet, spiritual Christmas.

In a flicker of spiritual hope, only one retailer, Banana Republic, squeezes in at No. 16.

The morning began with the dominance of the
iPod over the iGod. Clearly, there were still some people in the world who had never had one and were eager to explore all of the rites involved in virgin possession of Man’s portable jukebox.

As I write, the day after this deeply worrying experience, I stare at the latest Google Trends, still concerned about the world’s direction. Marley and Me continues to ride high in Googlers’ cranial Top 20. The engagement of Gisele Bundchen and Tom Brady is, naturally, creating worldwide giddiness. There seems to be massive outpouring of interest in the Sarah Palin calendar.

But there are only two entries in the whole of the Top 100 that reflect even a moment of self-reflection.

(Credit: CC Eoin O'Mahony)

Even more seemed insatiable on the subject of the movie Marley and Me, which, I understand, is another opus featuring Jennifer Aniston and an unsuitable dog.

Perhaps they decided to concentrate their business online.

As the NBA games lurched through the televisual day, Googlers’ enthusiasm for finding out more about Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and, um, the San Antonio Spurs’ Roger Mason was palpable.

I am not sure I will ever recover.

The Top 100 searches, at least whenever I set eyes on Google Trends, avoided all matters of higher import. No one seemed keen to Google: “The world is going to hell in a handbasket and all I get is this infernal
Xbox?”

Many were simultaneously keen to discover what was showing at the local movie theaters, when Wal-Mart’s sale began, which restaurants were open on Christmas Day (many showed a great fascination for the International House of Pancakes), and so many seemed entranced to know more about the multitalented actress Josie Davis.

The first is at No. 59. Yes, it’s “mortgage help.” The other is languishing at No. 78. No, it’s not “Lord, help us.”

With a loud voice that I last remembered from my First Communion screaming in my head “Is nothing sacred?”, I decided to put humanity to the test. Are we still God-fearing people who understand the true meaning of life? Or is our belief in things truly beyond belief?

“Our view is that the term ‘netbook’ is a widely used generic term that describes a class of affordable computing devices, much like the term ‘notebook’ or ‘ultra-mobile PC,’” Intel said in a statement Wednesday.

Psion Series 5 was launched in 1997

Intel cited a letter in its suit from Psion’s legal counsel that asserted that “Intel aided, abetted and otherwise induced manufacturers and retailers” to “use the term ‘netbook.’”

(Credit:
Psion)

The Intel suit for a declaratory judgment also cited the fact that Google informed Intel that it “would prohibit all advertisements that include the term ‘netbook’ in the ad text.” This was the result of a legal action by Psion against Google that “had the immediate effect of effectively ending Intel’s (and all others’) ability to advertise the netbook category of computers via search engine marketing.”

Intel has filed for a declaratory judgment against Psion Teklogix in order to continue using the term “Netbook” generically. The legal filing also revealed, as a separate matter, that Google would prohibit search advertisements that include the term “netbook.”

Intel continued: “In order to continue to use the generic term ‘netbook’ we filed the case. We’re asking for a decision to clarify that the use of ‘netbook’ does not infringe anyone’s rights.”

What’s the difference between a Netbook and a notebook? More than the design, according to Psion Teklogix.

Part of the Intel counter-claim is that the chipmaker believes that Psion did not use the Netbook trademark on laptop computers for five consecutive years following the date of registration in 2000–apparently a legal requirement. Mostly because Psion’s mobile computers did not succeed in the market and were discontinued, according to Intel.

Not surprisingly Intel and others, including Dell, don’t agree.

Psion “purports to be the owner of U.S. Trademark Registration No. 2404976 issued on November 21, 2000 for the mark Netbook for use in connection with laptop computer,” according to an Intel legal filing in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

Psion Teklogix, which describes itself as a “provider of mobile computing solutions,” has been sending cease-and-desist letters to manufacturers, retailers, bloggers and others since December claiming the trademark. Before it became Psion Teklogix, Psion PLC made handheld “organizers” in the 1990s whose tiny clamshell design resembled the smallest Netbooks offered today by Asus or clamshell mobile Internet devices (MIDs) offered by companies like Compal and OQO (see photo).