adamyntium

Category: technology

  • Find a cool Web site? Just Furl it!

    I recently discovered the coolest site and service.

    It’s called Furl (http://www.furl.net), which stands for File URL. In a nutshell, it is an excellent free resource that will help you save and full-text-find any Web page on the Net.

    Basically, you painlessly install a little bookmarklet thingy (icon) on your browser and when you go to a site you want to save, you click on it. Furl then does three things:
    – Shares it with others in your group, or with the public (depending on what you set — you can keep your entry private if you want!)
    – Tags it with the category you chose and any comments you add.
    – Stores it in your own personal archive (accessible from any browser after you log in).

    But here’s the kicker: it saves the FULL TEXT of the page, and lets you search your personal archive, sort of like your own personal Google!

    This is very cool for research or for play. Save articles, save joke pages, save pretty much anything you want, and Furl will remember it and find it for you as long as you can enter in at least a couple of words from the page.

    Amazingly, Furl is free, and if the site ever does come to an end, you can export all your links before it goes dark.

    Oh, and the guy who runs it is pretty cool; after I wrote him with some suggestions, my mail didn’t just go into a black hole like such feedback mails sadly often do. Instead, I quickly got a friendly note back, thanking me for my input, and asking for clarification on a couple of my requests.

    But I’ve blathered on long enough. Go Furl! (and don’t forget to Furl this blog, darnit :D)

  • Don’t like it? Go home and don’t come back.

    There’s the old joke of two folks eating in a restaurant who are (probably once again) kveching:

    “Oy, this food is terrible!”
    “It sure is! And the portions are so small!”

    It’s amazing and pretty disgusting to me how many folks apply a similar attitude on the Web. I think everyone has a right to complain, but if you don’t like the food… don’t spit in the kitchen, just stop going to the restaurant (and perhaps post a negative review somewhere if you wish).

    Friendster and other social networks
    First, let me preface this by saying I’m not much of a fan of Friendster. It’s slow (really really REALLY slow), feature-poor, and it has basically devolved into an “I’m more trendy and freaky and have more piercings than you!” smugfest. Oh, and the guy who conceived the project is seemingly a humorless boob.

    But with that said, it’s still a private company, running its own servers, set up by its own programmers without the use of public money.

    So I tried it, gave up on it, and have chosen to show my dislike of the service by no longer using it. Pretty simple, eh?

    But for countless others, they see Friendster’s penchant for deleting fake profiles (“fakesters”) and the like to be an outrage and a challenge. Therefore, despite the service’s terms that these folks agreed to when signing up, these counter-culture rebels have taken to using scripts to create multiple fake profiles and engaging in other behavior to basically send a big “fuck you” to the Friendster creator, the Friendster staff, and many of the members who find it both unfunny and annoying to be indirectly linked to 50,000 others via Cookie Monster.

    In my mind, it’d be like getting invited to an apartment party, finding the host to be rather disagreeable… but instead of just leaving, you jump up and down on the host’s couches (in your shoes, no less). He asks you to please leave, since it’s his apartment, after all, and you’re a guest… but you tell him to stick his demands where the sun don’t shine. After you’re (understandably) forcibly ejected, you come back with thirty friends and all proceed to jump on top of the host’s furniture. Hey, it’s your right to have fun, isn’t it?

    Some equally maturity-challenged guests think it’s funny, so they join in, too. Others, unsurprisingly, are annoyed and then leave the party for more sane territory.

    Interestingly enough, similar rumblings are already occurring with orkut. Folks are complaining about restrictions on their profile photo, for instance, and instead of sending feedback to orkut or even making amusingly snarky posts in their blogs, they’re having oh-so-much-fun by signing up as many different IDs (with goofy photos) as they can. I’m just waiting to see how long it is before some San Francisco hippies take to the street to protest orkut’s dominant tyrany, the abridgement of their “first amendment rights!”, and orkut’s role in the fascist perpetuation of normalized and coercified group acquiescence. Their rallying chant, “We Rail | Against Jail | No more bans | We’ll all hold hands!” (yes, I know it doesn’t exactly rhyme, but that’s never stopped protesters like this before).

    Do I think everything at orkut is hunky dory? Certainly not, and indeed, I actually admire folks — like Liz and Dana — who have taken the time to voice their strong opinions about orkut’s current flaws.

    But on the whole, I think folks who are unhappy with orkut (or any other privately-owned-and-run service) have exactly two choices:
    – stick with the service, but publicly or privately express concerns
    – quit the service (and, yep, still publicly or privately express concerns if they wish)

    In contrast, hanging on to the service while trying to undermine its intent or knowingly violate its terms is both rude and immature. Then again, living in San Francisco, I think those adjectives describe quite a bit of the ‘trendy’ protesters (“What’s the protest this week, oh Moonshadow Cheese? I can’t wait!”). And mind you, I may sound like a fuddy duddy, but anywhere else I’d be a flaming liberal. I even helped organize a street dance in the middle of Union Square a few months ago, and I have nothing against silliness and fun. But I also don’t willingly abuse others’ property / sites / etc.

    Registration at the New York Times
    I love reading the New York Times on the Web, and I’m grateful I can do so for free.

    Others, however, are not quite so appreciative. Despite the fact that the New York Times collects a minimal amount of personally identifying info and the fact that one can use a disposable e-mail address to sign up, many people have started using ‘community’ IDs because they’re either too lazy or too rebellious to offer the 30 seconds it takes for the one-time registration.

    Why does the NY Times even ask folks to register? Well, it keeps their advertisers happy. It helps them figure out which articles are more popular in tandem with usergroup trends, and it also enables them to (I’d assume) serve more targeted ads: if you read the technology section regularly before other sections, I’m sure the NY Times could serve you more technology-oriented ads. Sounds good to me.

    But believe it or not, I just spotted a site (which I won’t even give the benefit of a link here) that urges people to share their registration username and password for the NY Times and other sites so others can use them to log on with. I hope the sites affected quickly blacklist the shared IDs.

    I’m not sure whether these folks are paranoid (“Oh no, the NY Times may know that I clicked on their crossword puzzle page AND their travel page!”) or selfish or simply wanting to stick it to The Man {gag}. And I don’t know whether there are enough of these twits to actually threaten NY Times’ tracking or advertising efforts. But I sure hope not. If enough jerks continue to abuse the concept of free content in exchange for minimal advertising, then it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to fortell that more and more services will simply start to make their content available only via paid subscriptions.

    And you’ll have the wankers detailed above to thank.

  • No limits to human greed and obnoxiousness

    Forget “evil,” I am upset and angry that there appears no limit to simple human greed and obnoxiousness.

    I’ve just deleted about the 20th piece of comment spam (“Nice blog, check out my casino link”) on this blog. Of course, this pales in comparison to the 400+ e-mail spams I receive (150+ I must personally sift through) DAILY. But it irks and saddens me nonetheless.

    Sure, I could install a special filter to try to quarantine the spam from the non-spam comments. I could even switch to a different blog software (at the cost of about 20 hours out of my already busy life) that offers more comment options.

    And yeah, I could even just turn off my comments, like many others have done. But then this blog becomes purely a lecture and not a conversation, whereas I’m constantly hoping to move it more towards the latter!

    So I’m just sick of this, knowing that it’s basically an arms race.

    I don’t make much, if any money off of this blog; I do it because I enjoy writing, and I take pleasure in the fact that thousands of folks monthly seem to enjoy reading what I have to say.

    But — as other bloggers have frankly expressed — when it becomes more of a hassle than a pleasure, I (and many other bloggers) will simply just throw up our arms and give up. And then the spammers will simply move on to the next medium, I suppose.

    I’m hardly a violent person, but I’d so like for one of those creeps to try invading my personal space in real life so I could punch their lights out.

    On a more philosophical note, I’m just deeply saddened (and worried) about how spammers seem to be effectively co-opting every revolutionary new communications medium. Already I’ve lost e-mails sent to me by friends because I accidentally trashed them as spam. So many lost opportunities, strained friendships, and so much wasted time that could have been spent in profitable or social pursuits… all because of spammers’ greed and ammorality. I don’t believe in hell, but if I did, I’d be delighted to see all of them having their nether regions being painfully singed in the netherworld.

  • Two big, uh, points against Booble

    I’m not a lawyer and I don’t play one on TV. But I did graduate from law school and I know a pretty open-and-shut case when I see one.

    Booble, the “adult search engine” that is claiming to be a “parody” of Google, has been sent a takedown notice by the latter and has subsequently sent a defiant reply, perhaps just milking this for all the free publicity.

    It’s pretty clear to me that Booble’s lawyers should have used training bras before filing their argument, because while they may be abreast of (mostly) relevant case law, they’re nonetheless gonna be sadly deflated from a court loss.

    Here’s why:

    – Booble has not done enough to be seen as a parody rather than a predator
    Had the Booble folks been a little less airheady, they would have included a PROMINENT disclaimer at the TOP of their pages, rather than in tiny point at the bottom. Additionally, Booble is directly profiting from Google’s likeness (via porn site sponsorships)!

    – Booble is profiting from business in Google’s space!
    By positioning itself within Google’s space, not only does Booble cause likely consumer confusion, it also directly competes with Google (where undoubtedly people seeking porn often turn to for their needs).

    Booble’s going down. The only questions are what damages will be assessed, and whether Booble will have the assets to pay up.

  • The New (much) Improved Friendster

    Well, if you’re as much of a geek as I am — or even if you just are a geek wannabe and voraciously read the tech rags — you’ve likely already heard about Orkut.com.

    Well, I’ve had a chance to play with it for a day or so, and it’s rather fascinating. Though clearly not-yet-perfect, it’s still fun and quite a bit ahead of Friendster in many ways.

    Let me get some criticisms and concerns out of the way first:

    – There aren’t enough checks and balances
    It’s too easy to add (and then be unable to un-add) a friend, delete a message, and so on. There are no “Are you sure?” screens. Aside from preventing ‘oops’ moments, I think it would at least be helpful to gently remind folks to carefully choose their friend links, as in “By adding this person as a friend, you’re making a statement that you know and like this person. Are you sure you want to do this?” Otherwise, the system is more apt to end up with a zillion useless/meaningless friend linkages.

    – As of yet, the search features are anemic
    You can search only by a small handful of esoteric and broad fields, and cannot search by company name, interests, etc… though indeed orkut.com has noted that this functionality is slated for future versions.

    – Information display is far from optimal
    On the search results page, the info you get is minimal on each person, and generally not enough to give you a good idea of whether it’s worth your time to click through to their profile. Ideally, it’d be nice to be able to choose which data points are shown, but in the meantime, it’d be nice to at least see some professional info (e.g., company name) on such listings.

    – The invite process is kludgy
    You can’t invite groups of friends, you can’t (easily) individually customize the invite e-mails, and it seems you can’t access a generic invite URL to send in your own e-mails.

    – Me Too?
    Perhaps one of the most frustrating aspects of orkut.com for me is that there’s no real sense of its ‘place.’ It mingles in just enough romantic/flirty/goofy stuff to be potentially off-putting to serious business networkers, but it’s unlikely to be enough to compete with Match.com, Yafro, and other friends-oriented networking services.

    * * *

    Okay, enough whining. There’s certainly much to admire and appreciate in orkut.com!

    – It’s FAST!
    Sure, this isn’t that impressive YET given the limited member set (2464 members as of 2:40pm PST, and seemingly growing by about 50-100 every hour since this morning), but boy, that speed sure is refreshing right now! And given Google’s track record on efficiency/speed, I am confident that orkut will remain delightfully quick on its feet.

    – It’s quite the A-List party at present
    From my experience (and, biased-ly, my friendships), Google hires uber-intelligent and interesting folks. Given that at least 50% of the current orkut.com members seem to be Googlers, the service is starting with a pretty intellectual and powerful foundation.

    – It has great potentialLook at past Google projects that started out as pet projects, like Google News. There is clearly a history of refinement and success with these projects, and while orkut.com is clearly not yet version 1.0 material due to needed feature enhancements and interface tweaks, it’s certainly a fun and impressive beginning.

    * * *

    It’ll be fascinating to see if — or perhaps, more likely when — orkut overtakes the slow-and-feature-poor-but-critically-massed Friendster.

    Additionally, will Google’s entrant into this market stimulate demand enough for online social networking so that more sites (including the stellar Tribe.net) will flourish by the expanding pie? Or will orkut.com — like Google search, to a great extent — basically crowd out all competitors? What do you think?

    * * *

    Added 1/24/04 5:16pm:
    Wow, just got my first application error while browsing orkut. Bummer.

  • Questioning desires and assumptions about music

    Yes, it’s been a while since I’ve posted, and no, I won’t apologize. I’ve been busy… not (just) picking my nose, but picking things to write about.

    Additionally, dear reader, I’ve been spending much of the last few weeks delving even deeper into online music services, evaluating my own music habits and interests, and planning a rather major undertaking of a site about online music services. Yes, you heard it here first ;-).

    Much of this has come about during the seemingly mundane process of ripping my 350+ CDs to digital files on my computer. Allow me to explain…

    My vast CD collection, probably like many of yours, has been sitting in the corner of my room, collecting dust and — were it to speak — would probably moan, “Adam, why hast thou forsaken me?” Indeed, until recently, I don’t think I had listened to one of my CDs in literally years, what with the proliferation of song availability via legal and :cough: questionable online music services.

    Upon ripping my CDs, I realized that I had well over 5,000 tracks, just waiting to be heard… some for the first time ever. I boggled my mind with the geeky calculation that, yes, I could listen to an album’s-worth every day, and it’d still take me more than a year to go through my existing collection.

    “What am I doing paying for two different online services,” I asked myself, “when I haven’t even listened to a fraction of the music I already own?” The fact that I now had every single one of my songs, originally on CD, now available for instant-listening on my PC intensified this soul-searching and budget-questioning.

    “Psst!” whispered the ConsumptionDevil, perched playfully on my left shoulder, “It’s just $14 or so a month for the two services, ya cheapskate. Isn’t that a small price to pay for SUCH a FABULOUS collection of music at your fingertips? Do you really want to be stuck with those musty old relics from the 80’s? And besides, you pay more for one lousy night out at the movies!”

    “But it’s not just about the money,” I argued, probably prompting my roommate to wonder why I was mumbling to myself yet again, “It’s a matter of time. Why should I spend my limited free time browsing Napster and MusicMatch, searching for tunes, making my own custom radio stations, and so on… when I can just click a few buttons and be listening to fine music I already have?”

    —

    Ah ha! I thought. Now I have him, that seemingly sly devil of consumerist greed. Always wanting more, always wanting the latest. Well, I showed him! I’m taking my life back and…

    “Not so fast, smarty!” he retorted, dismissing my arguments with a cynical glance, “If you have hopes of holding yourself out as an expert in the Digital Music arena, don’t you need to actually experience and test what you write about? Your credibility and future employment is at stake. And besides, from a pure enjoyment standpoint, aren’t you always just itching to hear what everyone’s talking about? That new record, that promising artist, the new musical you’ve read critical raves about… your old CDs tie you to the past, whereas the new music services allow you to explore the present and the future. Don’t be a luddite, Adam, for goodness sake!”

    {sigh} He had me. But I’m an exceptional case (or, as my parents would say, patting my head, “special”). What about the rest of the world?

    —

    To the normal music enthusiast, the Napsters and iTunes and all may prove initially tempting, especially as the KaZaAs of the world become increasingly risky and inconvenient. But will there come a point where these folks, too, stop and ask themselves… what *AM* I doing with 10,000 music files on my hard drive? Sure, my shiny new iPod can now hold all 10K of ’em, but so what?

    People will eventually question, I think, not whether they need to regularly acquire and own track after track, but whether the attendant hassles are really worth it. Storing, organizing, and — this is the scary part — backing up or moving to a new computer — gigs upon gigs of music… is this really any fun? With CDs, you simply boxed ’em up and took them with you. Barring scratches or theft, there wasn’t much of a worry. Your CDs would work everywhere, never expire, and always be correctly labeled.

    In contrast, your iTunes files won’t work on most Windows programs and they won’t work on any portable player except an iPod. Your Napster files will work on most (but not all) Windows programs, but won’t be playable on a Mac or on an iPod. And unless you authorize additional computers (and, if needed, de-authorize previously-used computers), you won’t be able to play ANY of your online-music-service acquired files on your friend’s laptop or your new computer at work.

    —

    When I ask my friends about music, they almost unanimously scoff at server-based solutions (such as streaming), and insist that they want “a personal copy” of any music they like. I wonder if they will always think this way. For me, at least, the thought of having someone else (whether it’s Napster, Microsoft, Apple, or another party) store ALL my music and allow me to listen to it anywhere remotely (with my choice of software, however) is increasingly tempting, especially as broadband connections become more commonplace.

    Will consumers eventually opt for convenience over ownership? Or is ownership, in fact, synonymous with overall convenience? And more philosophically, will people soon realize that what they wish for may be more than they want to handle? When “I want every song by the Beatles and ABBA and Linkin Park and… and… and…!” dovetails with free or cheap availability of music, particularly in high-bitrate-encoding, translating into a few hundred gigabytes of personal storage requirements… will people still be so keen on ‘having it all’? Or will the clutter finally catch up to them?

    I honestly can’t say.

    Then again, knowing the increasingly insatiable consumer demands to own more, newer, better… those musty CDs may indeed prove to be no match for innovation and the celestial downloadable jukebox.

    —

    What are your thoughts? And in particular, if money were no object, how would you have your music?

  • A comprehensive review of the new Napster 2.0 service – Part THREE of three

    [ This is the final and third part of my Napster 2.0 music service review. If you haven’t read the other parts, I encourage you to start at part one of my Napster review — Adam ]

    In this final section of my Napster review, I’ll be covering these remaining topics:
    – Radio
    – Music info
    – Non-music offerings
    – Overall user interface
    – Pricing and value

    If you’re not already a Napster user, I encourage you to download and try out the software for free as you read along here 🙂

    In contrast with my earlier entries, I’ve decided to stop assigning ‘grades’ to various components of Napster’s service. There are just too many variables involving user interests, connection speed, and so on, to make such subjective judgements applicable for all readers.

    —

    RADIO FEATURES AND FUNCTIONALITY
    Napster radio is both fabulous and infuriating.

    Fabulous:
    – Unlike ANY other legal service, Napster allows you to not only skip to previous and upcoming tracks with ease, but even enables you to scan to any point within any song. So, for instance, you can look on “your” radio station and see the tune “Brand New Day” by Sting coming up in three songs… and decide to fast forward to the middle section of the song with just two mouse clicks!
    – You can do anything with “radio” programmed songs that you can do with searched-for or browsed-for tracks! Every single song you get on a radio station can be added to your own custom playlists, and — depending on the permissions of any particular track — downloaded and (for an extra fee) burned as well.
    – The “Radio” system on Napster is basically equivalent to the Playlist feature (discussed earlier in my blog), meaning that the learning curve is minimal. You can even load up a Napster-provided “radio station,” remove a few un-favorite tracks, save it as a custom playlist, and share it with other Napster users.

    Infuriating:
    – Someone’s not minding the quality control very well over at Napster. While, as a swing dancer and jazz aficianado, I was grateful to see Napster featuring a “Lindy Hop” radio station, I was hugely annoyed to discover that some of the tracks on the station were repeated as many as four times in just a few hours of listening. Given the thousands of swing songs that are available, even in Napster’s library alone, this sort of repetition is inexcusable.
    – Further diminishing the excitement of the Napster radio stations is the fact that at least several I’ve tried don’t seem to be grabbing music from a very large pool. Listening to the 80’s pop station over three days, I heard pretty much the same tunes each day, just in a different order.
    – In contrast with Rhapsody, Napster only streams songs that it has on-demand licenses for. On one hand, Rhapsody’s contrasting practice can get annoying (“Gee, I love that song… but ack, I can’t replay it or bookmark it!”). But on the other hand, Napster’s practice may be considered by some to be limiting, since streamable but not-on-demand artists like the Beatles and Metallica will currently not appear on Napster’s radio stations.

    On the whole, Napster’s radio system FEELS like a sophisticated playlist offering, and as noted from my opinions above, this can be either a great or a not-so-great thing. In a bit of a generalization, those wishing to sit back and be entertained with a broad assortment of carefully picked tunes would be better off with Rhapsody or MusicMatch for their radio needs. But those wishing to engage in a more interactive experience would absolutely come out ahead with Napster.

    —

    MUSIC INFORMATION
    Napster thoughtfully offers a handful of well-written and useful reviews for a variety of albums and albums, and — in common with other music services — uses AllMusic Guide notes for the bulk of its reviews.

    While Napster’s additional in-house reviews occasionally push the service ahead of its competitors in this context, on the whole, Napster’s music-info offerings fall flat. Here’s why:

    – Napster has unwisely decided to favor anti-copying over user convenience, and IMHO, that’s a loser of a decision every time. Specifically, even though the music information text is contained on what amounts to an HTML page, Napster hijacks right and left mouse capabilities, rendering users unable to copy and paste any of the review text or album track listings… even in Fair Use contexts! In fact, it’s not even possible to print specific info screens. 🙁

    – Unlike with both Rhapsody and MusicMatch, when Napster doesn’t have rights to feature an artist, an album, or a track, it simply pretends that the person or material doesn’t exist. This can be absolutely maddening, both because it hampers searching and it also leaves gaping holes when someone is just trying to see, for instance, how many albums an artist has recorded, or how many tracks he actually recorded on a given album. On Rhapsody, this info is somewhat hidden, but easily available. On MM, not only is the info listed, but users can use unavailable-artist lookups to find similar-but-available music from other artists!

    – Lastly, Napster has a really hard time looking up info on even some tracks it DOES have, when those tracks are part of a compilation or co-authored musical. For instance, right-clicking on a track and selecting “BROWSE ARTIST” in the Buffy the Vampire musical recording, Once More, With Feeling generally results in Napster ignoring the request, instead of it looking for other similar music from the “artist” (in this case, the composers of that particular musical). I’ve had similar problems with jazz compilations, especially when more than one artist is listed for a given song. Ideally, Napster should either pick one, or ask which one I want to read about.

    —

    NON-MUSIC OFFERINGS
    I’m sorry to admit that I haven’t spent much time exploring Napster’s videos or magazine. At a cursory glance, the magazine seems detailed and engaging, with quite a bit of diverse information. The videos, on the other hand, while a nice touch, are a bit too “lo-res” for my taste.

    —

    OVERALL USER INTERFACE
    I’ll note up front that I should cut Napster some slack on this. While Napster 2.0 is a bit of an ‘upgrade’ from the earlier PressPlay service, it’s still obviously a major rewrite, and definitely not based upon the more long-lived (and almost-too-simple) original Napster interface. So basically, this is Napster 1.1, and given this, they’re doing quite decently 🙂

    The thumbs up:
    – Most everything is pretty intuitive with the current interface. Clicking, right-clicking, dragging, and double-clicking all seem to do what one’d reasonably expect, and while that might seem like faint praise, in comparison with many other Windows programs, it’s not.
    – The HISTORY window, allowing you to see every track played and purchased, is a very helpful and also interesting feature. And it’s not just for show; right-click functionality on this page is superb, allowing one to add tracks to playlists, download tunes, and more.
    – In fact, with few exceptions, the interface is generally consistent; when you right-click on a track, you’re likely to see the same (allowed) features and options no matter where you are in the service… your library, the NOW PLAYING screen, results from a search or a browse, etc.
    – Napster smartly and politely presents a plethora of confirmation and warning screens, and better yet, it gives you the choice of disabling most of them via option settings. In fact, speaking of option settings, Napster offers more settable preferences than many other competing music services, and that’s much appreciated!

    The thumbs down:
    – Very few keyboard shortcuts
    – Spotty status/info communication in some respects; for instance, there are no icons next to the NOW PLAYING tunes to tell you if those tracks are downloaded or streaming… the only way to find out is to right-click on each individually. Also, in general, mouseovers could be used more frequently and more effectively, both to convey status and other information.
    – The minimized player mode (with, alas, a near-invisible button to trigger it) is a neat idea, but it’s barely functional, with no right-click options available whatsoever (e.g., you can’t download or buy/burn a song, nor is there even any extended mouseover info on the track currently playing. Bummer!)
    – Finding artist and album info can occasionally be quirky or difficult.
    – Checking for a track in someone else’s collection is common-sensically available by right-clicking on a track in a browse/search results screen, but is oddly not possible by right-clicking on the same track in the NOW PLAYING screen. Oops!
    – Status/option info throughout the service isn’t as contextually intelligent as it could be. When you select multiple tracks, it should say “tracks” not “track(s)”, and when you don’t select any non-napster tracks, it shouldn’t present you with a checkbox asking you if you want to delete non-napster tracks. Context, context, context ;-).
    – And there are the little touches that are missing; unlike with MusicMatch, the Napster taskbar entry doesn’t tell you what’s currently playing. And unlike with Rhapsody and (sometimes, though quirkily) with MM, Napster doesn’t support the nifty Microsoft Internet keyboard’s previous/next/play/stop buttons, nor the MS Mice’ forward-back buttons for browsing.

    —

    PRICING AND VALUE
    Here’s the bottom line: At $9.95 a month for the Premium service, Napster is an outstanding value if you spend any appreciable time in front of a Windows XP/2000 computer and can listen to music while you do so. You’ll be amazed and perhaps a bit alarmed at just how many hours you can joyously spend “surfing” music… both listening to current favorites and exploring new tunes and even new genres. You’re likely to even get silly and see how many songs on Napster have the word “chicken” in them (157 at last count) or just how many songs you can find performed by Count Basie, or what the Alternative CCM subgenre is (hint: Jesus would approve)… and so on. Or you might just spend all night skimming through Billboard Chartbusters by decade.

    Indeed, if I might be so bold — even when taking into considerations all my criticisms in my composite review — you might find Napster Premium to be like Tivo: not that interesting or critical until you play with it and are faced with living without it. It’s one of those things you have to experience for yourself (and, in case I haven’t mentioned it earlier, Napster marketing execs are nuts for not offering a free trial!)

    But what if you’re not a geek-tethered-to-a-computer, or you just don’t like listening to music very much via your tinny computer speakers (and don’t feel like forking out dough and time to hook up your computer to a nearby stereo system)? Well, then, Napster Premium may not be such a hot deal for you.

    That’s because, even with a Premium membership, as stated earlier, you’ll still have to pony up 99 cents per track or $9.95 for (most) albums for the privilege of copying tracks to a portable music player or burning them to a CD. And you can do that even without being a Premium member.

    Indeed, this is one area in which I think Napster marketing and accounting wonks seriously need to go back to the boardroom and do some significant rethinking.

    Pricing tracks the same for both Premium (even long-term Premium) members and regular “uncommitted” members is both bad PR and bad business. Even a modest “Buy nine, get your tenth track free!” program or something similar would highlight Napster’s commitment to really offering its Premium members MORE.

    Right now, Premium members get:
    – Unlimited streaming / tethered downloading (either great or not-so-great as detailed above)
    – Access to Napster Radio (a mixed value)
    – Ability to read and post on the Napster Message boards (currently lagging seriously behind free music-related boards on the Web, both in terms of content and usability)

    But Napster could and SHOULD offer so much more for its Premium members, such as:
    – The aforementioned ‘loyalty’ discount on purchased tracks
    – Access to videos, music clips and info before anyone else
    – Special contests (for backstage passes, musician memorabilia, etc.)
    – discounts or additional free tracks with purchase of a Samsung/Napster player (how about “Pay for or commit to a (non-cancelable) two-year Napster membership, and get the Samsung Napster player for $49.95.” Hey, it works for the wireless phone companies, right? 😉
    – Priority customer service
    – Live chats with musicians, DJs, directors, etc.

    After all, let’s face it — folks can still easily get nearly any track they’d find on Napster via :cough: services like KaZaA (and can escape legal wrath pretty easily with just a click or two on particular options). Also, Napster is facing stiff competition from services like iTunes, Rhapsody, and MusicMatch… and no doubt soon from Amazon and Microsoft.

    Napster’s saving grace is in Community and Loyalty. Indeed, due to the stranglehold of the recording industry, Napster can probaly ill-afford to compete on price alone, so it must focus on adding value in ways that are not easy to duplicate by competing services.

    —

    I sincerely hope that Napster will be a success, in addition to, not just instead of the many other current and future services. The arena of online music is one that should and hopefully will exponentially expand in the coming years, and I am optimistic that both artists and consumers will be the winners.

    In the meantime, I’ll once again urge you to download and try out the Napster software for free, and I heartily welcome your feedback below!

  • Misery, snarkiness, and an unexpected apology

    A few weeks ago, I posted a note on a prominent swing board urging dancers to “Just Say No” when they really don’t feel like dancing with someone. The gist of my note was as follows:


    […] I’d like to go against conventional wisdom and practice and urge people to say NO when asked to dance if saying yes would result in misery for both dancers.
    With regards to the three awful dances I had recently, in each case, the follow accepted my invitation quite reluctantly. Maybe she just learned that her pet poodle died, maybe I look like her abusive ex-boyfriend, or maybe she was just really, really tired. But it doesn’t matter. In each case, her movements and expression while dancing with me evoked images of someone cleaning the bathrooms of Grand Central Station with their tongue, and boy, was that painful (dancing with her, but yeah, undoubtedly the imagery, too).
    If these women had simply said, “No,” the following would have happened:
    – We’d both have been saved several minutes of unpleasantness.
    – We’d have had the opportunity to likely ENJOY several minutes of blissful dancing with a different partner (or a bit of blissful rest). […]

    One of the key acknowledgments in my note was the fact that saying no to a dance request is largely considered taboo in the Lindy Hop scene. My note was an effort to try to turn the tide and make it socially acceptable to turn someone down… in particular, when the alternative is an unpleasant dance for both people.

    —

    To my great surprise AND mortification, I received an e-mail in response to my now-very-active “Just Say No” thread… from one of the very women with whom I had such a miserable dance.

    When I read the first few words of the note, indicating that this was one of the people that had incited me to write the somewhat-nasty note, I shuddered in unpleasant anticipation of what she had to say in the rest of her note.

    “Adam, you’re really an asshole. Maybe if you learned to be a better dancer, or smelled nicer, you’d have decent dances and you wouldn’t have to whine on a message forum.”

    or

    “What nerve you have complaining about our dance in public! Not only will I not dance with you ever again, but none of my friends will either. You’re certainly not welcome back [in this city].”

    —

    No, instead, this is what she wrote:


    Hey Adam,
    I am that girl that looked like she would rather have a root canal than dance (by the way, the analogy was really funny but true) :-). I apologise for making it so miserable for you. I knew I should have said no but like it was stated in the thread, social politeness sometimes rules out.
    Again, I am so sorry that it was that horrible (and I knew it was when we finished) and after the eternal song finished I quit dancing for the whole night and turned down about two other dancers before leaving (I should have quit sooner, huh.) Hopefully I can make it up to you some other time.
    Hope you have more great dances,

    [her name]

    —

    I was completely stunned. And largely speechless.

    I took a few moments to gather my thoughts, and sent her a brief but sincere thank you, noting that I, too, hoped she and I would get to ‘make up’ for the less-than-stellar dance by having a much better one in the future.

    —

    So what lessons can we take from this? The kindness of strangers, even when they’re slapped? The potential perils of posting scathing but well-meant notes on public forums? I’m not sure. But at least now I have caught my breath and my heart isn’t racing anymore 😉

  • A comprehensive review of the new Napster 2.0 service – Part TWO

    [ This is the second part of my Napster review. You may read the first part here. ]

    This part of my Napster review will cover the following topics:
    – The Now Playing functionality
    – Library and playlist functionality
    – Community features

    You can try out Napster for yourself and follow along here if you like 🙂

    THE “NOW PLAYING” FUNCTIONALITY – Grade: B-
    The “Now Playing” section of Napster is the area to the left of the main Napster screen which shows the track currently playing, and the other tracks queued (prior to and following the currently playing track).

    On the whole, Napster handles this section of its player better than all other music services. In particular, this is because most operations on Napster add to, but do not mess up the Now Playing window. Whereas on other systems, selecting an album to play or a specific track will often REPLACE the contents of a Now Playing window, on Napster, the newly selected tracks are merely inserted at the point of the currently playing track; after they’re done playing, the user is returned to his “regularly scheduled program” so to speak, and this is as it should be.

    Napster’s Now Playing Window (henceforth referred to as “NPW”) also offers some other goodies as well:
    – Nice right-click functionality, allowing the user to download, buy, or burn any (available) track, or bring up an artist-info page. “Build a radio station” is also available when 3 or more tracks are highlighted (more on radio features later). Lastly, users can add any track or group of tracks in the NPW directly to an existing or new playlist. Very handy!
    – Reordering and deleting tracks is super-easy, too, involving a simple drag-and-drop or hitting of the delete key.

    Of course, the NPW could be improved in several ways:
    – It’s nice to see the album art and the artist, track, and album names below, but alas, these info-bits are not clickable. Ideally, one should be able to click on that artist name, for instance, and have the artist page brought up.
    – Unlike Napster’s “Pressplay” predecessor, there are no visual (icon) indicators next to each track which show whether they are streams or previously-downloaded or purchased files. This is a major bummer :-(.
    – Information is not always very clear, especially when listening to songs by more than one artist, or songs from soundtracks. Often times, you’ll see “Original Broadway Cast” but no musical name. Ack!
    – when the NPW is minimized to a small toolbar (which in itself is a quite cool feature), one cannot right click to add track or download or anything :-(. This is a major oversight, IMHO.

    LIBRARY AND PLAYLIST FUNCTIONALITY – Grade: C
    Napster’s Library and Playlist features are wonderfully intuitive in some manners, but horribly UNintuitive in others, and currently a bit on the buggy side. This feature set really deserves a split-personality A- and D, but to keep things simpler, I’ll simply give it an overall “average” grade.

    What’s to like?
    – You can create an unlimited number of playlists, even with long names! Each playlist is limited to 260 songs, but that’s still pretty generous. And you can have any given track in more than one playlist simultaneously.
    – Your playlists are (optionally) available to all members (see the COMMUNITY section of this review for details).
    – One’s library is viewable in quite a few different manners… by artist, by album, by track, and more.
    – The service thoughtfully breaks up one’s library into alphabetical artist chunks (Artists A-E, etc.) as one’s library gets bigger.
    – You can import your existing WMAs and MP3s, integrating them into your Napster playlists and even CD burns!
    – You can jump to any song or artist within the relevant section of your library just by typing the first few letters. It’s one of those very-obvious but still quite-useful and sometimes overlooked features in programs like this 🙂

    What’s really annoying?
    – Artists are sorted by FIRST name, and there’s no way around this!
    – If your library is larger than 260 tracks (and this will happen, trust me, after about 1 day of use, or after 1 minute of importing your existing tracks), you can’t play a random sampling of your music.
    – You can’t import OGG or WAV files or anything other than MP3s and WMAs.
    – You can’t easily delete an album with a single click; you have to delete all the tracks associated with that album first.
    – Here’s a frustrating doozy: You can’t do any searches for songs within your library!
    – There’s little quantification. You can’t see how many artists your library has, how many tracks you have (napster or imported or total), or even how many tracks you’ve selected for a playlist. This is something that’d be insanely easy to implement (“You’ve selected 147 tracks…”) and very useful/interesting.
    – There’s an absolute lack of any DJ-type features in Napster. You can’t tag songs with mood or sub-genre, or even retag secured Napster tracks at all! You can’t set up a playlist that’s 60 minutes long for burning, either. In this context, WMP, MusicMatch, and iTunes are lightyears ahead of Napster.
    – You can sort by any column in your Library (which is good, but basic), but you cannot filter, and you cannot move, add, or change the order of columns.

    COMMUNITY FEATURES – Grade: C
    You’ll notice I’m giving a lot of Cs here. That’s not to suggest, as you’ve hopefully guessed, that I think Napster isn’t an excellent value, or even a laggard in its field. But rather — at least in its legal version one (“2.0” is a bit of a misnomer) — it’s got a LOT of room to grow and improve.

    Anyway, Community Features is another area in which Napster deserves a schizophrenic grade set of B and D, perhaps, and here’s why…

    The good:
    – It’s wonderfully fun to share playlists with other members, and also peer into their accounts (with their permission, which is ‘on’ by default) to see and stream from their playlists and even their entire Library! I’ve discovered some super-fun music this way.
    – As part of this, it’s also possible to right click on any track and see which other members have this track in THEIR library. This really enhances the discovery process, and like the aspects described above, is just sheer giddy fun seeing how many other folks share a love for an obscure track that you happen to enjoy.
    – Napsters boards already boast a decent set of genre topics. Perhaps more impressively, Napster has seen it fit to allow both harshly critical opinions AND even circumvention info to be expressed on the boards without censorship.
    – Napster offers the ability to send short messages (mails) to other members, and even share playlists with people off of the Napster network (though they need to use Napster to LISTEN to your playlists).

    The ugly:
    – Napster’s boards are running on horribly, disgustingly outdated “Ultimate Bulletin Board” (UBB) software… from 1998-2000! This is really unforgiveable. The boards allow for no editing, no notifications, no post previews, no signatures, pretty much nothing, frankly, other than very very basic posting with a few niceties like boldface type and hyperlinks. What WAS Napster thinking, especially when there are fabulous (and often free!) options abounding in the message forum space (phpBB, InvisionBoard, etc.).
    – Napster’s mail system is similarly unpleasant. New-mail notifications are so subtle as to be practically unnoticeable (one’s small inbox logo glows slightly and changes color). Each mail is limited to 512 characters… barely a full paragraph! There are no read-receipt options, or, frankly, any options other than reply / send / delete available. I don’t expect a full-blown mail system in my music software, but a few additional features and a larger per-message allowance would be nice.
    – Community browsing is also a bit limited, though not as severely. For instance, I’d love to know which other members have tunes by the somewhat-obscure a cappella band “The Bobs,” but I’m only able to look up matches by individual tracks, not by artist, so I have to check each of the Bobs’ tunes individually to see if any of my Napster colleagues have those specific songs. Bummer :|.
    – And while this isn’t a huge problem for me, I’m a bit disappointed that there are no instant messaging or real-time chat capabilities within Napster currently.

    In speaking with a customer service representative, I was told that community features are not a particularly high priority for Napster right now. “We’re really working the hardest on improving the music component, and getting more songs online” he noted, and quite understandably at that. I do think, however, that if Napster wants to compete against Free (e.g., KaZaA), they need to pay more attention to the differentiation aspect of community. After all, people can get songs themselves still pretty easily on free networks nowadays, but many may be willing to pony up money for a better EXPERIENCE… which, IMHO, includes Community.

    —

    Well, I have now decided to end this part of the review here, and continue in the next few days with the following topics:
    – Radio
    – Music information and non-music offerings
    – Overall user interface
    and
    – Pricing

    In the meantime, I think it bears repeating. Go out and try Napster now! I really don’t think you’ll be sorry 🙂

    Edited to add:
    The third and final part of my Napster review is now posted here.

  • Comprehensive review of the new Napster 2.0 service — PART ONE

    [ Napster is free to download, and they offer a free trial on their premium service ]

    I’ve now had a chance to play with the new Napster 2.0 service for quite a few hours, and I thought I’d share with you my detailed thoughts on the service.

    If you’re not already familiar with the basics of the new (legal) Napster, I encourage you to skim my earlier intro-to-Napster-2.0 entry, or even read the surprisingly informative Napster info page.

    I can tell you now, however, that you absolutely, positively…

    …should sign up to try out Napster 2.0 (henceforth, “Napster”). By reserving a username now (even without entering your credit card data!), you’ll be promised free five burns when the system is out of beta.

    Okay, on with my review 😀

    * * *

    MUSIC AVAILABILITY – Grade: B-
    Napster laudably offers over half-a-million tracks. That’s a heck of a lot! Unfortunately, many of them are only available for purchase, not for Premium member streaming. In both various broad and narrow searches, I found easily as much as 20% of the listed tracks were “Buy only.” As with many of Napster’s shortcomings, this is undeniably not the fault of Roxio (Napster’s owner), but rather a challenge associated with negotiating the byzantine layers of artist and publisher song permissions. However, to the end consumer, this doesn’t (and shouldn’t) matter. It’d be like a restaurant noting that several key dishes are unavailable from its menu, or only available at an extra price due to supplier problems. Not our problem.

    Some of the noticeable holes, at least for me, were in music from smaller / independent labels and albums which contain music from a group of artists, such as movie or musical soundtracks.

    It would be both thoughtful and good marketing, therefore, for Napster to have a “Click here to be notified via e-mail when this [artist | album | song] is available.”

    This is not to say, however, that even the most picky listener could possibly ever become bored with Napster. Even if only 300,000 tracks are streamable (and I’m betting that that’s a conservative guess), there is still an unbelievably vast number of tracks, artists, and genres to explore and enjoy. Therefore, I do sometimes have to remind myself to appreciate that the glass is not only more than half full, but also delightfully large. Even when comparing Napster to KaZaA, for instance, it should be fairly noted that often KaZaA did not and still does not always have the most obscure tracks one might wish to procure.

    SOUND QUALITY – Grade: A-
    Indeed, one of the great blessings of Napster as compared to KaZaA is that listeners are guranteed a consistent and quite impressive sound quality. While some purists and/or Microsoft-haters have railed against Napster’s use of secure Windows Media Audio files (which, actually, are problematic from other standpoints), Napster’s 128-rate WMA files sound impressively clean and crisp to my musician ears, and certainly FAR better than the typical 128-rate MP3s most commonly found on peer-to-peer services. Furthermore, I’ve heard not a single skip or recording blemish in any of the hundreds of tracks I’ve listened to.

    PORTABLE AND NON-PORTABLE MUSIC FILE DRM – Grade: B-
    Compared to the simply awful buymusic.com service, Napster’s Digital Rights Management (“DRM”) system is both consistent and generous, allowing use of the files on three different computers for both non-portable and (99 cent) portable downloads. Furthermore, portable downloads may be burned to CD on any unique playlist up to five times, seemingly reasonable for personal use. And of course, once a track has been burned to CD, it can be ripped and handled without any restrictions whatsoever.

    However, even the minimal DRM on the portable (paid-for) downloads is unduly restrictive and frustrating in some ways. When I buy a CD, it’s pretty clear from a legal standpoint that I can’t make 400 copies for my entire neighborhood. But no one blinks an eye if I let a friend borrow it for a week. In contrast, though, with Napster I learned that even after “buying” a track, I was merely procuring a license to use it personally; I could not share the track even with my parents via e-mail.

    Of course, I COULD just burn a CD, then rip the CD, but why make me go through all that effort? Why can’t the recording industry actually trust its users to do the Right Thing? After all, it’s clear that the tracks will end up on KaZaA regardless of any DRM, so why punish those who wish to use their purchased tracks within reason?

    SEARCHING AND BROWSING – Grade: C
    I’ll get the bad out of the way. Searching on Napster is really awful. Let me count the ways:
    – No power search: You can’t search by a combination, say, of artist AND album.
    – Very UNintelligent AI: “Housejacks” turns up 0 hits. “House Jacks” nicely turns up 18 hits. A search for the (just slightly incorrectly spelled) “piazolla” offers Astor Piazzolla tracks far down on the list, after such odd matches as “Brad Paisley” and “Isabelle Granet Pascale.” Uh, yeah, they all have names that start with “P,” but… 😀

    Browsing also suffers from at least a few maddening problems. There’s absolutely no way to easily look for musicals or movie soundtracks other than by name. And if you just want to scroll through available artists or albums alphabetically, well, sorry, you can’t.

    In contrast, iTunes is leaps and bounds ahead of Napster in these areas. iTunes, offering the best of ‘both worlds’ of search, allows users to do “anything” searches easily and quickly, for instance, letting folks type in “queen” and having the service intelligently list artist, album, and track matches in order of descending relevance. But iTunes keeps power users happy, too, offering a screen that lets folks search for narrow artist + track combinations and more.

    Luckily, Napster’s searching and browsing options aren’t all bad, however. Users can quickly access a menu of genres (pop, dance, jazz, classical, etc.), and from there, be presented immediately with a corresponding sub-genre list (e.g., for dance: trance, experimental techno, funky beats, etc.). From there, a list of artists is presented, with their albums listed hierarchically underneath. A single click shows any tracks on an album, and a double click instantly plays an entire album. Now that’s handy!

    * * *

    Okay this is already getting pretty long, so I’m going to stop here for now, and present an additional review section in the next day or three. 🙂

    Still to come… thoughts on Napster’s:
    – Overall user interface
    – The Now Playing functionality
    – Library and playlist functionality
    – Non-music offerings
    – Community features
    – Radio
    and
    – Pricing

    * * *

    Feel free to give feedback on my review so far, and let me know if there are areas you’d like to know more about, or areas in which you disagree with me.

    [ Now read PART TWO 🙂 ]

    [ Napster is free to download, and they offer a free trial on their premium service ]