Notes

Speaking of Audible, I'm in the last 4 hours of Snow Crash, the 16 Hour unabridged Audible version (sorry, no direct link, Audible site sucks big time).

So far is clearly the best audio book of my collection, in part because of the story, but also because the narrator, Jonathan Davis, creates a truly amazing atmosphere.

I tried to read a paperback edition some years ago, but I was not in the correct frame of mind possibly, I gave up. I should have tried harder. The story is very very good.

The geek side of me is constantly thinking that metaverse, the virtual reality world described in the book, is now mostly possible to do, with the current technology. Imagine a distributed network of modified Doom3 servers, sharing only a common currency, and a protocol for jumping between servers (something like portals). Big corporations would pay to have big cluster of servers capable of keeping a couple hundred users online, probably payed with advertising in that world (targeted with your profile, of course). Or they could collect a entrance fee, and provide services to the avatars.

Or even neighborhood servers, where people chip in to pay for it but get to have a place to build their home.

A entire business could be made just from selling models of avatars, as the book explores.

Anyway, I lost some time already thinking about the possibilities of this idea. The only thing that is not quite common yet is the hardware part, the googles and that kind of stuff.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 04:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

This is interesting for me. For the first time, my entire iTunes library does not fit into my 10Gb first generation iPod.

I know have 10,03 Gb of stuff, a total of 21 days, 15 hours of stuff. Of those, I have 3,44 Gb of audiobooks, a mix of Audible, IT Conversations, and past Your Mac Life shows.

Also 550Mb of iTMS stuff already. Must... not... click... buy...

Posted by Pedro Melo at 04:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Ok, so now you have the iTMS available, and you see that it's the first day and you bought around 100 songs. And you think: I need a raise.

Have no phear, I is here, and with a solution. Give your self an allowance. From the iTMS home page, select Monthly Gift, and select the amount you want to spend each month. You'll need to create a second .Mac account for this controlled shopper, but it works.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 08:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Several good things happened today:

• iTMS opens in Portugal: time to give my credit card some use;
• a color iPod is announced, with photo support: it's not enough for me (see my previous post) but is getting there. We now have a AV/S-Video out in the iPod.

Cool stuff. Now back to iTMS :)

Posted by Pedro Melo at 07:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

It's almost here. The website of Delicious Monster was updated. They are writing Library v3, a program for Mac OS X to keep track of all my DVDs, books and other stuff.

I've been waiting for this program to scan all my 300+ DVDs. At least that's what I tell myself :).

You can ask them to notify you the moment they release it.

By the way, their website is very nice, if you're into those things.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 01:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

IETF has published the XMPP RFCs. This is great news.

I don't expect the world of IM to switch to XMPP, but if the large IM networks open up, my only hope is that they choose XMPP as the public protocol. I guess I'm a optimist :)

Posted by Pedro Melo at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

I was starting to think that getting a major label to understand that copy protection on CDs does not deter copyright infringements but makes it harder for people who legally purchase music to listen to it anyway it pleases them, was an impossible task.

I personally buy occasionally a couple of CDs, and the first thing I do with them is rip, and move them to my iPod. The jewel cases get stored in a dark place somewhere in my house.

But there is hope. Sony Japan will no longer put copy protection stuff in their CDs because, and I quote The Register:

The reason? According to Sony, Japanese consumers now have a far better appreciation of the issues surrounding copyright and music piracy, and the law is now tougher on those who flout it.

More to the point, however, buyers have not responded well to the technology and the limitations it places on legitimate music buyers in order to hinder folk from duplicating discs for chums or profit.

Very cool. Hope to see this spread to other labels.

The next thing, is to make them understand that having online music stores is good for them. It seems that the major hurdle to get a music store in Portugal, for ex, is the label negotiations.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 03:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)