Random thoughts and some webnews

Here’s another roundup of random thoughts

• Welcome to the 21st century
• The lowdown on different audio file formats
• Think Apple
• The Zoom Quilt!
• Sixapart acquires Livejournal

Welcome to the 21st century

It seems that you can teach old dogs new tricks. Just today, I spent a quite enjoyable time teaching my mom how to use her 256MB USB thumbdrive.

It seems that she got it without knowing what it does – her laptop conked out on her, and the MIS department [of her office] advised her to get one of those flash drives for backing up data. Since almost every tech savvy person in the office uses one.

Anyways, I thought it was such a waste for it just to be sitting in her drawer gathering cobwebs, so I told her of the benefits of having a flash drive – that she can totally abandon those accursed floppy disks forever.

She seemed very keen to the idea, and I figured this is something worth spending time on teaching to someone since you’d have to be a total dolt to not get how it works.

So I delivered my lesson: from the USB connector, and how to look for one (and differentiate from the others), how to connect the drive to one, how to access the drive, how to remove/unmount the drive, and finally to use the drive on all the machines in our home. She passed with flying colors!

She seemed amazed that such a little device can do such a thing… welcome to the 21st century (actually thumbdrives were already available in the late 20th)!

The battle of the audio formats

Ars Technica has put up an excellent overview which explains the technologies behind todays known audio formats.

I’ve always wanted to discuss this topic ever since. I’ve seen a lot of discussion of people asking what they should encode their music to, and what with.

Regardless of the “better” compression methods out there, I still give props to MP3 for its widespread compatibility. And though ultimately the real answer is “it depends on what you want” – you and I both know that MP3 is still a solid bet if you want to be “future-proof.”

Why do I say this? We have lossless formats, which is out of the question for most users (since not all people have the luxury of huge storage space) – otherwise there wont be a debate about any compressed format at all.

But we have MPC, OGG, AAC, MP3, WMA, etc. trying to do the same thing – cramming as much data as possible to smaller sizes. I’ll tell you now that each and every format has its strengths and weaknesses, but MP3, while not the best quality, is still the best choice.

They say Apple’s AAC is better which could very well be true. But only iPODs are almost the only portable players that can play them. And though iPODs are insanely popular nowadays, they probably will be obsolete sooner or later… just like the Sony Walkman. And for the record, I do NOT consider the Walkman to be a fad, since it did have quite a considerable number of years in the market. That’s why I can say the same for the iPOD, fad or not, the point is there will be better players in the future, or better formats for that matter.

So for people to “future-proof” their audio files, they have to look at the signs of the times, and these days, you can count on other portable audio players to support MP3s before any of the others. If that should change, then I’ll deal with it when the time comes.

But At the last part of the article, it mentions people having lossless formats as well as lossy formats for their desktops and portables respectively. I was thinking that maybe it would be cool to have an integrated lossy/lossless standard. Something like encoding a song into 2 files. One for the portable player, and the other having the extra data which “completes” the full spectrum of data.

It makes sense since lossy formats essentially throw away audio information it thinks you don’t hear, and of course if you set your encoding parameters, it will throw much more than that.

So why not have another file which contains the rest of the data which, when used with the partner file… will complete the “lossless” version? And this can be standardized, if used in an asymmetric architecture (which can also eliminate the decoding problems). So you have the option to always have a lossless version, as well as a portable version without having redundancy. You can play the lossy version like any MP3, and including it with the partner file, if detected by the computer/program/player, will play the lossless version.

Oh well, I can dream can’t I?

About Apple

With the release of the Mac Mini and iPOD Shuffle, here’s what I have to say about Apple. They have successfully achieved a level of influence that is comparable to that of a cult. Why a cult? Because where else could you see someone being able to sell something regardless if it’s good or not?

Now before you start reacting, let me qualify: First of, I own and love a Powerbook and a 40GB iPOD – so don’t think I hate Macs. Secondly I think OSX is an amazing OS. And third, I think the Mac Mini, along with their flagship machines are great products.

But the Shuffle? I can’t seem to swallow it. And that whole tag-line of the mini? BYODKM? I just don’t get why it’s cacthing on.

The Shuffle proves that no matter how lousy a product is, brand and market it right, people will buy it. I think it goes right up there with the iPOD Sock. But it’s unfair to pin this issue on Apple alone, since Microsoft did it first.

I do not care to debate on this, since I know a lot of Mac enthusiasts that will contest the Shuffle’s value and give so much “valid” arguments. But at the end of the day, Apple released a substandard device with the price tag as its reason. They even say that the size/weight/battery life are incredible, which I’m sure they are, but that doesn’t change my opinion of this pathetic excuse of a player. The only things that it has going for itself is that it has the Apple brand, Jobs’ stamp of approval, and it’s integration with iTunes.

Even how they presented the product amazes me. Check it out. Sounds convincing? It’s like saying…

You know, it’s not bad to have a crappy product… in fact, its a good thing. Yes, its good to have a portable player that is technologically backward. You know why? cuz it’ll make you look cool. And you can at least afford that can you?

But if it can be like the iPOD, which can be used as an external hard drive, then maybe not all is lost. Certainly that will add a legitimate appeal to the Shuffle.

So kudos to Apple for that, they truly have top quality marketing managers for them to actually sell a piece of crap and make it look like the next best thing to the iPOD! Because mark my words… it will fly, not because it’s any good, but because Apple made it.

Same goes with the BYODKM (Bring Your Own Display, Keyboard, and Mouse). Do you honestly think this has the same caliber of true tech/internet terms such as RTFM (Read The Fucking Manual), or WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get)? Well if it does, you know that it doesn’t have anything to do with wit and cleverness, which are both lacking in that blasted tagline, but because it came out of the chosen one, Steve Jobs’ mouth.

Now if that’s not a cult mentality, I don’t know what the hell is… or maybe it could be considered as a Religion to some extent? Same factors are present anyways ehehehe. Just kidding.

But really, though I don’t like the Shuffle and some of the Apple mentality, that doesn’t mean I don’t respect the “Apple machine.” It is truly and efficient money-making enterprise which can thrive even in the smallest of market shares, that’s quite a feat when you’re up against Microsoft, which in itself – deals more crap than you [Apple] do.

As far as the Mini is concerned, I think its an excellent product. There are a lot of PC users that never got to try using a Mac cuz of the price, and they made a machine affordable, plus goes right up against a very legitimate PC market: the small form factor PCs. So I think Apple actually has a chance of gaining entry to the PC enthusiast market with the Mini, a very good move in Apple’s part. Get them piece by piece.

Of course I hope that the PC responds to this challenge too, so they can start cranking up the newer models that will “supposedly” beat the pants of the Mac counterparts. There’s nothing like good competition – there are no winners or losers in the consumer end… just great, ever-growing innovation.

The Zoom Quilt

Check it out

Sixapart acquires Livejournal

Good news to the lj community: Sixapart, the makers of MovableType just took over!

MovableType in my opinion is the best blog system out there. It’s actually a stripped down CMS system which is perfect for simple tasks like blogging. This blog runs on MovableType – so you have an idea how much it can be modified.

But of course that would depend how they implement their security and fault tolerance. The danger of letting normal people have access to a powerful engine, is that they can wreck it if they don’t know what the hell they’re doing. So you sometimes have to protect them for their own good. But I’m guessing that it will at least blow blogger, or other online journals out of the water as far as “functionality” is concerned.