Tech of the day: Slacker Radio

I am no stranger to online music service and have been actively using Rhapsody and Pandora for a long time but I just learned about Slacker Radio this week (from comments to the news that Sirius XM is filing bankruptcy. Many commenters high raved Slacker as a better alternative to satellite radio) and of course I checked it out.

Like most other services, Slacker provides a variety of channels (each main genre like classical, jazz, blues...... are further divided into a few sub-genre channels) Again, like most other services, it also allows you to define your own customized channel. The way I did it was starting with a single artist (I picked Andres Segovia) and from the list of related artists I choose who I like (mainly classical guitarist) and who I ban (world music and new age artists).

So, what do I think of Slacker? Let's start with the good: Slacker provides a channel called "Classic Jazz [Non-voc]" which cater to jazz fans who don't like vocal (thank god I'm not the only one!) That's pretty much the only thing it does better than other services IMO. The pre-defined channels aren't really anything to high raved about (contrary to opinions I read on the web) Even AOL Radio has more blues channels than Slacker! For customized channel, I think Pandora has a superior recommendation engine/algorithm (probably because of its music genome database) In other words, it is more capable of finding songs/artists closely related to those I specified. And Pandora's iPhone client works better than Slacker's: I tried the latter on 3G but it won't play (will try it a few more times to confirm though) Also, Pandora on iPhone has no commercial/promotion break. As far as comparison with Rhapsody, I think it's apple to orange: Rhapsody allows subscriber to pick precisely which songs to play (therefore justify its higher cost) as well as providing pre-defined and custom channels.

Do I want to see Slacker to succeed? Of course! The more competition in this space the better! (I also hope more people will pay for Pandora's service so that it will survive) I just think it is a bit overrated. For example, a Jupiter analyst said "Like Apple, Slacker isn't in the business of renting music; consumers can purchase tracks, which is what everyone is accustomed to." Well, one important feature of Slacker is "saving a song" to the user's library so that s/he can listen to it in the future, unlimited (while s/he is still paying, of course) How is that different from Rhapsody? And Rhapsody provides tracks for users to purchase too. It seems to me that the critics were quite unfair to Rhapsody, probably because it is own by Real (who is notorious for forcing adoption of its client software) and used Microsoft's DRM technology.

Tech of the day: have you violated copyright by reading books aloud?

Author's guild seems to think so (while most sane people think otherwise)

The controversy stems from a new feature of the latest version of Amazon's e-book device, Kindle 2. This new feature, called text-to-speech, simply reads out the words of the e-book to the user. The first thing came to my mind was that some people will use this in favor of audio books. Why did the author's guild have a problem with that? Of course it has to do with money. Let's use Dan Brown's Angels and Demons as an example (price quoted from Amazon): the kindle version costs $7.99 while the audio download costs $26.23! (just for reference: the paperback costs $10.88 while the audio book on CDs costs $35.47!)

However, the text-to-speech feature is not created just for destroying book publishers' profits. How about books of which no audio version exists? Furthermore, when done right, audio books are not merely text read aloud. Good audio books are performances in which the reader reads the text with emotions and portray the characters appropriately. (One of my buddy is on the road a lot and listen to lots of audio books and he really appreciate good performances) Of course, book publishers and authors will lose some audio book sales to the budget conscious readers who don't mind the machine generated voice but no business is immune to changes brought by technology anyway.

Star of the day: Jose Canseco

For those who have doubted Canseco's credibility, once again he's proven to be correct. He outed Palmeiro as steroid user in 2005 and A-Rod last year. Both denied and turns out they were liars, not Canseco. Of course Canseco didn't do it simply for the good of the game. He has definitely benefited financially. Still, next time when he has something to say, more people will listen.

While googling comments about Canseco, I came across an article that brought up an interesting question: when Senator Mitchell released his baseball steroid usage investigation (commissioned by MLB), the biggest name was Roger Clemens. A-Rod was not mentioned. If MLB knew A-Rod failed his test in 2003, how come Mitchell was not told about that? Did MLB "sacrificed" Clemens, an aging and retiring star, and protected A-Rod, who represented the present and future of the sports? Interestingly, Canseco also questioned why A-Rod was not in the Mitchell report when it was released.

Tech of the day: Bill Gates unleashed "hardware" bugs

Releasing software with bugs is nothing new for Microsoft (and Bill Gates) but he still pulled off a surprise by opening a jar full of mosquitoes at a tech conference. Of course, just like the software with bugs, the intent was not to harm people. He just wanted to raise the awareness of malaria (which could be spread by mosquitoes) And as expected, some people objected to this stunt. On the other hand, I'm surprised by the numbers of people defending him in this thread.

Topic of the day: the bare minimum amount of exercise

I gotta admit I hate working out. I have tons of excuses to avoid doing that. Even if I have the time, I'd rather sit down and do nothing than working out. I do know that it does my health no good if I keep avoiding it. Here comes good news: 7 minutes per week of vigorous exercise is good enough.

Now do I have an excuse not to do that? (Probably not :P)

Topic of the day: the octuplet controversy

When I heard the recent news about a lady giving birth to an octuplet (8 babies at the same time), it reminded me of the heartwarming story from a few years ago: the couple has tried many years and finally the baby-giving god has decided to grant them their wish, a bit more than they could handled though. Fortunately sponsors jumped in and hopefully they were living happily ever after.

Well, it turns out this story is a bit different because that lady has 6 kids already and she's also a non-working single mom. Lots of people voiced their outrage and concerns that she will turn to the welfare system to support her 14 kids! In the mean time she is shopping her story around.

The way I look at this is: ideally she gets money from her deals, just enough to cover the expenses of raising her 14 kids, no more no less. So basically the curious readers of the gossip magazines and her book will be supporting her kids instead of the welfare system while she gains nothing more from this. For the outraged folks: let's dial down a bit otherwise the bad publicities might prevent her from getting a deal!

Notes to the few pro-life critics who jumped on this: this has nothing to do with pro-life. Nobody would disagree this is a "pro-responsibility" issue, as simple as that. Stop hijacking!

每週冷飯﹕懷舊

原刊登於00年5月1日:

最近家中大收拾和整理舊物﹐因為筆者喜歡懷舊﹐所以把舊書舊雜誌翻閱得津津有味﹐原來我早己和雜誌結下不解緣﹗其中不少是自八十年代開始收集﹐本本都有感情﹐本本都捨不得丟掉(最後迫不得已唯有只留下每個年代一些有代表性的舊書舊雜誌)

我以往買的雜誌主要關於電腦科技﹑影視娛樂以及音樂。電腦雜誌方面﹐我自83年起開始閱讀I.E.電腦週刊﹑微型電腦專刊﹑現代電子﹑香港電子等等 ﹐今天重讀﹐其中不少內容都令筆者感概良多﹐包括今天大放異彩的UNIX﹐袋裝電腦(今天Palmtop Computer的前身)﹐85年John Sculley重組Apple公司和Steve Jobs被擠出局﹐雷聲大雨點小的日本第五代人工智能電腦計劃﹐以及可以列為文物的8"大磁碟的廣告(如果嫌這個不夠懷舊的話﹐請讀關於卡式磁帶機驅動程式一文﹗)

以上提及的所有雜誌現在均已不再存在﹐在雜誌界想圪立不倒實在是一件十分困難的事﹐曾拍過多張具代表性和紀念性照片的《Life》雜誌亦於最近宣布停刊(只搞網上版)﹗不過我相信如果零零誌在十幾年之後還會被大家重讀的話﹐我們一眾主筆必定已心滿意足。

原來《Life》雜誌只是比PC Magazine, AsianWeek及Dr. Dobb's Journal走快幾步﹐它們都在去年停印﹐只出網上版。