Martin Gordon's Blog

Larry Lessig will be giving his last talk on the topic of "Free Culture" in about an hour. I had the pleasure of seeing Professor Lessig give this talk in September of 2006 as part of the Penn Reading Project and I think the ideas he presents are fascinating and have had a great impact on me. We've come a long way in some areas, such as in the slow death of over-restrictive DRM, but we're still a ways to go in other areas, such as the predatory litigation undertaken by the music and movie industries. As the blog post announcing the talk mentions, Professor Lessig will begin focusing on corruption in Washington, a topic I'm admittedly less interested in.

Technorati Tags: Larry Lessig, copyright, creative commons, DRM, intellectual property, Free Culture

TechCrunch is reporting that Paramount, one of the last major studios on the HD-DVD side, will be announcing that it is switching to Blu-ray. This leaves Universal as the sole studio in the HD-DVD camp. I haven't been keeping up with the details of the format war, but I imagine the PS3 might have had something to do with it. Knowingly or not, people bringing home PlayStation 3's this holiday season were also bringing home Blu-ray players. With a much larger installed base of Blu-ray players, Sony had more leverage in negotiations with the last hold-out studios. I wonder how different things would be if the XBox 360 had HD-DVD built-in instead of as an optional add-on, given that it had a year (and effectively a two-year) head start.

I personally wouldn't go out and buy a PS3 just for Blu-ray support, and in fact was thinking about buying an XBox 360 because I like more of the games and because of the XBox Live (and Arcade) experience. That said, I wouldn't go out and buy any other Blu-ray player either. I doubt I would buy any Blu-ray movies since Netflix has been working wonders for me and on top of that, I would favor digital distribution over physical distribution at this point. I think many others do too, which makes me wonder if this was a war worth fighting over.

Technorati Tags: Sony, Blu-ray, HD-DVD, PlayStation 3, XBox 360, digital, high-definition, movie studios

Dear Netflix,

If you are wondering why your stock plummeted 12% today and is down another 4% in after-hours trading, it's because you suck. It all started out fairly well, when I signed up for the two free weeks and got my first two movies two days after I signed up. I also watched a fairly entertaining movie on demand from your site yesterday. I spent an hour or so building up my queue, rating movies and looking at your recommendations. I liked you so much that I even upped my plan to 3-at-a-time over the 2 I originally signed up for.

I returned those first two movies last Wednesday night and you got them on Friday. You promised me three movies on Saturday and I only got one of them. I'm still waiting on the other two. I went to file a shipping problem (or at least skim the procedure) before leaving work this evening around 7:30. You were down but you told me you'll be back by 8:45 (Eastern). You weren't. I kept checking back periodically and now you tell me you won't be back until 5. What have you been doing all this time? I hope it's not something you'll regret in the morning.

I was going to stick with you after the two-week trial was up, but now I'm considering leaving you for bluer pastures. Maybe they'll treat me better than you have so far. It was fun while it lasted, but if you don't get it together soon, you'll leave me no choice. Believe me, it hurts me more than it hurts you.

Sincerely,
Martin

UPDATE:Earlier this morning it said it would be up by noon, now it's saying 2 PM. Just tell us you're down without an ETA instead of setting false expectations.

Technorati Tags: Netflix, Blockbuster, DVD, rental, outage

Some from last week:

A map of soda/pop/coke popularity by county. Some interesting little pockets of "soda" in the mid-West and I didn't know most of Florida preferred Coke, but with only 120k respondents across the U.S., maybe it's not too accurate.

A McDonald's billboard features a sundial. Too bad it's McDonald's because the ad is pretty cool. Total calories consumed before 1pm according to the ad: over 3000.

Pacman for Excel. For some reason I have had this page open for a few days and have yet to download it. Weird.

The Wiimote retail box unveiled. Nintendo's Apple-like design approach has extended to the Wiimote box, which looks a lot like the new iPod nano enclosure.

Interesting coincidences while watching the 6 Star Wars movies simultaneously. Some are a bit of stretch and I doubt that any of them were planned.

Technorati Tags: soda, pop, coke, culture, dialect, McDonald's, billboard, sundial, Pacman, Excel, VBA, Nintendo, Wii, Wiimote, Apple, iPod nano, Star Wars, movies

I was going to do a regular "report the facts" post on Apple's announcements today but I was busy with submitting resumes and didn't have a chance to. So I'll just post my thoughts on the whole thing.

The 5.5G iPods are a solid upgrade, but Apple didn't really show much improvement for a the year span between the 5G announcement and their successors. Apple did let us lowly 5G owners have downloadable games (but only because they can charge $5 a pop for them) and the long overdue gapless playback, but would it really have hurt much to give us the search feature?

The new nanos look very nice and bring back a lot of memories from when the minis ruled the world. It's a great tribute to the colorful ones that'll be a whole lot less scratch-prone than the 1G nanos. With both the 8GB nano and 30GB iPod sitting at $249, it's makes the nano vs video decision a whole lot tougher. It is an excellent hedge move by Apple in that they are now that much more indifferent as to the sale of a nano vs a full-size iPod (differing margins notwithstanding).

By far the most revolutionary update is the shuffle. No longer is the iPod relegated to the pocket or an awkward armband. The combination of the clip and weight loss make it possible to carry the iPod shuffle, literally anywhere. You can carry 240 songs with you and not even notice. It's pretty amazing.

iTunes 7 saw a whole lot of improvements that will have varying effects on people's enjoyment of their media. The reorganization and segregation of different parts of the Source list make things easier to find, and the new-fangled UI theme is pretty and refined, but consistency sticklers will rag on Apple for introducing Yet Another UI Scheme™. The blue note in the icon pays tribute to iTunes 2, which also featured a blue icon. iTunes 3 had a purple icon and iTunes 4-6 had a green icon.

The iTV is interesting, and is essentially an Airport Express for video. The shots of the "enhanced" Front Row look great, but I'm wondering how well even the new 640×480 videos will look on HDTV (this also makes me wonder whether or not the 320×240 versions will get free upgrades to 640×480).

It really looks like Apple is setting up to take over the living room like they took over our ear canals. My only concern is that the whole iTV messes with my thoughts on Apple's future and makes me really wonder what kind of innovation they'll push forth on the desktop hardware side now that the Intel transition is over.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPod, iPod video, iPod nano, iPod shuffle, iTunes, iTunes Store, iTV, Front Row, hardware, music, video, movies

Apple's "It's Showtime!" event starts in less than three hours. The iTunes Music Store is already down in anticipation, but the online Apple Store is still a go.

I'll be in class (but with my MacBook) during the event. As always, however, MacRumors or Engadget are the best places to go for coverage in this post-"live stream" world that we live in.

Here's a small recap of what's expected to be announced:

• iTunes Movie Store, debuting with Disney movies going for $9.99-$14.99.
• iTunes 7, which will add support for the Movie Store (perhaps as a seperate item in the source menu) and will hopefully improve the video playback features.
• iPod nano with new aluminum enclosure that does better against scratches. Capacities somewhere in the 4-8GB range.
• iPod capacity upgrades. A true "video iPod" with touch screen scroll wheel is possible, but unlikely

That is what is >90% guaranteed to be announced. Any surprise announcements are anyone's guess - we've already seen fake shots of a MacTower (smaller version of the Mac Pro), the wide/touch-screen iPod video, and even a USB -> TV device named TubePort.

Technorati Tags: Apple, It's Showtime!, special event, iTunes, iTunes Music Store, MacRumors, Engadget

Larry Lessig spoke at Penn yesterday as part of the Penn Reading Project. His book, Free Culture, was given to all freshmen who were split up into discussion groups after Lessig's presentation. Penn Law professor Polk Wagner presented an opposing side. I was excited to see the famed Lessig presentation method in person and I hope Professor Lessig makes the presentation (or at least the links to the videos he showed) available.

I've got some pictures up on Flickr and here's a direct link to the audio.

This audio work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Technorati Tags: Larry Lessig, Lessig, Creative Commons, copyright, law, regulation, Free Culture, remix, Penn Reading Project, Penn, UPenn, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Here's a pair of links to tradition media (gasp!) prince VH1's Best Week Ever Blog.

The first video is a take on the current Apple "Get a Mac"
ad campaign, featuring a hip guy as a Mac and a nerdy guy as a PC. The second video is a take on Adam Sandler's movie career summed up in just a matter of minutes.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Get a Mac, PC, spoof, parody, commercials, trailers, Adam Sandler, movies, VH1, Best Week Ever, blog, old media, traditional media, television

Here is a video of part of Kevin Smith's talk two nights ago at Irvine Auditorium here at Penn. There's a lot of bad words in it, so keep it away from sensitive ears.

The file is around 30mb, so download it if you can. It should work on iPods with video, but I haven't tried it yet on mine.

Direct link to file.

Technorati Tags: Kevin Smith, Silent Bob, Clerks, Clerks II, Chasing Amy, View Askew, Q&A, Penn, University of Pennsylvania, UPenn, speech, humor, video, explicit

Just got back from watching Kevin Smith (aka Silent Bob) give a 4 hour Q&A session here at Penn. I captured some audio that is hopefully decent quality (on my phone) and some video of a story he told.

He also showed a cool clip from Clerks II (which he was pretty adamant about no one recording), which I imagine has never before been seen. The clip features a small clash between Lord of the Rings fans and a Star Wars fan in the restaurant and another scene where Jay starts dancing in the drive-thru.

I'll try and get the stuff up tomorrow. I wish I could have captured more as he had some great stories to tell (all very Not Safe For Work, however).

Technorati Tags: Kevin Smith, Silent Bob, Clerks, Clerks II, Chasing Amy, View Askew, Q&A, Penn, University of Pennsylvania, UPenn, speech, humor, audio, video