Mobile Phone Wish List

or What I Want In A Mobile Phone

• touch screen or QWERTY keyboard
• browser
• e-mail client
  
• hi speed 3G connection
• WiFi
• Instant Messaging & SMS
  
• GPS with spoken directions
• decent camera
• fits in my pocket

So the current version of the iPhone doesn't cut it for me. The Nokia N95 looks to have everything but the keyboard which will make browsing/e-mail an issue. What's a guy to do?

They're Back

Like Mr. Arnie in Terminator, our favorite RIAA scourges have returned, apparently unbowed! Like a house cat at night, who knows where they've been, but it's nice to see them on the proverbial kitchen window ledge in the morning anyway.

UPDATE - It seems as if the original parent operation allofmp3.com may have at least scored a temporary victory with Visa.

Texas or TX?

Hey Google Adsense, we were annexed in 1845!

Speedee Update

And the magic number is 18 lbs -EDIT, 17lbs, forgot I had the tool bag attached! Not bad for a Columbus SL, fully lugged frameset. Hmm, wonder what my Team Fuji aluminum would come in at as a single? Sub 14 lbs?

Added the Cambridge Cycles bullhorns & BMX brake lever. Waved goodbye to the rear brake and bolted on some $4.99 very-used SPD pedals. Now I can wear my ultra-comfortable Shimano MTB shoes. Final touch was some Cinelli cork bar tape and away I go.

Got about 10 miles on the finished product Sunday (it was mid-afternoon hot), fun = a 10 plus.

Currently On The Turntable

What's On Your iPod?

Cornelius - Point: Keigo Oyamada the man behind the Cornelius name weaves a complex web of disparate musical signatures. File under Eclectic and watch out for the unexpected.

Ellen Allien - Fabric 34: German musician, producer & DJ with the misspelled last name weaves a great mix of techno. Clocking in at well over 60 minutes it's a great album to get lost inside.

Shpongle - Tales of the Inexcusable : UK based Psych-Ambient. Combining middle eastern instrumentation, dub reggae, contemporary trance and flute Shpongle are hard to pigeonhole but not hard to listen to.

Single Speed Heaven...

...may be Boston, MA (at least around the MIT campus) where I saw a whole mess of single speeders this weekend. I wandered up to Cambridge Bicycle, apparently the high altar of One Speed Cycling. Great, grease on the floor store, fully stocked with both fixed track bikes and freewheel single road bikes. Found my bullhorn bars and a lightweight brake lever (should amuse TSA for awhile) so as soon as time permits it's on to phase 2. Stay Tuned.

Single Speed 1st Ride

Thanks to a break in the rain I got my first real ride on the single speed conversion. Had to make a few mechanical adjustments on the way but the overall impression is fun-fun-fun! Rode with a friend on his delicious, saved from the trash, old school Trek/Campy Nuovo Record. I kept up just fine although obviously if he'd dropped to the bottom cog on the downhills I'd have been dust in the wind. I've got a few chain line grumblings to look at and I'm still in the market for some bullhorn bars but otherwise this is shaping up to be a great thing.

Thanks AT&T (or whoever you are today)

Sitting at DCA waiting on a connection, saw the AT&T Hot Spot and remembered reading that premium home customers could now log on for free. Tried it & wow, it actually works! I hear T-Mobile may soon be offering similar to their phone customers so the traveler's best option would be to keep their home account but switch their mobile service? Probably not what AT&T had in mind though.

Back To Our Regular Programming

Here are some more criminals to hunt down -

mp3Sale
LegalSounds
mp3Sugar
mp3.ua
Musicmp3
mp3Ninja
JustMusicStore
mp3Search
SoundLike
mp3Stor
mp3 Love-X (not porn)
3mp3
mp3Hotfly

Thanks to HubPages for some info.


Hmm, looks like a flood to me?

And Now For Somthing Completely Different

Inspired by a long wish to build a single speed bike & goaded into action by an article in MakeZine I finally got around to this. My old Oschner/Cinelli Columbus SL frameset with a Mavic bottom bracket, Dura-Ace 42 chain ring and a Shimano freewheel with only the 17 cog remaining (about 2.4:1). I used spacers to fill out the rest of the hub (thanks to Richardson Bike Mart for the inspiration) and removed all signs of gear shifting. Aligning the chain & getting the tension was surprisingly easy as the framset has fairly deep Campagnolo dropouts.

Maybe I should have called this post "How To Make A Really Lightweight Bike" as the first thing that struck me was the lack of heft, even for an SL frame. I imagine with a lightweight aluminum donor a sub 14lb bike could be easily done. Next to come on this one is some home-made (read cut down) bullhorn bars & a single front brake with a BMX lever.

So what's it like to ride? Well if it stopped raining for 5 minutes I could tell you! Actually first impressions are very good, it accelerates extremely well and the lack of weight really allows the aggressive frame to shine through. I found I topped out at around 22 mph which is totally acceptable. In all, a highly recommended project for anyone with a spare bike, some tools (the only specialty item is the $8 freewheel wrench), some time & about $20 to spend.

Are they moving again or have the authorities caught up with the International Men of Mystery at mp3sparks.com (formally allofmp3.com)? A check today referred me back to the OpenDNS site which perhaps isn't surprising considering the amount of blog activity generated by Sparks last week.

Just because they've caught these criminals doesn't mean the public should not remain vigilant. There are others out there including GoMusic.ru and MP3Fiesta all happy to relieve you of your hard earned money in exchange for dubious music.

Remain firm fellow citizens, if we all keep downloading expensive, low bit-rate, DRM encoded music we can beat these cyber-terrorists and their little dogs too!

Sennheiser Kudos

I run with my iPod (imagine that) and a pair of Sennheiser PMX-70 headphones, these are really great sounding units & fit snugly even under the most strenuous workout conditions.

However, recently I caught the headphone cable on a door handle and ripped the connector clean off the end. Bummed, I went to Sennheiser's website to see about repairing them. There I found a very intuitive & simple web based RA system which even allows you to print a bar coded address label to their service center in CT. I clearly noted on the return form that this was not a warranty item since the damage was caused by my own carelessness and I was happy to pay for the repairs.

Here the story gets better. Having put the damaged pieces in an envelope I asked one of my teens to stop by the post office and mail them out for me. With typical teenager attention to detail, she put them in mailbox at the house where they were promptly picked up with no postage attached! At that point I figured I'd never see them again.

Two days later I get an e-mail from Sennheiser saying they had received my headphones and were processing them for repair. Two more days passed and I got an e-mail saying they had shipped out. Within five days I had a brand new pair of headphones at my door!

So in all, Sennheiser paid for 2 way shipping and a new pair of headphones. In these days of horrendous customer service stories I think they deserve a commendation & serious consideration by anyone looking for excellent audio products.

Let's Catch The Real Pirates

Hey RIAA, time to sharpen your legal pencils again! Hot on the heels of the First Family's admitting to creating an illegal mix CD comes another confession, this time from the pages of People Magazine. There, American Idol star Fantasia Barrino freely admits to cherishing a mix CD given to her by "a friend."

A quote from the RIAA's website -

Do The Crime, Do The Time
If you do not have legal permission, and you go ahead and copy or distribute copyrighted music anyway, you can be prosecuted in criminal court and/or sued for damages in civil court.

• Criminal penalties for first-time offenders can be as high as five years in prison and $250,000 in fines.
  
• Civil penalties can run into many thousands of dollars in damages and legal fees. The minimum penalty is $750 per song.

Seems like these folks are in a whole heap of trouble or is that only reserved for students, grandparents, disabled mothers, pre-teens and all the other riff-raff, pirating trouble makers?

Record Industry Decline - The Rest Of The Story

Rolling Stone has a nice piece on the rapid decline of the record industry. They put the blame on the label's early 2000's decision not to embrace Napster. Whilst I agree this is a major factor I think the grave plot for the industry was prepared much earlier than that.

1) They killed off the 7" single - although not known for it's musical quality the 45 rpm single was a great introduction to the concept of purchasing music. Highly portable and pocket money priced they introduced younger consumers to the concept of buying records regularly. The replacements were either too clumsy (cassette singles) or too expensive (CD singles). Digital downloads have reintroduced the concept a decade too late.
2) They forced customers into expensive CD's - rather than letting the market slowly switch over, the labels abandoned the vinyl album (priced at around $6.99) and forced them to purchase CDs at double the price. Music buying became a more risky proposition, a $7 mistake is easier to stomach than a $17 one. After a great run of reselling customers music they already owned the simple economics of price elasticity kicked in.
3) They fought the internet - as use of the internet exploded the labels did everything in their power to fight it. It's not just Napster, there were hundreds of missed opportunities. As their core demographic became increasingly wired the record companies headed out on a suicide mission.
4) The Product Sucked - the labels forgot about investing in talent long term and scrambled all over each other to release huge numbers of poorly conceived, one hit artists and albums. The result was mass consumer confusion and turn-off.
5) They Ignored Profitable Market Sectors - deciding to focus purely on the MTV demographic (which changes every 5 years) the labels forgot all about selling to a maturer audience, even though these are the people with the most disposable income and loyalty to acts.
6) They Allowed Radio To Get Away With It - commercial radio is all but dead, killed by corporate greed and homogenization. Rather than forcing radio to open up their play lists and expose consumers to new music the labels colluded with the folly, narrowing the selection further.
7) Now They're Killing Internet Radio - not having learned any lessons, the labels are forcing usurious (and back dated) fees for internet radio stations. Like Napster in reverse, this ploy seems to be aimed at forcing the legal stations out and paving the way for an underground community.
8) They Sued Their Best Customers - a recent internet poll lauded the RIAA as the worst company in America (admittedly they're a trade association), true or not it's a public relations nightmare. Abusing the legal system and using the courts to shore up their business model, the labels have created a "screw-them" mentality amongst consumers. Piracy is relished as a way of getting back at the industry and a fake Prada & iPod full of P2P music is a badge of honor amongst young consumers.

The record industry has one, last chance. It's going to require a complete realignment of their business models & the alienation of some huge customers (Target, Best Buy, Wal-Mart). Much creativity and imagination are going to be needed but luckily for them the research has already been done and customers numbering millions have shown their willingness to embrace the new distribution model. It looks like this.

OK, sorry, it looks like this.

Music to Travel by...

Or run by! No secret, I'm a big fan of progressive electronic music, get some for yourself right here (no DRM, 320kbs mp3, what's not to like).

Pirated Goods - A Short History Lesson

This gentlemen (name of William Heath) and his smuggling cohorts & predecessors plyed the English south coast from the 1300's until the mid-Victorian age. As the English Crown levied ever higher import duties on wools & luxury goods in an attempt to control & profit from all trade, our smuggler friend here found himself increasingly popular. And rather than being seen as a scourge to polite society, William was actually lauded as it's supporter. Fine ladies would boast of their smuggling connections as they served tea over lace cloths. In fact, it became increasingly difficult for the Revenue Men (government officials charged with catching smugglers) to get justice in the local courts because the magistrates were enjoying the benefits of smuggling themselves. Finally, after hundreds of years of battles, both physical & legal, the English dropped the tariffs and put William out of business.

It's all Economics 101. You have something I want but the price is high or the supply is low. At a certain point it becomes profitable for a 3rd party to supply me with the same goods either at a lower price or higher supply. For him, the potential profits outweigh the risks (the drop in William's case). Of course, it couldn't happen today, could it?

Oh - Those Good Old Days

My cassette picture reminded me of the this one. The golden early 80's where the record labels predicted the death of music for the first time as millions of teenagers grabbed their cassette recorders & copied each other's albums with impunity. Even the mighty Quincy Jones got into the fray, standing before a judiciary committee and claiming that without protective legislation the days of the 5 million plus selling album were over (bad news Quince, your Thriller album, released later that year went on to sell over 25M in the US alone). He even supported the insertion of an audio notch at 3KHz ("that no one could hear") into all recordings which would disable the record feature on cassette decks.

Of course the music industry didn't die. In fact, following MTV & the CD introduction, they went on to make more profits then ever before. But the rhetoric was not so surprisingly similar to what we hear today about file sharing, downloading, bit torrents and broadcast flags. "Our business model isn't working so we need regulators to step in and save it."

Immigration?

I've been up on this soap box before and taken more than my fair share of jabs over my stance on immigration. I think this excellent piece says much about how I feel on the subject. I picked this frame for the header because what surprises me most is that some of the most vehemently anti-immigration voices I hear are Catholics! Yet it was often traditional Catholic immigrants (particularly the Irish and Polish) who bore the most hatred when coming to the US.

The current wave of Hispanic immigration is predominantly Catholic yet so many of my faith are opposed to their entry, basing their prejudices on the flimsiest of racist rhetoric and media hysteria. Our church's teachings are pretty clear on the subject of the treatment of fellow human beings irrespective of immigration status. Jesus' teachings are even clearer.

DRM-Free Online Music

That would be legal, downloadable music with no pesky DRM encoding, some of it for no-$ free too. Since I've had it with DRM and the RIAA and am trying to avoid iTunes Music Store wherever possible I thought I'd spread the word.

1) Mercedes Benz Mixedtape - believe or not the venerable German automaker publishes a monthly mix of around 15 songs from new and established artists. Leans on the mellow eclectic Euro-music side but the download includes artwork and artist info. If I didn't already own a BMW I'd be tempted towards Stuttgart by their musical tastes alone. Look for a complimentary podcast too.
2) Beatport - primarily a source for DJs but open to all, Beatport has a web interface to beat all and a choice of downloads in high quality MP3 or uncompressed WAV files. Per song prices range from $1.49 to about $2.99 but their is always a ton of free tracks & mixes available to registered (registration is free) users. A most for the electronic dance & trance fan, they also have a somewhat regular podcast.
3) e-music - offers independent releases in every genre imaginable for a slightly confusing monthly subscription system (like any good drug deal, the first few are free). However, unlike other subscription rip-offs, the songs you download are in MP3 format & yours to keep for eternity. What makes this site great is the reviews and write ups for almost every artist listed. The preview system is a little clunky (I open the links in Quicktime) and leaves lint all over the desktop.
4) Techtronic Sounds - great & regualr podcast in the dance/trance/techno genres. Great mixes, not much else to get in the way of the music.

The Wrong Baggies!

I got my toiletries unceremoniously dumped by the 'droids at TSA in Orlando this weekend. I had carefully packed them all into a Ziploc bag as required but it turned out that the bag was the wrong size so it was bye bye handcream, toothpaste & shaving lotion. I'm so glad the TSA are on top of this kind of thing, imagine a whole traveling nation pulling out any kind of sealable baggie they fancied for the toiletries! It makes me shudder to think what an Enemy Combatant could do with a 2 quart freezer pack.

In all seriousness, doesn't this kind of moronic behavior invite ridicule of the whole TSA system? They have already become the joke butts of the late night talks & even Garrison Keillor's Prarie Home Companion took a dig at them this weekend. As Mr. Bumble said, "if that sir is the law, then the law is an ass."