Archive for the 'Commentary' Category

The French have always been careful guardians of their long-lived and vibrant culture. But in recent decades, the globalization of communication, commerce, and technology has brought about an influx of unwelcome, widely-used English terms. People look forward to le weekend, and surf le web.

Fed up with the creeping anglicization (is that even an English word?:) of la langue Francais, French linguists at the Academie Francaise - the body responsible for protecting culture through the French language - have come up with equivalents to more than 500 mostly English words for a new language website, being run by the culture ministry’s “General Commission for Terminology”.

Among the offending foreign words being banned from French utterance: WiFi, previously pronounced oui-fee (now acces sans fil a l’internet), e-mail (courriel) and (gasp) podcasting, derived from the very not French iPod (now called diffusion pour baladeur).
The sixty-five page list covers many non-technological terms as well, including words for coach (entraineur) and carry-out/take-out food. A whole page is devoted to the podcasting vocabulary.

It remains to be seen whether these new terms will be widely adopted among the general French population. We are reminded that when a few xenophobic elected officials suggested that Americans reject French foods, cultural icons, and vocabulary earlier this decade, U.S. potato lovers across the country did not rush to call them “freedom fries, ” as was suggested. The shared vocabulary of our increasingly connected world will probably continue to grow — even if some of the terms (supermodel, monetize, long tail) are annoying in any language.

It starting to look like geeking out with new media may be good for your social life.

First, Cosmo revealed that the Apple Store is a great place to meet people “for a fun fling or a long term relationship”:

Most guys are natural gadget lovers, and with sales of iPods and MacBooks skyrocketing, more men than ever are stopping by Apple boutiques. The vibe at the stores is conductive to man meeting too: You can check your email among cuties, take a free workshop on anything from Photoshop to podcasting (a great opportunity to strike up a conversation), or just survey the, ahem, good-looking merchandise.

Yep - the Apple Store is the place to meet those podcasting hotties.

Now, scientists have found that blogging improves your social life:

Researchers James Baker and Professor Susan Moore have written two papers investigating the psychological benefits of blogging, regularly updating personal web pages with information that invites others to comment.

The research, from Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, found after two months of regular blogging, people felt they had better social support and friendship networks than those who did not blog.

Bloggers reported a greater sense of belonging to a group of like-minded people and feeling more confident they could rely on others for help.

All respondents, whether or not they blogged, reported feeling less anxious, depressed and stressed after two months of online social networking.

What do you think? Can blogging and podcasting improve your social life? (more…)

Apple yesterday released the delayed “Take Two” interface for Apple TV. We’ve gone through the update process and tested it out, and here’s our thoughts on the new functionality and interface, with an emphasis on social media.

The update process is painless. Navigate to Settings and choose Update Software, and Apple TV will take care of the rest. The total time for the update, including the download and install was around twenty minutes.

The Interface

The interface, as shown above, has been streamlined, and it is easy to get around. The main categories appear in the left column, and then options or categories appear in the right column.

There are six main categories:

• Movies
• TV Shows
• Music
• Podcasts
• Photos
• YouTube

In addition, a Settings option lets you configure your Apple TV.

Three of the categories focus on buying or renting content from the Apple Store: Movies, TV Shows & Music. The remaining three are focused on your media or social media: Podcasts, Photos & YouTube.

Let’s take a look at each of these options. (more…)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and People For the American Way are spearheading the fight against amnesty for telecommunications companies which have illegally spied on Americans over the past six years. They’re asking for bloggers & podcasters to speak out against the proposed immunity legislation.

According to the “Stop The Spying” initiative,

The Bush administration has, [over the past six years,] authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct dragnet surveillance on our domestic telecommunications networks,…with no warrants or other meaningful oversight.

…[C]ongressional leadership handed the president even more authority to violate your rights by passing the so-called “Protect America Act” in August 2007. Now the Administration wants to make its power grab permanent and prevent any court from stopping the illegal spying. Proposed immunity legislation could let telephone companies off the hook for their role in the program and block lawsuits like EFF’s case against AT&T.

A majority of likely voters reject immunity for the phone companies, and Congress cannot be allowed to cave. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has promised to retool the new spying law, but he appears to be willing to ignore your rights once again and allow warrantless domestic spying to continue.

Stop The Spying asks that you hand-write a message decrying the telecom amnesty legislation, photograph yourself holding the message, and send your photo to StopTheSpying.org.

If video is your preferred medium, the People for the American Way want your video creations.

Stop The Spying also urges citizens to voice their opposition to this proposed legislation by contacting their lawmakers, by posting on Slashdot, Reddit, Digging related stories, and otherwise spreading the word.

By now, you’ve probably seen one of the live blogs of Steve Job’s Macworld Keynote.

You’ve probably also had a chance to read about Steve Jobs’ announcements, includin:

• the new Macbook Air;
• the Time Capsule wireless backup device;
• updates to the iPod touch;
• iTunes movie rentals;
• the new Apple TV software;
• the free iPhone updates; and
• DVDs coming with an iTunes Digital Copy.

It was an solid keynote, with lots of meaty announcements, but no huge surprises and no “one more thing”.

If you read between the lines of Apple’s announcements, though, there is one more thing hidden in Jobs’ keynote: Apple is killing off the DVD.

Four Ways Apple Is Killing Off The DVD

DVDs are dead. Steve Jobs didn’t come out and announce this, but he might as well have - four of today’s introductions pointed to the demise of the DVD as we know it:

1. The MacBook Air gets rid of the internal DVD player. Like Jobs decision to kill off the floppy with the iMac, getting rid of the DVD player is a sign that Jobs sees now sees wireless networks and the Internet as the ways to move bytes around. Apple will offer an external DVD player, but its an option. Apple expects you to buy your movies digitally and get your software wirelessly.
2. iTunes Movie Rentals promise to bring DVD-quality movies directly to your computer, iPod and television. Apple’s has nailed this by getting the major studios on board, offering fair rental pricing and flexible viewing options and by having a complete system that works. This will put more pressure on the already-struggling DVD-rental industry.
3. The Apple TV update turns what used to be an interesting iTunes peripheral into a digital replacement for Blockbuster and NetFlix. Now you can rent movies from your living room digitally.
4. iTunes Digital Copy - at first glance, this looks an enhancement to DVDs. In reality, it immediately establishes a de facto standard for delivering digital movies for portable media players. Apple is so far ahead of the competition here that it would take years for a competitor to catch up with this. The only way the movie industry will be able to keep iTunes Digital Copy from becoming a proprietary de facto standard is by moving to an open standard for digital movies - exactly the same thing that has happened with the digital music industry. In other words, the movie industry is going to have to kill off the DVD and offer DRM-free movies.

Don’t expect Apple to kill off the DVD overnight. It took Apple a few years to get rid of the floppy drive, and there are still some PCs that come with floppy drives.

Nevertheless, Apple is looking ahead, not back, and the future Steve Jobs envisions doesn’t included DVDs.

At the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates used his last keynote to offer his take on the future, talk about the first “digital decade” and what the future offers. He was joined by Robbie Bach, President of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division, who helped Gates demo his mad Guitar Hero skills.

It’s was a pretty mind-numbingly bad keynote. Here are the bullet points:

• Gates said we’re in the first digital decade, and “the speed with which digital technology has become central to the way we work, learn and play has been amazing.”
• The second digital decade will be even cooler!

Gates offered an update on Microsoft’s latest deals:

• They are partnering with NBC Universal for the first ‚Äúlong-tail‚Äù Olympics. Online viewers will have access to more than 3,000 hours of live and on-demand content so they can watch their favorite athlete or sport, regardless of whether the sport has seven fans or 7 million. NBCOlympics.com will be used as a marketing tool to promote Microsoft Silverlight technology.
• Xbox Live Video is getting ABC and Disney Channel programs and MGM classic movies.
• Xbox 360 is doing great; never mind the unacceptably high failure rate.
• 1.5 million users have joined the Zune Social.
• 100 million copies of Windows Vista have shipped, and they will get cooler between now and 2012.
• Microsoft Mediaroom is now running on 1 million set-top boxes worldwide. DVR Anywhere will let users watch their recorded programs on multiple TVs in the home.

Gates and Bach also discussed Microsoft’s vision for future user interfaces, including Tellme, Microsoft‚Äôs voice-and-visual mobile service that lets you use voice commands.

Last year, Steve Jobs completely stole CES’s thunder by announcing the iPhone. Gates has set the stage for this to happen again.

Let’s hope Jobs can deliver.

Update: We don’t always agree with TechCrunch, but when they say that Gate’s CES Keynote sucked, they’ll get no argument from us. Meanwhile, Gizmodo thinks that Gates looked cooler than Steve Jobs. Or maybe it’s just linkbait talking…..

There’s been a lot of discussion in the blogosphere today about the importance of Twitter.

David Armano, VP of Experience Design with Critical Mass, wonders “Why is Twitter exploding?”, and suggests that it’s rapidly growing because it has created a “conversation ecosystem”.

Forrester Analyst Jeremiah Owyang says that “conversations have shifted to Twitter,” and calls it a next-generation chat room.

If Alexa’s traffic statistics are any indication, though, Twitter isn’t exploding, it’s stagnating. Here’s an Alexa graph of Twitter.com’s reach for the last six months….. (more…)

Compete has published their latest stats for Total Time Spent Online - and they make clear that people are rapidly moving their attention from traditional media to online media. Time spent online is up by nearly 25% since last August.

Here’s how Compete’s Jay Meattle characterizes the trend:

“We are spending more and more time consuming information online. Logically, since time is finite online advertising spend should follow a similar trajectory with marketers allocating their ad budgets in proportion to where people are spending their time.

Needless to say, this is a time of considerable opportunity for online media properties and online marketers!”

Here are the details:

(more…)

A funny thing happened today. Pretty much everyone that’s been roasting NBC for yanking their content off of YouTube and iTunes is eating their words, now that they’ve seen Hulu, NBC’s new video site:

• “I was busy sharpening up the knives at BoomTown HQ to prepare for the debut of Hulu this week,” admits Kara Swisher at All Things Digital. Now that she’s actually seen the site, she’s impressed, saying that Hulu “in concept and tone and aims….is off to a good start.”
• “I mocked the service, and its backers, all through the summer,” admits Om Malik. After actually seeing the site, though, Malik says “I am ready to eat crow. And not just any crow, but rotten, six-month-old crow: I have never been more wrong.”
• “In the months following the companies‚Äô initial press release, we gave the joint venture a lot of grief,” notes TechCrunch. After seeing the site, they are “very impressed by the preview of Hulu‚Äôs interface and the bulk of its features.”
• “Hulu….has always been a joke,” according to Salon. After actually taking a look at the site, though, Salon has changed their tune. “Hulu is here, on time! And it’s excellent.”

A lot of people following new media appear to have let their prejudices against NBC, Viacom and other big media firms get the best of them when evaluating traditional media’s response to YouTube. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal has an article today that suggests that iPods and MP3s are ruining pop music.

The idea is that the dynamic compression that has become popular to make music sound louder, combined with audio file compression, which throws away details of the music, have combined to make pop music horrible.

According to the Journal, “because both compressed music and the iPod’s relatively low-quality earbuds have many limitations, music producers fret that they are engineering music to a technical lowest common denominator.” The result, according to the Journal, is music that’s loud and harsh.

“Ten years ago, music was warmer; it was rich and thick, with more tones and more real power,” says L.A. engineer Jack Joseph Puig. “But newer records are more brittle and bright. They have what I call implied power. It’s all done with delays and reverbs and compression to fool your brain.”

The WSJ seems to have forgotten that for half the history of modern pop music, it was engineered to sound good relatively primitive stereos and car radios. Today’s portable media players deliver sound that’s a leap ahead of the AM car radios, transistor radios and Walkmans of the past.

Is It Fergie’s Fault?

While Fergie’s My Humps may be craptaculous, it’s not because of portable media players.¬†

The Wall Street Journal’s argument¬†is one part neo-luddism and one part generational bias. Before they write off today’s pop, they may want to give another listen to past pop wonders, like¬† Judy In Disguise (With Glasses), Hippy, Hippy Shake, Pictures of Matchstick Men¬†or Napoleon Alexander’s They’re Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Ha?