Apple Fanboys Upset, Need to Wait 4 Months To Part With Cash

Recently Apple announced that it was delaying the release of Leopard the upcoming release of its popular OS X until October. Apple placed the blame on borrowing many talented members of its staff to work on the iPhone, which comes out in June. After Apple announced the delay the Apple fanatics lit up message boards across the internet, expressing their vehement hatred for this delay and proclaiming their exodus to Vista, all over a %#$#@! cell phone.

Here is where it gets good, these Apple addicts are pissed off but what will they do about it? If history proves to repeat itself they will bitch and moan and then part with their cash in October. The diehard amongst them do not seem to understand that idle threats of leaving for Vista are laughable. Seriously your going to ditch OS X for Vista rather than wait 4 months?! If so send me your old Apple. The only way to make Apple hear and understand is to stop purchasing their products.

I think bynkii from the Macworld forum’s sums it it up best, “Dear Lord, they delayed an OS, they didn’t stab your dog.” Lets all pretend Apple never gave a release date and get back to our regularly scheduled programs, because we all know this isn’t going to make anyone switch to Vista or not tune in to Job’s next keynote for “One more thing!”.

UPDATE:

Engadget clues us in on iPhone to Mac Connectivity via a patent filing.

Apple engineers explain how a mysterious “mobile phone” could be used to control your Mac (and specific applications like iTunes) via built-in Bluetooth, and the wording even mentions specific software that would be tailored to the Mac and handset in order to make it all happen. More specifically, consumers could “use the directional controls on the mobile phone to change listing volume, skip forward and backward, play / pause, etc.,”

Double Wires: Addiction Squared

If you have some time to kill then check out Double Wires, an addicting flash game at Gamefudge.

Seriously…play this.

Guitar Hero 2 Downloadable Content Hits Live

Major Nelson just announced 3 song packs for Guitar Hero 2, each containing 3 songs and running 500 MS Points or $6.25 per pack. Breaking this down even further the price per song is $2.08. So for content already produced and digitally distributed you are paying out the nose. I understand the whole if you don’t like the price don’t pay it, but I really wish the message would get across already. If I could purchase songs individually the price might not be so bad, or if I could choose any 3 songs of the 9 for 400-500 points I would be happier, right now as it sits I really want 1 song from each pack, so unless my wife decides we need the Exies song, we’ll pass.

The Content via Major Nelson

Name: Guitar Hero Track Pack 1
Price: 500 Points
Availability: Not available in Asia
Dash Details: Bark at the Moon as made famous by Ozzy Osbourne, Hey You as made famous by The Exies, Ace of Spades as made famous by Motorhead, For all song credits please visit www.redoctane.com.

Name: Guitar Hero Track Pack 2
Price: 500 Points
Availability: Not available in Asia
Dash Details: Killer Queen as made famous by Queen, Take it Off as made famous by The Donnas, Frankenstein as made famous by The Edgar Winter Group, For all song credits please visit www.redoctane.com.

Name: Guitar Hero Track Pack 3
Price: 500 Points
Availability: Not available in Asia
Dash Details: Higher Ground as made famous by Red Hot Chili Peppers, Infected as made famous by Bad Religon, Stellar as made famous by Incubus, For all song credits please visit www.redoctane.com.

The general consensus on Major Nelson’s blog is that the price is too high especially for content already included in a previous version, ie little work required to get it going on the 360. Red Octane is also being compared to EA who is known for gouging like no other.

I personally was very excited about the downloadable content for Guitar Hero on teh 360 but not at these prices and not at this distribution model. I’ll stick with the original content and set up Frets on Fire for my additional song strumming needs.  Frets is a free Guitar Hero clone which works with some mapping of the 360 explorer guitar!  The FoF community also has put together songs and song packs which are available for free.

What’s Wrong With Retailers: E-book edition

As part of my ongoing process of telling the world what retailers do wrong and in an attempt to set the market and retailers on my train of thought I am now tackling e-books. There are several issues I want to cover relating to the current state of ebooks.

Currently in order to read all of the ebooks I want to I need to keep a veritable arsenal of programs on my Pocket PC. At any given time I will have 4-5 different programs installed each accessing its own proprietary ebook format. God forbid the ebook is in a pdf format, which works horribly for ebooks on a PPC. One of two things needs to happen; publishers and authors need to all get together and use an open standard format, or they need to release their ebook in a multitude of formats. If authors who are providing content follow the example of Cory Doctorow, who distributes ebooks in 4 formats and allows fans to convert the novel into any format so long as,

“If you are converting to a format that has some kind of use-restriction options (i.e., no-print, no-copy, etc), these must be switched off”

This gets around the problem of needing 5 different readers on my pocket PC but it is not widely practiced.

The next problem I have with the current state of the ebooks is that many titles are often not released as an ebook, and a good number of titles which are released are often delayed significantly before their digital debut.

When the books are finally released as an ebook the price is often the same as a hardcover new release. This is problematic because the costs and overhead associated with an ebook should be much lower than the hardcover. This is similar to the ability of online music services to offer downloads cheaper than a physical verison on a CD. The lower overhead is relative to how many online stores can sell a product at a lower price than a brick and mortor store.

My Issues with Ebooks:

• Delayed Releases
• Pricing
  • Ebook distribution and overhead should be MINIMAL
• The notion that pirates will steal your book and leave you penniless,
  • DRM will protect your ebook to an extent but an ebook pirate isn’t the same person who would buy your book anyway!
• Many people only read ebooks, so offer them already!

If the marketplace demands a product or a format then give it to them, especially if the overhead is negligible. The few people who may pirate your material is so negligible in the overall scheme that it should not keep publishers and authors from releasing their works in a digital form. I have read exactly 4 hard cover books for pleasure in the past 2 years. I have read at least 20 full length ebooks in the same amount of time. Some of these I actually paid the full hardcover price to gain in a digital form (though I only paid full hardcover price in conjunction with a Fictionwise.com rebate program).

Halo 3 Beta Release Date Speculation

The Halo 3 beta has a release date of “Spring 07″ but Bungie has yet to nail down a specific date.  The Xbox 360 Elite in limited edition black will be released on April 29th 2007.  This would be an excellent final in to the Halo 3 beta test.  If Microsoft were to put beta invites in the first shipment of Elites and launch the beta on April 29th, the buzz would be big and the timing should fit in well with the Spring Dashboard Update and add to the hype!

Any thoughts?

Movie Theatre Etiquette

Last nite we went to see Blades of Glory at the local theatre.  The movie was great, hilarious and much better than expected.  I wanted to bring to your attention a bit of movie theater etiquette.

If you walk into a movie theater which is not near full, in fact almost empty, etiquette states that you should not sit directly in front of or behind a group of people!  It is as simple as that, you can sit to the sides of the group or have a little overlap but if you are a noisy group of teenagers who can’t sit through a movie without texting, sit somewhere else.

I Lowered my Citicard APR and So Can You

Well, since my knee surgery and the associated expenses are more than we have in savings we will need to put them on a credit card while taking several steps to pay them down quickly.

My first step was to call Citi to get a lower rate. It took 3 calls before I reached Darnell who was able to transfer me to Amber an “Account Specialist”.

I had explained to Darnell that I had been a Citi customer in good standing and had a credit score in the high 700’s and that I would liek a lower APR even for a short period of time. On the previous calls I had been told that 13.74% was the lowest they could go on my account. Miraculously the account specialist was able to offer me 7.99% for 9 months.

Granted carrying any debt on a credit card is less than awesome, but sometimes expenses happen, in this case an unexpected knee surgery and a high deductible.  The plan is to be out of CC debt by the end of this promo period!

Cutting Edge Technology in Higher Education

This paper will address two different technologies which when applied correctly in any place of higher education could result in a better experience for the students as well as an improved efficiency for the administration of a institute of higher education.  The first technology which could provide a radically better experience for students is RFID or radio frequency identification tags, which could replace the plethora of IDs, cards and keys which universities currently unload on incoming first year students.  The second piece of technology has already proven itself useful in numerous areas and we can expect it to be used in teaching and administrating in higher education in the near future.  The use of wikis have become a part of everyday life for many people who turn to Wikipedia on a daily or weekly basis to find out anything from how long it takes an eyelash to grow back to Mark Twain’s real name.  The software which powers Wikipedia is called a wiki and it is an easily edited web document, making it the perfect candidate for a policies and procedures manual.  This ever changing representation of the day to day functions of a department or job title reflects the current position much better than a static three ring binder tucked away in a bookshelf does.

In order to convey the improvements RFID technology will bring to the life of students I have created a short video, which showcases life at Bluffton University after I get my RIFD chip.  See it Below.

 

The benefits to students will also provide additional efficiency to college administration.  By consolidating keys, ID cards and network logins to one RFID tag the administration time and energy will be cut down enabling the university to better serve students.  The tracking ability of RFID tags will enable the university to track traffic patterns on campus to determine popular areas and plan accordingly for campus utilization and expansion.  RFID technology has already been used to save time by taking attendance in California, though it was cancelled due to privacy concerns (Greenfield, 2006 p. 56).   In order to allay some of these concerns, Bluffton University would provide students the ability to turn on and off certain features which would interfere with privacy as well as anonomizing usage statistics to further protect the privacy of it’s students.  Finally the ease of use and cutting edge technology could draw more students to Bluffton University (pg 56).

Another piece of technology which Bluffton University and higher education institutes could put to good use is a piece of software called a wiki.  A wiki can easily replace the out of date policies and procedures manual of the organization as well as providing a way for departments and positions to track how reports are run and on what schedule certain tasks need completed.  At Bluffton University I have started a wiki for the advancement services department which will be tracking how I do my job so that I can better track who requires what reports at what times.  The wiki will also account for special handling instructions and tracking which had previously been relegated to the back of employee minds and worn sticky notes.  Wikis can be easy to use and many free services exist which are easy to start and roll out for even the most technophobic employee amongst us.  The many benefits of this dynamic format clearly showcase the need for organizations to roll out wikis in day to day business and as a policies and procedures manual for the organization with certain users who have the ability to edit it.

These new technologies can improve the efficiency of the university and save money as well.  These savings and enhanced experiences will allow Bluffton University to remain competitive in the experience it offers students and the price of education.  As Bluffton University has made classroom technology part of the student experience, RFID and wikis are the next step in providing a revolutionary and affordable college experience.

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