Linked List: September 4, 2007

Tuesday, 4 September 2007

The New York Times on NBC-Amazon Deal ★

Brooks Barnes reporting:

“Amazon is a company that understands the value we provide as content owners to its business,” said Jean-Briac Perrette, president of NBC Universal Digital Distribution.

Translation: Amazon bent over and took it, and told NBC how pretty they are.

Barnes’s report makes no mention whatsoever of the fact that Unbox’s DRM restrictions are far tighter than iTunes’s. That’s a central aspect of the story, so no cookie for The Times.

ISO Rejects Microsoft’s Office ‘Open’ XML File Formats ★

Common sense prevails. Let’s hope they stick to it.

Dear New York Yankees: Your All-Star Game Logo Sucks ★

Design. Typography. The Yankees. How could I not link to this?

(Not to mention that I agree wholeheartedly with Selikoff’s critique.)

Michael Arrington’s CrunchFood ★

Spot-on parody of the TechCrunch “style”.

*Appendix A on The Talk Show ★

Thomas McQuillan gets it.

Jeremy Horwitz: ‘Tomorrow, Dreams Come True’ ★

Jeremy Horwitz:

I seriously believe tomorrow is going to be different. I think it’s going to be the day when iPod die-hards, technology geeks, and mainstreamers alike are all going to be genuinely excited by what Apple is going to show.

I think he’s right.

Lightroom Metadata Entry Tips ★

Great Lightroom tips from James Duncan Davidson (who gleaned them from Patrick Lenz.)

Clockwork Lemon ★

I picked up my copy of the Kubrick-themed issue #3 of Lemon today. It’s in the Art & Design rack in Borders’s magazine section.

‘After Ditching Apple, NBC Opts for Flex Pricing and More DRM With Amazon’ ★

Ken Fisher:

“Protecting content” is a tip of the hat to NBC’s concerns over DRM. Apple’s DRM policies are considered to be “too lax” by many players in the TV and movie business, because shows can be authorized for playback on as many as five devices. Furthermore, any given device can be authorized to play content purchased from five different accounts.

Compare Unbox: Shows bought from Unbox can be kept on two computers max, and can be stored on up to two different media players. Users cannot “mix” accounts, meaning that a PC cannot have authorized content purchased from two different accounts. As you can see, Unbox is far more restrictive.

This just shows how moronic these NBC clowns are. You don’t have to be a nerd or obsessive to see how these restrictions suck — they’re obvious. No mixing means you and your spouse can’t both buy material for each other’s use.

What’s surprising is that Amazon, a company that grew to prominence specifically because of their reputation for great customer service and experience, would go along with such odious restrictions. Here’s a simple rule of thumb: if an honest customer has to even think about the rules, your DRM system is odiously restrictive.

A Lengthy Message About A Brief Message ★

Khoi Vinh: “There’s also another, more formal idea at work on A Brief Message: the notion that online publications don’t necessarily need to be decorated databases. They can be art directed, too.”

Palm Cancels Foleo ★

Everyone knew this thing was a turd except for Palm. Well, it looks like they’ve figured it out — but only after (a) announcing it; (b) blowing millions on developing it; and (c) its original ship date. The sooner you realize a mistake the better, but at this point it’s hard not to see the company as a joke. Credit, though, to Palm CEO Ed Colligan for making the announcement in his own voice on the company weblog, rather than hiding behind a mealy-mouthed press release.

An even better joke is the name of this site.

‘Regrets’ ★

Hilarious new short film by Steve Delahoyde; premiered last week at An Event Apart Chicago.

PodWorks 2.9.2 ★

Buzz Andersen’s nifty song-transfer utility for iPods now has support for iPhones, too.

Et tu, Washington Post? ★

The Macalope:

It strikes the Macalope as slightly wacky that even the Washington Post is in the Apple rumor business these days. And you know it’s got to be good when the piece quotes AppleInsider’s Kasper Jade and Rob Enderle, the Huggy Bear and Angel Martin of Apple news.

Deck 21 ★

The Deck — the boutique ad network that provides the ads you see on Daring Fireball — has expanded to 21 sites. Newly added: Darius Monsef’s COLOURlovers, Veerle Pieters’s weblog (a longtime favorite of mine), and A Brief Message, a new site from Liz Danzico and Khoi Vinh, publishing 200-words-or-fewer essays on design.

New ‘Blade Runner’ Cut Is ‘How It Should Have Been’ ★

The difference between Ridley Scott and George Lucas is that each time Scott goes back and tinkers with his masterpiece, it gets better. (Thanks to Dan Benjamin.)

MarsEdit 2.0 ★

Major update to Red Sweater Software’s excellent desktop weblog editor. Performance, compatibility, the user interface — I don’t think there’s any aspect of MarsEdit 2 that hasn’t been improved from version 1. Plus there are new features like Flickr integration. I’ve been using the 2.0 betas to write Daring Fireball for months.

Designers and Developers for MDA ★

Do something good for a great cause.

Update: Looks like the server has been fireballed. Here’s a direct link to the donation page at Changing the Present. Send a few bucks and let’s hit this $5K goal.