Napster vs. iTunes

Napster has a pretty powerful ad campaign on the way. They plan to attack apple directly. The new napster ad reads, "fill and refill your compatible MP3 player without paying 99c a track."

I went to their site to read more about this new, great deal. Interestingly enough their site is strategically vague. It's not clear at all how it works until you dig pretty deep, or register for the trial.

So here's the fine print.

"Subscribers can listen to these full-length tracks an unlimited amount of times. You can check out an unlimited amount of these tracks to the hard drives of up to 3 computers for unlimited offline play. Pay CDN$1.19 per track when you are ready to burn to CD or transfer them to a compatible portable device, and keep them forever."

Consumers do your research.

Available Songs
Napster advertises 700,000 tracks
Apple advertises "More than one million"

Pricing
Napster is very sneaky about the $1.19 CDN price tag.
Apple is pretty upfront about the $0.99 CDN price tag.

Compatible players
Napster is compatible with a number of "hardware" players, but is only compatible with one real player (Microsoft Media Player 10 available for Windows ONLY).
Apple has a player to cover all needs (512MB, 1GB, 4GB, 20GB, 40GB, 60Gb) and also uses only one player (itunes, which is for Mac and Windows).

Down with DRM

Free your itunes music from the restrictions that are imposed by the music industry.

Governor Schwarzenegger

Holy shit this is funny. Search itunes music store for Schwarzenegger's total body workout and get ready to laugh your ass off!

Americans, this will soon be your President.

Cogeco Support

I was getting some crazy packet loss last night on my Cogeco Internet connection.

PING www.cisco.com (198.133.219.25): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 198.133.219.25: icmp_seq=0 time=120.0 ms
64 bytes from 198.133.219.25: icmp_seq=3 time=115.1 ms
64 bytes from 198.133.219.25: icmp_seq=4 time=114.4 ms
64 bytes from 198.133.219.25: icmp_seq=5 time=114.4 ms
64 bytes from 198.133.219.25: icmp_seq=6 time=112.9 ms
64 bytes from 198.133.219.25: icmp_seq=7 time=112.2 ms
--- www.cisco.com ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 6 packets received, 40% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 112.2/114.8/120.0 ms

I thought to call the support line in spite of my prenotions about their inability to help me. I was quite shocked to hear the pre-call verbiage. Apparently they will not deal with you if you have formated or manipulated your setup files (understandable), but then the message goes on to say that additionally they will not support home networks, printers, chat lines, linux, ftp, icq, firewalls, msn messenger, phone lines or linux. Geez, you could actually hear the deep breath the speaker makes just before the long-winded message.

So my question is - Wouldn't it be shorter to report what they DO support?

iTunes Phone

Motorola announces a cell phone that will sync up to your computers itunes app just like an ipod. It was announced at this weekends CES in Las Vegas. There's no mention of battery life which woudl be my primary concern. Nothing worse than missing your calls because you've wasted your battery on U2.

Here's the article.

No more toys

I have sold off most of my toys. I'm in the process of consolidating them to one product. Now all I need to do is wait for Rogers, Telus or Bell to carry it and I'm in business.

Palm Treo 650

What do you talk about when you're bored?

At work we talk about the life expectancy of food.

Nigel - "How often do you actually eat left overs anyhow."
Dave - "I know. If I had a dog, he'd eat like a king!"

lmao. Damn I'm bored.

Apple Mayhem

What's going on with these bad ibooks? Looks like my co-workers keep running into problems with their ibooks.

HD. How can you go back?

I now only watch 6 channels on my television. I may sound pretentious, but I can't bare to turn on a regular digital channel. I use to be OK with it, but after watching a HD football game in 16:9 format in 5.1 how on earth can you watch a fuzzy 4:3 rerun of friends? I have truely spoiled my at home entertainment.