So are consumers ready for 3D HDTV? The technology really only hit theaters in the past couple of years and has been a real hit with some titles such as Avatar and UP. Previous 3D attempts – think back to Jaws and those old Red and Blue paper glasses – were lack luster and often troublesome for viewers. So while the technology of 3D has improved it is not ready for wide spread home adaption.

The main reason for my argument against 3D HDTV now is basic economics. For the average Canadian family an HDTV has been a recent addition to the home. My own parents still use a 36” tube TV from Hitachi that renders fantastic image quality even 15 years after it was first purchased. So while people are replacing their old long lasting tubes with LCD and Plasma displays, they are also investing significant cost for such screens. The average cost for a 42” LCD is still in the $1200 range. To quickly turn around and replace that set with an 3D HDTV, with the often prohibitive new technology price, is a great recipe for consumer rejection.

So while 3D HDTV is coming and CES is a great chance to show consumers what is coming down the pipe. Don’t expect to see the 3D experience in your local sore anytime soon.

What do you think? Will the home version of 3D entertainment catch on or will it be regulated to the theater experience?

I had been having trouble with the device recently and had performed a disk repair on it twice. Tonight while playing a few tunes, I noticed that it was getting choppy as if the songs had random pauses in them. Much like the effect of a radio cutting in and out. Eventually I saw the icon indicating the iPod was in need of servicing. I was able to connect it to a computer and it recovered fine for a brief period. By the time I got home it had completely died. This was only after a few songs and a couple of hours later.

Finally, after many attempts to start the iPod I saw the infamous Sad iPod Face . I knew this was not a good sign. It was also starting to make an audible clicking noise as it started up. It was as if the iPod was starting only to encounter an error, stop the internal drive, and attempt to start again. No number of attempts to connect the device to the computer, restore it, or refresh it has delivered any success. The little guy is gone. The only way it will stay on is if I connect it to the computer and then it is unresponsive. It is like life support for electronics.

This is the downside of portable devices like the iPod. They work really well for a few years and then take a rapid decent into malfunctions and eventual electronic death. Combine that with the cost of a replacement and it is like a double slap in the face. Cell phones, iPods, and blackberries all come with hefty price points making them luxuries, not must haves (with the exception of a cell phone if it is your only phone). That said, I used my iPod on average of about 2 to 3 hours a day and would notice its absence during my commute and at work. So it will get replaced in time with a new iPod Touch or a regular iPod. Like I said, in time.

Now if Mr. Jobs reads this – and I doubt he does – feel free to send a replacement.

The Exploits Valley Salmon Festival has been running in my hometown for 23 years and has attracted some of the biggest acts in Canadian music. It has played host to bands like Great Big Sea, the Doobie Brothers, I Mother Earth, Nelly Furtato, and Bryan Adams to name a few. While the town is willing to spend money on the concert, and rightfully so, they seem unwilling to spend money on any development of a web presence.

I use the term web presence instead of website because in today’s marketplace it is much more than just a static site with a few pictures, it is an experience. An event with an established history like Salmon Fest should be willing and able to do more than a site developed in 1998. This is part of their marketing tool and a valuable tool when deployed properly.

Compare the online presence of Ozzfest or Lollapalooza to that of Salmon Fest. You will see a more interactive site that matches the themes of the event, the music and the bands. It makes the visitor more interested in the concert and when done right can make them feel included. A great site to gauge how this works is the Salmon Fest 2007 Facebook group that blossomed at just over 2000 users who were sharing stories, pictures, and talking about this years lineup.

A festival site could include a blog from the organizers talking about the developments happening in the planning of the next concert. They could use it to even start a few rumors to get people talking about show. Toss in a podcast with a few people talking about it and you have an audio or video stream to each of your fans. I could even imagine listening to a podcast and having the organizers invite the bands booked to play to promote the show on the podcast. These are just a few of the possibilities a company, festival event, or organization can employ to constantly attract attention to their bottom line. In this example, it would be ticket sales.

These are just a few of the things to consider when putting together your next web presence.

As any user of the Facebook site is now familiar, they have opened up their interface to allow the addition of applications to people’s profiles. This step was ingenious and quite possibly the biggest move of its type for any closed system site. However, it has allowed quite a bit of clutter to the peoples profiles. From monkeys that you can pet, to super walls, and reading lists, the applications range from the interesting to the absurd. But what do they really do? Well the answer is simply not that much. They do allow a certain level of customization of people’s profiles but in most cases, they do not allow any particular insight into the user.

Instead, the applications have become one of the most contentious aspects of the site. In order to use an application you have to add it to your own profile, an unnecessary step. This simple oversight by the Facebook developers now requires that you add an application to interact with it on someone else’s profile. For example, the “graffiti wall” application allows you to make graffiti on another person’s profile, but for me to use it I must add it. When I add the application, it has certain access to read information in my profile such as who I am. This should not be a necessary step and should be rethought by the developers of Facebook. In addition, most applications automatically request you send an invite to your friends list. This should also be rethought and the option to invite presented but in a different manner such that the default action is to invite no one. Let the applications distribute virally based on success not the current default action to invite everyone on your friends list.

Another aspect of the site that needs major rethinking is the advertising model that Facebook currently employs. As it stands right now the advertising model is random, and not content sensitive. I have seen the 300 DVD release advertising on profiles where the movie is not listed. The advertising model could benefit from an update where the ad’s presented are more reflective of the content on the page. If I am viewing a profile of a friend who is an avid reader – such as Sara Inkpen – then I should see primarily ads relating to books or book stores. Not workopolis or the movie 300. The advertising model should relate to the primary interests and content of the page being viewed. A second possibility is ability for Facebook users to purchase advertising space cheap and have their ads appear in their networks and groups.

If Facebook can address these two issues while retaining the functionality of them they will have a powerful model to expand. Such an expansion has been bantered about recently as a possible Internet wide protocol for social networking. Facebook is a closed system, but imagine the possibilities of expanding that system network wide. Allowing individual websites to implement code – much like how HTML allows them to organize and display content now – that establishes more meaningful connections and organization throughout the network. The Internet could evolve from an inter-connected network of networks to an inter-connected social network of social networks. Such an advancement could even rival Google and how it dominates the way in which we find information online.

The argument most often put forward by those organizations is that they need to protect the intellectual property of their members. Whether it be a song; a movie, a book, a photograph, or a painting, it was the art form that was being protected. The unique combinations of words, or melody, or paint on a canvas, was what was being protected. I have no argument with this. As a writer I feel I should be fairly compensated for my work and when a person uses my works – for which an economic value is attached – then I should be fairly compensated or they would have infringed on my rights and I have a recourse to take against them. The recourse comes in the way of copyright laws. If I can prove infringement of my rights to gain economic value for my writings then I can take action. This is the basic premise of why the MPAA and RIAA want to use DRM and lobbied for laws such as the DMCA. They want more ways in which to protect the economic rights of their members.

With new technology comes new risks and in 1998 when the DMCA was drafted and passed into law few people expected the far reaching effects. However, the law placed the power in the hands of copyright owners and their representatives. With a online world where most people are anonymous and the emergence of digital content new challenges were faced. The result was instead of proving that an infringement took place and going after the infringer directly these lobby groups had power to just notice the digital content provider or host of suspected infringement and they had to take down the material in question. So now instead of proving that you stole that shirt from the store, you were assumed guilty until you proved you did not take the shirt. This is the real world analogy to how the DMCA can be used and often is.

So the result has been that the MPAA and RIAA have set up brokerage houses for out of court settlement of copyright violation of their works. Why pay tens of thousands of dollars defending yourself in court when you can pay thousands of dollars and settle. The problem with this is you admit a crime you may have not committed based on your financial ability to defend your self. Such was the case of a woman who was sued a few years back by the RIAA for downloading songs to her computer, the problem with the case was she never owned a computer and it was eventually tossed out.

Considering all this and argument that it is the IP they are protecting, then why are we being charged full value for each copy of a movie or song? Consider the converse. If I have purchased a DVD and I want a digital copy to play on the my laptop so I don’t have to carry the disk around I can purchase it from an online retailer like iTunes but I can’t – legally – make a copy of it myself. I have purchased the IP already and subsequent purchases should be just for the new form of media. If I own a record then getting the CD version should only cost me the cost of the media not a full repurchase of IP contained within or if I scratch a DVD a replacement should only cost me the media cost.

So basically organizations like the MPAA and RIAA are using DRM and laws like the DMCA to protect their economic interests and creating an system in which we have to repurchase content with each new format that is introduced. Thus removing our options to legally use it a manner that suits our needs, these are the basic principals of Fair Use in the US and Fair Dealing in Canada.

The thing they were posting about was a number and in this case a simple 16 bit hexadecimal number. So what is this magic number that would have hundreds of thousands of people posting stories to digg.com, Slashdot.org, and other social networking sites like facebook? The number is actually a key and a very important key at that. In the realm of DVD’s and HD-DVD’s having this key is like being given the master key to every house in your town. The key is the processing key for HD-DVD and in the hands of a talented programmer would allow HD-DVD movies to be played or copied to any computer, or device. Copies that could be uploaded and shared online but at 20Gb a file it is unlikely you will see that happen any time soon.

Most readers are likely thinking “so what?” and wondering why this is so noteworthy. Well it relates to the use of the DMCA to take down blogs, postings to social networking sites, and any other reproduction of that number. The Movie Producers Association of America (MPAA) have been handing out take down notices like they were candy to prevent this number from becoming available. They view it as a part of their intellectual property and thus subject to copyright. It is a part of their digital rights management (DRM) strategy, which restricts playback of HD-DVD’s to approved devices. If you are a Linux computer user, or a home theater hobbyist who wants to build their own media server, you would be prevented from have HD-DVD functionality so since these are not approved devices. E.g. there is no Linux (or Mac I believe) HD-DVD players.

So what about this revolt? About a month or so ago this key was discovered and posted on websites, subsequently the MPAA started a campaign to have those postings removed. The removals – most notably from digg.com itself – quickly became seen as attempts to censor users to protect corporate economic interests and the users were reposting the number, and links to other sites with the number faster than they could be taken down. Eventually the founder of Digg, Kevin Rose, bowed to the will of his user base and said they would stop removing postings and deal with any consequences that might result. In his words “if we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.”

This is a perfect example of both DRM and the DMCA at its worst. It is a tenant of copyright law that words and numbers cannot be copyrighted, they could be trademarked, but not copyrighted. It is exactly these kinds of draconian laws that the US is pressuring on other countries, and exactly the kinds of laws the current government is considering introducing as part of its copyright reform. If you reverse engineer, find a security hole, or discover a way to break encryption that is applied to copyrighted material you can be prevented form sharing that information with laws like the DMCA. This is exactly what has happened with the HD-DVD processing key and many other products such as the DeCSS code that allows DVD playback. It leaves a chilling effect on those who wish to build a better lock by understanding how to break the current one, a process often pursued in academics.

I recently attended the local theater to catch a flick where I was given a promotion card for 3 free music downloads from the Purtracks store. This is combined promotion from Hershey’s Chocolate, Coke, Empire Theaters, and Puretracks. The cards contain a serial number and a PIN number that you can use to redeem for the three songs. The problems started when I attempted to scratch the coating that is over the PIN number (much like a scratch and win ticket). As you can see in the image the coating did not remove easily and I ended up scratching the ink off the card, rendering the card useless. Not wanting to give up I decided to register for an account and see if I could decipher the numbers so I can get my 3 free songs.

The registration process was easy, simply provide the typical information; first name, last name, email, postal code, password, and a few check boxes for news letters. Once logged in to the music store I found that just about all the albums were available in WMA format only, and few were available in mp3 format. Knowing that WMA does not play well with Mac OS or any Linux/BDS variant this limits the customer base greatly. I would assume that any store would want the widest breadth of consumers possible.

Having surfed around and found 4 songs I like – I received a free song with registration – and added them to my cart and proceeded to the checkout. Attempting to decipher what numbers were I was ultimately unable to figure it out after several attempts. Having felt enough frustration in finding MP3 songs, knowing I could never use the service at home since I am a Mac user (you can not even view the website from a Mac), and the inability to redeem a coupon due to low quality printing, I decided to deactivate the account. Feeling that I would never likely return to the service as it does not fit my needs I clicked the “My Account” button. Searching high and low I could not find the deactivate account option. So now I am stuck with this Purtracks account, meaning they have my name and email with the potential to spam me in the future.

Once again I feel Purtracks has totally missed the boat on providing a quality service to its users. Using WMA, and the DRM contained within, limits the playability of the songs, restricting the access to even surf the store to Windows computers is unlikely to attract any attention from Mac or Linux users who might choose to use them. Finally, the inability to remove your information from their site is one of the largest privacy concerns I can think of and could be a violation of PIPIDA (Canada’s privacy laws). They can do much better.

I think this is a great move on behalf of Disney. I have lost a lot of faith in the company in recent years, especially since there is little for them to appeal to me with. But the artistry of hand drawn animation is amazing and worth keeping as a different form of art. After all, whether is it Mickey driving a steam boat, or Buzz Lightyear attempting to fly. Both are amazing forms of art and entertainment, and for 50 years Disney set the bar that all others are measured against.

To many music listeners, and artists, providing a MP3 version of a single or album for legal download is not a trend but a fact of doing business in the modern market place. This is being further supported by a recent success of the band Gnarls Barkley, who�s recent single Crazy is now the #1 song in the UK. Not only are they sitting atop the charts at #1 but they did this amazing feat though downloads only. The CD will not hit shelves till later this week.

This song is a history maker for one very important reason, legal downloading works! The RIAA would like everyone to believe that their slumping sales figures � which have been openly debated � are a result of Peer 2 Peer file trading, and illegal downloading. But this one song has produced such a success in such a short period of time that it almost silences the record industry�s argument. It is even more astonishing when you consider that the recent change in the way the charts are calculated. They allow downloadable versions to be considered when the song becomes available within a week in a physical format.

I applaud the achievement of Gnarls Barkley and hope the industry takes note of this success. MP3 is the new standard in which music consumers are demanding their music, now if we can only get the industry to provide this content without unreasonable technology restrictions.

Most of the movies released in the last calendar year have limited or even any appeal to most movie goers. In many cases highly hyped movies have has paper thin plot lines and were more promise than substance. Although some good movies have come out of this summer season, starting with Star Wars III (Which I found to be a huge disappointment and the ending felt rather rushed) and ending off with some decent comedy in both the Wedding Crashers and 40 Year Old Virgin, it has not been a particularly exciting or enjoyable movie season.

Hopefully this inward look will motivate the movie industry to start focusing on quality rather than quantity. The result may be fewer movies, but they may enjoy longer runs on the screens due to better viewer turn out. In the end, we are paying for the entertainment and at $10.50 (Local market prices) a head we demand more or we just won�t go.