If you use MusicMatch or Windows Media Player or any other basic mp3 encoding software you might be interested in knowing that you can gain a much higher quality mp3 with not too much work. I came across Chris Myden’s “Quintessential Guide to Creating High Quality Mp3s” just over a year ago. I had no idea what I was missing until I followed his instructions and compared one of my favorite albums with a 128K encoded mp3 from MusicMatch with one using Exact Audio Copy and the Lame codec with the alt-present-standard switch.

If you own a quality set of speakers or headphones you’ll definitely notice the quality difference if you’re ears are used to 128K mp3 or 64K wma files.

I cannot believe I’ve never heard of the Konfabulator until tonight while I was reading through the latest Maximum PC.

Konfabulator is a JavaScript runtime engine for Windows and Mac OS X that lets you run little files called Widgets that can do pretty much whatever you want them to. Widgets can be alarm clocks, calculators, can tell you your WiFi signal strength, will fetch the latest stock quotes for your preferred symbols, and even give your current local weather.

So that’s the official explanation. I used to run Desktop Sidebar but Konfabulator looks and feels a lot more polished. Definately worth checking out.

I think I’ve figured out why kids love McDonalds. I believe it’s because they can be as loud as they want for half an hour. We went to a birthday party at McDonalds this afternoon and my ears are still ringing. The Happy Meal is an afterthought for our kids when the play land is full of kids yelling at the top of their lungs. My two year old son wanted so badly to climb up the highest levels of the play land to be with his older sister and cousins. Kim and I watched as he’d slowly go up one level of stairs at a time. A few times it took his sister pushing him from behind to get to the next level. He eventually made it to the top and was ready to take the slide all the way down which he did. He got to the bottom and had a big grin on his face and said, “Wow!”

I was chatting with a friend who has worked at Microsoft for about 15 years about why the Tablet PC, Portable Media Center, and the Media Center PC haven’t taken off like Microsoft had hoped they would. This got me thinking about some of the less popular Microsoft products that are “best of breed” in my opinion. Here’s the list we came up with:

Microsoft Publisher – Why can’t all MS products be this polished and easy to use out of the box? I’ve used this product for five years and I’m still impressed with each version.

Photo Story 3 – A hidden gem. Taking photos and putting them in a nifty sideshow to music and narration has never been this easy. A fantastic product for everyone with a digital camera.

MSN Messenger – Ok, this doesn’t qualify as a less popular product because so many people use it but it doesn’t get much recognition for being a very simple, straight-forward product that even my technophobe mother can use. My only worry is that MS appears to be cramming this product full of additional features in the same manner as ICQ until it became a bloated piece of junk. Keep it simple!

Media Player 10 – iTunes gets all the press but Microsoft has slowly taken a very bland product and made it into a very easy to use media player. Again, I hope that MS keeps things simple and doesn’t try to push MSN Music in the same manner that made me discontinue using MusicMatch. I just want an mp3 player, not an online music store shoved in my face.

MSN Spaces – This product caught me by surprise. In a short period of time, Microsoft has put together a very nice blogging service that rivals those that have been around for years. For first time bloggers who don’t want to muck with code and configuration, this should be your first stop. MSN is back in the game.

Digital Image Suite 10 – No, it’s not as powerful as Photoshop. Doesn’t matter because for people like myself that don’t have weeks to learn the in and outs of the Adobe product, this is an excellent solution. I still use Photoshop for some tasks but features like “auto red-eye removal” make quick work of the problem compared with other products. I thought MS was going to kill this product a while back and I’m glad to see they didn’t.

What do all these products have in common? They are easy to use! Why haven’t the Media Center PC and Portable Media Center taken off? IMO, they are too difficult for the average person to setup and use.

Now that blogs have hit the mainstream companies are beginning to take notice. Just a few weeks ago I was in a company brainstorming meeting when someone made the suggestion of creating a company blog. The idea had been tossed around before, but this time it hit a nerve. I had just received my issue of Fortune Magazine with the group of bloggers on the cover, and so I passed around a few ideas and offered to help get things rolling.

A couple of days into the process I began to think if creating a blog for my employer was such a good thing. Like any employee, there are good and bad things about any job. There are great benefits in some areas while others are weaker. The whole nature of blogging entails writing openly and honestly. It’s the person’s opinion that should come through in any blog, and I wasn’t sure that would be possible or even desireable in this capacity. I eventually decided that tossing my name into the ring on this corporate blogging endeavor wasn’t a good idea for my career.

I was saddened to hear that Mark Jen from Google was fired for posts related to his blog. I read through much of his blog and was surprised he was so critical of Google’s benefits so early in his career there. There is some confusion on what grounds he was eventually fired, but from what I can gather, it had something to do with divulging company financial matters that should have been kept private. Mark was a former Microsoft employee and I’m left to wonder if Microsoft would have acted as quickly and harshly as Google did.

I’m sure many companies are quietly at work drafting up a blogging policy for employees. I wonder how soon it will be included in most employment contracts. The Age of Inocence is sadly over.  

Update: Mark Jen responds to his firing from Google

I moved to southern Utah this past summer, but had the chance to return to Seattle this past week to attend Cisco Business Solutions Workshop in Bellevue. It was a lot of fun to be back in the city. But the best part was having the opportunity to visit with friends at Microsoft and TSG. I realize how spoiled I was when it came to having access to the latest hardware, software and technology. I saw more Tablet PCs being hauled around by employees than I’ve seen anywhere else, even CompUSA or Best Buy.

But I was sort of bummed that I didn’t spot one iPod on the MS campus. Maybe next time.

Scoble brings up an interesting point about whether or not “small thing” actually make a difference in the computer industry or any industry for that matter. I definately agree with him that small things can and do make a very big difference. For example just look at how quickly Firefox has come from near obscurity to being featured in nearly ever business magazine from Business Week to Fortune to this month’s Wired where Firefox developer, Blake Ross, is featured on the cover. I’ve been running Firefox for about 6 months or so but even a couple of months ago very few of my friends had even heard of the program, and many of them work in the computer industry. Now, even my father has said goodbye to IE and is happily using Firefox.

My hope is that Firefox provides a much needed kick in the butt to Microsoft so they will begin to innovate again. Even with the millions of Firefox downloads Microsoft still controls over 90% of the browser market so I’m not holding my breath that they will see a need to put much effort into a product that doesn’t drive revenue. I’m still waiting for my copy of “Windows XP Reduced IE Edition”.

Napster is another small idea that caught fire in a very short period of time and the repercussions are still being felt even though the RIAA shut down the service. But it’s too late as the cat is out of the bag and people got a taste of how powerful P2P technology is. How about Bit Torrent? Seems like you can’t pickup a computer magazine without reading about Bram Cohen’s creation that’s reportedly using up a third of all internet traffic.

I’m excited to think about what small things will become part of our lives over the coming years.

Drunkenblog turns back time with this classic Steve Jobs demo of NeXTSTEP 3.0. I especially enjoy the small digs he gets in about the PC and Mac.

Back in 1994 I had moved from Salt Lake to Seattle right out of college and took a job at Wolfe Internet as a support technician. Our entire staff worked on NeXT systems. With their svelte looks and gorgeous black tint I thought they were the coolest looking computers I’d ever seen. I didn’t realize at the time how advanced and ahead of the curve they were in many areas. My initial impressions with the web at that time came through Netscape Navigator on that NeXT machine. Programs were quick to launch. Websites would magically jump to the screen and everything felt within reach and intuitive. It wasn’t until I was forced to use a Windows 95 machine that I realized how lucky I’d been to have a NeXT. Unfortunately, back then you could purchase 8–10 no name PCs for the price of one NeXT system.

Looking back at NeXT it’s easy to see the influence it had on Apple’s OSX such as the inclusion of the “Dock” made popular by OSX but first found in NeXT. Those were some very fun times to be involved in the computer industry.

Apple has now sold over 250 million songs off its iTunes music store. Although this sounds impressive it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the number of songs being traded on p2p networks. I’d like to know two other numbers:

• Of the $248 million (~99 cents a song) what % did Apple hand over to the record labels?
• Of the amount paid out to the record labels, was % made it into the hands of the artists?

Apple created iTunes obviously to support it’s highly profitable iPod which makes sense. Just like MusicMatch uses its online music store to push users to upgrade to MusicMatch Jukebox Plus. One can only hope that eventually the record labels and the RIAA will see the light and drop prices to more reasonable levels and lessen the use restrictions. Until that happens I won’t be purchasing tracks/albums from any online music store.

Are iPod owners more likely to puchase from an online music store than those who buy more advanced mp3 players like the Rio Karma or iRiver models that have more features but are less user friendly? I’ve owned an iPod and, compared with my iRiver H-120, it was easier to use once the songs were on the device. But, at least on a Windows XP machine, the iRiver is much easier to use when it comes to moving songs on and off the device. For how I use my mp3 player the iRiver runs circles around the iPod, but I know I’m in the minority. Maybe iPod users value simplicity over features and don’t like the idea of searching the p2p networks along with dealing with fake files and slow downloads. Whatever the reason it’s very clear that iPods are driving strong iTune sales.

Will it ever stop? From the likes of it it appears the RIAA will continue extracting a few thousand dollars from potential customers who make mp3 files available for download over p2p networks. The only reason I can see why this makes sense is that the RIAA figures a settlement of, say $3000, is more than an individual will spend on music over his/her lifetime. What other reason could they concoct that makes financial sense in this regard? Do they assume that after coughing up $3000 these people will suddenly begin paying for music again? I can’t imagine paying the RIAA $3000 puts a person in the mood to purchase music anytime soon. I’d be so angry I’d probably never purchase another CD again in my lifetime. I’d just find other means of finding and sharing music. It would force me underground.  

Why would I pay 99 cents for a song at iTunes or Musicmatch and be expected to keep track of the usibility restictions? I want to be able to listen to my music on any computer, any portable device, and share my music collection with any of my friends and family just as I’ve been doing with CDs and tapes for years. I don’t make my 40 gig mp3 collection available to anyone over the internet, but I do like to share music I buy or download with friends and family. It’s just like the radio in the sense that it allows me and others to explore new music we’d have otherwise not found. When I hear a song I really like I will buy the CD and support the artist. But the days of paying $16 for a CD containing one good song and a bunch of filler are over. I’ll continue to purchase CDs when they cost under $12 and contain more than just a couple of good songs. But until the RIAA lawsuits stop I’ll continue to fire up Shareaza or WarezP2P whenever I’m just looking to sample an individual track.