David Beach's Blog

Apple Inching Foward

I know this is old news by now, but it's all coming together. You can see it now like a ballet in slow motion. Apple is creeping into your living room and more and more into your life. First itunes, then the iPod, then the Mac Mini, then Front Row, then downloadable TV shows, then Intel, and now we have the iPod Hi Fi and the new Mac Mini. Two products clearly designed to be out side of your home office and into your home. You know, the part of your house where you actually live. It's like their product road map is unfurling before our eyes.

At first look the Hi-Fi seems like an odd choice. That's what the iPod economy is for right? Why compete with all of your accessory partners? Well if you take a step back, I think it's about two ideas that head in the same direction. First this product clearly is not a computer. It doesn't really have computer parts. It has portable stereo parts. Apple has moved their brand into your living room and it has lined up a new set of suppliers and partners in the consumer electronics space. At the same time.

Next you have the Mac Mini. I think anyone who first saw it thought the same thing... "Damn! I'm gonna hook that sucker up to my TV!" Now they made that function a feature. It is the new DVD Player with the world connected to it. Download shows, use the net, play your music, watch movies, photos, networked. It's all there!

OK, this is getting good. You can see the pattern. The coming months and January are going to be interesting times for us and Apple. I think we will see the next generation of the company emerge.

Now for the question... do I get a Mac Mini? It's so damn tempting! I know what I said about gadgets this year, and I need to stick to it... but if my DVD player happens to break, I can't be held responsible.

Swedelife

Since I was encouraged to "promote" die old here. I thought I'd do the same with Swedelife; yet another blog in the itsbeach network. :p

I think my life is divided into thirds: Family, Work, Music; and the three blogs represent that. Die Old is about me getting in shape so I don't die too early. This here thing is mostly about my working life. And Swedelife represents the music part of my life.

Music has always been a huge part of my world. I was six when I bought my first album; Kiss -Dressed To Kill, and I haven't stopped since. My brother was/is an accomplished woodwind musician, Saxophone mostly. But I never had the patience to get from nothing to something musically. If I didn't sound like the record, then why not just listen to the record?

In 1991 I left school to start an independent record label called Quagmire, the label. We released several CDs nationally and had a pretty healthy little business. In 1993 our distributor went chapter 11 and our inventory was locked up. With nothing to sell, we went online to become the first label on the Internet. We had a gopher site then a web site. We hooked up with IUMA and released the first album to be distributed electronically. A Western Front's Full Blown Dave. At the time it was revolutionary. It's cool how things have changed. I went on from there, working at IUMA then a bunch of other stuff, yadda, yadda, yadda, I work at Yahoo!.

All this time, we never stopped recording. We have about a hundred albums in the can... from before Quagmire all the way up 'till yesterday. We keep recording. We decided to launch Swedelife in order to showcase this incredible music. The idea is to give a song away, everyday, for as long as humanly possible. It's hard to keep that pace up, but if an audience begins to grow, I will make it happen. Of course it's podcast and we also feature video.

Essentially the Swedelife Collective is a group of freaky folks from the Quagmire days and beyond getting together to write and record all kinds of music. It's an awesome community. It includes musicians from around the Bay Area and the globe. When people are in town, we get together and lay some tracks. It works out well.

So please, check it out. www.swedelife.com. Let me know what you think. And help me find that audience. If you know anyone interested in this type of thing, ping 'em. Above all this music needs to be heard. Thanks.

Plum

I just saw the DEMO demo for Plum. I'm a little overwhelmed. The problem with demoing something that is complex and potentially game-changing at DEMO, is that you only get the 6 minutes. Sure that should be plenty of time to convey a concept, but the Plum demo was packed so full with compelling features and interactions, it was hard to take it all in. Plum has a lot of elements that I consider necessary for a Digital Life Manager. I think it crossed into DLM territory when they showed how it can capture content from your desktop in order to archive and share it on the interweb. Among other things. I can not wait to get my hands on it.

I do fear that they've packed too many features into this thing. It could very easily sail right over the heads of most people. Although the basic interface looks accessible (it sure is pretty), it's going to take some time for the average person to have a reason to make use of it all.

Please remeber that the Web 2.0 community is very very small. I think that many people are designing for themselves instead of for the betterment of the medium and others. My friend Cale Peeples touches on this in a recent post.

"It seems that the Internet has become more compartmentalized - more widget oriented. It may be an evolution of sorts, but I think the the evolution is slowing down and maybe even stagnating. For better or for worse, the focus is shifting from innovation to stabilization and the innovations that exist are narrowly focused and introverted.

The prevailing mood is less "look what we can do with the internet" and more "look what I can do in a browser"."

While this doesn't necessarily describe the Plum concept, it does describe the whole Web 2.0 phenomenon very well.

Where are the big ideas? I'll say it again... Where are the big ideas?

To any of you who are developing a w2.0 service/feature/business with the desired outcome of being purchased by Yahoo! or Google or whatever... Stop what you're doing and get a real job.  It will never happen.  If you're trying to change the fucking world come hell or high water and that's your sole desire... talk to me. That's what's needed.

We haven't even tapped the Internet's potential. Please don't be complacent and think that what you see is what you get. It doesn't have to be. It can be anything. We don't really need a better -fill in the blank-. Do we? Make people's lives better.

If I can give you one bit of advice, it is this... Solve real problems, not made up ones.

Plum might be close. It sure is damn interesting. And it sure is getting closer to the DLM vision. Hey Plum dudes, release it already!

emusic

I started an emusic account today. (what? something not w2.0? – thank god!) Pat Goddard sent me a spam for 50 free tracks for trying it out. I haven't used emusic since 1999 or so. Maybe earlier. I sort of have a history with them. They were one of the first players in the pay for download space. They also bought IUMA. Then,  I almost worked for them once. It's really amazing that they're still around. I remember when they were on their last legs.

Here's what I like about them:

1. No DRM! 'nuff said.
2. Browse by Label! I've been wanting this from iTunes and Yahoo Music Engine. emusic has an easier time with this because they only have indie labels; but 18,000 of them. The theory is that indies are easier to browse because their catalogs are smaller. Shouldn't matter, in fact emusic does a good job of label navigation. This feature is important because many labels have a brand off their own and feature a specific style of music. Why shouldn't you see all releases available from SST, Ninja Tune, Matador, etc.?
3. "Save for later" feature. Again this is also something that I'd like to see from iTunes or Yahoo! Music. If I'm interested in something, but don't know if I want to commit, I should be able to keep track of it. Besides if done right there's  a lot you can do with that data. It's great for cross and up-selling.
4. The design. I like the design and most of the interface features of emusic
5. User reviews. Not that they have them, but the majority of the ones they have are well written, insightful and intelligent. The iTunes reviews are killing me. They are terrible and a complete waste of space. They either need to kill them or do a much better job of filtering them.

I don't really care for the limited downloads per month. It's $9.99 for 40 songs per month. I can eat that up in ten minutes. But I guess it's worth it for the lack of DRM and the indie spirit.

Rhymes With Drowning

I don't know what to say.

Todd Downing. He and I were good friends growing up. Geeks? Hell yes! Todd was crazy talented, he could pick up any artistic implement and play it. Musical, pens, paints, clay, whatever. We'd spend all of our time coming up with ideas to be the next Lucas or Eno or Stan Lee even. We started our own production "company" as kids. It was a miniature media empire. We'd publish comic books, magazines, games, films, and music. We'd find any way to make these things then show 'em or try to even sell them to whoever we could.  We had no idea what we were doing, but we knew we had to do it. Some of the kids we did this stuff with back then went on to Pixar, or ILM, Warner Bros., or Yahoo!

At some point in the early 90's, Todd moved with his high school sweetheart and wife Samantha to Washington state. First to Renton, then to Seattle. He and I sort of grew apart over time. I started the record label and then went to IUMA; he went on to deep dive in the RPG world, working for Microsoft then his own companies. Todd and Sam had two children, Tyler then Kayleigh.

This is the incredibly tragic and almost bizarre part. I may not have all the facts straight but the story is the same. You hear of people that have a run of bad luck, but that doesn't even begin to describe what has happened to Todd and his family in the past 10 months. In April, Samantha lost her battle with a very rare form of cancer. She died at 37. The next month Todd's father, Edmund, fell to another rare cancer of the brain. Then on Christmas Eve, just as they were trying to get their lives together, their house is flooded by a huge sewer break. Sewer = Shit. Half of their house was damaged and they lost tons of memories and valuables. AND THEN... four days ago, on Valentines Day, Todd's house catches on fire and guts the place. They lost everything. Everything. Thankfully the kids were in school and Todd got two of the three pets out. Punky the cat didn't make it. Think about that for a second. No clothes, no computers, no food, no CDs, DVDs, books, toys, furniture, photos, paintings on newsprint from your preschooler... everything you saved for one reason or another... gone, nothing left.

It makes you wonder. How can so many freakishly wrong things happen to one family in such a short period of time? It doesn't seem random, but it's impossible to believe that someone or something planned this. Yes people die, yes houses flood, and they even catch on fire. But does it all have to happen all at once? And does it have to happen in such a way to seriously fuck up the outlook of two innocent kids? How can they feel safe?

It's not right.

Todd writes one of the most honest and often heartbreaking blogs called Rhymes With Drowning... the title says it all. Please visit it and pay your respects to a hell of a guy who's been through his own personal war. No one deserves this to happen to them, especially my friend with the wild imagination and limitless creativity. I hope his spirit hasn't been crushed because I think he's been put here to do something wonderful... maybe, for some reason,  someones telling him that he better get to it.

Audio Overload!

I was wondering when this would happen. Music and other audio content has reached a saturation point for me. I'm saturated with sound. It's a good thing, but I'm trying to figure out how to deal with it.

Let me explain. I have a 30 GB iPod, I have about 1,000 CDs ripped and stored on my hard drives ready for listening. The CDs are now in storage. I subscribe to about 25 to 30 podcasts. Including Dawn & Drew, Zoe, Barack Obama, The Ricky Gervais Show, TWIT, The Sound of Young America, Swedelife, and a bunch of others. I subscribe to Yahoo! Music Unlimited and can listen and download nearly any album that's been released. I have a Creative Zen for that. I subscribe to XM Radio to listen to baseball games, especially the Oakland A's. But I also listen to XMU and Air America Radio on XM as well. They have about 160 other stations too. I listen to NPR and sports talk on the car radio too.

I also just started using iFill by Griffin. iFill lets you record audio streams from SHOUTcast channels and saves it to your iPod. That means I can record KCRW and Indie 103 from LA and listen to it whenever I want.

This doesn't include the new music that I still purchase either as a CD or through iTunes. Do I dare mention audio books?

There is now not enough time in the day to absorb all of this. I'm not complaining, this is what I've been wanting. But there needs to be a better way to handle it all. Either I need to change my behavior and limit my choices, or someone needs to invent an intelligent system to allow me to absorb and manage this content more effectively. I feel the same with RSS feeds, in fact they are very similar.

Another problem is that I have to deal with several different services, mediums, devices, and systems in order to get the audio that I want. I have to pay for them all differently and manage them differently. Hell, if I really wanted to, I don't have to pay for any of it.  The fact that I do bother to pay should give me some way to manage it better.

The music like water concept becomes more appealing. Maybe it should be "sound like water."  Anyway it's more than a payment solution. It's a distribution system that flows like water as well. It's everywhere. You can get it when you want and where you want. It's portable. It's alive. And most important... you don't even have to think about it. It's just there for your enjoyment.

But for now, when am I going find time to listen to that new The Sword album?

Die Old Promotion...

Jane says I need to promote dieold.org more. So here I am promoting my die old blog. Okay, here's the deal. I've been overweight for a long freakin' time. I've decided that if I don't finally do something about it, I won't "die old."  And that's pretty much the ultimate goal right? The "good" might die young, but the lucky, healthy bastards are the ones that are fortunate enough to have a long life. I don't know about you, but I want to be one of them.

Die Old is my blog about this process. I write every day. What I eat, what I do, how I feel. I've tried many times to do this and I've learned a lot about myself. I've learned that I can't do it alone, so I figure the only way I'll succeed is if everyone in the world knows what I'm doing. Keeps me honest. Please check it out and bug me as much as you want, link to it, tell a friend, anything. It will help me to die old... thanks.

Oh yeah, the address is http://www.dieold.org :)

New Project

I got assigned a new project yesterday for Yahoo! Shopping. This is something that I've wanted to do for a long time, so I'm excited to work on it. I can not really discuss it at this time, but I'll show it off soon. The cool thing for me is that I get to do almost everything for the front-end. Define, architect, design, manage, etc. I need to dust off my photoshop skillz. By the way, see that "New!" icon? A long time ago I tried to convince our merchandising folks to create baby clothes with that graphic on them. They didn't bite, something about brand dilution. I still think it could work though.

The Client/Server Digital Life Manager

The more I think about it the more I like it. The DLM could be server and client based. First it should work on any browser. No question. But there could be a client that totally enhances the experience. One of the problems I have right now with online calendars is that they don't exist if you're offline. How can you manage your time in an offline environment? The entire world maybe wireless some day, but not soon enough; and a mobile phone interface is good to review data, but totally inconvenient to enter it... More later, maybe.

Amazon.com Purchase Circles -- MSN.COM

Okay this is a little freaky... Take a gander at the books that are "uniquely popular" being purchased by our friends up at MSN... Should we be worried?

Link: Amazon.com Purchase Circles -- MSN.COM.