For those who are attending, I will see you there tomorrow morning… and for those to also subscribe to my Graphics blog on CorelDRAW.com, sorry for the cross-posting

While this book does not cover specifically software piracy, it contains a lot of insightful information about the challenges traditional companies face and how they should embrace piracy vs. fighting it, including great insights in different ways of thinking.

 The books description on amazon.com states following:

Music journalist Mason, a former pirate radio and club DJ in London, explores how open source culture is changing the distribution and control of information and harnessing the old system of punk capitalism to new market conditions governing society. According to Mason, this movement’s creators operate according to piratical tactics and are changing the very nature of our economy. He charts the rise of the ideas and social experiments behind these latter-day pirates, citing the work of academics, historians and innovators across a multitude of fields. He also explores contributions by visionaries like Andy Warhol, 50 Cent and Dr. Yuref Hamied, who was called a pirate and a thief after producing anti-HIV drugs for Third World countries that cost as little as $1 a day to produce. Pirates, Mason states, sail uncharted waters where traditional rules don’t apply. As a result, they offer great ways to service the public’s best interests. According to Mason, how people, corporations and governments react to these changes is one of the most important economic and cultural questions of the 21st century. Well-written, entertaining and highly original, Mason offers a fascinating view of the revolutionary forces shaping the world as we know it. (Jan. 08) - Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 

Overall, this is a very interesting book to read and brings many new points of views and perspectives to the problem. The biggest (obvious) conclusion is that fight might not the best answer when it comes to piracy, much more embrace, which makes sense for the examples in the book. But at the same time, Matt Mason clearly gives examples where taking legal actions make sense. 

Looking at the table of content, this book covers many different subjects, from pharmaceuticals to music, and from radio stations to tags and graffitis. Yes, many of these areas have re-shaped how we do and understand things, and many of them are about to. The example of the 3D printers is certainly an excellent one and will have huge implications in the future. And showing how industries have grown from underground activities was very interesting (think about music trends such as disco or the hip-hop). The part I was missing most was related to a look at the current IP laws in major countries and thoughts on how this could be updated / reformed. And if you don’t have time to read the full book, focus on the last chapter (outro titled “The Pirate’s Dilemma: Changng the Game Theory”) next time you are in a library or a book store.

If you want more information on the subject, I can only recommend the related blog: thepiratesdilemma.com

There have been quite a few reviews such as the one from Lifehacker that gives other great perspective on the online service from Apple. The comments below provide those I noticed and have been making me happy, annoyed me or are driving me crazy (outside of the reliability problems).

The Good, e.g. the stuff I like

In my blog entry about the MacBook Air, I mentioned how I use iDisk from, at the time, .Mac to keep the documents I use / need in sync between my desktop and laptop computer. And with Secure WebDAV access to the iDisk information, I am also able to access the content of my online storage space from Windows XP or Vista computers while at work for example. And with the new storage increase by switching to MobileMe from .Mac, I am good for quite a while before I run out of space. I know that there are other solutions available that might be cheaper, but as far as I can tell (I didn’t do extensive research on this), none integrate as well as MobileMe with the operating system from Cupertino.

In addition to iDisk, MobileMe offers preferences, bookmarks, contacts, calendar, keychains … syncing acorss multiple computers. This is really great and is working as well with MobileMe as it was working with .Mac, e.g. overall pretty good. And when you install iTunes 7.7 on Windows, you gain MobileMe syncing for contacts, calendars and bookmarks with some Windows apps. I am so happy that my Safari bookmarks are synced across Mac and Windows that I really don’t care if some people find it sneaky to add the MobileMe Preferences with the iTunes update.

The new web apps for Mail, Calendar, Contacts and iDisk are really nice. There is plenty of room for improvements, but overall, they are fully usable. The contact manager is almost a clone of Address Book on the mac, and the online Calendar feels very similar to the desktop app provided by Apple. Yes, there are things that can be improved with the email and iDisk apps (see below), but overall, it works. Having used Outlook for the Web 2007 recently, I would say that the Apple implementation has potential to offer the same level of user experience, but there is still some way to go before getting there.

The gallery feature works well for me, and now that I got the capability to upload photos directly from the iPhone, I will be able to publish photos to certain galleries while on the road… I am certain my parents will be very happy to see family pictures on the go. And the integration with iPhoto on the Mac makes it really nice. You can even sync iPhoto albums using the MobileMe galleries across multiple machines. I understand that the galleries are not working that well from a Windows computer, but this isn’t a problem for me at this stage.

The Bad, e.g. the missing things for a killer solution

There are a few things that annoy me. First, why is it that when I check “Keep me logged in for two weeks”, I need to log back in every time I restart my browser? Yes, it is not the best option from a security perspective, but if you give the option, make sure it works.

Another annoyance, at least for me, is the choice of color Apple made for the iDisk icon on the MacOS desktop: Pink! And even worst than than, when you change the icon to something else, it doesn’t seem to update the mini-icon in the Finder window. OK, it makes it really hard to miss, but I am not a huge fan of that color… if the MobileMe logo is blue, why not stick with that color?

On the subject of the iDisk, one of the biggest feature missing for me right now is access to my documents in the iDisk from the iPhone. Why couldn’t I have read access to my iDisk files while on the go from my mobile device… everything else is linked to the cloud offering from Apple. OK, there might be an additional application that will be released in the future, so just make it quick. The iPhone already has support to display various document file formats when they are attached to emails. Why not give access to your online files through an iDisk application, that connects to the back-end server through Secure WebDAV. To make things even more frustrating, you cannot go to the iDisk web application with Safari from the iPhone. Ultimately, you should be able to save email attachments to your iDisk from the iPhone email application, but that’s a future feature request once the basics are there.

To continue with the iDisk subject, why can’t I preview documents within the browser from a desktop computer? Every modern web browser can display txt, pdf, gif, jpg, avi, swf, … inline, why do I need to download the file first to my computer before I can quickly view the content. Makes it a lot harder to get the right image or PDF document for example.

The last thing I have in this list is regarding the online and iPhone calendar. OK, Apple changed its messaging and stopped using the concept of “Exchange for the rest of us”, but iCal on the Mac can invite people to calendar events, sending out emails in the background. Why can’t I do this with the iPhone calendar app or the MobileMe online calendar? And why can’t I accept or decline meeting proposals that I get per email from another iCal user on my iPhone / through the web interface?

Now to make MobileMe the killer offering, once you have the scheduling capability obviously, Apple should enable free-busy time information to be shared across all MobileMe members. Apple is already storing the calendaring information about all those who subscribe to the service on their servers… if you could expose this information on the iPhone / Online calendar / iCal (CalDAV anyone?), that would really offer an Exchange solution for the rest of us. Yes, having previously worked as a product manager for a group scheduling software company, I know that this is a lot more complex that you would think, but half of the problem is already solved: Apple has access to real-time information about availabilities thanks to push. OK, will need to wait for MacOS 10.6 to get that on the desktop, but even the 15 minutes delay is better than the average time it takes for an Exchange server to update the free-busy time information.

The Ugly, e.g the showstopper

The ONE thing that is preventing me from switching over to MobileMe for all my private emails is that there is no support for email aliases. I am not speaking about adding @me.com addresses to your existing @me.com account… I want to be able to send and recieve emails for my @metrailler.net or my @gmail.com email address from Mail.app on the desktop, the MobileMe online service and the iPhone. Gmail does it for free and it works great. This means that Apple needs to allow emails to be sent through their SMTP server with emails addresses that don’t end with @me.com or @mac.com and they need to give the option to change the from email address to anything the user wants (already possible on the desktop app). How hard could this be?

Ant the ONE thing that makes the web interface unusable is the fact that the site (outside of the account section) is not secure! Yes, that’s right, no HTTPS to access your mail, contacts, calendar or documents. This is simply unacceptable and makes it a show-stopper to use the online service for me. The IMAP access to the mail is secured, the iDisk access through WebDAV is secured, so why isn’t the web site access secured?

Overall, there are very few things that are show-stoppers for me at this stage, and many things I would like to see. Some of the benefits already available make the service worth the yearly subscription to me, but because of a few small things, I am unable to use it to its full potential. I fully understand that you cannot develop everything in one version… so if you are interested Apple, this post has a list of priorities from my side. Once these are done, why not open-up me.com to third-party developers and enable them to add apps to the ones you provide (using SproutCore), getting 30% of the additional subscription fee?

And the great thing is that you can easily update your posts…

The one thing they didn’t say is that you needed to sign-up for a voice plan of at least $35 per month to be eligible to the $199 / $299 purchase price for the iPhone 8Gb / 16Gb respectively. If you want a $30 per month voice plan, the phone will cost you an extra $50 (less that 1 year of $5 extra subscription if you do the math). In addition to that, they are offering Visual voice mail for $8 per month as a stand-alone offer or for $15 per month part of a pack that also includes caller id and way to many SMS messages. Therefore, the cheapest comparable monthly plan that you could go with a 6Gb per month data plan was, under this offer, CA$ 73.

So how does it look when you map this pricing against the others in the graph I previously used:

We have a clear winner there, except if you will only use less than about 400Mb of data per month. But then again, you need to hurry to get this plan as Rogers / Fido announced it would only be available until the end of August 2008… except if they decided to extend the offer. 

One more thing, if you manage to exceed the 6Gb limit, pricing is identically to the iPhone plans, e.g. $0.5 per megabyte for the first 60Mb and $0.03 per megabyte thereafter. This means that 10Gb of data per month will still be under $225… OK, not as cheap as the unlimited data in the USA, but almost half of the original iPhone pricing offering from the canadian mobile network operator.

The one huge thing that is a potential show-stopper for me is the 3-year contract that you have to sign to be able to have an iPhone in Canada. I don’t know what will happen in 3 years time, but I am 100% certain that I won’t have the same phone (iPhone 4.0 should be out by then). I would not mind paying more more for the phone now so that I don’t need to get locked in for such a long period of time.

Digging further into the offering, I wanted to do the math behind cost for data usage, to get a better picture of what we are actually talking about… and the findings are quite interesting. All pricing below are in Canadian Dollars.

In a nutshell, if you expect to transfer more than 2.1Gb per month and don’t use the iPhone as a phone a lot (under 150 minutes per month), go with the $60 plan, it’s cheaper! If you transfer 5Gb per month, it will cost you $229.80, $234.30, $251.08 and $235.36 on the $60, $75, $100 and $115 plans respectively.

So what do the numbers tell us. Last week, Rogers / Fido announced the price plans they are going to offer for the iPhone in Canada. Here is a screenshot of their pricing as of June 30th (link to the page here):

My initial reaction was really negative based on this. Historically, I haven’t used my cell phones a lot as a phone, but am expecting to use the data option of the iPhone extensively. Therefore linking the included minutes with the data usage doesn’t make sense to me. I am, for the rest of this post, assuming that 150 minutes of voice communications per month will be more than enough for my needs. 

And when it comes to text messages, I am planning to have CallerID on my phone, e.g. I will certainly end-up with the $15 Value Pack 1 that bumps the SMS count to 2,500 on every plan (not sure about the extra $5 for the Value Pack 2).

Therefore, the choice of the price plan really comes down to the data usage. To better understand this, I built a little spreadsheet that calculates the actual cost for different amounts of data transfered, resulting in interesting findings. Again, all these assume that the number of included voice minutes are irrelevant.

• You can immediately see the spike due to the first extra 60Mb at $0.5 per Megabyte vs. the $0.03 per Mb linear increase thereafter.
• First and foremost, avoid the $100 plan (green line in the graph)… it is the most expensive of all by over $20 per month, except if you are certain you will be between 800Mb and 1Gb every month.
• The $115 plan (purple line in the graph) only makes sense if you are going to be between 1 and 2Gb every month. Above 2.05Gb of data transfer, it will cost you about 6$ more per month than on the $60 plan.
• The $75 plan (red line in the graph) is the cheapest if you transfer between 400Mb and 800Mb. Above that, it is about $5 more expensive than the $60 plan, and it is $1 cheaper than the $115 plan if you transfer more than 2.1Gb per month.
• The $60 plan (blue line in the graph) is the cheapest if you transfer less than 400 Mb or more than 2.1Gb. Comparing the $60 and the $115 plans, you are better off with the cheapest plan except if you know you will be between 1.25 an 2.05Gb per month of data transfer every month for 3 years.

Update (June 10, 2008): OK, my unfounded rumor was completely wrong… that must be why it was unfounded

With the iPhone 1.0, Apple introduced a brand new business model for the mobile phone operators. Instead of massively subsidizing the devices, locking in the users for a multi-year period and keeping all the revenue, the new approach was to charge full price for the phone and then get a revenue share of the subscription. Not only did this provide a high perceived value by the end users as they had to pay for it (normal cell phones are considered “free” or at least “cheap”), but it also opened up a brand new revenue stream for Apple in addition to the one from the sale of the hardware… But to achieve this, it required the phone to be locked and only available to the mobile phone operators who agreed to the revenue share. Great model, except that the hacker community didn’t like AT&T or didn’t live in the USA and took this as a great challenge. They were able to defeat the mechanisms in place on an ongoing basis… I for example used ZiPhone to unlock my iPhone and use it on the Fido network (a fully owned subsidiary of Rogers) here in Canada without any problem. 

So why would Apple go ahead with an unlocked iPhone and how could they protect the ongoing payment from the mobile operators, which enable them to double the revenue per device according to the estimates?

Regarding the why, my guess is that the adoption rate from operators around the world hasn’t been at the level that Apple had hoped, resulting in lower than forecasted unit sales of the iPhone. In addition, now that the Cupertino company has realized that you cannot win the fight against hackers (very similar to the intentional pirates in the software world, but that’s for another blog post), it has added cost to the development and had negative impact on the user experience with the brand and device to the reason why to unlock the device… With revenue soon to come from the distribution of third-party applications, having as many devices as possible out there is certainly a very attractive value proposition. 

Regarding the how to protect the revenue stream, the answer is in the software. No, not in the software of the iPhone itself, much more in the software that is implemented by the mobile operator to deliver specific services for the device from Apple, which will be a lot harder to hack or pirate. For example, I don’t have (currently) visual voice mail in Canada. Now that’s certainly not a killer feature for me and I can live without it, but what if the iPhone 2.0 was to add more of these “unique” features that require to be on a network which provides a revenue share to Apple. A few examples that come to my mind are visual chats between iPhone users, instant messaging (remember, rumor has it that this will be one type of app that won’t be allowed to be developed by third-parties), or an access to your iDisk (hey, there are rumors of updating .Mac in sync with the WWDC iPhone announcement, so why not). Basically any feature that won’t be available on the iPod touch could require a subscription with an Apple approved mobile network operator (e.g. one who provides a revenue share to Apple).

And the good thing is that this “how” would also work in countries where iPhone 1.0 where introduced, except that there will most certainly not be other operators who will be able to offer Apple’s cell phone and won’t have the service. Finally, with the latest rumors about Rogers offering an attractive data plan price according to Electronista (at least for the HTTP protocol), looks like I will need to change mine for a new one soon. 

OK, I know this is a stretch, but as mentioned in the title, this is a completely unfounded rumor that I just made out of thin air. If you don’t agree with my logic, feel free to let me know

On a recent plane from Asia back to Canada, on board of a very recent 777 that had a completely updated interior, I got this message again. So can someone tell me why there is actually an ashtray in the lavatory, especially if it is placed just below the big “No Smoking in Lavatory” sign:

I can understand an ashtray in very old planes (those that are over 10 years old and that didn’t go through a complete overhaul since). But on a very modern one, I have to say that this evades me completely! Perhaps they are expecting the regulation to change, just as this is becoming the case with cell phones and wireless devices for Internet access.

It really sounded like the currency from Switzerland was the equal of the one from a third-world country where the exchange rate changes by the minute due to civil war… so when I asked what currencies are actually accepted by my bank, the answer was simply US Dollars and British Pounds (at least one European currency, thanks to the Queen). Yes, you’ve read correctly, my bank in Canada isn’t even willing to exchange Euros.

And for those who ask, I am banking with one of the biggest ones in Canada who charge a fortune for a normal account per month, not a small unknown internet bank. I was already convinced that the banking system in this country is completely outdated, but this was just the little extra that confirmed everything. The only solution for me is to go to a currency exchange place downtown (yes, where the tourists go) and then take the Canadian Dollars to bring them to my branch! Not impressed…

Gérard

When Apple announced the MacBook Air, I looked at it with an intrigued eye, but didn’t place the order immediately (I know, really amazing) as I was still quite happy with my original 15’’ MacBook Pro (the Core Duo version). But then, walking into an Apple Store in Montréal, I saw the Air and by the time I left the mall, I had one of the SSD based model in a small bag specifically designed for it, looking forward to experience it fully during a three weeks trip to Australia and Taiwan. In Summary: I love it!

First things first, this blog entry is not about benchmarking, so let me answer the battery question first: on a plane, e.g. without wireless connectivity, I get over 5 hours of battery time reading PDFs, writing documents, cleaning-up my inbox and catching up my offline Google Reader account, while listening to some music and podcasts in the background. Now with WiFi enabled, I appear to get about 4.5 hours (again, I did not time it exactly)… well enough time for my needs. Yes, getting 15+ hours battery time would help to keep the Air alive during a Vancouver, Canada to Sydney, Australia flight. But in that case, first, I still try to sleep a little, and second, I had a power-plug near my seat to charge back the battery while sleeping. And the reason I wasn’t using the MacBook Air while having the power plug connected on the plane is that there seems to be, as previously reported, a conflict between the type of power provided while in the air and the multi-touch trackpad! And yes, I just confirmed it during the Air Canada flight home I am currently sitting on between Tokyo, Japan and Toronto, Canada. I will report this issue to Apple tomorrow as it really defeats the logic that a device aimed at the frequent travelers has issues when you actually travel!

On the subject of the multi-touch track-pad, I have been very positively surprised by it. Yes, I’ve been experiencing multi-touch on the iPhone for a few months now and am a strong believer of this type of interaction with the device, but I wasn’t clear on how that would work on a “computer” operating system. There again, the integration with the applications that Apple delivers is seamless (other applications will need to be update to react correctly to these events)… for example, when I read to the latest PDF edition of the “Le Temps” newspaper with Preview, I can very easily zoom into and flip through pages… even rotating them is very easy, even if a lot less useful when it comes to reading a magazine on the screen. iPhoto also works very well with the track-pad. I can’t wait for tools such as Pixelmator to support the multi-touch events and build on them for an even better user experience.

Now when it comes to the keyboard and the screen, these are absolutely great to use. The keyboard feel is really nice (I am slowly getting to a North American keyboard as I’ve always been using a Swiss French keyboard before, and am getting better with accented characters). The LED glossy screen is really nice to work with. It is actually so bright when turned all the way on that I normally keep the brightness between 40 to 50%. That certainly helps with battery time.

I know that a lot of people have been complaining that there is no integrated DVD drive and no built-in Ethernet port, not to mention the lack of built-in EVDO or EDGE support. In all cases, having been on the road for three week, I didn’t miss any of them a single time. Regarding the DVD drive, I actually can’t recall the last time I used the DVD drive while traveling. I normally need it to install software, and the remote installation feature works amazingly well. But I only install software when I am at home normally. In addition, as I am carrying my work laptop anyway, I installed the remote DVD software support there just in case.

When it comes to built-in Ethernet port, I am very happy with WiFi support. Most of the hotels I stay have actually wireless access available these days. And for those who have only Ethernet access, I discovered a long time that the best solution is to have an Airport Express base station in my suite-case, so that I can actually use my laptop anywhere in the hotel room, and not only at the desk with the generally uncomfortable chair. Oh yes, and when it comes to EVDO or EDGE support, I live in Canada, do I need to say more? With a mobile phone provider who charges about 1$ per Megabyte before roaming charges, I don’t see this as an option any time soon anyway.

I know that it is, according to the specs at least, the slowest Mac currently available. But as a user of a laptop traveling to surf the web, answer emails, write documents and view the photos I captured during the trip, it is more than fast enough for my needs. And I’ve been using vmWare Fusion 1.1 (more on this in the future) with a Windows XP virtual machine to run CorelDRAW and PHOTO-PAINT X4 on it very smoothly, thanks to the 2Gb of RAM that come standard. For the more advanced things such as advanced video editing or 3D modeling, I will be using the much faster and powerful machine I have at home.

The other factor to consider is the disk space. With the SSD option, the size announced by Apple for the drive is 64Gb… oh yes, once formatted, it goes down to 55.4 Gb?!? Talk about maths that go wrong. Out of that, you’ll need about 10Gb for the Operating System, 10 Gb for applications (Xslimmer is a must-have application for Air owners) and another 15 Gb for the Windows virtual machine, which leaves 20Gb to play with. This means you don’t have enough space to store your entire music and photo library, but it leaves plenty for data when you are on the road. Here is how I’ve got it split currently: About 8Gb for iTunes (I sync my iPhone with the Air), about 2Gb max for all the photos I’ve captured during my trips and about 10Gb for a full sync of my iDisk. Yes, .Mac makes total sense for people with multiple Macs… the possibility to synchronize the settings and data on multiple computers is really great, and having the “Back to my Mac” feature of 10.5 enable you to access that one file you completely forgot to copy before leaving home. Even better, it works really well.

All in all, the MacBook Air is a fantastic device when traveling that gets people turning their head and asking about how I like it. The constraints are something you need to consider up-front and make sure they won’t be a problem for you. I cannot see it as the main computer for most of us, but as the machine to take with them for the road-warriors that syncs with the iMac they have at home, it is an amazing device… if only the price was a little more affordable

There has been a lot of discussion regarding the rules related to renting movies… Looking at how I normally watch movies (I do subscribe to Zip.ca, the Canadian equivalent to Netflix), I’ve rarely started watching a movie that I got through the mail more than two weeks after receiving it, and I don’t recall having once stopped watching the movie before the end of it to continue a few days later. Yes, being able to watch movies for 72 hours after pressing the play button the first time. But as I haven’t gotten used to the Tivo time-shifting experience as of yet, I don’t really mind the 30 days / 24 hours rule. Yes I know, I will certainly regret writing this in the future…

After updating my version of iTunes and the software on my iPhone (I was actually traveling with a trans-atlantic flight the next day), I rented a movie to give it a try (The Simpsons) and enjoyed watching that movie on my hand-held device while being stuck in economy class. Overall, the quality and experience was great, except that in the middle of the movie, I suddenly get an advertisement message for something!!! That destroyed my whole experience and, while being as unobtrusive as possible, is unacceptable in my mind.Update 9 July 2008: The advertisement I saw was actually part of the movie. Thank you Geoff for pointing this misunderstanding out to me

The other thing related to the new media offering from Apple is the fact that some DVDs you can buy (at least in the USA and Canada, yes, in Canada!) will also include a digital copy. While not specifically for iTunes (it also works with Windows Media Player’s PlayForSure, but not with the Zune), the idea is very intriguing… the only DVD I could find at this stage with the digital copy (another cartoon movie: Family Guy - Blue Harvest) actually includes two discs in the case, plus a little flyer with instructions for the digital copy. This card also include a unique serial number. When you insert the second disk in your computer drive, iTunes detects it and asks for the unique number on the card to unlock your very own digital copy of that movie. Type in the code, and then something strange happens. Instead of copying the movie from the disk and unlocking it over the network (strange I know, I don’t even complain about the fact that there is DRM all over this), iTunes actually starts downloading the movie! I get a second disk in the DVD case, and the only thing that is included on it is information for the media player to display a page on the store to start downloading the movie for “free”… In summary, these DVDs don’t implement and evolution of the DRM used by Microsoft or Apple, they simply link back to the normal workflow and require you to download the movie in electronic format… Handbrake still sounds very appealing for a digital backup of your purchased DVDs with this type of approach from the movie studios.

The last change regarding the media offering from the makers of the iPod, the new Apple TV experience, is great. Version 2.0 of the software installed seamlessly on my device, and it then was very easy to find a movie to rent, click a button and watch the movie within a few minutes of deciding what to watch. I understand that the HD version of the movie is not 1080p, but the quality on my HD-TV was really good. And the good news, I didn’t get any add on the movie I rented to try the Apple TV experience out (Michael Clayton). What I really enjoyed is the fact that from the moment I decided what to watch and the point where the movie actually started, only a few minutes where required.

The Apple TV experience is really seamless… once the size of the Interweb tubes grows a little more (Bell, Rogers, take this as a strong request from my side) and the quality of HD rentals move to true 1080p, the monthly fee for Zip.ca will be hard to justify. I don’t see myself stopping buying Blu-Ray movies that I want to see more than once for the foreseeable future (I stopped buying DVDs as a rule since I got the Playstation 3 last year). But for those movies that I just want to see once, getting it directly streamed to your TV is a seamless experience that I look forward to enjoy again. The one thing missing is as following: after watching the movie, why not offer me a 48 hour window to convert my rental into a purchase for an extra $9.95? As the whole thing has already been downloaded once, that shouldn’t be to difficult from a technology perspective… but then again, DRM and the studios might be the biggest reason that will prevent this from happening.

In summary, while there is still room for improvement in many aspects, this offering around movies from Apple is a great first start. Just start offering these outside of the USA, and get rid of this @$#%#*! DRM and I will be a very happy camper.

On the subject of DRM going away, when can I get DRM free music from all the major in addition to EMI outside of the USA??? Currently, the only option is Amazon.com if you have a US credit card. When will I get all the music DRM free on iTunes, wherever I am?

But after 5+ hours of usage, I needed to recharge the battery. Good news, there was a 110V power plug in the seat, so I connect my power adapter. And then, I get a huge surprise… the multi-touch trackpad starts behaving in a very strange way… the cursor starts jumping across the screen, when in the finder, the desktop icons change sizes… and as soon as I disconnect the power, everything is back to normal. I was therefore able to watch a movie on the Air, but every time I needed to move the cursor, I had to disconnect the power cord first???

I will try this again on my flight back, and if the problem is still there, I will report the details to Apple. It sounds really strange that a sub-notebook designed for road-warriors could have problems when used in a typical scenario for the target audience.

In addition to the great ice sculptures, local inhabitants go and skate on the canal… well, I’ll see next year if I want to give it a try again. It’s been so long that I haven’t skated on ice that I’m not sure if I could actually still stand straight.

And here are a few more photos of the day:

Building on the amazing success of open-source in the software development world, this book looks at business models that apply similar strategies as a competitive advantage compared to other players in their respective industries. With many insightful examples and sometimes ideas going at the opposite of the traditional corporate thinking, this book is worth a read!

The books description on amazon.com states following:

The word “wiki” means “quick” in Hawaiian, and here author and think tank CEO Tapscott (The Naked Corporation), along with research director Williams, paint in vibrant colors the quickly changing world of Internet togetherness, also known as mass or global collaboration, and what those changes mean for business and technology. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia written, compiled, edited and re-edited by “ordinary people” is the most ubiquitous example, and its history makes remarkable reading. But also considered are lesser-known success stories of global collaboration that star Procter & Gamble, BMW, Lego and a host of software and niche companies. Problems arise when the authors indulge an outsized sense of scope-”this may be the birth of a new era, perhaps even a golden one, on par with the Italian renaissance, or the rise of Athenian democracy”-while acknowledging only reluctantly the caveats of weighty sources like Microsoft’s Bill Gates. Methods for exploiting the power of collaborative production are outlined throughout, an alluring compendium of ways to throw open previously guarded intellectual property and to invite in previously unavailable ideas that hide within the populace at large. This clear and meticulously researched primer gives business leaders big leg up on mass collaboration possibilities; as such, it makes a fine next-step companion piece to James Surowiecki’s 2004 bestseller The Wisdom of Crowds.

When looking for specific information, I find myself regularly starting on Wikipedia, an only encyclopedia entirely build by volunteers all around the internet in a highly collaborative way. When I look for a specific information, I got there first, even before I start searching on Google. Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP, also known as LAMP, have become one of the most widely used web server solution (this blog runs Wordpress on a LAMP configuration) and are completely free, developed in an open and collaborative way by thousands of volunteers around the Interweb. There must be something behind the model used to develop these great solutions that can be applied to the business world. That’s the topic of the book “Wikinomics”.

Through numerous examples, ranging from a mining company, to motorcycle manufacturers and even Lego, this book looks at what has made these businesses so successful. Recognizing that even the largest enterprises don’t have enough resources internally to out-think very innovative start-ups or individuals, being able to harness the power of the commons has proven to be a deciding business advantage for these companies. By being open and inviting people outside the traditional walls of the company to participate in the future of products and services, these companies have been able to deliver more and faster than ever before and have proven to be strong competitors to businesses with strong market leadership. Throughout this book, D. Tapscott and A. Williams detail the main principle of wikinomics: Being open, Peering, Sharing and Acting globally. Covering concepts such as Ideagoras, Prosumers and platforms for participations, this book is well worth the read.

The two next steps are for other types of contents to be available DRM-free (TV shows, movies, audio-books, eBooks, …) and for the removal of country borders for digital sales and subscriptions… DVDs and Blu-Rays / HD-DVDs are region-encoded, but even more annoyingly, you cannot buy DRM-free music legally from Amazon.com and you cannot watch shows on hulu.com if you are outside the United States of America!

Why not make the digital content sold online available simultaneously world-wide… record companies and movie studios should consider this as another “virtual” country around the world, just like other physical countries / geographies. I would love to see the reaction of the press and blogosphere if there was a killer content available everywhere but in the US.

It’s not that I don’t want to pay for my content, it’s just that I can’t do it legally from where I live… I believe that this is really wrong.

PS: When is the iPhone coming out in Canada?

On the Windows front, I have also used Ecto for a while. While it works almost as well on Windows than on MacOS, except for the iPhoto integration obviously, you can feel that this is not a native application. Listening to episode 42 of Windows Weekly, I wanted to know more about the Windows Live applications from Microsoft, and especially the one to write blog posts: Windows Live Writer. And I have to say: Microsoft, great job!

Windows Live Writer seems to be compatible with almost all the blogging platforms out there. I’ve only tested it with WordPress.org (this site) and with CommunityServer.org (my other Blog about Graphics). Setting-up the accounts is really easy. In addition to enabling you to post, Live Writer will actually get a copy of the template and style of your blog, so that you can type and preview the posting as if you were live on your site. This is a really nice feature that puts your content into context. But if you really want to, you can always revert back to HTML mode

There are also more and more plug-ins that are made available to add functionality to Windows Live Writer. You can for example insert YouTube videos, maps, tags, … and much more. The only thing that I seem to be missing compared to Ecto is the capability of editing previously posted blog entries. You cannot, or at least I haven’t figured out yet how to, list the previously published and drafted entries for editing.

All in all, for a free software from Microsoft, this is really worth the download. If you are looking for a blog editor that is easy to use, compatible with your blogging platform of choice and for Windows XP or Vista, give it a try.

To help implementing the GTD methodology, many software and online implementations that have been specifically developed. One of the software I used initially is called ThinkingRock, a Java based software that works on Mac OS, Windows and Linux, and applies GTD to the letter. Many more are available and there are even sites that index all the GTD applications available. While the data file saved from ThinkingRock works on all platforms, I ended-up carrying a USB stick with me at all time when going from my home computer to the one I have at work. I also wasn’t able to quickly add something to my inbox when on the go or check my lists while away from my computer(s).

I therefore decided to move to an online solution, and the one I selected is called “Remember The Milk“. While not specifically designed to implement the GTD methodology, its approach at managing lists and its support for off-line, keyboard shortcuts, notifications and mobile access, including an iPhone compatible version, ended up making this my solution of choice that is both fun to use and easy to maintain up-to-date.

When I initially looked at Remember the Milk, or RTM as it gets regularly abbreviated as, I saw a flexible solution that could adapt to many different usages and that didn’t force you into one specific methodology. At the same time, I wasn’t clear if this would be something that could replace the tool I was using at that time. Doing a quick Google search online, I found a very interesting article on the Republic of Geektronica Blog about how to implement the Getting Things Done methodology using Remember the Milk. While this post and all the comments below gave me a good idea on this site and how it could be used, I very quickly added a few tweaks of my own.

It all begins with lists. In addition to the mandatory Inbox and Sent lists, I have added following ones:

• Delegated: For all the tasks that have been delegated to someone else (very good when sharing tasks)
• Private: For all the stuff I have/want to do on my private side of life
• Projects: This list includes all the tasks related to projects that take multiple actions
• References: A list dedicated to all the notes I make with references and information that can be useful for me
• Someday: Stuff I will need / want to do one day is stored in here and I look at it when I do my weekly action review to see if there is anything to move in another list
• Thoughts: This could be collapsed with the Reference list, except that I store ideas that are not necessarily actionable in this list
• Work: All the single tasks that are not in a specific list
• Everything: This is actually a saved search that shows me everything that I have captured in RTM

When it comes to the GTD methodology, contexts are an integral part of system. While some people have recommended to simply use tags for the context, I’ve decided to actually leverage the “Locations” feature of Remember The Milk to define context… Living in Ottawa, Canada, I’ve for example defined the “@home” context as being my home address as a location in RTM. @office is at my work address. And for the contexts that don’t have a specific address, I picked a spot on the map: @errand is for example in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, @online is in China, @phone is in Tokyo, … At the end, I’ve got various contexts defined by locations for my various needs. And if you pick points far enough from each other on the map, you can quickly display a specific context such as @phone when you are in front of your phone and have some time. And because all my contexts start with the @ sign, they are all together in the tag cloud as well.

Next steps: Tagging. While you can search for anything easily, populating the tag cloud makes it very easy to find stuff quickly and easily. While you can use any text as a tag, I defined some basic rules about those to help me group these in 3 different categories: People, Projects and the rest.

• People: Any time I tag a task with a specific person name because I am working on this task with that person for example, I use a pre-defined rule. If the person is called John Smith, the tag will be +johns. Using the + sign at the beginning, following by the short name of that person combines all the tags related to people together at the top of the tag cloud. In addition to that, when I add tags to a specific task, starting to type +j will show +johns in a drop-down list in real time (very nice and fast AJAX implementation). I also have a +team and a few other +groups tags that I use on a regular basis. When I have a meeting with someone, I simply click on his tag, et voila, I immediately see all the tasks related to that person.
• Projects: Applying the same concept as for People, I use the - sign at the beginning of the project tag. This will combine all the projects together in the tag cloud between the people (with the + sign) and the contexts / locations (with the @ sign). For example, I’ve got a “-coreldraw.com” tag for everything related to the CorelDRAW.com community site. In addition to that, these next actions are all combined in the “Projects” list described above.
• The rest: I use various tags for the tasks I have across the site. All the non-people, non-project related tags don’t have any specific sign and therefore are listed at the end of the tag cloud.

With all this configured, everything is ready for GTDwRTM… on a daily basis, using the keyboard shortcuts, this site is fun to use and easy to maintain up-to-date. The overview screen shows what you have to do today, tomorrow and what is overdue. The weekly planner makes it easy to get a full overview of your tasks. Using the Netvibes module or the iGoogle one integrates your scheduled next tasks very nicely with your home page of choice. And for the Gmail users out there, RTM is now integrated directly in your email application. There is even an off-line mode using Google Gears (I already use it for Google Reader)… works great when on a plane for example.

Being able to use various different ways to manage your lists, add tasks and get reminders makes Remember the Milk a very flexible tool to work with. You can for example email tasks to yourself, which is great for crackberry users on the go such as myself. Just add the unique email address in your contact list with the name RTM, and start sending yourself email. You can even set priorities, tags, lists, locations, … directly from the email using a simple to remember syntax. You can get notifications per email, Skype, MSN and other instant messaging protocols and the iCalendar support works really great, except that the version of Outlook I have at work doesn’t understand this “non-Microsoft” standard. The mobile version of RTM is also great from cell phones with limited web capabilities, and there is even an iPhone optimized version for the users of the Pro version of Remember the Milk.

Now that I’ve started to get some of my colleagues to try this online service out, we are also increasingly using the task sharing feature, so that when I add a to-do item in the delegated list, I actually delegate it to someone else who will see it appear in his/her inbox. And being able to define the due date as “next tuesday 4pm” makes it very easy to set time tracking in place. Really cool.

There are a few things that could be improved: First, there is no way to export your data from Remember the Milk in a clean XML file for example. While this isn’t a big issue as you can use the iCalendar connector or the ATOM feed to get all the information, it should be rather easy to offer an export feature. Another thing that I would like to see is to be able to set the SSL version of the site as the default in your profile. While RTM works both with HTTP and HTTPS, the default is to go to the HTTP URL, not the encrypted one. Would it be possible to have an option in your account settings to automatically redirect you to the encrypted site? Finally, I am surprised that there isn’t a desktop software version of it available yet, using the open API to store all the information on the server.

And to finish this review, I’ve left the best for the end: Remember the Milk is free and there is no advertisement over-crowding the site. If you like it and plan to use it on a regular basis, please go ahead and get the Pro account option for $25 per year. In addition to knowing that you support a great online service, it adds nice little extras such as the iPhone /iPod touch interface and a sync tool for Windows Mobile devices.

The team behind RTM has done an amazing job at adding new features on a regular basis… next step, get out of beta

With all the noise about the Amazon Kindle these days (yet another device that won’t be available in Canada for the foreseeable future), I was really surprised by the bad press the eBook Reader from Sony was getting. Well, if Sony only sold a few thousands of these, I am one of the happy owners. Overall, the book reading experience is really nice, PDF support is bad and the Connect online bookstore has a long way to go before it can be at the same seamless experience level as iTunes.

I have been interested in the ePaper technology for a while. I do travel on a regular basis for my job, and the majority of these trips are on flights over 4 hours. In addition that that, I really like reading books (when time permits). One of the biggest problems I normally have when I travel is that I am in the middle of a book with normally 150 pages to go… this means that I will be done reading it before my plane lands at its destination. So the only option for myself is to take a second book with me. As I already carry a lot of “stuff” when I travel, I was looking for a way to avoid this.

The other thing that is part of my job is to read documents such as analysts reports or white paper, usually in PDF or RTF format. The Sony eBook Reader is supposed to support these formats, as well as Microsoft Word (but no Corel WordPerfect) and MP3 files for music and audiobooks. More on this later.

To stay true with Sony, the software that comes with the eReader only works on Windows. But the great news with this new version of the device is that you can simply drag&drop documents to the internal memory or to the memory cards through a USB connection and they will automatically get added to your available books. Even better, in addition to the expected Memory Stick format, the PRS-505 also has an SD Memory slot! Yes, I know, Sony supporting something else that their own format. And the other good news is that this device charges itself through USB! No need for a separate charger when traveling.

When it comes to openness, the PRS-505 can display RTF, DOC and unencrypted PDF files directly. This is great in theory, up to the point where you try to display a PDF document formatted for US Letter or A4 (e.g. the size of most of the PDF files). They look really bad on the Sony eReader. One work-around is to set the device in Landscape mode, but even then, the quality is not good enough to be readable. Sony recommends to re-generate the PDF according to their specifications to solve this problem! As if I could contact Forester to get this done… I haven’t noticed this problem with RTFs as the device is able to reflow the text to better match the screen. Sony could have supported the Mobile PDF specs and give the option to the user to either display the PDF in its original formatting or optimize the document for ePaper reading, but they did not. For those of you who have a similar problem, here is my solution: Use Corel WordPerfect’s PDF import feature. You can then save the document in RTF format and display it correctly on the eReader.

When it comes to closeness, the Sony device uses the proprietary BBeB format for its own eBooks. While some sites are looking at specifications and reverse-engineering of the format, there is no easy way to convert documents, especially PDF ones, into the BBeB format. Some free eBooks sites support the BBeB format. Integrated with the Windows software that comes with the eReader, you can buy books online (to browse the catalogue of available titles, go to ebooks.connect.com). Both the book library software and the online book store have a long way to go if they want to provide the same user experience as with iTunes, but then again, Sony is only at version 2.0, while Apple is currently at version 7.5. Very nice from Sony, when you register your eReader, your account enables you to download 100 classic books, including H.G. Wells, Shakespeare, and many more. I got myself Dan Browns’ Digital Fortress (in case you ask, this is not a free “classic book”) to conduct my “real-life” book reading test. Conclusion: I enjoyed the book

When it comes to reading books, you can feel that this is not a version 1.0 product. The device is light, its aluminum finish makes it comfortable to hold in your hand and the buttons to flip pages are conveniently positioned both on the right and at the bottom of the device. You can choose your font size and bookmark pages for future reference. The ePaper technology used makes it very nice to ready long documents: Bec