Greg

I sent the comments below to Bob Thompson in response to his post today. I’m not sure I see how iPod sales are tanking in a big way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:IPod_sales_quarterly.png If you remove the huge Christmas bump, they have still been selling more per quarter than last year. As far as iTunes, from what I’ve read it seems to be doing very well too. In fact, they are now the 5th largest reseller of music in the US. That’s not online reseller. This is as compared to brick and mortar stores. http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2035 http://www.wftv.com/technology/9831655/detail.html BBC mentions what you are saying: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5350258.stm But I think the key point here is that people will not replace their existing CDs with downloads. They will rip what they have, and then may buy from an online store like iTMS. Since CDs have been around for so long, it only makes sense that folks will have more ripped music than online purchased music. I personally don’t find the iTunes DRM all that annoying. It seems to just work. Buying is fast, and I can listen on my iPod or burn a CD or whatever I want. Yes, it is still DRM, and if you hate DRM you will definitely hate it too. But I’ve not seen any error messages or weird restrictions like with Microsoft’s Plays For Sure. Oh, and one more point. From what I’ve read, iTunes has been considered the loss-leader that sells iPods, not the other way around. This article makes some excellent points: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Home/8FF35CC1-9C86-492C-B711-1564A8EB60A4.html Some key quotes: “Clearly, Apple sees iTMS content as the lubricant to sell iPods and accessories, not a huge cash cow in itself. That’s the third aspect of technical feasibility.” “If users choose to buy their music on CDs or from indie MP3 outlets, Apple doesn’t lose out, because three out of four of those users will choose to buy an iPod to listen to their songs. The iTMS is an option for consumers, not a critical moneymaker for Apple.”

Wow. January of last year was when I last made a substantive post here. I’ve been trying to figure out how to transition back into posting, and that process has led to more procrastinating, and still no post. I’d better just post and be done with it, I guess. Much has happened. I could be dramatic and call this last almost-year life changing. It wouldn’t be that much of an exaggeration, really. But the cliche is that the more things change, the more they stay the same. And that cliche has proven itself with me. But in other news, I’m reading what may be the best book I’ve read since the last best book I’d read. I know I’m a bit behind the times here, as everyone else already knows about it, but the book is Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson. The whole concept is astonishing, but what makes it so memorable to me is the protagonist. The whole book thus far has been from his perspective, in first person, and it seems that most of my favorite books are in first person and don’t jump perspectives much. There are notable exceptions, of course. I picked it up a dozen or more weeks ago, and it sat next to my chair waiting to be read all that time. Poor book. Then it won the Hugo and I remembered I still hadn’t even taken it out of the Barnes and Noble bag. It’s really a great book, and that Hugo is well deserved.

Happy Birthday ! I hope you have a mega great, uber fantastic, ultra happy, lame adjective free day!

As I mentioned before, I wrote an extensible and generic DHTML data grid that uses Javascript and some IE specific features to provide database updates/reads, easy to use canned validation, inline editing and navigation (similar to Excel) and a host of other client-side niceties that make the grid very fast to work with and require few post backs. As RJ is an IE only shop, I didn’t bother to make sure I wasn’t using anything IE specific.

I’ve been putting together some stuff for MechaPencil Publishing, and as part of that, I’ve been working out ways to do some of the neat things I did for the IE grid in a browser independent way. As these tricks might be helpful to others, I thought I’d document them. I’ll update this as I continue to solve these problems.