Dieter Rams: Bitten By Apple?

(Top: 1960s Braun products, designer Dieter Rams.  Bottom: contemporary Apple products, Apple employee Johnathan Ive)

In a case of serial, uh, inspiration, the 1960s work of Dieter Rams, lead designer for German industrial giant Braun bears a more-than-passing resemblance to the current products of a certain Cupertino computer company. Enjoy the comparison of Rams’ designs against the modern iPod, G5, and iMac. Given Steve Jobs’ penchant for expensive German eyewear, perhaps there are bigger surprises than this…

(lifted from That’s Right blog)

Coming soon to your website: videos you don’t like

Google’s confusing purchase of YouTube has so far borne little in the way of a public proof of the concept behind the purchase. It is fair to expect such a proof, monumental as it would be: the public emergence of a business model that is based on selling your neighbor’s house and possessions is a historic development we eagerly await. Presuming it is not our neighbor placing our home on the market, naturally.

Google’s AdSense program, wherein space on web site pages are occupied by ads served by Google and paid for by Google’s advertising clientèle includes hundreds of thousands of websites. In an effort to leverage Google’s purchase of YouTube (to do something with all that video) and simultaneously expand and strengthen AdSense, Google will announce today that YouTube videos are being added to the AdSense program. This means those easily-ignored text ads in the right-hand column will now include video clips, targeted by subject just like AdSense ads are now. From Miguel Helft’s piece in today’s New York Times:

The service, which represents the first major combination of a Google product with YouTube, will give video creators wide distribution beyond YouTube via Google’s network, known as AdSense. Since the videos will be surrounded by ads, the service is another way for Google to cash in on the huge number of video clips stored on YouTube.

Several other networks distribute videos and ads on the Web, but none reach as many Web sites as AdSense.

Google said it would share revenue from the ads with the creators of the videos and with the Web sites that embed them, though it declined to specify what percentage of the revenue will be kept by each party.

“We are creating incremental distribution for our content providers,” said Christian Oestlien, product manager for AdSense. Mr. Oestlien said the system would also allow publishers to make their Web sites more compelling and give advertisers a new way to reach customers.

While many Web sites already embed YouTube clips in their pages, this system would allow them to make money from the clips. They would not, however, have the same level of control over what clip gets embedded.

Sure, if your definition of “compelling” includes handing over more page space to quasi-random clips of god-knows-what production value, usefulness, quality level, credibility, etc. At least the thorny issue of YouTube video ownership has been sidestepped (yet again):

For now, the system’s scope, and its potential to deliver new revenue to Google, is limited, because only about 100 media companies that have created YouTube videos will be participating.

Google declined to give a full list of participants, but of those it listed, none were large media companies. They include Expert Village, a producer of how-to videos; Ford Models, a modeling agency; and Extreme Elements, which creates videos about extreme sports. Over time, Google expects to use AdSense to syndicate other types of content besides video, the company said.

Seems like a long way to go just to assemble a list of 100 companies who make videos nobody wants to see.

And about these videos: is there an end in sight for this charade where we pretend that a media asset has no important qualities beyond its indexability in a search engine? As we watch the craft of filmmaking succumb to the same race to the bottom that music, graphic design and print each suffered in the wake of the personal computer, is there any chance we will notice that, contrary to Josef Stalin’s famous comment, quantity does not have a quality all its own?

Vint Cerf: TV will melt down before Net does

Internet godfather Vinton Cerf is not worried about video traffic bringing the net to its knees in an oft-predicted technical meltdown. Instead, at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival he warned that TV, and not the net had better watch its ass as it approached its own “iPod moment.”

Distinctly unlike most techno-pundits, when Cerf starts mumbling threats or using weird new phrases or conjunctions, it really pays to listen closely and unpack what he says. There is little chance that Cerf crafted his words to fulfill some kind of lecture-circuit deliverable, some meme-for-meme’s sake nonsense phraseology standing in for insight. This is a guy who got up from his terminal one day having built IP, which you just used, are using now and will use again in the next ten seconds; there isn’t much he can say about the internet that isn’t insightful.

From the August 27 2007 Guardian:

Dr Cerf, who helped build the internet while working as a researcher at Stanford University in California, used the festival’s Alternative McTaggart Lecture to explain to television executives how the internet’s influence was radically altering their businesses and how it was imperative for them to view this as a golden opportunity to be exploited instead of a threat to their survival. The arrival of internet television has long been predicted, although it has succeeded in limited ways so far. But the popularity of websites such as YouTube - the video sharing service bought by Google in 2005 for $1.65bn (£800m) - has encouraged many in the TV industry to try and use the internet more profitably. Last month the BBC launched its free iPlayer download service, and digital video recorders such as Sky Plus and Freeview Playback allow viewers to instantly pause and record live television.

Dr Cerf predicted that these developments would continue, and that we would soon be watching the majority of our television through the internet - a revolution that could herald the death of the traditional broadcast TV channel in favour of new interactive services.

“In Japan you can already download an hour’s worth of video in 16 seconds,” he said. “And we’re starting to see ways of mixing information together … imagine if you could pause a TV programme and use your mouse to click on different items on the screen and find out more about them.”

Some critics, including a number of leading internet service providers, have warned that the increase in video on the web could eventually bring down the internet. They are concerned that millions of people downloading at the same time using services such as iPlayer could overwhelm the network.

Dr Cerf rejected these claims as “scare tactics”. “It’s an understandable worry when they see huge amounts of information being moved around online,” he said. But some pundits had predicted 20 years ago that the net would collapse when people started using it en masse, he added. “In the intervening 30 years it’s increased a million times over … We’re far from exhausting the capacity.”

16 seconds? That’s a lot of time to wait for Bambino!

I see…a Japanese Robot Tour

I have few gifts, but one is clairvoyance as relates to technology. I often can accurately derive future developments by analyzing past developments using a methodology I like to call “guessing correctly”.

I have again seen a small shred of the future.

I hereby, on this day and no later, predict the following event and surrounding media storm:

A Japanese robotics developer and a Sony subsidiary entertainment company will book and execute a tour of a performing robotic musical group or system. This tour will be handled in the same way an indie-rock guitar band tour is currently handled, in support of a debut CD “recorded by” the group/system.

Seems inevitable, doesn’t it? I’ll bet five bucks! It’s a push if its not Sony.

Man, it’s gonna be pretty sweet when I can point back to this post!

<shakes fist> You hear me, tomorrow?! I got your number!!

Untethering Haizman

Named for the Angry Samoans classic “Haizman’s Brain” is my new MacBook Pro. While Haizman’s been a fine machine so far, it is not without its design faults. One being its lack of a PCMCIA slot for simple broadband net access. While I understand that the inclusion of such a pedestrian feature is clearly beneath the precious little lozenge’s dignity, I wouldn’t have minded not having to screw around with underdeveloped hardware technology.

The new slot format, ExpressCard, is less than endowed with choices in net access. The search starts now for an answer: how should I put this MacBook Pro on the net? I have even heard of a few hardy souls who have skipped the card route altogether and put MBPs on the net via Bluetooth link with a Sprint Treo. Let the games begin!

read more | digg story

Google Identifies New Spammer: Itself

As Google’s reach expands, its grip tightens. The company’s stern rules governing what is and isn’t spam are already taken as gospel, and form the effective operating principles of hundreds of thousands of webmasters, all terrified of offending the Big G. Get a bad rep at Google, and watch your traffic dwindle or outright cease when they remove your site from their index.

Sudden negative attention from Sergey and Larry’s octopus is so serious that it turns out that nothing can save you from their wrath - it doesn’t even help if you happen to be Google. From today’s ComputerWorld:

Readers of Google Inc.’s Custom Search Blog were handed a bit of a surprise Tuesday when the Web site was temporarily removed from the blogosphere and hijacked by someone unaffiliated with the company.

The problem? Google had mistakenly identified its own blog as a spammer’s site and handed it over to another person.

The change was first noticed by the Google Blogoscoped Web site, which noticed that posts on the Custom Search Blog had been deleted and replaced by a strange comment from someone identifying himself as Srikanth.

“Google Custom Search, is the wonderful product from Google which many webmasters have been looking and dream for,” Srikanth wrote. “Also Google Custom Search is integrated with Ad-sense, which means make money while keeping users on your site for longer time with custom search engine. … Good Luck for all the Custom Search customers(??).”

This blog typically offers tips and tricks for users of Google’s Custom Search Engine software, which can be used to build customized Web sites that search specific Web sites or pages.

Srikanth’s tone was out of character for an official Google blog, prompting Google Blogoscoped to speculate that the site may have been hacked.

The answer turned out to be less sinister, according to Sean Carlson, a Google spokesman.

“Blogger’s spam classifier misidentified the Custom Search Blog as spam,” he said via e-mail today. Typically, Google notifies blog owners when it has spotted content associated with spam on their Web sites to give them a chance to clear up any misunderstandings.

However, that didn’t work out in this case. “The Custom Search Blog bloggers overlooked their notification, and after a period of time passed, the blog was disabled,” the company said.

When blogs are disabled like this, their URL becomes available to the general public. That’s when Srikanth swooped in and wrote the joke post.

“It was a case of “URL squatting and not a security issue or any kind of hack,” Carlson said.

Google quickly realized its mistake, and the Custom Search Blog is now back in action.

Linux Audio Appliance: Just Add Appliance

The pro audio world and Linux/open source software world have been trying to find a way to fit together. Looks like they may keep trying. The latest effort, launched by a former executive of a legendary 1970s digital instrument maker, is linuxdigitalaudio.com. The site strikes me a bit like venture capital in the reverse; instead of nerds petitioning professional capitalists for funding, this is investors pitching the open-source community the promise of “economic incentive” if they would just be so kind as to, you know, conceive, design, prototype, integrate, and deliver the Pro-Tools-killing portable box. When I asked the executive in question about the problem of driver development, which I consider to be the far biggest hurdle if for no other reason than hardware sure isn’t any more, I got a response that boiled down to “the community will do that.” Then he told me how he sold his instrument to Frank Zappa back in The Day. Shrug. We’ll see if the open source community is more or less discerning than Frank was.

candy-colored and annoying

to the surprise of nobody, apple iPods and iBooks and related iBilge are hollywood’s preferred brand of quasi-toy computer and shitty audio player. the apple corporation, always first to the party (whenever the party is really a job in disguise) has policies in place to ensure they never reliquish their exclusive association with the skin-deep.

for one thing, according to this wired.com article, apple forbids its employees working in their retail stores from speaking to the press about the celebrities who come in to their los angeles stores.

it’s understandable - apple has no interest in being associated with motley crue singer vince neil, who bought a g5 recently so a reality tv show camera crew would “see something cool-looking in his shanty pad.”

at the end of the day, which is more important? that apple retains its confidences with the world’s confused entertainers or that we learn that director kevin smith is a regular at the store due to his wife’s iBook being “on the blink”? he should look pissed off.

new ways for software to ruin your day

point and click your way to a hit song with HSS - software designed to make record company a & r people even lazier and more cowardly than they already are.

you notice the new guy? there’s something weird about him.

it turns out that roaches aren’t that smart after all. the leurre project comes to us from a team of french, flemish and swiss researchers and engineers. the team has built robotic cockroaches that walk, smell, antennae-waggle and generally behave like real cockroaches. they do such a good job, these robots are actually accepted by real cockroaches.

future plans include utilizing these robots to infiltrate cockroach society. these agents, once ensconced, will work within the cockroach system, disrupting it from the inside, sticking it to “the man”, if you will. these robots will borrow money from real cockroaches and never pay it back. they will spread sabotage and disinformation wherever they go, recommending bait poison as haute cuisine and glue-trap motels as four-star.

the roaches in your walls will soon feel the spread of growing ennui and dissatisfaction as more and more of the odd electric interlopers arrive, each taking up a little more space, each waggling their antennae in depressingly predictable patterns. younger roaches will pack up and leave in droves. priced out of the grease behind your stove, they will hit the road and never darken your door again.