Microsoft Zune - Brick Day 2008

I've got a Zune music player, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. It's a very good player, and it seems to get better with each software upgrade. So I was surprised when I picked it up on 12/31 and found that it was completely bricked. I checked Google for answers and found that I was not alone. This was happening to thousands of Zunes worldwide! Must be a year-end date bug, I thought.

Turns out I was right. Luckily for me, and for Microsoft, all the Zunes recovered fine on 1/1/09. Some poor programmer at Microsoft is hitting his head against a desk right now, wondering how he could have made this error.

Why does the Zune care about the date, anyway? Zunes couldn't even show the time onscreen until the latest firmware updates. One answer is DRM. Zune used to have a "3 days or 3 plays" rule for shared music, and you need a real time clock to enforce that. Another case of DRM causing trouble for manufacturers?

NYC Schools: Preliminary Proposals To Address District 3 Overcrowding

This is of interest to parents of students in NYC District 3 Public Schools (Upper West Side of Manhattan).

I recorded this from the back of the auditorium. Audio quality is listenable. I've captured the main presentation by John White, and also most of the Q&A session.

The presentation references reports at http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/Portfolio/News/District+3.htm.

Listen using the audio player embedded below, or download the MP3 file from here.

How to fix a computer with a corrupted PointSec boot sector

...without a floppy drive, when you are several thousand miles from your office tech support staff. I had to do this last month while travelling in Israel. My work laptop hard drive is encrypted with PointSec security software. PointSec distributes their recovery tool as a floppy image, which didn't do me any good. I found a way to prepare a bootable CD from the floppy image and rescue my PC. The whole process is documented in this tech note that I wrote following the incident. Hope it's helpful.

Dash had better port their GPS software to the iPhone 3G

Have you seen the Dash Express? It's a GPS with built in Internet access. The genius feature is that it tracks each Dash user's speed and position and continually relays this information to its central servers, where data from all Dash users is combined and crunched to provide an accurate real time report of traffic conditions.

Brilliant product, but costly and with a monthly fee Also there's the problem that until they have a critical mass of Dash users on the road, traffic reports are going to be spotty.

Luckily, Apple has just delivered the gadget that is either going to save Dash or destroy them. The iPhone 3G has Internet connectivity and GPS built in.

I think that Dash should port its software to the iPhone, pronto. They should Create two versions:

1. A feature limited version that is free, but useful. This will ensure they have a critical mass of Dash users on the road at all times.
   
2. A full feature version that they can charge money for. If it's good enough, this would replace the Dash hardware entirely. Dash can then get out of the hardware business and focus on scaling up software sales.

On the other hand, it wouldn't take much for Google to add code to their existing Google Maps for iPhone to gather traffic speed data. They could use this, just as Dash does, to improve the quality of their real time Traffic feature.

Jott and Remember the Milk go full circle

I'm a recent convert to Remember The Milk, the Web 2.0 todo list with excellent Gmail integration. It's especially useful in conjunction with Jott, a free phone transcription service. I have set up Jott to feed tasks into my RTM inbox, so it's easy to phone in new tasks from anywhere. The problem has always been: how do I check my todo list when I'm away from a computer? An iPhone would be the ideal solution, but I'm stuck on a Verizon plan with a crippled smartphone.

Now Jott has come through with the answer. They've introduced Jott Feeds, a service that reads you any RSS feed over the phone. RTM can export your todo list as an Atom feed, so it's a simple thing to set up phone access to your todo list. Now I call up Jott, ask for "Jott Feeds" then "Remember the Milk" and it reads me the list. Simple and effective.

How (not) to create a video podcast, Part 1

For a couple of years now, I've been listening to The Daily Show, All Things Considered, Kol Israel (in English) and other programs as podcasts on my iPod. These shows are not normally available as podcasts, so I have rigged up a set of bash scripts on my Linux server to capture the programs and build the podcast feeds, which are then picked up by iTunes running on my Windows PC.

The flow goes like this for TV and radio broadcasts:

cron > script > TV/FM capture card > xawtv streamer > wav file > lame > mp3 file > get metadata > create rss file > publish to Apache > iTunes retrieve podcast> iPod

There's a similar flow for streaming radio

cron > script > streamripper > mp3 file > get metadata > create rss file > publish to Apache > iTunes retrieve podcast > iPod

I recently bought a couple of Zune 30s; these have nice color screens and video podcast support, so I decided to upgrade my podcast scripts to build video podcasts. How hard could that be?

Two weeks later, I can report that it is extremely hard to get right.

My Goals:

Do as much as possible on the Linux server
No transcoding required when syncing to the Zune 30, which only supports .wmv format natively
Reliable, hands off operation
Stretch goal: remove commercials

First attempt:

cron > script > TV/FM capture card > xawtv streamer > avi file > (mencoder transcode to wmv ) > wmv file. This failed because mencoder on Linux cannot build the wmv9 format, which is the only one the Zune 30 will read natively.

... more later, including the solution that finally worked for me.

Radiohead: In Rainbows

For their latest album, In Rainbows, Radiohead have gone direct to their fans with a bold new experiment in music distribution. They are selling their album directly over the Internet, in MP3 format with no DRM. What's more, they offer an interesting choice: set your own price for the download (even free!).

I almost never buy music on iTunes - I'd rather have the CD, thanks. But in this case, I went for the download and paid £4 (around $8). Radiohead have sidestepped all the problems that the big labels have created around digital music distribution, and their pricing model is a good answer to Allofmp3 and The Pirate Bay.

Here's what I thought of the buying experience.

Radiohead's website for the album, inrainbows.com, is designed for looks rather than usability. The terse wording on each page gives you barely enough guidance to get through the purchasing process. You have the choice of ordering the digital download or, for collectors and completists (market segmentation!) a box set with bonus CD and vinyl LP. Sadly, choose your own price only applies to the digital download, not the box set.

As for the choose your own price option - You can choose any price you like as long as it's in pounds sterling. Fair enough, they're a British band. But with a worldwide following, it would have been nice to offer dollar and euro denominated options.

The site does not describe in detail what you get with the digital download. You see a track listing and that's about it.

When you order is filled, you get a link to download a file - as it turns out, it's a Zip file containing 10 tracks in 160Kbps MP3 format. No album art and no lyrics are included. I found some D.I.Y. cover art; it's not official but it's good enough for now.

So - how's the music? I've listened to it once so far as background music while writing. It's a Radiohead album, but it's no OK Computer. I'll have to listen to it a few more times before I make up my mind about it.