March 23, 2005

From the "pointless limitations" department...

Why do manufacturers of high tech gadgets insist on imposing arbitrary limits on their functionality, for no discernable reason? I'm not talking about limiting the amount of memory in a device to lower the cost, or anything, but about limitations that someone had to go out of their way to add to the devices' firmware...

A few weeks ago, my housemate Chris had a great idea — rather than spend valuable beer money on a cool ringtone for his phobile moan, he recorded the introduction and theme tune to "The A-Team" directly from the TV, using his phone's mic. Excellent.

When I tried to do something similar, I found that while my T610 (allegedly a decent handset) has the ability to record up to 30 seconds of audio and store it in some suitable format, it is not then able to make this file into a ringtone. Sigh. It clearly has all the requisite bits of hardware and software, but for some reason Sony-Ericsson have elected not to allow their customers to do this; I can only assume the mobile networks like the revenue stream from people buying ringtones, and lean on the manufacturers to leave out features like this.

Meanwhile, clc seems to have found just as pointless a limitation of his iPod — one which doesn't even merit a cynical explanation like the one above.

I guess all hardware really does suck. Oh, except my new iAudio M3 :-)

Posted by James at 03:55 | Comments (0) | TrackBack
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January 27, 2005

Paging Dave Winer

Dear Dave,

On behalf of the rest of the blogosphere, I would like to congratulate you on your recent award, most arrogant post of 2005. You've done us all proud! It's just a shame you're no more in the running for any of the other awards than, say, I am...

See, you didn't invent podcasting: at the very least, Harry Gilchrist was audioblogging ages before you, and Wikipedia's entry on podcasting, while mentioning you as playing a big part in the automation of the process with enclosures (which, given they're part of your spec, you can take complete credit for) and special aggregators, neither credits you with the first proper implementation, nor with coining the term. I didn't invent podcasting either, but hey, I don't claim to be eligible for any awards.

Regarding best technology — deary me, Dave, you don't even have a comment or trackback implementation! The google-powered citations thing is cool, but, doesn't really offer much over a standard search function to the average user. In fact, I tried to use it to find out when you first mentioned the term "podcasting", but it wouldn't let me page through the results, so I couldn't. Great.

Sorry, but I think there are far, far cooler bits of technology out there. As for Best Weblog and Best Technology Weblog... well, my mummy says my blog is better than yours. Sorry.

All the best, and I hope this blogging thing works out well for you.

Cheers,
James.

[I emailed Dave a link to this article; I'll keep you posted about his response, if any.]

[Update: Dave says "Wow!"]

Posted by James at 14:14 | Comments (1) | TrackBack | TrackBack (1)
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January 12, 2005

Subscibe!!

Yesterday, Dave Winer pointed out the problem caused by more and more online RSS aggregators advising sites to include "Subscribe with $aggregator!!" icons on their sites (see my "Sub | Bloglines" and "LJ Friend" icons on the right) to get more subscribers — there comes a point when you just can't sensibly include that many buttons.

Luckily, Aquarion (of ESF fame) has first designed and then gone and coded a solution. The result is called SubscribeMe, and this is my SubscribeMe link

Do let me know how it works with your favourite aggregator!

Posted by James at 20:27 | Comments (3) | TrackBack
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