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Music for free, what a premise
May 8th
This isn't exactly the newest news ever but it's something I had to comment on because it makes me happy to see. Trent Reznor of fame is now free from the stranglehold of a record label and, as a result, has been able to stick it to the recording industry by putting Nine Inch Nail's new album on the cheap. Really, really cheap. So like five dollars, right? I mean that's been done before. Take Radiohead for example, "just pay what you think the album is worth" they say....but now it has been taken one step further.
You can get Nine Inch Nails - The Slip right now for free. Not free and then pay later if you like it, just free. Not only that but you can get it roughly a billion different formats ranging from your standard .mp3 to better-than-CD-quality 24/96 WAVE all for free. What happens is you put in your email, the email addresses of a couple friends if you want to give them the heads up, and they email you the link. You hit up the page, decide which format you want and grab your free album. It's pretty much awesome, and I can see it becoming a bit of a trend as we move forward from independent artists especially. The reason? Well, piracy is an issue. Not nearly as big of an issue though as the people who see the negative side-effects of piracy without actually being pirates themselves. For example, I can buy an album but making a back up copy is
It's becoming more and more true that artists aren't apt to make money off of their actual music (even if they sell well they don't see a very big percentage anyways) but rather off of merchandising and live shows. The only problem with trying to sell merch and tickets is that you need people listening to your music first, otherwise they'll never fall in love with it enough to spend some cash. That's why giving away your music is so powerful. Without a monetary barrier in place there's a way higher chance that someone will pick up your music and give it a listen, even if they aren't a fan or aren't familiar with your music. I have known about Nine Inch Nails for a long time, even liked a few of their more popular songs, but wouldn't classify myself as a fan. Any other time if there was a new NIN album out I would say "that's great" and ignore it. When I heard I could get it for free though, I went ahead and did so. I'm just one person but I'm sure a lot more were in the same situation.
There are some artists that have made their careers on giving their music away for free - the first artist I think of off the top of my head would be . He gives away all of his music and has formed a huge cult following as a result. That's especially huge with the younger crowds, the people who are most likely to come out to a show and get into your music and most importantly spread it among their friends. If you look up a you'll see they're totally nuts, and I have to say a lot of that has to be because he's played to his audience and made it easy for them to get into his work. Another artist that's much less known (I've heard very little about him personally besides once that he was mentioned on a podcast) is . I heard a sample of one of Brad's songs on a podcast like I said, and I went out immediately and grabbed his whole album . It's really good stuff too, music that I would have missed out on had there been a monetary barrier in the way.
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Microhoo – The Aftermath
May 6th
. Microsoft showed interest in acquiring Yahoo around the beginning of February, and since then there has been a lot of drama and discussion about whether the move would be good or bad for Microsoft or Yahoo, what it implied, and whether the deal would ever get done. At least one of those three questions has been answered now - the deal has not been completed. On May 3rd one Steve Ballmer to Yahoo's Jerry Yang expressing his appreciation to the Yahoo staff for their cooperation during the proceedings, and also admitting his remorse that the acquisition never happened.
Late last week everyone was absolutely sure that Microsoft wouldn't be backing down. In fact, I listened to over the weekend and a notable Microsoft pundit and author of "" - - said that she was positive the deal would be done the day after the podcast was recorded. I think they said the recording happened on May 1st, so that would be May 2nd that she was sure it would go down. Much to our (and her) surprise though, it was not to be. Why was everyone so sure though? Steve Ballmer held a at Microsoft presumably speaking about the situation of the acquisition. Ballmer isn't noted for his subtlety or willingness to submit, so the natural assumption was that he was speaking about how he planned to go the distance and do whatever needed to be done to get the deal done. As it turns out, that was not the case.
Microsoft recently upped their bid for Yahoo to 47.5 billion dollars (or 33 dollars a share) in order to urge Yahoo along. That's a significant amount of money over the original bid which was 31 dollars a share (44.6 billion). In the end though, Jerry Yang insisted that they would not sell for any less than 37 dollars a share, which calculates to be a whopping 53 billion dollars. That's a huge sum of money, much more than Microsoft has ever spent on a company in the past, and so as of today Microsoft has stopped seeking Yahoo. A lot of people assume that the reason Yahoo increased their price was because , offered some help to Yahoo, and urged them that they were getting a bit of a raw deal from Microsoft. If that's the case then I have to question Yahoo's commitment in that case as Google is a direct competitor to Yahoo. Not only that but it's absolutely in Google's interest that this deal was not completed.
It's no secret that the reason Microsoft wanted Yahoo in the first place was to compete with Google. Steve Ballmer is dead set on making a play in online advertising, and of course Google dominates that particular market. In joining with Yahoo the hope was that Microsoft would be able to pick up a lot of the search technology that Yahoo has developed over the years, and as a result become a better competitor for search. Also, just for reference, Microsoft is also competing with Google in other areas. For example they just unveiled a which enables file management and computing in the cloud (read the internet). The important thing to note about Live Mesh aside from its potential to be a really powerful tool is that it is poised to compete with Google's online suite. What I mean by that is Google's document and spreadsheet application available as . Computing in the cloud is the next big thing and despite these rather modest beginnings it's important for Microsoft to get moving in the field as soon as possible so they aren't blown out like they were with online advertising.
With all that said I sort of feel like this was the best move for Microsoft. There was already so much criticism aimed at Microsoft for wanting to get Yahoo. Yahoo, although they're a fine company, isn't exactly doing these days. Not only that but it was assumed that a lot of the most talented people at Yahoo weren't really into working for Microsoft, so the potential for Microsoft to let a lot of valuable engineers slip through their hands was a consideration. So really, it's a good move to hold off. Like I said at the beginning of this post though, Ballmer isn't known for backing down. What I mean by that is that I wouldn't consider this issue "down but not out." Now that Yahoo has denied Microsoft the acquisition their stock is expected to drop off while Microsoft will see a bit of a boost. Therefore, there's a possibility that Microsoft will just wait for Yahoo's stock price to drop a bit and then they'll come back to Yahoo and say "hey, remember that deal? See how bad you're doing now that you didn't accept? We can't offer you our original bid but we're still interesting in acquiring you so that you can recoup some of the costs."
We shall see...
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Nvidia Vs. Intel
Apr 15th
This week I read an where Jen-Hsun Huang, the CEO and co-founder of Nvidia, laid out some fighting words against Intel. I didn't care much about the bitterness that seemed to be bubbling up between the two companies but I found the subject which incited the rant pretty interesting. Basically, Intel is on their way to developing CPUs which have integrated GPUs in them, eliminating the necessity of having a separate video card because moving the GPU onto the CPU should increase performance considerably.
That sounds great to me, it means potentially smaller computers for less money, who can argue with that? Of course Nvidia has a problem with it because the thought of a 2-in-one CPU/GPU undermines their business of creating discrete GPUs. Honestly when I read the article it made sense to me, after all look at where sound cards went. It used to be that having a separate sound card in your computer was a necessity to get any semblance of decent audio from your computer, aside from that little "bleep-bloop" speaker you hear when you start your computer. Now it's pretty much a given that the audio is just integrated with your motherboard and you don't have to worry about a separate sound card. It's only a matter of time before the same thing happens to video cards. Sure you can get integrated video today but it's generally looked at as being the budget video solution, needless to say no one expects integrated video to produce much gaming performance.
So then, if this does happen what happens to companies like Nvidia? When I read the article I thought to myself that Nvidia should just try and be bought out by Intel as soon as possible unless they plan on branching out their products into other components aside from video cards. Look at ATI, they were purchased by and if AMD can put together their own combo CPU/GPU they might be able to beat out Intel as a result. Sure there may not be much use for discrete video cards if these combos become a reality but having a well-established company to work with such as ATI would definitely ease along the transition and might make AMD's offerings superior. If Nvidia and Intel teamed up though, the game would be all but over.
So really I just wanted to comment on this article because I think it's an interesting look into the future. I doubt we'll be seeing this take hold anytime soon. You also have to consider that the first few revs of the combo proc probably won't be comparable to having the latest graphics card in your machine, more of a continuation of what Intel is already doing with their integrated video chipsets. Still, I thought the subject was pretty interesting considering my recent posts about the state of PC gaming and what will happen as we move forward. In a few years time Intel's offering may be all you really need, but as of today I'd say keep that GeForce 8800 handy.
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CES ’08 – Excitement Ensues
Jan 15th
Alrighty so yet again it's January of the new year and what does that mean? It's time for the of course! CES has been around for a long time and in case you don't know what it is, it's basically a trade show for all things electronic. In recent years it has begun to revolve around display technology, and the like, and although you get to see a lot of new tech it's sort of irrelevant because most of what is shown is a long way off. It's assumed that what is shown will be available by the end of the year but that's almost never the case. So, sure you can see cool things but in most cases you won't actually get a chance to put your hands on any of it for a year at the very least.
Still, there are a couple of notable things about this year's CES. First off, it was last time doing the because he'll soon be stepping down as CEO of Microsoft. This is truly the end of an era. As a result of that they'd obviously want to make a massive announcement, right? Really wow the media and go out with a bang? Well...not quite. There was a lot of speculation heading into CES particularly from the gaming community. A rumor was leaked that a new skew of the Xbox 360, tentatively called the at the time, was going to be announced at CES. This new version of the 360 bundle would include an HD-DVD drive, have a 320GB hard drive, and finally work as an player. Microsoft had been talking the Xbox 360 up as a great IPTV box (it was mentioned at last year's CES for example) so most of this made sense - but it never came. It was reasoned that this was the year and that the recent might have been a result of Microsoft working on integrating IPTV, but that turned out to be wishful thinking.
There was however a with a bunch of celebrities in it parodying Bill Gates' last day at Microsoft. The video was funny and some people even went out on a limb by saying it made Bill but overall the presentation was lacking any excitement. Thank you, Bill. It's been fun. As Ballmer said - we'll see you at the board meeting tomorrow. As far as more significant news goes there was one very important announcement from the Blu-Ray camp. Five days before CES began Warner Bros. came out and announced that they would be in the ongoing HD format wars. A lot of people are saying this is the death knell for HD-DVD as Blu-Ray's list of titles now contains 75% of the best-selling DVDs out there. It seems that the format war might finally be coming to a close. As I , I'm feeling a lot better that I have that (read: ) sitting in my entertainment center. =)
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Google will bid on the wireless spectrum
Dec 6th
About a week ago that it would bid on the 700mhz spectrum that the FCC was putting on sale starting January 28th of next year. A lot of people have been anticipating this move, especially while rumors of the Google phone were abound. The hope of most was that they would bid on and win the spectrum and then use it to provide a free ad-based wireless service (whether for cell phones or internet). The spectrum was previously used for TV broadcasts but with the move to cable and satellite setups there isn't much need for that anymore.
The real question though is if Google will actually put in a legitimate bid for the spectrum or if, after the pressure from analysts if they'll only put down a bid to show they're making an effort but not truly pursue it. That's not to say that Google couldn't afford to go all out for it at all, , but it might not be part of their plans. In just attempting to win the spectrum they could force whoever does win it to keep it open though, which would allow people to use it no matter the device (or application, for that matter). In this way they can avoid all of the extra hassle and cost of having to maintain their own in-house network and instead take advantage of the open spectrum.
This is all hot off the heals of Google's petitioning of the FFC to force whoever wins the spectrum to (contrary to Verizon and AT&T's hopes). In order for this to happen Google has to bid at least 4.6 billion for the spectrum and then they can back off. After that, whoever wins it would have to keep it open. The question is whether or not 4.6 billion is enough to win the spectrum in the first place. Most analysts say it's not - they think the spectrum could go for upwards of 6 billion. Both Verizon and AT&T are extremely interested in the spectrum because it would be essential to the future of the respective companies so the bidding could go much higher than 6.
I'm rooting for Google to at least make the 4.6 billion play, I'd hate to see the spectrum end up closed to either AT&T or Verizon. Let's face it those aren't exactly the most technologically cutting-edge companies and I'm pretty interested in what Google could do with the spectrum. ? Yes, please. Mobile phones with ? Yes, please. Sixty dollars a month for services with improved speeds? I think I'll pass...
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