March 2008

The iPhone requires a fundamentally different approach to user interaction. Something that goes way beyond the obvious things like the multi-touch interface.

If you can have a background process running on your iPhone, what is that process going to do when it detects a state change? What happens with a buddy comes online, or a new piece of data is available, or when a long running calculation is completed?

[...]

You’re [sic] phone soon becomes a fricken’ pinball machine as multiple applications fight for your attention. With 24 notification permutations for every application, things will quickly get out of hand.

Calendar notifications are jarring enough for me, so I’m glad that it won’t be possible for any custom applications to deliver sound notifications when I am not actively using them.

In its second annual statistical report, the Alzheimer’s Association projects that 10 million baby boomers will suffer from the disease.

[...] Fewer people are dying from heart disease, stroke and conditions such as breast and prostate cancer. If you avoid those illnesses, or beat them through successful treatment, you still have to die eventually of something. And the older people get, the greater the chance they’ll develop, and possibly die from, Alzheimer’s.

One aspect of the report says that, if they live to age 55, women are nearly twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s as men. The report’s authors say that’s also age-related. When researchers measure the risk of developing Alzheimer’s at any particular age, men and women show no real difference [...]. But to the extent that they outlive men, women are considered more likely to develop the Alzheimer’s.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism just released The State of the News Media 2008, its annual analysis of cable television news. The mediascape proved barren: on average, five hours of viewing would yield 71 minutes of politics, 26 minutes of crime, 12 minutes of disasters and 10 minutes of celebrities. Science, technology, health and the environment received just six minutes of coverage (with health and health care accounting for half of that.)

Newspapers, network news and online news all provided more science coverage, though not by much.

Bands have always sold CDs at concerts, and nearly every indie label has some sort of online storefront these days (see, for instance, Fall, Suicide Squeeze, and Rough Trade). What’s more recent is the trend toward offering digital distribution, often in fan-friendly formats like MP3 and FLAC. Reuters has a piece this weekend on three indie labels (Merge, Def Jux, and Sub Pop) that are examples of the trend, and it points out the obvious problem that such sites face: most music lovers will never visit a label-specific store.

But in the digital, long-tail era, such stores can succeed by targeting a niche fan base with exclusives, rarities, and out-of-print material. They can also cater to online buyers concerned about audio fidelity by offering lossless versions of tunes, something that the major stores don’t even make available.

I disagree with the Reuters report that says that music fans will not buy direct from a label through their web site. Just last week Trent Reznor made $1.6 million from Ghosts I-IV from his web site. Labels like Def Jux and Sub Pop have a large fan base and will be successful. The rise of lossless digital audio (i.e. FLAC) is a boon for consumers, offering identical quality as the CD with no digital rights management.

However, I think one potential issue is the cost of FLAC versus CD. The example in the article points to Our Ill Wills by Shout Out Louds. The CD is available for $13 while the FLAC is available for $11.49. The pricing on the FLAC version is a complete rip off. For only $1.50 more, you get the professionally pressed disc, which lasts longer than a burned CD, as well as artwork. I think Trent Reznor is more on target with his pricing. He charged $5 for the FLAC and $10 for the CD.

A team of scientists including Linda B. Buck, who shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, has retracted a scientific paper after the scientists could not reproduce their original findings.

The Harvard Medical School, where the researchers worked when the findings were published in the journal Nature in 2001, has begun a review of the research to determine if there is any evidence of misconduct.

The retraction was published on March 6th, in Nature 452, 120.

DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) – A chain of popular Middle Eastern restaurants owned by a man linked by federal authorities to terrorists has gone out of business.

A company spokesman said the La Shish restaurants saw business fall off by 50 percent after federal agents raided Talal Chahine’s homes and businesses in 2005 looking for evidence of a $6.5-million tax evasion scheme.

About 50 teenagers and young adults broke into an empty, foreclosed home in southwest Bakersfield Saturday, throwing a raging party and making off with the home’s high-end appliances, according to neighbors.

I’ve seen similar stories published in numerous local papers across California. Foreclosed houses are the new abandoned warehouses.

The company recently said it anticipates higher first-quarter subscriber, revenue and profit growth than previously projected. (Netflix is now looking for between 8.16 million and 8.26 million subscribers at the end of first quarter, up from a previous goal of 7.85 million to 8.05 million.)

I have an Apple TV but have kept my Netflix account because its catalog is almost 100x larger.

Showtime Networks are teaming up with clothing designer-turned-gaming magnate Mark Ecko to bring that most charming of serial killers, Dexter Morgan, to the world of videogames.

Dexter, the subject of a Showtime series of the same name, based on the books by Jeff Lindsay, is a serial killer who keeps tries to maintain something of a moral compass by satisfying his homicidal urges by slaying other killers.

It’s a great idea but I wonder about the quality of the game after reading that Mark Ecko is on the production crew.