Sunday, May 15, 2005

Playing catch up

Just a few quick thoughts from Jerusalem after catching up on a few hundred backlogged RSS feed entries.

Bill Gates thinks that the cell phone will beat the iPod. I hope he's right, but I'm not so sure we're anywhere near there yet. The use model for listening to music lends itself to sucking up battery juice for anywhere from 3-5 hours at a time. I can't count the number of times my iPods (yes, plural) have died on me. And that's okay. But it's not okay when I can't use my cell phone any longer because I've spent the morning listening to mp3s on the way to work. So, I still think we have a ways to go on the converged cell phone/music player front.

The MPAA is targeting TV download sites. I don't blame them. At least they're targeting the download sites and not their own customers who are using them because they can't get what they need out of paid broadcast/cable television services. The MPAA should focus on providing legal TV download services that knock their customers socks off. Then, once those are available, deal with illegal downloading that continues.

Bruce Schneier blogged some thoughts on the REAL ID Act. Schneier's blog is one of my favorites. He's a top authority on issues of security, and I strongly suggest checking it out.

In catching up on my news feeds, it seems that Windows Mobile 5 has been announced. I can't wait to play around with it. I'm thinking this will definitely need to be my next phone purchase.

Finally, a few fun pictures from Israel...

The future of BlockBuster (if they're lucky?):



We can't even get a Coffee Bean in Michigan, and suddenly they're popping up all over Israel:



6,000 miles East and still plagued by the Live Strong fad:

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

you should opt for Arcafe and not Coffee Bean