One Shot Design

I started using Apple Inc.’s iTunes back in Italy. The software has many locks-in: it doesn’t play Microsoft’s proprietary WMA or the open OGG Vorbis audio format. When instructed to consolidate the music library, iTunes does it with a logic of its own, separating the audio files and the images in completely remote registries; and the library manager also operates on its own will: it always switches back to the default music library location even though I specified my preferred one.

Pentafoil tangle by Carlo H. Séquin

Despite all its drawbacks, iTunes remains the only solution for a European citizen considering digital music purchase over the Internet. The songs are a child’s play to locate, samples can be played, and it only takes a couple of clicks to get the files on the local disc. Moving them from there is another problem… The biggest drawback I could see was the unability to buy music from other European countries. An abberation considering the many laws safeguarding the free movement of goods across the EEC.

Why cant Apple Inc. sell music licenses across internal European borders? I thought it should be easy. Well it turns out that for the time being it is actually impossible. Andrew Orlowski explains on The Register why the European intellectual propriety laws, or lack thereof, makes it very hard for entrepreneurs to launch a pan-european digital music store.

Palm has stopped teasing us and finally announced a date for the launch of the Pre. The handset will go on sale on Saturday June 6th for $300, just two days before Apple’s WWDC, where many are expecting the announcement of a new iPhone.

Read the whole article at Wired.com

It is highly arguable that at the time of this famous statement, Andy Warhol could have foreseen that a US government agency created in 1958 to secure technological edge over the Soviets would combine with post-1975 personal computers after to enable common mortals to experience fame from the anonymity of their basement.

Since 1989, the World Wide Web has enabled skilled users to publish content on the Internet, and the ever-decreasing technicality of the process now allows laymen to publish 140 characters-long messages. The Web 1.0 era was characterized at best by free static web hosting, while the Web 2.0 saw the successive rise of free content management software, free blogging, MySpace, Facebook and eventually Twitter. On april 16^th 2009, actor Ashton Kutcher won his bet against CNN, reaching 1,000,000 followers on his Twitter account before the news channel.

Twitter is based on proprietary software, just like the social networking portal Facebook. Both networks boast a multi-million broad user base, but have yet failed ^{1 2} to capitalize on their popularity. Apple’s iconic iPhone received dedicated Facebook and Twitter applications and Facebook features a micro-blogging feature that can be synced with Twitter.

Users somehow consider the free service they get as something democratic, but truth be told, both networks are funded by capital venture; so at some point the investors will want to get their money’s worth.

On several occasions, Facebook did stir strong protest from regarding policy. The network is prone to phishing and is criticised namely for holding onto information even after an account has been closed and for reselling data to third parties. Similar concerns about Twitter brought some developers to create Identi.ca, an open-source Twitter clone that handles all the user information according to the Creative Commons license.

Canonical has begun beta tests of a web-based service that’ll let you store and synchronize files on your Jaunty Jackalope PC with other Jackalope-powered machines. Called Ubuntu One, it’s designed to provide you with access to your files using a web interface when you’re away from your main machine. The service also promises to let you share documents with others.

Ubuntu fluffs web file-synchronization service • The Register

OpenedHand is a small open-source firm that worked on projects for Nokia, One Laptop Per Child, OpenMoko, iRex, Access, STMicroelectronics and Vernier. The firm has recently been acquired by Intel, who plans to absorb it into its Open Source Technology Center, the department working on Intel’s Moblin Linux platform.