As a former Yahoo employee, I've never wasted an opportunity to harass my former colleagues who work on the Yahoo! Music product. Subscriptions, I've said, are for the birds, and unless it works with the iPod, forget it. I'm not alone in this opinion, that much is clear. But having had access in particular to one highly placed Y! Music executive, who has endured my constant negativity with grace and aplomb, it was an absolute pleasure to read that they may be a step closer to a workable model.

This week, Yahoo! Music launched a pilot, making a single track (sadly, a Jessica Simpson track) available for download without Digital Rights Managment. I cannot emphasize enough how significant this is. It means that (a) Yahoo realizes that DRM and lack of iPod interoperability are killing their music business, and are willing to do the heavy lifting with the labels that may be necessary to get them to budge; and that (b) the major labels may be coming around to the fact that as long as they insist on DRM, they're going to be slaves to hardware manufacturers.

Bravo.

Now, I'm an enthusiastic Apple geek, and I love my iPod and my Mac, yada yada yada. But despite this, I realise that as a consumer, it benefits me exactly zero percent to have Apple be the only viable source for downloadable music. Why should my choice of hardware lock me into a single online music retailer for the life of my purchase?

That's not to say I believe Apple is to blame. In my opinion, Apple's obstinate refusal to open up their hardware to competing DRM standards is inconvenient in the short term, but may prevent DRM as a whole from lasting in the short term.

Basically, Apple has forced the major labels into a corner -- because the iPod is so dominant, they can dictate what DRM their hardware uses, which translates into Apples extreme dominance as an online retailer, controlling over 70% of the online music market. No manufacturer wants a single retailer to monopolise the channel, so in this case, the labels face a choice: insist on DRM and let Apple continue to dominate the channel, or dump DRM and let other retailers compete.

Tough choice for the labels, but one they need to make. I certainly hope the Yahoo pilot is successful.

Posted by ElectricOrange at 12:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I clawed my way out of bed yesterday morning, mildly hung over from the events of night previous wherein the spirited yet aged French national football team did vanquish their Portuguese tormentors in the semi final match of the global football tournament.

Or, possibly, hung over from the beer consumed whilst watching said events with a fairly large complement of souls.

So, anyway, I digress. I clawed my way out of bed yesterday morning, sat down at the table to do my morning sip-and-surf ritual. (Sip: iced coffee. Surf: miscellaneous assorted websites). The ritual takes some time. I'm time-rich at the moment.

And, so, I'm sitting there, doing my sip-and-surf. And, lo, my mobile phone — communication tool, tether, leash, albatross, bearer of tidings good and bad — starts to shudder and shake and spring to life with the familiar vibration that mimics the television newsreader, saying, "This. Just. In… but I don't necessarily want to talk to you about it." Those words that typically elicit nothing short of ambivalence on my part.

Alright, and so now, there I am, having clawed my way out of bed, sipping and surfing, mildly hung over, checking the text message on my phone that had arrived at an uncharacteristic hour, because for some reason, text messages tend to arrive on my phone in the late-afternoon/early-evening hours.

And what did the message say?

Well, time-rich though I may be, this hardly seems the appropriate moment to delve into the deeper question of what the message quote-unquote "really said", or what the message's sender quote-unquote "actually intended". Nor does it seem like an opportune time to get into the pithy existential debate as to whether or not there was actually a message at all, per se, because, well, at least in my case, that is the kind of debate that is technically impossible while not yet having concluded the "sip" portion of the "sip-and-surf" ritual.

No, it's not time to beat around the bush, as it were, because you, dear reader, likely don't have the wealth of time on your hands that I do; you don't have all day to just sit there reading and reading, while the author endlessly blathers on, flying circles around the central issue, but never actually getting there.

You, dear reader, are too busy to waste time like that.

So, finally, after the clawing, the sipping, the surfing, the texting, the general sturm und drang of yesterday morning, what did this oddly-timed message have to say?

"Dude! Nice going france! So, you wanna go to the final with me? I invite you just make it to berlin! Lemme know…"

Pictures now available in the Gallery…

Posted by ElectricOrange at 7:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Given my employment history, when old friends and former colleagues disappear for a while, you never know what clever things might emerge along with them when they resurface.

Case in point: Nestoria.

Nestoria aims to rethink the business of searching for residential property (in this case, in the UK) by liberating it from (a) the clutches of real estate agencies who haven't the slightest clue how to build a usable website, and (b) other real estate classified listing sites, who never seem to get the whole picture.

Let's start with what's missing (but not missed): 1. The long list of useless checkboxes that aim to "help" you refine your search; 2. The endless mortgage come-ons that invariably accompany these sites; 3. Suggested selling via "featured" listings; 4. Bogus listings that have been placed to game the system and make you think your dream house is available at a reasonable price, only to find the agency has blatantly lied about the price in the search listings.

Instead, Nestoria borrows a page from the Google playbook (with great success, I might add) by focusing on simplicity. Simply choose whether you're looking to buy or rent, enter an area or post code in the search box, and go. The search engine is specifically designed to keep agencies from gaming the system, and in my experience the results seemed to match my preferences rather accurately.

From there, intelligent links at the top of the result page act as filters to help you refine your search, and a map shows you where, exactly, the listings are located. Below the map are tabs indicating key information about the area you're searching: schools, tube lines, census data -- even pubs. How sensible. Now, all they need to do is make the tube stops and schools the centre of proximity searches, and commuters and parents will have the key tools they need to get started on their search for a new home.

I'll be interested to see how this grows and what, if any, effect it has on the way the real estate game is played in London. But this is the simplest, most logical tool I've yet found for the task. And as I'm strongly considering a move to London, it's a tool that will come in most handy.

Posted by ElectricOrange at 10:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)