Blue Sky On Mars

Thoughts on Building Software Products
May 10, 2005

Zesty News 1.0 alpha is feature complete

by Kevin Dangoor

Calling an “alpha” feature complete is kind of funny. In my book, an “alpha” release is one that is missing some features that are planned for the final release. A “beta” release has all of the planned features, but is not fully tested.

At this point, I have put together all of the features planned for Zesty News 1.0 alpha. So, the alpha is feature complete… but Zesty News 1.0 final is not.

Last week, I put on my product manager hat and decided that I would let me do a little feature creep. I added automatic update detection and the ability for the user to download and install a patch file for most updates. I have not yet done size optimization on the Zesty News releases, so the builds are pretty large. While going through the testing cycle, I’d really rather not force people to re-download a few megs when a couple hundred K will suffice. Beyond the download size, though, this update system lets the user know what is new and lets them download and install with a single click. That’s a lot more convenient than downloading and running the installer.

Thus starts cleanup work: fixing known issues and niggles and making the interface look better.

May 10, 2005

Hillary Rosen doesn’t like lying in the bed she made

by Kevin Dangoor

It sounds like Hillary Rosen is not happy with the world she’s created.

Most agree [the iPod] is the best quality player on the market even if the cheapest one costs a few hundred dollars [except the Shuffle, which is $99 - kevin]. The problem is that the iPod only works with either songs that you buy from the on-line Apple iTunes store or songs that you rip from your own CD’s. But those other music sites have lots of music that you can’t get at the iTunes store. So, if you have an iPod, you are out of luck. If you are really a geek, you can figure out how to strip the songs you might have bought from another on-line store of all identifying information so that they will go into the iPod. But then you have also degraded the sound quality. How cruel.

Hillary took the post of RIAA president after the DMCA was passed, as far as I can tell. But, I’d imagine that she was involved in the RIAA prior to becoming president and that she lobbied for the DMCA in some capacity. That geek that she’s referring to just broke the law. A law the RIAA lobbied for.
The solution to this problem does not lie with Apple. The solution to this problem lies with the RIAA first: let Apple and the other stores sell MP3s.

Most every player device works at every one of these “stores” and it is pretty easy to keep all the songs, no matter where you got them, in a single folder or “jukebox” on your computer.

You could just go to AllOfMP3 and get the tracks you want in whatever format you want, and those can play on every player but the iPod. Hillary comment about “most every player” neglects the fact that 90% of the players sold are iPods and those stores don’t work with iPods.

There are two monopolies at work in online music: Apple (70% of the online music market) and Microsoft (probably the rest). Actually, no, there’s three monopolies at work: the RIAA is the third, and they’re the ones that can really turn things around once they get passed their unsubstantiated belief that DRM is a good thing.

This stuff just gets to me. (In this case, it got to me via Boing Boing).