blockhead's Blog

Electronic device manufacturers and content producers have got to back away from the forest and see the light filtering throught the trees. Consumers want to control the content they purchase and want to be able to use their electronic devices together without restrictions placed on them.

Standards and interoperability will have to come to digital devices, just as Google co-founder Larry Page said in his Consumer Electronics Show keynote speech when he introduced Google Video. Right now, only those video's purchased through Google Video that are NOT copy protected will play on video iPods and Sony PSP's - the rest only work on Google Video.

http://www.google.com/press/podium/ces2006.html

That news about Google Video and Digital Rights Management (DRM) standards of interoperability had me fuming about my inability to use my content (photos, movies, music) on devices made by different manufacturers or between cell phone providers. Today I ran across a story about an Anti-DRM group in Britain campaigning to demand an end to DRM.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/18/drm_consumer_opposition/

Obviously I'm not the only one disturbed by the fact that I cannot move digitally recorded movies from my Tivo to my DVD recorder (purchased for exactly that reason, but before I knew it wouldn't work) I only found out that I couldn't record movies from the Tivo to the DVD recorder when I called Pioneer customer support to ask why the recorder wouldn't record my movies. It seems that I can only move digital movies from the Tivo to my computer (which I found I could do with free Tivo Desktop software when I called Tivo customer support.)

So instead of recording directly from my Tivo to my Pioneer DVD recorder, I have to move the movie over to my computer via Tivo Desktop software, then burn a DVD from my computer. Very smart move on Tivo's part, as it means I definitely won't buy the DVR from my satellite TV provider because they don't support skipping commercials, nor do they support moving movies to my computer.

This also means I don't NEED my Pioneer DVD recorder - so their DRM which stops Tivo digitally recorded movies from recording to DVD means that I won't use that Pioneer DVD recorder and will now sell it. The other DVD player connected to my other television will suffice. If I want to record something, it goes on the Tivo because it is so easy to use and works so extremely well. I'll use the free Tivo Desktop software and move it to my computer and burn DVD's of my recorded television and movies there.

Clearly Tivo is doing all they can to make their device consumer friendly - but they are being besieged by television and movie content producers, who are screaming at them to stop the 'piracy' of their users. Tivo now disables the 30 second commercial skip button daily (which you have to know how to program - Select, Play, Select, 3-0, Select). They do this via automatically updated internal software because advertisers screamed at them for several years about the consumer ability to skip commercials. The result is that I reprogram that function daily anyway - annoying, but not nearly as annoying as not being able to control my own device the way I want to.

I'm convinced that content producers will lose this battle over the long term and I'll do all I can to fight them myself, like supporting anti-DRM groups wherever I find them. And I'll research more thoroughly before buying products which contain DRM to make certain they will work with my existing devices - meaning no Sony CD's or DVD's. There have been rumors that Apple is creating a set-top box and service similar to Tivo and I'd buy one in a split second as I'm sure I could use my iPod, iMac and iPhoto seamlessly between all devices.

Maybe they'll make a phone with a Mac OS and a PDA as well (I actually used to own an early Apple Newton PDA and oh, how I wish they had continued to develop that wonderful little thing). I'm happy to use anything Apple produces - but I won't switch cell providers or switch my Satellite TV provider. Interoperability and standards are essential to me. It's about choice. Pioneer limited my choices and lost a customer and Motorola lost my ROKR iTunes phone business because the device is only available from Cingular.

Obviously, I'm a Mac user and had studiously avoided purchasing Windows machines until I had to buy a Windows box to run business software not available for my Apple machines. So I bought an extremely cheap $299 PC to run the three programs that won't run on my Mac. That cheap machine now serves as my DVD burner for movies (with a cheap external hard drive as movie storage drive). Pioneer lost a customer because they don't allow me to record movies to DVD from my Tivo. How about a Tivo/Apple partnership? That would be a marriage made in heaven due to the customer-centric design and usability so elegantly addressed by both companies.

I'll put up with Apple's walled garden (iTunes and proprietary AAC files) and their own DRM only as long as everything they make works seamlessly together. Apple products always have worked elegantly together and probably always will. Somehow most third party software seems to interact well with everything else on the Macs. The moment Motorola makes that ROKR iTunes phone available through MY cellular provider, I'll consider buying that phone.

Being in the market for a phone, I had been looking at a Palm Treo 650 phone/PDA and was excited when they introduced the new 700 model, just as I was about to make that purchase. So I read a few reviews and discovered to my horror that Palm just fell victim to the dominance of Microsoft and replaced their own well designed Palm operating system on that new Treo 700 with a buggy, slow and cumbersome Windows OS!

In the process they lost another customer, because I can't stand the clunky way one must navigate with Windows (reviewers agree) and refuse to buy that machine now, the same way I avoided all other PDA's running Windows for the past 10 years. This is all because Palm couldn't port Microsoft documents and Windows related bits to the Palm OS when corporate users required that interoperability. Thanks to Gates & Company, Palm lost another customer - and their own elegant OS.

If mainstream electronics device manufacturers continue to take the path of least resistance by kowtowing to content producers, lowest common denominator software and stifled functionality and interoperability, then consumers will eventually find a way to take back the control. We'll avoid buying products (CD's & DVD's, 'rented' music) that don't work with their existing devices (Tivo's, DVD recorders, PDA's, iPods) and will find companies that make all of this stuff work together and buy from them - but only so long as ALL devices and ALL content work with each other interchangeably.

Mike Banks Valentine is a Search Engine Optimization Specialist and blogs about web content at: http:// weblogs.Publish101.com and distributes articles about business at: http:// Publish101.com while operating a small business ecommerce tutorial at: http://WebSite101.com

There is an alarming trend in the IT service organizations in today’s service world. It is the lack of quality services provided by small business computer service and network organizations. Could it be the shortage of skilled computer technicians? Or is it really the inability for the leaders in these small computer support companies to see what is happening in their market?

Computer support organizations, especially those that focus on the small business marketplace, need to put their focus on their client base. This focus is vital with the emergence of larger players in the small business computer consulting space that are developing an interest in servicing your client base.

The three things that all small business computer support companies need to master are:

- Anticipate your client’s needs – Computer Consultants need to actively anticipate their client’s business goals now and in the future. Small businesses can change direction on a dime since their decision making hierarchy is very direct. So it is important that the small business service organization has the ability to anticipate what their client’s needs will be now and have the ability to foresee their short term and long term needs. An information technology consultant with the ability to see the opportunities of their client’s needs will entrench themselves into their client’s business for a long period of time.

- Proactive Support – Once you can master the anticipation of your client’s needs, the next step is to take the appropriate steps to ensure that the items they have anticipated coming down the pipe are now proactively put into place. Small businesses cannot work successfully in a reactive mode. When their technology support company does not take the steps to proactively service their client base they run the risk of their clients suffering unnecessary downtime. Most of the time, it comes back to an issue that could have been prevented with proper anticipation of their needs and then taking the proactive support to implement the needed steps to prevent any downtime.

- Service The Client – Service companies need to consistently service their clients. When you have put into place the steps needed to anticipate their needs and then proactively implemented these solutions, small business consulting companies need to service their clients consistently. Stop servicing your clients and you might as well hand them over to your competition. I cannot speak enough about the enhanced level of service that small business clients require—they will always depend on the expertise of their IT consultant the most . Consultants today cannot assume that things are just working at their clients. You need to be in there all the time.

These are three main areas that today’s small business consultants need to focus on to ensure their success. If you do not take care of your clients, your competition will. You can bank on it.

Information Technology companies today are so concerned about service metrics, managed services and many new trends in servicing clients that they are failing at one major area—actually servicing them. Small Business consultants seem more concerned about the perfect service plan, how to charge their clients and designing the perfect solution. This preoccupation has them leaving the front door open to their competition who understands the importance of servicing the client, anticipating their needs, and taking the proactive steps to understand their needs, goals and desires when it comes to technology.

It is time to get back and focus on what the client’s needs are, anticipate their direction, proactively address these needs and then service the heck out of them.

Many people buy new computers when their current one starts running slow. With rapidly increasing processor speeds and larger amounts of memory becoming cheaper, spending a few hundred dollars does not seem so bad if it will get you back to the speeds you are used to. But, any reliable computer technician will tell you that even a five or six year old computer can still run reasonably fast if it's tuned up properly.

For a computer a tune up is almost entirely software related. Every time you install a program or visit a website or download anything, there are changes made to your system that, over time, can drag performance down to a crawl. One quick way to check your systems health is to look at your resources as follows:

1. Right-click on the taskbar (this is the solid area to the left of the Start button) and choose Task Manager.

2. Click on the Performance tab and look at CPU Usage and Physical Memory Available.

3. If the CPU is running more than 15% and you have no other programs running, you may have a hidden process running in the background. Click on the Processes tab and click on the CPU column to show the item using the most of your processor. If the name of the process is unfamiliar, look it up at www.tasklist.org for a better definition.

4. You can follow the same procedure if you find that memory available is low.

A very common cause of memory and CPU usage is spyware or malware. These are hidden programs that get installed inadvertently when you download something or try a 'free' software program. If you suspect that you have some of this unwanted software, the good news is that you can usually remove it completely and gain back a lot of performance.

A search on Google.com for 'spyware removal' or 'adware removal' will give you many options of tools to clean this unwanted software from your computer. Most of them are free and are very effective.

Another alternative is to re-install the operating system, but that will require re-installation of all programs and documents. Just make sure you have everything backed up to CD, tape or an external drive before you try this. Home computers today commonly contain important documents and digital pictures that may be irreplaceable if lost.

Have you ever wondered how to make a screen shot? Just click the 'ctrl' key and the 'prt sc' key at the same time―but then what? Where did it go to? Actually, it didn't go anywhere―it's on hold in the same way as when we *save* something. When we *save* something, we have to put it somewhere. Well, the same holds true of 'ctrl' (meaning control) and 'prt sc' (meaning print screen). Is all that happens is that you took a shot (or picture) of the screen from your keyboard. Suppose the whole page doesn't fit on the screen? What then? Read on, and I'll tell you how get it all.

1) To start, adjust the screen (with your scroll bar) and frame your picture. Then, click the 'ctrl' key and the 'prt sc' key at the same time.

2) Open up Word, and paste the screen shot in there. You will have to crop it, because your whole screen is visible. Click on the image, select your crop tool, and crop it. After it’s cropped, click on the white part of the page to change the tool icon back to an *I beam.* Now, click back onto the image and with your pointer, size the image to the approximate size you want. Right click on it and *copy* it.

3) This sounds weird, but this is the easiest way to turn a non-jpeg into one. Paste it into an email and send it back to yourself. Your firewall may warn you that it is a virus, but it's not. Just override the warning and proceed.

4) Open up your email and right-click the image. Next, *Save Picture As* to your PC and change the ridiculously long geek name to something like *ScrnShot* (to make it easier to find). After you find it, you will see that it became a jpeg and website friendly.

5) Repeat the process to get the second half of the webpage. You should have two sections. The screen shot only captures what is visibly seen on the screen.

6) Open up Illustrator CS and paste both sections together in this software. Now, 'Save For Web.' (revised 2/15/2006)

Debbie Jensen, Photographer, Graphic Designer
http://www.debjensendesigns.com