On Tuesday, I posted my thoughts on the third alternative in Steve Jobs' letter about DRM in the online music space. While getting rid of DRM completely is something that everyone obviously wants, I do admit - it's unlikely that it's going to happen anytime soon. I hope I'm wrong.

So one needs to step back and think about the alternatives. Apple's closed FairPlay DRM model has been under a fair amount of criticism recently. It's something I've personally never been fond of at all either. In his letter, Jobs argues against opening up the model and licensing it to partners, claiming that it would result in a higher probability of the DRM system getting compromised. However, is this really true?

Ars Technica's Ken Fisher examines Jobs' claim by comparing FairPlay against Microsoft's open DRM model (codenamed Janus), and shows how FairPlay was compromised more often than Janus in the same timeframe, although Janus was being used by several Microsoft partners. Jon Johansen (aka DVD Jon), who became famous for breaking FairPlay several times, also weighs in with his thoughts, dismissing Jobs' claim. It's an interesting perspective, and one that I'm more inclined to agree with.

What do you think? Does Jobs' argument really hold true against the facts that have been presented? If we put aside the thought of an ideal world where DRM ceases to exist, would you rather have Apple license FairPlay to partners for the sake of interoperability, or would you prefer that it be left just the way it is today?

Yahoo! just launched a new service called Pipes today. Pipes is described as:

...a hosted service that lets you remix feeds and create new data mashups in a visual programming environment. The name of the service pays tribute to Unix pipes, which let programmers do astonishingly clever things by making it easy to chain simple utilities together on the command line.

The service basically allows you to pull in data from various sources and perform interesting operations on it. You could do something as simple as merging all the official Yahoo! blog feeds into a single one, or something more funky, like pulling in content from the NY Times, and using keywords to find related photos on Flickr. Then, of course, you can generate a new RSS feed for your mashup and subscribe to it in an aggregator, or use the processed result-set as input to a larger application (or another Pipe!).

There are plenty of possibilities for useful and interesting mashups, and Pipes is a tool that aims to make the process of creating them more accessible, even to non-programmers, through a friendlier visual environment.

I haven't had a chance to dive in deeper yet (maybe this weekend...), but it looks like a nicely designed tool, especially well-done for a first version of something that hasn't been done before. If you try it out and create any fun and useful feeds, leave a comment and let me know. :)

Steve Jobs posted his thoughts on digital music sales and DRM earlier today.

It's a well-written piece that mentions some of the problems with closed DRM models, including Apple's own FairPlay. Jobs also proposes a few alternatives that could be used to address these problems in the future, and his third suggestion is especially interesting:

The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store.

This is what consumers have been asking for all along. As Steve later points out, DRM really hasn't worked out for anybody, including the music industry. Most people simply find it too restrictive, and have opted for alternatives like ripping CDs and downloading music from P2P networks like BitTorrent.

Skeptics have posted various conjectures regarding the true intent behind Jobs' letter (check Techmeme if you're interested), especially related to the recent lawsuits in Europe against FairPlay. And some of them might even be right. Nevertheless, the fact that this was posted out in public for everyone to see tells me that Apple is at least thinking in the right direction. If the industry giants joined forces on this one, I'm confident that they could put enough pressure on the music companies to make them eventually give in and be more reasonable. After all, the digital music revolution would have never come about without companies like Apple and Microsoft, and I'm sure the music companies are fully aware of that fact.

Anyway, you should read the complete article. I have to commend Jobs for at least getting the ball rolling. Now let's see where things go from here...

Even though I think IE 7 is a big step-up from its predecessor, I still prefer Firefox for its versatility, even on Windows Vista. But the fact is, while IE 7 looks like a native Vista application, Firefox doesn't quite fit in. The default Winstripe theme was fine on XP, but I think it looks out of place with Vista's new Aero UI.

Fortunately, we can fix that pretty easily and have it looking like this in no time...


1) The first step is to skin the browser chrome. "Vista Firefox" is a work-in-progress theme that looks great already. Download and install it. Then, right-click the toolbar and select "Customize" to move the buttons around. You can arrange them like I have in the screenshot, or do what works best for you.

2) I prefer to keep my toolbar as uncluttered as possible, so I install the Stop-or-Reload Button extension. This combines the two buttons into a single one - Stop while a page is loading, and Reload after the page has loaded (since the Stop button would be greyed out at this point anyway). I place this combined button to the right of the address box, just like it appears in IE 7.

3) The IE folks had the right idea when they turned off the menu bar, in my opinion. I hardly ever use it in Firefox either, so I decided to hide it to keep things minimalistic. To do this, add the following line to your userChrome.css file:

#toolbar-menubar { display: none !important; }

However, unlike IE 7, Firefox doesn't automatically show the menu bar when you hit the Alt modifier key. So I installed the Compact Menu Blue extension, which allows you to place a button on your toolbar that expands out to display the File, Edit, View, and other menus. The blue globe you see to the right of the search box in my screenshot is the Compact Menu button.

And that's it. Firefox should now look much better on your Windows Vista setup. :)

Edit: Some of you wanted to know how to get the blue Google page. That's easy too. Just install the Stylish extension and get this user-style for Google.

Tags: windows, vista, firefox, ie7, aero

Last week, I started testing CallWave Mobile, a free service that replaces your voicemail service and sends copies of messages you receive to your email inbox.

Setting up the service the first time only takes a minute. You just sign up for an account on CallWave's site, and enter a code on your cellphone. The code is carrier-dependent, and CallWave tells you what it is. Once that's done, all unanswered calls are automatically forwarded to your CallWave inbox instead of your carrier's voicemail service.
When you get a new voicemail message, CallWave notifies you via SMS, email or both (this can be configured in your account settings). These notification messages include the caller's phone number, the time the message was received, the length of the message, and a link to a webpage that plays the message directly in your browser if you're at a computer. You can also get messages as audio clips attached to the email notifications, if you like. CallWave provides handy visual voicemail widgets/gadgets for both Windows and Mac OS X as well.

If you're at a computer, you can respond to voicemail messages by either sending the caller a text message from the web page, or initiating a call back. In the latter case, CallWave dials you and the caller and connects both of you together.

Deactivating the service is as simple as setting it up. You just punch in another code (which CallWave provides you with as well), and you can continue using your carrier's voicemail service.

I find this service quite handy because there are places where I don't get cellphone reception. Many of the computer labs and classrooms in the engineering building on campus, for example, are dead spots, but I'm almost always near a computer at these places. If someone's trying to reach me, I can at least listen to their messages and respond if it's something important. Plus, there's really nothing that your carrier's voicemail service does that CallWave can't, so you don't lose anything by using it.

My experience with it has been good so far - it was quick and easy to set up, and notifications come in almost immediately. Check it out if you think it might be useful to you. :)