domomata.com

A piece of your custom sales flyer, from Gazaro.

In the TechCrunch50 “Demo Pit,” companies take up temporary residency — new ones each day — hoping to catch the eye of the conference attendees. Three grabbed me so far today. These are companies for our time: They’re helping consumers be smarter with their money.

First up, Rate Surfer. You give it access to your credit card accounts, and it will alert you when rates change (useful if you sign up for cards with teaser rates) and it will, if you let it, move your balances between your accounts to make sure you’re paying the least amount of interest.

Then there’s Gazaro, a sale finder. If you’re looking to buy some particular items, this service will scour sales near you for the item and make a personal “flyer” of the type you see in the Sunday papers. I will offer financial advice on this: Please don’t be suckered into buying something based on the percent off the retail price. Retail prices are engineered to sell things, they’re only loosely based on actual cost or value. Ok? Lecture mode off.

I offer no financial judgment here, but if you run credit card balances and try to keep ahead of interest rates, this is worth checking out. It requires a download, by the way, which you may find comforting. Unlike Mint, Rate Surfer doesn’t store much of your financial data on the Web. The service is not live yet, unfortunately.

Of these three companies, Rate Surfer is the most interesting and aggressive.

Finally, Kangalope. This is an event tracker for your family. You tell it what your family is in to and your budget, and it will send you advice on things to do. Also, if you’re taking a road trip (the modern family vacation), it will find cool stops for you to make based on things happening along your route. Nice idea, although not completely unique, and it will be tough to get users.

A policeman near St. Louis suggested that he could send Brett Darrow, 20, to jail on trumped up charges. While Darrow’s
car-mounted video camera was rolling, the officer shouted: “Do you want to go to jail for some (expletive) reason I come up with?” And later he added: “I don’t really care about your cameras.”

She said that newspapers and local TV stations can also provide context, gather interviews and flush out stories produced by non professionals. That’s what the New York Post did after the body-slamming NYPD video surfaced. The Post was quick to post a report on their Web site that included the officer’s name, what he said in his report (that the bicyclist ran him over) and that he was a third-generation policeman.

But was he right when he said he could he have successfully railroaded Darrow? Would anyone have believed Darrow had he been without the video? Would the police department have been under as much pressure to take action if Darrow had only gone to the local paper or TV station with the video?

“In the old world, (traditional media) used to be the gatekeepers,” said Geneva Overholser, director of the School of Journalism at the University of Southern California and a former Ombudsman at The Washington Post. “The fact is those gates have been torn down…We have to figure out how to use the new tools of new media and how to work with citizens who are producing this kind new journalism.”

Could YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen become this generation’s version of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the famed newspaper reporters who broke the Watergate scandal?

Probably not, but their site has quickly become a competitor to investigative journalists everywhere. There used to be a time when people with information about corporate misdeeds, government corruption or police brutality would go to CNN, The Washington Post or their local newspaper. Now, who needs traditional media when anyone can just film wrongdoers in action and post it online?

The video-sharing phenomenon has emerged at a time when much of the public is mistrustful of the information provided by the government and professional news organizations. Some have turned to blogs and message boards for news. But YouTube, like no other site, has earned a reputation for providing citizen journalists with a podium that has the potential to reach millions across the globe.

A young woman on a train in South Korea refuses to clean up her dog’s poop. Someone videotapes the event and the woman becomes a figure of contempt on the Web and known as “The Dog Poop Girl.” She’s stalked and ridiculed by angry Internet users and eventually the public condemnation forces her to quit school and go into hiding.

It’s probably safe to say the officer does now. He was later fired.

Did that decision spare an already demoralized public even more shock? Or did it rob them of the opportunity to learn everything about the death of their president?

The leaking of the Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg; the film of President John Kennedy’s assassination taken by Abraham Zapruder, the police beating of motorist Rodney King videotaped by George Holliday.

Providing audiences with verification of stories produced by unknowns could be an important contribution for traditional media, said Overholser.

Had those events occurred now, it’s possible some of them would have ended up on YouTube. Would the reaction have been the same? For years, Zapruder and some news organizations refused to show the scene of Kennedy’s head being blown apart. The public didn’t see the films in their entirety until 1975, 12 years after Kennedy’s death.

The policeman has been assigned to desk duty and the department has launched an investigation. Once again, YouTube has handed individual members of the public the ability to challenge a version of events presented by a powerful entity.

“I would argue that when something likes this appears on Youtube,” Overholser said, “and I see stories about it at Washingtonpost.com or Latimes.com, I would like it to mean that the papers have verified that the videotape is legitimate.”

When one reflects on the controversies in this country’s history that sprang from information obtained by average citizens, it’s clear most of them were delivered to the public after first being filtered through a major news organization or government body.

Citizen journalists illustrated their growing power this weekend when a tourist videotaped Patrick Pogan, a New York City policeman, body slamming a bicyclist in what appears to be an unprovoked attack. On Sunday, the videographer posted it to YouTube. Sure there were also eyewitnesses, but the video may prove most damning for it differs dramatically with what the officer said happened in his report.

The other side of the argument is that someone could misuse the power provided by YouTube and the Internet to distribute false information. Videotape has been tampered with before. And even when it’s not, it can still be used to inflict damage.

The rewards of enabling individuals to report the news is easy to see. Corruption, brutality, and injustice have been exposed in situations where members of traditional media weren’t around.

Government crackdowns in Burma and Tibet meant foreign journalists were often unable to get footage of the civil unrest in those countries. Sure enough, the world could see what was happening at YouTube, where witnesses posted videos.

On Sunday, Orem, Utah-based forensic-software maker Paraben plans to introduce a unique piece of enterprise software developed to detect and analyze images on workplace networks and computers for suspect content. The system looks for a number of sophisticated parameters and grades images at three levels, based upon their correlation with criteria that have been programmed into the system.

Pornography in the workplace can pose a serious problem for employers because a significant amount of material is downloaded by employees during business hours.

I interviewed Schroeder last week, during the Techno Forensics seminar at the headquarters of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), near Washington D.C. From personal experience, I can attest to the difficulty in analyzing large hard drives. Searching terabytes of data is incredibly time-consuming and difficult, so this software should provide a welcome tool for administrators and investigators.

(Credit:
Paraben)

Even more importantly, such a program can help protect employees from the kind of invidious and offensive conduct that has been ruled as actionable by the courts, she said.

Schroeder told me that the program cannot discriminate between child and adult pornography, but it is extremely effective at rapidly identifying suspect images, either online or offline. The system is capable of providing an effective real-time monitor, as images are downloaded to individual workstations, and can definitely aid in shielding employers from extremely costly lawsuits.

Screenshot from one of the menus in the forensic-software system for analyzing images for pornography.

While the Paraben software has been designed for the corporate environment, it isn’t prepared to examine other problem areas: cell phones, PDAs, and any other device that provides access to the Internet.

The viewing of porn at work can result in lost time, creativity, productivity, and employer profitability. More importantly, it can help create a hostile work environment and can be considered sexual harassment, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Naturally, corporations want to avoid the potentially serious legal consequences and protect their bottom line.

The software, according to CEO Amber Schroeder, will also aid in the development of evidence for internal or criminal investigations in such cases. It’s expected to cost about $17,000 for 500 computers.

I found the browsing experience on Streetread to be enjoyable, albeit less productive than subscribing to these feeds via Google Reader or any other feed grabber. The idea of a scrolling page of links lends itself very well to something like the
iPhone, so I’d be interested to see this ported over as a native application that could put all of this information together into tabs or sections of the screen that could be accessed with finger swipes.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

Read your favorite financial stories as they happen and keep track of stocks with Streetread.

Start your day out every morning by reading your favorite financial feeds? You might like Streetread, a relatively simple feed aggregator that pulls in stories from major financial publications. It also grabs live quotes from your favorite ticker symbols.

While you could accomplish a similar feat with services like Alltop, Original Signal, and Netvibes, Streetread’s claim to fame is that it’s constantly updating and will keep the page alive and scolling downwards as new stories pop up. You can preview each headline before you click, or just click it without getting lost–it’ll simply jump you off site while retaining a link on the top of the page to hop back to Streetread.

Co-founders Robert Hohman and Tim Besse, along with Barton, provided the seed funding for Sausalito, Calif.-based Glassdoor, and they received an additional $3 million from venture capital firm Benchmark Capital. Hohman (who is chief executive; Besse is marketing vice president) hopes the information will be unique enough to get by on advertising revenue.

I know this because of a start-up called Glassdoor.com. While Glassdoor’s service, scheduled to go into a public beta at 9:01 PDT Tuesday, is certainly helpful for nosy reporters who want a read on what employees think of their bosses, that’s not the 12-person company’s only intention. Glassdoor executives say they want to be the TripAdvisor of the workplace.

Founded by veterans of Microsoft and Expedia (Rich Barton, the CEO of real estate site Zillow, is non-executive chairman) Glassdoor has a fairly simple goal: Make salary and workplace-quality information (the kind of stuff you’d love to have when you’re interviewing for a new job) as public as possible.

Glassdoor may have a unique method for gathering its data, but it’s hardly the only company trying to tackle salary information. Other outfits, such as Salary.com, which claims more than 4 million visitors per month and also sells a business service, are also in the salary info business. Indeed, human resources departments have for years been gathering data on competitors to decide if their salaries are competitive.

Glassdoor's data shows Yahoo’s Jerry Yang became very unpopular May 14.

Employee reviews include “pros” and “cons” of each company, leadership ratings, salaries by position, and bonus details. The site will also send out alerts for a company when reviews are added.

(Credit:
Glassdoor.com)

Public beta users will be able to see data from four sample employers–Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, and Cisco Systems–without providing their own information. To get information on more than those four, they’ll have to “give to get,” as the company calls it. So far, more than 3,300 people have filed dossiers on more than 250 companies (not all of them in tech), according to Glassdoor.

Soon after May 14, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang’s approval rating among an admittedly small group of Yahoo employees tanked. Not surprisingly, that was the day word spread that corporate raider Carl Icahn was launching his proxy fight against Yang and Yahoo’s embattled board of directors.

(Credit:
Glassdoor.com)

Which brings me back to Yahoo: While the 49 people who’ve filled out information about Yahoo is in no way a scientific sampling, the lousy CEO approval rating is certainly illustrative of nervousness inside the company. When a corporate raider like Icahn comes calling (particularly after a potential suitor like Microsoft takes a hike), there’s always reason to worry. Will executives cut costs to placate shareholders? Even worse: If the raider wins, will he gut payroll?

Employees provide Glassdoor's data and provide that information anonymously.

It’s an ambitious plan. The solution: The service is free, but in order to get information users have to provide information. If a user wants to find out how much, say, a midlevel engineer at Microsoft makes, he or she has to provide information about his or her current job and company. It’s anonymous, and Glassdoor screens information that seems bogus or plain-old axe-grinding. (It will be interesting to see how that labor-intensive work scales with new users. That and maintaining the quality of salary and company information are the biggest questions that will have to be answered in the not-too-distant future for Glassdoor.)

For a prospective employee, of course, the bigger question is: Should I work at this place?

There are few things that video game publishers–or any consumer products companies, for that matter–like more than reaching big, notable milestones.

On June 10, Geek Gestalt hits the highways for Road Trip 2008. I’ll start in Orlando, Fla., and visit many of the South’s most interesting destinations. Stay tuned, and be sure to keep up, both now and during the trip, with what I’m doing on Twitter.

Of course, one wonders how many more copies it would have sold had it been available on Nintendo’s
Wii. But Zampella said that Infinity Ward decided not to make the game for that console because “it just doesn’t fit on the Wii. We thought it would be compromised to be on (that) platform.”

These days, monster hits like Grand Theft Auto IV and Halo 3 have gotten most of the media’s attention for best-sellers, but by reaching 10 million sold, there’s no doubt that COD 4 deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as any other title.

Indeed, Zampella acknowledged that COD 4 has set the bar very high for his studio, and it’s hard to imagine Infinity Ward being able to come right back with another 10 million-seller.

Well, with Guitar Hero III, Halo 3, and Grand Theft Auto IV inspiring record-setting sales in their own right, we might easily see a few more games reach the magic 10 million mark soon. And the next Call of Duty, COD 5, which is being produced by Tryarch, not Inifinity Ward, might see even bigger numbers.

But, COD 4 still has some juice left. He suggested that the game is still selling, that it’s map pack add-on has sold 1.5 million copies, and that the main game itself is expected to sell a lot more copies this holiday season.

So it was with considerable pride that Activision’s wholly owned Infinity Ward studio told me Tuesday that its war game, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, has just sold its 10 millionth copy.

And to be sure, it’s not the only game that has reached 10 million units moved–Infinity Ward said that COD 4 is one of “less than 10″ games to do so since 2000–but it’s still a notable milestone, especially when you consider that, at a sticker price of $60 a pop, even when considering that you can buy it for less at some retailers, Activision has raked in many hundreds of millions of dollars with the game.

True or not, hats off to Infinity Ward on reaching a milestone few ever reach.

Infinity Ward studio head Vince Zampella didn’t know exactly how many units the game had sold on each platform it is available on–the
Xbox 360,
PlayStation 3, and PC–but did say that COD 4 had been most successful on the Xbox.

Where’s the feature to let the home screen’s many pages wrap around from one side to the other? I have seven pages with icons (none full; I use the pages to hold different types of apps) and it bugs me to have to flip pages six times to get from 1 to 7 or vice versa.

But come on, Apple! The lines on a sheet of paper are fixed. The lines on a computer display aren’t. Stretch the lines apart so that every event gets the space it needs! Jeez, this isn’t rocket science.

Without the ability to select, replying inline to e-mail is so difficult that I usually just use top-posting, which I generally don’t like.

Notes has other problems. It’s slow to start up and can’t be configured to open into a new note, which makes it ineffective for quickly jotting down short notes such as phone numbers. It uses the MarkerFelt font, which is ugly and more difficult to read than other fonts on the iPhone. (Personally I wonder if this was a misguided homage to the hand-printed appearance of the Casual font on the Newton. Casual would be a good choice for this app, though, since it’s highly readable.)

Muting and sounds
For example: Where’s the feature to mute the phone? You may point to the little toggle switch on the left side, but no, that just mutes the ringer and certain audio alerts, not the whole phone. On my old Palm Treo, the mute switch darn well muted everything, as if the switch disconnected the speaker wires themselves.

Other iPhone apps have their own transfer programs, which is a mess. It seems to me that round-trip data movement, including translation so that documents can be viewed and edited on the Mac or PC (where practical), is a more fundamental feature for a smartphone than a multi-touch display.

As I mentioned, I use the Notes program in spite of the fact that it’s basically impossible to bring data into it. It’s possible to export text from Notes by e-mailing it to yourself, but that’s a one-way trip. Notes aren’t available on the Mac after synchronizing an iPhone; they’re locked in an undocumented sqlite database managed by iTunes.

Ever since I got my iPhone 3G in late July, I’ve been keeping track of the things I like–and don’t like–about it.

(For the adventurous, this database is located at ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup on a Mac, or C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup on a Windows machine. There are a few third-party apps that can extract some of this information, but I don’t know a way to make changes and get them back into the phone.)

In trying to decide between using the Notes app and this Notes folder for note-taking, I realized that the iPhone doesn’t have a single standard for managing modified documents. Mail works like a Mac: when you edit a document, you’re really modifying a copy of the original, and you have to save your work. Notes works like a Newton: you’re editing the original, so there’s no need to save the document, but there’s also no way to abandon your changes.

The Calendar app doesn’t handle multiple-user event scheduling very well. Invitations received by the iPhone’s Mail app aren’t understood by the phone. I can go look at the message on my
Mac and add the event to my calendar there, and eventually the event shows up on my iPhone, but that’s not so good when I’m traveling. And even then, the event can’t be edited on the iPhone–not at all, not even to change the times.

Alarm volume is controlled by the ringer volume, but even the minimum ringer volume is still audible.

My entire Contacts database disappeared from my phone one day. I was worried about what would happen when I backed up the phone–would it decide I wanted to delete all the contacts from my Mac as well? I made a quick backup of the iPhone database before syncing, but it all worked out OK. It took a long time to restore the list, though. It hasn’t happened again, and I still don’t know why it happened at all.

Judging from Apple’s job listings, it’s hiring a lot of people to work on iPhone software, but there’s a lot of work to be done. We’ll just have to see how quickly Apple can improve the iPhone, and whether it can maintain a clean, consistent user interface at the same time.

Music and video
The iPod application is missing a valuable feature found in the desktop iTunes application. It can’t play music or videos shared from a Mac on the local network. This feature would be a great way around the iPhone’s limited local music and video storage. (Brian Tiemann had the same thought.)

(In fact, where’s the iPhone’s “to do” functionality? That’s a very basic PDA feature that shouldn’t have been left up to third-party developers. It was easier to manage to-do lists on the Apple Newton 10 years ago.)

A popular “where’s the feature?” in many articles about the iPhone is the absence of copy/paste functionality. This makes moving data between applications painfully difficult. For example, I’ve sometimes been forced to write down–on paper!– something I wanted to copy from Mail into Notes or vice versa.

(Credit:
Apple)

It would be even more useful if the Phone app could record calls, or parts of calls. I had a great little program on my Palm Treo– mVoice, from MotionApps–that did that, and I loved it. If someone was about to give me their contact information or driving directions, I could push a button and make a quick recording. There’s a version of mVoice for the iPhone, but it doesn’t yet have this feature. MotionApps says “we are working hard on enabling this feature and we are expecting to add phone call recording support in near future,” but I’ve heard Apple (or perhaps AT&T) doesn’t want to see this feature on the iPhone. That’s a mistake, I think.

As you’ve noticed by now, pretty much all of these comments are purely software related. In truth, I have almost nothing to say about the iPhone’s hardware. The iPhone’s industrial design and basic hardware features are entirely adequate for my needs, and certainly enough to support all the features I want to add.

Another thing I’d like to see: a standard way to access “advanced” details on complex items. For example, the desktop Mail program has a lot of detailed account settings, but the iPhone provides no way to manage these settings even though they certainly exist inside the software. In the Phone app’s Recents list, there’s no way to see how long each phone call took. In most items, there’s no way to find out when the item was created or last edited.

The iPhone Favorites screen is the most useful to me, but it would be a lot more useful if it amounted to a global bookmarks function, giving me access to favorite Web pages, applications, and even specific functions within applications like “create new note,” “send e-mail,” “find nearby restaurants,” “show me a route to my house,” etc.

(Credit:
Peter N. Glaskowsky)

The Calendar app does something else that’s kind of silly. In the daily view, most events get two lines of text: the title and location. Displaying these two lines takes up about one hour of the day. For a shorter event–one scheduled for 30 minutes, say–the two lines get squeezed into one line in an attempt to maintain the orderly appearance of the schedule.

Bottom line: I can’t find a way to make the unit completely silent without going into multiple Settings panels and applications, and even that isn’t completely effective because some applications (as exemplified by the otherwise valuable Phone Aid) will turn the volume back up when they run.

The things I don’t like are, generally, software features that ought to be present but just aren’t.

I can understand why Apple assigned a higher priority to whiz-bang features like multitouch; if you don’t sell a product, it doesn’t really matter how well it works. But now that the iPhone’s long-term success is absolutely assured, it’s time to get back to the mundane stuff like plumbing and save application developers the grief of having to implement their own solutions.

It would also be nice if, when entering contact information, the iPhone would do word completion based on contact information. Typing “Intel” is no big deal. Repeatedly typing “Microsoft Research Silicon Valley” gets old fast.

Application-generated sounds have a separate volume control. If you’re not in the iPod application, which has a volume slider, I think the only way to adjust this control is to use the volume rocker switch while an application is making sounds. Sometimes, that’s after the phone has already started to annoy the people around you.

I thought about this one a lot, and I believe the cleanest way to add this feature to the iPhone without cluttering up the user interface is to put another meaning on the Home button: hold down for more detail on the current item.

This would also be the right way to add local file storage to the iPhone. I bought Avatron’s Air Sharing application, but that has its own transfer method that’s a lot less convenient than what I’d like to see.

Contacts and phone calls
The Contacts application is very slow if one has a long contact list. I currently have a little over 3,000 cards in my list, and it takes several seconds for the contact list to load in whenever I go to search it–in Contacts, Mail, Phone, or wherever. It hesitates for a few more seconds each time I try to use the quick-scroll list (the letters down the right edge of the screen). That’s too slow.

There’s a search field in the Contacts list, but for some inexplicable reason, it scrolls with the list. If you aren’t at the top of the list, you can’t initiate a search. That really needs to be fixed. Also, the search function ought to support searching for names based on first initial, last name (the “flast” method), which generally works better than searching for first and last names.

The iPhone will sync third-party app preferences and data, sure, but only to that darned sqlite database. Programs like iTalk that need to move data to the Mac desktop have to create their own transfer programs. Griffin, for example, has iTalk Sync. These programs are a pain in the neck to deal with. Griffin has a section on the iTalk Web page that describes how to transfer recordings. It says “it’s easy” but then provides a five-step, 140-word explanation. That isn’t “easy.”

Apple’s iPhone 3G

I often find myself wishing I could link contacts to events and notes, a feature that was enabled on the Newton by third-party software. I used my Newton to keep track of my business activities, which commonly involved taking notes during phone calls. It would be helpful if the Phone app provided a button to start taking notes that would be available through Notes as well as through the Phone app’s Recent list.

My Apple Newton, Palm Treo, and Apple iPhone 3G.

The things I like are, generally, the same things everyone likes. The iPhone is feature-rich, well integrated, well supported by independent software developers, and fun to use.

The Calendar app does something very nice: the icon on the iPhone’s home screen shows the current day and date. So, where’s the feature? Why don’t all of Apple’s apps do this sort of thing where appropriate? The Clock app icon always shows 10:15. The Weather app always shows sunny and 73 degrees. The Stocks app shows a random squiggle. Sure, updating all these icons would give the iPhone some extra work to do–so Apple should provide a “Live icon updates?” setting and have some rules about how often the updates should happen. I think the slight increase in overhead would usually be worth it.

Each time I discover another one of these missing features, I jot it down in my iPhone WTF list. WTF, of course, stands for “Where’s the feature?”

Since Apple is rumored to be releasing the next major
iPhone firmware update today, I thought I’d run through the list now, and then see how the new firmware changes things. Many of these comments apply to the
iPod touch as well.

(Sheesh, I’ve been busy lately. I had more spare time when I was employed!)

But I realized pretty early on that the inability to simply select text is also painful. If I decide I want to rewrite a sentence in an e-mail I’m composing on my Mac, I just select the old text and start typing the replacement sentence. On the iPhone, I have to position the cursor at the end of the sentence and hit backspace a bunch of times (or hold it down and try to let go at just the right moment) before I can start typing again. Similarly, if I want to just delete a bunch of text, like unnecessary sections of the e-mail I’m replying to, I can’t just select it and hit delete.

The Mail program, when configured for Apple’s own MobileMe service, has its own Notes folder, but that’s no improvement. Although it’s called “Notes,” the iPhone treats this folder like any other mail folder. A “note” shouldn’t have addressee information, should it? Similarly, there’s an Apple Mail To Do folder, but it has no actual “to do” functionality.

This reminds me of one more idea.

On handheld devices, I much prefer the latter strategy because ease of use trumps the ability to abandon changes. Also, since an incoming call can pull the user away from a running application, it’s better for changes to be saved instantly. But one way or the other, there should be a standard for this element of the user interface.

The Calendar app also has the worst user-interface design in the whole iPhone, I think. To select the date and time for an alarm, you spin three wheels apparently stolen from the game show The Price Is Right. The minutes wheel is so easy to spin that in going from :00 to :30, I commonly spin right past :30 and back to :00. Apple has developed many ways to select dates and times for other systems and applications; this is by far the worst.

And finally…
What I’d like to see: a MobileMe folder in the user’s home directory that contains one folder for each app that wants to sync data with the desktop.

Where’s the feature to let me generate extended Unicode characters and accents? I assume non-English versions of the iPhone make this easy. Does Apple assume that customers who speak English never have an occasion to write to people in other countries? Or that we don’t care about spelling their personal or place names correctly?

Currently, double-clicking the Home button can perform one of three functions on an iPhone: going to the home screen (just like single-clicking), going to the iPhone Favorites screen, and going to the iPod app. (On the iPod Touch, it always goes into the iPod application.)

Similarly, a long event has plenty of room to display additional information, such as the notes associated with the event–but instead, the event ends up with two lines of text and a bunch of wasted blank space. Display the notes, and shrink the event if that helps to keep the whole day on the screen. I hate having to scroll the Day display just to show two events.

Syncing third-party app data
Currently I use Griffin’s iTalk app to record voice memos. It’s a decent app, but it highlights another “where’s the feature?” issue: where is the standard method for syncing third-party application data to the Mac desktop?

On the iPhone, there’s no way to predict which sound sources will respect the mute switch. Calendar alerts do; alarms don’t. These are good choices–I like knowing that the alarm function will still wake me up even if I mute the phone before going to sleep–but hardly intuitive.

E-mail and Notes
In the Mail app, where’s the common in-box for all mail accounts? I have two accounts I use regularly, and it takes four clicks to switch from one in-box to the other. Apple’s desktop Mail application has a common in-box that displays all the individual in-boxes together (without actually moving the messages), which is just what the iPhone needs.

Alerts and Calendar app
While I’m on the subject of alerts: in the Calendar application, where’s the function to set an alert for the exact time of an event? Sometimes I just want to beep myself at 10 a.m. to make a phone call, for example. I don’t want to have to set the time for 10:05 a.m. and the alert for “5 minutes before.” I love the fact that Calendar supports up to two alerts for the same event, but I wish I could set them to, say, 15 minutes and 0 minutes respectively. This problem could be solved by providing a “Custom” time choice for both of the alerts.

AOL said distributing widget ads through Platform-A won’t cost extra.

An example of a widget ad from Advertising.com.

AOL said Wednesday it’s integrating interactive “widget” ads with Platform-A, the Time Warner subsidiary’s advertising network.

Widgets are small Web-based applications, and widget ads offer more interactive possibilities than conventional ads. AOL acquired Goowy in February to advance its widget push, and the Goowy technology for creating and managing widgets is now integrated with Platform-A.

“Widget-based advertising is gaining momentum in the industry, and Platform-A’s network approach allows our customers to build brands, encourage interaction, and drive site traffic–all at scale,” said Lynda Clarizio, president of Platform-A, in a statement.

Widgets already could be distributed on AOL’s Bebo and on Facebook through Advertising.com service, which is part of Platform-A, but Platform-A has a much broader reach. According to June statistics from ComScore, Platform-A is the top-ranked ad network, reaching 90 percent of the nearly 190 million Americans who are online. (The Yahoo Network was second, at 83 percent, followed by the Google Ad Network at 81 percent, and Specific Media at 78 percent.)

Update 12:35 p.m. PDT: I corrected a reference to AOL’s parent company.

(Credit:
Advertising.com)

His choice of Nine Inch Nails could be important. If he follows the band at all then he knows that leader Trent Reznor is helping to spearhead a do-it-yourself movement among musicians. Reznor left Universal Music Group last year and has experimented heavily with self distribution via the Web.

In an interview with CNET News.com last year, Merrill says he got interested in online security and hacking as a kid growing up in Arkansas. He found ways to “play with” membership rolls on white supremacist bulletin boards and wanted to embarrass them.

View results

Google Chief Information Officer Douglas Merrill is leaving Google to become president of EMI’s digital unit, according to sources.

He may be a music fan but he’s definitely no music-industry insider. The only connection that can be found to music is on his personal blog–he lists the Sex Pistols, Nine Inch Nails and Mary-Chapin Carpenter among his favorite performers.

But for Merrill the move will require either huge mental exercise or a near religious conversion. At Google, products and strategy focus on opening up content for the world to see and making it searchable by anyone with an Internet connection. This world view has repeatedly put Google at loggerheads with copyright holders and their ilk. For instance, Google has been sued over its book scanning project, its news aggregation site and its YouTube video site, where you could easily find pirated music videos and TV clips.

Merrill, vice president of engineering, joined Google in 2003 as senior director of information systems and led strategic efforts including regulatory activities related to Google’s 2004 IPO. He oversees all internal engineering and support worldwide. Before working at Google, Merrill held information technology, engineering and security positions at Charles Schwab, Pricewaterhouse and RAND Corp., a non-profit think tank.

News.com Poll Can a Google exec teach the recording industry how to take advantage of the Internet?

Like other record labels, EMI is struggling to compete in an industry turned upside down by the Internet. The music industry has to figure out how to deal with technology that easily lets people “rip and burn” music for free instead of paying for CDs. And artists, frustrated with politics at record labels, turning to the Internet to release and promote their music.

A separate source familiar with the matter said Merrill will be starting at EMI later this month and that the position was created specially for him. He is staying in California, the source says. EMI, the fourth-largest record label, is based in London.

Merrill’s experience at Google, considered along with Apple as one of the most innovative technology companies ever, can help EMI navigate the digital waters better. Traditionally, record labels have been slow to adopt technology and have completely missed the boat on e-commerce. Merrill will be crucial to evaluating technology and helping EMI create an Internet strategy.

(Credit: Google)

In this environment, Merrill might be exactly what EMI needs.

Others, including Radiohead and Madonna have walked away from traditional record companies. And of course, there’s big questions to be answered regarding file-sharing, ad-supported music, iPods and how to make money on digital distribution.

A Google spokesman confirmed that Merrill is leaving but said he could not confirm the other information. A spokeperson for EMI Music Group declined to comment.

“For EMI to hire someone from Silicon Valley will offer them a huge advantage over the label next door,” says Hab Haddad, vice president of business development at music management firm McGhee Entertainment, which represents rock band Kiss.

Yes
No
They should have hired someone from Apple

The move was a head-scratcher, bizarre enough to be second-guessed as a hoax, especially given how different the music industry is from Google’s world.

And EMI needs the help, especially now. The company is under new ownership after Terra Firma bought the company last year for $4.7 billion. Since that deal was finalized, several of the label’s biggest acts have bolted, including Radiohead. Terra Firma chief Guy Hands has also begun whacking costs at the company, eliminating between 1,500 to 2,000 jobs, nearly a third of EMI’s 5,500-person staff.

Updated 5 p.m. PDT with more information and context.

“It’s a digital world, and if (music companies) can’t pull the heavyweights in (who) have been successful in other industries, they’re never going to get it right for their industry.” –Hab Haddad, VP, McGhee Entertainment

On a personal level, the match might be more heavenly. Merrill’s shoulder-length hair and casual attire makes clear he’s not a corporate “suit.” Plus he’s got a bachelor’s in social and political organization and a master’s and doctorate in Psychology from Princeton.

It will be interesting to see what an executive from a company known for pushing the envelope on fair use can bring to an industry that has rabidly protected its copyrights. Maybe he can help them use the Web to make money instead of trying to keep others from using it at EMI’s expense.

The move comes at a time when the music industry is seriously hurting. Total revenue have plunged from $14.3 billion in 2000 to $10 billion last year.

“It’s a digital world and if they (music companies) can’t pull the heavyweights in that have been successful in other industries they’re never going to get it right for their industry,” Haddad says.

CNET News.com’s Greg Sandoval contributed to this report.

The news of Merrill’s departure was first reported by PodTech founder John Furrier via Twitter and on his blog.

Electronics companies like JVC and Kenwood, known for their audio equipment, said last week they had officially set up shop together after what seemed like a yearlong dance. They will fold the brands into one company, JVC Kenwood Holdings, in hopes of reducing costs and scaling their distribution in the already crowded Japanese consumer electronics market.

“If I stopped people on the street and asked them to name (an audio) company other than Bose, 80 or 90 percent wouldn’t have a clue,” he said.

“I often wonder about the 30-year-old iPod,” Guttenberg mused. “Will someone still use an iPod in 30 years,” like audiophiles do high-end speakers?

Music today is a commodity–ripped for free track by track, or bought for 99 cents and eventually added to a vast digital library, either destined to become a favorite, or more likely forgotten for good after a couple of listens. Today’s music players are regarded the same way–mostly as disposable. Either the player will work for two or three years before sputtering and dying, or a newer, faster, smaller, better player that has far more cachet will be released in six months.

The effect is that it’s slowly killing an industry.

But those two are not alone in their plight. Last month it was revealed that D&M Holdings, known for audio brands like Denon, Marantz, McIntosh, Snell Acoustics, and Boston Acoustics is up for sale, and that Harman International, which already operates dozens of brands, is interested, along with JVC Kenwood, in snapping it up.

Little brand awareness
The problem is that the awareness of audio equipment beyond the iPod and its ilk is disappearing, according to Guttenberg.

But are they true audiophiles? No, at least not in the way people who came of age trying to find the perfect sound on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon were. They’d buy high-fidelity speakers and systems that play back music in a quality as close to the original performance as possible.

“Before, people would listen to music through their stereo system, or 10, 15 years ago over their home theater system; that doesn’t happen anymore,” said Steve Guttenberg, who writes The Audiophiliac for the CNET Blog Network. “People have sort of moved away from that sort of mindset. It doesn’t happen except for audiophiles.”

Companies like McIntosh, the original high-end audio company, catered specifically to audiophiles. Begun in 1949 in Binghamton, N.Y., it still builds its speakers by hand, just as it always has. If any of its products were ever in need of repair, the company would take it back and fix it, not just replace it. The products were made to last for decades, not just the length of a one-year warranty.

Home audio sales have been in decline for the past half decade, and have drooped even lower in recent years. Home CD player sales totaled $36.2 million last year, but that’s 35 percent below 2005 sales figures. Home speaker sales are down 2 percent, but home shelf systems sales are down 40 percent in the same time period, according to data gathered by the NPD Group.

The answer is, of course, not a chance.

In the face of slowing sales and brand awareness, the industry has responded by consolidating many of the original home audio brands and manufacturers.

While it’s unclear if it was the cause or simply a response to a new generation’s needs, the runaway success of the iPod played an important role in this change. The iPod either tapped into our desire to listen to music on the go–and bring the entirety of our music library with us–or told us that’s what we should want.

I’d bet the average person under 30 hasn’t purchased a serious home stereo system in the last five years.

And why not? If you think about it, the equipment that has traditionally defined the audiophile is antithetical to the way we experience music today. Speakers are clunky and immobile, and expensive shelf systems don’t play easily swappable digital files. Instead, stereo shopping nowadays often means picking up an
iPod and a speaker dock. The combination is cheaper, mobile, convenient, and, for better or worse, cool.

And it’s not because they don’t like music. Quite the opposite, actually. The popularity of online streaming music sites, rise of music blogs, and skyrocketing digital music sales from places like iTunes, Wal-Mart.com, and Amazon.com show that young people are voracious music consumers.

The brand is now on the block, its personalized service, handcrafted products, and attention to detail no longer as relevant to the majority of music consumers.