The Beatles on iTunes finally; not everyone is amused

The Beatles are on iTunes. I for one am glad of that. I won't succumb to the hype and buy their entire collection immediately but it is good to know that one of the most influential and iconic bands in the history of pop music has finally arrived in what is arguably the most popular music store on the planet.

But not everyone is amused. Mark Mulligan, an analyst at research firm Forrester, wrote in his blog that it wasn't that big a deal. "The fact that securing the content of a band old enough to be most young music fans' grandfathers is a sad reflection of the state of the digital music market," he wrote. "The digital music market needs new music products, not yesteryear's hits repackaged," he clarified. I disagree. It is a sad reflection on the state of license holders and their narrow views that it took this long in the first place.

A couple of years ago I went to a Paul McCartney concert. It was a birthday present from my sister and I looked forward to it. I have never been a Beatles fan, being just a few years too young to have first hand experience of the hype and just old enough to have seen it all falling apart in less brilliant solo careers, or so my hard rock and post-punk self thought. The Beatles are a band who I came to appreciate much later in life. Also recognising then the achievements of some of the solo work of Paul McCartney and John Lennon.

What struck me about the Paul McCartney concert was the generation spanning audience. Literally every age group from toddler to geriatric was there and pretty evenly spread, percentage wise. And more importantly: they were all enjoying themselves. Mark Mulligan should think again. What he says means that old things are not to be regarded as worth anything. So let us burn all Rembrandts, Van Goghs and lets replace the Mona Lisa with a digital art installation by an art school student. No more Beethoven, Mahler, Mozart, in digital form on digital distribution platforms. Let's not make e-books of Shakespeare, Dickens, George, Austen. They're all old hat and according to Mark Mulligan's argument they should be replaced by bright young stars. Whose work of course is all of it brilliant and worth looking at, listening to or reading. I know, let's replace the Beatles with Susan Boyle.

Robot on stage: the end of the line for actors?

A life like robot has taken to the stage in Japan, the BBC reports. The android actress' name is Geminoid F. Not a name that portrays well on a theatre poster I guess. The robot plays the part of an android caretaker to a woman who is terminally ill. Geminoid F recites poetry in the play and she never leaves her chair. Her movement and speech are directed by an actress back stage. So no autonomy yet.

So why is this news? Although this may be a first in the hallowed halls of theatre, robots controlled by humans have been part of the film making industry for donkey's years. This particular robot does look quite human but only at a glance. The resemblance fades away as soon as the robot moves any of its parts. It looks wooden and lacks a lot of je ne sais quoi. If anything it shows up the intricacies of the human face. A smile is more than just the curling upwards of the lips. The whole face, the eyes smile as well. This trick the robot has not mastered.

So Geminoid F does not pose a threat to human actors yet. And I am guessing the price for such a robot is not going to make it an economical extra or stunt person either. Although you never know in Hollywood. Imagine: instead of launching clothes filled with sandbags from the core of one of its many explosions the next Michael Bay movie may launch animated robots. A bit of a waste of money in my view, but most Michael Bay movies are that anyway so no great change there.

(A bit more on this story here: SkyNews.)

Teens who text a lot live unsafe lives, a study claims

A study done by the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine in Cleveland shows that teens who text a lot (more than 120 messages per school day) and who spend a lot of time on social networks (more than three hours a school day), are more likely to lead unsafe lives. Unsafe, in the eyes of the researchers means they drink alcohol, use drugs and OMG, have sex! The calamity! High school students who drink, smoke weed and fool around with each other. This must be the end of the world.

At first my reaction was to laugh. I looked at the calendar, no it was not April fools day. So was this research real? What got my goat most was the blatant reversal the researchers allowed themselves. They warned parents that excessive - in their eyes - texting and social networking caused all these debaucheries. Which of course is total poppycock to put it mildly.

I remember my high school days, although they are some time ago. We did not have social network sites and mobile phones. They were not even a gleam in the eyes of their unborn inventors. Yet I do remember the socially more active specimens of my age group being a tad more precocious than some. They smoked, drank and screwed around at 16. Others did not. Live and let live. Had a study been done in those days they would have shown much the same results percentage wise. You see, there's one line in the report that gave the game away: "Many of the 19.8 percent of teens who reported hyper-texting were female, minority, from lower socioeconomic status and had no father at home". I went to two schools that had a large percentage of students that would fit the above classification and you know what? They would also fit the reports findings to a tee. And yet, as stated, no texting, no social network sites. Might there be another cause for the findings of the report?

Teens are teens. They explore the boundaries of what is possible. They experiment. That's what teens do, even have to do. That's their purpose in life. Let teens be teens. True, as a parent there has to be a certain measure of control and awareness but there also has to be a certain allowance of freedom. In the end most of them will turn out to become well adjusted members of society if they are given the chance. If there is no or little parental control teens may fly off the hook. It happened in ancient Greece, it happened in medieval England, it happens now. This report in my view grossly over-hypes the blame social technologies have in what is the normal behaviour of certain groups of high school kids.

Move over old-skool gamers, it's the final level for you

(created with the South Park Avatar creator)

(With the launch of the Microsoft Kinect, all three major gaming platforms now have a controller that is motion oriented. In other words: the gamer needs to get off the couch and put his or her hind quarters into gear. The success of the Nintendo Wii is well known but it seems that both the Playstation Move and Microsoft's Kinect are overnight successes as well.

I am an old-skool gamer. I don't have much time to game anymore but when I do I like to sit or lie on the couch and immerse myself with near religious passivity into a fantasy world of choice. So this development of control schemes that require more physical activity than moving my thumbs and index fingers is worrying to me. Soon video games will cause loss of weight, lowered blood pressure and development of musculature reminiscent of an Olympic athlete. That's not going to do a geek's image any good.

It's the last days of Rome for the old-skool gamer. The grossly overweight, snacks and soda popping gamer is a dying breed. A cultural exponent of the twentieth century is on its last legs in this first decade of the twenty-first century. All that will be left is a small niche of humanity that perseveres as the stereotype old-skool gamer, mainly found among those that play their games on PC's. Most probably roaming the World of Warcraft.

But as all geeks know: one just can't stop progress. It's only a matter of time before a motion based system is developed  for PC's and then even the last vestiges of old-skool gamers will have fallen. Once the drivers have been downloaded, the patches installed and autoexec.bat's and config.sys's been edited, there will be no stopping the onslaught of health for the PC gamers.

It is sad. I gain some solace from the existence of that one South Park episode that stands as a proud monument to a lost culture. The culture of the old-skool gamer.

E-paper E-readers not up to snuff yet

Yesterday I had the chance to have a quick look at a couple of E-readers. They were the Oyo e-reader, the Samsung E60 eReader and a couple of BeBook E-readers (Neo, One and Mini). Also yesterday I had a go at an iPad in an Apple store. In my humble opinion E-readers are not up to snuff yet.

The first thing that struck me was the antiquated user interface of all the e-book readers I looked at. Punching number keys to navigate through menu's felt like warping back to the 90's. Or if a touch screen was available I had the greatest difficulty in getting the device to respond to my at first ginger and later more insistent pawing of the menu items. The loading of books, even short ones took ages. Granted, once a book is loaded it is ready for you at start-up but as more and more of these devices are becoming multifunctional, chances are you will be switching tasks quite often.

Then there was the turning of pages. It was like adding special effects to the book. A white screen flashed, went dark, waited a couple of seconds and there was the new page. And the pages contained too little text to be able to put off turning the page for long. So this dramatic effect would be a often repeated. If I wanted a book written by Michael Bay this might work but to have these effects crop up in "Pride and Prejudice" is nothing less than disastrous.

The ergonomics of many of the devices was also less than ideal. True, they are light and compact but this also means less text per page. I do not want to turn the page too often, it breaks the flow of reading, especially taking the afore mentioned special effects into account. Some of the buttons lacked positive response and all but the Samsung felt cheap. More toy like than serious reading tool.

I own an old iPhone (3g) and I played with the iPad yesterday. I am not going to say that these are the ultimate E-readers. But I am going to say that they are the yard stick to which the also rans are going to be measured in terms of usability. And the also rans fall short. Way short! Granted they are a lot cheaper than the Apple products but that is beside the point if they do not provide enough of the function they were intended for in the first place. What use is a car that's cheap that has square wheels?

Sadly I can not compare these E-readers or the iPad to the Amazon Kindle simply because it is not available in our country so there is no where to test it. I also have not tested the Sony ones yet although they are available over here. The experience may be slightly better. But boy does it need to be a lot better to win me over!

I remain a fervent proponent of E-books and E-reading in general. I do believe it is the future of publishing and reading. But the developers of the technology behind it need to shore up their breeches, grease their elbows and get to work. There's a lot to be done before it all becomes comfortable enough to compete with books or the iPad/iPhone on a long term basis. Once the fad has worn off I mean.