A Letter to Audible about DRM

I still haven't found a very convenient way to listen to Audible books. I don't want to go out and buy a new phone or a new mp3 player just so that it will work with Audible's unnecessary restrictions. Burning to CD's is a bad option because at a minimum of 14+ cd's per book, its just wasteful. CDRW's are out because the cd player in my car can't read them. Audible's software players are decent, but they are only supported on the desktop (I don't want to listen to books on my desktop) and specific devices. I tried it for a while on a Pocket PC device that I had access to through work, and while it was fine for in the car it was too large and bulky to take running with me. So finally I started burning the books to a set of CDRW's (which I repeatedly use just for this purpose), then I rip each of those cd's one by one, and finally I move the resulting mp3's onto my phone (for in the car) or my mp3 player (for when I go running). Pain. In. The. Butt.

So recently I tried Audible Air, Audible's java player app for mobile phones. It isn't supported on my phone, unfortunately. So I emailed them and got a very detailed and polite response about why Audible Air won't work on my phone (the device manufacturer has to update the firmware so that it can understand the DRM blah blah blah). BS!

Then I saw a post on Boing Boing about how Amazon (Amazon purchased Audible early this year) said that it would not remove the DRM from Audible's audio books unless customers complained enough. So, if you're an Audible customer (or might be in the future), I hope you'll take a moment to email them and share your frustration about DRM. Here is the email I sent to audible@custhelp.com:

I hope you'll also pass along these comments about your DRM, so that things can change. I read that Amazon plans to keep the Audible DRM unless customers complain enough. Well, here is my argument against DRM:

You said - "The encryption is required by the publishers to insure the security of their book files..." While this may have been true at one time, I believe this statement is now incorrect. Random House nows allows its online retailers to sell audio books without DRM (see the following letter from Random House: http://craphound.com/DRMLetter22108.pdf). According to one well known author/blogger (Cory Doctorow, http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/21/random-house-audio-a.html) who ran into this problem, it is Audible itself who is placing this restriction. Even authors who WANT their books to be without DRM cannot do so if they desire to distribute their books through Audible (there is a well known author/blogger who has had this problem in the past).

Random House is smart enough to know that pirated copies of audio books, just like music, will exist no matter what. Amazon and Audible are smart enough to know this as well, or at least they should be. Right now, even with your DRM, I could (if I wanted to, which I don't) burn a copy of a book to a CDRW, rip the cd's to mp3's, and distribute those mp3s illegally. I could even merge them together into one large mp3 if I wanted. DRM doesn't stop the kind of people who do this - all it does it inconvenience good customers who just want to listen to good audio books on their devices or in their cars without having to burn 22 cds. As it is now, in order to listen to books the way I want to, I have to burn to a CDRW, rip the cd's to mp3's and manually copy those mp3's onto my SD card for my mobile device. Talk about a painful process. All so that Audible and publishers can accomplish what? Nothing.

Then there's the issue of Audible wasting time and money struggling to keep ahead of software applications that can convert from .aa to .mp3. Even more time and money is wasted trying to "support" x device. You would already support my device if you just gave me mp3s instead of a DRM mess.
What keeps me from buying more audio books from Audible? What keeps me from buying a Kindle from Amazon? DRM, and only DRM. I already canceled my Audible membership once out of frustration over this. I signed up again after Amazon bought Audible hoping that things would change. I hope I'm not wrong, and I hope it happens sooner than later.

Technorati Tags: Amazon, Audible, DRM, .aa, .mp3

Diet Coke Bandit

A long time ago I wrote about the diet coke bandit of my office. Sometime between then and now I cut back on my diet beverage intake drastically. Then I probably drank 4 or 5 a day, now I might drink 2 a week. Instead I drink mostly water. Sometimes I put lemon juice in my water - enter the re-emergence of the Diet Coke Bandit, now known as the fridge bandit.

The fridge bandit used the last of my lemon juice, and then put the container right back in the fridge - empty. Can you believe that? Shameless.

The fridge bandit also seems to be too busy to pay attention to what he or she is doing. Either that or they're just plain dumb. They cannot seem to figure out the engineering marvel that is known as the fridge pack. Instead, they open 12 packs of sodas on the end of the box. Even worse, after they open the box in this way, they put the box into the fridge in such a way that the sodas will roll out of the box (on its side instead of on the top or bottom). I wish this person would give me a break.

UPS Online Tools

I've been messing with the UPS Online Tools - tools that software developers could use to write applications that take advantage of UPS data such as shipment costs, tracking, and address verification. I say could, because UPS makes it so difficult to do anything you practically have to sign over a kidney. I thought it was funny that UPS has trademarked the color brown.

Brown, brown, brown, brown, brown, brown, brown, brown! Neener neener. Brown!

(03:18) lancer: Note:
UPS, the UPS Shield trademark, the UPS Ready mark, the UPS OnLine® Tools mark and the Color Brown are trademarks of United Parcel Service of America, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

(03:20) jamesn: UPS HitCreek is their developer integration program. Is that trademarked?

Audible doesn't have Watership Down

A short conversation with James:

(03:07) lancer: hmm...audible doesn't have watership down
(03:07) lancer: or anything from that author
(03:07) jamesn: Do they have "Fucking Travesty, the Book"?
(03:08) jamesn: Or "Why we should not be in business?" By A. Audible Jackass?

South Mountains State Park

A couple weeks ago I had the pleasure of going on a camping trip with some friends.  Destination:  South Mountains State Park.  It was a blast.  My favorite part actually turned out to be what I was afraid of. 

We left on Friday after work, which meant we would arrive at the campsite late.  After taking our sweet time getting there (even driving around searching for the Russel Stover outlet on the way) we made it about 10 minutes before the gates to the park closed (whoops, that was close)!  Then we discovered that all the car camping places were already taken, and we'd have to hike out to a campsite.  Ouch!  That's exactly what I was afraid of!  We had no backpacks, and it was dark and we only had one headlamp!  We ended up strapping whatever we could fit on our backs and biking in the dark to the campsite about 2 miles away.  Once we got there it was awesome, until we realized that we forgot to bring something to make fire with!  :)  Fortunately there was one other group not too far away and they gave us some fire.

Blake showed us how to make "boy scout burgers" - a ton of hamburger meat and onion and spices smashed down inside aluminum foil and thrown directly in the fire.  Those were great.  The next night we made s'mores as well, which I hadn't done since I was a little kid in the boy scouts.

We went mountain biking and hiking all over.  The biking was amazing - it was incredibly difficult going uphill (I did a lot of walking and pushing my bike uphill!) and it was incredible SCARY going downhill!  A couple of times I thought for sure I was going to go flying over my handle bars and tumbling down a mountain side!  The highlight of the hiking was High Shoals Falls.  It was at the top of t his 80 foot waterfall that I realized my brand new phone was designed by a moron.

Google Calendar Sync

I've been using Google Calendar Sync for 2-3 months now, and I absolutely love it.  In the past I always kept my calendar in Outlook at work, and sometimes it was a pain to check that from home.  Now items in my Outlook calendar are automatically synced with my Google calendar (and vice versa).  I haven't come across a single bug or annoyance.

I like how Google Calendar is very smart about new entries.  If I create a new entry like "7pm, dinner at Angus Barn", Google automatically recognizes the time and location of that entry.  Suggestion for Google:  do the same thing with "Tom's birthday" (as well as anniversary, annual, etc).  Automatically mark that as an event that repeats yearly.

Technorati Tags: Google Calendar

Crap UI Design

I think one of my unique personality traits is that I tackle big problems with relative composure, but I often over-react to small problems or annoyances.

Lately, an issue that has been annoying me more and more (and has been pointed out to me that I get a little too upset about) is crappy software UI on household devices. Whether it be my dvd player, my cable box, or my cell phone - there appear to be a bunch of idiots designing the UI and capabilities of the software that runs on these devices.

So...because of this, and because two blogs is just not enough, I have decided to turn this non-constructive complaining into something more (debatably) useful: UI Follies. The first two posts are specific to my new Motorola i880 cell phone. But I plan to talk about more than just cell phones, and more than just handheld devices and entertainment center components. I also won't limit myself to software, though that will no doubt be the bulk.

Sidelined

Of course, 1 day after expressing how happy sports and fitness have made me, I hurt my shoulder playing volleyball. Luckily its not too bad, but I will be out for a couple weeks at least. I have an AC sprain that is bad enough to cause me a good amount of pain when raising my arm over my head, and pretty severe pain when reaching across my body towards my other shoulder. Ouch! At least there is no fracture. Whew (knock on wood).

After a few days, I get to do fun exercises, some of which hurt pretty badly right now. I know you probably aren't interested in the weird shoulder exercises I must do, but I really left this link for myself, so there. ;)

Huge milestone

Saturday was the first doubles volleyball tournament of the season for me, and it was awesome. My pitiful little mind doesn't have enough words to adequately express just how awesome it was.

First, just the excitement and anticipation of the day was great. Just to be outside with friends on a beautiful warm day, everyone with their coolers and fold-out chairs and volleyballs, the feeling breathed extra life into me.

I got to see a lot of people that I hadn't seen in a while, which was nice (for the most part, ha ha). And a big group of people who I've gotten to know and enjoy over the off-season shared two portable shelters, chairs, fruit/water/gatorade, and conversation. Then, out of 5 AA pools, I end up in a pool with some of those fun people.

Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I played very well. Blocking and serving have been weaknesses in my game in the past, and while they could still use improvement I definitely stepped them both up during this tournament. I have a hard time correctly utilizing that split-second when you need to see the set going up and decide whether to run up and attempt to block the hit or fall back and attempt to dig the spike, but I've been working on it and I could definitely see the payoff. Unfortunately it wasn't enough for me to win the whole thing, though! :) I had my chance and blew it. I finished #1 in my pool (I went 7-1 there for 139/144 possible points), got ranked #4 in the following single-elimination play-off, and lost by 1 point in the first round to a guy I have beaten many times in the past.

The best part though, of this Saturday, was that it made me realize I'd reached a fitness milestone I did not know I had reached. To provide background, I like to tell a story about last summer when I played in my first doubles tournament in about 6 or 7 years: how driving can hurt. After that long hot day of playing, everything on my body hurt from my eyeballs to my feet, but mostly my legs (quads and calves). I was driving home with the cruise control on, and as I reached my exit on the beltline, it was actually painful just to raise my foot a few inches off the floorboard and push it back down on top of the brake pedal. Now that's a bad shape to be in. The other tournaments last summer weren't so bad, but I would still be sore and tired and fighting cramps afterwards, and basically good for nothing the following day. But this time...I felt great. After I finished, I could have played much more. That evening after the tournament I had energy to give away, and even the next day there was no soreness whatsoever. What a great feeling. That more than anything else makes me extremely proud, but also thankful for having friends that encourage me to get in shape and stay in shape. A year ago today, I said that I was more fit than I'd been in 7 years. Today I can say that I'm much more fit than I was just last year. Next month? Next month I'll be more fit than I am today.

Tift Merritt Show

Saturday night I spent at the Carolina Theatre in Durham to see Tift Merritt in concert. I went with my friend Julie, who had never heard of Tift before. The show was really good, she sang songs from her recently released album "Another Country" (of which most was actually written in another country) as well as some older songs. She has such a wonderfully unique voice, and really gets into performing as she jams on her guitar or rocks away on her keyboard.

Tift got her start in the triangle area, and it was clear that she had a lot of old friends/family and fans in the theatre - they let her know it with several standing ovations and loud on-going cheers.

She was also interviewed on NPR's Talk of the Nation this past Thursday.

They were filming some hd video of the show, and I came across this post mentioning an upcoming documentary about Tift Merritt and her band.

Sara Watkins (of Nickel Creek) opened the show. Wow. She's good.