Sunday, December 31, 2006

Traditions and Change (Explain this to me Hollywood)

New Years Eve is always a great time for traditions and reflection. In my family we had a quirky tradition of a buffet including french bread/banans and chedder cheese (slice and go), shrimp cocktail, canned herring and various cooked meats (think salami, ham, roast beef). This traditional dinner was followed by a screening of Swiss Family Robinson, you know the Disney movie from the 1960's.


Well this year I am hanging with the friends and remembering those traditions and discovering that you cannot find the movie Swiss Family Robinson in any of the traditional [brick and mortar] stores. Thus my plans of a wicked NYE party complete with traditional food and movies was cancelled. I did eventually find the movie on Amazon.com which annoys me even more.

If this content is available, why isn't it available when "I" want. The real answer, I am convinced, is that Hollywood has not yet gotten the message that DRM and their silly rules actually get in the way of people purchasing. Tonight I would happily have spent $10-$20.00 (perhaps even more) to have this movie available.

Disney/Hollywood and all you silly DRM loving people... get the message. IF you had made AVAILABLE to me the CONTENT then I would have PAID you $20.00 (or more).

The technology involved in making this content available to me is trivial. At one end of the spectrum they could simply create an ISO image and stick it up on the web and give me a one time key to access and download it and create my own DVD. If you wanted to get really fancy youd use some codec's and encoding.

I hope that the studios and their fun loving MPAA get the message quickly that they need to ENABLE this market and technology. I don't care how you do it...just get it done. The sooner you find a way for me to watch Swiss Family Robinson on MY TERMS, the sooner you get MY MONEY!

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Thursday, December 28, 2006

Identity - Again

It is shocking to me that Identity Management is not more of a mainstream issue.

My friend Steve was returning from London a week ago and lost his cell phone "somewhere in the AA terminal in Chicago". After he spent a number of hours on the phone with various Chicago O'Hare airport folks he discovered his phone was with AA in their lost and found.

On Christmas day I got a Merry Christmas email on my blackberry. It turns out that he lost all of his phone numbers when he lost his phone.

This story ends on a happy note, Steve's phone is being fedexed back and his numbers will be saved.

I don't understand why cell phone companies haven't latched onto this problem yet. It seems like SIM cards and phones should be easily able to "backup" to the mobile xSP. I would happily pay $5.00USD/month to have my numbers and contact information backed up.

So here is another reason Identity Management should be important to everyone. Here is a situation where a good identity management system could be used to centralize our information. If your phone is lost do you want someone turning it on and finding all your numbers and text messages OR would you rather an authentication check at the boot of your phone that then downloads the trivial stored data you need (phone numbers) onto ANY device you use.

I use a blackberry so this problem doesn't exist for me, so consider this rant as my good deed for the day!

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

del.icio.us --> are you on it yet

I just signed up for del.icio.us ---


Find me here:
http://del.icio.us/kyle.macdonald

Come on United - Read the writing on the wall

Living in Denver I am constantly having to fly somewhere to get my job done. That means a weekly commute to the bay area and countless international trips. United has wonderful and expensive service that covers plenty of the domestic US. There isn't really anywhere I need to go that I can't fly direct from Denver with one notable exception - anything International.

As a new resident of the City and County of Denver I suddenly care a lot more about the airport as my tax revenues support it (in additions to my revenue dollars as a passenger). After hearing United gripe about how complicated/expensive and difficult international service would be in Denver, I was shocked to hear that Lufthansa (an airline I don't particularly love) was now offering an ADDITIONAL service to Germany (Munich to be specific).


Lufthansa adds Denver-Munich route


This means that Denver is now served by 2 international airlines (Lufthansa and BA) with 3 non-stop Europe flights. This begs an obvious question - Where is United?

I would argue that United's lack of an international presence in Denver is holding back the Denver economy. I am glad to see that Lufthansa and BA both get it.

So I question Denver's city government, when will you start to penalize United for not supporting Denver the way they should? We gave them generous packages when DIA first opened, suffered during their bankruptcy and endured their crappy service during all of the labor strikes. Shouldn't they be giving something back in the form of enhanced and expanded service to the citizens of Denver?

If we can't handle the political fallout from penalizing United, let's do something better and convince Frontier to expand to international service to Europe or Asia. Surely the more international business we can get into Denver the better.

Get the message United, either find an International route to Denver from Asia or Europe or figure out that "It's time to Fly"!

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Kyle's going to the TED Holiday Salon, are you?

I am heading to the first annual TED Holiday Salon in New York City on December 14th.

Let me know if you will be joining. Anyone want to plan on coming to TED Global 2007 with me?

TEDGLOBAL "Africa: the next chapter"

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