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Apple and DRM

[This caused a bit of a stir when it was published on the BBC website – I was away in Scotland, and offline, so missed most of it… ah well, you can’t always be around.  And now Cory is saying the same about DRM in Salon.]

For a company with a tiny share of the computer market and an increasingly perilous first mover advantage selling portable music players Apple punches well above its weight in coverage of its every move.

In January CEO Steve Jobs single-handedly distracted the attention of the world’s technology press from the hundreds of announcements taking place at the Computer Electronics Show in Las Vegas by pulling out an iPhone on stage in San Francisco.

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Watching Vista

[As ever, this is on the BBC News website, and it was also picked up on Slashdot where the discussion has been extensive… and not entirely supportive!]

The launch of Window Vista last week was accompanied by widespread criticism from advocates of open systems, open networks and the free flow of information.

Particular attention was lavished on the digital rights management features of the new operating system, the tools that determine whether you can play or copy video or audio on your computer.

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How to annoy your customers

I have a Barclaycard, and registered for their online service as it’s useful to be able to check statements and such like.  When I moved house I forgot to tell them – my post is redirected so I didn’t notice – so today I thought I’d do something about it.

I couldn’t find an obvious way to notify them of change of address on the site, but the feedback section had a pull-down list of subjects and ‘Address Change’ was there. So I selected it, typed in my address, hit submit – and got this. 

Clearly they don’t actually bother to think about their customers.

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Let’s Lisp again

Lisp is one of the oldest and best-loved programming languages around, but it gets relatively little attention from programmers despite its flexibility and power. Now the organisers of the 2007 International Lisp Conference hope to raise the language’s profile by inviting entries for their latest programming contest.

read more | digg story

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Learning from the locals

[As ever, you can read this on the BBC News website, and it was also picked up by Charles Johnson on lgf]

The students in my online journalism class at City University this year must be wondering whether they have made the right choice.

Getting a professional qualification in journalism, with its shorthand classes, endless lectures on ethics and numerous assignments designed to hone students’ reporting skills, may well look like too much effort in the world of citizen journalism.
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