10.21
Here are the latest bits and pieces of news from around the tech world. Come back here this weekend for even more…
The McCain Campaign has been bitten by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). Several of their YouTube videos, including political advertisements, were taken down upon DMCA complaints from who-knows-where, possibly the studios whose shows can be seen, albeit briefly, in the ads. McCain’s legal counsel has asked YouTube to exercise discretion about the takedown notices, ignoring them if “fair use” applies,, however the DMCA makes no provision for such a thing and for YouTube to make such arbitration would lead it down a slippery slope out of safe haror provisions, thus making it a much, much more restrictive environment for posting videos. All of this is rather ironic, but very much needed; McCain supported the DMCA’s legislation a few years back.
Speaking of YouTube, it is now the second-largest search engine on the web. Google is number one, Yahoo ranks third. If you count Google and YouTube as a single entity, there’s no chance of catching up unless aliens suddenly abduct the colorful company.
Sandisk’s SlotMusic initiative is now in full force, though the idea is downright dumb. Basically you’re lookig at a casette-player model (no track information one album per piece of media) except instead of casettes you’ve got tiny MicroSD cards. It’s a nice way to sell flash memory for Sandisk, and at least SlotMusic cards don’t have to be rewound after playing, but if you have a midrange cell phone (or, for that matter, one of several of Sandisk’s MicroSD-slot-equipped Sansa players), there’s absolutely no point in getting the $20 SlotMusic player. Nor, in my opinion, any reason for not just downloading your music from Amazon’s MP3 store to a regular MP3 player or a regular McroSD card, which can be found for around $5 per gigabyte nowadays.
Don’t want the temptation of a ringing phone while driving? By working with cell carriers, Aegis Mobility wants to help, forwarding calls to voicemail and pausing text message reception if you’re traveling at a high rate of speed, presumably down the freeway. Problem: you could be in a bus, or in the passenger seat. Interesting, though…what do you think?