Don't be scared of 'Advanced Settings'

A recent article in the New York Times focused on the new, feature-poor gadgets that people are buying. I've written about all the features we have, but don't use.

I think it's a bad sign that people are regressing in their love of features. It is an unfortunate situation that ignorance about technology is acceptable. Our whole world is becoming much more reliant on technology every day. If you don't make a modest effort to keep up, you will only get yourself into more trouble later. Think about what would have happened if 50% of the population refused to learn how to use a car. And if 85% of those who learned to use a car didn't learn to use the headlights or the windshield wipers. We'd have a pretty bad situation on the roads.

The article stands in stark contrast to some great new Sprint commercials (embedded below). The CEO, Dan Hesse, promises that they will teach you how to use all the cool features of your new Sprint phone. Just come in to one of their stores. To me, this is a brilliant and wonderful marketing campaign. Sprint hasn't been doing well. Hopefully, this will help them turn it around.



The point is: Don't be scared of the advanced settings and features on your devices! Computers are amazing. They are also very flexible. Programmers go through a lot of stress to give the end user as much customization as possible. They work hard to also provide a clean, usable interface

People are so scared of technology. It's yours! There is no way to permanently ruin your computer by messing with the advanced settings. This is especially true in software that you have installed (as compared with the drivers that make your hardware work).

Make some changes. Tinker with the settings. You can change a lot of things that will make your computer (and cell phone) interactions more pleasant and productive. If you don't like the way a change worked out, change it back. You can always reset a phone or computer to factory settings if you get flustered.

A few ideas:

• In your Blackberry internet browser, set it to enable HTML tables. Many mobile websites will be much better. (You get there by pressing the Menu key and then going to options)
  
• In Microsoft Excel, set the default for a new workbook to only have one worksheet (Under Tools > Options)
  
• In Microsoft Outlook, set messages not to automatically mark as read. (Can you figure out where this setting might be?)

There are so many changes you can make to your computer and cell phone to make it easier to use, more productive. These devices are there to make your life easier. Learn to use them!

Flight of the Conchords Season 2 Premieres online

A sign of the growth for online video is that HBO is using Funny or Die (a website by Will Ferrell and company) to premiere Flight of the Conchords, a hilarious show.  I'm embedding it here for your viewing pleasure. Hopefully, one day, I can subscribe to HBO over the internet, plug my computer into the TV and use something like boxee to see it all.

Without further ado:

Season 2 Online Premiere - Flight of the Conchords (US Only) - watch more funny videos

Related articles by Zemanta

• Broadband Content Bits: HBO's Conchords on FunnyorDie.com; Whoopi's Stream; NFL Rewind
• Flight of the Conchords Invite Fans to Lip Dub

MP3s vs. M4P: Don't risk needing to buy The White Album again

Image via WikipediaIsn't it weird how everyone refers to any music file as an MP3?  Like Kleenex, Xerox and Rollerblade it's a recognized brand name. What you probably don't know is that you aren't buying MP3's from iTunes.

You're buying M4P files. They have DRM (Digital Rights Management) so that you can only load it onto Apple devices. That's not a big deal for as long as you own an iPod, but the second someone else makes a better device, you'll be out in the cold on your music library. [There are ways around it, but it's a load of trouble.]

I bring it up because I read some stats claiming that Amazon's music store is a flop because it's just not as easy to use as iTunes so people aren't buying it. I recently bought a bunch of music from Amazon's webstore. It was very easy. On my mac after purchase, Amazon has you install a download manager which automatically imports your songs to the iTunes library. Totally easy, basically one step and the best part is that I'll be able to take my music with me on any device I ever buy without hassle.

The only other piece of advice I can give is to change some of the settings in the Preferences window. Under Advanced, make sure two boxes are checked. First, 'Keep iTunes Music folder organized'. Second, 'Copy Files to iTunes folder when adding to library'. For me, when I download a new song from Amazon or an audiobook from Audible, I just open it with iTunes and it is organized automatically in my folder and in my Library.

The bottom line: it's your music. Make sure you know how to keep it in your control. You don't want to be a victim like you were when they made the switch from cassettes to CDs and were forced to buy the White Album again, do you? [Not that The Beatles are actually available digitally, yet].

Related articles by Zemanta

• Why Isn't Anyone Defecting from iTunes to Amazon's MP3 Store? [ITunes] 
• Amazon MP3 (AMZN) Not Killing iTunes Yet (AAPL)
  
• Rumor: Apple's iTunes going DRM-free starting Tuesday (Aidan Malley/AppleInsider)
• eMusic hits 250 million downloads
• Reselling MP3s: The music industry's new battleground?

The perfect set-top box: it's about the pipes and the remote

What would the ideal set top box have in it?
It definitely needs tv, maybe games, and it has to connect to my existing downloaded content and the most importantly it needs the internet (a DVD player would be nice, too, in the short term).

#1 on the list is definitely television content. There is hardly a way for anyone to do without the content regularly delivered via the cableco. Most content can be had on demand, but the live events and news are always going to need to be streamed. The 'guide' that shows you what is on and when is probably the biggest advancement of content consumption since the tv was invented. And yet, the potential is so much higher.

What about a google search? Or relevant information about what I'm watching? What about bringing my fantasy team into a page on the guide that updates in real time while I watch football (it's been possible for at least 2 years)? What about the recipe being made on the cooking show I'm watching? Or the IMDB page for the movie I'm watching? Maybe overlay it on the screen. Yahoo is still working on tv widgets, which is the beginning of a solution.

The point is there is lots of secondary content relevant to what I'm watching on tv that would be great to have along side it. There are opportunities for ads in the guide, which might bring the gatekeeping cablecos along. The box could provide suggestions of what to watch (like TiVo) but from the full content library (Hulu, Netflix, etc), not just previously recorded programs.

Which gets me back to a point I've been making for a long time: cable cos suck. By making it so hard for people to hack their own set-top box together, they have limited innovation substantially. There's nothing about what I've suggested above that you couldn't already do on your pc. The hard part today is incorporating the tv, which the cable companies walled-in (CableCARD was a poor attempt to fix that).

The biggest problem with existing set-top boxes is that they can only have one cable input, compared to the cableco box that has two (so you can record one thing while watching something else). Any 3rd party set-top box you get you has to take the one output that would normally go to the TV and be in the middle, which eliminates the two source possibility. This has managed to get me to pay them $7 a month per box. TiVo charges $12 per month. I do believe that they have a better product and it would be worth paying more for, except that they can't get two sources if you have digital cable. Has a culture that used to buy VCRs and DVD players really abandoned the hardware model? I'm not that sure. So, why can't people continue to pay a portion of a monthly charge to the cable company with the rest going to a company like TiVo, who also gets to sell the hardware. I really think people would pay for a the right hardware with the right software (I still believe Boxee could be that software).

With Obama talking about national broadband, there is a chance we can cut the power of cablecos and make everyone get a richer experience. It's possible, we nationalized the highways once-but that's another post (hopefully coming soon, but requiring actual research).

So, how would you control the ideal box I've been describing which has tons of different features and configurations. With a touch screen remote (like the ipod touch-which I mentioned wanting to use as a remote way back when). But, the tv experience is often a lean-back experience, the tactile feel of a real remote makes browsing without looking away from the tv much easier. Well, you could do like the old palms and have people learn different gestures to do specific tasks, or a swipe across the screen could change modes. But that might not be ideal. I think I would want like 4-5 physical keys to switch to my favorite settings/modes and a home screen with everything else. But, that's a more tactical implementation discussion. I believe people would get past it or that you could solve the browsing issues by having a full keyboard as well.

The remote really is the key. You could get Picture-In-Picture with the remote as a screen with little speaker to keep an eye/ear on when the game comes back from commercial. It could be where you keep your fantasy scores (or otherwise replace the laptop on the coffee table). The finger flick of the iphone would be a good way to browse the program guide without bringing it up on the screen if desired.

The beauty of the touchscreen interface is that its a blank canvas so you can do anything with it. The question is whether we are over engineering this solution. I might be in this exercise, but I think we could all stand to get more from our tv experience.

How would you change it?

Related articles by Zemanta

• The case of the missing CableCARD-ready set-top box 
• Obama Promises Massive Works Project, Including 100% Broadband Availability (CLIP) 
• Why The iTouch Is Inevitable
• Hulu Household: Why I Got Rid Of Cable
• Boxee brings your content and the internet's to your TV (well, computer)