Tuesday, January 27, 2004

Netflix And TiVo? Perfect Together This one is for Tony Gentile: A long, but interesting, look at Netflix's business. The article points out, accurately, that Netflix is going to be a strong competitor for any online "video on demand" outfit - as they basically are a video on demand outfit that just takes a bit longer to deliver - but comes with much more freedom for the end user. However, the company clearly realizes that their biggest threat doesn't appear to be the recent copycat attempts by folks like Wal-Mart and Blockbuster, but the future of video on demand. Unlike most companies that miss the boat on disruptive technologies, Netflix is already trying to figure out how they'll compete in that space as the technology gets better. They haven't given up much in the way of details, but are working on tests of video on demand systems they can offer as an option - allowing for a gradual transition when (if!) people want their movies delivered over the internet. At the end, the article makes one interesting prediction: Netflix and TiVo should team up to offer some sort of combined solution. The article doesn't specifically discuss what that solution should be, but it could make a lot of sense. Offering up an easy way to "download" the video of your choice to your TiVo could be fairly compelling. [Techdirt] 6:10:36 PM    trackback []

GarageBand and multiple iTunes Music Library files I was playing around with GarageBand last night, the first time I've had a chance to see what all the excitement is about. In short, it is very cool. I'll post more about it as I go, including some songs I've had in my head for a while that I'm eager to get out. But first, I wanted to share a disconcerting experience. After I made my first song, I selected the menu item "Export to iTunes". A dialog appears saying, "File not found", then the export proceeded. When iTunes launched, my entire catalog was missing, and the new song was the only song available. Ack! Well, turns out that, like Mac OS X itself, iTunes looks in several places for its library information. Mine has always been stored in my ~/Documents/iTunes directory, but GarageBand saw fit to make a new one at ~/Music/iTunes, and iTunes sees that folder before it sees the other one. By deleting the folder created by GarageBand and relaunching iTunes, I was able to recover my entire catalog (as well as all my playcounts and other stats). I remember reading someone's weblog yesterday about this very issue, but of course I can't remember who it was. I'm hoping this post finds you... 9:47:01 AM    trackback []