January 27, 2005
The worlds
first. . .MP3 players
Over at News.Com there a story (link on the blog)
http://news.com.com/Bragging+rights+to+the+worlds+first+MP3+player/2010-1041_3-5548180.html?tag=nefd.ac
Talking about the first flash-based and hard-drive based MP3 players, the Eiger
Labs MPMan and the PJB100 (which came out of Compaq Research and ran Linux)
respectively.
When MP3 first hit the big time in late 98, early 99 I bought each of those
devices along with a few others, most notably the Rio. To this day I still
don't see much difference between those devices and the devices of today with
one key exception: The PBJ100 had an SDK so you could at least write your own
client code. It didn't allow you to update the on-device firmware which is the
current crusade Adam (www.curry.com) and Dave
(www.scripting.com) are on but you could
manipulate the files on the device directly. I'm with you guys, we need a
programmable player that we can customize!
Software
Patents. . . Good or Bad? I say both.
I come to this discussion as both an inventor and expert reviewer of software
patents. I hold patents on things like specialized software that is used to
synchronize lyrics to music for Karaoke CDs and technologies that allow
consultants to multi-task on multiple projects without having to manually
start/stop a clock as they switch from customer-to-customer. I've also, prior
to my joining Microsoft, been hired by various patent licensing firms to review
patents for the validity of their prior-art; you know if you try to patent
online shopping you'd better have filed it before Compuserve, not Amazon! I
believe that patents have value but ONLY if they represent actual innovation.
So go invent something new damn it!
Podcast of the
day:
SherlockHolmesAudio
http://www.pinkgeek.net/weblog3
Reading of the public domain works for Arthur Conan Doyle.
I'm a big audio book fan and a Sherlock junkie so to me this kind of podcast
this is simply spot on. It is well produced and professional sounding.
Manic Minute Recommendation: Grab your deerstalker, The Game Is Afoot!
And that's your
Manic Minute for January 27th, 2005
12:55:43 PM 
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