Combing through the tax return instruction booklets, do you remember seeing those missing children announcements with age progression pictures? Well, now you don’t have to be kidnapped to get your picture manipulated.

Phojoe will take any picture, and for $199, manipulate it to whatever age you want. I didn’t really see a need for it besides creepy gag gifts at weddings, but apparently plenty of grieving parents order it to see what their deceased sons and daughters would have looked like. One of the customer quotes:

“...I'm 78 and would like to see what my son would have looked like before I die. He was 2 when he was killed and would now be in his 30's...Wow, When I first saw the photo you did, I was floored, it was just shocking as if I was looking at the real thing. A tingle went through my spine. You really captured my son.”

Would you ever get one?

Labels: photography, service

While upgrading to a new computer could be exciting (depending on the kind of person you are), there are a lot of annoyances involved in transferring the old files to the new computer. This is no problem for the tech savvy folks, who will most likely set up file sharing over a network or burn DVDs, but it could be a huge impetus for casual home users. Since most US households have computers and the market have saturated, the game (if you are HP or Dell) is now about how you can get people to upgrade their computers more frequently. The file transfer program would be perfect for those hesitant to upgrade because of the uncertainties surrounding moving data.

This would be easy for laptops since it could be sent in or brought to the store easily, but tougher for desktops. For Dell or HP, the best plan probably would be to partner with the Geeksquad (not that I think they are any good) or other home support service that already have the infrastructure to get to customers homes. They could even help set up the computer and collect the old machine for recycling.

I’m not sure if the business model for this service makes sense (might be too expensive), but it is a really attractive feature that could be bundled with new computers. Of course I would never use it, and in an ideal world, everyone would have a friend who could help them instead.

Labels: computer, service

The RIAA sucks, and if you’ve been following the recent lawsuits, political meddling, and fear tactics carried out by the RIAA, you’d agree too. If you’re well informed on the matter, you might want to skip to my idea section, “What can we do?” If not, here is a brief overview:

In a perfect world...

You would be able to purchase music from any of the many online music stores and play it on your computer, mp3 player, car stereo system, etc. You should be able to send that music to your friends so that they can listen to it and enjoy it. If your friends like it, they should buy it, but if they don’t, no problem. If you didn’t send them the songs, they weren’t going to discover the songs and buy them anyway, so it’s no loss to the record labels or the artists. Sounds perfectly reasonable right? This is how people enjoyed music with LPs, 8-tracks, Cassette Tapes, and CDs. Well, thanks to DRM, with more than 90% of the songs sold online, you can’t do this.

Dee-Arr-Emm?

Consider yourself lucky if you never had to deal with Digital Right Management. To put simply, DRM is the technology embedded in audio files that prohibit them from being playing on certain devices. If you ever bought a song off iTunes, you know that those songs will only play on your iPod or on computers which you certify as yours. Why are such arbitrary restrictions put on your music that you buy? Because the RIAA is scared of losing their business model and revenue, even if that means more inconveniences for an entire generation of music listeners.

If you want to find out more about DRM, Wikipedia has a relatively unbiased article (but also technical), while Defective By Design is waging a full scale war against DRM.

Note: DRM covers much more than music including DVDs and other forms of media. Also, DRM doesn’t prevent piracy or sharing as every DRM introduced to this date has been cracked and rendered useless for protection purposes. It really just makes media ownership much more difficult for the consumers.

RIAA?

RIAA (Wikipedia) is a trade group that represents the recording industry in the US. In layman’s terms, RIAA is a public relations organization that is funded by the major record labels. Their official goal is to “foster a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members' creative and financial vitality” which really means they try to sway law makers into passing resolutions that allow them to make more money. The RIAA is composed of many record labels, but mostly controlled by the Big Four, which are EMI, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group. The Big Four accounts for 70% of the music distributed world wide, and 80% of the music distributed in the US

As you may know, record labels sign exclusivity agreements with musicians and produce, promote, manufacture, and distribute their music while receiving a large cut of their sales and recouping some of the production costs, which the labels consider to be “loans.” Record labels are the middlemen between the consumer and the musician, who typically don’t have the resources to distribute their music. In that sense, they have two customers, the audience and the artists, and that is an important point to keep in mind.

So what’s wrong with the RIAA?

It used to be that they were the only way for musicians to distribute their music. If you wanted to become famous, you had to sign with a label so that your music could be distributed in thousands of CDs across the world. However, with the internet, that is not the case anymore. Musicians can record their music at a studio (or their garage) and put them on the internet, selling and/or promoting themselves at the same time. The music labels are losing their business model to the internet. They would rather be selling CDs, which has a much higher profit margin than digital downloads. Instead of embracing this new technology that allows for better distribution of music and new paradigms of sales, they decided to hinder it as much as they can: DRM.

Concurrently with pushing DRM, RIAA started a massive legal push against pirates of music by indiscriminately bringing lawsuits against individuals under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which they lobbied to pass in the first place. While some of the lawsuits were legit, they’ve taken a shot gun approach and managed to sue a paralyzed stroke victim, dead person, twelve year-old girl, computer-less family, and the list just continues. What makes this even more atrocious is that the settlement money never reaches the artists, whose copyright was infringed in the first place. If you’re curious on this matter, there is a great article on how the RIAA goes about suing people (and in extension, why the US legal system is broken).

More recently, they set up an online website where college students can settle their lawsuits with a credit card with the same ease as online shopping. Again, with the same shotgun approach, they’re sending out hundreds of pre-litigation settlement letters, in hopes that some students will confess and pay up.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the RIAA is trying to change the face of the internet by trying to hold Wi-Fi owners responsible for their internet connection. Can you imagine what would happen if this gets written into the law? Every coffee shop that offers free Wi-Fi will have to take them down for the fear that someone might download illegal music on it. No more Wi-Fi at airports. No more municipal Wi-Fi. It’s one thing for the RIAA to dictate how we listen to music; it’s another thing for them to dictate how we use our internet. Do you hate the RIAA now? I hope so.

What can we do?

Gizmodo is running an RIAA Boycott for the month of March and their Manifesto is extremely informative and well thought out. There are other boycotts out there and I respect their intentions, but I wonder how much effect it will have. First and foremost, only the well connected consumers are getting this information, and there are many more people buying music than that. Second, these companies are filthy rich (from their virtual oligopoly status) and a month of active bloggers boycotting might not put a dent in their wallets. I’m not suggesting we don’t boycott; every little bit helps. However, I think we need to look into the other side of the equation.

Earlier on, I mentioned that the record labels have two customers: the consumers and musicians. So far all the anti-RIAA movements I’ve seen have focused on the consumer side, and not the artist side. From what I can tell, the record labels screw over the musicians even more than the consumers. Courtney Love's speech to the Digital Hollywood online entertainment conference in 2000 highlights a great deal of atrocities committed by the RIAA. To mention a few: in 1999, the music companies successfully lobbied to own the copyrights to any of their artists forever (it used to be 35 years). Numerous artists, including TLC and Toni Braxton, have declared bankruptcy in the past to free themselves from awful contracts. Of course, in our society, we’re conditioned to view this as irresponsible artists blowing their money on drugs and lavish parties, but that’s not always the case (the RIAA must love the bias). Renowned independent producer, Steve Albini also points out how skewed the system is in favor for the big companies and compares the contract signing process to swimming across a pool of shit. MC Lars, on the other hand, makes his points via YouTube through his own song.

Like many things in Capitalism, the label-artist dynamic works on a demand and supply principle, and since there are much more aspiring musicians than the companies can support, they have the upper hand in negotiating. Having dabbled in the fine art field for a bit, I can understand the temptation of signing something to get a “start,” even if that meant selling your soul. If some gallery offered to put my photos up while keeping 90% of the profits, I would have signed in a heartbeat (although the fine art field is different in that galleries will never own your work). In the old days, signing with the label was almost the only way to get noticed. However, with the internet putting everyone closer together, this isn’t the case anymore. Artists don’t need to sign with big labels in order to be noticed and to distribute their music.

I spent fifteen minutes today pretending to be a musician (which I am far from) and googled for advice on getting a record deal. I found a good amount of information on how to sign with record labels, but little on the atrocities of the RIAA, and virtually nothing in terms of alternative. In order to end this terror of the RIAA, we need artists to boycott the RIAA. How do we do that?

For starters, there needs to be more obvious information on the drawbacks of signing a record deal along with success stories such as Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records. Artists need to realize that they need to spend an ounce of their creativity into distributing their music so that they don’t sign into indentured servitude for the rest of their lives. Many of the Boycott RIAA movements offer plenty of alternate options for consumers (DRM-less eMusic), but I haven’t seen them offer any alternatives for the musicians. If all our favorite musicians keep signing record deals with the RIAA, it’s going to be very hard to keep boycotting the RIAA. I keep talking about alternatives, but besides starting your own label or finding a benevolent independent label, is there anything out there?

Let’s skip the labels all together

Imagine a music service where musicians can upload their music and sell it on site, or link it to their website. They can choose to have people preview it for 30 seconds or listen to the song unrestricted (but still have to buy to use in your iTunes or iPod), and like YouTube, they can embed the music easily into their own websites. Of course, no DRM. The service would work great in conjunction with Pandora or last.fm, internet radio that focuses on music discovery. Think cafepress for music.

I’m sure this service will face a fair share of lawsuits, from copyright infringement (which gets very tricky when bands cover or remix music), like Viacom vs Google, to malicious RIAA fear tactics. Nevertheless, it’s hard to argue that this isn’t good for music, and since we have the enabling technology, why don’t we have this already?

Update: I found some alternatives

Thanks to the loyal commenters on Gizmodo for these finds.

SellaBand - It takes some time to understand the whole system, but in short:

1. You buy parts (like stock) in a band you like on their website.
2. If a band reaches 5000 parts, $50,000, SellaBand will help the band record their music professionally and release a CD.
3. The music will then be available on their website for free, and the ad revenue will be split amongst the band and the fans who bought parts.
4. The CD will also be available for sale, and the profits again will be split amongst the band and the fans who bought parts.
5. No long term contract. No DRM.

Interesting concept. It’s definitely an system that puts the fans closer to the artists, and that’s a good thing. However, browsing through the website, I think there is something missing: discovery. Right now, in order to sample the music, you have to search for a band (filter by country or genre if you want), and then go to their page to listen to the music. There is no way of sampling multiple bands at the same time. They really could use a radio on their website, ideally with some rudimentary filters such as genre and language. I don’t want to make music listening a full time activity; I just want something in the background while I write. If something interests me, I’ll look over, and see who it is, and then maybe find out more.

Magnatune - Magnatune is easier to understand; they are the record label for the internet era. Unlike other labels, they give 50% of the income to the artists, which is unheard of. Even cooler, they let the buyer decide how much they pay for the music download. While this seems like it could be abused very badly, apparently the average album sale price is $8.93. They also have a radio which you can filter by genre; I’m trying it out right now. If you want to find out more about it, USA Today has a good article from 2004. Like SellaBand, it seems like Magnature also relies on word-of-mouth and the fans to advertise their bands. I’m not sure if they have already, but I hope this label signs with Pandora.

These websites need to be better known. If you have any friends that are aspiring musicians, be sure to tell them about it.

So what am I doing?

I’m writing this on my blog in the tiny corner of the internet in hopes that someone with more visibility and resources will run across it and get inspired to do something. I’m still boycotting RIAA, but that’s more because I’m content with Pandora and don’t need to buy any music. I’m sure that sooner or later, the paradigm shift will occur and the music industry will become consumer-centric again. The RIAA will change or die, and we’ll be able to take full advantage of the internet and other technologies that have risen recently, but they’re wreaking major havoc on their way down. I hope that when the New Music Experience does arrive, enough fans are left to enjoy it.

Labels: internet, music, RIAA, service

Recent (troubles) disasters to my Mazda made me wonder if there is more of a hassle/worry free way of owning car. While I haven’t crunched the numbers to see if this is feasible at all, could you possibly have an all-you-can-drive car for $100/month?

I’m not referring to a regular car you rent at Enterprise (which I happen to have right now) but a car specifically designed and manufactured to be rented for $100/month.

How would this work?

- You pay a $100/month, no contracts (unlike leases).
- If the car breaks down, you bring it to the dealer, and they give you another identical car, so that you can keep driving.
- Insurance is included in that $100, so if you damage/total your car, you pay at most the $500 deductible (liability might have to be charged separately according to driving records).
- You exchange your car at the dealership every 10,000 mile or 6 months so that they can service it (you don’t really need to change the oil every 3000 mile).

What does this mean for you?

- You completely minimize your risk of owning a car: the maximum you would ever have to pay would be the $500 deductible for any damage you cause to the car (necessary so that people won’t drive too recklessly).
- $100/month is really cheap for owning a car (especially if insurance is included). In seven years, when most cars depreciate entirely, you’ll be spending $7400.
- In exchange for the low cost, you completely give up any ability to customize the car (with factory or after-market options). You’ll also be driving the same model car as many other people on the road. If you are the kind of person that like to distinguish yourself with the car you drive, this is not for you.

What does this mean for the car company?

- Since the car is going to be returned every 10,000 mile or so, you can design with regular maintenance in place. This means using less reliable but easily replaceable parts.
- Since only one car model is going to be offered, it eliminates the complexity in development.
- The radical uniqueness of this business is enough for everyone to find out about it through word-of-mouth (very little marketing required).
- Very steady income stream with a subscription model.

If this idea catches on, several different models could be offered at different price points to cover different market needs. However, caution should be taken against excessive market segmentation and offering too many options (defeating the competitive advantage of this system). Simplicity is the key to this operation.

What would the car include?

- Basic features with no frills (to keep cost down).
- Small “cute” design rather than a sporty look.
- Comes in basic colors. Nothing too disagreeable as the user may not have his/her choice when he/she switches the car.
- No visible odometer. This is important since it never feels good to step out of a 20k car and get onto an 80k one. All it needs is a trip meter that keeps track of when the next maintenance is (obviously a hidden odometer is necessary for maintenance reasons).
- Possibly a two-seater (if that’s what it takes to keep cost down).
- Customizable options dock. This actually may become a lucrative business model. Basically, in the car, your radio is a detachable option that you can either rent with the car, or purchase yourself (for expanded features such as Bluetooth and iPod connectivity). Once people buy their radio units, they would feel compelled to stay with the program since their radio is useless on other cars.

Of course all of this is hypothetical and of questionable feasibility at $100. There is some price point where the model works, but that may be too high to make it attractive at all. Furthermore, you can’t start this on a small scale, making it an extremely risky venture to start. Nevertheless, I think it’s an interesting alternative to the high marketing high cost method of selling over engineered cars of today.

Labels: car, service

The other day, I had the joy of discovering Scott Adams’s Dilbert Blog via the meeblog. If you’re looking for some daily source of inspiration and procrastination, I highly suggest you RSS it (or bookmark it, but that’s soo Web 1.0).

While most of his posts are random banter inspired from small daily events, he did post an interesting idea that is well beyond the norm of conventional thought, like the ones on this blog. Apparently it costs $25,000 to house an inmate for a year in prison. That’s well above the rent of my apartment for three people for the year, and I live in one of the most expensive parts of the US. Scott Adam’s idea is to start a home based business that allows the average Joe to house inmates and cash in on the $25,000 spent by the government. He calls it the Best Roommate Ever.

Yes, it’s a crazy idea. No, it will never happen. But the idea of having the inefficient government outsource to efficient civilian companies is an idea that’s been around for a while and it is a good idea… or is it?

Labels: crazy, service

Ok, bad title, I apologize.

I’m sure everyone’s had one of those days/nights where you park your car in a gargantuan parking lot and end up spending twenty minutes finding your car. While the problem has been partially solved by remote key fobs that allow one to roam around the parking lot aimlessly trying to unlock the car, car companies have been limiting the range as a security issue (it’s a lot easier now for anyone who steals your keys to steal your car too). With many manufactures adopting some form of On-star-like services, here’s an idea:

If you really can’t find your car, call up On-star, give your password or some way to distinguish yourself, and ask them to momentarily turn on the car alarm. If you aren’t close enough to the car to hear the car alarm, maybe you shouldn’t be driving.

This would be the easiest idea to implement as it requires no extra hardware or software besides On-star’s ability to remotely activate the car alarm (not sure if they have this capability right now). The one issue would be if the car is parked underground and cannot receive the activation signal. Higher tech solutions could involve the car’s navigation system and a cell phone interface that displays your cars location on a map, but this becomes a problem in multilevel parking lots. Of course you could just be responsible and remember where you parked your car.

Labels: car, service

You have bands/sport teams/comedians/dance troupes/orchestras that you sort of like, but don’t care enough to keep track of their tour schedules and venues. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a website where you could enter your zip code and the performers that you want to see, and it notifies you when they are coming to your area of town? This would make a great addition to Ticket Master, though there needs to be some mechanism to keep track of the lesser known performers (let them upload their schedule).

Labels: online, service

Apologies for the total disappearance over the last few days, been under the weather and hugging my pillow. The last few days, what I wanted most was some cough drops, medicine, and soup, but without really the energy or the will power to leave the apartment, I was stuck with warm water and orange juice. Delivery, however, is almost entirely limited to pizza and oily Chinese food, not the most enticing while sick.

So what’s the best solution? Besides asking your roommate and friends to pick up this down time necessities: online grocery delivery. Of course I didn’t realize this until I started writing this (toughed it out until I could comfortably drive), so I didn’t utilize it this time around, but I’m sure I will in the future. The delivery charges are hefty, but you could consider it a don’t-really-want-to-bug-a-friend-fee.

On the other hand, there really needs to be another alternative to the pizza Chinese food delivery monopoly. Burrito anyone?

Labels: online, service

In a random conversation with a stranger the other day, the notion of a Good News News came up. Being completely worn down by suicide bombs, war on terror, steroids, and other malice of society, she wanted something that projected only the good things in the world.

A simple google search will return a number of broadcasts, websites, and blogs that focus on good news, but like it or not, they all have religious undertones (most of them Christian) which goes against the first law of journalism: impartiality (of course no news source is ever completely impartial).

Furthermore, without any universal value system in place, the definition of good is entirely personal. While advent of low pollution alternative fuel sources may seem like a good thing, there will be thousands of people in the oil industry losing their jobs (not to mention all the Petroleum Engineers, which was a popular major in mid 1900s). But at the same time, if we limit the news entries to those where 99.99% of the people can agree as good, it may just filter down to those feel-good stories on the 8 o’clock news, which are cheerful, but almost entirely insignificant.

Nevertheless, it would be nice to see some news sources focusing on good news without making me feel like I have to be a Christian to be happy. After all, the world isn’t filled with bomb exploding, drug dealing, children killing, dog kicking, corrupt people that appears on the news daily.

PS The Good Bites section of the Good News Network is pretty informative and cheerful.
PPS Apologies for the rough Photoshop work.

Labels: happy, service

The obvious follow up to Reputation Defender would be… Reputation Builder!

Looking to apply for a new job? Let us build your online reputation by making a slick myspace profile or LinkedIn account. We’ll even comment on other people’s profiles, respected blogs, and industry-related forums with witty intelligent responses and make sure they show up on google searches for you name.

Hunting the web for romance? Let us make sure google image searches (this is rather disturbing...) of your name returns the most attractive and desirable pictures (not necessarily of you).

Have propaganda a website or some obscure accomplishment you want people to see? Let us make sure they appear on the first 10 search results for your name! (Most likely impossible for me)

Ridiculous? I know. But completely implausible? Not really.

Labels: crazy, service

From the library of weird services, Reputation Defender! The protector of your online identity!

For $10~$16 a month, they’ll google your name (or your kid’s) and compile a nifty little report showing where you appear online. They may even just run a script that searches all sorts of sites and outputs a .pdf report.

If you find something that “you don’t like,” for a one time fee of $30, they’ll send a form letter “a team of specialists” to get that information removed.

I wonder if they’re making any progress against The Consumerist. I bet it’s a tough battle.

Now I’m sure I misrepresented them in this post somehow, so I wonder if they’ll come after me to uphold their reputation.

Labels: service

Need a good excuse to skip town for the weekend? Maybe want to hide your profession? A doctor’s note to skip class? Well, if you live in Japan, there are perfect companies for you.

While companies lie all the time (which is conveniently called marketing), Alibi Companies will lie for you so that you can keep some deep secrets from those around you. Most of them are conveniently located in the red light districts of major cities so that ladies of the night can pick up fake pay stubs and name cards to disguise their true profession. Other services include answering phone calls and saying you’re out of the office, forwarding mail, and forging government documents (just as long as you don’t use it at government offices). I’m amazed the last one isn’t illegal in Japan (or if it is, isn‘t enforced). They will even attend weddings and funerals as your boss or co-worker as long as you give them some time notice.

In the west, there apparently was an Alibi Agency in England, but the website now leads to some cyber squatting site with links to private detectives ironically.

In the end I’m not sure what’s worse: paying people to lie for you, or a society that drives people to hide their secrets by hiring these companies.

Sample Alibi Company (Japanese).

Labels: service