*michael parekh on IT*

ON YET ANOTHER DIGITAL FIGHT

REAL SILLY

The following op-ed piece in the San Francisco Chronicle is worth some attention involving an initiative called RealDVD* by Real Networks.  Titled the "Movie industry's shortsighted fight", it explains:

"Thomas Edison, probably America's best-known and most prominent inventor of all time, and holder of nearly 1,100 patents, is famously quoted as recognizing that technological advances are the result of hard work more than anything else. He said in 1903 that "genius is 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration."

There is now unfolding in a federal court in San Francisco a lawsuit in which several major Hollywood movie studios are suing RealNetworks - a relatively small but successful company that develops and markets Internet communications technology - in an effort to prevent the company from selling a software product that simply enables consumers to copy their DVDs to their personal computers. If the studios are successful in this Goliath-against-David legal action, Edison's lesson in hard work will have been effectively reduced to, "genius is one percent inspiration, 99 percent permission."

The lawsuit, under the supervision of U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel, remains in its early stages, with a hearing set for April, but the studios already have succeeded in securing a restraining order against RealNetworks' effort to market its product, RealDVD. The effort by the studios to hamstring RealNetwork's efforts to bring this latest product to the consumer makes little practical sense, legally or economically, given what the product does (and more importantly, perhaps, what it does not do)."

The broader implications of this fight are notable:

"While the industry lawsuit relies in part on the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998," federal legislation that was designed to thwart the development and sale of products that allow individuals to distribute their own versions of copyrighted material such as movies, the clear fact is that RealDVD software does not circumvent any technology, and does not permit a user to distribute a DVD. The product does nothing more than permit the purchaser to copy a DVD onto his or her own PC or laptop. In other words, the product simply enables the private viewer to watch the DVD they'd already purchased directly from their computer's hard drive rather than rely on the sometimes-cumbersome process of inserting the DVD itself into a player."

Think about how useful something like would be, especially for netbooks that don't even have on-board DVD drives.  More features of RealDVD can be seen here.

The piece ends on the following note:

"Defendant RealNetworks has the law, the facts and common sense on its side. The industry has money and hubris in its corner. Regardless of whether you ever might consider purchasing RealDVD software, this case should concern you; that is, if you wish for fair play and innovation to remain valued commodities in 21st century America. Thomas Edison understood this. Let's hope Judge Patel does, too."

Here's hoping that common sense prevails for once in this instance.  But judging from the history of these kind of tussles in the past, it may not pay to get too optimistic.

* Image source.

ON TRANSPARENT CALORIES

LIGHTNESS OF BEING

One of my hard-earned accomplishments this year has been to lose dozens of pounds and get to a weight I haven't been at since my twenties.  There was no magic process, just a disciplined approach to eating better, exercising, and most important, counting calories.

A medically supervised diet incorporating a daily net calorie deficit, was probably the most important driver for success.

It'll be especially important to keeping the weight off over the coming months.  As most folks know through painful personal experience, losing the weight is generally the easy part, keeping it off is the hardest.

The New York Times had a timely article today titled "Calories Do Count", that emphasize this obvious point on calorie counting, especially given how mainstream servings in restaurants and grocery stores tend to be more "Super-sized" than not:

"For the last few decades, the most popular diets were complex formulas that promised abundant eating with just the right combinations of fat, protein and carbohydrates. Now those regimens are starting to look like exotic mortgages and other risky financing instruments. And just like a reliable savings account, good old calorie counting is coming back into fashion.

“More and more, people are looking at calories in, and calories out,” said Dr. Terry Eagan, a Los Angeles psychiatrist, who for 16 years has helped people with eating disorders and other addictions. “I know some people want something that’s sexy and different and new, but there really isn’t anything new about weight loss.”

As a New Yorker, I'm glad the city has rolled out some initiatives to make counting calories a more transparent process:

"New Yorkers got a harsh dose of calorie reality this summer when restaurants with 15 or more outlets were forced to post the calorie content of food next to the price. The resulting sticker shock has brought parts of a great city to its knees, often to do push-ups.

The campaign has inspired lawmakers around the country to follow New York’s lead.

Restaurants and food companies are lightening recipes and portion sizes. Starbucks, for example, claims to have saved the nation 17 billion calories since last October by swapping 2 percent milk for whole. The 100-calorie snack is this decade’s answer to the fat-free SnackWell cookie, as more brands introduce tiny portions of things like Cool Ranch Doritos and Clif bars."

It's a trend that's good for America.  We all just need to start paying attention to the basics on the calorie front just as we're also reminded to pay attention to the basics on the financial front.

ON TODAY'S CORN MANIA

POLITICS AS USUAL

Corn is trading limit up in the Chicago pits today, and will likely trade limit up on Monday, CNBC announces this morning.  If you hadn't noticed, we've been in a bull market for corn, wheat, soy beans and other agricultural commodities.  Despite recent highs, these trends are expected to continue for several years, as several financial firms have recently projected.

And it's not just about increased, secular global demand from rapidly industrialized countries like China and India.

It's also about our current politicized mania for growing green via increased use of corn-based Ethanol biofuels.  Turbo-charged of course by a highly charged election season that has both parties trying to outdo each other in their courting and wooing of farmers in places like Iowa. 

Increased diversion of our farmlands to more production of corn for ethanol is already baked into the "Energy Independence and Security Act" signed into law a week ago by President Bush after strong support by both parties in both  Houses of Congress.  And don't you love how they name these things?

Which is why Mayor Bloomberg's comments on all this a few days ago stood out in sharp contrast to what we heard from most of our politicians, as this New York Observor story highlights:

"The mayor, asked about the subject during a Q&A near the South Street Ferry Terminal this morning, said the increased production will make food more expensive in America and have “world wide implications” on the overall supply of food.

“The part of the bill that, uh, requires using more ethanol was an outrage,” Bloomberg said. “That is going to drive up the cost of food for everybody in this country and have world-wide implications on the food supply. The bottom line is you cannot keep growing corn for ethanol and have reasonably priced food in our country. Farmers are already walking away from planting wheat and soybeans and other things to go over and plant corn because they’ll be able to sell this corn to be used in ethanol plants.

There is no evidence whatsoever that the ethanol that is made is fuel efficient or anything else. It’s just, it’s a farm bill rather than an energy bill and I’m not even sure it’s good farm policy. Most of the farm things that we do don’t benefit most farmers. They just benefit ten percent of the more industrial-sized farms. And the small farmers who we really should be helping in this country, who needs a lot of help isn’t sharing in that. So it’s bad energy policy and probably bad agricultural policy.”

We use corn based ethanol here compared to sugar-based Ethanol in places like Brazil, which is often cited as a good example of how the ethanol thing can be done.  But of course importing sugar-based Ethanol is penalized under our current tariffing policies.  And it makes for perfectly practical politics, regardless of fundamentally negative all this ends up being for our economy longer-term.

ON TECH INNOVATION IN RURAL PENNSYLVANIA

PUSH-BUTTON FOOD

One of the annual joys of returning to my in-laws' family for the holidays in rural Pennsylvania, besides hanging out with them of course, is seeing the deployment of technology-driven services not yet available on either coast. 

Yes, that's right.  We dwellers of either coast may think we have the best services enabled by technology, but we haven't seen anything yet.

Until of course you pull into a Sheetz convenience store in Pennsylvania. 

There, besides getting gas, and other items available in a typical 7-11, you find made-to-order breakfast, lunch and dinner via automated kiosks, the type we find increasingly at airline check-in counters.  This article from selfservice.org last year explains:

"Sheetz stores are a little different. The convenience chain that began in 1952 as Sheetz Dairy Store in Altoona, Penn., now hires baristas to pour gourmet coffee. Their store-branded MasterCards have RFID chips.

 For the past 10 years, Sheetz stores have leveraged kiosks to move their made-to-order sandwiches. Each of the 327 Sheetz stores has multiple ordering stations.

From those stations, customers input their orders, while being automatically prompted for cross-sells and up-sells. The orders are then moved to the appropriate production area of the kitchen, depending on what sandwich the customer selects."

It really is empowering in the extreme when you can custom make one's breakfast service down to whether one wants salt and pepper in the sandwich.  The article goes on to explain the win-win benefits for all the parties concerned. 

The make-to-order combinations for any food and gourmet drinks via the kiosks seem to rival the choices possible at one's local Starbucks.

And you don't have to talk to a Barista feeling pretentious saying things like "Grande Black double-cup skim with two Splendas".  You do it with the privacy of your very own kiosk.

Wish we'd get this technology innovation closer to home in New York, LA and San Francisco.

ON SOME APPLE/SONY SMACK-TALK

IT'S ON!

It's been interesting to see how Apple and Sony have diverged over the last couple of years in their stock prices (see Yahoo! Finance chart below).  Part of the reason of course is Apple's success with iPod and iTunes over Sony's Walkman franchise. 

It looks like Sony's not planning to give up the opportunity on the video side, as
this bit from Fake Steve Jobs (aka FSJ) explains:

"Howard Stringer of Sony says they're going to make a big push into the U.S. market for video downloads and go head-to-head with Apple. See the WSJ story here. This news comes in the wake of our rift with NBC.

It's Sony's way of saying, "Hey guys, remember us? Over here? Sony? Big name in the last century. Still in business. Still want to be your partner. Call us, bokay?"

Oh well. Looks like we'll have to back up the Hummer and drive over them again."

I've learned never to read FSJ while drinking coffee again.

ON THE BEST & WORST ADS FROM THE 41st SUPERBOWL ONLINE

PLAY BY PLAY

Updated 2.5.07:  Gizmodo has a good rundown of the Superbowl ad hits and misses.

YouTube is letting their users rank the SuperBowl commercials, with the winner unveiled on Tuesday, should be a fun game to watch in itself.

CBS itself has got all the commercials lined up as well (quarter by quarter, no less), but you need to make sure you have the latest versions of either your WIndows Media Player or RealPlayer all installed to see them...it's too bad if you're using an Apple Mac like yours truly tonight. 

Why, in the age of YouTube, do traditional media sites still make mainstream users jump through the hoops of downloading and launching standalone media players?  I know, I know, for the "better", higher definition quality of course, but is the trade-off worth it?.

Well that rant aside, the Colts beat Da Bears 29 to 17.

And the best, most creative, SuperBowl Commercial this year, in my humble opinion, is still the Coke Ad I highlighted a couple of days ago.  It's fitting indeed that the SuperBowl this year is being played in "Vice City", what with Grand Theft Auto game with that name being the inspiration for the Coke commercial.  That's one man's opinion, right or wrong.

We'll see how the zillions of other surveys online and off rate and rank the commercials.  For now, I'll continue with my take on the ads.

The Bud Light commercial with Mencia teaching English as a Foreign Language was a pretty good second tied with the OTHER Bud Light "But he had Bud Light" commercial. 

OK, the Taco Bell commercial with the two lions, was also a hoot.

The worst one this year has got to be the Dunkin Donuts "Maple Syrup" ad, followed closely by the Emerald Nuts "Robert Goulet" ad (what the heck was that one about??

Although a lot of polls loved the Bud Light "Rock, Paper, Scissors" ad, I thought it's inspiration, the Sprint ad that ran in last year's SuperBowl was funnier, probably because the basic concept was SO new and surprising back then.  Sprint tried something different, as this post from Influence 2.0 notes, spoofing drug company ads with it's ad for wireless broadband.

In the truck category, Toyota Tundra beats Ford hands down, especially with the big "See-Saw" commercial.  They made me want to buy a Toyota pick-up vs. a Ford, even though I'm not in the market for that product.

A new phenomenon this year of course was the "user-generated" ads trend, where Doritos, Chevrolet and others committed to run ads created by consumers.  The two Doritos ads, "Live the Flavor" (Fred Wilson's favorite ad), and "Checkout Girl", were pretty good, and hold up well against those produced by the pros, in terms of concept and selling the product proposition.

Fedex was pretty lame this year so far compared to the hilarious "Caveman" commercial last year. I still remember it a year later.

(More links to follow).

P.S.  As mentioned above, the inspiration for the winning Coke Ad above is obviously the controversial video game Grand Theft Auto, Vice City. 

If you're a fan of that game (like me), or if you've never played the game, check out these two videos from YouTube (Part 1 here, and Part 2 here).  Together, they're a TERRIFIC summary of the Vice City "story", and you get a good feel for what all the fuss was about.

It's a labor of love by TomH88 (lots of spoilers if you plan to play the game).

Each clip is a relatively long nine minutes or so, but well worth the investment, especially considering that you'd have to invest days to play the whole game and get the whole story.

P.S. 2:  TechCrunch has a good post on some relatively lame Web 2.0 "SuperBowl" commercials on YouTube, and where to go for the REAL Superbowl commercials online, both during and after the Big Game...YouTube, Google and Yahoo! are good places to start

ON A MID-WEEK ROMP THRU ITALY

BON APPETITO

Reading this article on Italy in today's New York Times, turned a Wednesday into a Sunday for this reader.

Titled "Just how good can Italy get?", it's one of the best travel pieces I've seen on Italy in some time.

It transports the reader to a corner of Italy I've yet to visit and savor. 

Here's how writer Frank Bruni kicks things off:

"MY kind of pig heaven looks a lot like Bologna’s fatty heart.

In the shops along and around Via Drapperie, haunches of cured ham dangle far into the distance. Coils of pork sausage spiral high into the sky. Bologna is the capital of Emilia-Romagna, and the region of Emilia-Romagna sees the beauty in swine, as the affiliation of one of its cities with a world-renowned delicacy makes clear. Here lies the plump mother lode of prosciutto di Parma.

And of Parmesan cheese. Wheels and wedges of it cram Bologna’s food stores, which allowed me to choose among Parmesan aged one year (not enough) or two years (just about perfect) or even five (oops). Looking up from the cheese, I was dazzled by the array of vegetables and fruits, their vividness reflecting how fertile this region is and how finicky its inhabitants are."

He sets up a faux culinary competition between Emilia-Romagna and Piedmont, that is marvelous to read through, regardless of who "wins". 

The whole piece uses over-the-top metaphors and piquant phrasing that makes the brain do multiple double-takes over and over again.

For example, here's how Mr. Bruni describes a ham he finds delectable (bolding mine):

"I had certainly eaten culatello, the Lamborghini of cured ham, produced around the Emilian town of Zibello, along the foggy banks of the Po River."

It made me Google "culatello", even though I'm not particularly fond of cured ham.

If you like Italy, and if you like good food, the piece is worth reading and saving. 

It'll almost make you put Italy back at the top of your immediate travel list.

ON AN ANCIENT FRUIT FIRST

COUNT THE WAYS

It's been good to see consumers in the US becoming familiar with the humble pomegranate fruit and it's many merits (image from Wikipedia). 

Having grown up with the fruit in both India and the Middle East, it's great to find it in so many new products in the States.  It's been a staple of diets in these parts of the world for thousands of years.

As this article in Israel21c points out:

"According to product data service Productscan, some 215 new pomegranate-flavored foods and beverages were brought to market in the first seven months of 2006, compared to
just 19 for the whole of 2002. Pomegranate flavors are finding their way to everything from natural fruit juices to chewing gum and even sausages. "

Why?  The article explains:

"The rise in popularity stems partly from growing medical
interest in the crimson fruit's health benefits. Pomegranates are
naturally high in polyphenols, powerful antioxidants that are helpful in fighting a variety of health problems ranging from cardiovascular diseases and inflammation to certain types of cancer.

Studies have even begun suggesting that the fruit may even be helpful in alleviating menopausal and post-menopausal symptoms in women (pomegranate is the only plant known to contain estrogen) and erectile dysfunction in men. Couple that with their naturally-high levels of vitamins A, B, and C, calcium, and iron, and it's no wonder the fruit is being touted as a health panacea.

And, Open notes, the antioxidant content of pomegranates is three times higher than that of red grapes. "

So why am I going into this?  Because of this innovation from Israel:

"Several years before the trend got started, a family in Israel's Upper Galilee region began working to create a tastier and healthier version of the ancient fruit, only to cross their way into yet another huge food market. Their product: the world's first pomegranate wine fit to be sold to international wine connoisseurs..."

"...the family founded the Rimon Winery, named after the Hebrew word for pomegranate, and began producing en masse and for
the local and international markets..."

"...Starting this year, the company began featuring a product line that includes a dry wine, a dessert wine, a heavier port wine with 19% alcoholic content, and a rosé wine."

Apparently it took a few years of wine engineering to perfect the product:

"The story began ten years ago, when father and son Gaby and Avi Nachmias, the third generation of a farming family who were founding members of Moshav Kerem Ben Zimra in the Galilee, began experimenting to create a new strain of pomegranates.

Understanding the fruit's excellent therapeutic qualities, their goal was to engineer a "super fruit" that would be richer in vitamins and antioxidants, sweeter, and deeper in its red color than most pomegranate types. "

Can't wait to try them.

ON GADGET FOR JULY4TH WEEKEND

OPEN SESAME

Courtesy of gadget-site Gizmodo, comes the perfect gidget for this weekend.  A fridge magnet Mrs. Darth Vader would approve in their recently re-modeled kitchen. 

I tracked the links down to the online retailer selling this gizmo, and still didn't find more info on how this thing would actually attach to the fridge, or what it would look like installed.  So much for using inexpensive online technology to inform your customers before making a purchase. 

On a separate rant, I found the following line in the retailer's description, highlighted in red:

"Don't fall for cheap, Chinese imitations!"

Remember when they said the same thing about "cheap, Japanese imitations"?