Guardian: IE7 will come on auto-update

I forsee a problem, there are many sites that do not work with IE7 even some that work with Firefox/Safari, so when everyone gets IE7 automatically there will be confused users and sites losing customers. As a Windows/Firefox and Mac/Safari user I will be an amused bystander.

Guardian: Google offers live traffic maps for mobiles -- a killer app?

Most people don't have satnav and most people do have a mobile , with an increasing number able to access the web. So if you get caught in a jam, do you a) walk to the nearest shop by a sat nav and set it up in your car, or b) google it? As for safety, stupid people can't be stopped, but if you have a passenger, or you are at a standstill, you will be OK.

Guardian: Apple on the up - but iPod sales down

The biggest threat to a stand alone music player is from mobile phones and portable machines from Nintendo, Playstation and Xbox. If people are carrying one of these that plays enough music then they will not need to carry a separate music device. Following this I think the iPod market will be split in two, at the lower end people who want something smaller than a phone or gameboy will buy something like the shuffle, at the other end some people, and I probably include myself, will need something with more storage and will buy the appropriate size of iPod.

I doubt Apple will want to be absent from this middle tier, and it is easier to build a mobile from scratch than to enter the games market, unless the occasionally rumored link with Nintendo arises. So I expect Apple to create a mobile phone in the next 2-3 years. If in ten years every mobile phone has 1TB of storage then I suspect large stand alone devices will fade away, if these phones are the size of a shuffle or smaller then they too will disappear.

Record Companies

I recently bought a box set of John Coltrane material listed on Amazon as “The Complete Impulse Studio Recordings”, however it turned out that the correct title was “The Classic Quartet - The Complete Impulse Studio Recordings”. What this means is that the later Impulse recordings, which added Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane, were not included and the later period was actually of most interest to me. I didn't mind, because I hadn't been short changed by this 8 cd set, and this is a great collection of albums. I thought I would just have to look out for the other box set covering the later years. As I have already bought a few Miles Davis sets I know that it is sensible to split these collections, and having looked a bit further there is probably another 5/6 cds worth of Coltrane material, great. Except there is no other box set, this set was released in 1998 and since then Impulse have just ignored the rest. Most of the albums are available, but some are only available on import or second hand. I also discovered that shortly after the original release of this box set Impulse found new material, but didn't add it to the set, but have released it on reissues of the original albums, so if I did want the extra material I would have to get a duplicate of the album I already have in the box set. Another disappointment for me was the partial albums included, Kulu Se Mama has the title track missing, because it was not recorded by the Classic Quartet. I already have this on vinyl, so do I buy it again on CD? “Live at Birdland” is a mixture of live and studio recordings, I now have the studio recordings so I thought I would pop on to iTunes to get the live tracks, except iTunes won't let you but these tracks separately, I have to purchase the whole album and therefore pay for duplicate tracks. Luckily “Impressions”, which is also a mixture of live and studio recordings, used live tracks from The Village Vanguard and Impulse have released the complete recordings from those nights.

I would also like to replace my collection of 1970s Temptations albums which were produced by Norman Whitfield. These are great albums and I miss them, I would be willing to repay something to get them. So I looked on Amazon, I looked on iTunes and I looked on the Motown website. I discovered that not all of these albums have been re-released on CD, but worse, some that were re-released have had the tracks edited. However what really irritates me is the 20 something greatest hits albums that have been released instead.

Last year I bought the Complete Stevie Wonder on iTunes, and this was a genuine complete set. So why do Motown not do this for their other artists? Why do Impulse release only one box set and not see it through. I have heard that Sony/Columbia are delaying the final Miles Davis box sets, all very odd. Surely there is some value in making available a product for me to buy, perhaps if record companies stopped worrying about illegal downloads and got on with there job then people wouldn't go to illegal download sites in the first place. I can understand that record companies will have a priority list, but surely that would include John Coltrane and wouldn't include hundreds of greatest hits collections.

Reading

In the middle of all these I forgot this:

Musical Holiday

The Orb have been busy:

Guardian: Adware scumbags rake in $2 billion a year

I have worked in a company where the marketing department were told directly by senior staff that these products should be avoided, but they went ahead anyway. Why? Because they are not judged by their pure view but by the returns for the company. Until companies take a broader view these things will continue. Even on a usability case The Guardian now uses adverts that are very annoying, why do you do it? Not for customer satisfaction, but for the money. Quite how advertising departments can prove a return on investment for such irritations is beyond me, but the point stands that companies are financially driven, even the Guardian.

Coltrane

I like box sets, I like John Coltrane; restoring a few I had on vinyl:



following all this!