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I think this sums things up quite well.

Electronic Arts in Common Sense Shocker!

"...people need to recognize that every BitTorrent download doesn’t represent a successful copy of a game, let alone a lost sale."

So says Mariam Sughayer, of Electronic Arts' corporate communications.

Now, the implications of this statement are quite far-reaching. The obsession of the recording industries in pointing out that they are losing millions in revenue due to 'illegal' music downloading is lost when the facts are taken into account.

Here's a fact: To lose millions, you first have to make millions, then lose them.

Such a business model — built on imaginary losses — is a logical and mathematical mess. The world's economy is in the shape it is because it is in the hands of minds like this.

As far as the global economy goes, a little Darwinism is all that's needed, if the governments will allow that to happen.

But Electronic Arts' message is a sensible one, and one which many businesses could do with taking on board. They're taking the wider view, which is concentrate on what you do best.

Make good golf games.

The RIAA

And what they're up to.

This guy is starting to take a little heat from the RIAA.

Support him. Visit his site:

http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com

Do your bit to ensure the future freedom of people who actually want people to hear what they've got to say.

Spread the word.

Time...

...is merely a function of the complexity of the universe.

Chrome update

Two things, here.

Chroming my way around reddit, I noticed This is the coolest animated gif you will ever see in your life.

So I clicked the link. It took me to a bare page with an — actually, quite good — hand-drawn animation as a .gif file.

After a few seconds, though, I noticed something was up. The animation started to slow down. From the 40-ish fps it kicked off at, the rate dropped to around 15 fps and even lower.

I opened the same page in IE and FF. Animation ran full speed for the duration.

Hmm. Not so good for Chrome.

Secondly — and this has been a pet hate of mine with tabbed browsing all along — the link at the start of this post was obviously copied from reddit. First, I copied the text into my post, then, after highlighting the text I'd just pasted, clicked the 'link' icon at the top of blogger's text form. A dialog appeared, and I clicked to go back to the reddit tab to then grab the URL. Except the dialog had locked the blogger tab and I couldn't switch.

Close the dialog, switch tabs, copy the URL, switch tabs again, click the link icon again, paste the URL.

Details, people...

Chrome

First impressions of Google's new browser, "Chrome", are pretty good.

Things I like:

• Tab management.
• Clean look, like Firefox, but easier on the eye.
• Quick page loads.
• Add a new tab to get thumbnails of recently viewed pages.
• 'Incognito' mode.
• Less user interface, more web page.

Things I don't like:

• Double clicking the tab bar 'restores down' the window.
• Dropping text links onto the tab bar does nothing (FF will open the text link in a new tab).
• Opening the Options dialog has always caused Chrome to crash. (My work machine, XP 64 bit).
• No home button.

Allow me to elaborate.

Tab management is very neat. Like IE and FF, tabs can be rearranged so that relevant tabs can be grouped together. As well as the underlying functionality of this working very well, visually the process is well represented, the tabs gliding and snapping smoothly into place.

This clean visual style is carried throughout the rest of the browser window. The navigation controls are simple to understand, although the lack of a home button is a mild annoyance. Moving the tabs above Chrome's Omnibar (that's Google for address bar) is a stunningly simple design, representing the idea that each tab has its own address and properties, something which is true even 'under the hood', as a tab can be dragged away from its native window into an entirely new window instance, complete with history and other properties. Compare Chrome's presentation of tabs to IE's and even FF's tab and address bar layout, this is a revelation and visually more representational.

Pages load (or, probably more accurately, are parsed and displayed) noticeably quicker. On my local work's intranet I could almost hear an audible 'snap' as pages appeared.

A better implementation of IE's thumbnail view is revealed on opening a new blank tab. Rather than a blank page, you get a bunch of thumbnails, your recently visited sites. Also, a neat bookmarks section is displayed to the right below a Google search box which will trawl your history.

A new browser would be incomplete without some kind of 'secret browsing' mode. Both IE and FF have recently introduced features which Chrome calls its 'Incognito' mode. Right clicking a link and selecting 'Open link in incognito window' opens the linked page in a separate browser window with a darker shaded border and an icon top left, like a cliché of a Private Detective dude, complete with hat, high collar and shades. Pages viewed in this window won't store your history or temporary files like cookies and whatnot, a plus for those concerned about online privacy.

The lack of a menu bar and status bar (by default. Other browsers do allow you to turn these off) means that, 'out of the box', this browser steals the least screen real estate from your web site. At the bottom of the window, the web page ends, and your Windows task bar starts within a pixel or two. However, hovering over a link or loading a page brings up a semi-transparent status bar which promptly disappears when no longer needed. Neat.

Another neat feature is that, if you happen to click a link which takes you to a series of pages, you won't have to click back through all of the pages before you finally reach the page which referred you to the series. Right-clicking on the back button brings up a familiar history but at the bottom of the list of pages you've just clicked through (a photo gallery, for instance) you'll see the page which referred you to the site, maybe 15 or 20 clicks ago. Smart.

Some people may whinge about the absence of RSS functionality, but the major downer for me, besides a few personal annoyances, is that I could not access any of the options on a Windows XP 64 bit installation. The application bailed messily and without warning whenever I tried to access this most important of features. To that end, I have absolutely no idea how customisable Chrome may be and it is the one thing that I have to say has genuinely spoiled my first experience of this otherwise easy to use and nice looking browser.

Having said that, it's a beta, people. It's not really officially launched as a working browser. We've been publicly invited to Google's unveiling of a new piece of software. They've lifted the cover on their creation and said, 'Everyone, excuse us, and, you know, don't take this too seriously, but look at what we did!'

And I have to say I'm looking forward to the finished product.

Get it here.

Repairing the Rhodes

Acquiring a Rhodes piano (not mine, but I desperately wanted it to work to record) gave me the opportunity recently to do something I've kind of had on my mind for a few years now.

I wanted to fix it. The last time I seriously used it, I had to be tactical about the chord inversions I used to lay down the grooves, as some of the keys didn't sound.

This is no way to play a musical instrument, of course, and so I was driven to find out what the problem was and work out how to fix it.

I knew that the mechanism itself was fine, because lifting the lid revealed hammers which were mobile and smooth, hitting the tines squarely and firmly. So, the problem had to be either with the tines (the metal rods which vibrate when struck by the hammers and whose motion is converted into an acoustic signal by pickups) or with the pickups themselves.

Moving a tine assembly to a note which did not work revealed that the tine didn't work in this position, thereby proving that the pickup was to blame and not the tine.

Fitting them was a little tricky, but I now have a Rhodes with the main part of the scale perfectly intact. There are a few keys which still don't work but I never really heard the top octave or so of a Rhodes being skilfully played before, so I've left them alone. I have spare pickups if I ever decide to use these notes.

Of course, this is just one part of the process of getting everything sorted out properly. Pickups in place, I now wanted to 'voice' it, this being the process of getting the notes to sound the way I wanted them to.

You may know the closing bars of Donald Fagen's 'New Frontier' from his 1981 album 'Nightfly'. If you haven't heard it, buy it. It is some of the best produced and played Rhodes piano I've ever heard.

Next on the agenda, new hammer tips for the whole range of keys. I think this is the way to go for that consistent sound as some of the keys sound loads better and it's not down to pickups.

I'm working (gradually) on a music website, but that might be even further away than a well-tuned Rhodes.

But watch this space..!