Richtig said Fred!

Great news everybody, Amazon has listened to its international customers and will roll out in 2008 its MP3 music store to its international customers. There is no specific date yet, but it’s coming.

You can read the press release here.

Businesses can change their mind like for example Amazon.com that has stopped selling MP3s to their Canadian customers. But so can customers, who prefer to take all their business somewhere else. I used to buy quite often from Amazon.com, but now I will look elsewhere until they lift these stupid restrictions.

You can leave comments on Amazon.com’s blog here http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/post/PLNK3GRDQKLEO6WFM

Palm is starting Preorders on its smallest smartphone to date. The palm Centro is NOT availlable as GSM phone unfortunately, so it is targeted to the North-American market for now. The Centro is possibly the smallest Smartphone availlable this year, and it does have nice features: Bluetooth, a 320×320 display and 1.3MP camera.

The real price is 399$, but if you lock yourself with a provider you can have it for as little as 99$ which is nice for some.

You can read about the Centro on Palm’s Blog or visit the Palm Centro Site

Here’s a fun update, after several purchases on the Amazon MP3 store, today I have started receiving this stupid message whenever I try to make purchases:

We are sorry…

We could not process your order because of geographical restrictions on the product which you were attempting to purchase. Please refer to the terms of use for this product to determine the geographical restrictions.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

So it seems Amazon has started putting a “USA Only” enforcement on their MP3 store, why get business from Canadian customers when you can just mess with their mind by allowing purchases then denying them purchases, all in the same week.

Here is a strange pricing scheme I have just found on the store, The Chemical Brothers’ Single “Electrobank” is 1.87$ for 3 songs, but the first and third song are 1.94$ each… My guess is that the pricing is dictated by a set of rules and since those 2 songs are quite long (over 7 minutes long each) then their prices is higher.

Here’s the link to Electrobank from the Chemical Brothers.

Here is an interesting posting from Mike Hearn, a Google software developer on Slashdot:

For instance, I’m one of the very few people who have Maps logs access (ie, I can see cookies and IP addresses), and that’s only because I work directly with the servers on a day-to-day basis and do abuse handling as part of my job. The vast majority of Maps developers have no logs access at all. I have to periodically rejustify my access, I’m not allowed to track any individual cookie or IP address for longer than 24 hours, my own usage of the logs is recorded and audited, I’m not allowed to take the logs out of their secure holding area and am not allowed to give logs in non-scrubbed form to anybody else. Violating these rules is grounds for instant termination. Contrast this with ISPs which sell clickstream data [seekingalpha.com] on the open market.

I would like to point out that very few companies handle logs and user data with that level of protection. I have seen quite a few places where webserver logs are not properly secured and not considered as important as user information like addresses and phone numbers (which are publicly availlable in the white pages). Google understands privacy issues clearly which is better than most companies out there.

You can read Mike Hearn’s complete comment on Slashdot here.

Another discovery today, Ã ;GRUMH is availlable, I wish they had more CDs from them. But it is well worth browsing the MP3 store and making discoveries like that.

I’m allways on the lookout for out of print CDs and here’s my best deal I have found so far on the Amazon MP3 store.

Mafu Cage from Neon Judgement
On CD (used) the only copy availlable is 99$ on Amazon.
The same album as an MP3 download is 8.99$ on Amazon MP3.

Well the MP3 is not a collector item like the CD, but if like me you just enjoy the music and don’t want to shell 100$ for a used CD this is a great option!

There are a lot of threads on the net about Halo 3 not performing that well with high definition TVs right now.

Here is the top 3 of Halo 3’s visual issues:
1.- Split screen mode has black bars on either side of the screen when viewed on widescreen TVs.

2.- No anti aliasing which creates “jaggies” when viewed close to the screen on high definition TVs.

3.- The infamous resolution which has less than HD vertical resolution (640 pixels is less than 720).

Do these issues matter?
How do they compare to other AAA titles?

1.- Split screen with black bars gets you back to feeling you own a last gen Xbox, this makes the output look so much like an old 4:3 aspect ratio TV. This is so obvious it makes Halo 3 stand out of the current HD crowd, I mean all the current AAA titles that have split screen have addressed this issue in a nicer way.

2.- No anti aliasing. Well it is probably not such a big issue if your TV has 720p native resolution, unless you are close to your TV or have a large plasma screen. But then again, FSAA (full screen anti aliasing) is becoming a norm on any decent PC game right now with decent graphic hardware. Is the 360 allready outdated compared to PCs? Probably, no one would think of buying a 2 years old PC right now to play Unreal Tournament 3 when it comes out… FSAA makes all images look nicer, especially on large screen, and even though the edges are not as crisp, the overall look is more realistic. Small things and things that are far away do not appear as pixel blocks with sharp edges. Read the advantages of FSAA on Wikipedia.

3.- Resolution is a big issue in HD TVs, some customers will buy 1080i or 1080P TVs in order to get a sharper image which is a great idea. Every time someone buys a new display? What is the first technical question that will be asked? What is the display’s resolution and refresh rate? So if a TV would have listed on the box as resolution 1080P, you would expect it to have AT LEAST 1080 vertical pixels in progressive scan. If the TV could only display 720 vertical pixels but could ACCEPT 1080i INPUT then it should be clearly stated on the TV BOX, otherwise it is misrepresentation. With Halo 3 (as with many other games), the thinking was different, on the back of the Halo 3 box all I can see in a small square is “HDTV 720p/1080i/1080p”… If I pick other titles like PGR3 (XBOX 360) or Resistance: Fall of Man (PS3), all they list on their back is 720p. The issue of the missing 80 vertical pixels is probably not the biggest problem here for 720p screen owners, but for anyone else with 1080i or 1080p displays you get cheated because the game relies on the XBOX 360’s built-in upscaler. One day Microsoft claims HD-DVD’s higher NATIVE resolution is a good idea when compared to an UPSCALED lower resolution DVD (which is true), but then they release a video game which relies on UPSCALING to achieve 1080p resolutions and expect everyone to just accept that fact.

What’s the next move? Releasing a plain DVD in an HD-DVD box and selling it 10$ more than the “regular” DVD and still claiming it has 1080i resolution instead of it’s actual resolution of 480 ?

One last thing: IS THE GAME GOOD? Yes it is! Go out and buy it! And stop whining about HD resolutions, because after all I’m still playing Dig Dug, and Pac-Man and no one ever complained about those graphics, after all they had COLOR…

Ok so after a couple purchases on the Amazon MP3 store, I am quite thrilled that I can get my hands on some Chris & Cosey which has been unavaillable for many years. This is a great opportunity to get some out of print singles or albums that would cost a lot more if bought used.

To see the Chris & Cosey MP3 Collection on Amazon click here.

I just hope the artists are getting a better share than for album sales.