Year: 2004

Freely copy iTunes Music Store files

Something to have handy.

Freely copy iTunes Music Store files. PlayFair is an open source app that strips Apple’s DRM out of iTunes Music Store singles, allowing you to freely copy the music you pay for.

It takes one of the iTMS Protected AAC Audio Files, decodes it using a key obtained from your iPod or Microsoft Windows system and then writes the new, decoded version to disk as a regular AAC Audio File. It then optionally copies the metadata tags that describe the song, including the cover art, to the new file.

Link (Thanks, Rod!) [Boing Boing]

'Perfect' Corporate Weblogging 'Elevator Pitch' Competition

This is shaping up to be an interesting effort.

You might want to take a look at Blogging's Three Cores: Discover, Read, and Write, which contains some excellent ideas from fellow judge Phil Wolff. You might also want to look at Shel Israel's 12 tips on Giving Great Presentations and Doc Searls It's the Story Stupid for good advice on distilling messages.

Perfect Pitch – Corporate Blogging.

Judith reminds us of the 'Perfect' Corporate Weblogging 'Elevator Pitch' Competition.  Go on, take that ride :

Don't Forget The 'Perfect Pitch' Competition…. 

Have you submitted your ‘Perfect Pitch’ entry yet?

The rules of engagement for this contest are listed in: The ‘Perfect’ Corporate Weblogging ‘Elevator Pitch’ Competition, which was posted on March 29, 2004.

We have the honor of hosting this competition with an awesome group of internationally respected judging panelists:

danah boyd, Dave Pollard, Dina Mehta, Don Park, Elizabeth Lane Lawley, Flemming Funch, Jason Shellen, Jim McGee, Lilia Efimova, Martin Dugage, Phil Wolff, Ross Mayfield, Scott Allen, and Ton Zijlstra.

So submit your entries soon as the deadline is Midnight [EST] April 15, 2004!

Please submit your entry to: pitch at weblogsinc dot com. Thanks! (-:=

 [The Social Software Weblog]

 

[Conversations with Dina]

Social Network Systems from Bob Frankston

Now these are Social Network Systems I can endorse!

Is it SATN?. No, just Bob Frankston and his three newly proposed YASNS — EomE [Enemy of my Enemies,] Blind Trust Network, and the Mindless Philatelist Network:

You’re invited to join the EomE network

Unlike David Weinberger who seems to dislike the social networking phenomenon, I embrace and extend the concept.

Enemy of my Enemies is a new social network. Unlike the old ones it focuses on the real need to protect ourselves from “them”.

Warning: you must click the button an even number of times otherwise you will be considered an enemy.

You will be asked to make sure that you are indeed the enemy of at least one of my enemies. Don’t be surprised if you are on enemy list yourself. You can be in both categories though in order to join you will have to agree to attack yourself to protect me.

The Trust Network is the new effort to solve the problem of trust on the Internet. You can simple check a box to say you trust me. We at the Trust Network understand that there are people who you trust with your life but not your money but such fine distinctions are not compatible with the need for naive trust. All who are trusted agree to encode all their information into the semantic web ontology that eschews ambiguity in favor of simplicity. Esperanto is the only language allowed within the Web of Trust (WoT).

For those reluctant to be enmeshed we are willing to assist with the “Home Lobotomy Kit”. It provides all the instructions you need (spoons not included). After the operation you will find no ambiguities in the concept of trust.

After all, the whole purpose of these networks is to collect people like we collect stamps. So why bother with the people part and go straight to the Mindless Philatelist Network. This is the network for people who don’t really care what they collect as long as they have the most. Stamps are simpler than people but either way only quantity matters.

[The Social Software Weblog]

Send-up of “Respect Copyright” PSAs

Logic and rational argument have had little effect in the copyright wars. Let’s hear it for scorn and ridicule!

Send-up of “Respect Copyright” PSAs. The CBC’s Rick Mercer has produced a screamingly funny, vicious parody of the copyright boo-hoo-poor-Hollywood ads that run in front of all the movies in Canada now.

WHO MAKES MOVIES?

You know, people go see a comedy or a fantasy or an action film and nine times out of ten they walk out of the theatre at they look at one another and they say “Wow, that was really bad.”

CHARLIE NESMAN MAKES BAD MOVIES

I make a lot of sequels. I’m the guy who makes part four and part five of movies where you haven’t heard of the first one. Someday I’d like to make a part two.

What kind of movie do I like? I like a movie about a monkey that gets special powers and then has to play a sport. That’s the kind of movie I like.

THE PIRACY ISSUE

I don’t know why anyone would ever steal a movie. Unless of course it’s to avoid this commercial which we now play in front of every single movie you could possibly go to, telling you you’re bad for stealing even though you just spent $11 to see some movie and instead you have to sit there and listen to me whine at you and accuse you of being a thief. Nevermind the $9 you just spent for $0.30 worth of popping corn.

MOVIES: THEY’RE NOT WORTH IT

You’re very bad people.

WATCH TELEVISION

Real Stream Link (Thanks, Ted!) [Boing Boing]

Jim Macdonald explains writing

I still have enough to worry about with improving my non-fiction writing skills. Nevertheless, this is a good read if you have any interest in understanding the craft of writing.

Jim Macdonald explains writing. Jim Macdonald, half of the Doyle-Macdonald writing team, has been presiding over a hundreds-posts-long running tutorial on how to write that is unbelievably good and sensible and right. If you want to write, go read this now.

Well, now, what to put in the opening?

We’re going to stick with the chess game metaphor for a while here. In the opening you’re trying to put yourself into a strong position for going into the midgame (where the exciting action and the exciting combinations occur), and you do this mostly by getting your pieces off the back rank as quickly as possible. The pieces are your major characters. Get them out there, and get them doing things.

Don’t neglect your pawns — your minor characters. You should cherish your minor characters. They’ll save your life. If you have a selection of minor characters you can pull them out to solve problems later in the book.

Now, what to put in that first chapter? (Recall that if your readers don’t finish the first chapter they’ll never get to chapter two.)

To answer the question of what goes into chapter one, I’m going to grab the first stanzas from a bunch of Anglo-Scots folk ballads. These were the popular songs of earlier times, cooked by the folk process so that only the important and memorable parts remain, they’re entertaining, and they tell stories.

Link (via Making Light) [Boing Boing Blog]

MessageSave and EZDetach make Outlook mail management a lot easier

Some more friction reducers from Marc to investigate.

MessageSave and EZDetach make mail management a lot easier.

Reading some of the e-mail questions I receive from readers and scanning through some of the older posts on the Getting Things Done forum, it appears that many people are struggling with two problems related to Outlook e-mail

  • How to save e-mail for archival purposes (say, on a CD), to improve Outlook performance, and/or reduce the server space used by IMAP or Exchange servers.
  • How to manage attachments to e-mails when archiving

An elegant solution for Outlook users comes in the form of a pair of small add-ins for Outlook from TechHit – MessageSave and EZDetach. These add-ins are available as two new buttons on the Outllok toolbar and provide a number of ways to quickly process your accumulated mail and define rules for new incoming messages.

MessageSave gives you the ability to save e-mail messages as either native Outlook e-mail files (.msg) or plain text (.txt) files. You can save individual messages or process an entire hierarchy of folders at once. A wide range of options are available fo adding data points to the saved file names including date received, sender, etc. This makes sorting the output folder contents a lot easier.

There are advantages to saving in both formats, of course. Text files are a lot smaller than native Outlook messages. Saving in native format preserves formatting and makes reintegration into Outlook darg-and-drop simple (if you choose to delete the messages from your .pst file or Exchange folder after saving them).

I was able to reduce my personal .pst file from 95 MB to under 20 MB by saving all my older messages to a folder on my hard drive. MessageSave preserves the folder hierarchy (optional) so my very idiosyncratic filing system is unaltered. And, because Lookout, which has become an indispensable part of my Outlook setup, can index and search file folders, my ability to find whatever I’m looking for is preserved.

EZDetach provides a nice solution to the problems associated with storing attachmnts to e-mails in your .pst or Excahnge files. You can save the attachments to a local folder (or network share) and maintain a link to that file in the e-mail message. This obviously saves space equal to the size of the attachment while maintaining the association betwee a message and an attachment. When saving the files, you can have an exact copy of your Outlook folder structure created and attachments can be inserted back into messages when you forward them. You can even reestablish the link if you move the file after detaching it.

Both of the tools are quick to install and easy to use. EZDetach costs $18.95 and MessageSave runs $24.95.

[Marc’s Outlook on Productivity]