The Buzz

A couple of weeks ago I lamented over the policy Apple set on how you could upgrade your music to the newer, unprotected and higher quality music files they were now offering in their store. At the time, I noted how it was an all-or-nothing upgrade.

As I continued to ponder it, I discovered other reasons why it was harsh. For instance, Apple has had a long-standing policy of offering free songs of the week. I’ve found a few great artists that way, but the majority of them were downloaded, listened to once and then discarded. However, since they were considered “purchased,” I would have had to pay for them, along with the ones I had paid for.

Well, Apple listened. Now you can selectively upgrade your music. This now allows you to skip the songs that you haven’t listened to in five years and never will again.

Nice move, Apple!

In this challenging climate, many are looking for ways to bring in some additional income. Finding a job is difficult, and sometimes those with jobs are looking for ways to get extra cash rolling in.

In that spirit, I took a look at Mechanical Turk, a service that amazon.com created to help those who needed large quantities of data verified or created, but in areas where machines can’t quite do the job yet. The service has been around for awhile, but seems particularly handy for those with time on their hands right now.

Here’s how it works: thousands of HITs, as they call them, are submitted by companies or individuals looking for assistance. Each item takes varying amounts of time; generally speaking, the more challenging, the more the pay per HIT. Some HITs, which require some quick online verification of information or identifying pictures, may take a few seconds, while others, which could involve writing, might pay up to a few dollars per HIT. During the time I’ve spent on the site, I’ve seen the number of HITs available range from 45,000 to 72,000, so there’s always plenty to do.

You complete the work they request and submit it. If they accept your work, you get paid. The money is deposited into an Amazon Payments account, which can then be used either to purchase items on Amazon, or to be deposited into a checking account.

Since units of work are small, they can be completed during downtime, great for those who are looking for ways to bring in a few bucks. But given the small payouts for each item, it’s unlikely that a person will get rich off the service.

Doing the work precisely as instructed is important, as if it’s not done well, it can get rejected. Abandoning a HIT after accepting it is also frowned upon, so it’s worth being sure you’re able to do it first. You can preview a HIT before accepting it.

Amazon keeps metrics of what percentage of your work is accepted, and what percentage of HITs you abandon after starting. Those who post HITs can require that your acceptance rate is at a certain high, and abandonment rate at a certain low, meaning it’s important to try your hardest each time.

Also, HITs can get approved quickly, or take days. Out of the first five hits I completed, only one was approved within 24 hours. The others are still pending, and until they are moved into approved status, I don’t get paid.

I’m impressed with what they came up with, and there are much worse ways to spend your time online. I was able to get going in less than five minutes, and after doing a few hits, I found myself enjoying the work, not worried about whether I’ll run out of time to complete what I’m working on, since they’re so short. It’s definitely worth a look if you have a bit of computer savvy, especially if you’re comfortable with doing work or research online.

A few years ago I went to a concert, which I was reviewing for my college newspaper. Thinking I wasn’t allowed to bring a camera, I only had my cell phone. When I realized they weren’t stopping people from taking pictures, I shot a few (grainy) pictures, and one was published very small. During our review of the issue with our newspaper’s advisor, he commented that “this will be the future of journalism.”

Some of us thought it was a bit nutty, but one interesting thing came out of the “Miracle on the Hudson” coverage that was all over the news yesterday. A ferry passenger snapped a picture of the passengers waiting on the plane, and uploaded to Twitter using a service called TwitPic.

The photo got noticed very quickly, and it got passed around in a “snowball effect,” as the owner of TwitPic described it, even causing his servers to buckle under the stress for awhile, receiving 500 hits every 15-20 seconds (or about 100,000 an hour). I personally think this photo kicks the pants off of most of what we saw on most news services.

Twitter has been a growing source of information and pointers to information after major news events. One Twitter user was on the plane that skidded of the runway in Denver last month. And others have used Twitter to send out information on events like Israel’s invasion of Gaza earlier this month.

US Airways noticed too, and opened up a Twitter account to pass out links and information to users following the news on the service.

Phones are getting more powerful, and so are the cameras (an iPhone was used to take the picture, with a reasonably good 2 megapixel camera). Text messaging allows people to get information out in a hurry, and paired with a service like Twitter, you can share with everyone practically immediately.

It’s a brave new world. Kind of exciting, as long as you don’t overload on it.

I was saddened to see Circuit City’s announcement that they were liquidating today. I wasn’t so much surprised by it, but my life-long connection to the retailer is now coming to an end.

When I was eight, and still living in Virginia, my parents took me there and bought me my first keyboard, which sequed into more than 10 years of piano lessons. (I never ended up being that good, but it was a fun hobby nonetheless). When they started opening stores in Connecticut, I ended up working at one for over three years, starting during the Christmas season of 1998 and all the way through the beginning of 2002. Even during that time, I saw what I perceived to be a slow decline in the stores, especially as Best Buy ramped up and charged the state. They just weren’t keeping up with Best Buy, which had nicer looking stores and were constantly changing things around to respond to trends. Circuit City got rid of appliances and did half-hearted renovations from time to time.

A year after I left, they laid off their highest-paid commissioned associates during a painful transition to a salary format. Some close co-workers of mine got laid off for earning too much. Commissioned employees earning too much meant they were selling too much. That, combined with them laying off higher paid employees in 2007 (which were a combination of remaining employees from the commission days and longer-term employees who had more product knowledge) likely did them in, as did their inability to keep up with Best Buy.

What I remember from working at the stores 10 years ago was a close-knit group of people who cared about what they sold, and providing customers with information in a way they could understand. In my more recent efforts to buy products, I found myself doing more research online than in store, especially when attempts to ask questions in their stores failed to yield satisfactory answers.

Meanwhile, Best Buy seemed to be doing exactly what Circuit City used to do – providing well-trained reps who can answer unusual questions. I’m no tech novice, but occasionally I’ll be doing something I haven’t approached before, and I could usually find someone at Best Buy who knew what I was talking about, and more times than not they’d have a better selection than Circuit City.

But despite the fact that Circuit City was a shell of what it used to be by the end, I’m still sad, in part because they had possibilities of making it work. The store that opened on the Post Road in Milford not all that long ago blew away any of the other locations they had, with a nicer setup, really good employees and a larger selection. It seemed that, had they had planned it out earlier or had more time to turn the ship around, they could have had a shot.

Even in the end, I’d buy an item at Circuit City over Best Buy, maybe out of some loyalty from working at the company for all that time. I also appreciated that they were more aggressive in Internet marketing, so many times I could get a Circuit City gift card as a prize at more recent jobs, where Best Buy wasn’t there, or get cash back rewards or points towards things through Web site loyalty programs.

But the death knell has been sounded. While I have no qualms about going to Best Buy when I need something in a hurry, or hopping online to order things if I can be patient, I will miss Circuit City. My last purchase there was the day after Christmas, and I got an incredible deal on a new computer. I worry that somehow without competition, Best Buy might not be as forthcoming with really strong deals. Thankfully, Wal-Mart and Target have been stepping up their game, and the Internet offers plenty of places to get items too, but it feels like a major chapter is over, and I’ll miss them.

I’ve been an avid fan of Palm for 10 years, ever since my doe-eyed days working for a big box retailer. My first Palm Pilot dates back to the Palm IIIc, a reasonably-sized organizer that had the added bonus of being able to load all sorts of software on it.

I’ve stuck with Palm over the years. I bought a newer Palm device and keyboard when I got to college, which I used to take notes in class, a boon for me since my handwriting borders on horrific. I most recently purchased a Palm 755, their combination smartphone and organizer, that still had that simple interface I’d grown to love over the years.

While it was easy to use, it’s starting to seem a bit long in the tooth. I now use a Blackberry as my main organizer and phone, and as it turns out the 755 is the end of the line for their high-end PalmOS smartphones, with the Centro taking its place and largely being an entry-level smartphone on all the various carriers.

This past week Palm announced the Pre, their next generation phone, with a new OS to go along with it. I’ve hovered around Gizmodo to see the details, and the more I see, the more I’m excited about it.

Everyone likes to compare any phone to the iPhone, but frankly, Palm’s always offered solid smartphones, over the iPhone, which has good features but I find to be more of a fun phone than a business phone overall (although, with their app store, the gap is quickly closing on that front). If Palm can keep the price down and cultivate an ecosystem, just like they did when they created the smartphone market with the original line of Treos, there might just be another chapter in the Palm story to come. I for one can’t wait to get it.

DISCLAIMER: I have worked, and continue to do so, in the wireless industry as a lowly sales peon. As such, this and all wireless items will avoid any discussion of carriers, but instead focus on the cool technology that’s either coming or has arrived. Frankly, that’s more fun anyway.

I’ve been an avid supporter of Apple’s iTunes Music Store since the launch on the Windows side in October of 2003. The pricing, along with the ability to play the songs on multiple computers, iPods, etc. has been attractive to me.

When I checked iTunes two nights ago, it showed I had 2700 purchased files over a five year window. While some are episodes of TV shows, it’s mostly music. Breaking it down, it’s only about $10 a week over the course of the past few years, which is managable (and less than a CD used to cost, on average, before digital services came to pass).

As the service has evolved, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been slowly but surely been making a push to take it a step further and remove those restrictions. He finally got what he wanted, and now the majority of music on iTunes will be free of restrictions.

Part of the change gives consumers the option to upgrade their previously restricted files to an unrestricted version, with the added bonus of having a higher-quality file, which should boost sound quality. To do this, Apple is charging what sounds like a reasonable fee of 30 cents per song, 60 cents per music video (which upgrades the audio quality, but not the video quality), or, if you bought a whole album, 30% of the current going rate for the album’s price.

Here’s the catch: you have to upgrade all of the songs available at that particular point, or not at all.

When I checked the upgrade page two nights ago, I had 940 songs already available for upgrade; that rose to 983 by last night. You can do the math, but I was close to $250 for the upgrade as it stood last night. That’s not cheap, and since you can’t cherry-pick, it’s an all-or-nothing situation.

People are griping over the price, as well as the all-or-nothing setup of the program, and that’s valid. Some will do it because they see a benefit. It’s a solution for those who want it badly enough, and I’m considering it (although I’ll have to tuck some money aside to make it happen, not easy in today’s state of affairs).

But here’s a problem I personally have, and it’s not covered at all in the articles I’ve seen on the subject thus far. I have Comcast. Comcast recently rolled out a bandwidth limit of 250GB a month for accessing the Internet. Exceed the limit too many times, and you can be booted off their service for a year. To make it even more cloudy, they have yet to offer a way to monitor this, and almost weren’t going to at all, although it looks like one might be here soon.

I’ve had Comcast’s service for over a year now, and have been pretty happy with how things have gone with them. The connection is fast, and provides me with what I need to get work done at home. But the limit means if I want to upgrade my library, I’m using a not-insignificant part of my limit to do this, because of the all-or-nothing nature of the upgrade.

As of last night, the download size was over 6GB (equivalent to a season of a TV show I purchased last week). It will surely go up by the time I have the money to do it, if I want to do it. This means I’ll have to crimp in other areas online just to stay under the limit, or risk being booted.

So, it’s a Comcast problem and an Apple problem to contend with. I personally feel $250 is a lot to upgrade my library. Apple has said it is to cover the cost of bandwidth, but why would 6 GB of music cost $250 in bandwidth, while that same 6 GB as a TV show be only $19.99 (which is what I paid for that season)? In the meantime, to get a better version of what I have, I have to limit what I want to do for a few weeks, or wait for the Comcast meter.

I’m sure others of you out there have been using iTunes for awhile. Is a higher-quality file worth the 30 cents per song? Are you considering the upgrade, or have done it? Or are you just going to sit back and enjoy what you already have?