According to the New York Times (via Consumerist.com), the president of Salesgenie.com has apologized for his company's Super Bowl commercials. The animated ads depicted panda bears speaking in Chinese accents and a main character (named Ramesh) who spoke in an Indian accent.

The thing I find really funny is that the company president, Vinod Gupta, apparently developed and wrote the commercials himself. It's funny to me for a couple of reasons -- first is that the guy spent more than $2 million for EACH 30-second ad, but couldn't be bothered to get professional ad people involved (the animation was done by an outside firm, but not the writing/development). The second reason I find it funny is that the Monday commercial wrap-ups across the web universally panned the commercials as lame, ineffective, and offensive. It's one thing to go your own way and not bring in professionals... it's another thing to fall on your face in the meantime.

Salesgenie is actually a part of InfoUSA and Mr. Gupta is the Chairman and CEO of InfoUSA. He wrote the company's ad spots that run in last year's Super Bowl as well. That's right, the chairman of a company whose market cap is nearly $500 million decided to write his own commercials, two years in a row. So he did. Poorly.

The commercial for Salesgenie during the Super Bowl last year was poorly received, but in that instance the complaints were about what viewers perceived as low production values and a hard-sell style.

The Salesgenie commercials were poorly regarded in many surveys, polls and reviews of this year’s 54 Super Bowl ads.

 

For instance, in the 20th USA Today Ad Meter survey, the pandas spot finished 44th and the salesman spot finished 49th.

 

In a survey of blog posts about Super Bowl spots by Collective Intellect, the Salesgenie commercials drew the most negative discussion.

 

Personally, I think Mr. Gupta should apologize to the viewers who have had to watch his commercials. They're horrible.

They are spending some big-time money, though, as one of the Fox pre-game shows was sponsored by Salesgenie and there have been print ads running recently in various national business magazines. And while the stock market's been fairly volatile across the board the last couple of weeks, it doesn't look like Wall Street was too hip on the ads either. Here's the financial equivalent of some Monday-morning quarterbacking earlier this week:

The whole premise of their ads is "100 free leads for your sales peoples." And, for some reason, that just cracks me up... I know the InfoUSA model is to have giant databases of people and businesses, with attributes assigned to that data so they can slice it and dice it based on demographics.

Nonetheless, the idea that a sales group would get value out of some generic "leads" database makes me wonder... doesn't the value of those leads depend on what I'm selling? Suppose my niche is high-end lizard-care products for exotic reptiles? Software aimed at meteorologists who monitor currents in the North Atlantic? USB sushi flash drives? The InfoUSA business has obviously done well, and I'm certainly no salesperson... so maybe it's just me that finds the whole "100 free leads" thing kinda funny.

Or maybe it's funny because it reminds me of Glengarry Glen Ross and the complaining the sales guys did about "the leads". They didn't have "the good leads"... 'cause Mitch and Murray sent them the crap leads! Man, it's time to watch this movie again.

Technorati Tags: super bowl , commercials , glengarry glen ross , sales genie , marketing

An item on TechCrunch this morning pointed me at the official Google blog, where David Drummond (Google Senior VP and Chief Legal Officer) commented on the Microsoft bid for Yahoo. I think it's fair to say that a Google corporate officer blogging on a Google property (Blogger) constitutes their "official" response.

For an official response, it's pretty idiotic. For starters, Drummond twice refers to the letter sent to Yahoo's board by Steve Ballmer as a "hostile bid". Hmm. Is this a hostile bid? A hostile takeover? Let's look at that.

The president of one company sends an open letter to the board of another company, offering to buy that company at a significant mark-up over its current share price. Doesn't seem terribly hostile to me. But I'm no lawyer, so let's go see how others define "hostile" bids for acquisition...

Had Drummond used his own company's search engine's "Define: " syntax, he'd have found this:

Note the key element in there: without the approval of the target corporation's board. What was Ballmer's letter to Yahoo, if not a proposal for the board to consider? Had he searched Wikipedia, he'd have seen this:

A takeover which goes against the wishes of the target company's management and board of directors. opposite of friendly takeover.

... but that topic (Hostile Takeover) links to the "Takeover" topic. A key portion of that (from the Friendly and Hostile Takeovers section within the topic) is [my emphasis]:

When a bidder makes an offer for another company, it will usually inform the board of the target beforehand. If the board feels that the offer is such that the shareholders will be best served by accepting, it will recommend the offer be accepted by the shareholders. A takeover would be considered "hostile" if (1) the board rejects the offer, but the bidder continues to pursue it, or (2) if the bidder makes the offer without informing the board beforehand.

Seems to me that neither of those conditions were met. On (2), the bidder (Ballmer on behalf of Microsoft) did inform the board beforehand. And until/unless Yahoo's board rejects the offer and Microsoft continues to pursue, then condition (1) won't be met either.

Drummond's not totally alone, though... it seems that some in the media are also joining the bandwagon. ABC News has a story that refers to the bid as "hostile" several times... and quotes Kara Swisher as saying "Yahoo had been rebuffing Microsoft's overtures for the past year"... and "You don't tend to try to do a hostile takeover in the Internet space because people just leave," Swisher said. "So it's very unusual Microsoft is attacking Yahoo in this way." "Attacking"? Hyperbole much?

However, Swisher's perspective on the matter is hardly without bias. Just three weeks ago, she was writing that there was no way that Microsoft would acquire Yahoo. She called rumors of Microsoft looking at Yahoo "a tad ridiculous" and, when referring to discussions between former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel and Steve Ballmer, she has this to say [my emphasis]:

It never happened then and will not now.

So how do you get from "it never happened then and won't now" to "they've been rebuffing overtures for the past year"? Then again, I suppose telling ABC News that she frankly doesn't know and was completely off the mark just three short weeks ago isn't the shortest route to a juicy soundbite.

For their part, Yahoo makes it clear in their own official response (published late Friday) that they're reviewing the "unsolicited" bid. Not much else they can see for now, I suppose.

Earlier today, Brad Smith, Microsoft's chief counsel, posted a response to Google's statement. It's a fairly short statement, with the investment relations boilerplate being longer than the statement itself, but these numbers are worth noting:

According to published reports, Google currently has more than 65 percent search query share in the U.S. and more than 85 percent in Europe. Microsoft and Yahoo! on the other hand have roughly 30 percent combined in the U.S. and approximately 10 percent combined in Europe.

It would be nice to know which "published reports" he refers to, but certainly Google's domination in search query share can't be argued. They're a verb at this point (and for good reason... Google's search does rock!).

So now it'll turn into a war of the words... cue the rhetoric and grab your popcorn. Should be an interesting ride.

Technorati Tags: google , microsoft , yahoo , acquisition , techcrunch

I have to be honest... When Twitter was first released and the hype was deafening, I was among the skeptics who questioned the point of the service -- why would I want to constantly update the world on 'my thoughts'? Where I am? What I'm doing, eating, thinking, saying, wondering... or worse? Who would want to read that? And why would I want to read those types of updates from others?

The fact that there was so much emphasis on using SMS/text messages for everything only added to my skepticism. I'm getting these updates on my phone? I only have 140 characters to use?

So I stayed away and chalked it up as one of those "silly web 2.0 fads" that gets announced, hyped, and then drops off the radar while still in perma-beta mode.

Recently, though, a few different things got me to take a look and (finally) create an account:

• A few services I'm using have Twitter "Bots" that I can use to communicate with the service. "Remember the Milk," for example, lets me use Twitter to add things to my task list. The "I Want Sandy" service lets me use Twitter to set reminders for some point in the future. This type of service automation has been around via IM for a while, but the user experience through Twitter seems better to me.
  
• The authors of several blogs I subscribe to have begun putting links to their Twitter streams in their blog templates and sidebars. Maybe they've been there for a while and I'm just now noticing them? In any case, I see subscribing to a blogger's Twitter stream in the same way as subscribing to their del.icio.us bookmarks. If I enjoy reading their blog posts, it stands to reason that I might enjoy their "smaller" thoughts (via Twitter) and the bookmarks they're creating (via del.icio.us). The benefits here are more passive -- I can drop in, read what I like, and then move on -- but they're benefits nonetheless.
  
• My team at work is distributed between Colorado and Tennessee. In addition, we have a fairly flexible environment that allows for telecommuting when necessary (snow days, waiting for the cable guy, and general "life happens" stuff). We use IM and email pretty heavily, but have found that those don't always work well for certain scenarios. Specifically, there are times when we'd like to have some ad hoc group communication. People thinking out loud, asking general questions of the group, or even coordinating around things like issue tracking items, builds, and more. In these cases, IM is a bit too "point to point" because those conversations often turn into "let's email the group and get some more input". Email isn't great because of the latency between arrival, reading, replying, and sending... during which people start to reply on top of one another. It's great for many things... but sometimes you just need a "chat room" for the in-between stuff that happens all day.
  
  So I thought Twitter might be useful for this and created an account... it's easy to use and that ad hoc "one-to-many" style of communicating updates and status is its strong suit. I discovered later that the downside of this is that there's a lot of other noise going on as well -- so unless I subscribe ONLY to my team members' Twitter streams, I'm sifting through other people's updates to get the ones that are work-related. For now, we're going with Campfire from 37Signals and it seems to be working well. Kinda like "private Twitter with file attachments"...

So with these thoughts in mind, I've been giving it a shot and posting occasional status updates. I'm not yet totally convinced - but neither am I as skeptical as I once was. And while the value's not there for work-related team communications (the original point of the exercise), I definitely think the "bot" services are useful and I've enjoyed seeing the updates from others whose blogs I follow...

In using it for a week or two now, I've been "following" (in Twitter's parlance) a few streams that are really worthwhile. One of those is Merlin Mann, the guy behind the 43 Folders productivity site... his Twitter stream seems to be used for stream-of-consciousness thoughts he has throughout the day. And they're usually hilarious... You know how most people have that filter that stops them from saying all the hilarious/cynical/disturbing/obscure things that come to mind throughout the day? I think Merlin just piped his filter to his Twitter stream. One example, recently posted as I type this on Super Bowl Sunday, demonstrates his ability to turn a phrase [say it in the voice of an NFL player]:

"I'm just so humbled that my freakish physique and tolerance for head trauma can be leveraged to sell lite beer. I also wanna thank 'God.'"

In addition to bloggers, I've found other types of streams to be worthwhile - including New York Times (which streams headlines throughout the day as news articles are posted), Woot (which publishes the daily Woot bargain), and TechMeme (which tracks hot topics in tech news).

There's a pretty good "fan wiki" going that provides some other ideas for using the service, including collections of Twitter mashups, "Non Human" streams, organizations, weather for various cities, and even airport status (e.g., Chicago O'Hare)!

So... for now I'm sticking it out to see how it goes. Time will tell whether the value I'm getting now lasts or if it's just short-term novelty.

Who knows... maybe in another 12-18 months, I'll look into this whole Facebook thing.

Technorati Tags: twitter , social networks , im

A few months back, probably after deleting my daily allotment of 100+ spam messages per day, I decided to look into a better way of handling email. The hosting company I use for my domain (Server Intellect) provides a web-based mail client (Smarter Mail) that I often used when out and about. On my machine at home, I used Outlook 2007 to fetch that email. And while Smarter Mail's UI was fine for a web-based mail program, the spam that made it through the filters was ridiculous.

In addition to my personal email, this affected a few other family members who also use email on the domain... and let's face it, no guy wants to hear from his Mother about "how to get rid of all that male enlargement spam."

So I went in search of a better way... as a listener to Scott Hanselman's podcast (and reader of his blog), I knew that he'd recently moved his domain's mail (and other services) over to Google Apps for Domains. His recounting of the tale in the podcast sounded pretty painless, so I went to check it out.

I was very impressed with how seamless and easy the whole thing was. Google provides excellent instructions for how to make the transition, including walkthroughs for the control panels used by many web hosting companies. The process amounts to just a few steps:

1. You prove to Google that you own the domain. The easiest way to do that is to put a file at a certain URL that contains some data they provide. You create it with a text editor, upload it to your site, and let Google know you're done. Google looks for that file and then reads the contents... if it matches what they provided, you're good to go.
2. You decide which services you want to use -- GMail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Start Page, and public pages -- and you can turn them on and configure them as you like. This was great because I could turn on calendar, docs, and start page right away, but figure out how I wanted to transition email later.
3. You use Google's instructions for your hosting company's control panel to make some changes in the routing of traffic in your domain. For me, this was as simple as logging into the domain, adding some A records to indicate where traffic should go (i.e., sending it to special Google URLs where the apps live), and then hit that URL in a browser to see the result.
4. With email, I was originally worried that there would be an awkward transition period... not at all. First, I created all of our accounts in the Google Apps interface so that there were mailboxes in place. Google even gives you a temporary URL you can use to check that mailbox before transitioning to the URL you want (e.g., mail.domain.com), as well as a temporary email address that goes to each mailbox. Google gives nice step-by-step instructions for handling mail transitions in particular.
5. With those in hand, I logged into SmarterMail and set up Forwarding rules on each mailbox -- so that mail sent to me (for example) would automatically be forwarded to my mailbox's special email address over on Google's system. With those rules in place, I changed the MX records with my hosting company so that mail traffic would start to go to Google's servers rather than Server Intellect's.
6. After that change is made, there's a brief transition time while records get updated and the tubes get re-routed. With the forwarding rules, though, nothing is lost or in limbo. Within hours, it seemed, everything was being processed through Google and we were good to go.

That all sounds a little more involved than it actually was... someone moderately familiar with their hosting company's control panel could get the whole thing done in a couple hours in the evening. Maybe more if you had a bunch of mailboxes to go through and set up forwarding rules on.

In addition to Scott's podcast, he also had a few posts on his blog that were helpful when I looked into this. Unlike with Scott's situation, I didn't have a bunch of email to transition UP to the Google mailboxes. I do still have a large Outlook PST file locally, but I'm not convinced I'd get a lot of value out of pushing it all up to my mailbox on the server.

For now, I'm pretty much just using GMail as intended (e.g., leave it all on the server), but I take advantage of the IMAP capability occasionally to move things into some Personal Folders that I want to archive. I do see that, over time, I'll likely start using labels and the "archive" feature of Google Mail and keep more and more info on the server... but that will be a transition that occurs naturally over time rather than jamming all of my current archives up there at once.

Others in the family are using the new setup the same way they used the old one -- use the web interface to handle mail when traveling or when using a different computer, but then let Outlook slurp it all down via POP when they're on their personal machine... but they're increasingly seeing that it's useful to leave it up on the server for convenient access.

It's been a few months since the transition... and overall, we couldn't be happier with it. The service is free, fast, and has added a lot to the way we're tracking things. My wife and I frequently share Google Docs for various things (Christmas shopping lists, chore charts, etc) and we're just starting to use the calendar to keep track of household schedules.

And that spam problem? It's pretty much licked... Google's filters are great. I think the number of spam messages I've seen in roughly three months can be counted in the single digits. I did keep an eye out on the Spam folder to watch for false positives and there were a few. But those could be counted on one hand and, more importantly, I understood why Google wanted to filter them -- mostly they were messages that mentioned poker, a pastime of mine but a frequent topic for spammers.

Bottom line:

Pros

• Virtually no spam.
• Couldn't be easier to setup.
• Uptime and stability of Google services.
• Access to Google's "search" for email.
• Other services we can grow into.
• Free (unless you have more advanced needs)

Cons

• It does require familiarity with your host's control panel... but if you have one of the many standard interfaces they support, that's an easy hurdle.
• I know people will say "use labels!" and "use search!", but I still wish Gmail had folders.
• Some of the Google Apps For Domains services get new features and capabilities slower than their "regular" Google cousins. As Scott has pointed out, it's clear they're not running the same codebase in both places... so things like IMAP support, colored labels, and lots of iGoogle add-ins don't work in Google Apps until weeks after they're generally available elsewhere (if at all).
• Those differences mentioned above also mean you need to be careful when looking at 3rd-party add-ins or tools. Some that work fine with regular Google tools may require hacks, or may not work at all, with the tools available via Google Apps.

Highly recommended!

Note:   This post is the first in a series of posts about moving more of my personal data and productivity tools on to web-based services (i.e., "the cloud"). It's a process that's largely on-going (only mail is "fully" transitioned for us), but I'm working on transitioning my tasks (which Google doesn't yet support), my calendar (both home and office), as well as personal data (important docs, photos, etc) to web-based services.

Technorati Tags: google , google apps , productivity , web services , gmail

I'm seriously contemplating a Windows Home Server solution and am pretty much at a fork in the road. On the one side is the HP Media Smart Server (which includes hardware and the OS), while the other side is the option to buy an inexpensive machine (perhaps via Dell Outlet) and then buy the OS separately.

No decision yet, but the cost difference is negligible... so it boils down to "Do I want something that works out of the box, or is this something I'd enjoy setting up as a project of my own?" Who knows... I'm also considering just going with a more basic NAS style solution.

There are many things to like about Windows Home Server, but one feature that intrigues me is that it has an SDK for writing add-ins (via .NET). I can think of a few add-in projects that would be fun to build.

Unfortunately, the MSDN Subscriptions blog announced today that WHS will not be available to subscribers. They don't comment on why they opted not to make it available... but it's a disappointing decision regardless.

First of all, I should point out that I'm wearing two hats here... The first is as a consumer who will likely be purchasing a WHS license for use in my home (unless I go the pure-NAS route). Because MSDN makes licenses available for development purposes only, I'd be buying a WHS license either way (separately or with the HP server). The second hat is as a developer with an MSDN Subscription who appreciates that the subscription gives me access to the licenses I need to build solutions on Microsoft's platform.

I've seen arguments in MSDN forums that "home" products aren't available via MSDN Subscription. However, I can have a Vista Home or Home Premium install up and running in a couple hours or so using media and/or downloads from MSDN. So there are "home" products on MSDN.

Another argument might be that that it's not technically aimed at developers... sure, but neither is Office, Exchange, or Project -- and each of those is available because developers can build tools that supplement and enrich those products. Home Server doesn't seem any different in this regard with its much publicized add-in model.

Clearly, Microsoft's success over the years is based on the popularity of its platform with 3rd-party developers. Without a rich ecosystem of 3rd party applications and tools, particularly in the business world, would Windows have become the dominant desktop OS? With many agreeing that is the first product aimed at a potentially huge and largely untapped market (small, wireless home networks), why treat Home Server differently in this regard?

In some ways, Home Server is a solution to a problem that many of its target customers don't know they have -- lots of people have small networks at home but no idea that they should be looking into automated backups, remote access to their files, and shared storage for their growing libraries of music, photos, and other data. It's certainly possible that a 3rd-party add-in to Home Server could become the "killer app" that convinces people that it's a "must have" solution.

But if developers on the Microsoft platform don't have access to WHS in the same place they get their other development, testing, and deployment tools, why would they bother?

I must be missing something... what's the downside to Microsoft including Home Server in MSDN?

Technorati Tags: Microsoft , MSDN , Windows Home Server , WHS

Eric Sink has a blog post about his experience in trying to get pricing information out of a vendor whose products he was looking into. Their prices weren't listed on the web site (strike 1), so he had to fill out a web form to request a price. The response he got back was a request for his phone number so that a salesperson could call him (strike 2). Specifically, they wanted to talk about his application and how he planned to use their product (strike 3).

I've run into this several times with development tools and components and it typically tells me one key thing about the vendor involved... you want to jack up the price based on my ability to pay. More succinctly, you want to find out my "price sensitivity" which is just a fancy way of saying, "What it's worth to you?"

That tells me the vendor isn't sure what their product is worth in the market. And that they don't think my time is worth much either (not to be an ass, but I'd like to avoid 30-minute phone calls when the topic could be covered in a 3-sentence email). Finally, it says that you (the vendor) want to dictate to me (the customer) the nature of our relationship.

"How I plan to use your product?" -- What if I'm a rich, whacked out philanthropist who buys software component licenses, reads the Quick-Start Guides to my kids at night, and wants to use your install media as the basis for my Chinese throwing star? What's the price then?

My experience with this is typically in dealing with the vendors that make UI components and other development tools. Doesn't matter if you're talking about Java, .NET, or anything else. One vendor I dealt with recently didn't have any pricing on their web site. Instead, you have to contact a salesperson via email and request a price. The response back was along the lines of this (paraphrased, but not by much):

Before I can give you a price, I really need to find out more about your product and your company. We like to look at ourselves as not just a tools vendor, but also as a partner in your business. Knowing more about the pricing of your products and services will help us craft a relationship that benefits you and ensures that you get the most out of our product.

Pretty amazing, huh? In truth, the conversation was more about him asking me questions than me asking him about licensing their product. He wanted to know how many licenses to our products are sold each year. How many end-users does that represent? What's the pricing of our product? What do our sales forecasts look like?

It's probably worth noting here that the vendor I'm referring to makes exactly one development tool -- a UI component for .NET. And I tried to explain it as simply as I could -- "Look, we already license UI tools from companies X, Y, and Z. I can go to their web site and immediately see how much I have to pay per-developer for their tools, and what the deployment licensing is for those tools (royalty-free distribution, named users, etc)."

But trying to get that information from this vendor was nearly impossible. In the end, I ended up on the phone with the president of their North American business, playing a game of 20-Questions. All so he can make an educated guess at how much I might be willing to pay for the use of his product.

By the way, when I finally got a proposed price (after multiple emails and a long phone call), it was about 8-10x what we were willing to pay to license the component. So much for the analysis of our price sensitivity... We went another direction.

Now, I don't even bother. If I go to a site and can't find any sort of pricing information, I move on.

Technorati tags: development tools, pricing, software, marketing

My last post, on whether non-geeks care about DRM (short: they will), focused on the Apple iTunes Music Store. In it, I mentioned that I've purchased plenty of music via the iTunes store. I also explained the various hoops I have to jump through to get that music into a standard format (MP3) for use elsewhere (Tivo).

What I didn't mention is that my most recent several purchases have been much easier to deal with... not because Apple's making it easier for me, though. In fact, it's Amazon.com that I've been using recently when I look for music. The Amazon experience is really very nice... and while it's not as integrated and seamless as the whole iTunes/iPod world, it's pretty easy to navigate nonetheless.

• First, you download and install the Amazon MP3 Downloader.
• Next, you shop for music. When you find something you want, you choose the "Buy" link.
• Once you confirm the purchase, the Downloader starts running and downloads your tracks in the background. As an added bonus, it will automatically add the new songs/albums to iTunes for you.

The Downloader seems to be a pretty well-behaved piece of software. It runs well and has options for iTunes integration (that auto-add feature), where to store music files that are downloaded, and more.

Ok, so it's nice... but is it better?  I actually think it is a better place to buy music for a few reasons.

• The first, most obvious reason is that you're getting MP3 format files -- they'll play anywhere.
• Second, the audio quality (bit rate) of those files is higher than with the files you get from iTunes.
• Finally, the prices are cheaper. Most songs are $.89 each and albums are typically $8.99 (some are even $7.99).

When I first looked into it, the selection on the Amazon store seemed pretty slim. There were a lot of artists that it simply couldn't carry because they hadn't yet worked out deals with the major record labels. Within the last month or so, though, Amazon has signed the remaining "Big Four" companies and the selection has grown considerably.

Now, the only challenge is to remember that I need to check Amazon first before I click "Add Album" in iTunes!

Technorati Tags: amazon , mp3 , drm , itunes , apple , digital music

The Read/Write Web blog put up a post yesterday asking if DRM-free music matters to consumers. Their point was that if most customers purchasing music on iTunes (with DRM) are using it on their computer or their iPod, then they never really "see" the DRM and don't much care. The music plays in the places where they want it. It's a good point, but I think the number of people whose music is consumed entirely on an iPod or their computer will only diminish.

That's not to say that the number of people using iPods will go down or that I predict the demise of Apple's portable music devices. To the contrary, I have had an iPod for a few years and I love it. If the new iPod Touch were available with capacities larger than 16GB (even at the expense of a few additional millimeters in size), I'd purchase one pretty quickly. I've also purchased many albums/songs through the iTunes Music Store and use it extensively for podcasts.

What I am saying is that I think the number of places and contexts in which we consume music will grow and that those places will increasingly not involve a iPod.

For example, we have a Tivo Series 2 in our family room and it's connected to our home network. The Home Media Option on the Tivo lets me point it at our library of music on a computer in the basement and play back that music through the TV or stereo. The Tivo remote and a full-screen TV are a decent way to navigate a large music collection (though there are many improvements I'd love to see) and the convenience of all our music available that way is great.

The catch is that Tivo's Home Media Option will only let me play MP3 music files. Apple's DRM-protected files aren't recognized at all. There are a variety of similar options for piping music throughout a house and their adoption is likely to rise. As prices come down and digital distribution of content is more widely adopted, it's reasonable to assume that more people (non-geeks) will want the convenience of their music anywhere, anytime.

But for music purchase via iTunes Music Store, you need to jump through several hoops to get the DRM-protected files to play back on those systems. Here are the steps I go through to make it available to our Tivo's music system:

• In iTunes, I have to make a playlist with the songs from the album I purchased.
  
• I then have to burn an Audio CD of that playlist... in terms of content, this gives me a CD similar to the disc I could go purchase in a brick-and-mortar retailer. I say "similar" because Apple's music has compression on it that means the audio on that CD is not as high-quality as on a true, shrinkwrapped CD.
  
• Note also that this disc is now also a reasonable backup to my music. If something disastrous should happen to the computer or the iTunes ecosystem, I've got a regular CD that can be played anywhere.
  
• Now I have to use another program (I like CD-EX) to "rip" that CD into MP3 files. This is the same process you'd go through with any retail CD and is something I did a lot of when initially converting our CD collection into MP3.
  
• Now that I have MP3 files, I also like to use MP3Gain to process those files and set the audio levels. This non-destructive process helps to set the volume levels in MP3 files consistently, which helps fix the problem of playlists that get very loud and then very quiet.

At the end of this, I've got my purchased music in three places and three different formats -- the iTunes DRM-protected files from Apple, the physical CD I burned, and the non-DRM-protected MP3 files that will play through the Tivo.

Clearly, a better option is to purchase my music without any DRM on it. I can burn a disc if I want to (and I do make sure to have a backup of some type either way), but I don't have to jump through all those hoops to play my music where I want, when I want. The MP3 file format is so ubiquitous that I know it will play on any portable player, through all sorts of CD/DVD players and stereos, and through playback systems like the Tivo that stream the music on demand.

So... even if a consumer doesn't care about DRM today, I'd argue that they will. I can easily see a situation where a non-techy (say, my parents) get an iPod and enjoy the convenience of purchasing music through iTunes. Down the road, though, they'll have cheaper, more prevalent, and less-geeky solutions for playing their music somewhere other than that iPod.

Only THEN will they realize what the DRM has "cost" them... and they're unlikely to be in a position to do anything about it. The whole burn-then-rip two-step described above isn't something my parents would work out or stumble across.

They'd simply be locked in and stuck. And it will matter.

Technorati Tags: drm , mp3 , digital audio , ipod , itunes , tivo