Recently, I worked a little bit on this blog¹ and thought about how I’m gonna blog when I’m at the re-publica. Installing and configuring all this git(hub) stuff on my laptop is the only way. I can write text on my iPad or iPhone, but I can’t publish from it. Maybe there’s a solution that involves a ‘server’² and some scripts that detect changes - aka new articles in a folder - that’s synced via dropbox. But that involves some effort. For me, at least.

So I thought:

Well, I used the wordpress software once, that’s pretty huge, but there’s all this easy-blogging tumblr stuff going on, right? All I need is a service sporting an iOS App that I can create drafts with and post from. Should be pretty easy to get a slick, nice-looking text-only blog going.

Boy, was I wrong.

Spaces, hm? Okay, multiple blogs, I get it.
'SLIDESHOW', are you kidding me?

Why sould I post a photo of me? Chat? FOLLOW?

I just can't use a standard theme. But I know so little CSS, it ain't worth 30$/year. Also: WordPress lets you follow people now, too.

Is blogger doing a geocities rememberance thing today? Oh no, they're serious about this design.

To be more specific:

• Posterous tries to be tumblr. Nobody wants that. Posterous doesn’t need to be thumblr, they could try to differentiate themselves and provide a service without all this ‘follow’ and ‘easy publishing’ crap. Instead, the posterous iOS app looks exactly like tumblr’s, but yellow.
• Posterous’ iOS app doesn’t support online drafts. So I can’t start writing a post at home and finish it on the subway. Full mobile capability was one of the main reasons why I started looking for alternatives. With Dropbox and an iOS text editor, I have all my drafts and posts with me, at least.
• WordPress.com is even worse, they go in all directions at once. They still do their serious publishing thing. But you can ‘follow’ people now, too.
• When you delete all the widgets from the sidebar(s), WordPress still displays a ‘standard set’.
• Blogger. I just couldn’t get beyond that hideous sign up screen.
• What’s wrong with these services? Following people on Twitter makes sense, and maybe on Instagram. For consuming any other form of content, RSS is the way to go. Does Posterous really think a stream of only their content deserves an extra space in my daily routine of media consumption? That’s cute. And dumb.

I’m not a web developer, I’m not a designer or programmer of some kind. I’m a law student who likes tech very much and is able to google the html and CSS snippets he needs. But all those ‘easy blogging’ services³ make the option of writing a script and running a server look very… easy.

1. This footnote displays beautifully in Instapaper! And Instapaper now knows my name! These features are brought to you by @talinee. Thx! ↩

2. My desktop machine. ↩

3. There are no ‘blogging’ services anymore, apparently. ↩

For a long time, I’v been using ‘XBMC Remote’¹ for… guess what? Remote controlling the XBMC isntallation on my main media home work ubuntu machine. It could’ve been better, though, but among all the crap out there in the App Store, it was the best.²

… or so I thought. Then, a littlie birdie (thanks, Mats) told me to check out ‘XBMC Commander’. I did so (iPhone version), and was impressed. Once you wrap your head around the gesture control thingy, it works great. There is nothing you can’t get XBMC to do while you sit on your sofa in front of your giant TV. With a lot of style, that is. It even offers the IMDb link for a movie that you’re looking at that acutally switches you over to the IMDb App.

There also is an iPad version of the app, you have to decide for yourself whether that’s good or not. For me, the attention should be on the big screen, cause that’s what XBMC’s all about. Yeah, that’s right, I just assumed that you have an iPad and an iPhone at your disposal.

Hint: The ‘Small Thumbnails’ layout gets rid of the awful bookshelf and chalkboard layout that actually might have kept you from buying the app. But now I told you, so go get it.

Disclaimer: The App is the best one I’ve ever used for the purpose it serves. Still, it could be better. The layout should be switched for the whole app, not for every single media type, for example. Or the position of the ‘Options’ menu button.
But it’s at good as it gets as far as XBMC Remote Apps go, and in this case, that’s really quite good.

1. I’m not linking it, because it’s the devil. ↩

2. To be honest: Since iOS5, it was kinda buggy. I kept telling myself ‘It’s okay!’, but it was a lie. ↩

Here’s Marco’s reaction to Andy Ihnatko’s thoughts on The Oatmeal’s point (The new comic about how it’s impossible to legally buy ‘Game of Thrones’).

Clever thoughts. The Oatmeal’s comic is spot-on. But Andy reminds us of the publisher’s right to choose how and when he wants to make his goods available. I’m sure Andy is a very digital person and no lobbyist for rights holders. But (his) use of the verb ‘steal’ when ‘copying’ is meant kinda freaks me out.

you’re just one of those people who prefer to steal things if they think they can get away with it

Because: copying is not theft. And, from my German-European perspective I have to add:

1. All the people who watched ‘Game of Thrones’ between it becoming ‘available’ online and the premiere on the German pay TV channel ‘TNT Serie’ fueled the hype for it and were among the first fans in Germany. ‘TNT Serie’ sure was happy about that.
2. A German consumer’s wait for the original, english version to become available in a legal way often times is/was much longer than for the dubbed version.

To be fair: Apparently, ‘Game of Thrones’ was made available on iTunes at November 2nd 2011, in both English and German, one Episode per week as they simultaneously aired on ‘TNT Serie’. New productions like ‘New Girl’ seem to be treated the same way. But then again, there’s DRM for iTunes’ video content.¹

My apologies for the detour. Marco replies to Andy:

It’s unrealistic and naïve to expect everyone to do the “right” thing when the alternative is so much easier, faster, cheaper, and better for so many of them.

I think that’s something we can all agree on. But I want to elaborate on the ‘right’ in there.
The core problem is that publishers make doing the ‘right’ thing stupid and archaic. I’m not sure there’s a solution to this problem except for other publishers or the existing ones changing their minds. Music was in the same spot a few years ago. Today, copying music just seems so… stressful. There are multiple suppliers who offer DRM-free music at terms that aren’t unreasonable. And there are models that let you listen to as much music as you want, like Spotify - at least in some countries.²

TV isn’t there yet. It’s at the beginning of its own disruption, and some people live by its old rules, some don’t. But there’s no reason to hold on to the old rules. When video content is offered in the way music is today, there’s just as much money in it as before the Internet happened. One could argue that the most evolution-hindering factor is the amount of money that is still made the old way.

Classical TV, whether in the US or in Europe, won’t go away the day after tomorrow, but its relevance will begin to fade out soon, and with it will the money that’s coming in. ‘New revenue streams’ is the keyword, I believe. The copying that currently is considered illegal is one of those streams, but seemingly nobody wants to put the ‘revenue’ back in it. It could be in there, trust me, just look at the iTunes music sales.

One last note: I’ll be damned if the new Apple TV doesn’t offer something that’s very relevant to this discussion. Even if it’s not the the hardware itself, but the lack of DRM or something like that.

Update: So, 1080p playback for the Apple TV, it is. Maybe more.

1. I ain’t buyin’ that, because I don’t get what I pay for. I don’t blame Apple, though, because clearly it’s the studios who want to ‘protect’ their content. ‘Protect = not sell’, that is. ↩

2. As you can see, even that whole music thing isn’t fully developped yet. But way further than movies and television. ↩

This week, abc did an ‘special report’ on the working conditions at Foxconn, a (not solely) Apple manufacturer. First off: I don’t know if HIMYM’s Sandy Rivers is a parody of Bill Weir or the other way around.
I almost had forgotten how bad ‘TV’ is. Yes, this is American TV, but it was more or less of the quality a ‘news report’ on one of our private channels would be. It was fifteen minutes, separated by three commercial breaks. That’s how ‘in depth’ it gets. It was nothing more than Apple handing ABC something ‘exclusive’ and ABC being thankful in return. He actually talked to the chief guy of the Fair Labour Association about how he expected Foxconn to put on a show for visitors like him. ‘Yeah, they do, but we expect that and it’s normal’ was his answer, and that was was it on that topic. Weir repeatedly stressed how Apple and Foxconn encouraged him to talk to anyone on the Foxconn campus - the employees acually complained about the prices for food and the crowded dorm rooms - wow, I’m impressed by this example of investigative journalism.
It was actually quite cute in what an angry voice Bill Weir told the viewers how he repeatedly had asked for Tim Cook to give an interview about working conditions at Foxconn but was turned away. Can you believe it?!

It all makes sense considering the disclaimer at the beginning of the show: abc’s CEO sits on Apple’s board and the Steve Jobs trust is involved somehow, too. So, this ‘report’ was bad, plainly bad. But quite good if understood as PR stunt.

That doesn’t mean I’m rooting against Apple in this stupid and most self-righteous discussion ever. Foxconn also manufactures hardware for Samsung, Nintendo, Nokia and others. Suicides are below Chinese average. Foxconn just raised wages for employees in Shenzen. However, all of that doesn’t make working at Foxconn a piece of cake, of course. But nothing in China is, really.

Whoever lives in a first-world country and points a finger at Apple really doesn’t get it. People should collect everything in their household that’s ‘Made in China’, and then think about the conditions all that stuff was manufactured under. Good thing people blame Apple so they can feel better about themselves. One just has to admit that who’s born in a first world country is very, very lucky. Maybe being in a situation that makes you apply to a Foxconn job offering isn’t that lucky. But relatively speaking, the workers at Shenzen are better off than the folks who applied but didn’t get the job. Really, it’s a global problem, and the situation at Shenzen and Apple’s involvement in it are just symptoms.

Does that mean we shouldn’t do anything? No. But again: Blaming Apple so you can feel better about yourself doesn’t change anything.