From Electronista:

Microsoft on Thursday said it might cut the price of its Zune Pass subscription service. Senior product lead Terry Farrell wouldn’t say how certain this was or how much it might drop, but recognized that the Zune’s $15 monthly, unlimited downloads weren’t necessarily competing well. Music is a “challenging business,” he told BusinessWeek in a chat.

Because nothing is better than a shitty service, than a shitty, cheap service.

A few clips faster than my exhaust.

The name was suggested by Ginn’s brother, artist Raymond Pettibon, who also designed the band’s logo: a stylized black flag represented as four black bars. Pettibon stated “If a white flag means surrender, a black flag represents anarchy.” Their new name was reminiscent of the anarchist symbol, the insect spray of the same name, and of the British heavy metal group Black Sabbath, one of Ginn’s favorite bands. Ginn suggested that he was “comfortable with all the implications of the name.” The band spray painted the simple, striking logo all over Los Angeles, gaining attention from potential supporters, and thoroughly irritating police. Pettibon also created much of their cover artwork.

via Wikipedia

Electronista: Amazon says Kindle won’t chase iPad, focused on reading

Amazon won’t try to copy the iPad with future versions of the Kindle, CEO Jeff Bezos said in an annual shareholders’ meeting today. He stressed that the Kindle would emphasize e-reading and likened its role to that of a dedicated camera versus a phone camera. Just as a phone is multi-purpose but won’t be the best camera, an iPad won’t necessarily be the best reader, Bezos said.

I’d love to see the Kindle become an amazing e-book reader and I think that by focusing on the Kindle doing just one thing versus trying to be everything they can do that, but right now, the Kindle is not a better e-book reader than the iPad. I’ve had a first generation Kindle and it’s decent. After I started using it for a few weeks I soon realized the limitations of the device. In short – Amazon needs to put laser focus on better software.
Whatever Bezos’ true plans and intentions, I hope he’s taking some of his own advice.

Hints, previews and sneak peeks.
They go hand-in-hand with prototypes, demos and proof-of-concept products.
These impossible-to-buy, incomplete, vaporware products – coupled with speculations – form the bulk of technology news. It’s bullshit is what it is.
Here are a few recent ones I like:
Yahoo, Nokia to unveil ‘Project Nike’ deal – Yahoo announces an alliance with Nokia. Wow. Screenshots? Mobile apps to demo? Nothing? Amazing stuff guys.
Microsoft Cancels Innovative Courier Tablet Project – Microsoft first leaks videos featuring a concept product, and then cancels it about 6 months later. Nice.
NVIDIA hints webOS tablet, rags on Apple and Intel – The title says it all. All talk, no walk.
This is just one of the many reasons Jory Kruspe and I started HEED (It’s one of my reasons anyway). HEED is about the process that creates well-designed products. It’s about how something that’s well-designed can improve the quality of life. It’s about pointing out places in world where there’s bad design and why businesses and individuals need to wake up and heed to design.
I’m not saying not to dream. I’m saying do something with those dreams. Make something. Find a process that allows you to execute your ideas. And when you find that process, use it.
The articles mentioned above are all (potentially) great ideas, but a design isn’t successful unless it’s executed.
That’s why Jory and I started HEED as Twitter and Flickr accounts. We both are busy with our jobs and haven’t been able to put aside the time to create the picture-perfect venture we’ve envisioned in our heads. So we’re starting with a seed.
Hey, at least we’re starting.

Art is a jealous mistress, and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture, or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860
via Laphams Quarterly

Words of wisdom for anyone in a position of hiring from Heidi Hackemer at BBH.
The article pertains to the hiring methodology for the advertising world that BBH lives in, but I would go so far as to say this should be the methodology for every industry:

The second column is where things got interesting: we also looked for candidates that had a bit of “mess” in their resume, i.e. a curiosity, a drive to think about and do things beyond pursuing the perfect advertising career. As a result we have filmmakers, activists, dancers and a guy that has worked in third world development.

And:

We believe the mess is just as important as the “proper” education and inputs: advertising is one of those fields that should collaborate not only internally, but with culture at large – to be relevant and human we should inhale the world around us, circulate it in our lungs a bit and then exhale our response. The minute that we get too obsessed or spend too much time focusing on what happens within our walls or the minute the great love in our life becomes a widget or :30 second idea is the minute we lose the oxygen that we need to make great work.

This mindset is especially important in the design industry. Our greatest ideas come from being interested in everything, then combining disparate ideas into new combinations for products and services.

Flash Co-Creator Jonathan Gay Responds to Steve Jobs
I’m hoping to get the iPhone vs Flash stuff out of my system so I can post thoughts on other topics, but I’m still too interested in the arguments. Call me a chick, but I like drama and gossip.
In the interview, Gay rehashes all the ‘open’ talk I’m already way to familiar with. I’m going to skip over commenting on that as well as all the “Apple-is-hurting-users-by-not-providing-Flash-on-the-iPhone” talk. Enough already.
I did find this nugget funny, where the interviewer asks Gay “how much would the Flash player need to evolve before it would meet Steve Job’s strict efficiency standards”:

It’s worth noting that Flash was developed on a 66 Mhz 486 which is probably one tenth the speed of an iPhone. So I don’t think there is a fundamental architectural issue. I think the Flash architecture with the binary file format is inherently higher performance than HTML for multimedia.

Gay is absolutely right. Flash was developed for those very limited specifications way back in the day. But if I recall the days when I used to design and develop in Flash 4, cerca 1999, the Flash plug-in was around 200K (Adobe has all the versions archived on their site). Granted, it also couldn’t dynamically load JPGs or any video. It also couldn’t load XML files. Or do PaperVision3D.
Looking into my Internet Plug-ins folder today, the Flash 10 plug-in is 13MB.
Times have changed. I’m not saying Flash can’t be refactored to run on a mobile device, but Adobe still has a lot of work ahead of them.

MacNN: GQ records extremely low iPad magazine downloads
VP and publisher Pete Hunsinger doesn’t seem to get digital:

Hunsinger defends the iPad edition, claiming that it costs “nothing extra,” given that there are no printing or shipping costs. The iPad app is $2 less than the print edition, and GQ is also charging just $2 for back issues. The VP says he expects the iPad to eventually become a “major component” of circulation; one boost is anticipated with the June issue, which will feature Australian supermodel Miranda Kerr.

First off, I would argue that the iPad version should cost as much, if not more than the print version. From my experience, most people don’t understand the costs that go into building products/experiences/tools for the web. There’s an incorrect assumption that because this product isn’t physical and ‘real’, it must be cheaper to make.
The truth is that it should cost a lot of money to create an iPad version of GQ magazine if they truly exploit everything that makes experiences on the iPad great. This doesn’t mean you have to go overboard when using a new medium, but it does mean creating an appropriate experience.
And that’s what we’re talking about when talk about building for iPads and iPhones – experiences. I’ve read a number of stories in the press about the iPad being a device for passive consumption, but that’s a premature dismissal. If GQ is simply digitizing text and making image galleries that you can flick through, they’ve missed the point. That’s easy.
My second point is that the iPad is not and should never be ‘the savior’ of the print industry.
Every company is responsible for their own fate. Whether you’re Conde Nast trying to convert your print publications into digital experiences, or Adobe trying to make Flash relevant to mobile computing, blaming or praising Apple for your failure or success is to sell your company short.
Conde Nast is moving their properties onto an amazing platform. They’re responsible for creating an amazing experience.
Evolve or die.