Who Owns XML?

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More IP madness. According to MIT Technology Review,

Executives at Scientigo, a small software maker based in Charlotte, NC, say the company owns two U.S. patents (No. 5,842,213 and No. 6,393,426), that cover one of the fundamental concepts behind XML: the idea of packaging data in a self-defining format that allows it to be correctly displayed wherever it travels.

Scientigo CEO Doyal Bryant says the company plans to capitalize on the patents either  by reaching licensing agreements with big corporate users of XML or by selling them to another company.

That ROKR phone

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From Good Morning, Silicon Valley…

“We got off to a little bit of a rough start. People were looking for an iPod and that’s not what it is. We may have missed the marketing message there.” That’s what Motorola CEO Ed Zander had to say about the company’s ballyhooed ROKR phone, which appears to be sinking like its namesake in the market for converged devices. According to American Technology Research, an exceedingly high percentage of customers who purchased the phone are exchanging it. “As many as six times more customers are returning the ROKR phones than is normal for new handset,” ATR analyst Albert Lin told Bloomberg. “There’s an overall disappointment with the product.” I’ll say. But honestly, what did they expect? With its slow syncing, artificial 100-track limit and ungainly design, the ROKR is a poor substitute for an iPod. And as a cell phone, it’s less than astonishing. You’re better off spending your money on a NAZR.

Nice to know that one’s intuitions are occasionally correct.

Apropos Harriet Miers’s nomination to the Supreme Court…

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… this from Martin Kettle, writing in yesterday’s Guardian:

Back in the dawn of American constitutional history, Alexander Hamilton set out the reasons why it was important to have the Senate act as a check on presidential nominations of this kind. The Senate, he wrote, needs to make a president “both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same state to which he particularly belonged, or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure.”

Earlier in the week, Bush was asked: “Of all the people in the United States you had to choose from, is Harriet Miers the most qualified to serve on the supreme court?”. The president answered “Yes”.

The new Betamax problem

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This morning’s Observer column.

History repeats itself, said Marx, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

Step forward the consumer electronics industry. In the late 1970s, two incompatible video recording systems emerged: Betamax, from Sony; and VHS, from JVC. The battle between them became one of the canonical case studies in the curriculums of business schools, illustrating the victory of marketing over technology, a moral deeply comforting to sales executives and those who teach marketing.

Although the Betamax format was technically superior, VHS won the battle for the hearts and pockets of consumers. It is thus seen as a cautionary tale for smart-ass engineers who think technical sweetness is all that matters.

As ever, reality is slightly more complicated than marketing myth….

Quote of the day

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If I didn’t know any better, I’d say Google’s true corporate mission was to organize the world’s wealth, not its information.

John Paczkowski, writing in Good Morning, Silicon Valley about the news that Google’s income increased seven fold over the last year.

Forget that air guitar…

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… and get one of these.

It’s a Yamaha EZ AG. Each fret has six illuminated microswitches which, when depressed, simulates the sound of a string being pressed at that location. If you want to learn, then the device will ‘play’ a desired riff, lighting up the relevant switches/frets as it goes. Quentin and I found it when buying audio kit at Digital Village. I left him in charge of it while I went to pay. As I was signing the credit card chit, what should I hear but the opening bars of Eric Clapton’s ‘Tears in Heaven’, played expertly.

Someone (Gordon Brown?) should give one of these to Tony Blair when he steps down from Number 10. After all, he used to be an air guitarist before he took up politics. A snip at £149.99!

HP panics over Blu-Ray

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From Good Morning Silicon Valley…

Bill Gates’ recent assertion that Sony’s Blu-ray DVD standard is “anti-consumer” and “won’t work well on PCs”… has apparently put The Fear into Hewlett Packard. At a meeting of the Blu-ray Disc Association Wednesday afternoon, HP, which has shipped a Wintel PC or two in its time, delivered a pointed ultimatum: Include two technologies supported in HD DVD or we will consider switching allegiances. The first of HP’s requested features, “mandatory managed copy,” allows users to copy high-definition movies for use on home networks. The second, iHD, supports PC-friendly interactivity and is slated to be implemented in Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system. HP was “shocked” when Microsoft and Intel announced support for HD DVD, and hopes the addition of these features will lead to a compromise between the rival groups and hopefully a unified standard. “We’re still supporting Blu-ray, but we’re very serious that we want these technologies,” said Maureen Weber, general manager of personal storage in HP’s personal-systems group. “If in the end, they’re supported in one and then not the other; we’ll have to make a choice.”

Coincidentally, HP’s appeal came on the very same day that Forrester predicted Blu-ray will win the DVD format war. “After a long and tedious run-up to the launch, it is now clear to Forrester that the Sony-led Blu-ray format will win,” Ted Schadler, a Forrester analyst, said in a report. “But unless the HD DVD group abandons the field, it will be another two years before consumers are confident enough of the winner to think about buying a new-format DVD player.”

David Pogue likes the video iPod

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See here for his enthusiastic review.

The biggest surprise: watching video on the tiny, 2.5-inch screen (320 by 240 pixels) is completely immersive. Three unexpected factors are at work. First, the picture itself is sharp and vivid, with crisp action that never smears; the screen is noticeably brighter than on previous iPods. Second, because the audio is piped directly into your ear sockets, it has much higher fidelity and presence than most people’s TV sets. Finally, remember that a 2.5-inch screen a foot from your face fills as much of your vision as a much larger screen that’s across the room.

Many people — including Apple’s chief, Steve Jobs — have predicted that video on the iPod would never be as popular as music. One crucial reason is that watching requires your full attention. You can’t do something else simultaneously, like driving or working.

In practice, these predictions turn out to be absolutely accurate. (I established this fact through scientific hands-on testing. Unintentionally absorbed in an episode of “Lost” while walking through Grand Central Terminal, I marched directly into a steel support girder.)