Unserwater Video S.Severa - summer 2010

Changing the look of my blog

I'm trying to change the look of my blog, it's a work in progress.
As a consequence I'm seriously hating the templating system used by blogger...
Anyway I found a base template that I like and I'm working on tweaking it to my needs.

Update: Argg! Why doesn't IE 6 support transparent PNGs?? The result really stinks! I'll start all over again..

Audiobooks in no man's land

I often listen to the podcasts of the TWIT network (This Week in Tech, www.twit.tv), most of which are sponsored by Audible.com. A few days ago, I decided to try their service (until then I bought audiobooks through iTunes). Incredibly, every single book that interested me was present when I wasn't authenticated, but disappeared when I loged in. I asked their customer service, and they explained they didn't have the rights for selling those audiobooks in Italy.Yesterday I looked for the last book, On Intelligence, and even this was not available so a decided to cancel my Audible account and also sent the mail that follows.

I don't understand the logic behind this issue, maybe someone has bought the rights for these books in Italy, but why then can I buy them in paper form Amazon.co.uk?

Digital divide? Who knows..

Dear Sirs,
I do not care if I lost 2 credits in leaving your service, but I realized it is of no use for me, every single book I wanted to buy is not available for my country, Italy. I don't have any idea of what is the sense of this since no one else provides audiobooks locally, and I'm not at all interested in translations.
To be transparent in your service, you should post a warning, upon registration for Italians (and other countries with the same restrictions), that many of the books that seem available when you are unregistered are not when you login.
It seems that most of your catalogue is cut in half as soon as one logs in.
I would also suggest that you list the books anyhow, instead of hiding them (avoiding th user to check and double check), posting a message regarding the reason it is unavailable.

If you have a chance, I suggest you to remind the rights holder who does not allow these audiobooks to be sold in my country, that this kind of barrier is an incentive to piracy.
Everyone should have the chance to buy content easily and at a reasonable price.
This does not mean that I will pirate these books.
I will only have to buy them, in paper, from Amazon (where they are available), and this makes your service useless to me.

I have put Leo Laporte and Steve Gibson in copy, since their great podcasts are the reason why I tried your service and they should be informed in case they might be interested.

Regards,

Alessandro Canepa

UPDATE (1/8/2007)
Audible's answer:
Dear Alessandro,

I understand that you have some legitimate concerns regarding the service we provide and the audio that is available in your region. I really do apologize for the inconvenience that this may have caused you in regards to this situation. I can assure you that we, audible.com, is aware of the issue that many customers like yourself are having. This is a large concerns for us and we are diligently working with our publishers to obtain the necessary rights to make all of our books available to you and other regions. Unfortunately though, this is a lengthy process that our content department must try to overcome. Your business is very important to us and we are not happy to hear that you are not satisfied with the service. I will present this email to my superiors to make them aware of the issue. In the meantime, if there is anything I can do to make your time with Audible more pleasant please let me know. Again, I do apologize for the inconvenience and I hope that you are able to use our service in the near future once we have been able to make more of the books available to you.

Sincerely,
Mauro B.
Audible Customer Support.

How Permanent Is Your CD-R?

An interesting article on archival life of CD-R's, a must-read for everyone relying con CDs.
"low priced CD-R’s may not be readable, at all, and error in as little as two years".."but 70 years would be low for a quality CD-R with the norm being 100 years"
So we better keep this in mind..

read more | digg story

“Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish” says Steve Jobs at Stanford University

“Find what you love” says the man who’s “thinking different” has delivered us with the first personal computer, the Mac and recently the iPod. Creative innovation has always been the focus of Jobs and his companies, and probably few other men have contributed so much to global progress.

I really admire Jobs, as he once said “We hire people who want to make the best things in the world”. The difference is in the concept of what is best, not the product which captures the market but the one that creates new markets.

In my opinion that is the great difference between Jobs and Gates, and between Apple and Microsoft; creating verses dominating.

You can read the text of Jobs’ speech here, an article with the italian transaltion is available here.