DRM Crippled CD: A bizarre tale in 4 parts

Aside

This article on The Big Picture tells a bizarre story about DRM crippled CDs. This actually hits home for me as over the weekend I found that the new G3 – Live In Tokyo CD (Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, and John Petrucci) came out and is also DRM protected. iTunes only has the partial album – no Petrucci. Disappointing. This story is a pretty interesting read and shows how rediculous this copy protection thing is and how petty one company can be.

Google Reader

I’ve been using the Google Reader for the last few days since I’ve been away from my home machine, where I usually use FeedDemon for all of my RSS aggregating needs. I have to say, I’m digging it. One nice thing about having Google software to manage this kind of stuff is that they are confident enough to give you the ability to export your feed data to external feed readers if you aren’t happy with it.

Joel Spolsky wrote an article back in 2000 about removing barriers to entry in order to get your product accepted in the market. One of these barriers is allowing the user the option to go back if they feel they have made a mistake. Google has removed this barrier to entry for us, allowing us to go back to what we are comfortable with if we want to.

I’m not sure I’m going to go back. I really like what Google has done with their aggregator. Check it out and see if you don’t feel the same way.