Digital Lifestyle Laundry

I'm going through a strange life laundry process with my PC's and the 6.4 bajillion files, MP3's, digital photo's and documents strewn all over 6 hard disk partitions as if Hurrican Ivan had spent a fortnight inside my beige tower. The reality is that it's a few years worth of neglect and undisciplined filing plus a rampant tendency to duplicate everything about eight times in different folders on different disks just in case a hard drive goes pop.

So, I'll never lose anything but I can never find anything either. Time to clean up.

Checklist :

1. Install Windows XP Service Pack 2, this took ages on my 56k dialup. DONE

2. Remove 48,000 duplicate files, using NoClone. 10%

3. Organise existing MP3's and rip entire CD collection into iTunes/iPod. 50%

4. Organise all digital photographs into year folders. Picasa looking good. Timeline view rocks. DONE

5. Replace 802.11b USB adapter with a 802.11g access point. DONE

6. Order ADSL, I'm told there's a good chance I may get it this time. Will know in a couple of days. PENDING

7. Defrag x 6. PENDING

Trojan iPod

My new iPod just arrived and it's quietly charging away whilst consuming vast amounts of MP3s from my PC's disk. A couple of observations; the iPod, besides what it represents at a face value function level, is a very clever move by Apple and a real market share trojan horse. Now that I - a PC user - own a piece of Apple hardware and can now experience what it's like being an Apple customer, with all the quirky coolness the brand experience conveys, I'm a whole lot closer to buying an Apple computer.

With the iPod, Apple has skilfully smoked its brand right under Microsoft's radar, rather than confronting head on, Microsoft's otherwise unassailable fortress of PC market domination. And in doing so, Apple has been able to find an unlocked back door.

And I don't just mean they've nicked the MP3 player market from MS or other MP3 kit vendors, what they've done is to chip a big piece off the entire PC user communities' MS or PC brand loyalty and appreciation which, besides making Apple loads of money at the iPod level, may critically harm the dominant market share currently locked down by the PC vendor / MS vendor community. There's definitely a short and long game with the iPod. Definitely a trojan horse on a switch mission.

A truly brilliant business plan.

Wardriving With Doc

Picked up Doc Searls from his hotel in Regents Park last night en route to G&S in Soho (where I would later meet Stowe Boyd, Phil Wolf, and some other fine people I've previously met) and no sooner was he sitting in the passenger seat than he whipped out his not inconsiderably sized widescreen Powerbook and set about firing up his Macstumbler app to scan the route for WiFi hotspots. It was great to chat and share stories, Steven Wright jokes and various other stories from the tech frontline. Both my and Doc's social networks have been converging in one way or another for about 4 years, initially on outer fringes via the Cluetrain mailing list in 2000, then in low earth orbit via our blogrolls and posts and now in good old fashioned facetime - we first met face to face back in May but never got a good opportunity to chat with him properly. I never cease to be amazed and I delight at the way technology influences my life like this.

But I was totally impressed with James Cox's throw-away comment which totally popped my reality valve; with a perfectly serious facial expression and tone, James blurted out "and I can now synchronize my VoodooPad Wiki notes with my iPod." Roll back ten years, nay five even, and such pub talk would have been considered absolutely interplanetary in nature and origin. OK, maybe that sentence is still interplanetary to 99.9% of the population, but 0.1% of seven billion is still a big number. Awesome.

I also smirked when the discussion about RFID cited an example in Bulgaria (I think) where an RFID trial involved having an embedded chip in your upper arm, facilitating automatic payment for goods (presumably just by waving your arm about), but I did wonder how long it would be before people had RFID chips on their shoulders, and would people with RFID chips on their shoulders actually be resentful about the fact whilst simultaneously enjoying their new found consumer freedom?