Category Archives: Random

Stories in my ears

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After a couple of months of debating it I finally got an Audible subscription today. To put it bluntly it really does sum up why DRM just doesn’t work.
For those not in the know Audible is a subscription service for audiobooks. The basic plan gives you one audiobook a month for £8 a month and a discounted rate if you want to buy more (usually £4). Considering the cost of physical audiobooks this is fairly good value, no complaints there.
The problem is the format it comes in. Audible uses its own DRM file format which a few select players can play. Now this isn’t a problem when you have an Android or iPhone which have native Audible apps but what if you want to play it in the on a Windows Phone 7 handset?
There is a way to convert the files to MP3, the Audible website even tells you how to do half of it. Burn them to CD and rip them back to MP3.
So after downloading the files to my computer I then have to download iTunes which is the only player which is actively supported. Then you can make a playlist of the audio books and burn the to disc. That said you are best checking that you have a lot of spare CDs or a virtual ISO program as an audio book in CD audio format is going to take up half a dozen discs. Once that is done you can then rip the discs back to MP3.

OR you could download a pirate copy and save yourself a couple of hours of pain. If I wanted to I could have found a pirate copy in minutes and saved myself some time and money. When will companies learn that DRM like this doesn’t work. It punishes paying customers and does nothing to stop people who want to steal it doing so.

Audible you make me want to steal

Goodbye Consoles?

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Earlier generations of console offered something that wasn’t available else where. Hardware wasn’t as cheap and forthcoming as it is these days. Consoles offered a relatively cheap platform to make games on.

The modern world is heaving with easily accessible hardware. Handheld consoles which were once bespoke hardware now use the same hardware as their smartphone cousins. So if the hardware doesn’t make them unique, what does? Nintendo have become the masters of selling tried and tested electronics to the masses. While Microsoft and Sony battle it out with the powerhouse machines and lose money on hardware as they do Nintendo go about and do their own thing. The only way to win the hardware race is not to take part, there will always be something faster and better out shortly.
Sony have recently annouced their NGP, which looks very nice. Unfortunately it doesn’t really offer anything new, there is no unique selling point here. You have a very generic experience for the user, if they have used any other console before they aren’t going to find anything new here. The 3DS on the other hand offers something very unique for many consumers, just like the DS and Wii did before it.

So if we are going to see familiar games on the NGP with its off the shelf hardware why does it need to exist?The tech world seems to be moving towards a more unified environment why not just develop the Playstation Portable as a platform rather than just a set bit of hardware? Sony announced with the Xperia Play that they would also be releasing the Playstation Suite which plays playstation one games on android handsets. Why not just create a new platform which takes full advance of the power instead?

The Unity games development platform is the perfect example. It is being used to create rich games that are usable on multiple platforms with just a small client install. Why not just have a “Playstation Mobile” platform that can be installed on Android, Apple or Windows Mobile handsets?