Greetings from the sky! I’m writing this on my flight back to Seattle from Boston and noticed that the tech-news-o-sphere is all abuzz about Amazon’s new cloud music products recently announced. In a nutshell, Amazon automatically now is giving its MP3 customers accessibility to their music anytime and in any place via an online digital media locker (“cloud drive”) and an online music “cloud player”.

My predication is that this is the beginning of consumers (mass consumers, not just early adopters) migrating from an ownership mentality to an accessibility mentality. Here’s what I mean:

Moving from the CD to the MP3 was the first shift for me. I remember a few years ago when I still preferred to purchase CDs and then rip a copy for myself so that I’d have my music both in digital format and in a physical format. It was important for me to “own” it and know that I had something tangible.

But then I started realizing what a hassle that was and began just purchasing MP3s without CDs. Nowadays, ironically enough, my biggest concern (in terms of managing my media) is dealing with the limitations of my “ownership”. I like to listen to music on my computer(s), in the car, during a workout, while playing Xbox, at home, at work, during travel, etc. etc.

And it’s not just music, it’s all my media (movies, shows, music, pictures, and books). My biggest constraint is often figuring out which device has how much storage and how best to micromanage my “ownership” to optimize my usage of particular media on-demand.

In short, my perceived need for local “ownership” is a pain. Wouldn’t it be great if ownership wasn’t the first priority? Imagine a world where storage space is no longer an issue. Your media content is online, “in the cloud” in such a way that you can get to it from wherever you are.

That’s not what Amazon announced. But rest assured, that’s where media consumption is going. And I can’t wait!

First, a quick recap on Radiohead’s place in the world of digital distribution experimentation:

In 2007, Radiohead decides to release their album “In Rainbows” exclusively on Radiohead.com with a unique “choose your own price” model. You pick how much you pay (free being an option), and you then can download the album. Next, comScore releases numbers from the Radiohead experiment, which suggest that most of us are cheapskates and freeloaders.

Then, Radiohead responds to comScore’s numbers and says they “no way reflect the true success of the project” even if also stating that the real numbers are “not for public consumption.” Finally, Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke calls the whole thing “a one-off response to a particular situation.”

Fast forward to 2011, and we have Radiohead’s latest distribution model: their new album The King of Limbs is only available on their site for a price of $9 and up (depending on which version you get). The release date was February 18, 2011. But even if I call myself a mild-to-moderate Radiohead fan (have — and have paid for — most their music), I haven’t yet listened to “The King of Limbs.” Here’s why:

My music purchase behavior starts with Zune (I am a Zune Pass subscriber, which means I can listen to most mainstream music via a monthly subscription fee), then goes to Amazon MP3, and then moves to iTunes as a last resort. Occassionly, a fourth location I’ll go for music purchasing is Amazon, for the physical product once known by many: the CD. However, that’s only in the case where the CD comes with something I can’t get with just the digital download.

So where does Radiohead land in my music purchase process? Nowhere. It’s not on Zune, Amazon MP3, or iTunes. And Amazon has the CD listed with a release date of March 29, 2011, but with no extras included.

So why don’t I just go to Radiohead’s site and pay them directly?

1. That’s not where I shop.
2. That’s not where I trust my credit card to be stored/used.
3. That’s not where automated services reside post-purchase to make sure my downloads automatically integrate into my two platforms for music organization (Zune & iTunes).

In short, the fulfillment experience is messy. That’s what I’d expect if I were to opt-in to pirating music. But if I’m paying? It needs to be seamless.

Radiohead should stick with what they know: music. And I’d rather make a statement by not purchasing Radiohead’s album, than make a statement by jumping through their hoops.

Let’s face it: we all love making comparisons. It’s an easy way to simplify a point. The problem, though, lies in the implicit assumptions and interpretations that go along with a comparison. Meaning, as soon as you make your comparison, it’s as if you’re holding all else equal while at the same time elevating your comparison to a higher level of credibility as compared to any of the unspoken alternative comparisons involving the two things you’re comparing.

And so it happened today with a post over at TechCrunch entitled “Is Google at Risk of Becoming the Next Microsoft?” Guest author Peter Sims makes some interesting commentary about Google (after sharing an intriguing story) but then sidetracks an otherwise good read by trying to simplify his point via a comparison of Google to Microsoft (see title above). As a result, that’s probably all this article is going to be remembered for.

Ironically, this comparison is coming from a tech blog that found it necessary to discuss Apple passing Microsoft in market valuation in three separate blog posts. Interesting. Perhaps someone should remind Sims that Google needs to come up with $70+ billion of market worth before it can experience the dreadful risk of becoming like Microsoft.

Sarcastic simplified comparison rebuttal aside, here’s my real point (quoting myself with emphasis added, a comment I left on the post at TechCrunch after Sims defended his comparison based on Microsoft’s 10 years of flat stock performance):

This whole title/question is based on just one angle and flawed as a result: it’s only the shareholder’s perspective. Why not link to MSFT profits or revenues over the past 10 years? Why not link to the growth of computers in households over the last 10 years? Oh right, because we’re talking about success as defined by stock market investors… Is that really the best measurement? For them, maybe, but for the rest of us who don’t actually short or buy millions of shares of certain stocks… not so much.

Bottom line: we need a more holistic measurement when comparing success of companies like this.

Oh, and you forgot to mention (like most do) Microsoft’s not-so-sexy billion dollar businesses in Server, Sharepoint, etc. when listing Microsoft’s “struggles” over the years.

Don’t get me wrong, market valuation, stock performance, and other financial metrics projecting the future have their place in defining success of a company. But what else should be considered? In my comment, I suggest revenue and profit trends (which, in theory, are supposedly accounted for in stock price). But that’s still financial-only thinking.

What about cultural contribution? Innovation? Research? Economic impact? Job creation? Employee satisfaction? Societal improvements? Each of these is difficult to measure for comparison sake (i.e., a bit of an apples to oranges issue both in how we define the parameters for each metric and in how we weigh each metric against the others) but most are still very relevant.

Microsoft, Google, Apple, plus plenty of others have done much for the world here. But saying it that way is bland and boring. We need a way to compare! (Or do we?)

And what about philanthropy? Microsoft’s clearly the winner on this metric. There’s the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation plus the recent news of co-founder Paul Allen giving most his money to charity. None of that would be possible without Microsoft. I’m sure carbon foot print is something else to throw into the success metric mix for good measure.

Even then, I know I’m missing plenty of other good metrics in my quick-and-dirty attempt to redefine how we measure success. But I’m a bit tired of finance being the de facto metric for making company comparisons. Does anyone (with power and influence, i.e., not me) want to take a stab at coming up with a better metric? Or are we stuck, for better or for worse, with financiers ruling the day once again?

*Update* Uh, so for some reason, the TechCrunch post has been taken down (at least for now, as I write this). I’m not sure why. I’m glad I captured my comment (quoted above) before its disappearance with the post!

*Update 2* And now the TechCrunch post is back.

*Update 3* TechCrunch now has a new guest post entitled “The Many Bottom Lines of Businesses” which addresses some of the same issues I talk about above.

Warner Brothers had come up with a slick promotion to get some much needed buzz around Blu-ray. My consensus: great idea but flawed execution. Here’s how it works (and why it won’t work):

You send in the cover art sleeve (keep the disc) and the UPC from your HD DVD movies. And for $4.95 per movie, plus $6.95 S&H per order, you’ll be sent back brand new Blu-ray copies of any movies you have in HD DVD. There are a few restrictions (only 1 copy per movie and only up to 25 movies per household) but nothing really that prohibitive.

At first glace, it seems like a decent offer, especially for someone like me who bought an HD DVD player with 10 movies included for under $200. But why is Warner Brothers trying to make anything off of this? At best, they should be giving away these movies under these circumstances (to owners of the HD DVD versions) and, at worst, they should sell them at cost (which is likely quite a bit less than $5 per disc). Here’s why:

I’ve been interested in Blu-ray for sometime now. And I have blogged about my HD DVD decision mistake quite a bit along with my interest in eventually switching to Blu-ray. That is, if the format wars of online movie distribution don’t get resolved first. So any incentive to do this (like this one from Warner Bros.) gets me interested.

But I would go out and buy (or order via Amazon) a Blu-ray player right now — on the spot — if this offer were closer to pocket change. As it is, it’s still a significant cost to switch to Blu-ray (albeit at a lower cost than yesterday) with this extra $60 needed.

And me, combined with the much larger volume of switchers if this were free, being a Blu-ray customer for the next who knows how many years, with a Blu-ray Netflix account, is worth more to Warner Bros. than the short term $60. Actually, they’d get much less than $60, since only some of my movies are Warner Bros. which ties into the other reason this won’t work well.

Part 2 of the failed execution is not making this a much bigger deal by joining forces with Paramount and Universal and having them offer the same thing. If these companies really want Blu-ray to take off, these are the kinds of promotions they’re gonna have to start doing together.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still thinking about making the switch. But it’s not the impulsive, easy decision it should be (for me, and anyone else who made the bad HD DVD discretionary purchase and is not thinking of discretionary spending in a bad economy) for this to really help Warner Bros. in the long run.

My barometer for Blu-ray player pricing (the Amazon Blu-ray store) tells me that most players can’t get under the $200 price mark with the cheapest at $159. All this despite Engadget predicting earlier this year that the market would be flooded with $150-or-less players.

And even if I pay less than $150, that doesn’t mean I’m willing to give up the two most important features which are absent in my current crappy HD DVD player (but were present in my older regular DVD player — hate it when moving forward in one way is moving backward in two other ways): it needs to boot up fast and remembers where I left off in a movie (if I turn it off and then turn it back on).

So, nice try, Warner Bros. You got me thinking. But you need me to be decisive.

This week I found myself in the frozen section browsing for ice cream. I’m not even sure how I ended up there and why ice cream, but my subconscious was apparently way ahead of me. Once my conscious kicked in, the comparing started.

There’s, of course, plenty to choose from if you’re in the mood for flavors that put the ice cream in the running for world record of highest calorie density food. My personal favorite in this category: Ben & Jerry’s Half Baked Fudge Brownie & Cookie Dough. So good!

But alas, I try to limit my intake of said category. So this week I was going for sweet tooth meets practical. And this category is all over the place. It simply depends on what your trade off threshold is. Do you want sugar free? How ’bout fat free? One third less calories? Half the sugar? Half the fat? Or some combination of the above?

The trick is to get something made where the taste sacrifice is minimized while the health advantage is maximized (or more accurately, the health disadvantage is minimized: it’s not like ice cream, no matter how sugar/fat-free is ever really considered a health food). But there’s no one right answer to this formula. In fact, the answer almost completely depends on the unique criteria of any given person, which brings me to my question of the day:

When will I be able to tweak my ice cream like my PC gaming graphics?

While some consider it a disadvantage to PC gaming (when compared to console gaming), I actually like being able to customize my settings to my exact criteria. I’m in full control. I make trade offs when selecting the hardware (decision based on price). And then once I install a game, I make trade offs based on what’s important to me: frame rate / resolution / detail level / anti-aliasing / isotropic filtering, etc. In the end, my gaming experience is custom tailored to my criteria (though arguably more expensive, just like custom-made ice cream would likely be more expensive than the pre-made alternatives).

But I’d be willing to pay (within reason) for custom made ice cream that fits my criteria more exactly. The difference, though, is that with computer games, you can change your settings as many times as you wish and preview the results. With ice cream, however, tweaking the taste-to-health meter and previewing it several times before placing an order… not very practical.

Or is it? I’d love it and would find it to be very practical (from the consumer perspective). How the process would work in reality, though, escapes me. Any ideas?

The first half of my title is taken straight from the title of an email I received from Netflix a couple days ago (see end of post for text of the email). In short, as of December 15, 2008, Netflix will no longer carry HD DVDs. Around the same time I got this email, coincidentally, a friend of mine sent me an email about an online sale offering $2 HD DVD movies.

You see, back before we knew the outcome of the HD wars (one year ago), I chose HD DVD over Blu-ray. I got a player and 10 HD DVDs for $174 (well, actually for $124 since Amazon gave me a “we feel sorry for you” $50 gift card once it was clear HD DVD lost). Interestingly enough, now Blu-ray prices are being slashed in the same way HD DVD prices were slashed a year ago.

The last time I checked out Blu-ray pricing on Amazon (my quick and dirty benchmark), the Playstation 3 was still the best deal (with any Blu-ray player cheaper still well into the $300′s but without the bonus of being a gaming system). But now, looking at Amazon’s list of Blu-ray players, the Samsung BD-P1500 player comes in lowest at $204.47.

It doesn’t stop there. Analysts are predicting more price cuts for this holiday season, and a leaked “Black Friday” ad for Wal-Mart shows a Magnavox Blu-ray player for $128. As I mentioned in a post nearly a year ago, the “format wars” matter more post HD DVD death than they did when the term referred to Blu-ray vs. HD DVD. It’s just that now “format wars” refers to Blu-ray vs. traditional DVD vs. streaming/downloadable content.

At under $200 I would consider a Blu-ray player, though my reasoning might seem unconventional. The HD DVD player I bought a year ago is my primary movie player for any disc (i.e., regular DVDs I own or get through Netflix, which is a lot of my media consumption). And its boot time / load time is excruciatingly slow, plus it doesn’t remember where I stopped a movie if I turn it off and back on again.

In other words, it’s a crappy DVD player even if it “upconverts” DVDs and plays HD DVDs. The question is, then, whether or not these under $200 Blu-ray players are dog slow with no memory feature. Hopefully Blu-ray isn’t making the same mistake as HD DVD on this front: releasing a player that feels crappy in every way other than picture quality. I could be wrong, but I think consumers still care about other conveniences too.

Unfortunately, the two conveniences/features I’m most interested in don’t seem to be easily comparable across products. This is where an Amazon deal or a Wal-Mart 4:00 a.m. deal lose out. I may only buy a Blu-ray player after I get to use it in a Best Buy (or wherever), which means I’ll likely be paying a premium.

Bottom line: In my opinion, Blu-ray is only a good buy if the premium over an upconvert DVD player isn’t much ($50ish more, meaning the Blu-ray player is well under $200) at the same time as the Blu-ray player having the same features we’ve come to expect from our movie players (in my case, boots up fast and remembers where I left off).

Does anyone know of a Blu-ray player that fits these criteria? I’ll update this post if I find anything.

*Update* Lots of below $200 deals coming out today, including one player that boasts a quick load time!

See below for the Netflix email:

HD DVDs are going away

Dear Bob,

Effective December 15, 2008, we will no longer carry HD DVDs. At that time, we will automatically replace any HD DVD titles in your Queue with standard DVDs when available. You don’t have to do anything.

Last February, we announced that since most of the major movie studios had decided to release their high-def movies exclusively in Blu-ray, we were going exclusively Blu-ray as well and would be phasing out our HD DVDs.

We’re sorry for any inconvenience. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please call us at 1-888-638-3549.

- The Netflix Team

Somehow I missed the Craigslist memo. It could have something to do with the fact that I haven’t used even eBay for a while. (I used to be on eBay quite a bit but gave it up a few years ago when Amazon proved to be a worthy replacement with much less hassle.) But we recently moved and found ourselves with a couple of items needing a new home due to space constraints in our new place. Namely: a Yamaha electronic keyboard and a spare fold-a-bed.

So I signed up for Craigslist and posted these items online. Here’s what I found:

• The keyboard went right away even though it was priced at less of a bargain than the bed ($75 vs. $35 for the bed)
• When both items were picked up (at different times), both parties buying almost forgot to pay until the last minute making for a potentially awkward situation (though both seemed very nice)… interesting coincidence
• For whatever reason, for the bed, I received four very interested inquiries who requested my address and setup a time only to “no show” and not respond to any further correspondence. The fifth person finally did come and get it.

My whole experience is admittedly anecdotal and could be quite the exception for all I know. And there are plenty of stranger “exceptions.” But it is all I know of Craigslist at this point. Overall, I’d use it again, sure, but only if the context dictated it as the best choice (i.e., if I move and need a theoretically easy way to get rid of big items). Outside of this kind of scenario, though, I’m not sure. It feels like it’s the world’s largest and most streamlined ongoing garage sale. While that’s all fine and good, I’m finding that model doesn’t work as well for me. But it seems to do wonders for plenty of people.

Anyone else used Craigslist with similiar (or different) results?

So my HP G85 all-in-one printer/scanner/copier/fax died after nearly five years. Truth be told, though, I had been printer window shopping earlier this summer and was planning on replacing it relatively soon. At the time, I had tentatively decided on HP’s Photosmart C7280 all-in-one. It has everything my G85 had but is smaller, faster, and better (more features). You gotta love technology.

My first inclination was to run over to the local Best Buy since the company had just emailed me a 10% off coupon for the holiday weekend. (I tend to fall for the coupon marketing ploy.) But it was out of stock. Figures. So only then did it occur to me (embarrassingly enough) to check out the printer’s price online via Amazon. Amazon’s price: $209.99. Best Buy’s price: $304.99. Amazon 1, Best Buy 0.

In Best Buy’s defense, it had the printer for a cheaper price online: $289.74. And I did have a coupon for 10% off. Then again, though, that’s not much of a defense. It’s still quite the premium over the Amazon price, plus Amazon has free shipping.

I know this is pretty anecdotal, but it’s consistent with my previous experiences. Amazon doesn’t always have the lowest prices, but for me, at least, it delivers when it counts.

One of the best things about shopping on Amazon (or most anywhere online) is that you don’t have to pay sales tax. Well, that recently changed for me. Since I now live in the state of Washington, I pay sales tax on any Amazon orders (because Amazon headquarters is here). The funny thing is, though, that I haven’t really given up on shopping via Amazon. Since being here, I’ve used Amazon to buy an Xbox 360 and a GPS device, plus some other odds and ends.

It could have something to do with the fact that I’m an Amazon Prime member (I pay $79 per year to get free two-day shipping or next day shipping for $4). But the other thing I’ve realized is that I now trust Amazon more than practically any other retailer (especially when just looking at alternative online retailers). I’m sure there are times when Amazon isn’t the best deal, but in a way, it still is (for me, anyway).

Bargain shopping has the drawbacks of added time, added risk, and more hassle. And even with a 9% tax, Amazon still feels worth it. I mean, I still have to pay that 9% tax anywhere I shop locally. And the few times I’ve needed to return an item, I’ve noticed that the Amazon process is flawless and favors me, the consumer. Plus, Amazon’s MP3 store offers less expensive, higher quality, and restriction free music.

I realize this sounds like little more than a plug for Amazon, but I like talking about businesses that have done a good job and earned my trust. And Amazon seems pretty high on my short list.

Back in February, I titled a post “Dear Microsoft: Get Netflix on the Xbox 360 and I’ll Buy One.” True to my word, today I ordered an Xbox 360 following the latest announcement. I’m a huge fan of Netflix and have always had an interest in getting an Xbox 360 (even though I’m more of a PC gamer).

Considering that we already had a Wii in our home, though, an Xbox 360 just seemed unnecessary (again, even though the Xbox 360 is quite different than the Wii, my gaming experience quota was plenty full with Wii and PC gaming). But the Netflix bonus is just enough for me to go for it.

It looks like the deal is exclusive (sorry Sony, another item to add to your list of missed opportunities) and that there might be plans for group watching of movies over Xbox Live? Remember when HD DVD made this happen with Harry Potter?

It seems like a cool idea even if it seems a little weird to be having a movie party over the Internet. But that could just be my resistance to a new concept, which really isn’t solving much of a problem out there. Whatever the case, I’m all over giving new features a try.

By the way, it also helps that today a friend of mine emailed me about a sale Amazon is having on the Xbox 360 Elite. I guess it’s a sign.