electron zoo

I finally got a chance to download and play with Mozilla Firefox 1.0 PR — yep, I have indeed been hiding under a rock the past few months.

I’m pleased to report that I’m using it right now to update my blog with Blogger, because when the initial Mozilla 1.0 release occured, Mozilla was not supported by Blogger. But that’s ancient history — now the smart chaps at Google are running Blogger, and they wouldn’t dream of such an oversight. In fact, Google search is integrated into Mozilla Firefox.

Another very cool feature that’s been integrated into Firefox is an RSS reader. I think that’s fantastic, because RSS feeds are just too darn useful to have to have a lofty learning curve for much of the browsing masses.

Do you think this is a good reason to party? Then do it — a series of worldwide parties are being planned, just like they were to celebrate the initial Mozilla 1.0 release. In fact, I went to the one here in DC and the turnout wasn’t bad, but it was nothing like the killer release party in San Francisco. I saw a documentary at a convention once about the build-up to the first Mozilla release that documented the San Francisco party, but when I just went looking for its name on Google I didn’t turn up a whole lot. I think it might have been called Code Rush, since there is a documentary about Netscape by this name.

I don’t really have the time or inclination to actually organize a Mozilla party in DC, but I’m going to watch this space and see if 1.0 really will happen again.

I’ve done my share of illegal file sharing on the internet. I mean really, I was in college when Napster became a household word, and who doesn’t want music for free?

These days, I’m done with pirating music for many reasons. For one, it’s a major pain in the butt — files are hard to get and often named wrong. Even worse, a lot of the time when you think you’ve found what you were looking for, it turns out to be a corrupted copy the record label is distributing to discourage music pirates. But the most upsetting problem with pirating music is, well, getting caught by The Man.

So these days, my approach to music is really old-fashioned — I buy CDs and trade them with friends. How 1995.

I’ve also experimented with paid music downloads. When the iTunes music store came out, I tried it right away. But I was pretty disappointed with it — I got some .m4p file that only played in iTunes or on an iPod. Oh — and I don’t own in iPod. Yes, really, I actually don’t have one. For real.

This Saturday, I was driving my car (something I don’t do much these days) with the windows rolled down. I was blasting some tunes on WHFS, which was once a very progressive and edgy radio station before it went soft in recent years and starting playing too much pop alternative. But now rockin’ music is finally coming back into style to replace the constant rehash of Pearl Jam, Creed, and crap that’s been playing on the radio. I was thinking that the main reason I wasn’t too into pirating music anymore had something to do with the fact that new, mainstream music just hadn’t been cuttting it for me anyway. But on Saturday I heard a song I had to download immediately — Somebody Told Me by The Killers.

But (as I previously mentioned) it’s nearly impossible to pirate brand spanking new songs these days. So I figured I’d check out the new Napster. And here’s what I have to say about it: it’s really not that bad, if you can get over the fact that it costs money, and there’s really no getting around it.

My download came with a free week of “Napster Premium”, a service that costs about $10/month. I don’t think they explained what the service could and could not do very well, because I was pretty confused even after reading the FAQ. “Napster Premium” allows you to listen to unlimited full-length songs and download them to your music library. But if you want to burn the songs to a CD or copy them to your MP3 player, you still have to buy them for $0.99 each, which you can do with or without their subscription service. It enforces this policy using WMA files locked down with Windows Media Player 9 Digital Rights Management — a little internet searching demonstrated this is pretty close to impossible to crack. But I can listen to the files in Winamp, so I’m not stuck with just Windows Media Player and Napster. (But I’m totally stuck with Windows!)

After some thinking about it, I’d say the Napster Premium subscription service is comparable with XM Radio or even Columbia House (now that’s old school.) It probably gives them a run for their money given the way you can get way more music and get it on demand. But then again, it keeps you glued to your computer unless you want to throw down a lot more cash. ($0.99 a song is reasonable, but it can add up fast.)

So there’s my quick review of Napster. In short, it’s alright, and I got my rockin’ song by The Killers off of Napster onto my iRiver MP3 player without a lot of trouble — after I paid for it.