Matt Kirkland takes apart your favorite robotic toys to reveal the robotic exo skeleton that lies beneath with before and after photos. Viewer discretion is advised.

This evening, I upgraded the Movable Type installation to 4.1, attempting to fix some bugs that I had with the previous version. In the installation of Movable Type 4.1, the Dashboard widget which once worked, was broken, and spat out the following error:

Movable Type was unable to locate your 'mt-static' directory. Please configure the 'StaticFilePath' configuration setting in your mt-config.cgi file, and create a writable 'support' directory underneath your 'mt-static' directory.

After growing increasingly frustrated at the error, I took some time to troubleshoot the problem. It turns out that if you set the StaticWebPath variable in the mt-config.cgi, setting the StaticFilePath variable becomes unnecessary, so I just commented it out, and everything happily works again.

I'm still running into a problem where the "export entries" function doesn't fully export my entries -- it stops at about 1200 entries.

Yesterday we had Amazon buying out Audible, this morning we've got earnings reports from Google and a bid for Yahoo from Microsoft.

Google earnings are only 17 percent this quarter, making this the first quarter that Google earnings did not exceed 25 percent. As a result, the stock took a tumble of 8 percent, coincidentally, the same amount they missed analyst expectations by.

Microsoft, in the meantime has decided that if you can't beat the competition, you can try to buy them out. With a purchase price of 44.6 billion dollars, a number well over its book value of about 10 billion dollars. As a result, Yahoo stock is up 48 percent, bringing the market cap of Yahoo! to about 37 billion. Google, of course is number one in search engine traffic at 65%, Yahoo is number two at a respectable 21 percent, while MSN ranks at third with 7 percent. In November of 2007, Microsoft made a bold statement that they aimed to be in the top two in search; while I originally thought they would do it through efforts in engineering and better advertising of their search engine, it looks like Microsoft is throwing money at the problem in a different way.

Microsoft has been one of those companies that came late to the internet party; they didn't realize how important it would be, and ended up spending a lot of time and money on it trying to catch up to the rest of the pack. One of their first internet-related purchases was the code to Mosaic, which they used to create the first versions of Internet Explorer. Another was the purchase of WebTV, a television set-up box which allowed users to surf the web on the television. The potential of buying Yahoo! would boost Microsoft's web presence greatly; not just in search, but in many other service areas as well. Yahoo! owns Flickr, del.icio.us, upcoming.org, and 46% of Alibaba (one of China's biggest search sites) among other acquisitions not branded by the Yahoo! label.

I've always found some of Yahoo's services superior to Google's -- namely Flickr over Picasa, and My Yahoo! over iGoogle, but rarely do I find any webapp of Microsoft's even remotely useful. With share prices of Yahoo! skyrocketing over this news, I'm pretty certain a refusal of this buyout bid would not go over well with shareholders.

If you haven't heard already, the online retailer Amazon has purchased at a price of $11.50 per share, roughly equating to a $300 million dollar purchase price for Audible's assets, including 80,000 audio programs. Their reason for purchase, obviously enough is their investment on the Kindle e-book reader. On the market these days are three devices people primarily use for audio books: car CD players, iPods and computers. Amazon aims to make the Kindle the iPod for books, so this acquisition was a necessary one for Amazon.

Audible is one of the providers of exclusive audio content to Apple's iTunes store, as well as a provider to Amazon. In the battle for provider of downloadable content, Apple and Amazon are at odds with one another. While it would be a stupid decision for Amazon to discontinue Audible's partnership with Apple, it is a possible for Amazon to do so if they find it advantageous. All of which all begs the question: why didn't Apple buyout Audible? Audible's revenue stream coming from sales through Apple's iTunes store is around 25-30%, and with over a billion in cash reserves at Apple, $300 million seems to be a small price to pay for continued access to Audible content. The problem is not their content, but rather their profitability; Audible has lost money since its inception, a trend that is slowly turning around (their earnings per share last year was a mere negative 4 cents, and their estimated earnings per share for the current quarter is a whopping 2 cents).

Jobs has gone on record to say that people don't read anymore. Part of this statement might come from the news bit about the average American reading one book per year, but I think as audiobooks are a portion of the content being sold on iTunes, Jobs has some numbers on the the amount being sold by Apple of audio books, and my guess is those numbers are very small in comparison to the 4 billion songs sold on iTunes.

Part of the problem likely stems from the fact that online audiobooks are priced with variation much more than any other downloadable content on both Amazon or iTunes; a movie can be downloaded for 9.99, a song can be downloaded for 99 cents, and an audiobook can cost anywhere from 95 cents to 49.99. At those prices, most would likely rather purchase the paper and binding version of the book. Amazon's prices for downloadable audiobooks aren't much different from Apple's, most download books averaged within a few dollars of Apple's prices. The variance in price, as well as the somewhat limited selection (example: Harry Potter 6 can be found as an audio download on iTunes, but not on Amazon, and costs $49.99, while Harry Potter 7, the best-selling book of last year is not available at all).

If Amazon wants the Kindle to succeed, the content from Audible is a necessary to their future success; to Apple, audiobooks are nice to have, but not as necessary as the music is what dominates their iTunes store, and with prices as they are presently, it is unlikely that downloads of books in either e-book or audio form will ever overtake sales of physical books anytime soon.

Four years ago, President Bush decided to give NASA a billion dollars in funding over the next five years to get the United States to return to the Moon by 2020. The first step in all of this is to create a rocket to take the astronauts there, so it's up to a new generation of engineers to create these machines to send people to the Moon. Their new rockets are called Ares, and they've got just one little flaw: the rocket could shake violently during the first few minutes of flight, possibly destroying the entire vehicle.

I find it interesting that 30 years ago, we were able to build rockets with 60s/70s era parts that were durable enough to withstand launch, yet with modern technology, blasting-off may as well be blasting apart.

Battlestar Galactica: Season Three is available for pre-order on Amazon. Priced at 59.79, you only save a whopping 19 cents on this 6 disc set, leading me to wonder why Amazon's prices on DVDs have been so high lately -- is it because they're trying to keep the price of Unbox episodes (30.25 for the entire season) competitive with the DVD releases? With such a small discount for the DVD, it really feels like Amazon wants to encourage us to buy our DVDs elsewhere -- Costco perhaps?

Every January, the Consumer Electronics Show sweeps through Las Vegas showing off objects of lust for gadget lovers for the year ahead. Last year MacWorld and CES ran concurrently, which resulted in the iPhone pretty much stealing the spotlight away from CES. This year, CES is running a week in advance of MacWorld, and so far, there have been some interesting items of note to appear:

Thin is In

It seems that many electronics manufacturers were showing off new televisions this week, with several manufacturers revealing ultra thin plasma and LCD televisions. The thinnest being Pioneer's 51 inch plasma Project KURO, at a mere 9mm (0.35 inches) thick and weighing a scant 40 pounds. They're claiming an infinite contrast ratio, as it is capable of getting pixels to emit no light.

In the old days of CES, video game systems and game software used to showcase here. I think people were having too much fun playing videogames and pretty much ignoring the other vendors, so they made the videogame industry start their own version of CES, called E3. E3 grew until it imploded on itself, creating the lame version of E3 at the Santa Monica Hangars, and the extra lame "E for All Expo".

The New York Times is saying that the CES is still too diluted with products:

Now, electronics makers and industry analysts say the show has become so loud, sprawling and preoccupied with technical esoterica that for many companies, it is as much a place to get lost as to get discovered.

The runaway hits of the last year were products not introduced at CES. The Nintendo Wii (introduced at E3) and the iPhone (introduced at MacWorld). New York Times brings up a good point -- the CES is so packed with product announcements that they drown each other out, which was the reason why a lot of videogame companies felt that E3 was no longer useful. In the old days if you wanted to see what was out there in the world of consumer electronics, you'd read an electronics magazine or maybe you'd head out to your electronics retailer and get some brochures, maybe even a product catalog. Today, I think the internet has changed that landscape drastically. Consumers can find out all the relevant details of a product by surfing the manufacturer's website. The things coming out of CES these days are more of the same of what you can already buy at your retailer -- newer cellphones, newer tvs, newer computers -- but anything that's truly innovative gets announced outside of CES, and I think a bigger part of it is that for consumers to get it, it needs to be explained to them, maybe even experienced by them so they can figure out how this new device can fit into their lives.

NYT asks whether the show could produce a new hit product, and the senior VP of Industry Relations had this to say: “It could be the Sony Rolly robot. It’s a small media player that rolls around like a robot.”

A rolling media player? Why in the world would I ever want that? If I don't even want it, try convincing the rest of America that a rolling media player is the killer product of 2008. Robots, in general don't do well in the United States -- a lifetime of science fiction movies, where robots are as capable, or even more capable than their human masters, has all wanting positronic androids, rather than these highly advanced single purpose machines. I think actually, the announcement that will have the most impact on the consumer electronics industry for the next year has already been made: the decision by Warner Bros. to throw their support Blu-ray's way. With Blu-ray being the winner, all those sitting on the fence about purchasing Hi-definition equipment can finally buy a Blu-ray player.

Earlier this week, Warner Bros. announced that they were going Blu-ray only, and dropping support for HD-DVD. Only Paramount and Universal are the studios left backing HD-DVD. Sony, Fox, Disney, Lionsgate and now Warner support Blu-ray. Interestingly, it may have been the Sony Playstation 3 that swung favor over in favor of Blu-ray, as each PS3 also functioned as a Blu-ray player. In 2007, the number of Blu-ray discs sold outnumbered HD-DVDs two to one. I also suspect that the stronger copy protection scheme for Blu-ray probably has something to do with the studios favoring the format.

Interestingly enough, the DIVX format lasted for about as long as the HD-DVD vs Blu-ray format war, and in that case, the reason for studios to join DIVX over DVD was also due to the stronger copy protection scheme offered by DIVX. Interestingly enough, the last holdouts for the DIVX format (Dreamworks, Fox and Paramount) are almost the same ones who are last holding out for HD-DVD (Dreamworks, Universal and Paramount). There's another similarity in this format war; DIVX was a consortium between Circuit City and various movie studios, while DVD was an open format. While in the hi-def case, both formats are closed, Sony's Blu-ray format was developed with studio interests in mind, while the HD-DVD format was mainly backed (at first) by hardware manufacturers. HD-DVD was able to create cheaper players, but not able to supply the movies.

I think the lesson to be learned here is that you can't make a successful media platform without media, and that studio support can be bought with large wheelbarrows full of money. There's probably a lesson in all of this here for those that want to make movies downloadable, as downloadable content is independent of media format.

When the iPod first released in 2001, I was one of those who thought it would fail. It was expensive, it was heavy, and although it held much more music than the competition, using a hard drive as the storage medium seemed to me a risky choice as far as reliability went. There were few, if any, manufacturers who wanted to design housing secure enough for a hard drive to withstand the drops. All other portable music players at the time used flash memory to store music, which meant they were lighter, they held less music, and you could drop them without fear of the damaging the data storage device. With the exception of drive space, technically these devices were superior, but an interesting thing happened: consumers liked the software, and they liked the iTunes store, and Apple soon had a lineup of iPods to fit every price point.

It is important to note that before the iPod had made its entrance, the market was oversaturated with MP3 players -- everyone was making them, from big brand manufacturers like RCA and Sony to computer peripheral manufacturers like Creative Labs and Diamond, to manufacturers in China, pumping them out at prices ranging from $100 to $300, all while the starting point of Apple's iPod was $400.

I offer a theory for this, and that is in the beginning the iPod made things simple. Putting music on the device was ridiculously easy and quick, burning CDs or purchasing music required little computer knowledge, and once you had an iPod, everyone knew what it was. Purchasing a case for the iPod was easy, because everyone was making cases for it that accomodated the controls, meanwhile if you were buying Sony or Creative, no one other than the manufacturer was making cases or accessories for their product. This became even more apparent after other iPod models were released; within weeks of announcing a new iPod, cases, clips and all manner of accesories were available and custom fit for the newest iPod. By taking away the choice of different music players, you were granted an even wider selection of accessories and music.

The problem with technology is as it continues to move forward, it is quickly outdated -- and people are always wanting the latest and the greatest, so Apple built in a a battery with a two year lifetime, which made sure that if the product wore out, it would be replaced with a newer model -- preferably another iPod. People who use their iPods consistently become dependent on the device and replace it upon breakage, because the thought of being without personalized playlists is too much to bear.

Apple has brilliantly captured the market in music -- while outlets like Amazon and Walmart also offer music downloads, these alternatives from iTunes suffered from a problem in the past: compatibility. While currently most of these services have surrendered DRM in favor of just supplying an MP3 music file, this is a decision made by economics (mainly because there was no demand for music files which could not be used on an iPod). In contrast, iTunes music only works on Apple devices, which means that while the minor percentage of non-iPod music players is closed to them, it is a percentage that doesn't outweight the benefits of having Apple's iPod locked with DRM, which results in the sales of DRM-music and iPods. It is interesting to note that this is the same strategy Amazon is attempting to execute with the Kindle.

Amazon today signed a deal with Warner for DRM-free music tracks, joining Universal which previously allowed Amazon to sell DRM-free music. iTunes still carries music from these two labels, but not in DRM-free form, and both Warner and Universal can potentially opt-out of any long term contracts with iTunes. This changes the playing field somewhat, as Amazon is quickly approaching the level of being a potential competitor with Apple in the field of digital distribution.

The transformation of all these services to one that is DRM-free is not just because the iPod is essentially a closed platform, but also because everything plays MP3 now. Cars come with stereos that can read MP3s, cellphones have built-in music players, and even personal devices like the Amazon Kindle have the ability to playback MP3s, and yet I don't see the market for iPods shrinking substantially -- each generation of iPod has more storage space, more functionality, more features, but the core function of playing music is still the main use of the device. The reason the iPod sells well is because there is plenty of media available for the users to consume, and while Apple would prefer that they buy from the iTunes store, items without DRM play fine on iPods. The media companies, on the other hand, are still frightened of releasing movies and tv shows DRM-free, and are unhappy with their contracts with Apple. NBC/Universal has pulled their shows off iTunes, and speculation has been that this is due to pricing and NBC wanting a percentage of iPod sales.

Video is the new media being sold, common sense dictates to me that while one might want to carry their music collection with them, having the complete season of Lost with them isn't as much a priority. Apple is rumored to have negotiated with Fox for a movie rental service on iTunes, which should be interesting to see, and may give a boost to their ailing AppleTV product line. In addition to AppleTV, their video-capable iPods are poised to benefit from the rental market, as well as any computer with iTunes installed. While I don't see this as being a huge market right now, since DRM for video isn't going away anytime soon, Apple may as well pick up some revenue in this field while they can.

It is of interest to note that Apple loses little when other companies decide to drop DRM. In the big picture scope, it means that there is more media available for the consumer, and the users of their devices. As they are currently the market leader, most likely a DRM-free file is being used on an Apple product, and not their competitior. While it does mean that the file was not purchased from iTunes, the bulk of the money that iTunes generates goes to the label, and not to Apple. Apple's main source of revenue in this venture is the sale of iPods.

Cory Doctorow recently wrote an article for The Guardian entitled "Downloads Give Amazon Jungle Fever", in which he details how an otherwise smart company can be so stupid when it comes to digital downloads.

Doctorow's sentiments echo my own opinions in many ways -- especially about the Kindle and e-books. As of late, I have been reading Steven Levy's "The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture and Coolness", a book about how the iPod came to be, which has a chapter in it about the early days of the web, the MP3 format, and Apple's iTunes software, and how record companies sued each and every music distribution company before Apple came along. Apple's dealings were clever: iTunes was Mac-only, and worst case it was just a tiny percentage of the computer audience; a mere 5 percent, but even so, the record companies wanted pretty strict limitations on the rights of the users, including the number of times it could be copied to CD, and how many computers the song could be played on. What I find most interesting about the negotiations is that the record companies thought that Apple was just another middleman, another retailer like Best Buy or Tower Records, who were all too happy to give the music industry money in exchange for product. Except in Apple's case, there was no real product to supply -- no shipping costs, no manufacturing costs, it was, in the publisher's eyes, free money. The iTunes situation hasn't changed much, although I believe that more single songs are purchased from iTunes instead of whole entire albums, but it seems that with the success of iTunes, everyone is trying to emulate that model without realizing that selling music tracks is very different from selling tv shows and books.

When you buy a tv show, you're buying the whole episode, when you buy a book, you're buying all the chapters. Unlike a music album, you can't break it up into discrete units, and people aren't going to want to purchase discrete units. On a CD, it might have a good track seven, and you might want to purchase that, but I doubt you're ever see someone say "I just want the portion of the movie where Natalie Portman's family is killed by Gary Oldman in Leon: the Professional", or "I just want chapter 5 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, because it doesn't work like that -- books, movies and tv shows have a narrative structure that makes such cutouts odd when viewed out of context.

The second hurdle to overcome is the device. The iTunes store has the iPod, while Amazon is attempting to market their Kindle e-reader to become the iPod of e-book readers. When I first saw the iPod in October of 2001, I remember my reaction: too expensive, too heavy and too fragile. The Kindle strikes a different set of chords within me: too expensive, too ugly, and too few colors. These are, of course, all problems that can be fixed over time, but I feel as if many of the features of this device already exist in gizmos we already own, which relegates the device to a novelty.

If one looks at the various electronics that have succeeded over the years, one of the more common components is the ability to use the device on a daily basis. Sure, everyone loves getting a tire pressure gauge-compass-flashlight with window hammer, but it's not a daily use object like an iPod or a personal computer, and an object has to be able to make the transition from home life to work life -- e-mail and cellphones are good examples of such objects, while video games and tv sets are objects that cannot make the transition because they are much too associated with leisure activity. Personal Electronic devices such as the iPod and the Kindle fill a different segment of time, that which lies between work and home -- they exist as devices that are usually prohibited at work, but can be used during the time "off the clock", or in the space where one is neither working, but not at home -- such as breaks and the time involved in commuting.

The Kindle is an storefront for Amazon that the consumer has purchased in the guise of a personal electronic device -- nothing more, nothing less, and though they aim to make Amazon the iTunes of the reading world, digital books have not yet reached the point that I would want to replace my physical library, regardless of the amount of space they take up.

Going digital only serves to do one thing: make companies ridiculously greedy, particularly if what they are selling does not truly belong to them, as in the case of music, movies, books and tv shows. You see, the true IP owners are the creators or writers of the material, but negotiations, contracts and other deals have relegated the original creator to merely being a shareholder in their own work, with most of the power of ownership and distribution belonging to the publisher. This reversal means the purchaser of the product is dealing with the publisher, whose goal is to entice the buyer to buy more product. This relationship is apparent is the dealings of every company in the digital downloads industry -- and which I believe runs counter to the common sense definition of ownership.

I own a huge library of media -- CDs, DVDs, books. I paid for them, and thus I feel free to do whatever I please with them -- if I want to give them away or sell them, I am free to do so. If I want to loan them out or shred them for an art project, I can do that as well. Amazon's digital downloads restrict me in a number of ways:

• No resale. This isn't a big deal, since most media I end up buying is stuff I want to keep, but it does hurt in bargain shopping, as you will never find a digital download in the "pre-owned" section.
  
• No gifting. The digital download model makes it inconvenient, if not impossible to give someone a book, a movie or an album -- you'd be better off just giving them a gift card.
  
• No borrowing. Because the media isn't physical, companies don't want you passing a file to your friends (or to the internet).
  
• No recyling. A bad book can be tossed into the garbage or donated to a library, or turned into an art object, but there's nothing you can do with a digital download other than clear it off your hard drive.
  

One of the interesting things about music collections and the iPod is that the iPod didn't invalidate my music collection; the Kindle wants me to replace my physical books with virtual ones -- but Amazon's rights to change the content of the e-books, or remove/delete them goes against any real-world term of ownership that I know of -- if anything, it's much more like a service fee that says "someday this content might not be here, but today, you can use it."

Lastly, Amazon is a store. They are good at selling things and keeping inventory, but they should not be in the business of making devices, supporting devices and managing digital content (just as they never should have been in the search engine business). Does the Kindle generate buzz? Yes, but it's negative buzz about the device and their policies, and I don't see that helping them.

My own strategy for the Kindle would have been a plan for physical books to become digital ones, by scanning in the barcode and inputting a random word on a random page, I'd be willing to do this, even with a small surcharge for the conversion process, as it means that I'd still have a physical book, but I'd also have a digital one for when I'm traveling about. Sadly, what Amazon has chosen to do is little more than a method for people to pay money to rent a book.