It’s worth noting that you don’t have to manually spread the URL around for your Mixwit “tapes” – there are built-in publishing tools to blast the thing off to whatever social networking page you happen to frequent. And, if you are some sort of non-comformist asshole and prefer to run your own space instead of flocking to MyLiveFaceSpaceBook (or whatever the hell is hot this month), you can just stick your mix in-line with the pasting of some code, thus:

Also, a couple of people dropped notes to point out that Gruber had a link to a similar sort of deal yesterday. It’s called “Muxtape” and while it has generally the same function, it’s more of a “playlist” than a tape, and there isn’t the same sense of discovery as the thing spools out – it’s just not as cool. Nor does it have the same visual vibe – if you really start to play with Mixwit you can work up your own skins and labels and stuff, either with some quick uploading or by using the downloadable template and really getting busy. It’s personal.

That said, Muxtape does have a certain industrial flair about it, and looks good on a big screen, so maybe you might want to have it as your “virtual DJ” at a party or basement rave. It’s certainly worth a look. (Via DF)

A couple of folks asked about the Wii Guitar Hero sales numbers, wondering where the data came from. Wonder no more – it comes from the NPD Group, whose job is to track sales totals and consumer trends. Looking at the numbers for February, we see the top ten on the software side of the game biz (with units sold) are:

Call of Duty 4 (Xbox 360) – 296,200
Guitar Hero III (Wii) – 292,900
Wii Play (Wii) – 289,700
Devil May Cry 4 (Xbox 360) — 280,200
Devil May Cry 4 (Playstation 3) – 233,500
Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games (Nintendo DS) – 205,600
Lost Odyssey (Xbox 360) – 203,600
Turok (Xbox 360) -197,700
Guitar Hero III (Playstation 2) – 183,800
Rock Band (Xbox 360) – 161,800

By the way, if you are interested in such things (and maybe surprised that the PS2 version of Guitar Hero is in the top ten and the PS3 version is no where to be found) the hardware sales numbers for February were:

Nintendo DS – 587,600
Wii – 432,000
PlayStation 2 – 351,800
Xbox 360 – 254,600
PlayStation Portable – 243,100
PlayStation 3 – 240,800

This is a bitch for Sony – one one hand they are desperate to get rid of the PS2 because they have staked a large chunk of their future on the PS3, but on the other hand the PS2 actually makes them cash, and the PS3 is still a money pit. Meanwhile, over at Nintendo they just sit around and count their money … all day long.

2,941,000,000: The number of quarters produced by the United States Mint in 2006.

For people of a certain age – of which I am one – “mixed tapes” are a cherished memory from teen-hood. You made ‘em for friends, you made ‘em for crushes, you made ‘em for various events and chores that filled your adolescent days. Everyone had a “study tape” and a “breakup tape” and a “walking to school tape” and gawd knows what else. They were wonderful things: Making them and playing them had this wonderful tactile component – working the pause and record buttons, sorting through them, making the labels … fiddly little bits that made each and every tape special, and something that is probably (and sadly) now lost forever.

I mean, iTunes is great and all, but somehow I don’t see the next generation getting older and pining for the Great Playlists Of Their Youth.

With that in mind, I was delighted to find Mixwit – a cool little web app that lets you make virtual “mixed tapes” and digitally pass them around to your pals. The process is dead easy – you provide links to songs online, skin and label your tape, and then send the URL to anyone you’d like to share it with. Signup is super easy, and there is a fab little web search utility to find existing links to songs you want to dub if you don’t have some handy web server space of your own.

Go and give it a shot – or, if you just want some music for your Tuesday afternoon at work, give a listen to something that I cobbled up for your aural enjoyment.

I mean, hey, everybody loves Cool Tapes.

The idea of entire albums being added to the Rock Band catalogue gets closer and closer – today owners of Harmonix’ sublime music game will have noticed that about half of Boston’s debut album hit the download list, for 2 bucks a track or a sawbuck for the whole package:

Hitch a Ride
More Than a Feeling
Peace of Mind
Rock & Roll Band
Smokin’
Something About You

If you played the original versions of Guitar Hero, you know that “More Than A Feeling” was a wickedly good time, so this would seem to be a no brainer download. Anything that smacks of cock-rock is usually worth the time and effort in this particular gaming genre.

Also, the Wii version of Rock Band is now 100% official. It releases on June 22 in both Canada and the United States, and the main product will be the standard “game, drums, microphone, and guitar” bundle. Guitar Hero controllers for the Wii will also work with the game, and (praise be!) all of the instruments will be available separately on launch day. No word yet on whether or not downloadable songs will be available*, but there will be 5 bonus songs included in the original package.

This has got license to print money written all over it. It may surprise you to know that the Wii version of Guitar Hero 3 outsells all other platforms, including the ubiquitous Playstation 2, but the people at Harmonix are well aware of this and ordering larger wallets even as we speak.

*Given the fact that there are extra songs already included, I would say that the immediate answer would be “No” to the question of downloadable content – the Wii’s built-in storage just isn’t large enough. However, the downloads are a huge money factory for Harmonix, so that will probably not be the situation for all time. As soon as the Nintendo adds the ability to address an external hard drive, you can bet that the download store will be open for business.

4,400,000: The number of half-dollar coins produced by the United States Mint in 2006.

Government officials in the Philippines are taking steps to ensure that people follow proper guidelines of health and safety while nailing themselves to chunks of wood this weekend. An excerpt:

They have urged them to get tetanus vaccinations before they flagellate themselves and are nailed to crosses, and to practise good hygiene.

In the hot and dusty atmosphere, officials warn, using unhygienic whips to make deep cuts in the body could lead to tetanus and other infections.

Um … okay, then. If there is a line between organized religion and public displays of stupidity – and I often doubt that there is – then this is the spot where it got crossed. Did anyone stop to think that maybe those “health officials” should spend their time and energy on telling these people not to be such morons in the first place?

Jeezus.

There is a point in the transition from kid-hood to adolescence when you become well and truly convinced that you aren’t going to make it. All the bullshit of school and the trauma of dealing with your so-called peers and the angst that your parents are so adept at piling upon you … it starts to add up to this huge mountain of despair and you get to the point where you are absolutely sure that you will never make it to your fifteenth birthday.

Everyone finds their own way through this and has their own crutches to get there – cliques, drugs, gangs, dark poetry scribbled under the covers by flashlight, whatever. For me it was a handful of authors that because silent allies – their books providing connections to other lives and other worlds with redeeming values above and beyond our own.

I thought about this today when I heard that Arthur C. Clarke had died. Imperial Earth was one of those books, a chunky hardcover full of hope, not for humanity or the planet, but for me – an affirmation that the mores of society are not absolute, and that only the weak succumb to artificial dictates in ethics, conformity, sexuality, appearance … hell, in life. You make your own way, you serve your own muse, and at the end of the day the only judgement you answer to is your own.

Powerful stuff for an awkward kid. And an important foundation for the person that kid turned into.

Thank you, Mr. Clarke. I owe you one.

I got a laugh out of this one – someone went to the time and trouble to try and find out if Apple users were “smug and arrogant” and then went through all sorts of hand-wringing when it turned out to be true. Get a grip people … of course Apple users are smug and arrogant. There is no virtue in false humility. You might as well wonder why someone driving a McLaren SLR feels superior to other mopes on the highway who are tooling along in their Chrysler shitboxes. When you are awesome, you know it. And when you know it, there is no point in hiding it.

Sheesh.

If you were waiting to jailbreak, unlock, and/or activate your version 1.1.4 iPhone … wait no more. And if you already have an unlocked phone and you are on an older version, now is a great time to upgrade to 1.1.4 . In either case, just head on over to the unlock page and follow the three easy steps. You will be pleased to find that, because of a couple of new tweaks in Zibri’s unlocking code, the process is now simpler than ever.

Also, since a number of people asked, I am re-posting the settings to get EDGE networking up and running in Canada. It’s back on the unlock page, but I’ll also dump it here for lazy people who don’t want to take the time and effort to click … and for the benefit of any search engines in the crowd:

Rogers
APN: internet.com
Username: wapuser1
Password: wap

Fido
APN: wap.fido.ca
Username: fido
Password: fido
Primary gateway IP: 205.151.11.11
Port: 8080

Telus
Use the static IP and login information that you were given with the SIM card when you first got it. Telus does not use the APN method, so if you don’t have the IP you are screwed. Sorry.

Reason number 267 for never, ever trusting any mail or remote connection application that doesn’t come from a major vendor: This Gmail “archiving utility” takes your Gmail/Google credentials and mails it back off to the author of the software. It would be safe to assume that his reasons for doing this are not on the up-and-up.

Le this be a lesson learned, and not just for dodgy shareware. Apparently some social networking sites do the same thing – ask for your email username and password so they can send invites on your behalf – and I would be less-than-shocked if doing that came back to bite you on the ass. Just saying.

Thanks to Gruber for the link.

How about that - I was completely and utterly wrong. Certainly there was an announcement regarding the distribution and sales of applications via iTunes – I did manage to get that one right. But the list of stuff that came out of the blue ranged from interesting to surprising to “holy shit”:

Real-time full-push integration with Microsoft Exchange: This was a Truly Big Deal, and definitely the “holy shit” moment – especially since it bypasses the whole “middleware” concept that RIM has pushed with the BES. No middleware means less cost, less setup, true “remote data wipe” security, and (as was gleefully pointed out by Phil Schiller) no system-wide outages like Blackberry users get skewered on when RIM occasionally drops the ball.

A full suite of enterprise tools: The Cisco VPN was the star of the show here – maybe not a “holy shit” but definitely a development that I am personally salivating for.

Apple footing the bill to host freeware for the iPhone: Very nice. A little bit of apparent altruism goes a long way here.

A full remote simulator and debugger for the iPhone on your Mac: Again, very nice. The ability to simulate the entire stack of the iPhone and grab stuff out of it to send to Xcode is wickedly slick.

Over-the-air software purchase and install from the iPhone: This is another “wow” moment – and one that will pay off quite well, I think … everyone from bored commuters to travelers cooling their heels in airports is going to feel the temptation to buy something to while the time away or do something cool. This is the ultimate encouragement for impulse purchasing.

You can download the entire development kit right now, and if you are up for taking the plunge you can apply to get on board as an enterprise tools test site as well. The SDK, it should be noted, is entirely free, you only have to pony up and join as a developer if you plan on actually selling anything.

Finally, it is interesting to note that this is the first time that Apple has explained why they need to charge for updates to the iPod Touch and not the iPhone. In the past, Apple has been loathe to try and explain the concept of subscription-based accounting and what products it applies to, mostly because the average mope doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Sarbanes-Oxley or “generally accepted accounting practices”. This, I think, is Apple giving a nod to the fact that you can no longer gloss this shit over and you have to throw a bone to the press, if nothing else.

UPDATE: After the main event there was a short Q&A session about the enterprise package, a session that left no doubt on how they are going to target the Blackberry megalith – they are going to aim squarely at the RIM middleware infrastructure, and apparently have no qualms at all about trying to drum up some mild panic regarding system reliability and – the big boogieman here – data security. Money quote from Phil Schiller:

“Why aren’t CIOs really worried about security? Every email message sent to or from a RIM device goes through a NOC up in Canada. Now, that provides a single point of failure, but it also provides a very interesting security situation. Where someone working up at that NOC could potentially be having a look at your email. Nobody seems to be focused on that. We certainly are.”

Ah yes, those dirty Canadians and their evil Waterloo data scraping bunker. This just got very interesting indeed …

Sadly, I am not in San Francisco today, and am therefore tragically not at the big Apple iPhone SDK announcement event. But I am going to guess that the gist of the matter is that all software will be distributed and installed via iTunes, something that is going to raise some “Apple is trying to control us” hackles, especially amongst the freetards.

There are actually plusses and minuses to the whole idea – the plusses coming in the form of an instant distribution channel and one-stop sales engine for developers. Everyone already has iTunes, so just put your product into the stream and sit back and make money.

The downside will come if there are restrictions on freeware or some sort of gauntlet-like approval process – you don’t want to give people the idea you are trying to stifle legitimate third-party development.

The reason behind restricting third-party software installs is, of course, to placate the wireless partners who still think that “hackers” are going to write programs to take control of the wireless networks or some other such inanity. So regardless of how much complaining may or may not come out of this, it’s going to be a fact and people should just live with it.

Stay tuned.

1: The number of robots that could never, ever be repaired in the adventure game Suspended.

Back in the day – and I am probably dating myself here – there was a genre of adventure game known as “point and click”. The folks at Sierra were the undisputed kings of this particular market, with titles ranging in content from the traditional to gritty, passing through wacky and the generally tasteless on the way. The games were a lot of fun, but were eventually superseded by richer and deeper products – games with character growth, better narrative, open-ended gameplay and (eventually) on-line play and evolving content.

The somewhat simple narrative and linear storylines – not to mention the distressingly lame graphics – did not age well, and the genre as for the most part faded away, although there are certain people who work tirelessly to keep the flame flickering.

Anyway – while the entire adventure game industry has moved on to bigger and better things, some brave souls over at Capcom thought that the Wii and it’s tactile control system would be a natural fit for this sort of thing. And after some messing about they came up with Zack & Wiki, which is an utterly delightful little exercise in welding traditional adventure gameplay with the waving and thrusting of the Wiimote. The game is a ton of fun, but has sadly remained pretty much entirely under the radar. The game is in the stores, but the chances are very high that you have never ever heard of it.

So, in the spirit of public service and of wasting a good 30 minutes of your work day, I feel obligated to point out this on-line demo level of Zack & Wiki. It uses the mouse instead of the Wiimote, but the general concept is the same: click on the various items that highlight when you mouse over them and figure out the order you need to use/trigger/manipulate them to get to the treasure. When you get to the page, click on the “Gameplay” tab to get to the demo level.

Go try it. Consider it your Wednesday diversion. And if you have a Wii, you really need to think about picking this one up.

Back in the day – and I am probably dating myself here – there was a genre of adventure game known as “point and click”. The folks at Sierra were the undisputed kings of this particular market, with titles ranging in content from the traditional to gritty, passing through wacky and the generally tasteless on the way. The games were a lot of fun, but were eventually superseded by richer and deeper products – games with character growth, better narrative, open-ended gameplay and (eventually) on-line play and evolving content.

The somewhat simple narrative and linear storylines – not to mention the distressingly lame graphics – did not age well, and the genre as for the most part faded away, although there are certain people who work tirelessly to keep the flame flickering.

Anyway – while the entire adventure game industry has moved on to bigger and better things, some brave souls over at Capcom thought that the Wii and it’s tactile control system would be a natural fit for this sort of thing. And after some messing about they came up with Zack & Wiki, which is an utterly delightful little exercise in welding traditional adventure gameplay with the waving and thrusting of the Wiimote. The game is a ton of fun, but has sadly remained pretty much entirely under the radar. The game is in the stores, but the chances are very high that you have never ever heard of it.

So, in the spirit of public service and of wasting a good 30 minutes of your work day, I feel obligated to point out this on-line demo level of Zack & Wiki. It uses the mouse instead of the Wiimote, but the general concept is the same: click on the various items that highlight when you mouse over them and figure out the order you need to use/trigger/manipulate them to get to the treasure. When you get to the page, click on the “Gameplay” tab to get to the demo level.

Go try it. Consider it your Wednesday diversion. And if you have a Wii, you really need to think about picking this one up.

When Flickr first burst onto the scene a lot of professional and semi-professional photographers jumped on board – it seemed like a natural way to make examples of your images available to the world at no cost. However, Flickr was always supposed to be about photo sharing, and for these people the sharing aspects inevitably turned into a less-than-stellar experience with photo stealing – especially after Flickr got inhaled into Yahoo. For anyone who makes a living (or just earns a few extra bucks) by snapping pics, the ongoing theft of intellectual property from Flickr has become very tiresome indeed, and a lot of photogs have just bailed on the whole thing.

Which is where PhotoShelter comes in – stepping into the market as a secure photo and image repository geared towards professionals. It is entirely free to join and it includes watermarking, optional levels of access restriction, and a fully integrated sales and payment system. Better, there is a one-step “import from Flickr” tool that lets you haul your stuff over from your Flick account en masse. And, if you do want to share or propagate images to the world at large, there is a “publish to Flick” tool that sends stuff back the other way so anyone can pick it off.

The whole thing is very slick – if you have any sort of financial stake in your photo work, then you owe it to yourself to at least take a peek.

Mean Gene dropped me a line to point out that Country Style has come up with another fabulous idea. They are riffing on the fact that the vast majority of Tim Horton’s “Roll Up The Rim To Win” cups are losers – so much so that getting a losing Tim cup is the basis for universally-understood national jokes – by offering to accept any Tim Horton’s “Sorry, Try Again” cup at any Country Style store for a free medium coffee. The promotion runs from March 3 (that’s today, if you are keeping score at home) until March 9, and there is the expected limit of one “winner” per customer per day.

This is a fucking brilliant plan, and I hope that they manage to get the word out because this is the sort of thing that Canadian’s like – the underdog flipping the bird to the big bully on the block, and hey, it’s free coffee, which is a big deal in the Great White North.

So save your “loser” cups and head over to Country Style this week. Maybe have a sandwich while you are there. And for extra laughs, you can play the “Sorry, Try Again” matching game over at the Country Style web site.

Enjoy.

Since any attempt to upgrade or restore your iPhone via iTunes now will give you a version 1.1.4 phone, and the unlocker for that version is not available yet, I have modified the unlock instructions to give you a local copy of the iPhone 1.1.3 firmware. You can download it and still upgrade and unlock any iPhone that came out of the box with any version of the software that is earlier than 1.1.4. This includes all phones purchased up to and including February 29th, 2008. If your phone is already 1.1.4, then you have to wait. Anyone else, you can keep going – just head over to the unlock page and follow the instructions.

You’re welcome.