Nick Bradbury

Reluctantly siding with Grokster

In his post about the MGM v. Grokster case, Christopher Baus asks "Where's Nick Bradbury?" It's a fair question given my stance on software piracy, but as I've written before, I believe it's a mistake to hold developers of P2P products liable for the copyright infringement of their users.

As you can imagine, that's not an easy position for me to take since 100% of my income comes from software sales. My work is pirated left and right on file-sharing networks, so I'd probably turn a blind eye if I thought this case would affect only the current swarm of spyware-infested P2P apps that were so obviously designed for "sharing" copyrighted material. But that's the problem. This case doesn't just affect these piracy tools. It could affect technologies like BitTorrent which are widely used for piracy, yet have legitimate uses as well.

And I have to be concerned about how this case could impact small developers such as myself by burdening us with legal concerns. Mark Cuban hit upon this in his blog recently:

"If Grokster loses, technological innovation might not die, but it will have such a significant price tag associated with it, it will be the domain of the big corporations only."

Look at it this way: if people use FeedDemon to subscribe to warez feeds and download copyrighted material, should my company be held liable? The idea seems ridiculous given that I obviously didn't design FeedDemon for this purpose, but this possibility won't seem as far-fetched if MGM wins this case.

As an aside, I look at the current crop of file-sharing software and see an opportunity for someone. As the success of iTunes has shown, there are millions of customers who are willing to dump file-sharing tools in favor of a more legitimate solution. I'd love to see a tool which enabled purchasing software as easily as you can purchase music on iTunes (look at RealArcade for a specialized example of this). These days I buy far more music than I did before I switched to iTunes, and the primary reason for this is that it's so easy. If instead of simply clicking "Buy Now" to purchase music I had to type in my contact information, credit card details, etc., with every purchase, I'd buy a fraction of the music I currently do. Why not sell software the same way?

Download audio to your PlayStation Portable (PSP) with FeedDemon

Last week I picked up a new PlayStation Portable (PSP) in the hopes that I could use FeedDemon to download podcasts and other audio files to it. Turns out it's possible, but it wasn't as straightforward as I would've liked.

In my case, I decided to use the PSP's USB connection to copy downloaded audio directly to the PSP's memory stick. Just in case other readers are struggling with this, here's how to do it:

1. Select "USB Connection" in your PSP's settings and enable the USB mode - this must be done in order for the PSP's memory stick to be mapped to a Windows drive letter
2. If you haven't done so already, create a folder on the mapped drive named PSP, then create a subfolder of that named Music
3. Open FeedDemon's FeedStation utility, then click the Options toolbutton and switch to the Podcasting tab
4. Place a checkmark in "This Folder" to copy downloaded podcasts to a local folder, then enter the path to your PSP's music folder (in my case, this is I:\PSP\Music)
5. Click OK to save your settings

The next step is to simply use FeedDemon to download your favorite podcasts, then let FeedStation take care of automatically copying them to your PSP.

Note: My PSP came with a feeble 32MB memory stick, which is far too small for storing audio. So if you plan to use your PSP to listen to podcasts, make sure to invest in a much larger memory stick!

RSS reader market share among football fans

The Read/Write Web has an interesting post about RSS aggregator stats which to some degree confirms my suspicions about RSS reader market share. Over the past few months, I've seen several posts about market share which I believed were inaccurate for many reasons, not the least of which was the fact that they really determined market share among geeks rather than the wider non-technical audience (yes, many non-techies are reading RSS now!).

In this particular example, the top aggregator being used is My Yahoo, followed by FeedDemon and then Bloglines. As Kevin Donahue points out, FeedDemon is easy to use, which makes it an obvious choice for the non-geek.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that there's very little you can determine about RSS reader market share when looking at a single set of feeds (and of course, basing market share on server hits is inaccurate to start with), but the fact that the results vary so widely based on which feeds are examined speaks volumes about the accuracy of these surveys.

PS: Kevin, I agree that Fanblogs should be in FeedDemon's default set of feeds - I'll add it to the "Sports" group in the next build. However, given the number of feeds you offer, you might want to consider providing your visitors a custom build of FeedDemon that's pre-loaded with all of your feeds.

Thank you, Apple!

Just wanted to thank the person (or people) at Apple responsible for listing FeedDemon as the recommended RSS reader for Windows. That's quite a compliment, and I do appreciate it!

Dexter Cartoon for March 25, 2005

Dexter RSS feed

PS: This week's Dexter is dated by the reference to "Thelma and Louise," which was in theaters when I created the strip.

How I use FeedDemon to Receive Podcasts

A couple of months ago I posted about how I use FeedDemon, and since it was a fairly popular post I thought I'd share with you how I use FeedDemon 1.5 to receive podcasts and sync them with my iPod.

In his article Payloads for RSS, Dave Winer talked about how RSS enclosures were intended to be downloaded while your computer is inactive (such as in the middle of the night). FeedDemon certainly supports this idea by enabling you to schedule your downloads, but I have to confess that I rarely use this feature anymore. I download only a handful of new podcasts every day, so I just let each download start right away. And although FeedDemon enables you to automatically download enclosures for specific feeds, I seldom use this feature since there aren't many feeds whose podcasts I always want to hear (in fact, I believe I only have automatic downloads enabled for my IT Conversations feed).

Instead, when there's a podcast I might want to listen to, I simply cick the enclosure icon to add it to my FeedStation download queue. I also make use of the fact that I can drag-and-drop a media link onto FeedStation to add it to the download queue. Chances are that most FeedDemon users don't know about that feature, but it's extremely handy - I regularly find myself drag-and-dropping MP3 links from Firefox onto FeedStation (note that this works from IE as well).

I generally add podcasts to my download queue throughout the day, and I have FeedDemon configured to automatically copy the downloaded podcasts to my iPod (although in the past I used this feature to copy downloads to my Creative Nomad as well). I then take my iPod with me the next morning, so that I can listen to the new podcasts after I drop off my kids at school.

Link Dump: March 22, 2005

• Anil Dash: The Blog Cycle
• BitTorrent 4.0 Released
• Feedster's Corporate Blogging Policy
• Podcasters at Gnomedex
• Size Matters + Slippery Slope = Trouble Ahead
• The Anti-Entrepreneurial State
• The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
• The Sorry State of Affairs in Weblog APIs
• "Welcome back, Beatallica"
• Why Attention.xml Could Change PR Forever
• Zeldman: Userism

Microsoft a "We" Company?

Robert Scoble wants Microsoft to be perceived as a "we" company. I've taken a few jabs at Microsoft here in the past, but you know what? I'll give them credit for already making big steps towards becoming "we" instead of "us." The most obvious example is how Microsoft has embraced blogging in a much larger - and much more honest - way than many other companies. The mere fact that Scoble's blog exists shows that they're taking "we" seriously, and they deserve some recognition for this despite their past indiscretions.

Scoble also suggests that Microsoft needs to get along better with others, and he's put his finger on Microsoft's biggest problem right now: lack of trust. Let's face it, even Microsoft's friends don't trust the company due to past behavior, and that's a hard thing to overcome.

Funny enough, this is another lessen that Google may find itself forced to learn. As the auto-link controversy showed, there are a lot of people who are starting to mistrust Google, and Google will find it extremely difficult to keep expanding without the trust of its users. So far I've given Google the benefit of the doubt and have continued to believe that they really are working to make the world a better place by enabling access to information. But it will take a single big misstep for me to change my mind.

Yahoo Acquires Flickr

People have been hinting it at for quite a while, but now it's official: Yahoo has acquired Flickr and Ludicorp.

Recovery

A year ago I was sidelined by a pinched nerve, which resulted in surgery and a long recuperation. Today I celebrated my recovery by running my first half-marathon.

Now, I wish I could report that I ran at a record pace, but the truth is that I ran veerrry slowly. At about the fifth mile I started having trouble with my iliotibial band, and no amount of stretching seemed to help. So rather than run a speedy race, I slowed to a 10-minute-mile pace and spent much of the run watching people twice as old - and twice as wide - pass me by. Still, given that a year ago I was down for the count after neck surgery, I feel pretty good that I finished at all.

I feel even better about the fact that my kids were there to see me finish. Last year, I hated them seeing me wearing a neck brace, unable to turn my head or even pick them up. This year, as I crossed the finish line I spotted my kids holding hand-made "Go Dady" signs, and I can't describe how great that made me feel. The only thing better than that was lifting myself into the stands to give my wife a well-deserved (and very salty) kiss.

PS: A special thanks to my best friends Kevin and Shima, who made sure my favorite beer was waiting for me outside the event. Nice one, folks :)