I can’t remember the context, but I remember reading an article a little while ago about music, DRM and other digitally formatted media. The line that really struck me was not one that was tucked away anywhere, or that was the centre of any argument. It was presented as so obvious that it didn’t need any further emphasis:

Digital is flexible.

The natural state for things, anything, that is digitally represented is that it is mutable and changeable. If I chose to buy a digital book, the natural feeling thing is that I should be able to read that on my laptop, iPhone, Kindle or any other device that I pick. If I buy music, I should be able to crank it through my stereo, or put it through headphones. That’s the obvious take-away from that statement.

It struck me, too, that it’s natural to be able to take these digital things and reuse them as much as possible; whether that’s remixing music with other tracks, using digital media as the basis of an art project of some sort, or even just exploring a shift in context (like visualisation around novels to explore the themes) it seems like it should be an easy thing to do. That’s why DRM is bad.

Digital is flexible is the obvious, default starting point. If your media isn’t flexible, demand better.

After several years and 3 major hardware iterations, O2 have finally lost their iPhone exclusivity in the UK. Over the last few days, Orange have started selling the iPhone on their network too. Many saw this as a chance to start some competition in the marketplace, which is always a good thing. Did we get it? Well, no, not really.

The problem is that Orange have basically got the same deals as O2. The pricing is pretty much identical (if we’re not quibbling over pennies either way) and the structuring is too.

They could’ve competed on any number of fronts: pricing, different number of texts/minutes, different data plans, different tethering, cheaper handsets etc. Instead they seem to be doing exactly the same thing as O2. How does this really help your average consumer? It doesn’t. They’ve added very little to the marketplace, and O2 have too much of a headstart for a me-too answer.

On the plus side, they do have a better 3G network but on the minus side they also have explicit data restrictions. 750Mb per month might seem like a lot, and I’m sure it’s adequate for most people, but I’m fairly sure you could tear that down quite easily under the right circumstances (Spotify and iTunes video looking like likely culprits).

They could’ve done so much better, but instead we get a fairly middling effort. A waste and a disappointment. Let’s see if Vodafone, the next to get the iPhone, will do any better.

A film fight that’s up within a few weeks of it’s due date? I must be getting caught up. Anyway, October was an obscenely strong month. Let’s get on with it.

Zombieland is exactly my kind of film. Zombies, gore, action and comedy all packaged together neatly into 90 or so minutes. The whole thing is set at just the right level: over-the-top but with characters we can all get behind. While the story itself is pretty forgettable, it’s really not that important to enjoying the movie. The performances throughout are great, with Woody Harrelson in perhaps his finest role. The Bill Murray section is absolute genius and I implore you to see this film for that if nothing else. Very good stuff. (See my Zombieland Twitter review).

To call a Pixar movie sweet, touching, funny, cute and fantastically put together seems redundant; that’s exactly what the studio manage to do with just about everything they’ve done. Up is no exception. The unexpected star is an old man desperate to live out his (and his wife’s) lifetime dream of exploring. It’s beautiful and sad, with some of their best characters yet. Dug, and his squirrely obsession, is easily up there with the Toy Story crew and Wall-E. This is one of their best. A must-see. (See my Up Twitter review).

A romantic comedy has to be something special for it to win me over. Sam Mendes has managed that with his incredibly sweet latest film, Away We Go. It manages to find a careful balance between the mushier parts and the more sombre parts, by injecting the whole thing with a remarkably grown-up sense of humour; the featured couple are having fun with each other, not for you, and the film works far better that way. John Krasinski is the surpise of this film, managing to get far enough away from Jim from The Office to sell it. It’s not without its flaws (a little schmaltzy in places, and could do with being a little shorter), but still a solid film. (See my Away We Go Twitter review).

Finally, Fantastic Mr. Fox sees the unlikely coming together of a classic Roald Dahl novel and all the odd fun that entails, with a Wes Anderson movie, with his full suite of quirks, awkward timing, and time-tested cast (Schwartzman, Wilson etc).  The result? One of the best films of the year. It barely misses a beat, with George Clooney playing Mr Fox as smoothly as you might expect, an all-star voice cast backing him up, and Anderson reworking all of the lines to perfection. The visuals are gorgeous oranges and browns, the characters distinctive without being weird. It has a decent line in grown-up humour that will go over the heads of most kids. I don’t have a bad thing to say about this film. Absolutely fantastic, as the name suggests. (See my Fantastic Mr. Fox Twitter review).

The winner? Any of these films could win in other months but Fantastic Mr. Fox is just that little bit better.

So, I finally gave in and bought Spotify Premium for a month. I’ve been largely looking at the iPhone version and have a few quick week one observations:

• 3G is not reliable enough for me to do streaming. I’d typically get half-way through an album and hit stuttering.
• Great for sampling new music.
• Offline mode does exactly what you want it to do, but is completely playlist centric. You build a playlist and can either play it in order or in shuffle. If you happened to a number of artist’s tracks into a playlist out of album order, that’s too bad. You can’t sort it.
• It sorely lacks the ability to search amongst your offline tracks to just play individual albums i.e. if you have a playlist full of Green Day albums, you can’t just pick “Dookie” and go. You need to go through the playlist. Some kind of local search would be invaluable. You can kind of do this if you have signal, but that seems like an unnecessary requirement: the tracks are right there, just index them.
• The flick through artwork to get to the next track is nice. Very much in keeping with the rest of the iPhone.
• Had a few crashes, but nothing major.
• It’s not their fault, but not being able to background the application is a nuisance. I frequently write notes for later use and having to stop the music to do that is a pain.
• Having to sync offline mode via wi-fi is equally painful. A thousand tracks takes HOURS. I’m not an expert but I’m sure the USB cable can be used for this via the connector API.

I’m now into week 2 with more carefully crafted playlists and things are better. I might update again next week.

Several years ago, most people in the UK were issued with new bank cards featuring the now familiar chip-and-pin system (formally specified by the EMV group). The goal was to provide greater protection to transactions by removing easily forged signatures and greatly increasing the state of card cryptography, at least compared to the old magnetic stripes. While the system has its flaws, it has been a success and is now an every day part of life here in Great Britain, as well as most of the Western world.

One problem it doesn’t solve is timeliness for small transactions. If you’re buying a cup of coffee, a sandwich or a similarly low-value set of items, using a card still takes a great deal longer than a cash transaction. If you have a queue of people all paying by card, the time taken really adds up, both for shops and consumers.

There is a solution that has been trialled in various ways over the last few years, called EMV contactless. By embedding a small radio transmitter (tiny, tiny range) into modern credit cards, we can now make use of chip-and-pin free technology. Rather than inserting your card, typing your pin, and awaiting authorisation, you swipe your card over a reader (less than a second) and that’s it. It gets enough of your details to charge you the right amount (which it tends to do in the background) and you get on with your day. You basically have a system that’s much faster than cash.

You might be thinking that this sounds familiar if you live in or have visited London in the last 6 years or so: this is exactly how Oyster cards work on London Transport. You swipe, you walk through, and that’s it. It may also be familiar to American readers who are part of the Chase bank. It’s been deployed by them under the name Chase Blink. (I should say I was once employed by another part of Chase’s parent company, but obviously had nothing to do with any of this – I just read about it there first. My opinion is not their opinion, yadda yadda).

Now, obviously, an instant debit card that finishes transactions after you leave is open to fraud: you could charge up a number of small transactions that total a huge amount. They’ve thought of that. There are both per-transaction and daily limits before you have to revert to chip-and-pin. It’ll vary from bank to bank, but I’ve seen sensible limits of £10 per transaction and £50 a day. That should cover the use-cases here i.e. replacing cash and low-value card transactions.

A far more interesting problem is proliferation. I have one of these cards (it got sent out within the last week) but, as far as I know, there are absolutely no places in Glasgow that I can actually use it. I imagine big name, high-volume chains will get it quickly (coffee chains, fast food, etc), but I can’t imagine a quick change for most other vendors. Given the cost in upgrading aging equipment to be chip-and-pin compatible, a real concern for this system is how smaller companies who would really benefit from contactless transactions are actually going to be able to afford it. Sure, the convenience and time-saving probably make it worthwhile in the long term but I imagine the equipment involved is prohibitively costly for many operations.

If this had been incorporated into cards at the same time as chip-and-pin, then I’m sure it would be huge and have a bright future. As it stands, I doubt its going anywhere fast. I would like to be wrong on this one.