Thou shalt have no other gods before Mark Zuckerberg [Sacrilege] ( 2007-11-12 )

Well, these Facebook pages for celebrities and products are really going to work out well, now, aren't they? You can now become a fan of "God," a move which is going to thoroughly delight Campus Crusaders everywhere. But get ready for some holy wars. There are, as of this post, three different gods to choose from. This is a violation of the First Commandment. But even worse? It's a violation of Facebook's terms of service.

Mark Cuban, Facebook, and OpenSocial ( 2007-11-05 )

High Quality Without HD: A Fair Marketing Ploy In A HD Age? ( 2007-11-19 )

Screenshot Tour: A Look at Amazon MP3 ( 2007-09-28 )

Starting Tuesday, Amazon launched Amazon MP3, a new online digital music store selling DRM-free MP3s for $0.89 to $0.99 a la carte or $5.99 to $9.99 per album. That's as cheap or cheaper than the iTunes Music Store but without any of those pesky DRM restrictions or codec issues (everything supports the MP3). Featuring over two million songs from over 180,000 artists, it's shaping up to be an extremely viable alternative for purchasing music online.

Check out the features offered by Amazon MP3 in the gallery below.

Although Amazon MP3's two million songs sound impressive (and there is a lot of very good and popular content offered), it contains a lot of what most of us might consider filler. That said, if I'm looking at downloading the same album in iTunes or Amazon MP3, the choice is pretty obvious: I'm going for the cheaper, DRM-free MP3s. With the Amazon MP3 Downloader, the music will be added to my iTunes library just as seamlessly as if I had bought it from iTunes, and I'm not vendor-locked into iTunes or the iPod for the rest of my life.

Technically speaking, the MP3s are of a pretty high quality, generally encoded using variable bit rates averaging at 256 kbps. While it's not the 320 that seems to be the standard for high-quality MP3 encoding that the BitTorrent crowd has probably come to know and love, it's definitely high quality. (Eight years ago I thought it was crazy to go any higher than 192!) On the flip side, Apple's default bit rate for their AAC-encoded music is 128 kbps (though you can purchase some DRM-free AAC tracks at 256 kbps for $1.29/song). Remember, though, the 128 kbps AAC offers much higher sound quality than a 128 kbps MP3—namely because the AAC codec is more efficient than the MP3. However, at 256 kbps, Amazon's MP3s should sound just as good if not better than your iTunes-purchased AAC files. The main difference, then, will be the file size (the AAC files will be smaller) and the DRM (Apple restricts your downloads, Amazon does not).

Granted, Amazon MP3 is far from the first vendor to offer DRM-free MP3s, as other such services—most notably eMusic—having been around for quite some time. But Amazon is Amazon, and with their imposing consumer influence, this store might have a real chance. In the end, whether it's a viable iTunes replacement or not, it's still a very promising option for digital music lovers. Let us know what you think of Amazon's new offering in the comments.

Rocketboom creator takes on Calacanis [Andrew Baron] ( 2007-11-14 )

Jason Calacanis's human-powered search engine Mahalo is "fundamentally flawed," says videoblogger Andrew Baron. Well, we could have told you that: It's basically Yahoo's directory, 12 years too late. But Baron, best known for creating Rocketboom, trashed Calacanis's service not for its lack of originality, but for its lack of critical applause. "Mahalo is not a worthwhile product," Baron wrote, "I have never seen a single positive review of the site." What's got the guy so worked up?

In his post, Baron gripes about Calacanis's "aggressive marketing tactics" to promote Mahalo Daily, the site's videoblog with former CNET host Veronica Belmont. But in a reply to Baron's attacks, Calacanis guesses the antipathy stems from Calacanis's public attempt to hire Amanda Cogdon after she quit Rocketboom.

Yeah, it could be that. Or it could be that in Mahalo Daily's launch trailer, Calacanis and Belmont parodied "Rocketboom" on Mahalo Daily and Calacanis said, "Hm. Been thinking about it. Rocketboom just isn't that funny."

There's only one way to resolve this, of course. No, not a catfight between Belmont and Rocketboom anchor Joanne Colan, pervs. Instead: Bulldog love!