Do you download via iTunes? How about listen to great music, shows and podcasts (like geekazine… hint hint) on the player?
Today marks the 5 year anniversary of iTunes - a corner of Apple’s market that had a hand in making the company so popular today. Here is a rough timeline of events in the last 5 years:
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Apr. 28th 2003
iTunes Launches
May 5th 2003
iTunes hits 1 Million Downloads
Oct 16th 2003
iTunes for Windows is launched
Dec 15th 2003
25 Million Downloads
Mar 15th 2004
50 Million Downloads
June16th 2004
iTunes UK Launches
June 23rd 2004
iTunes UK - 800K downloads
July 12th 2004
100 Million Downloads
Sept 7th 2004
iTunes Opens to other music players
Oct 15th 2004
150 Million
Dec 3rd 2004
iTunes Canada
Jan 24th 2005
250 Million
May 10th 2005
Video iTunes
June 24th 2005
iTunes UK - 50 Million
Aug 4th 2005
iTunes Japan Launches
Aug 8th 2005
1 Million Downloads - iTunes Japan
Nov 7th 2005
1 Million Video Downloads
Nov 22nd 2005
Apple Ranked 7th in Music RetailersÂ
Feb 24th 2006
1 Billion Downloads (Dr. Evil would be so proud;)
Apr. 2nd 2007
EMI turns off DRM in iTunes
Aug 1st 2007
3 Billion Downloads
Apr 3rd 2008
Apple Becomes #1 Retailer of Music
Apr 28th 2008
10 Million Songs
10 million songs, 10,000 plus music videos, 20,000 plus books, 350 television shows, and 1000 feature films. Over 4 Billion songs have been downloaded since it’s inception.
Of course, the music store has seen it’s share of issues. The Beatles lawsuit for the “Apple Corp” name, the DRM issues and multiple companies claiming that they can match or even beat iTunes in songs. Still, five years later, it’s not only still here, but it’s on the top of the heap.
And the fun doesn’t stop there. Rumor of a program that will make your iPhone a Remote Controller and another article speculating iTunes will capture one quarter of Worldwide Music by 2012 has been talked about on the web today. With Apple TV, iPhones and iPods being sold daily, the numbers will increase - more and more will use the service for audio and video.
We congratulate iTunes Music Store for 5 years of great service. We also hope to see many more years of downloads.
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The New York Times reports of a Blogger who gets an email after complaining about a service that is not there. Other people have complained about their bills and Comcast comes back with a “Can I Help”? Even others find themselves with internet connection issues for trying to use the service. This begs the question: are we seeing a new trend and is this a good or bad thing?
First of all, most likely they are not looking at your blog or twitter directly. They are most likely running searches from Google, Summize (remember - Twitter bought that company) and a bunch of other engines. They look at keywords that - in turn - give them information to turn around and say “What can we do?”
Last year while working at a job, we decided to implement a helpdesk system. I looked over a few systems, gave a recommendation and we implemented. The one I’m going to talk about wasn’t the one we went with simply because there were good features they lacked, but this is one feature that really made me think about the way we can see customers.
The service let you put a piece of code on each users’ desktop. When they logged into the network, that code would send a log to the helpdesk software. If any keywords showed up, the software would alert the helpdesk so action could be taken before the customer could call in.
Think about it: Google a specific topic. Let’s take Comcast for example. Go to Google, then “Advanced Search”. Type in “Comcast”, and filter to the last 24 hours. Not only will you get blogs, but you will also get twitters, plurks and a host of other items.
Now if you organize that with specific keywords like “Comcast” and maybe a hot word like “sucks”, you can see all the blogs and posts that follow. If someone wrote an API that could constantly search for these words, then they can report on a system and get back to the author.
Of course, if you are on Comcast’s’ network and sending plain text (like most blogs are), then it’s ten times easier for Comcast to filter and respond. If it was encrypted, that would be a different story. However it’s only plain old text passing through the internet for all to read - including Comcast.
What is the good? Well, you may not want them to watch what you are sending, but if you put it out on Twitter or in a blog, you want people to see it anyway. So why not Comcast? Why not AT&T? Why not Steve Ballmer or Steve Jobs? I suppose if Ballmer or Jobs were to call you tomorrow over a blog or Twitter, you might see that as an honor that they are noticing your posts.
It can also alert people of any questionable activity. In this post 9-11 era, concern over communication is a hot issue. With so many ways to communicate over the internet, it might be nice to stop another epic event before it takes place.
What is the Bad? Well, it’s just another form of Big brother watching. One more step closer for RIAAs and MPAAs to surface. It is wrong to duplicate and distribute copyrighted material, but for those who don’t do that it’s not fair if we are being watched.
Dave Winer reported that right before an Obama speech, he was disconnected from Comcast for “Security” issues. Dave instantly closed his Comcast account. If I was in the same position, I think I would have either done the same thing or strongly worded the incident and made sure enough people heard it. I would most likely do the latter if I didn’t have another avenue of connection.
Is there a “Happy Medium”? Not really. That is why history is riddled with events like witch hunts and the Spanish Inquisition (Yeah, I know. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition). But with pressure to have a safe lifestyle, you have to have someone watching over it, right?
Well, someone or something might be watching you now. Whether it’s the ISP seeing what you are posting on your Blog or twitter, a security camera watching your actions in and out of a retail store, an ATM watching you take your money or one person just peering out the window to see what you’re up to. It’s all the same, right?
Some may call this move by Comcast as creepy. Others may call it brilliant because they are preventing issues. Even others may call it questionable practice because they are watching you. But the old saying “Danged if you do, danged if you don’t” can come into play here. We want to be safe but we don’t want to be watched or held accountable. What goes on behind closed doors….
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