Numa Numa Phenomenon

NumNuma

There is a craze in the United States of what I am calling the “Numa Numa Phenomenon”.

It was started innocently by this regular guy, Gary Brolsma, who created a video of himself lip singing to the song “Dragostea Din Tei“. The phenomenon is the numerous parodies spreading around the Internet of what Gary had started.

You can check out a collection of these video parodies on YouTube.

Here’s a bit of background about the song, “Dragostea Din Tei”. It was originally released in 2003 by a Romanian group called “O-Zone” in Romania and then 2004 through out Europe. It became the best selling single of the year (2004) in Europe.

In Japan the song was remade, dub with Japanese and English words and re-released as “Maiahi”. Since its released, it is still on the Japanese Top 10 charts. A Flash version was made by Avex using the famous Japanese character Monā as the promotion video for the Maiahi CD. Although Avex refused to admit that their character was the actual Monā.

This song is so popular worldwide, artists from around the world have recorded their localized versions of the song. Including Italian, German, Spanish, Brazilian, Dutch, Afrikaans, French, Russian and Hebrew.

Of course with the release of Walt Disney Pictures’ “Chicken Little” in the United States, I am sure this song will break even more records (excuse the pun) as theatre releases happen around the world.

Too Hard on iPod® with Video

So many people are being too hard on Apple’s recent release (Oct. 12). Particular with their announcement of the Apple iPod® with video.

First of all note that they [Apple] did not label it the “iPod Video”. This is an important and subtle fact. In no way Apple or Steve Jobs thinks that people will want to watch high resolution videos on their 2.5 inch LCD screen of the new iPod®.

This new version (5th generation) iPod® is foremost a MP3 player with video capability.

In my opinion, the current version of the iPod® is a transport medium of video and it is a tip of the iceberg for what Apple will do for this area of digital media.

As in the original launch of iPod® there were very few features as compare to other MP3 players in the market at the time. Although due to its ease of use and design along with the introduction of iTunes Music Store (iTMS), which is how Apple took the MP3 market from the its well established competitors (Creative, iRiver, Sony, Rio, etc., the latter even went closed its doors).

Again Apple is doing the same thing here with videos. They are introducing a device that can do basically the same thing as everything else in the market. With only 2000 music videos and a handful of TV shows, it is not particular different from the 10s of thousands of songs available in the iTMS when it was first launch.

Yesterday iRiver just announced; to be released next month [November], a new device called “iRiver U10”, which has a smaller screen than Apple’s new iPod 2.2 inches compares to 2.5 inches. Most importantly the two devices have similar functionality, but the iRiver is much smaller in capacity compared to the new iPod (iRiver’s 1GB or 2GB compared to Apple’s 30GB or 60GB).

Another thing people are hard on Apple with, are the video codecs that the new iPod supports. Officially the new iPod supports the H.264 (aka MPEG-4 AVC) and MPEG-4 codecs.

People need to remember that Apple, unlike many others (namely Microsoft), supports industry standards. Both the H.264 and MPEG-4 are ITU-T and ISO/IEC respective approved standards.

I understand that many of the “torrent” videos available are encoded with the DivX codec, but that is not the standard for videos. Although it uses codec from MPEG-2.

They other misnomer is that the .AVI format is better than .MOV (QuickTime) or .MPG (MPEG). All three of these are “video/audio containers”. Neither of them are conclusively better than any other, except both QuickTime and MPEG are industry standards.

So what Apple has done and introduced to the world is only the “tip of the iceberg” of what to come. I do not know for a fact, but you can follow my trail of thought by reading my previous weblog article (“Next iPod“) on the subject.

Should I Say I…

hmm… I am glad.

Back on July 23rd this year I wrote in my blog:

… about short videos. Like music videos, TV sitcoms, TV commercials, Movie Trailers, audio skits of any kind which are 15 minutes or less. In these case the entertainment value out weights the quality of video or audio quality of the handheld device on which these videos would be played on….

I wonder if the rest of my post will come true in the near future.

I guess time will tell.

Concerns Unfounded for Apple iPod Not Supporting Firewire

Firewire

Ever since last night’s (morning in San Jose) Apple announcement. There had been post all over the Internet complaining that Apple dropping the support for Firewire (aka i-Link, aka IEEE-1394) on their iPod®.

Firewire is an industry standard that is approved by the IEEE (hence the IEEE label). It was developed primary by Apple back in the 1990s, but this is not an Apple exclusive technology.

As long as video is still important in consumer electronic and film industry, Firewire and its variants will still be around, and will be supported by Apple and its devices (ie. Macintosh, iPod®, etc.)

Like QuickTime, DVD-R and CD-R, Firewire was made popular by Apple (and to a certain extent Sony). The fact that the original iPods have Firewire does not mean that the USB versions are any less superior.

Removing the support for Firewire is a business decision. Being one of the inventor of Firewire, it is to Apple’s advantage to include Firewire in everything (royalties). But I am sure to maintain the same price point and add new features, I think Apple had made the right decision to drop it from the current line of iPod®

Consumer should equate this decision to Apple’s decision to remove the AC Adapter in every iPod® shipped. Similarly, I don’t think Apple believes that AC Adapter is any less superior to charging via USB or Firewire ports or after market AC Adapters.

Don’t be mislead by these individuals who believe there is a feature lost or the unfounded conclusion, that the decision is based on the fact that there are more Wintel users of iPod®.

We are not talking about a large quantities of data being transfered; even with the new 5G iPods. Unless may be you’re using your iPod® as an external drive. Even for the latter, USB 2.0 is arguable faster than Firewire 400. Each technology has its own flaws, and the jury is still out on which is better. You can be assure that both technologies are still being advanced as we speak.

The most important thing people need to remember, most USB compatible devices; including the Apple iPod® are backward compatible to USB 1.1. So again there is no worry here. Do NOT believe the notion that one will have to upgrade their computers (Mac® or Wintel) to connect their iPod®’s.

People please read Apple’s web page for the products.

Mac system requirements

  • Macintosh computer with USB port (USB 2.0 recommended)
  • Mac OS X v10.3.9 or later

Windows system requirements

  • PC with USB port or card (USB 2.0 recommended)
  • Windows 2000 with Service Pack 4 or later, or Windows XP Home or Professional with Service Pack 2 or later

The Internet is a powerful medium and we should all be responsible for spreading the wrong rumors.

Also some people had complained that their iPod® are not always recognized on their Windows machine when using the USB connection. You should be complaining to Microsoft about their OS rather than Apple of their iPod.

[Update 13:54]
I have found another article by “Gareth Potter” on the subject.

Irresponsible Reporter of NYT

Today I read the article “My Songs, My Format” by New York Times’ Sean Captain (Late Edition – Final, Section C, Page 9, Column 1) and it erupted me to write the following letter to the Editor at New York Times (NYT).

Dear Editor,I was appalled to read such an article from New York Times.

Mr. Captain’s article is truly bias and had not explained clearly the facts about the topics he touched on. It would be very misleading to a layman reader of the article.

For example, Mr. Captain never explain the “AAC” codec (Encoder/Decoder), but instead referring it to “Apple’s format”. Implying that it is a proprietary format created by Apple. That is not the case.

The “AAC” format is part of the industry standard for MPEG-2 and MPEG-4, the version that Apple promotes is AAC MPEG-4, which commonly agreed by industry expert as having a better compression and sound quality than the MP3 format.

Aside from that Mr. Captain also fail to explain the concept of “bps” (Bits per Seconds), which is also very important when talking about compression formats and particularly important when comparing different codecs. One can not compare bit rates of different codecs directly. That like comparing apples and oranges.

Mr. Captain also fail to point out that there are many other MP3 players our there which also supports the AAC format.

As Mr. Captain correctly points out that Apple is a trend setter. Like when Apple removed the floppy disk player from their computers, “Macintosh” 5 years ago, everyone was up in arms calling it a stupid move that will destroy Apple’s market share. Now we see that other major manufactures are also following Apple’s directions and removed the floppy drive as standard equipment from the computers they manufacture.

Going back even further about 13 years ago, when Apple send out all their developers resources in CD-ROM format, the critics were all calling this a bad move, which is designed to force Apple’s developers to purchase the more expensive (at the time) CD ROM player option in their Macintosh. This took another 5 years for the rest of the world to realize that CD-ROM is a much better and preferred medium by the consumers.

Apple in the past had always try their best to stick with industry accepted Standards. Some times these Standards are well established in other times they may be recently approved as Standards, and lastly Apple’s own technology is adapted as Standards (ie. QuickTime, IEEE-1394 aka Firewire aka i-Link).

For a publication like New York Times, I believe it has much better integrity that to publish something that is so misleading to the average reader that cause them to draw an incorrect conclusion about the subject. As for Mr. Captain, he should be much more responsible to verify and clarify his facts and terminologies in his article, rather than to allow the readers to do the verifications themselves before coming to a conclusion about his article.

I am sure that Mr. Captain does not intentionally want to mislead the New York Times readers. I urge you to insist on a retractile or a following clarification article to this one by Mr. Captain.

Unfortunately, due to the commercialization of New York Times online I am not able to provide the link (URL) to the actual article on NYT’s web site.

Hongkong Disneyland

HongkongDisneyland

Much hype had been surrounding the opening of Hong Kong Disneyland tomorrow. Many have talked about the number of tourist from mainland China and elsewhere in Asia to Hong Kong, which suppose to result in economical benefit of Hong Kong. I personally do not have this same believe.

For one, the size of Hong Kong Disneyland is between 15 – 19 hectare, when considering the 30,000 maximum capacity, that equates to 2.5 square meters per person. It is currently the smallest Disneyland in the world. Hong Kong Disneyland spokesperson speaks of the Disneyland Hotels and resort facility as a whole when talking about the size of Hong Kong Disneyland, but how many of the visitors would even care or for that matter see these other facilities.

Everything at Hong Kong Disneyland is smaller than the rest of its brothers and sisters in Paris, Los Angeles, Tokyo and Orlando.

In particular the Cinderella castle for some reason looks more like Cinderella’s cottage. It lacks the dominance that a castle should instill. May be it has to do with the mountain that is its backdrop. This so call mountain on Lantau island is the size of a hill in most fairy tales. This is the only Cinderella castle that has a mountain as its backdrop, but to make the castle smaller just to give a better proportion to the mountain is ridiculous.

Disneyland has delivered the Disney magic for years to visitors for years to visitors around the world, but with the behaviours of the mainland China visitors to Hong Kong Disneyland, they have tainted this magic. Until Hong Kong Disneyland spend more effort to prevent these behaviours the Disney magic will never be successful in Hong Kong.

My recommendation to all, is to save the money and go to Tokyo Disneyland / Disney Sea instead, then reconsider Hong Kong Disneyland again in 4 – 5 years from now.

Hongkong Disneyland

HongkongDisneyland

Much hype had been surrounding the opening of Hong Kong Disneyland tomorrow. Many have talked about the number of tourist from mainland China and elsewhere in Asia to Hong Kong, which suppose to result in economical benefit of Hong Kong. I personally do not have this same believe.

For one, the size of Hong Kong Disneyland is between 15 – 19 hectare, when considering the 30,000 maximum capacity, that equates to 2.5 square meters per person. It is currently the smallest Disneyland in the world. Hong Kong Disneyland spokesperson speaks of the Disneyland Hotels and resort facility as a whole when talking about the size of Hong Kong Disneyland, but how many of the visitors would even care or for that matter see these other facilities.

Everything at Hong Kong Disneyland is smaller than the rest of its brothers and sisters in Paris, Los Angeles, Tokyo and Orlando.

In particular the Cinderella castle for some reason looks more like Cinderella’s cottage. It lacks the dominance that a castle should instill. May be it has to do with the mountain that is its backdrop. This so call mountain on Lantau island is the size of a hill in most fairy tales. This is the only Cinderella castle that has a mountain as its backdrop, but to make the castle smaller just to give a better proportion to the mountain is ridiculous.

Disneyland has delivered the Disney magic for years to visitors for years to visitors around the world, but with the behaviours of the mainland China visitors to Hong Kong Disneyland, they have tainted this magic. Until Hong Kong Disneyland spend more effort to prevent these behaviours the Disney magic will never be successful in Hong Kong.

My recommendation to all, is to save the money and go to Tokyo Disneyland / Disney Sea instead, then reconsider Hong Kong Disneyland again in 4 – 5 years from now.

iTunes Music Store – Japan

Again the news of a possible Apple’s, industry leading, iTunes Music Store for the Japanese market is in the news.

This rumor had been around for over a year now, each came with possible launch dates. The difference this time, is that the news is from the Asian recording company Avex (Chinese only site), which announced an agreement with Apple to distribute its holdings through Apple’s iTunes Music Store starting August of this year. Of course, true to Apple’s tradition, they have no comments on any unannounced product.

Given that Avex has one of the largest collection of works from Asian artists. The possibility of iTunes Music Stores exploding in the major Avex countries (Hong Kong, Korea, Japan and Taiwan) is inevitable. I truly hope I am correct, since I have been waiting for iTMS to arrive in Hong Kong ever since iTMS was launched by Apple.

This is good news for all those music lovers (like myself) in Asia who want to and willing to purchase our music via the online medium.

It is not that there are not already legal downloads in Asia (for example EOLAsia), but the entry of the market leader into the area is definitely a significant indicator for all those record labels that are still on the fence.

While Asia is one of the most challenging market for companies like Apple to push legal downloads of content. I am sure all of Apple’s competitors are watching to see how well Apple can pull this off. Since everyone knows that IP pirating is a major problem for most Asian countries.

When I used to work for SPSS, the Sales & Marketing team used to joke about the fact that they “sell a million copies of SPSS worldwide, but one to Asia”.

Let’s hope that the theory of “most people are honest and good” prevail and Apple can make these new Asian versions of the iTMS as successful as they did in the US and Europe.