Apple just announced some interesting upgrades to the iPod Touch. Some new applications are now available for the iPod - including maps, email, weather, stock quotes, and a customizable home page. Unfortunately, the are planning to charge existing users $20 for the upgrade.

I don't think this is going to persuade people to stop hacking their iPods. Many of these applications already exist for the iPhone, and Apple is simply installing them on the iPod Touch as well. The binaries are identical, so they don't even need to recompile. It costs them nothing to do this - just add the applications into the iPod deployment package.

To an uninformed customer, like me I guess, it seems like they are simply trying to get another $20 from my pocket, for no discernable reason. It's not costing them $20 to develop and deliver these to me. It's just they've been holding them back from me. It's like a cover charge to a bar, where I've already paid $400 to be a member (to buy the iPod) and regularly pay for drinks (songs) anyways. So why this extra $20?

Add this to the already long list of reasons Apple is one of the most consumer unfriendly companies around. (With Sony of course.)

I wonder what a Zune is like?

It struck me the other day, as I was in my local Sony Store oogling the beautiful televisions, that I have mixed feelings towards Sony. I mostly hate them, but I do own all Sony stereo equipment, and when I redo my home theatre later this year it will probably be Sony as well.

Sony makes great products. No doubt, their products might cost more than the competition but you get what you pay for. You want the cheapest LCD around, buy Prima. But if you want something to show off to your friends and make them jealous, get a Sony.

But they are also one of the most consumer unfriendly companies around. While everyone has standardized on the SD flash memory format for cameras, Sony introduces the MemoryStick. So if I buy a Sony camera, I can't use all these cheap 2GB SD cards I have and instead have to buy expensive Sony-only cards. No thanks.

A few years ago I purchased a new camera, made by Konica Minolta. I liked that camera  a lot, except I lost the lens cap for it. Speaking with a camera store sales clerk some time later, I learned that Sony purchased some assets from Konica Minolta and that Konica Minolta would stop making cameras as a result. (So no, I could not buy a new lens cover for my camera.) Did Sony buy the Minolta technology just so that Minolta would get out of the camera business?

The lowlight was of course the famous (infamous) rootkit incident. Inserting a Sony Music CD into your computer actually modified Windows in such a way that made it easier for virus writers to hide viruses in your system. Inserting a music CD in your computer should not have to install software, let alone modify Windows. It should just play.

Sony was the company that brought the world BetaMax, and now they are the company behind Blu-Ray. I understand innovation, but I don't understand doing things to make life more difficult and confusing for your customers.

I suppose I should be thankful that Sony computers run Windows and not some proprietary operating system. I'm sure they would have done that if they could.

A CNN blogger at CES this year made the comment that Sony makes too many products.

"There will be 16 new Handycams, two new Walkman phones, a Blu-ray PC drive, a mainstream entry into the Alpha camera line, new Mylo models, some new Vaios, a bunch of new Bravias -- although I missed the exact number, apparently 10 of them are 1080p," Jongewaard said.

"How on earth can it be profitable to have this many different products?" she added.

That's another thing about Sony. They make something like 200,000 products. No exaggeration, it's that high. They seem a bit unfocused.

I'm currently both reading AND listening to the book The Four Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. I'll admit the title caught my attention on Amazon.com and bought it simply based on that, not knowing anything else about the book.

The book describes how the author was able to eliminate a ton of unnecessary stress from his life, and then outsource the rest in order to free himself to only work 4 hours per week to make the same (or more) income.

Is it possible or just a fairy-tale fantasy? There are some interesting concepts in this book. One is the 80/20 rule - which is not new. The theory is that 20% of your customers will contribute 80% of your income. (Or the flip side is 80% of your customers will only contribute 20% of your income.) So why not focus on the 20% of customers that pay your bills. Don't be afraid to fire customers who are giving you headaches and very little profits. Or those customers who you call every week and never order from you. Put them on autopilot and focus on the small number of great customers. Find out why they're so great, and then find a few more just like them.

Another interesting concept is the idea of elimination. Reduce the number of emails coming in. Ask people not to CC you on things you don't need to be involve in. Reduce the number of meetings. Delegate more things - your customer service staff should be empowered to make the customer happy without having to come to you to ask for small things. Create a FAQ for the most frequently asked questions. Reduce the drains on your time. Make people around you aware that you consider your time valuable and don't let them waste it with idle chit chat and stuff.

And finally, Ferriss recommends you outsource as much as you can. Get a virtual assistant for $4 an hour from India, and let them do the preliminary research you need to write that article, let them blog for you, let them do your business and personal errands that take a long time, even let them respond to your emails for you. Can you find 10 hours of week of tasks for someone else to do, for $40 a week? Are there things you'd rather be doing for 10 more hours a week (playing with your kids, sleeping, planning your next big project) that you'd pay $40 to free up? It's seductive to free up a lot of time for so little money.

Ferriss has a blog, and recently did an interesting interview with Robert Scoble. An interesting theory - one which I will be slowly putting to the test over the next couple of months.

Do you ever see a movie because you just liked the name of it, and saw a little bit of a teaser trailer? That's why I went to see I Am Legend. And honestly, I didn't know much about the story except Will Smith was the last person alive in Manhattan for some reason. I didn't know or couldn't remember the reason, but it sounded cool.

And the other reason I went to see it I suppose was that I was watching an episode of Diggnation, and Kevin and Alex both said it was an amazing movie. So I knew I had to see it.

First of all, props to the filmmakers for making such a highly believable movie. When Will Smith is driving his Mustang down broadway, and the camera pulls back, you see that Manhattan has been overrun by nature. The streets are full of weeds, not a soul is stirring, he truly has the city to himself. And the various wildlife that now inhabit it as well.

I'm not sure what I was expecting. I suppose I was looking for a bit of an action movie - guns, explosions, and in the end our hero would be victorious. What I got, was more suspense than I was expecting, and more drama. This just in: Will Smith can act! For a large portion of the movie, Will Smith is the only actor on the screen. He carries this movie on his shoulders. And he does it well.

I won't ruin the movie for you. I do recommend people to see it. Be prepared to be on the edge of your seat through a good portion of it. And be prepared to jump a few times - I did several times. It's also a movie that sticks in your brain a few days after you go and see it.

I know I'm late in discovering this, but this is really good:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr3qPRAAnOg

First, let me get all the swearing out of the way up front. @&%^ #$%#^&!

Someone has started sending out mass spammings using one of my domain names as the return address. I don't know how many emails have been sent out using that domain, but it has to be in the million range I am sure. 

It all started when over the Christmas holidays, I started receiving email bounce backs from people I've never sent an email to. Several were of the "I am not in the office this week" variety, but now tons are in the "access denied" variety. All told, I bet I've received around 1000 email bounce backs.

Lucklily my junk email filter caught most of them, but its still a pain to log into Gmail and see 400+ emails in your spam folder. I usually receive 50 per day, but 400 was a new record.

SPAM is such an ugly and useless thing. It's unbelievable to me that in 2008, there is not an easy technical solution to fix it. The world has closed off most of the open email relay servers, why not go after all of them? And why not implement a protocol that provides and absolute and unhackable trace to the actual source of the email. Once an email server has been identified that sends out thousands of spam messages a day, shut it down. The ISP can turn off the switch. Unplug it. Find and fix these holes in our email infrastructure.

On my Marketing Weblog, I say personal email is dead. This is one big reason email is dead.

It's Christmas. And every year at this time, as families get together to sit down and eat a traditional meal together, there's one ritual that also happens in millions of homes across North America as well.

I'm talking about removing viruses from your relative's computer.

I knew my nephews machine was due for some cleaning, as a few days ago I started receiving strange MSN messages from him, inviting me to download a ZIP file. I knew it was bogus, and there's no way I'm accepting a file like that under those circumstances. He's got a virus. Again.

It occured to me tonight, as I was applying the latest Microsoft patches (which strangely never get applied even though I set it to automatic install), that I actually enjoyed cleaning viruses off the machine. Maybe that's the geek in me. But I have a standard set of tools I use to get rid of the nasty stuff, and I get a certain level of satisfaction when the AVG anti-virus program reports 55 threats found, and is able to remove all of them.

Now I do wish that there was some, sure-fire way, to keep that machine clean no matter what the kids did to it. The problem I guess is that they do need to install software from time-to-time and I live to far to take away their "admin" access and be able to come by to install things as they need. That's not a reliable solution.

But in the meantime, I sit there for hours running anti-virus scans, and anti-malware scans, uninstalling bad programs, removing odd registry entries. And feeling geek superiority over the virus writers for now.