Insightful piece by Dilbert creator Scott Adams on the realities of pursuing an ad-supported business model. While making the Dilbert strip available on the web free of charge was a net positive, other efforts have produced mixed results:

A few years ago I tried an experiment where I put the entire text of my book, "God's Debris," on the Internet for free, after sales of the hard copy and its sequel, "The Religion War" slowed. My hope was that the people who liked the free e-book would buy the sequel. According to my fan mail, people loved the free book. I know they loved it because they emailed to ask when the sequel would also be available for free. For readers of my non-Dilbert books, I inadvertently set the market value for my work at zero. Oops.

Adams continues:

So I've been watching with great interest as the band "Radiohead" pursues its experiment with pay-what-you-want downloads on the Internet. In the near term, the goodwill has inspired lots of people to pay. But I suspect many of them are placing a bet that paying a few bucks now will inspire all of their favorite bands to offer similar deals. That's when the market value of music will approach zero.

Definitely a lot of food for thought.

Giving Stuff Away on the Internet (WSJ via O'Reilly Radar)

Generally, Fils-Aime just spouts the usual PR-speak but there are a few interesting nuggets in this interview with the S.F. Chronicle. Here's the snippet that especially caught my eye:

Q: With the success of the Wii, it looks like it's moving video games into mainstream entertainment. What needs to be done to cement video games alongside movies, music and TV and how far along that process do you think you are?

A: In order to solidify video gaming as an entertainment choice alongside movies and books, we need to get to a point where legitimately 80 to 90 percent of consumers can participate. And the fact of the matter is historically that's not been the case.

Record labels pin the decline in music sales to piracy. In my humble opinion, however, the current slow death of the industry is a result of a decade spent chasing every whim and fancy of the teenage audience to the complete neglect of every other demographic.

Gaming was headed down this path as well, until Nintendo showed everyone a whole new blue ocean. A few years from now, people will look back and the DS and the Wii and realize how Nintendo saved video games. Again.

S.F. Chronicle Interview with Reggie Fils-Aime

According to an AP article on the New York Times web site, Apple is no longer accepting cash as a form of payment for iPhones:

“We’re requiring a credit or debit card for payment to discourage unauthorized resellers.”

Not accepting cash at a physical retail store is strange enough. But claiming that it's to discourage reselling means that Apple must be tracking the number of sales made to each credit card number. It's debatable whether or not this is a privacy violation, but making it more difficult for your customers to buy your product just makes no sense. There are a multitude of scenarios where a single person might want to buy more than two iPhones. Here are just a few off the top of my head:

1. People buying iPhones for themselves and also as gifts.
2. Parents in a household with more than one child buying iPhones for the entire family.
3. Bosses buying iPhones for their employees.

The timing of this change in policy is certainly noteworthy as well. With all the press coverage of the Leopard launch, this little snippet of Apple news probably falls under most people's radar.

Apple Limits Sale of iPhones: Two Per Person and No Cash

Bungie admits in the 9/28 weekly update that Halo 3 only has 640 pixels of vertical resolution. As I said earlier, I don't find this to be a big deal, especially since I don't even own the game. However, the tone and attitude of Bungie's admission is condescending and insulting to those fans who obsessed over Halo 3 enough to count the pixels on the screen.

Here's a choice quote:

In fact, you could argue we gave you 1280 pixels of vertical resolution, since Halo 3 uses not one, but two frame buffers – both of which render at 1152x640 pixels.

To use an equally ridiculous counter example...let's say you want to buy a car from me. I take two cars, cut each in half, throw away one pair of halves, weld the other pair together and sell you the result. From Bungie's perspective, you've received two cars for the price of one! What a deal!

But nothing trumps the closing statement:

In fact the reason we haven’t mentioned this before in weekly updates, is the simple fact that it would have distracted conversation away from more important aspects of the game, and given tinfoil hats some new gristle to chew on as they catalogued their toenail clippings.

Way to appreciate your customers, fellas.

Bungie Weekly Update: 09/28/07 (via Joystiq)

The built-in screenshot and video capture functions in Halo 3 are brilliant moves. Give the gamers tools to show off and the internet is instantly flooded with crazy Halo 3 media. Is there any better (or cheaper) form of marketing?

However, the tools are a bit of a double-edged sword because they also make it incredibly easy for people to dissect every detail of the game. Like the eagle-eyed gamers on the Beyond 3D forums who claim that Halo 3 does not run at a true 720p resolution.

For me, this is not a big deal, but I can definitely relate to the obsessive types who find less than "true HD" completely unsatisfying.

What is surprising to me is that at a $60M game can't get true HD out of the XBOX 360. And Bungie is perhaps the premiere first-party developer.

Halo 3 not HD: runs at 640p, pixel counters claim (Joystiq)

This is the first figure I've seen concerning Halo 3's development costs:

The total cost to Microsoft for "Halo 3": a little more than $60 million. Development costs will probably be just above $30 million, given an elite team of 300 full-time artists and programmers working for three years on the game at Bungie...Bonuses to key developers and artists will probably add $25 million to the tab.

This must make Halo 3 the most expensive video game in history.

Microsoft's 'Halo 3' expected to ring up giant sales (L.A. Times)

I'm a sucker for Limited Edition collectibles, but this is rather ridiculous...

Collectible insanity aside, I find the act of sending reviewers all these extras and freebies a bit unsettling. It's going to be basically impossible for them to rate the Halo 3 experience from the perspective of the average customer. Admittedly, though, for a blockbuster franchise like Halo, it probably doesn't make much difference.

That said, I can still remember my disappointment with Halo 2's rushed cliffhanger ending and feel no impulse to jump into Halo 3.

Halo 3 '1UP Unboxing' video (GameVideos.com)

To extend the discussion of my previous link on ringtones, making your own ringtones from music you own or audio of your own creation is completely legal.

As long as you're talking about music you've ripped from a CD, go ahead -- no one's trying to stop you. Since making a ringtone doesn't count as a derivative work, you're not infringing any copyrights. Just don't sell or distribute anything, and you should be fine. Funny how this piece of advice keeps coming up, eh?

Know Your Rights: Is it illegal to make my own ringtones? (Engadget via Wired)

A must-read in-depth look into the copyright and fair use issues surrounding ringtones.

First, it’s no wonder the record labels and cell phone companies are protecting ringtones with every bit of anti-competitive force they can muster: they pay the same royalty to songwriters and copyright holders, deliver smaller amounts of data, and collect anywhere from 250 percent to 500 percent of the price of a normal song sale.

But that's not to say that the ringtone business isn't legitimate:

Nonetheless, each delivery of a ringtone is a delivery of a copyrighted song, and incurs the standard (or, if there is one, the negotiated) royalty for the copyright holders. While copyright holders are free to waive those fees if they choose, the compulsory license does not require them to do so. Unless they do, the record companies owe them money for each ringtone delivered. That means Apple owes the record companies money, and therefore you owe Apple money.

Also be sure to check out the TuneCore FAQ mentioned in the piece, which gives detailed breakdowns of how much copyright holders get from sales on iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster, and other digital music stores.

Opinion: On ringtones and copyrights (By MacJournals.com via Macworld)

For me, the highlight of this article is the image showing the market shares of various smartphone operating systems by region.

I was really surprised that Blackberries (RIM) are almost exclusively a US phenomenon. But then I reflected on my recent trip through Asia and noted that I did not see a single Blackberry, even amongst finance and banker-types.

Conclusion? Heavy email use is really an American practice.

Who’s Afraid Of Apple & Google? Not Symbian (GigaOM)