Whirlwind of ideas

Ryan and I had a couple of interesting discussions over lunch today. The first was about the music industry, Apple, and cell phones and how the music industry wants to bypass Apple and sell directly through cell phones. As misguided as that is, (who wants their cell phone to be their purchase/delivery method for all of their music purchases?), they'll probably end up screwing the customer over as they've done w/ Bluetooth & file transfer. Such as if you want to get the pictures you've taken on you're camera phone off, you have to pay to send them through the cell phone company's service. Will music be the same way - getting charged twice for content you own, having to email your song purchases to yourself? Also, we lamented on the ringtone thing, $2.50 for a 30 second clip for your phone, $0.99 for the whole song you can play on your computer, iPod, etc. Since most new phones can play straight mp3's as ringtone, I've got a great idea for Apple. Come up w/ a way in iTunes to create a ringtone. Select a song, tell it you want to create a ringtone out of it, pop up a window w/ a 30 second 'window' that you can drag around to get the part of the song you want, preview it, then BAM!, ringtone created. Figure out a nice way to get it on your phone (iSync anyone?) and you'd be set. Too bad you've got to get the handset makers to agree on some sort of standard to easily facilitate it.

Speaking of Bluetooth, Ryan commented on how he's been using the MS Bluetooth mouse, but has been irritated by it's quick disconnection time while idle. I'm sure this is done as a battery saving measure, but what about the people that would rather not be annoyed? How about coming up with a recharging solution w/ a cradle for the mouse to sit in at night/every couple days/weeks, etc. Or better yet, for someone that doesn't want a cradle sitting around - why not build a retractable USB cord into the mouse, that way you can plug it in to recharge via USB every once in a while, or, if your batteries die, can always use it as a regular corded mouse? There's plenty of room inside mice these days w/ doing away with the cruddy mouse ball. Should be more than enough space to fit in a rechargeable cell, your Bluetooth module, the mouse electronics, and your retractable USB cord. Then you'd have your Holy Grail of mice.

And let me get another gripe off my chest. Why does no one make cool ergonomic keyboards anymore? Where's the Bluetooth ergonomic keyboard? I'd love to go Bluetooth for mouse/keyboard needs, but I can't stand using a regular keyboard - hurts my hands too much. As soon as someone comes out with a semi-reasonable priced ergonomic Bluetooth keyboard, I'll be all over it.

Ok, enough ranting for now.

--JOsh