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An interesting story from Quentin Fottrell at MarketWatch, where he discovers that you really can’t pass along all your digital books, movies, and music when you die. This seems pretty logical with iTunes, since the “ownership” is tied to *your* email address, but it also poses a lot of problems.

For instance, in my home (as I am sure is common in many homes), only one person has a huge music collection (me) and therefore should I pass before the others in my family — what are they to do? Buy all the music again? Keep using my login forever?

That ties into something else I have long been thinking about: what happens to blogs, like this one, when the proprietor dies? I wish there were someway to cheaply preserve the content and links to the content long-term. There’s no easy solution to the problem, but it is a going to be a massive problem — all of a sudden links are going to break because sites (and all the content for the sites) just vanish.

[Shawn and I talked about this on *The B&B Podcast* episode 74](http://5by5.tv/bb/74). Basically this is a 20-inch multi-touch display that houses a “full” computer in the same way that an iMac would. The difference is that this is made to be moved off of a desk and used as a tablet, or whatever. You have to love the way the Sony confusingly describes the product:

>Portable, battery-powered VAIO™ Tap 20 fits right into any living space – from bedrooms and kids’ play areas to the kitchen or garden. Lay it on a coffee table and let everyone join in games on the large multi-touch screen. Flip out the in-built stand and tilt VAIOTM Tap 20 at a comfortable angle for ‘lean back’ photo/movie editing by touch operation, browsing and entertainment. Or stand it upright and use as a fully-functioning desktop PC: it’s easy to work on documents, surf or check emails with the supplied wireless keyboard and mouse.

Sounds to me like they are billing it as a replacement, or better option, than:

– A tablet.
– A laptop.
– A desktop.

Essentially it is all three in one. It has a battery with unknown battery life, it has a stand, a multi-touch display, weighs north of 10 pounds, has an ethernet port, and *so* much more.

All I can think is: my god this is a bad idea.

I am usually pretty good at figuring out scenarios where a device or gadget would fill a need, and perhaps even fill the need better than other devices for a certain niche of people, but with the VAIO Tap 20 I was at a loss. It’s not going to be a better desktop computer than a true desktop, it’s going to make for an even worse laptop, and an still even worse tablet.

I’ve been wracking my brain on this one since talking to Shawn about it and I think I have it: it’s the ultimate board game.

No really, think about it. The biggest pain in the ass factor with board games is setting them up, with the VAIO Tap 20, you just launch the game you want to play, it deals out the (whatever for the game) and then you play — hell you could even save the game and resume later (handy for playing me in Monopoly).

So there you have it: Sony has made the ultimate board game computer system.

A clever hack to an Ikea shelving unit which turns it into a decent looking desk. I have two of these shelving units, but know that they make larger ones, so I am betting you could make a pretty sweet standing desk using this technique — if you have, let me know.

Personally I was in Ikea over the weekend and [saw these wall mounted desk/tables](http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/80217524/). I really liked them and am thinking about building a similar desk.

My idea would be to have a permanent lower desk that was sitting height, it would have a 24″ or so leaf that drops back towards the wall. Then above it I would have a wall mounted desk that opens up at standing height. The lower desk would be out of the way for my legs, but still be able to hold hard drives and such on the back.

I would like to design it so that the top of the standing desk would make a nice clean backdrop for the sitting desk. Anyways, just my thoughts for now as I am thinking through several desk designs that I want to build.

What I love about IFTTT is that, as a service, they seem to get “it”. They advertise that premium accounts are on the way, which is great because it is a service that truly makes the web better. I don’t have many “recipes” but the ones that I do have would be very hard to replicate without IFTTT. Actually I don’t know if I have the skills to replicate any of the things that IFTTT does.

So this post is half about telling you that IFTTT now works with App.net and half to tell you that I really love IFTTT. *Carry on.*

Jonathan Poritsky has a really interesting thought about Netflix, their original content, and the archival-less nature of streaming-only services:
>But what happens when I fall out of love, or when they hike prices again? What happens when the company starts developing films and keeps them exclusive to streaming as well? And what if they fail and fall into obscurity? If released on disc, they could at the very least be preserved by fans and collectors.

I’d argue that so long as services like The Pirate Bay exists, we won’t need to worry about not being able to archive streaming-only content. That said, this is a really good question.

Without original content, Netflix is just a distributor to production companies. With original content Netflix now has a role in creating works of art (if you believe films and TV shows are works of art, I do). This is an interesting problem for Netflix and film buffs alike as more and more companies like Netflix spring up to make works of art.

Likewise too with Instagram — how many historic photos may be in the grips of Instagram that will be lost when/if the service dies?

Ditto Mixel — what if there were truly great works of art on the service, never again to see the light of day.

With streaming, with cloud hosted, with digital itself — we have such a huge risk to lose really important stuff. Important, historically and more.

Same with this blog. If I stop paying the hosting bill, it all goes away. Not that there is anything that important, but there are websites that *are* that important.

The headline says it all. The victim/alleged shoplifter says it was all a mistake and that he meant to buy the headphones.

What’s amazing to me about this story is a few things:

1. He got a bag from an employee.
2. Even though he had a bag, he was stopped. (How/why?)
3. That this hasn’t happened before, or at least not been blogged about before.

The ‘EasyPay’ feature has always seemed like a PR nightmare waiting to happen since it’s launch. I think we would have seen the “old” Apple executive team quietly handle this — which is why we probably never heard about it — but now we heard about this. This is massively wild speculation: but could Browett be trying to rid this feature and therefore letting Apple take bad PR to prove his point? I’m blaming Browet because he [seems to be the only one in Apple’s ranks that doesn’t understand why the Apple Stores are successes](https://brooksreview.net/2012/08/snafu/).

A new book from the guys at Studio Neat. I had a chance to read an advance copy (I also provided a quote on the site) and I really urge you, no I beg you, to read this book before you launch your next Kickstarter project.

I cannot tell you how many Kickstarter projects I have backed that months after the “expected ship date” still have not shipped, and after reading this book I have a feeling those products could have been shipped on time if the backers knew some of this knowledge.

I told Tom and Dan that after reading this book, I almost think it should be required before starting a project on Kickstarter. While I can’t make that happen, I am 50% more likely to back your project if I know you have read this.

Ok, is that enough reason to go check it out?

If not, get this: it’s $5.

Also: it’s a fast read for a slow reader like me.