A measly six letter word that inspired a nation is perhaps also one of our greatest irrational fears. Humans, by instinct, are afraid of even the idea of change. Face it, we are control freaks, and change is the one thing that is impossibly hard to grasp.

It’s what fuels the hearts of activists to stop global warming, the voice of consumers against AT&T’s new data plans, or even the digital scare back at the turn of the millennia. Hell, it even caused a twitter outbreak against Google’s new homepage background.

Every change is met by a force to remain constant, a force created by the insecurities of our control oriented nature. But sometimes we forget that change is natural, that it is one of the fundamental columns of life. One that pushes us forward.

The facts remain, the Earth has warmed many times, some past our current temperature. Look, even the polar bears survived, let alone us. AT&T’s new data plans will ultimately mean more savings for its customers, since 98% of us use less than 2GB anyway. And 10 years ago, the new millennia passed by without a nuclear blackout, it was just another new year.

Sometimes it pays a lot to take a step back and think twice. Change is a part of us.

Piracy is certainly unethical, unbelievably sketchy, and undoubtedly hurtful to their legitimate producers, in some irrational and unquantifiable way.

And I’m sure the record labels die a little each time a song gets pirated millions upon millions of times. But you know what? I don’t feel that bad for them. They’re sitting on mountains cash, hungry for every penny, yet unwilling to offer even a remotely reasonable royalty to artists and creatives. Even if we somehow ignore their vanity and greed, they only return that favour by the feeding, consumers, us and our governments complete and utter nonsense.

It’s a huge topic with countless spin-offs. But today, I just want to make one thing clear, piracy is not shoplifting, nor is shoplifting an analogy, and we certainly can’t take the same preventative actions as we do against shoplifting.

In context.

When you shoplift a box of cereal from your local grocery store, you are taking the product from the store without compensating them. Every time you take a little, the store has to lose a little, a real amount that can be measured in numbers – a number that directly impacts the livelihoods of the store’s workers and suppliers.

Alternatively, when you pirate, it’s more like when you purchase a replica of some designer handbag from the black market. In this case, you aren’t taking the product from the original manufacturer, but from a third party. The original producers don’t lose anything for each time you buy it from the dealer, at least not directly.

That, that isn’t stealing, at least, not the way we were taught it. And neither is piracy.

Wait, what?

So why does the media treat piracy like shoplifting, instead of the more actual analogy, of the black market? Well, the simple answer is, the black market isn’t under as large of a microscope as shoplifting, yet, the music and movie industries want there to be a death grip around pirating. If we treat it for what it really is, perhaps the public wouldn’t be as bothered, and we wouldn’t have these ridiculous data screenings imposed, by, yes, the very media giants.

You industry leaders, take a step back for a moment. Why, why do you think, that by lying to us, we will be on your side? Because we won’t. If there’s anything I hate more than pirates, that, that would be liars.

Our computers have been powered by the same hardware layout for decades, a keyboard, a mouse, and a monitor. Their arrangement has changed, as different styles emerged and faded away, but there is still a nostalgic familiarity with all these systems, and at its essence, it remains the same on every desktop, laptop, and netbook, Mac or PC.

It’s about time, time we move on. Time we acknowledge the past, and respect our forefathers, but turn our heads in a new direction. We can no longer linger in the restraints brought by these technologies, and the future is pretty clear – touch screens.

For too long now, computers have been a powerful asset that the user needs to understand and learn. But they will need to start to be more natural and understand the user, because after all, we don’t provide for them, they work for us.

iPad.

On this note, I turn my head to the iPad. Apple isn’t revolutionizing an industry like it did with the iPod and iPhone. The company isn’t heading into a saturated, proven market. It’s something new, something alien. In a way, I think this is what Steve always wanted, the iPad encapsulates hope, hope for the future. A future that isn’t tied to mice, one that isn’t limited to a tech savvy audience, but where the technologies finally becomes accessible to everyone.

But that hope is grounded by reality.

In many ways, the shiny gadget next to me isn’t mature. When I first opened the box, and turned it on, it didn’t start up like my Mac and immediately come to life. It required, guess what, a traditional computer to activate it. Granted, the Apple Store geniuses could have done it for me, but the fact remains that it is like an adolescent. Enough to be on its own most of the time, but not quite ready to face the entire world in all it’s reality.

The Pond.

The iPad is sufficient, but it cannot yet replace a traditional computer. It is astronomically successful, but it doesn’t represent the future of computing, not yet.

Apple made a splash, but the pond is much deeper and wider than it appears. We can only speculate what might come in the future. Maybe someone will make a dive, and who know’s what we’ll discover.

But it seems the computer giants are slowly waking from their sentimental haze. HP bought Palm for a reason, and it wasn’t because their phones were doing so well. Perhaps we will be treated to a computing revolution in our generation. There is hope.

I’m not quite sure what you guys are up to in those offices, but fighting an aggressive letter from Jobs with hugs and kisses does not cut it. You screwed them over in the past, so now Apple’s moved on with HTML5. If you even want them to glance back at you, do the next best thing, make them jealous. Jealous of your relationship with that other chick, Android.

Whining about their ban on your flash does not accomplish any real tasks except waste time, effort and money. If there’s one thing you should’ve learned by now, Apple doesn’t take superficial advice (heck, they don’t even have focus groups), they do things their way.

Apple is the type of company where a half-assed product simply won’t cut it. That’s why so many people buy iPhones and iPads, because they truly are amazing at what they do. And these people will continue to purchase them irregardless of the meek attempts you’re trying to throw around.

In the end, it comes down to a the simple solution that, for whatever reason, no one in your entire company seems to like – just make a goddamn awesome product. I’m sure it won’t go unnoticed.

Cheers,
Qiming.

A while back, I was streaming music from Youtube through a service called VEVO. It’s a collaboration between major record labels to put legal music on the site. I tweeted about it.

However, to my great surprise, someone from @VEVO actually tweeted back.

As far as I know, most of my tweets are uploaded to some remote server, where it is stashed among millions of others, joining a cluster of meaningless noise. Tweeting, for the most part, is a one way tunnel, I post to the cloud, and it stays there, for as long as Twitter stays in business.

But once in a while, someone out there reads your tweet and responds. It’s an exhilarating feeling to know someone acknowledges your existence enough to spend even just a few seconds to type something back.

By putting a human face on their social outlets, VEVO broke away from the usual generic replies corporations seem to love. It’s not that I used to hate the service it or anything, but by responding to a consumer’s tweet, it just sparked a connection so much more personal and valuable.

Who says it takes years to win a customer’s loyalty? Sometimes, it only takes a word and a smile to win someone’s affection.

This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to blog, and it won’t be the last time either. It’s just another interval in my life as I experiment with a plethora of new inspiration.

The Right Size.

Blogs are kind of like shoes. They come in an assortment of shapes and sizes. Fancy ones, comfortable ones, or down to Earth ones. But none of that matters, unless the shoe fits your size.

For a while I tried to do what other bloggers do best, tutorials, journals, articles… but that never seemed to work. Fact is, I will never be able to do better what others do best.

And until I find what fits me best, I’ll be trying on a new pair of shoes every once in a while. After all, there’s always another pair on the shelf, it’s a long walk to the end of the aisle.

An Empty Canvas.

Every time an artist opens the seal from a new canvas, there is an abundance of possibilities. At that very moment, anything is possible, because anyone that ever become anything had all started at that very same place – in front of an empty canvas.

This is an empty canvas, the direction which it will go is up to me. Once I start to sail it, however, it becomes harder and harder to halt the ship and go the other way.

So I’m treasuring this moment. A moment of exhilaration, as if I’m on the track, just waiting for the whistle to blow, when winners and losers haven’t been decided, and everyone is equal. Just equal. Anything can happen.

Maybe this time around, my blog will last, maybe it won’t. But I’m not giving up. Not yet.