Apparently Napster to Go is old news, having been launched in beta months ago. They don’t appear to be marketing it – the only mention of it I could find was on the page of compatible devices. I’m guessing the reason is the page only lists five devices compatible with the Napster to Go service and all of them are portable media centers. I wanted to search for other devices compatible with Windows Media Digital Rights Management 10 but the PlaysForSure advance search isn’t working. There’s new firmware for the Zen Micro that supports WMDRM 10, but nothing yet for the Zen Xtra. On the plus side, I discovered the Nomad SDK and FriendlyNomad C# wrapper for the SDK. Not sure what I would write that accessed my Nomad – I which I could customize the playback experience but Red Chair Software’s Notmad Explorer provides a great PC expereince.

Norman blogs about how he chose what blog service to use. His criteria were: 1) ease of use and 2) look of the final product. (Of course, look of the final product was important to Norman – he’s in marketing!) As a developer and architect, I originally cared most about “rolling my own”, though I switched over to dasBlog about a year ago. (I just don’t have the time to roll-my-own as often as I used to.) However, given that I had invested significant effort into the look of my final product, that factor was important to me as well, which is one of the reasons I chose dasBlog over .TEXT.

Of course, what’s funny about investing so much time thinking about the blog template is that I think most people read the site via RSS, not HTML. Chris Anderson of “The Long Tail” wrote about this a while back. Maybe I should invest a little effort into the new dasBlog Community Edition effort – I’d like to see the number of times the RSS feed is downloaded vs. the number of times the home page is downloaded.

Norman further goes on to discuss the fact that his blog is hosted on Blogger, which of course is now owned by Google. I like his point that “Interoperability and mixed environments is the way the world works. If it is good enough for my customers, it is good enough for me.”

First it was Halo 2′s online stats, game viewer and RSS feeds. Now, MechAssault 2 introduces the concept of Conquest. While Halo 2′s online gaming experience is awesome, it doesn’t lead anywhere – each game is completely unrelated to the others. But with Conquest, each battle impacts the ownership of planets in the galaxy. Each player joins one of the five houses and then can participate in the galactic war. Planet ownership is based on the results of battles fought there. You can see the current map of the galaxy as well as war updates at any time. (But no RSS feed for the war updates – what’s up with that?)

The only bad thing is that MechAssault 2 doesn’t appear to have any per game stats like Halo 2 has. Wouldn’t that be a great experience – Halo 2′s game viewer and per game stats combined with MechAssault 2′s conquest metagame.

I was on vacation without access to the ‘net most of last week, so I didn’t get to immediately blog the USC’s utter dominance in the Orange Bowl last Tuesday. I got to watch the game with several college buddies (the benefit of vacationing in LA) and we just had a ball. After the bittersweet shared championship last year, this feels great. Who would have thought it would be over at halftime? I called it “in the refrigerator” 4 minutes into the third when SC went up 45-10. I would have called it at half time, but I figured OU would come out with some life in the second half, but they didn’t.

While I am glad about many things about this season, I am most glad that the Orange Bowl rout leaves the title undisputed. Even the most die-hard Auburn fan, having watched their team nearly blow the Sugar Bowl the night before, has got to be hard pressed to honestly argue that they deserve to be #1. Especially when they think to the last time they played USC – they got shutout at home 23-0. Sure, Auburn isn’t the same team but then again, neither is USC.

There’s already talk of USC being a dynasty and of a threepeat (or should that be three-Pete?) Frankly, that talk is a little premature in my opinion. But given the massive drought USC football went through when I was in school there (during the decade long plus losing streak to Notre Dame) it sure is nice to be on top.

Christmas was spent with just my local family – me, Julie, Patrick and Julie’s mom Patty (who lives ten minutes away). New Year’s was spent with Julie’s side of the family – three of Patty’s four children and all six of her grandkids are at Brother Jim’s in Santa Barbara. Even Julie’s dad drove up, making it the first time this much of her family was together since Julie and I got married 4 1/2 years ago.

However, it’s hard to be happy without feeling for the people who’s family and friends were devastated by last week’s tsunami. I’ve got a few friends in the area – I’ve done TechEd Malaysia twice and have been working closely with the Indian MSFT office of late. I’ve heard from I think everyone I know in the region and luckily they’re all OK (though one had a close call). Of course, there are countless others who were not so lucky and my heart goes out to them. I wish I had more to say, but given the scale and scope of this tragedy, mere words seem almost trite.

I don’t make resolutions anymore, since they are pretty much the same every year (more time with family, lose weight, smarter with money, etc.) I make a little progress on each every year – enough to be somewhat proud of but not enough that I can quit working on it. I’ve been reading Dee Hock’s Birth of the Chaordic Age which my Dad lent me at thanksgiving and I’m really enjoying it. I’ve marked down several passages, but this one seems most appropriate for the new year:

“Riches are not in the number of possessions, but the fewness of wants.”

By that measure, I know few richer than myself.