I don’t pretend to understand everything Steve Gillmor talks about, but I can usually understand its importance.
Today, Steve says there’s Something in the Air, and he’s feeding off of a few fun interactions that happened in the last week or so, including Engadget’s interview with Bill Gates. (Parts 1 and 2)
Steve says: “You can hear something new in Gates’ voice as he talks with Peter Rojas–he’s having a good time! What a joke, the world’s richest man having fun. When that happens you know the revolution’s here.”
Amen to that.
Also check out J.D. Lasica’s interview with someone from Nikon and the PR practitioner who puts the ixnay on any questions about the new Nikon DRM issues (they’re encrypting the RAW files).
From the (also on) Engadget interview:
Adobe has been trying to get camera manufacturers to adopt the license- and royalty-free DNG or Digital Negative standard. Is Nikon considering that?
Saurabh Wahi, MWW Group (PR representative): Actually, let me jump in real quick. Let’s save that question for another discussion because we just want to talk about digital SLR cameras now. Is that OK with you, JD?
Well, it’s not OK, because if you don’t address some of these issues, our readers are going to rip into you. So it’s for your own good to get in front of these topics that have been swirling around the past two weeks.
Wahi: I understand. But at this point, we have put out an advisory, and we want to forward that advisory over to you, but beyond that we have no further information. So I hope that’s fine.
I don’t know why Steve wouldn’t be able to talk in general terms about these issues.
Wahi: There’s so much information out there right now, we want to make sure we can come back with specific information that can help people, and we are in the process of putting that together.
There was a report in CNET on April 21 about the encryption being broken on the white balance metadata for RAW files in the Nikon Capture application, does Nikon plan to take any action against the programmer who broke your encryption code?
Wahi: Again, whatever information that we have available right now is available in the advisory, and I can make sure I can send that out to you.
Could we just talk about the business decision of Nikon encrypting its white balance metadata in the RAW files?
Wahi: Again, the advisory contains all the information that we have available to give to you, and we’ll send that out to you.
I’d like to know what you would say to your customers who are hopping mad about this.
Wahi: The advisory contains all the information and as soon as we finish this interview I’ll send you that.
No, no, not a conversation! Anything but that!