When considering the possibility of Amazon buying eMusic, one of the things I think is most interesting is the potential impact of having a single major online music store sell both CDs and DRM-free digital tracks in an integrated way, and how that might affect the way both CDs and digital tracks are sold and perceived. (Smaller services such as Magnatune have provided such a combined offering already; however, with all due respect they’re not Amazon, one of the top five music retailers. Also, both Wal-Mart and Best Buy sell both CDs and digital tracks online, but not in an integrated manner.) I’m also excited by the possibility of bringing Amazon’s many industry-leading features (reviews, recommendations, etc.) to the digital music market. Although the rumored Amazon/eMusic deal may never come off, it’s still fun to speculate how it might lead to new sales and pricing models in the music industry. ...

Well, I leave off blogging about eMusic for a month and look what happens: I happen to check Hypebot this evening and find that Amazon is rumored to be buying eMusic. eMusic’s CEO David Pakman recently denied rumors of eMusic being sold, so this may or may not prove to be just a rumor and nothing more. In the meantime that hasn’t stopped some people on the EMusic message boards and elsewhere from being concerned that this might be The End of eMusic As We Know It. However I think if it does occur such an acquisition could make good sense for both companies and might be to the ultimate benefit of eMusic subscribers, Amazon customers, and the music industry in general. ...

This is my report on activities of the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending March 30, 2007. Projects for the week Here’s a partial listing of what I and others at the Foundation did this past week: Grants and related activities. I attended and spoke at the G3ICT meeting on Monday, March 26, at the United Nations building in New York. I also considered some new requests for conference and travel sponsorships. ...

This is my report on activities of the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending March 23, 2007. Projects for the week Here’s a partial listing of what I and others at the Foundation did this past week: Grants and related activities. My main activity for the week was attending the CSUN conference. The Mozilla Foundation had a booth in the CSUN exhibit area and also a separate room where we hosted meetings of developers working on Mozilla-related accessibility issues. Aaron Leventhal and others did a conference presentation on the “Mozilla accessibility ecosystem,” and we talked to lots of other people about Mozilla Foundation-sponsored work to support accessibility of dynamic web applications and related matters. It was great being able to talk to a number of people whose work we’ve funded; many thanks to those folks who helped out with the booth. ...

This is my report on activities of the Mozilla Foundation for the weeks ending March 9 and March 16, 2007. Projects for the week Here’s a partial listing of what I and others at the Foundation did these past two weeks: Grants and related activities. I continued preparations for the CSUN conference. I also presented to the Mozilla Foundation board an overview of the Foundation’s strategy on funding accessibility-related projects, along with a wish list for future funding. ...

Due to lack of time I didn’t do a status report for this week; see the next status report for the week ending March 16, 2007.

This is my report on activities of the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending March 2, 2007. Projects for the week Here’s a partial listing of what I and others at the Foundation did this past week: Grants and related activities. I continued preparations for the CSUN conference, including making sure we have booth banners and signs, handouts, etc. Next action(s): Finish up CSUN stuff. CA certificates. Gerv Markham continued work on processing bugs for including CA certificates. Gerv and I also provided some feedback to the Mozilla Corporation on possible approaches to dealing with Extended Validation certificates. ...

I recently read Seth Godin’s book Small is the New Big—basically a collection of his blog posts published on dead trees. (I checked it out from the library, saving both my pocketbook and the environment.) One of the posts I found interesting highlighted the concept of the “free prize,” i.e., that little something extra you get from certain products and services: The Free Prize is the experience of service at the Ritz Carlton, when what you paid for was a good night’s sleep. ...

This is my report on activities of the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending February 23, 2007. Projects for the week Here’s a partial listing of what I and others at the Foundation did this past week: Grants and related activities. I’m working with Aaron Leventhal to prepare an overall plan for Mozilla-related accessibility work in 2007 and 2008. Regardless of how this plan gets funded (and some work may not get funded at all), I think this will be a useful exercise to pull together all of the accessibility-related Mozilla activities into one vision and connect them with the wider world of open source accessibility. ...

As chance would have it, I was inspired recently to try to start blogging again about eMusic, after a few months during which I was busy with other things and just didn’t feel the urge to expound on things eMusic-related. Appropriately enough, this post is about how eMusic can bring a little excitement back into our relationship. As a download (as opposed to streaming) subscription service eMusic relies on the fact that a lot of subscribers aren’t necessarily that active in using the service: They don’t use their full download quotas, which raises eMusic’s revenue and profit per track and in essence subsidizes eMusic’s low prices for everyone else. At the extreme end of the spectrum eMusic no doubt has subscribers who (for whatever reason) don’t download anything at all, but just let eMusic continue to bill their credit card. Wouldn’t it be great for eMusic’s business model if everyone did that? ...