The Bully Backs Down

Well, it's been a while since this one was announced, but nobody relies on me for important news anyway (or at least they shouldn't.) I actually tried to post on this one the night I heard about it but there were errors and the message didn't get posted. Can you say conspiracy *gasp!* (kidding)

Anyway, you may remember back in my "Fun with Formats" post that a company referred to as Big "S" makes MP3 players (digital audio players) that don't play MP3's but instead use a proprietary encoding format. So basically if you bought one of their players and already had an MP3 collection you'd have to re-format everything. On the other side of the equation, if you didn't have an MP3 collection, but decided to buy a Big "S" product, you'd soon amass a collection of songs in their own format. Saying that this would leverage future purchases in Big "S"'s favor would be a bit of an understatement.

Apparently, Big "S" realized that we (when I say "we" I mean "I and other geeky types") think they make cool gadgets but want no part of this proprietary carp. Bottom line- it's costing them sales. So recently, they announced that they would be adding MP3 support to their line of MP3 players. Neato.