Back in January, I noted that Apple had teamed up with Depeche Mode to offer an ultimate collection of songs through iTunes, capturing all of the band's albums, plus previously unreleased live recordings and remixes, delivering 647 songs for "only" $169.99, approximately 26 cents per track, down almost 75% from the typical 99 cent price. After six months of trying to be good, I took the plunge last week, and finally bought it. Now, I'm in Depeche Mode heaven, listening to song after song, hour after hour of some of the best music ever - trying to remember note for note, word for word, each of the songs I first held dear on long-since discarded cassette tapes over the last two decades.

Now, I'm re-acquainting myself with lesser-known excellent tracks from Depeche Mode like "Work Hard", "Dangerous", "Kaleid", "Route 66", "Oberkorn", and "Behind the Wheel", in addition to those that have gained the most airtime, like "Policy of Truth", "Personal Jesus", "People are People" and "Somebody". Like any good snob, it's the ones that didn't get the radio play that I like the best. (See my Last.FM track list for live updates)

Depeche Mode helped bridge the gap between electronic pioneers Kraftwerk and the DJs and techno artists of today like DJ Tiesto, Underworld and Chemical Brothers. Their songs, some a decade or two old, are just as good as the day they first hit vinyl. And having already approved payment for this latest splurge on my credit card, I have no regrets.

Cross-posted to Athletics Nation...

There wasn't much to celebrate with the most recent series against the Mets. But on Saturday, Joe Blanton put up eight scoreless innings in yet another remarkable pitching effort by him this season. The only problem? The A's hitters matched him zero for zero. Why does this keep happening? We investigate...


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Next week, if rumors are true, the world will be tilted off its axis with the debut of Apple's much-anticipated iPhone. While I don't expect to be waiting outside an Apple Store or AT&T store with credit card in hand to partake in the imbibing of Apple's latest gadget, I will be watching the situation very closely. It's a rare thing for Apple to bring new life in this world and for me not to partake.

But even prior to the iPhone's being available for commercial sale, iPhone sightings are cropping up in the wild, with the occasional spy photo or Web log tracking giving their users away. In fact, tonight, this humble site was visited by a strange creature: the iPhone.

A quick look at SiteMeter for louisgray.com shows:

ISP APPLE COMPUTER
Operating System Macintosh MacOSX
Browser Safari 2.0 Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en)
AppleWebKit/420 (KHTML, like Gecko)
Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543a Safari/419.3

I find the browser details fascinating. The iPhone tells Web site owners that the ISP is Apple Computer, not AT&T, that the operating system is a full fledged Mac OS X, as Steve Jobs has told us, and you even get to know the specific WebKit version underlying the Safari browser on the iPhone itself.

These days, Web authors aren't just writing for Internet Explorer and Netscape, as we were a few years ago. Now, in addition to those browsers, we need to expect our copy to hit Safari and Firefox, and a litany of new approaches to the Web, from Blackberry to generic mobile phones and now, Apple's iPhone. I expect to see iPhone browsing becoming more commonplace in the coming months. And just maybe, if I'm good, some of that will be done by me.

Earlier this month, I wrote that the biggest blogs aren't really blogs any more, having crossed the line between personal platforms to full-fledged media powerhouses. A review on TechCrunch or GigaOM can be just as effective at getting the word out these days as a mention in more traditional business press. TrueGrit, who forecast this change in August of 2006, says that "real changes occur with popularity", and that the image of a blog "becomes an entity of its own, not always in sync with the desires and direction that the person who owns it has in mind."

That last line, for me, is especially insightful. It seems that the momentum of a blog can pull the author in a direction they hadn't anticipated. I've mentioned here that what I had intended to be a personal blog of sorts has evolved to be more technology-focused and observational on blog trends than I had guessed it would be. The evolving readership and community I've found in the year and a half of regular publishing has pushed me more toward noting insights in how I interact with technology and away from my talking about politics, for instance, or chronicling every A's game, as much fun as that can be.

In fact, TrueGrit, while effusing praise on the blog, mentions our differences in politics as a concern, when she writes, "I think I should blogroll Louis, his politics are diametrically different from mine, but his interest in specific topics and the world are touchpoints for me."

Politics, religion and even sports can serve to divide people as well as bring them together. There's no doubt, as you could likely see from some of the comments earlier this week around Michael Moore's 'Sicko', that people can get riled up around differences in opinion, but through our efforts in the blogosphere, and our shared experiences and observations, we'll be sure to find commonality. I'm glad I can have discussions with complete strangers in this way, despite our sure differences. I'm glad we can expand the conversation.