Jazz Odyssey

This article from Extreme Tech is just one of several that have appeared over the last few days that reports on commercial or Open Source software that leverages the capabilities of Sony’s PSP beyond its default functionality.  In this case, the PocketMac software allows users to listen to their iTunes playlists (as well as [...]

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Good op-ed piece in the New York Times on today’s opening arguments in MGM vs. Grokster.  With billionaire Mark Cuban throwing his considerable financial muscle behind the EFF (who are defending Grokster), the pockets of both sides have become much more evenly matched.  This is history in the making so stay tuned….

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Here’s a cool article in today’s Wall Street Journal on how television advertisers are looking to “make ads as compelling as the programs they interrupt”. With Tivo and DVR penetration on the rise and the threat of “ad-zapping” rising with it, a kooky or amusing ad is no longer enough to get people interested, [...]

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Robert MacMillan of the Washington Post gives an interesting summary of his SXSW experience. Inspirational paragraph:
"Whatever the outcome in the case, all the posturing and arguing at events like SXSW is well-intentioned but ultimately irrelevant. I’m not a lawyer. I don’t compose or play music for money and my livelihood doesn’t depend on the [...]

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Wired is running an article on microtransactions:
"New car: $1. New helmet: 5 cents. Flashy new warrior’s sword: 50 cents. Bigger baseball bat: three for $2. Magic spell to help defeat that tricky warlord on level five: 10 cents per use. Welcome to the online store of the future — the one embedded in your [...]

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With one week to go until the oral arguments in the MGM et al vs. Grokster case, news sites, blogs and chatter around the water cooler continues to heat up. Wired has a short article presenting a brief snapshot of the differing points-of-view and potential futures. It’s a quick and worthwhile read, [...]

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Our head of sales here pointed out that new Jack Johnson album sold 23,848 via download this past week (as a comparison, 50 Cent did 6,661). This represents 10.4% of the total first week album sales–the highest percentage of digital business I’ve seen on a major artist. What’s especially notable is that it [...]

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Guitarist extraordinaire Steve Kimock has taken audience requests to a whole new level. While he’s honored the occasional shoutout from audience members, this time he’s playing an entire show based on fan requests at his 5/5/05 show at the Fillmore. Fans can submit their suggestions here. Kimock makes his live shows available [...]

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The South by Southwest music festival has been on the cutting edge of music for many years. This year is no exception, but the organizers have taken it to the next level by utilizing cutting edge technologies to enhance the experience for those attending and those attending in spirit.  As Wired reports:
"This year, [...]

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MSNBC ran this article by Bob Sullivan this past Friday. Mr. Sullivan presents some information on Gracenote (formerly CDDB), the "quiet company" that populates the track list and album data in iTunes when you place a CD in your computer. Gracenote began life years ago as a volunteer project, with thousands of users [...]

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The improvements to the iPod/iTunes experience keep coming….syncOtunes is an application (available for Mac and a beta version for Windows) that allows you to compare iTunes libraries across a network and synchronize them, mirroring missing files from one computer to the other. The resulting "missing files" folder is then easily imported into your iTunes [...]

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The volume of new music being added to the iTunes music store is pretty daunting, and there hasn’t been a great way to keep up with it without checking every few days to see if an artist or song you wanted had been added to the store. That issue has become moot–meet Tunestracker. [...]

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