Rojo

Apple said today that the iPhone is still on track to be released in June, but that it will delay Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard until October. The next version of Apple’s powerful operating system was scheduled to be released this spring. Apple blamed the delay on the iPhone, saying it had to “borrow” key resources from its Mac OS X team to complete the device on time. As previously noted on several occasions, the iPhone runs a stripped-down…  

It’s official - EMI Music just became the first major record label to drop digital rights management on its digital downloads - but many consumers must pay more. EMI is launching a new line of “premium” downloads at twice the current audio quality that will come without usage restrictions. From May, and initially at Apple’s iTunes Store, tracks from the label’s entire catalogue will be available in 256kbps AAC format at $1.29 (EUR1.29/GBP0.99) each. Tracks at the existing lower-quality 128kbps format will, however, remain for sale with DRM and at their current $0.99 (EUR0.99/GBP0.79) price. The announcement was made during this morning’s joint press conference at EMI’s London HQ.
- EMI CEO Eric Nicoli said the move comes after January retail tests showed sales 10-to-1 in favor of the higher-quality format, “reaffirming our belief that sound fidelity is, for many, an important factor”. “All our research tells us [consumers] would be prepared to pay a higher price for a file they can play on any music player. Interoperability is the key to unlocking the music business. We have the consumer at the center of our strategy; it’s clear from our research that many consumers find it frustrating they don’t have interoperability. It’s also clear that some care about quality. By combining these two, we think it’s a very positive step.”
- Apple CEO Steve Jobs repeated that interoperability and quality were the two key issues. “While 128kbps AAC is the best audio quality offered by any mainstream music store, audio users can tell the the difference between it and the original source material. It is time to consider delivering even higher audio quality than is currently available.” Asked if removing the restriction that Apple Store purchases must be played on an iPod would hurt iPod sales, Jobs said he was confident customers would continue appreciate the device’s ease of use.
- iTunes: The new EMI line-up will sit alongside the existing line-up on Apple Store, which will automatically invite consumers to choose which version to download. iTunes Store users will also be able to upgrade all the EMI tracks currently in their library to the new versions for $0.30 per song. “We think customers will really appreciate this,” Jobs said, although this is the standard per-track price gap between old and new formats, not a special offer. Suggesting a wholehearted effort to safeguard the future of albums, whole albums will automatically be sold at the new, DRM-free bitrate for the existing price.
- Retail: EMI’s new line-up will not be limited to iTunes. Other retailers would also be given the opportunity to sell tracks in AAC, WMA, MP3 or other formats “in the coming weeks”, Nicoli stressing it is retailers and not labels which set end prices (figures mentioned here are iTunes-specific). EMI press release: “From today, EMI’s retailers will be offered downloads of tracks and albums in the DRM-free audio format of their choice in a variety of bit rates up to CD quality.” DRM is also being removed from music video downloads, Nicoli said, with no price change. DRM must remain on tracks sold via subscription and ad-supported stores, however.
- Future: Nicoli: ”We expect sales to grow as a result of this. We remain optimistic that digital growth will outstrip physical decline - it hasn’t happened yet, don’t ask me to predict when that will happen because I can’t, but we remain optimistic. Digital downloads remains in its infancy - the opportunity is massive.” In an indication that Jobs’ February memo to the industry was the real deal, the Apple CEO said: “EMI has taken the first bold step in the music industry. Starting today, Apple will reach out to all the other labels [including independents] to give them the same opportunity.” “Well over half of the five million tracks on iTunes today will also be available in high-quality offerings by the end of the calendar year” - suggesting either confidence or specific knowledge about similar future announcements. Both said they hoped to be able to carry The Beatles’ catalogue - Jobs adding “we’re working on it.”
Update: Streaming audio|MP3| Slides (pdf)
Related:-
- Steve Jobs To Music DRM: Drop Dead

 

 

When it comes to desktop PCs, education could be the first, real place where Linux grabs hold.  

It takes effort to explain the significance of a new product when the immediate benefit to consumers may not be so obvious, and the awkwardly named “pipes” from Yahoo! is no exception. The product name is taken from the world of UNIX where a pipe is a conduit for the transfer of data between applications, while with the Yahoo product it is a conduit for data between web services. In a basic form Yahoo! Pipes allows you to take data from one or more sources and to bring it together, for example - to aggregate a group of feeds.

But Yahoo! Pipes goes beyond what just pipes are and what pipes do though as the application provides functions (or as they are called in the app - modules) that will perform a variety of different actions. There are modules available to prompt the user for input (a variety of input types), different operators to count, loop, cut, count, sort and merge data along with a variety of string and date functions. Because of this already broad base of available functions, Yahoo! Pipes is more akin to a shell scripting environment for the web rather than just a simple conduit between applications. It works like a visual procedural programming language with the output of the process dropping out at the bottom, in the form of text output, RSS, SMS alerts of even JSON. You can use feeds, user input or other pipes as input.

The beauty of the application is with its simplicity - a user can take any sources, user input requests or the above mentioned module and drag+drop them into place and then connect the pipes. Within minutes I had built an application (also known as a pipe, they should probably change the name as not everything can be a pipe) that would search for ‘Techcrunch’ in a variety of feeds, bring that data together, sort it and filter it for unique results. I saved the application and published it, from where I can now execute it at any time and receive the output in a variety of formats. I can take a copy of an existing pipe (application, argggh) and use it as a base template for my own pipe and I can browse an existing library of pipes.

Pipes can take any feed as input, and combined with the already available list of functions proves to be very powerful - my mind is still buzzing thinking about all that can be done with Pipes. I think some of the terminology needs to be cleared up, there needs to be a better introduction on the main page - but besides that this product is fantastic. It was inevitable that such a product would be released, and it is very good for Yahoo! that they managed to be the first of the big web companies to release such a product. The fact that they include Google Base as a default source in Pipes shows that the web is much more about interoperability than the desktop ever was or ever will be.

See Anil Dash, Tim O’Reilly and Jeremey Zawodny for more.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

 

Xeni Jardin: Snip from an interview with Arthur Sulzberger in Haaretz, via Gawker:

Given the constant erosion of the printed press, do you see the New York Times still being printed in five years?

"I really don't know whether we'll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don't care, either," he says. He's looking at how best to manage the transition from print to Internet. ...The New York Times is on a journey, Sulzberger says, and its end will be the day the company decides to stop printing the paper. That will be the end of the transition.

 

MyJSQLView provides an easy to use Java based user interface frontend for viewing, adding, editing, or deleting entries in a MySQL database. The database driver for Java is not limited to MySQL and can be easily modified for other databases. In addition the interface can also be made to interact through SSH.  

Radio station water drinking wheeze goes awry

A mother of three died from water intoxication after a radio station drinking competition, a California coroner said on Saturday. Jennifer Strange, 28, competed in Sacramento station KDND 107.9's "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest to try to win Nintendo's console for her children.…

 

AT&T plans to gradually phase out the Cingular brand in favor of the AT&T brand on the nationwide wireless offering.

 

Kent Simon writes "Many people may not know that MIT has initiated OpenCourseWare, an initiative to share all of their educational resources with the public. This generous act is intended (in classical MIT style) to make knowledge free, open, and available. It's a great resource for people looking to improve their knowledge of our world. OpenCourseWare should prove exceptionally beneficial to those who may not be able to afford the quality of education offered at a school like MIT. Here's a link to all currently available courses. It is expected that by the end of the year every course offered at MIT will be available on the OpenCourseWare site, including lecture notes, homework assignments, and exams. OpenCourseWare is not offered to replace collegiate education, but rather to spread knowledge freely."