Articles


iTunes and Apple Music Service coming to AOL?

An article in Mac Daily News cites a Fortune article in quoting an AOL/Warner executive as saying that they are courting Apple to provide the new iTunes service on the AOL service. Seems like a lot of indirection to get to the point, but it might be interesting as …

Nomad gets larger

Nomad, Creative Lab's attempt to compete with the iPod has just gotten larger. One day after Apple announced their new, redesigned iPod with up to 30GB (for $499), Creative announced that their 60GB Zen will be available for $399. Exact specs on the 60GB version aren't available right now …

"Steve Jobs: The Pied Piper of Music"

I couldn't resist this BusinessWeek article's title. This is part of BusinessWeek's "Byte of the Apple" column, that appears every couple of weeks. The author believes this may mark the beginning of the end for the big labels. I'm not so certain, but I do think it has the …

Apple Music's Digital Rights Management explored

There is a great article (followed by some nice follow-ups) on MacRumors detailing the particulars about Apple's DRM for the Music Store feature in iTunes. The summary is that you are allowed to (as Jobs said in his speech on Monday): Play a purchased song on up to 3 …


SensorML brings auto-discovery to web sensors

An article in Sensors (a magazine devoted to sensors and sensor technology) describes a new proposed standard for describing sensors and their data using a new XML dialect called SensorML. The idea is to provide a standard language for describing the sensors and the kinds of data that they can …

Safari's auto-fill wins

One of the new features in Apple's Safari browser is the availability of the various auto-fill capabilities. These have been done before in many browsers, but there are some very unique implementations to the version that the folks at Apple have brought us. My favorite, by far, is the …


More info on SBC frames patent tactics

The SBC frames patents have been discussed here before (January 28 and February 3), but here is a more recent and more in-depth discussion of the tactics from King and Spalding. It's not surprising that the folks at SBC (a member of the former Bell monopoly) have chosen to assail …

Load up those album covers

Since Apple's new iTunes 4 software supports display of album covers, we all need to load up our album covers into our play lists. A discussion thread on MacSlash discusses this very issue.

Gartner report questions Linux on the desktop

I'm a little concerned that the Gartner Group wasn't playing fair when they wrote this, but giving them the benefit of the doubt, here is their report republished by ZDNet. All the usual, variety is the enemy of efficiency (now, show me one single Windows house that has the same …

Fine funny filking

Thanks to Amanda who pointed me at this page which contains a number of amusing filk songs. The Mr. Anderson one is particularly amusing, although Losing My Connection is good too.

MovieFest: Trapped in the machine double feature

In celebration of the release of The Matrix:Reloaded on May 15th, we will be presenting a special edition MovieFest on Saturday, May 10th. In keeping with the trapped in the machine motif, TRON will be shown first, followed by a break and The Matrix will be shown after that …

CNet's review of Apple Music Service lukewarm

If you are interested in CNet's take on the new Apple music service, you can check out the analysis article. I've read it and I agree that the visible changes may be evolutionary, but the packaging, ease-of-use, and DRM changes are rather large. I was amused to see some …

IBM introduces portal speech recognition

IBM has released a set of routines designed to be integrated into portals that will allow for accessing web sites via Cellular (and presumedly other) phones. The code (called the Transcription Applet) is written in Java (of course), and is available as a free trial (along with some interesting documentation …

Intel to read your lips

Intel has an article on their site describing "Audio Visual Speech Recognition" and the technique employed to achieve higher reliability in recognizing human speech. The kicker is that there is open source code available as well. Way to go.

150 days with a TabletPC

A consultant using a TabletPC running Microsoft Windows XP has written about his experiences in the first 150 days for Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine. The long and the short of it is that he likes it, with some quirks. Especially for the kinds of meeting related and document review work …

Satellite Radio on your PC

I'm not thinking this is an appropriate counter story to the Mac users new iTunes services and software, but the folks at XM Radio announced that they will make available their satellite radio service directly on PC desktops using the cryptically named XMPCR.

Intel contractor finally charged

An article in Wired details that "Mike" Hawash (previously mentioned on this site in another article) has finally been charged by the government. I never had an opinion on his guilt or innocence, just on the issue of detention without information or charges, and because of that I'm even more …

University uses iTunes/iPod for lectures

Georgia College and State University has come up with an interesting use for Apple's iPod. MacWorld is reporting that the university is running a program where students can load up iPods with audio tracks of lectures given during the semester. The specifics are interesting in terms of why and …