January 2024
Project Cocktail
The news about Apple working with the music labels to "stimulate digital sales of albums by bundling a new interactive booklet, sleeve notes and other interactive features with music downloads" is interesting, but these so-called "interactive" downloads are not new. As I recall, there have been several available from the iTunes Store, usually as part of larger "box" sets. They open in QuickTime and have virtual pages and hot links and they're pretty cool, depending on how they are designed.
Although I don't think it likely, wouldn't be surprised if DRM was part of the "talks".
Wal-Mart Computers for Wal-Mart People
"Having staked out a business that serves PC makers first, IT drones second, and consumers dead last, Microsoft is left only to advertise that its software arrives on cheap hardware that isn’t burdened with being cool or sexy like Apple’s. As a marketing strategy, that’s so blatantly moronic that it’s hard to imagine a Fortune 500 company could decide to do that."
Why Windows 7 is Microsoft’s next Zune — RoughlyDrafted Magazine (2009/05/09)
"Starting at 8 a.m. this Sunday, Wal-Mart gets a head start on back-to-school sales, offering a full-function Compaq Presario laptop computer for $298. This Compaq has a 15.6-inch LCD screen,an AMD processor, 160-gigabyte hard drive and 3 gigabytes of RAM, a hefty parcel of memory by most measures."
Let the Back-to-School Sales Begin - Gadgetwise Blog - NYTimes.com (2009/07/25)
Dupin v2.0.3 Released
Dupin v2.0.3 is now out and is essentially a maintenance release. I wanted to tie up some loose ends before continuing work on a version for Snow Leopard (due in September), so v2.0.3 is probably the last version before then. The issues fixed are rare, and most users never experienced them, but they've been nagging at me: fixed "disappearing" column bug; fixed problem with filenames of files imported from a non-Mac OS; fixed a harmless syntax problem with XML creation during Re-Playlist.
iTunes 8.2.1 Released
Apple has released iTunes 8.2.1 via Software Update and the iTunes download site. More info later...
DIY: Remote Management Assortment, Part 5
I've added a Part 5 to DIY: Remote Management Assortment that describes how to create and delete playlists on a remote user's iTunes with ssh and osascript. If you haven't been following along in this series of projects, you may want to start at the beginning; this newest addition builds on routines and concepts from earlier in the series.