Buy Windows Products 
Buy Mac Products This article from the EFF highlights a curious feature of the new Microsoft Zune – namely that it won’t play songs purchased using Microsoft’s own Plays For Sure system. And it apears they may be abandoning the technology altogether.
If you were unlucky enough to purchase songs using Plays For Sure, you can at least re-record them for your own personal use.
I guess now that Microsoft is competing against its former partners with their own Media Players it’s time to throw them all under the bus. While Microsoft does use their hardware/software business model effectively in the PC business, burning your hardware partners can’t bode well for future projects. Microsoft PC anyone?
Personally – I’m a big fan of the iPod, and I also welcome a serious challenger to the media player space. I hope the Zune does well, but if this flops, nobody’s going to break Apple’s stranglehold for a long while.
To the Zune, Alice!
TimeTrax goes belly-up
TimeTrax – the hardware/software combo that let people record XM and Sirius radio – is no longer. If you recall, these are the guys that made XM discontinue the XM PCR because of worries people were recording and splitting songs off of the radio.
It’s not that surprising – the business model was fundamentally flawed – as people weren’t willing to pay $200 for hardware to do this when programs like Replay Music and Replay A/V do a better job for a lot less.
Replay Music 2.5
– Improved recognition engine.
– Fixed m3u playlist feature.
– Better recognition support for LaunchCast and Yahoo Music engine.
– Added a new setting to add leading zeros to track number in the file name for better file sorting.
– Removed Eliminate Similar tracks functionality since it caused too many errors.
– Added capability of users to record offline if they uncheck the Auto tagging setting. (Only for registered users).
– Added “Always tag with Artist name” and “Always tag with Album name” check boxes which correspond to text boxes in the “Start Recording Session” dialog box, so if Replay Music is not able to identify a song, then artist name and album name will already be tagged correctly.
– Changed name of Replay Music log file to ReplayMusicLog.log so users can find the log file more easily.
– Added a specialized Replay Music playlist feature – customers can import a playlist text file in the order of song, artist, and album delimited with a “|” for better song recognition. Each line of the file would correspond to the order of songs played.
Just how sensitive are they?
The RIAA shows an “abundance of sensitivity.”
I agree with the RIAA
Hell has not frozen over.
The RIAA is behind a compulsory licensing system for mobile phone ring tones, which would make it easier for everyone to adopt the technology. The alternative where royalties are negotiated song-by-song is being pushed by the Songwriters Guild among others.
Radio is another place where compulsory licensing is in effect, and this system was a great catalyst to the nascent radio technology.
Article here in Hollywood Reporter.
Now, if only the music labels would come up with a way to purchase unrestricted MP3s at a reasonable cost… then Hell would really have frozen over!
What’s a Nabaztag?
An intelligent electronic bunny? This is one of those products that’s either brilliant or stupid, that I wish I’d have thought of.
Read more about the Nabaztag here.
Be sure to watch the demo.
Replay Converter 2.20
– Eliminates occasional upside down videos from You Tube files.
– Added 16 Kbps audio bit rate to all target formats.
– Added a conversion counter to the title bar.
– Can now minimize Replay Converter while converting.
– Added a “Cancel Current Conversion” button and a “Cancel Conversion Job” button.
– Title bar icon is now animated when Replay Converter is converting a file.
– Added new optional command line switch parameters.
Google Snags IPTV Executive
This is interesting. From Fierce IPTV:
Back in April the industry got a whiff of Google’s future IPTV plans when the company sent out its feelers for IPTV talent: engineers, programmers and product managers. Now, OpenTV, an IPTV middleware company, has announced that its CTO, Vincent Dureau, has joined Google at a “senior engineering role.” Dureau was responsible for developing OpenTV’s key technologies, global business relationships and, in the early days, building its engineering team from scratch. Most interestingly, Dureau took the lead of OpenTV’s advanced advertising technologies, even penning a white paper that reads: “We believe that addressable advertising, where specific video ads are targeted to specific audiences will become central to advertising on digital television within the next 5 years… advertisers will be ready to pay premium rates to cable operators who can demonstrate increased efficiency of their advertising network through targeting.”
Just last month, two research scientists at Google developed a way for your computer to quickly identify which programs you’re watching on TV and feed you personalized content based on that information. While the scientists harp on the increased personalization aspects of it, you can bet Google has its eye on an advanced advertising platform that repurposes its keyword advertising scheme for TV. Looks like Dureau could be the one spearheading this initiative.
More from the Fierce IPTV blog link.
Replay Radio Supplemental
– Tuner is updated to stay tuned longer than 90 minutes when recording Sirius online.
– Fixed a bug with Automatically Tuning Sirius stations.
Replay Radio Supplemental
– Tuner is updated to stay tuned longer than 90 minutes when recording Sirius online.
– Fixed a bug with Automatically Tuning Sirius stations.