1000 Songs In Your Pocket

Apple Computer plans to host a special event on September 7th to introduce new music-related products, AppleInsider has learned.

On Monday the iPod maker began distributing e-mail invites to the event, which will take place at 10:00am on Sept. 7th at San Francisco's Moscone Center.

"1000 songs in your pocket changed everything. Here we go again," the invite reads, in part.

The slogan "1000 songs in your pocket" was originally used by the Apple when it introduced the the very first 5GB iPod digital music player in 2001.

Sources had previously reported that Motorola and Apple would use the 7th of September to unveil the first of Motorola's iTunes ROKR cell phones.

The phones will be the first product of Motorola's strategic partnership with Apple, aimed at enabling music fans to transfer their favorite songs from Apple's iTunes jukebox software to compatible Motorola mobile handsets.

The Wall Street Journal also reported on Monday that Apple and Cingular had struck a deal that would make the phone available in time for the holidays.

"Apple also may introduce a line of iPod digital music players intended to replace its hugely popular iPod mini line," a source told the Journal.

Bugg's Take

What new goodies does Stevie have hidden up his sleeves (or in his pockets, for that matter) this time? Could it be new iPods, or the by now not-so-secret Motorola iTunes phone? Whatever it may be, the Apple iPod juggernaut rolls on, kicking ass and taking names. Rio has bitten the digital dust. Who will follow? Will Creative, Sony, Samsung et al be able to go toe to toe with Stevie's 800 pound gorilla?

More blood on Apple iPod's Click Wheel: Rio is dead

D&M Holdings Inc., today announced it would exit the mass-market portable digital audio player business, currently marketed under the Rio brand, by September 30, 2005.

D&M Holdings will retain the Rio brand and trademark, and as previously announced the company retains access via license to MP3 player technology that was sold in July to SigmaTel, Inc.

D&M Holdings Inc. is based in Tokyo and owns the Denon, Marantz, McIntosh Laboratory, D&M Professional, ReplayTV, Rio and Escient brands. All are established brands in premium home theater, audio-video consumer electronics, professional audio or networked digital entertainment markets.

The company’s decision to exit the Rio business followed a determination that the mass-market portable digital audio player market was not a strong enough strategic fit with the company’s core and profitable premium consumer electronics brands to warrant additional investment in the category. The original goal of strategic advantage with wholly-owned and branded portable client devices was reconsidered in the context of the costs required to effectively scale and compete in this sector, where competition has grown intense. D&M Holdings will now focus all its resources on the core Premium AV business and advanced content server products.

"The digital audio market is evolving in such a way that our competitive advantage will be to focus on creating premium home network products that are designed for compatibility with a variety of client devices and services," said Vic Pacor, president of D&M Holdings in the press release.

D&M Holdings will continue to support retailers and customers of its Rio brand through all final sale and post-sales activities, including customer service, repair, warranty and sales channel support. D&M Holdings is committed to continuing service levels without compromise. Details of the financial impact of this plan are available in the company's latest financial results that were released today.

Bugg's Take

Wow, Rio dead? I remember when the Rio MP3 player was first launched, it was THE first MP3 player to market. Seems like the old adage of "first to market" didn't quite work out for Rio here. They got rumbled by the iPod juggernaut.

I even remember doing a Yahoo online search (Google didn't even exist way back then) for the Rio MP3 player, and was returned a page full of results for Marcelo Rios. We've come a long way baby....

Bite My Shiny Metal Ass!

All you Futurama nuts out there (you KNOW who you are) rejoice! For there is a god. Crazy Norwegian PC builder Jan Erik Vangen has built..... *drumroll please*... a BENDER PC!

*gasp! shock! horror!*

*woman faints in the back*

For all ye unbelievers... gaze upon the Truth!

1010010110101010101000110100101011001.....2.

Listening

In ancient times lived a man named Tang Sheng. He considered himself a very wise man. He had heard that the sage Zhu Gumin had great power with words.

He invited Zhu Gumin into his house. Tang Sheng said: “I was told that you can use words in a clever way. You can even lure a stranger out of his house. But I think you could never get me out of my house.”

Zhu Gumin said: “It is winter. It is very cold outside. I would rather use my skill to lure a person into a house. I could describe the warmth and comfort of a house in such a way that they cannot resist. They must come in even if they want to stay outside.”

“Let us try it,” said Tang Sheng. He stepped out into the cold garden. “Now use your words to lure me inside.”

But Zhu Gumin said nothing.

Tang Sheng again asked him to use his power with words.

Zhu Gumin again said nothing.

Tang Sheng decided to go into his house. But the door was locked.

Listening to what a man says accomplishes nothing.
Listening to what he means is better.
But most useful of all, Blade of Grass, is to listen to what you yourself mean when you ask a question.

Bugg's Take

Moral of the story:

Tang Sheng got owned.

Apple's iTunes sold albums for 50 yen

Apple Computer Inc. must be singing the blues after discovering its Japanese iTunes Web site sold albums last week for just 50 yen each.

The cost was a fraction of the intended 1,500-yen price, sources said.

While the company has declined to comment on the matter, the sources said the low price at the iTunes Music Store was likely a mistake.

The bargain was available last Thursday from the early morning to late afternoon, when it was possible to download Toshiba EMI Ltd. albums at 50 yen each.

Dozens of albums, including those by rock group RC Succession and singer Saori Yuki, sold at the price.

"This must be due to confusion on the sales side because of the unexpected popularity of the service," said music journalist Daisuke Tsuda.

Apple started its Japanese version of the hugely popular iTunes download service Aug. 4, offering about 1 million songs from 15 record companies. About 1 million tunes were sold online in the first four days of operation, the company has reported.

Prices for a single song downloaded using a special program range from 150 yen to 200 yen. An entire album starts at 1,500 yen.

People who downloaded the albums last Thursday received sales confirmations via e-mail from Apple with the 50-yen price, the sources said. Credit card billing statements for the purchases will also list the 50-yen price.

"We have heard talk about it (the low price), but our company is involved (only) in selling wholesale. The actual prices are up to the Web site," a Toshiba EMI representative said.

Although Apple apparently fixed the mistake, the damages could have been devastating.

"Unlike for ordinary merchandise sales, a music download service never runs out of stock," journalist Tsuda said. "If the recent incident was indeed a mistake, potential losses for the company selling the songs could expand without limit."

(IHT/Asahi: August 23,2005)

Bugg's Take

As they say, any publicity is good publicity. Perhaps this explains why Apple's Japan iTunes Music Store (iTMS) sold 1 million songs in 4 days following it's launch this month.

Sony to fight Apple with Beans

"Sony is getting curvy and colorful with its latest digital Walkman offering. The new NW-E300 series of kidney-shaped, flash-based devices--also known by the catchier name of Walkman Beans--is the latest in a string of music players from the company once synonymous with portable tunes. In recent years, like many other companies, Sony has been playing catch-up with the iPod from market maestro Apple Computer," CNET News.com reports.

"Pricing is set at about $130 for the NW-E305, which has 512MB of storage, and about $180 for the NW-E307, with 1GB of storage," CNET News.com reports. "The Beans play both MP3 and Atrac music files, and also support the WMA and WAV formats. They're compatible with Sony's Connect online music service. An FM tuner is built in."The players are due in October.

Read more here.

Shut Up And Show Your School Spirit!

Whether you went to college or not (or "university" as you Europeeps are wont to call it), you can appreciate the desire to show support for your school. It doesn't matter if you want to put a sticker on your car, paint your chest with funny letters, or wear a furry animal suit at sporting events. If you love your school you'll find a way to show it. Well, we've teamed up with the fine folks over at STFUniversity to provide an outlet to show a little school spirit.

STFU is our favorite institution, and though many of us attended other universities around the world, we're encouraging as many people as we can to embrace STFU and its ideals. Tuition is cheap at STFU, in fact it's free. There are no books to buy, and since there's no physical campus, you can study as little or as often as you like; though we think you'll find the more you immerse yourself in the STFU lifestyle, the happier and more fulfilled all our lives will be.

100% cotton, heavyweight t-shirt in Navy blue. "STFU" and "Subsisto Sermo Statim" printed on the front with a strangely-gagged mascot in white, orange, and blue. There is a 'distressed' effect on the whole design for maximum University appeal. For the non-Latin-inclined, the motto translates to "Stop Talking Now." And, of course the year the University was founded is 1337. No qualms there we are certain.

Buy it here.

Who is Max Planck?

Bugg's Take

Having just laid my grubby paws on the latest offering by Aussie indie-merchants Something For Kate, The Official Fiction, I chanced upon a familiar name. The album opener Max Planck evoked strange, surreal memories for me. As if one had placed one's car keys somewhere in the house, but unable to remember where. After giving the track a few spins on the trusty old discman, I finally realised why the name was so familiar. OF COURSE....Planck's Constant. That ubiquitous universal constant that is the basis of all quantum physics. Inspired, I dug up more dirt on Max Planck, the physicist. Max Planck, the man.

Who is Max Planck

Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck was born in Kiel, Germany, on April 23, 1858, the son of Julius Wilhelm and Emma (née Patzig) Planck. His father was Professor of Constitutional Law in the University of Kiel, and later in Göttingen.

Planck studied at the Universities of Munich and Berlin, where his teachers included Kirchhoff and Helmholtz, and received his doctorate of philosophy at Munich in 1879. He was Privatdozent in Munich from 1880 to 1885, then Associate Professor of Theoretical Physics at Kiel until 1889, in which year he succeeded Kirchhoff as Professor at Berlin University, where he remained until his retirement in 1926. Afterwards he became President of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Promotion of Science, a post he held until 1937. The Prussian Academy of Sciences appointed him a member in 1894 and Permanent Secretary in 1912.

Planck's earliest work was on the subject of thermodynamics, an interest he acquired from his studies under Kirchhoff, whom he greatly admired, and very considerably from reading R. Clausius' publications. He published papers on entropy, on thermoelectricity and on the theory of dilute solutions.

At the same time also the problems of radiation processes engaged his attention and he showed that these were to be considered as electromagnetic in nature. From these studies he was led to the problem of the distribution of energy in the spectrum of full radiation. Experimental observations on the wavelength distribution of the energy emitted by a black body as a function of temperature were at variance with the predictions of classical physics. Planck was able to deduce the relationship between the energy and the frequency of radiation. In a paper published in 1900, he announced his derivation of the relationship: this was based on the revolutionary idea that the energy emitted by a resonator could only take on discrete values or quanta. The energy for a resonator of frequency v is hv where h is a universal constant, now called Planck's constant.

This was not only Planck's most important work but also marked a turning point in the history of physics. The importance of the discovery, with its far-reaching effect on classical physics, was not appreciated at first. However the evidence for its validity gradually became overwhelming as its application accounted for many discrepancies between observed phenomena and classical theory. Among these applications and developments may be mentioned Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect.

Planck's work on the quantum theory, as it came to be known, was published in the Annalen der Physik. His work is summarized in two books Thermodynamik (Thermodynamics) (1897) and Theorie der Wärmestrahlung (Theory of heat radiation) (1906).

He was elected to Foreign Membership of the Royal Society in 1926, being awarded the Society's Copley Medal in 1928.

Planck faced a troubled and tragic period in his life during the period of the Nazi government in Germany, when he felt it his duty to remain in his country but was openly opposed to some of the Government's policies, particularly as regards the persecuti on of the Jews. In the last weeks of the war he suffered great hardship after his home was destroyed by bombing.
He was revered by his colleagues not only for the importance of his discoveries but for his great personal qualities. He was also a gifted pianist and is said to have at one time considered music as a career.

Planck was twice married. Upon his appointment, in 1885, to Associate Professor in his native town Kiel he married a friend of his childhood, Marie Merck, who died in 1909. He remarried her cousin Marga von Hösslin. Three of his children died young, leaving him with two sons.
He suffered a personal tragedy when one of them was executed for his part in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Hitler in 1944.
He died at Göttingen on October 4, 1947.

From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1967

Harry Potter Spoiler Tee

The good folks over at T Shirt Hell never fail to produce first class t shirts that anyone would be proud to wear. Especially turning up at a J K Rowling book signing wearing this puppy... Priceless.

Title of the Year

Ohhhhh...kaaayyyy.... Soccernet has had some pretty interesting typos and mis-published articles, but even I have to applaud the writer who came up with this barn-burner of a title. Take a minute to read it, ok... you can stop 1) laughing your head off or 2) furrowing your brow now. It's apparently (yeah right...) an article about a Swiss footy team conveniently called "Young Boys", who conveniently have just "erected" a spanking new stadium conveniently named "Wankdorf". How they managed to work the "relief" in there, I'll never know. Well done lads.