Yes, Myspace is still for sale.

But, no, no one has yet made a good enough bid–in other words, at the more than $100 million level its owner, News Corp., has sought–to knock out anyone else.

And who knows who will, as those working on the deal gave a deadline today for any revised bids for the social entertainment hub.

Among those remaining in the running: two strategic bidders, although the CEO of the Vevo music service has denied interest; several private equity players, including Criterion Capital Partners, which bought Bebo from AOL for a song; and an aggressive inside effort by CEO Michael Jones, which would include venture investors and a possible continued smaller ownership by News Corp. (News Corp. also owns Dow Jones, which owns this Web site.)

News Corp. is holding out for a few more bids today from those who had expressed initial interest, said sources close to the situation, after the company provided additional information about long troubled service.

That included data showing some increased user engagement from a recent Facebook artists profile app launch and a new music playback system, among other efforts to revive Myspace.

But, added sources, this is likely to be the final call for bids, since News Corp. reportedly would like to complete the deal and get Myspace off its books before end of its fiscal quarter this month.

“I think somebody with some brains and guts could do pretty well with the property,” said one News Corp. insider, noting that the Chinese social site Renren is smaller than Myspace in both size and revenue, even though it now has a $5 billion valuation after its recent IPO.

Perhaps, but such a windfall seems about as unlikely as Myspace winning back its once-might social networking crown.

Thus, finally settling on a decent bidder is Myspace’s best–and perhaps only–hope going forward.

Today, the formal program at the famous TED conference begins, with the theme title: “The Rediscovery of Wonder.”

BoomTown will be flying down to Long Beach, where the event is now held and runs through Friday (and where I will be sadly missing the Apple iPad 2 launch in San Francisco on Wednesday).

As usual, it’s a highly diverse and unusual speaker schedule, full of artists, scientists, educators and architects.

Among the most interesting to me are speakers such as: Data artist Aaron Koblin, who is now creative director of the Data Arts team in Google’s Creative Lab; Wrongologist Kathryn Schulz, who writes a Slate series featuring interviews with high-profile people about how they think and feel about being wrong; and roboticist Dennis Hong.

And, of course, I will be paying mind to whatever Microsoft Co-founder Bill Gates has to say about his latest philanthropy efforts.

There is a lot more you can read about here in TED’s schedule.

What I like a lot about the TED event is that what’s onstage in terrific videos soon appears on its very robust Web site.

I will be taking my own videos, of course, so get ready.

First it was LinkedIn, and now it is music-streaming service Pandora that has filed for an initial public offering.

In a document filed with the SEC today, the Oakland, Calif.-based company said it wants to raise $100 million. The underwriters are Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Stifel Nicolaus Weisel and William Blair & Company.

Pandora explained in the document that its service today is primarily a personalized radio station streamed over the Web and mobile phones, but in the future it has aspirations to do much more.

It wants to improve the service, develop new advertising products, build out its ad sales force, expand distribution to other consumer electronics and automobiles, and expand internationally. It also wants to add other types of content beyond music, such as radio formats, like talk radio or sports.

The company reported a loss of $328,000 on total revenues of $90.1 million in the nine months ended October 31, 2010. In the same period in 2009, it lost $18.6 million on revenues of $31.4 million.

A majority of its revenues comes from advertising, with a very small minority from subscriptions.

Pandora uses what it calls the Music Genome Project to draw correlations between different songs, so that when a user picks a particular station–based on an artist or a song–it finds the best matches to fit your taste, making the service insanely addictive.

The company’s tagline: “It’s a new kind of radio–stations that play only music you like.”

Generally, the advertising interruptions are limited, and subscriptions are available.

It hasn’t always been smooth sailing for the company, and has had to fight hard to keep down the royalty costs it must pay license holders. An IPO won’t put an end to those troubles, but it signals the company may be out of the woods.

The service has plenty of rivals, including companies like Rhapsody, and could be threatened by international competition from services like Spotify, which is still months out from entering the U.S.

In the filing, Pandora says the largest shareholders are Crosslink Capital, Walden Venture Capital, Greylock Partners, Labrador Ventures, the Hearst Corporation and GGV Capital.

Some other tidbits from the filing:

–80 million registered users in the U.S.

–800,000 songs from 80,000 artists in the collection.

–Streamed 3.9 billion hours in the fiscal year ended January 2011.

This is going to be good.

The iconic singer and performance artist Lady Gaga will be appearing at the Consumer Electronics Show later today to unveil “creations” she came up with for Polaroid.

Gaga announced last year here that she had been named the creative director of Polaroid.

As part of the collaboration that will debut her Polaroid “Grey Label” project, Gaga said a year ago that she would be coming up with “prototypes in marrying the fields of fashion/technology/photography innovation.”

Oh, goody. Fishnet stockings that can post pictures to Instagram!

I am considering going to the event–as ordered to by the shy and retiring Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel.

But it will likely be a mosh pit of nerdy dudes, so I’ll need to frontload starting at 10 am.

And you can watch it on Polaroid.com at 3:30 pm PT.

Awhile back, Zynga partnered with Snoop Dogg to blow up a four-ton armored truck in the desert to commemorate Mafia Wars reaching 10 million visitors in two weeks.

Today, Zynga is partnering with Snoop’s West Coast counterpart, Dr. Dre, who is using the social gaming phenomenon to promote his first album in more than a decade.

[We've included the footage of the truck blowing up for your entertainment. It's interesting to note that Mafia Wars has added nine million players since that celebration in August, four months ago.]

Players of the Zynga game will be able to watch the music video for Dr. Dre’s first single, “Kush,” featuring Snoop Dogg and Akon. It starts streaming for free today. Dre’s album “Detox” will come out early next year.

In addition, users will be able to buy “limited edition” virtual goods tied in with the artist in the “Hustlin’ wit Dre” portion of the game. Items include headphones, a vintage car and weapons.

Photo Credit: “>Detox-Dr.Dre.com

Empty bracket or no empty bracket: Will it work?

That’s pretty much the big question at News Corp. tonight, as its much beleaguered social networking site, Myspace, rolls out a new beta version aimed at shifting its fortunes.

And how will it do that? By moving dramatically away from its roots as a social networking site–and far, far away from powerhouse Facebook–and becoming a “social entertainment” hub aimed directly at the Gen Y audience.

That means heavy emphasis on the sharing and discovery of music, television, movies, games, videos and photos from within Myspace and without. There is also an upcoming new mobile site and better apps for smartphones and tablets.

And it also includes a new logo that features “my” with an actual fill-in-the-space bracket after it.

By the way, it’s now “Myspace”–dropped second cap–rather than the old “MySpace,” and the new color palette is black, not blue.

It is a bold, if risky, move, which could result in a dramatic decline of users or–despite the grim reality of second acts on the Internet–reset Myspace to begin a new cycle of growth.

For sure, as you can see from the screenshots below, it is a cleaner, hipper and much more attractive offering, with a tile format, ridding Myspace of its longtime cheap and noisy feel.

You can still toggle to a list or video view of the homepage.

Still, Myspace continues with the irksome moving parts, such as continually updating live notifications and real-time rolling number tickers that move constantly as people share various content.

It sort of reminds me of that national-debt clock in Times Square in Manhattan, but not as riveting.

Amid the better ability for bands and artists to more easily attract fans and promote themselves on Myspace, regular users can also become social arbiters–called “curators”–by active and useful sharing of their tastes.

And, perhaps most important of all, you can bring in a lot of outside sources, broadcast out to Facebook and have a two-way feed with Twitter.

Behind the scenes, Myspace has also done a major overhaul of its tech structure, which has been much maligned. In fact, it was once described to me as being made of “bubblegum and baling wire.”

Here’s an appalling stat, for example: There have been 117 different Myspace logos created for the service.

We’ll see how it goes, but here are videos Myspace did about the launch, including a logo-ganza:

And here are more screenshots than you ever would want (click on the images to make them larger):

Finally, here is the official press release:

MEET THE NEW MYSPACE

Myspace Debuts New Brand, Beta Website and Suite of Products That Focus on Social Entertainment for Gen Y

Beverly Hills, October 27, 2010 – Today Myspace announced a new brand, beta website and a suite of products that together redefine the company as a social entertainment destination for Gen Y. Myspace is creating a rich, highly personalized experience for people to discover content and connect with other fans who share similar interests. The entertainment experience will span music, celebrities, movies, television and games and will be available through multiple platforms, including online, mobile devices and offline events.

“This marks the beginning of an exciting turning point for Myspace. Our new strategy expands on Myspace’s existing strengths–a deep understanding of social, a wealth of entertainment content and the ability to surface emerging cultural trends in real time through our users,” said Mike Jones, CEO of Myspace. “Myspace is unique in that it is powered by the passions of our users, who program the site by expressing interests, sharing tastes and knowledge around particular topics, and scouting out up-and-coming subcultures. This is the just the first step and there will be many more features, programs and improvements to come.:

Specifically, Myspace will provide people with the ability to:

• Discover and engage with Myspace’s broad array of programming, including originals, exclusives and content from around the Web.
• Express, collect, and display their creations and interests on their profiles and through sharing tools.
• Connect to other fans with similar tastes.

Myspace will also focus on promoting curators–a subset of its audience whose reputation and knowledge around particular entertainment topics and emerging cultural trends make them uniquely influential–by supporting them with the resources, tools and a platform to expand their reach within the Myspace community.

Newly Designed Beta Site

Myspace has completely rebuilt its website, with a new visual identity and product features that put content center stage. From the color palette to the way the site is organized to the improved navigation, everything has been redesigned to help people easily find relevant content.

The redesigned Myspace welcome page showcases fresh content as it bubbles up across the beta site in real time. Additionally, once a user logs in to Myspace, the page will instantly populate with content based on the individual’s interests, creating a unique, contextually relevant discovery experience.

Registered users can now also toggle between three different views of the homepage, each specifically designed to display their stream in the way that resonates most. These include:

• List view: Traditional view
• Grid view: A magazine-like format
• Play view: A video format that allows users to watch, forward and resize their updates to full screen

To complement the online experience, Myspace will soon release a mobile version of the beta site, accessible on any mobile browser. A new Myspace app for iPhone and Android devices will follow later this year.

New Products

Myspace has released a suite of initial features that empower people to discover, collect and display entertainment content, while also offering tailored recommendations. These features include:

Topics–Myspace features more than 20,000 entertainment-focused, dynamic pages organized around topics. These pages provide a centralized location to view aggregated information about specific subject matter from a wide variety of news sites and blogs including MTV, Los Angeles Times, Access Hollywood, New York Times, Village Voice and Just Jared.

Content Hubs–These comprehensive entertainment destinations are specifically dedicated to movies, television and celebrities. The pages combine programmed editorial with trending articles that feature news, videos and photos from various content partners. Additionally, each individual article within the hubs recommends related content and topics. Hubs focused on games, comedy, sports and fashion will be revealed in the coming months.

Personalized Stream–The new stream automatically learns what to feature based on a user’s preferences and habits, so they see more of what they love and less of what they don’t.

Recommendations–This feature recommends relevant topics and other fans based on algorithms that learn the type of content a user views, listens to or watches and from whom or where they discovered it.

‘Right now on Myspace’–This feature shows trending content in real time on Myspace, helps fans find recently added music and videos, and lets them listen or watch right from the interactive chart. Myspace uses these trends to inform recommendations that promote discovery and engagement.

Discovery Tab–This always accessible tab combines videos that friends are watching with what’s trending in real time on Myspace. Scroll to the top of any page and the new Discovery Tab drops down as a horizontal film strip.

My Stuff TabMy Stuff is an easy way to see all that’s personal to a user – their profile, photos, videos and uploaded content, structured as a drop-down menu with different content areas.

Badges–This feature recognizes and rewards curators and fans for their social activity around entertainment topics on the beta site and promotes them with badges – graphic icons that appear in a user’s stream.

New Brand Identity

Myspace has also introduced a new logo that captures its revamped brand identity and values. The bracket in the logo represents a space where people can express themselves, enabling users to personalize the logo and make it their own–just as they can throughout Myspace.

The newly-designed Myspace begins rolling out today in beta and will be available to all users worldwide by the end of November. New users will have immediate access to the beta site. For more information, please visit www.myspace.com/newmyspace

It’s nice to hear enthusiasm on the part of Linkin Park band member Mike Shinoda about an innovative-for-the-music-industry effort to give fans a chance to be part of the iconic Grammy-winning rock band.

That’s because most artists or content creators–while making all the right sounds about the Internet’s impact on their business–often privately cringe at the ongoing flood of user-generated material that has drastically changed the industry.

Not Shinoda, who is certain he will find some real talent via a new online contest, called “Linkin Park, Featuring You,” that gives anyone an opportunity to collaborate with the band to produce an original song based on some of the tracks from the forthcoming single “The Catalyst.”

The song is on Linkin Park’s next album, “A Thousand Suns,” to be released September 14.

“We looked at it as both risky and fun to save a spot on the record that could be just anything,” he said in an interview with BoomTown earlier this week. “It’s creative, lets the fans be heard and, of course, is a great way to promote the album.”

Of course it is, but Shinoda said he is not expecting to have to put any bad-quality music on the record just to sell more music.

“The album could not be any more sacred to us and this is certainly an X-factor, which is kind of a move against the grain for us,” he said. “But the Internet has actually given a lot more people a chance to be heard and, as it has turned out, amateurs are so much better than we ever expected.”

So far, Shinoda said, he has just sampled a few dozen of the thousands of submissions so far, either selecting randomly or via a popularity ranking system the contest uses. He said he’s also using a range of people who are part of the Linkin Park team to filter material.

But, ultimately, Shinoda and his bandmates (pictured here) will pick the winning submission, with either the song to be included on the band’s new album or the winner to be invited to perform with the band on a song on the upcoming record. Either way, a pretty good prize for an aspiring musician.

Shinoda said he is hoping to hear a lot of different sounds from electronic music to keyboards to guitars and even horns (“No one has submitted a horn version so far,” he laughed. “But I hope someone does.”)

Linkin Park is using a group of Internet companies to carry out the massive user-generated effort, including: MySpace Music (platform, promotion and direct fan messaging); Indaba Music (hosting the MySpace application that allows musicians to auto-syndicate their remixes on MySpace); Top Spin Media (using their email for a song widget to deliver audio stems to all participants); and Ning (the back end to Linkin Park’s Web site, where they are also distributing the audio stems to push back to the contest)

There have been remix contests online done before, such as Snoop Dogg’s “That Tree” Remix Contest, which had 8,000 entries and generated a lot of fan interest.

But this effort is clearly more ambitious, perhaps because Shinoda is clearly a techie, with an ongoing interest in filling the Linkin Park Web site with puzzles, games and other interactive features.

In fact, Linkin Park had already conducted a smaller contest for fans to submit designs for characters used in a game the band released in April, called “8-Bit Rebellion,” for the Apple (AAPL) iPod touch, iPhone and iPad. And, after the game was completed by a player, it unlocked a new song, “Blackbirds.”

Shinoda said the band hopes to do even more digitally, trying to involve and engage fans in ways that they never would have tried before.

“There is a huge unknown factor and this is not something we would have done five years ago,’ he said of the latest collaboration contest. “But I am not afraid of my fans being good at music, even if it turns out they are better than me.”

Until a winner is selected, here’s a most excellent music video of my favorite Linkin Park song, “Shadow of the Day,” because I wish I had written the perfect and simple line, “Sometimes beginnings aren’t so simple/Sometimes goodbye’s the only way” (maybe some fan will write something as good):

And here’s a blog post by Sam Wick, SVP of marketing at MySpace Music, about its partnership with Linkin Park:

Linkin Park Wants To Put You on Their New Album

Linkin Park is arguably one of the biggest rock acts in the world with more than seven million fans on MySpace and iLike, two Grammy wins and a boatload of accolades from the music community. So, needless to say, we were more than a little excited to help the band launch their next album, “A Thousand Suns.”

This is a band that’s almost as passionate about social media and technology as they are about the music they create–and they came to MySpace, because we have a proven track record of successfully architecting custom album campaigns that uniquely marry music to innovation on a global scale. With this in mind, we knew we had to do something that not only raises global awareness of the new album, but really plays into the intimate artist-to-fan connection that Linkin Park has been cultivating on our platform for years. And so “Linkin Park, Featuring You” was born–a multi-phase program that each of our 30 territories across the world are rolling out locally.

Linkin Park, Featuring You begins on MySpace with a music application that allows fans to create their own original version of the band’s new single “The Catalyst” and ends with the rare opportunity for one worthy fan to have his or her song stripped onto the next album. SERIOUS. To make this happen, Linkin Park and MySpace Music brought together Topspin Media, Ning and Indaba Music–a true technology trifecta–to allow fans to interact and play with the music before it is even released. Again, SERIOUS.

Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park has this message to share with his fans on MySpace and across the Web:

“In the lifetime of Linkin Park, the evolution of community and music technology has blurred the line between artist and fan. With the release of our new album we want to push it even further and so we are making a commitment to our fans that is a first of its kind: We are blindly dedicating a spot on our new album to something unknown. That space is reserved for you and we’re confident that you will create something that we can be proud to include on “A Thousand Suns.” This is not just a “fan-remix” contest; we want to collaborate with you. This effort is made possible by the global 360 music platform of MySpace, and the dedication and talent of our incredible fans. Thank you. We look forward to hearing your submissions.”

Here’s how it works: By installing the Indaba Music-powered app on MySpace, fans have access to five stems from “The Catalyst” that they can use to re-arrange and re-imagine the song using either their own Digital Audio Workstation or with Indaba’s free, Web-based software. Once submitted, users can vote for their favorite versions and help the band in their quest to identify new talent and ultimately pick a winner.

“Linkin Park, Featuring You” is just the beginning of a much larger partnership between the band and MySpace Music that will provide Linkin Park fans with recognition worldwide with access to live shows, exclusive content and premieres as well as opportunities to connect and interact with the band in ways that only MySpace Music can offer.

Be sure to get your entries in by July 25th and don’t forget to spread the word about the contest to your friends around the world–and go buy the new single on August 2nd.

Here’s a video BoomTown did in honor of the 25th anniversary of the founding of AOL.

I had to miss the party back East yesterday, as I am prepping for the eighth D: All Things Digital conference–where, in fact, both AOL’s first CEO, Steve Case, and its current one, Tim Armstrong, will be interviewed onstage.

Instead, I did this video, which is inspired from an email Case sent to me recently calling me “Miss Snarky.”

While that’s completely accurate, I decided to have a little fun, all with the goal of feting AOL–which really does deserve much praise for its pioneering and innovative efforts to introduce the Internet to mainstream consumers without the snobbery so typical of Silicon Valley techies toward regular people.

The video aired yesterday during the events on the Dulles, Va., campus of AOL. Original execs Steve Case, Jim Kimsey and Ted Leonsis were there, along with about 500 AOL alumni.

AOL also dedicated three campus buildings: Dulles Main is now known as the Steve Case Center; CC2 is now known as the James Kimsey Center; and CC1 is now known as the Ted Leonsis Center.

Birthday events for AOL continue this week in New York.

So, here’s my video, as well as another video of an odd gathering of musical artists wishing AOL (AOL) happy birthday:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100525/happy-25th-birthday-aol-love-snarky-boomtown/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20100511/party-on-tim-aol-hooks-up-with-chuck-close-for-25th-anniversary/ http://allthingsd.com/20100511/party-on-tim-aol-hooks-up-with-chuck-close-for-25th-anniversary/#comments Tue, 11 May 2010 23:33:00 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=28344 What in the world is AOL CEO Tim Armstrong up to now?

A “Project on Creativity With American Artist Chuck Close,” according to a party invite for the iconic online service’s 25th anniversary that the company just sent out, which you can see below.

I have calls in to the chiseled-cheekbone exec find out what that means.

But extra points for putting AOL and creativity in the same sentence without even a trace of irony!

Indeed, after getting busy hiring the best management team in online history to run the digital equivalent–compared with Internet giants like Google and even Yahoo (YHOO)–of a lemonade stand, it’s nice to know that Armstrong is still thinking big.

And BoomTown loves a big thinker! In fact, that’s why we’ve invited the former Google (GOOG) advertising exec to the eighth D: All Things Digital conference, taking place in just a few weeks near Los Angeles.

We’ll be inquiring about how AOL (AOL) is doing at 25 years old, how Armstrong’s going to lift it back to innovative relevance and get is ad revenue back, its nascent content effort, how it feels to go from a Goliath to a David, and much more.

Until then, check out Tim’s party (click on it to make it larger):

And here is an interview I did with Armstrong right before AOL spun off as an independent public company last year:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100511/party-on-tim-aol-hooks-up-with-chuck-close-for-25th-anniversary/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100302/is-apple-finally-worried-about-amazons-music-store/ http://allthingsd.com/20100302/is-apple-finally-worried-about-amazons-music-store/#comments Tue, 02 Mar 2010 23:14:10 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=16893 Amazon’s MP3 store hasn’t done much to weaken Apple’s grip on the digital music business. But that doesn’t mean Apple isn’t paying attention.

Big music label folks say Apple (AAPL) has long complained about their involvement with Amazon (AMZN). But recently, Billboard reports, those complaints have become more specific. The trade magazine says Apple is asking the labels not to push new releases via Amazon’s “Daily Deal” promotion, which offers new records at cut-rate prices.

Warning! There’s some salty music-label-executive language in this excerpt:

In exchange for a Daily Deal promotion on a new album, Amazon has been asking labels to provide it with a one-day exclusive before street date and such digital marketing support as a banner ad on an artist’s MySpace page and messages on label and artist Web sites and social network feeds.

“When that happened,” [a major-label head of sales] says, “iTunes said, ‘Enough of that shit.’”

Sources say that iTunes representatives have been urging labels to rethink their participation in the Amazon promotion and that they have backed up those warnings by withdrawing marketing support for certain releases featured as Daily Deals.

In response, label executives at Capitol, Capitol Nashville and Jive recently opted against participating in Daily Deal promotions they had been considering for Corinne Bailey Rae’s “The Sea,” Lady Antebellum’s “Need You Now” and Ke$ha’s “Animal,” sources say.

Billboard notes that the labels are still working with Amazon on Daily Deal promotions. But it says they are pulling back on prereleases and exclusives for big records and pushing smaller artists that Apple isn’t likely to shower with promotional support.

Today’s Deal: $3.99 for Sony artist Raheem Devaughn’s new album, which doesn’t appear in iTunes “New and Noteworthy” section.

I’ve asked Amazon, Apple and all four of the big labels–Universal, Sony (SNE), EMI and Warner (WMG)–for comment, but I’m not holding my breath.

But assuming that Billboard is right here–and reporter Ed Christman has been covering music retail forever–it’s interesting to note that Apple is pushing back a bit more forcefully at Amazon. (Industry trade Hits DailyDouble reported something very similar in January).

If I’m Jeff Bezos, I’d take that as a compliment. And then I’d go back to worrying about Steve Jobs’s entry into the e-book market.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100302/is-apple-finally-worried-about-amazons-music-store/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100211/after-even-more-turmoil-can-the-hot-mess-at-myspace-be-saved/ http://allthingsd.com/20100211/after-even-more-turmoil-can-the-hot-mess-at-myspace-be-saved/#comments Thu, 11 Feb 2010 10:33:44 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=24330

Last week, someone who has been at MySpace for a while told me what it’s like working inside the social networking company, which has gone from supernova to also-ran in the course of a few years.

Reflecting on the downward spiral, which MySpace owner News Corp. (NWS) has been trying to slow over the last year, and how hard it has been to do a turnaround of any kind, the exec could not shake the idea that it could still be revived.

“MySpace is kind of a hot mess,” said the exec, referring to its still-large audience and well-known brand. “It’s both impossible to save and hard to give up on.”

Unfortunately for all those involved, that mess got even messier yesterday after the ousting of CEO Owen Van Natta by News Corp. Chief Digital Officer Jon Miller.

While News Corp. tried to paint the departure as more mutual in its official statement, it was most definitely not, as infighting among top execs finally came to a head today.

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

Escalating tensions over strategy going forward had grown untenable between Miller and Van Natta, as well as among and between Van Natta and his top two execs, COO Mike Jones and Chief Product Officer Jason Hirschhorn.

(Pictured from left to right above are Van Natta, Jones and Hirschhorn.)

Sources said relations had gotten so bad that Hirschhorn had told Van Natta recently that he was planning to resign by June.

It was a threat that moved well beyond well-known gripes the former media exec had aired to many outside the company over the last year about how MySpace was in much worse shape MySpace than he thought, and that reflects weariness from the weekly commute between his home in New York and the company’s Los Angeles HQ.

And after a recent blog post that claimed Hirschhorn was the one leaving, relations became even frostier, sources said.

The relationship between Miller and Van Natta had also become badly frayed, several sources noted, mostly over the pace of change and the level of control Van Natta had over MySpace.

“There were serious disagreements and something had to give,” said one person close to the situation.

After firing Van Natta in an afternoon meeting yesterday in what several people described as a “termination without cause,” Miller (pictured here with Van Natta behind him) appointed Jones and Hirschhorn co-presidents of MySpace.

It was a dramatic shift from only nine months ago.

With the backing of News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, Miller hired Van Natta last April, after jettisoning co-founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe.

But despite his CEO title, the former Facebook and Amazon (AMZN) exec didn’t get to select the two top executives beneath him.

Both Jones and Hirschhorn were hired by Miller directly–also with Murdoch’s involvement and approval.

The idea at the time of assembling this troika was that three heads are better than one, especially in dealing with the technological, administrative and business hairball that MySpace had become over the years.

As it turned out, three heads came with three brains and three different ideas of what MySpace needed to do to fix itself.

While the work to clean up the company, make cuts and attract new talent proceeded, it seems as if not enough progress was made on the what-next part of the equation, as various strategies were considered.

That led to an increasing number of clashes as pressure began to mount to do something, even as rival Facebook’s growth skyrocketed.

While Van Natta and the others distilled the idea of making MySpace the place where consumers and artists store and keep track of their entertainment content online, using a series of “super tools” to move them all over the Web, the lack of concrete changes even began to irk Murdoch.

In News Corp.’s earnings call last week, in fact, Murdoch said about MySpace, despite recent encouraging signs of stabilization: “It’s not yet where we want it.”

Uh-oh, that might have been a clue to watch for big changes!

In addition, as MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka noted, News Corp. disclosed that MySpace and the rest of its digital portfolio were coming up short on their end of a $900 million, three-year search deal with Google (GOOG), meaning that News Corp. would receive around $100 million less than originally anticipated.

This was due to changes made to the site’s design, which cut down on some page views that the old site created to show higher traffic.

And, said sources, any new search deal with Google or, perhaps, Microsoft (MSFT) is not expected to be stellar.

“MySpace will get paid what it is worth,” said the source about search fees. “But the days of big payouts are over.”

The real problem, of course, is that MySpace’s audience has been going elsewhere, particularly Facebook, and will continue to do so until a bold new direction is set.

Many in the industry do not think that is even possible and that News Corp. shouldn’t even own MySpace anymore.

There is also a good argument that the company should have, and could have, sold the asset several years ago, either to Yahoo (YHOO) during its takeover fight with Microsoft or to another bidder when the company was riding high.

Now, News Corp.–which is dealing with many other vexing digital issues, including a pitched battle over paid content–is stuck trying to fix a distressed asset that became that way by allowing the old regime to run it in a less than rigorous manner.

And despite all the Band-Aids applied so far, reviving MySpace will take a lot of more arduous work from Jones and Hirschhorn, neither of whom has helmed as big an organization, despite recent layoffs.

In addition, the co-presidents must get along well, and power-sharing arrangements are always tricky to pull off.

So, until Miller, Jones and Hirschhorn figure it out–or not!–and, in honor of MySpace’s music meme, here is Cobra Starship’s “Hot Mess” video:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100211/after-even-more-turmoil-can-the-hot-mess-at-myspace-be-saved/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20100126/reaching-for-the-height-of-radio/ http://allthingsd.com/20100126/reaching-for-the-height-of-radio/#comments Tue, 26 Jan 2010 22:21:11 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/?p=1029 Despite the popularity of music downloads or streamed music through online services like Pandora, the good old radio is still a source of entertainment for many people. It turns on as soon as the car starts and inspires shower singers every morning. Plus, it works pretty much the same as it has for decades.

The trusty radio has finally received an upgrade—to the world of high definition. HD Radio, which has been gathering steam for a few years, sounds better and offers more channels than traditional radio. It also sends properly equipped devices text data like a song’s title and artist name as well as traffic, weather and stock information. One HD Radio even lets you pause programming in mid-stream, so you don’t have to miss a song or NPR story just because you’re drying your hair. And future HD Radio devices will record programming like television DVRs do now.

The Sony (above) and Coby Electronics (below) devices use HD Radio technology to play more stations at better sound quality.

This week, I tested three HD Radio devices to see what all the hype was about: Best Buy’s Insignia $50 HD Radio Portable Player (http://bit.ly/75FcIc); Coby Electronics Corp.’s $100 Portable HD Radio System (http://bit.ly/6G6g4Q); and Sony’s $160 HD Radio with Dock for iPod + iPhone (http://bit.ly/8c0Bqf). I also talked with iBiquity Digital Corp., the company that developed HD Radio technology and licenses it to broadcasters and radio manufacturers, about how this works.

I found some worthwhile offerings in HD Radio, like commercial-free, sub-channels within existing stations and better sound quality. IBiquity claims that HD Radio makes FM stations sound like CD quality and AM stations sound like FM; to my ear, this seemed to be true.

Overall, I didn’t hear enough incredibly great content or sound quality to want to run out and replace my old radios. Washington, D.C., where I live, supposedly offers 41 HD Radio channels, but I couldn’t find as many as that. Over 2,000 primary HD Radio stations and some 1,100 sub-channels can be heard in all 50 states and Puerto Rico, but some areas won’t offer as many stations, according to iBiquity.

Tuning in each HD station takes longer, like the way changing channels on a digital TV takes an extra second. But in my tests, this process took five seconds or more per change of channel. This kind of delay is enough to try anyone’s patience.

It might help to explain the technology behind HD Radio. HD Radio makes it possible for local broadcasters to transmit content via digital signals on existing AM and FM frequencies. The digital signals are encrypted and eliminate static heard in analog broadcasts, resulting in better sound quality. But they take longer to be decoded by HD Radio receivers.

Many people mistakenly think that in order to listen to HD Radio, they must pay an extra monthly fee like with satellite radio. If you buy an HD Radio device, you’ll only pay for it because the service itself is free; its price is built into the cost of the hardware.

Besides boosting the signal, HD Radio offers extra channels of programming you wouldn’t hear on a regular set. It allows existing FM channels to play additional content on “multicast” channels. Most multicast channels are commercial-free, and they appear on the radio’s display as HD2 and HD3.

Don’t confuse HD Radio with the text data that scrolls across the screens of many current radios, like my car radio. This is a non-audio service called Radio Broadcast Data System that has been around for a while.

Each of the radios I tested offered an HD Seek feature—a way of skimming through all stations to find and play those that could be heard in HD. But HD Seek didn’t stop on multicast channels; to get to those on each radio, I had to press buttons to tune up or down while listeningwhile already listening to to a main HD radio channel. Some HD Radio models have HD Seek tuning functions that find HD1 stations as well as HD2 and HD3 channels. I saved these HD2 and HD3 multicast channels in my radio presets so they were easier to find again.

While a radio was tuning in, or linking into, a channel (the process that took several seconds), an “HD” logo flashed on each radio’s display. This logo turned solid when the station was found and finally started playing. I listened to multicast channels like a bluegrass/country station from my local NPR channel. Another station’s two multicast channels played “South Asian” music and the Mormon Channel.

As its name suggests, Sony’s HD Radio with Dock for iPod + iPhone has a built-in dock for iPods, iPhones and iPod Touches. If, while using this radio, you hear a song on an HD channel that you like, you can hit a “Tag” button to save information about that song. The next time you dock an iPod, iPhone or iPod Touch into the Sony radio, these tags are transferred onto the portable player. When you plug that device into a computer and open the iTunes Store, a list of the tagged songs appears, making it easier to recall songs you liked and may want to buy. This radio is a tabletop model and has the largest display screen of the three radios I tested. It also comes with a remote. It saves up to 20 FM and 20 AM presets.

The Insignia HD Radio Portable Player is a much smaller unit that comes with earbuds and an armband for exercising. If this radio tuned in an HD channel that offered multicast sub-channels, these were indicated on the display with a “+” sign, like “HD1+.” The Insignia radio stores 10 preset stations.

The Coby Electronics Portable HD Radio System resembled a single, lightweight speaker with a wheel, six buttons and a digital display on it. IBiquity Digital said this model uses an older HD Radio technology that doesn’t offer as much reception sensitivity as the Sony and Insignia. Still, it was simple to use, and its wheel made it a cinch to tune in HD2 and HD3 channels. It stores up to 10 presets.

In September, when Microsoft’s Zune HD was released, I tested its built-in HD Radio, the only such device capable of pausing live radio content. I paused music and talk radio on the Zune’s HD Radio when my phone rang, then un-paused the station to resume. This doesn’t work if the device is turned off and on again before resuming play.

Along with stand-alone radios, HD Radio receivers also are becoming more common in home audio systems and in cars. But while HD Radio’s sound quality and extra channels are definite pluses, the number of available stations needs to improve to make the wait for the HD channels to start playing more tolerable.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100126/reaching-for-the-height-of-radio/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100125/ticketmaster-live-nation-merger-gets-conditional-thumbs-up-from-doj-plus-d7-video-with-ceo-azoff/ http://allthingsd.com/20100125/ticketmaster-live-nation-merger-gets-conditional-thumbs-up-from-doj-plus-d7-video-with-ceo-azoff/#comments Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:46:31 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=23474

While many thought it would not sail through regulatory scrutiny easily, and it has taken a year, the merger of two entertainment industry giants–Ticketmaster and Live Nation–can go forward as long as a certain set of conditions is met, the Department of Justice said.

And while DOJ’s antitrust head, Christine Varney, told reporters today that she warned the two companies that the federal government was prepared to litigate if necessary, it–well–did not.

“We concluded the transaction as originally proposed was anti-competitive,” said Varney, a statement that was pretty much negated by her decision not to block the merger, given that the conditions she set were not a stretch for the parties to meet.

Still, Varney noted: “The proposed settlement allows for strong competitors to Ticketmaster, allowing concert venues to have more and better choices for their ticketing needs, and provides for anti-retaliation provisions, which will keep the merged company in check.”

We shall see about that–many are expecting even higher ticket prices and “fees.”

The companies also reached an agreement with 17 State Attorneys General as part of the U.S. consent decree, as well as with the Canadian Commissioner of Competition.

Not surprisingly, shares of both West Hollywood-based Ticketmaster (TKTM) and Live Nation (LYV) of Beverly Hills, Calif., were up about 15 percent today, even though the deal still has to undergo public comment and be approved by a judge.

But after today, Ticketmaster investors will get Live Nation stock, valued at $15.49, and with its ticker retired, Ticketmaster shares will no longer trade.

Now the combined company will be able to do everything from selling tickets to booking artists to selling their T-shirts and more.

And all Live Nation and Ticketmaster have to do to operate like this is sell off a college sports ticketing unit to Comcast (CMCSA) and license ticketing software to Live Nation’s nearest competitor, the Anschutz Entertainment Group.

Also, for a decade, the merged company cannot play dirty, blackballing those who decide they don’t want to use its services.

With 75 big venues across the U.S. under the purview of Live Nation, that’s a lot of places the world’s largest concert promoter could apply pressure.

And because Ticketmaster is the dominant player in ticketing for sports and entertainment events, as well as the manager of a spate of major acts that play at those Live Nation venues, it’s clear you have a very powerful entity.

It will all be led, in part, by Ticketmaster CEO Irving Azoff, who can be seen below in an interview with BoomTown at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference last May.

One of the most influential behind-the-scenes movers and shakers in the music industry for a long time now, Azoff talked about with me about the merger and digital forces buffeting the entertainment business.

Azoff will be the executive chairman of the merged company, which will be called Live Nation Entertainment, as well as CEO of Front Line artist management. Longtime Hollywood and Internet mogul Barry Diller is set to be chairman, and Michael Rapino will be CEO and president.

Here’s the video of the D7 interview, including the very funny intro that music legend Joe Walsh of the Eagles did for Azoff (and below it, a video of a terrific version of “Life’s Been Good,” sung by Walsh, which it certainly is today for Ticketmaster-Live Nation):

And here’s the press release from Live Nation and Ticketmaster:

LOS ANGELES and WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif., Jan 25, 2010–Live Nation, Inc. and Ticketmaster Entertainment, Inc. today announced that they have reached agreements with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and with the Canadian Commissioner of Competition, clearing the way for the merger of the companies. Upon closing, the company will be renamed Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. to reflect the combination of Live Nation’s concert promotions expertise with Ticketmaster’s world-class ticketing solutions and artist relationships.

Under the terms of the proposed final judgment filed today in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the companies have agreed to divest Ticketmaster’s self-ticketing subsidiary, Paciolan, to Comcast-Spectacor and to license the Ticketmaster Host technology to Anschutz Entertainment Group, Inc., as well as to other terms that protect competitive conditions in ticketing and promotions. Seventeen State Attorneys General also participated in the matter and have joined in the U.S. consent decree. The parties’ consent agreement with the Canadian Commissioner of Competition is on substantially equivalent terms.

As previously announced, in connection with the merger, each issued and outstanding share of Ticketmaster common stock will be cancelled and converted into the right to receive a number of shares of Live Nation common stock such that Ticketmaster stockholders will receive approximately 50.01% of the voting power of the combined company. Subject to final confirmation, the companies expect each share of Ticketmaster common stock to be cancelled and converted into the right to receive 1.474 shares of Live Nation common stock in connection with the merger and for Live Nation to issue approximately 84,613,661 shares of Live Nation common stock to Ticketmaster stockholders in the aggregate.

The combined company will be led by Michael Rapino as CEO and President of Live Nation Entertainment and Irving Azoff as Executive Chairman of Live Nation Entertainment and CEO of Front Line. Barry Diller will serve as Chairman of the Board of Live Nation Entertainment. The Board will consist of 14 directors, seven from each company.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100125/ticketmaster-live-nation-merger-gets-conditional-thumbs-up-from-doj-plus-d7-video-with-ceo-azoff/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20091222/hulu-tries-a-little-more-music-this-time-from-warner-music/ http://allthingsd.com/20091222/hulu-tries-a-little-more-music-this-time-from-warner-music/#comments Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:24:29 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=14364 Once upon a time, Hulu flirted with the notion of becoming a hub for music videos. That never happened, and now the big music labels are trying to create their own Hulu, via their Vevo site.

But Hulu is still playing around with music videos, at least at the margins. Last month, it began hosting some clips from EMI, which was promoting a new Norah Jones album. Now the site, owned by GE’s (GE) NBC, Disney’s (DIS) ABC, and News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox is adding a few more, via Warner Music Group (WMG).

Emphasis on “few”: For now, the only Warner artist you can find on the site is Muse, which is a band, I learned this weekend. The label’s release says you’ll be able to see clips from Jason Mraz and Paramore in the next few weeks, with more coming next year. (Props to CNET’s Greg Sandoval for sniffing this out earlier today).

Meanwhile, if you want to see clips from every other Warner artist, from Green Day to Madonna, you should look to Google’s (GOOG) YouTube, where Warner has carved out a deal to launch a mini-Vevo of its own.

Warner isn’t discussing terms, but given the limited number of artists the company is trying out here, it’s easy enough to get the impression that the label views this primarily as a promotional deal, not one with a big financial upside. Another indicator: My understanding is that under the terms of the agreement, Hulu will take the lead on selling ads against the clips, as opposed to the YouTube deal, where Warner is handling sales itself.

Here’s one of Hulu’s new Muse clips. Not my thing, at least based on what I saw of the band’s performance on “Saturday Night Live” this weekend. But whatever floats your boat. Press release below:

WARNER MUSIC GROUP ANNOUNCES AGREEMENT WITH HULU TO OFFER MUSIC VIDEOS AND CONCERT FOOTAGE

New Partnership Debuts with Rich Content Offering
From British Rock Sensation Muse

New Artist Pages Featuring Jason Mraz and Paramore to Launch in Early 2010

New York, December 22, 2009 — Warner Music Group (WMG), one of the world’s leading music companies, today announced an agreement with Hulu, an online video service that offers hit TV shows, movies and clips at Hulu.com and other online destination sites–anytime in the U.S. The agreement brings an artist-focused online video experience that features music videos, artist interviews, live concerts and rare behind the scenes footage from WMG’s world-renowned artists and labels including Atlantic Records, Rhino Records and Warner Bros. Records.

Warner Bros. recording artists Muse are the first artists featured under the agreement.  Recently, Hulu launched an all Muse artist page (www.hulu.com/muse) that features the band’s appearance on Saturday Night Live’s December 19th holiday episode as well as content from Muse’s sold out tour dates at Wembley Stadium, exclusive interviews and rare deep-catalog videos.

Hulu will also launch artist pages for Atlantic’s multiple Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter Jason Mraz and for Fueled By Ramen/Atlantic’s multi-platinum, Grammy-nominated rock band Paramore in the coming weeks.  More artist channels will be announced in early 2010.

In making the announcement, Michael Nash, Executive Vice President, Digital Strategy and Business Development, WMG, said, “We’re pleased to be working with Hulu as we expand our premium ad-supported video strategy to provide our artists with a customized and flexible approach to marketing and monetizing their music, by leveraging the most powerful partnerships and platforms in the industry. Hulu has been a leader and innovator in this space, and we look forward to working with them on creating compelling, content-rich artist channels that will provide a dynamic experience to their fans, while introducing our artists to new audiences online.”

Muse will launch their US tour in February 2010 in support of their fifth studio album, The Resistance, which earned them their highest-ever debut on the Billboard album chart when it debuted at No. 3. The Resistance debuted at No. 1 in 20 countries around the world. Their current single, “Uprising,” has topped Mediabase’s Alternative Radio chart for the past 16 weeks, breaking the record for the longest No. 1 track at Modern Rock for 2009.

Jason Mraz most recently released an all new live CD/DVD titled Jason Mraz’s Beautiful Mess–Live On Earth recorded at the Chicago stop on his Gratitude Café Tour. This comes on the heels of his third studio album, the platinum-certified We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things., which has received multiple Grammy nominations, including most recently Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for “Make it Mine” and Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals for “Lucky.” Additionally Jason’s song, “I’m Yours,” set the record this year as the longest-running song on Billboard’s “Hot 100” in the 51-year history of the chart.

Paramore’s new album Brand New Eyes, is the follow up to their 1.8 million selling RIOT!. The album, which was produced by Rob Cavallo (Green Day, Kid Rock) and co-produced by Paramore, debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and features the hit single “Ignorance.”  Paramore also contributed two songs to the soundtrack for the box office smash “Twilight,” including the Grammy-nominated focus track “Decode.” The band’s THE FINAL RIOT! DVD has been certified gold by the RIAA, making it the first Atlantic Records video/DVD release to be certified gold in more than 10 years. The band just wrapped up a sold out UK tour including a stop at London’s Wembley Arena.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091222/hulu-tries-a-little-more-music-this-time-from-warner-music/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090922/microsoft-packsthe-new-zune-hdwith-bells-whistlesand-plenty-of-style/ http://allthingsd.com/20090922/microsoft-packsthe-new-zune-hdwith-bells-whistlesand-plenty-of-style/#comments Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:58:03 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/20090922/microsoft-packsthe-new-zune-hdwith-bells-whistlesand-plenty-of-style/ At long last, Microsoft has made a portable media player that you can be proud to carry around: the Zune HD.

This fourth-generation Zune (Zune.net) is ultra thin and has a stunningly vivid 3.3-inch touch screen that covers most of its surface, doing away with the old device’s touchpad. It comes in one small size rather than the older large and small versions, and has capacities of 16 and 32 gigabytes for $220 and $290, respectively.

The Zune HD does a nice job of integrating and artistically displaying content about an artist, song or album whenever possible. It has an acceptable built-in browser that surfs the Web using a Wi-Fi connection, and a customizable Quickplay menu on the home screen that displays your content using tiny, stylish tiles. The corresponding Zune Marketplace finally offers movies—about 500 for renting or buying, half of which have HD resolution. And a $90 docking station works with the device to display its HD content on your HDTV.

Given all the improvements of this new Zune, it’s a shame that this makeover stopped short of revamping its commerce system, which is still too confusing. Rather than inviting newcomers to the Zune and its online store by allowing them to use real money to buy content, it is still tied to the points system made popular by Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox gaming console. In this gamer-friendly system, the cost of one song is 79 points, roughly the equivalent of a dollar, and users must buy points in buckets ranging from 400 for $5 to 5,000 for $62.50. People who are trying to watch their budgets don’t need the hassle of calculating points per purchase. And Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle e-reader and Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes Store have proved that using dollars and an uncomplicated one-click system is a successful strategy.

The way I prefer to get the most out of the Zune system is by using the Zune Pass for $15 monthly. This charge allows free continuous streaming of music from any computer’s browser as long as you log in, and includes 10 free MP3 downloads a month that are yours to keep even if you bail on using the Zune software. The Zune Pass lets you listen to Smart DJ playlists that can be built in one of three ways: using your own library; using a mix of Marketplace content and music from your library; or using only songs from the Marketplace. These also can be set to last for a certain amount of time—say for a 30-minute jog or a two-hour party.

I created several Smart DJ playlists including one using Dierks Bentley as the seed artist from which other suggestions were generated. This country singer was a good test for the Zune software because Mr. Bentley’s music blends new and old country sounds. I set the Smart DJ to produce a mix using only content from Marketplace and it returned a great list that included songs from newer group, Little Big Town, as well as older stuff like Joe Diffie’s “John Deere Green.” Any Smart DJ list can be dragged onto the Zune HD.

Apple’s iPod Touch is the Zune HD’s biggest rival and its iTunes Store has much more content in all categories compared with Zune Marketplace. But let’s put music, movies, TV shows, podcasts and music videos aside and say we’re satisfied with the amount of content offered by Zune Marketplace.

One of the iPod Touch’s best features is its ability to access Apple’s App Store, a catalog of 75,000 applications. The Zune HD only dips its pinky toe into a pool where Apple is already swimming laps: Only nine apps can be downloaded from the Zune Marketplace (all are free). They’re colorful and simple to use, but nine apps won’t be enough to compete head on with the iPod Touch.

The Zune HD uses Quickplay (shown on second player from left) to instantly display certain content.

It would be a real boon to Zune if it somehow inherited the gaming genes of Microsoft’s already-established Xbox, especially considering how Apple has heavily marketed the iPod Touch as a portable gaming system. Microsoft will only say that later this year Zune will offer apps for Twitter and Facebook as well as 3-D games like “Project Gotham Racing: Ferrari Edition.”

The only same-capacity model in the Zune HD and iPod Touch is the 32-gigabyte, which costs $290 and $299, respectively. The Zune HD is smaller than the iPod Touch so its organic light-emitting-diode touch screen is 3.3 inches compared with the Touch’s 3.5-inch screen. The Zune fits easily in any pocket and is just 0.35-inch thick. A thin horizontal button on the face of the device takes you to the home screen, and a hidden button on the left side pulls up an on-screen menu for volume and playback controls—or just tap the screen when content is playing. It doesn’t have a speaker like the iPod Touch, so you’ll always need earbuds to hear anything that’s playing.

Quickplay is one of my favorite features on the Zune HD. It uses tiny tiles to visually represent your content in four categories: currently playing; anything pinned (or labeled with a shortcut tile) to Quickplay; a history of recently opened content; and anything that’s new to the player. This includes all of your photos, videos, music, Web pages and apps. I easily pinned AllThingsD.com, a “Saturday Night Live” video and a favorite photo to the Quickplay menu. Clever animation sends this menu to the background of the home screen or swiftly pulls it into the foreground when needed.

I rented and downloaded the movie “Girl with a Pearl Earring” and opted to pay 360 points for the HD version rather than paying 240 points for the standard-definition version. A helpful on-screen explanation described the advantages of each according to where it would be played. Movie rentals last for 14 days or 24 hours after you first press play.

Listening to music on the Zune HD is a lot of fun—and even educational. Whenever the screen goes idle while playing a song, large images of the artist and album cover fill the entire screen while text—album name, artist name, song name—scrolls across these images. With one touch, I saw a list of other albums and songs by that artist, an artist biography, related artists, and pictures of the artist. This is a lot more interesting than staring at one image on the screen, and I learned a lot of new information about musicians I’ve been listening to for years.

The newly added Web browser on the Zune HD gets the job done, but has downsides. Its on-screen keyboard for entering names of Web pages has very small keys and doesn’t use predictive typing to fix your mistakes. Some Web pages rendered normally on the browser, but a couple—like Georgetown.edu—looked normal only when I turned the Zune HD horizontally.

As with other Zunes, this Zune HD has a radio receiver and now uses HD radio for finding more stations with clearer signals. If you like a song, an on-screen button tags it for buying and downloading immediately or later.

The Zune HD is a great-looking little player, and users will especially appreciate its Quickplay menu, rich collection of artist information and mesmerizing screen. If its points system was scrapped and its Zune Marketplace was filled with more content, I’d like it better.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090922/microsoft-packsthe-new-zune-hdwith-bells-whistlesand-plenty-of-style/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090916/apples-itunes-9-makes-it-easier-to-share-organize/ http://allthingsd.com/20090916/apples-itunes-9-makes-it-easier-to-share-organize/#comments Thu, 17 Sep 2009 01:04:03 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090916/apples-itunes-9-makes-it-easier-to-share-organize/ Apple’s iTunes program is one of the most popular software products in the world. The company says hundreds of millions of copies of iTunes have been downloaded, far exceeding the 220 million iPod music players it has sold. That’s because many people use iTunes to organize, play and buy music and videos on their computers, or to burn music CDs, even if they don’t own iPods or iPhones. Ironically, the vast majority of iTunes copies are on Windows PCs, not Apple’s own Macintosh computers, because Windows machines are much more numerous.

Last week, Apple released its ninth major version of iTunes — which first came out in January, 2001, before the iPod even existed — and I’ve been testing it. This release is the biggest overhaul of the familiar program in recent years, with improvements in the look and functionality of each of the software’s three main portions: the media jukebox, the built-in store and the synchronization features that move media and applications to and from iPods and iPhones.

In my tests, performed on multiple Windows PCs and Macs, iTunes 9 worked as advertised, and I found it to be less cluttered, more intelligent and easier to use than the prior version. It synced music and videos properly for me using both an iPod Nano and an iPhone. It’s available as a free download at apple.com/itunes.

To me, the two biggest new features in iTunes 9 are something called Home Sharing and a new, easier way to organize the apps on an iPhone or iPod Touch.

For years, iTunes users have been able to wirelessly stream music from nearby computers running iTunes whose owners chose to share their music. But Home Sharing takes this one step further, allowing users to actually copy the song files from one computer to another.

Right inside iTunes, you can simply peer into the shared library on another computer set up to allow this, and then select the song you want and drag it into your own library. It doesn’t delete the original from the other computer.

In my tests, this worked perfectly with music, as well as TV shows, movies and audiobooks, and it worked between any combination of my PCs and Macs. You can even configure Home Sharing to automatically transfer to your library new media purchased on another shared computer.

But Home Sharing has limitations. It only works with a maximum of five computers. These computers must be on the same local network, not connected over the Internet. And they must be the same computers authorized to play copy-protected media you buy from Apple.

With 75,000 apps available for the iPhone and iPod Touch, it has been easy to download so many that your device becomes cluttered, with numerous icons scattered among numerous screens in a manner that isn’t optimal. There’s a way to move them around, or delete them, right on the device, but it’s clumsy, partly because you can’t see all the screens at once, and partly because it’s difficult to move an icon from a location on one screen to another location several screens away.

The new iTunes lets you organize your iPhone's screen right on your computer

Now, in the new iTunes 9, when you plug in your device, the software displays an exact visual representation of your iPhone or Touch screens right on your computer, and allows you to rearrange them with your mouse. When you disconnect, the new arrangement is retained on the phone. It worked fine for me.

In iTunes 9, you also can create up to 12 automated “Genius Mixes” from your personal music library — essentially personal radio stations consisting of songs iTunes considers to be related, that play on and on. I enjoyed this feature, and found it generally made good choices.

There are also a number of small visual improvements throughout the program. In the jukebox, for instance, you can now locate all songs by a particular artist using a Column Browser — an optional left-hand column that lists the artists.

In the store, categories like music, movies and TV shows are now arrayed across the top, with drop-down menus for genres. The store also is generally better organized, with richer graphics, more white space and easier navigation.

A small touch of social networking, not exactly Apple’s historic strength, has been added to iTunes. From inside the store, you can post a link to a favorite title to either Facebook or Twitter, though this of course serves Apple by encouraging others to buy the title.

You can now buy special albums, called “iTunes LPs,” that attempt to replicate the experience of old vinyl albums by including lots of extra material. For instance, for one such title by the Doors, iTunes delivered to me liner notes, digital scans of old posters and set lists, plus photos and video interviews. Another, called Mayhem, by the singer/actor Tyrese Gibson, includes just one song, but also a vivid digital comic book with voiced dialogue.

However, these iTunes LPs take up a lot of space on your hard disk — about half a gigabyte each for the ones I tried.

Overall, iTunes 9 is a nice improvement on a much-used program.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090916/apples-itunes-9-makes-it-easier-to-share-organize/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090909/teeny-tiny-pixi-phone-from-palm-tries-killing-giant-hype-for-apple-event-today/ http://allthingsd.com/20090909/teeny-tiny-pixi-phone-from-palm-tries-killing-giant-hype-for-apple-event-today/#comments Wed, 09 Sep 2009 08:53:04 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=18261 Oh, BoomTown fears this is not going to end well for the weensy little smart phone Palm is debuting today on–what an amazing coincidence!–the very same day Apple is throwing its big product bash in San Francisco, at which Mac fanboys fervently hope that Supreme Leader Steve Jobs might even appear.

You don’t step on the Superman of Silicon Valley’s cape, of course, but the device with the aggressively cute name of Pixi is apparently attempting just that.

Thus, this fairytale might have a not-so-happy ending.

In any case–reminding BoomTown simultaneously of an unfortunate haircut I had at seven years old, those sticky sticks of powdered candy and, of course, Tinkerbell–Pixi seems to be a smaller, less featured and cheaper version of the Palm (PALM) Pre device.

Except super-adorably skinny and featuring “Sex-and-the-City”-style fashionable back covers by artists.

(Paging Roger McNamee: Where is the mirror, please, because–as you insisted to me in an interview at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, the ladies love it!)

Pixi uses the Palm webOS platform and other software from third parties, such as Facebook and Yahoo (YHOO).

The Pixi is seen here trying to flirt with a manly cup of coffee, with more images posted below, which you can click on to make larger–although not much larger since it is a pixie, for goodness sake!

Palm said the Pixi is scheduled to be available exclusively from Sprint (S) in time for the holidays (you can read more details in the full press release below).

But the launch today is clearly a happily-ever-after play–one that will surely cause Palm to catch all kinds of flak, if anyone actually pays any sustained attention today to Pixi given the outsized focus on whatever innovation in the iPod or iPhone or iTunes that Apple (AAPL) might or might not announce.

And, if Jobs does appear, all geek hell is sure to break loose and Palm staffers can pretty much quit for the day and go see “Julie & Julia” to familiarize themselves with the Pixi demographic.

By way of explanation, a Palm source wrote in an email to me last night, “timing’s a funny thing,” noting that this event has been long-planned to align with the demo debut of Pixi at Palm-sponsored Fashion Week in New York next week.

While one has to admire its minuscule chutzpah at going up against the Jobs-fueled juggernaut–a move even Google (GOOG) mobile plotter-in-chief Vic Gundotra wouldn’t attempt so overtly–let’s not hope the Pixi gets lost in the Apple sauce.

(Okay, sue me, but that line was too good to resist.)

Here are some more images to peruse, and below them, the full press release on the Pixi from Palm:

Thin Palm Pixi Phone Puts Fast, Intuitive Communication at Fingertips

Palm’s Thinnest Phone Yet Expands Palm webOS Line with Customizable Style

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Sep 09, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE)–Palm, Inc. (NASDAQ:PALM) today introduced the Palm(R) Pixi(TM) phone for faster, more intuitive and personal communication in a compact and customizable design.(1) With the instinctively useable Palm webOS(TM) platform, strikingly thin design, a visible full keyboard and fashionable personalization options, Palm Pixi lets you express yourself in amazingly useful ways. It’s scheduled to be available exclusively from Sprint in time for the holidays.

“With Palm webOS, we’re creating a new, more intuitive smartphone experience defined by unmatched simplicity and usefulness,” said Jon Rubinstein, Palm chairman and chief executive officer. “Palm Pixi brings this unique experience to a broader range of people who want enhanced messaging and social networking in a design that lets them express their personal style.”

In addition to linking your information from Google(TM), Facebook and Exchange ActiveSync, Palm Pixi adds Yahoo! and LinkedIn integration to Palm Synergy(TM) and assembles it all in a single view.(2) You can get your Yahoo! contacts, calendar and IM, and access to your LinkedIn contacts, including job titles. Synergy on Palm Pixi makes messaging easier by showing you all your conversations with the same person in one chat-style thread, so you can start a conversation on AIM Instant Messenger, Google Talk(TM) or Yahoo! Messenger and continue it by text message later.(3)

Complementing the phone’s already rich Facebook integration with the contacts, phone, calendar and photo applications, a new Facebook application will be available with Palm Pixi so you can see and comment on all the latest news from your friends, as well as easily update your status. The phone’s full QWERTY keyboard puts it all at your fingertips, and the multi-touch screen lets you move back and forth between open applications using natural gestures.(4) The unique removable back cover is rubberized, making it scratch-resistant, slip-resistant and durable.

Personalization with Style

For those who want to express themselves with some extra style, Palm is introducing the Palm Pixi Artist Series. Designed by some of today’s most unique and compelling artists, these numbered, limited-edition back covers let you change designs to suit your mood. You can see the first collection in the series, as well as information about the artists, at www.palm.com/artistseries. Palm will be showcasing the fashionable new Palm Pixi with the Artist Series covers this week at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York (Sept. 10-17).

You can also tailor Palm Pixi to your interests with downloadable applications from the Palm Beta App Catalog, including the latest entertainment and social networking applications such as Local Concerts by iLike, and Yelp(TM).(5) You can use Palm media sync to customize your phone with music, photos and videos from iTunes (Versions 8.1.1-8.2.1)(6), or use the on-device Amazon MP3 store to purchase individual songs or full albums over-the-air.(3)

“Palm Pixi continues Sprint’s leadership in providing useful and innovative devices on America’s most dependable 3G network,”(7) said Dan Hesse, chief executive officer at Sprint. “We are pleased to be the first carrier to bring this device to market and offer both devices in the growing Palm webOS family. Sprint’s Everything Data plans, which provide unrestricted access to the Internet, mobile content and applications, and our Ready Now retail experience make for a perfect combination with these new Palm products.”

The Sprint Mobile Broadband Network reaches more than 271 million people, 18,652 cities and 1,838 airports, and Sprint’s networks are now performing at best-ever levels.

Customers who purchase Palm Pixi will benefit from Sprint’s Ready Now, which the company pioneered to help customers leave the store educated, comfortable and confident about the phones they’re taking home. It is like having a free personal trainer that educates you on all your phone can do by setting up all the applications you want to use on the device.

Palm Pixi is also the perfect complement to Sprint’s Simply EverythingSM plan, which provides unlimited nationwide calling, texting, email, social networking, web browsing, GPS navigation, Sprint TV, streaming music, NFL Mobile Live, NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile and much more for only $99.99 per month. It’s a savings of $1,200 over two years versus some comparable competitor plans.

Palm Pixi Features

• High-speed connectivity (EVDO Rev. A)
• 2.63-inch multi-touch screen with a vibrant 18-bit color 320×400 resolution TFT display
• Gesture area, which enables simple, intuitive gestures for navigation
• Exposed QWERTY keyboard for fast messaging
• Robust messaging support (IM, SMS and MMS capabilities), including Google Talk, AIM and Yahoo! IM
• High-performance, desktop-class web browser
• Integrated GPS(8)
• Multimedia options, including pictures, video playback and music, and featuring a 2-megapixel fixed-focus camera with LED flash, and a standard 3.5mm headset jack
• Email, including Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) (for access to corporate Microsoft Exchange servers), as well as personal email support (Google push, Yahoo! push, POP3, IMAP)(9)
• Bluetooth(R) 2.1 + EDR with A2DP stereo Bluetooth support
• 8GB of internal user storage (~7GB user available)(10)
• USB mass storage mode
• MicroUSB connector with USB 2.0 Hi-Speed
• The first handset to launch with Qualcomm’s high-performance MSM7627(TM) chipset
• Proximity sensor, which automatically disables the touch screen and turns off the display whenever you put the phone up to your ear
• Light sensor, which dims the display if the ambient light is dark, such as at night or in a movie theater, to reduce power usage
• Accelerometer, which automatically orients web pages and photos to your perspective
• Ringer switch, which easily silences the device with one touch
• Removable, rechargeable 1150 mAh battery
• Dimensions: 55mm (W) x 111mm (L) x 10.85mm (D) [2.17 in. (W) x 4.37 in. (L) x 0.43 in. (D)]
• Weight: 99.5 grams (3.51 ounces)
• Sprint services, including Sprint TV(R) and Sprint Radio, Sprint Navigation, Sprint’s exclusive NFL Mobile Live and NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile Live

Availability and Pricing

The Palm Pixi phone is scheduled to be available from Sprint in time for the holidays. Pricing for the phone, as well as the limited-edition Palm Pixi Artist Series covers, will be announced closer to availability. Customers who would like to register to receive additional information about Palm Pixi and be notified when it’s available can register at www.palm.com/pixi.

In addition, effective today the Palm Pre(TM) phone from Sprint is available for $149.99 with a two-year service agreement and after a $150 instant rebate and $100 mail-in rebate. You can find this great pricing at Sprint stores, on the web (www.sprint.com) and by calling Sprint’s telesales group (1-800-SPRINT1). With the new Palm Pixi phone, and Palm Pre at a lower price, Palm and Sprint are bringing greater choice of Palm webOS phones to a larger audience.

NOTE TO EDITORS: Photos and video are available from Palm’s media gallery at www.palm.com/mml.

Please add the tag #Palm #Pixi to your tweets or “Palm Pixi” to your blog posts about the all-new Palm Pixi phone running on Palm webOS, and follow Palm on Twitter at www.twitter.com/palm.

(1) Within wireless coverage area only. Email, mobile number, and related information required for setup and activation. Required data plan not included; unlimited plan strongly recommended.
(2) Limitations apply. Layered calendars and linked contacts for Outlook require Exchange ActiveSync and Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 SP2 or later, sold separately.
(3) Within wireless coverage area only.
(4) Performance varies based upon actual usage.
(5) Third-party software available separately. Within wireless coverage area only.
(6) Compatible with iTunes 8.2.1 on Windows XP/Vista and Mac OS X version 10.3.9-10.5.7. Within wireless coverage area only. Music sold separately. Please respect copyright laws when downloading music.
(7) “Dependable” based on independent, third-party drive tests for 3G data connection success, session reliability and signal strength for the top 50 most populous markets from Jan. ’08 to Feb. ’09. Not all services available on 3G and coverage may default to separate network when 3G unavailable.
(8) Coverage not available in all areas at all times.
(9) Outlook requires Exchange ActiveSync and Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 SP2 or later, sold separately.
(10) Storage estimate subject to change based on system software and application usage.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090909/teeny-tiny-pixi-phone-from-palm-tries-killing-giant-hype-for-apple-event-today/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20090413/jill-sobules-internet-funded-album-california-years-debuts-tomorrow/ http://allthingsd.com/20090413/jill-sobules-internet-funded-album-california-years-debuts-tomorrow/#comments Mon, 13 Apr 2009 07:01:32 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=12145

We consider Jill Sobule to be the musical muse of ATD–which we desperately need since we are obviously way, way too jacked into the matrix.

That’s precisely why we have the gifted singer-songwriter appear annually at our D: All Things Digital conference–to kick off each day’s sessions with one of her songs and, more to the point, add a lot of much-needed levity and nontechie soul to the proceedings.

And tomorrow, Sobule’s Internet-funded album, “California Years,” produced by the legendary Don Was, debuts. I urge everyone to click the link here and get a copy–online, of course.

And by Internet-funded, I mean that the $75,000 needed to produce the album was raised entirely through an innovative Web initiative Sobule ginned up in late 2007 via a site called Jill’s Next Record.

Sobule wrote about the effort several times in our Voices section, where you can read about her asking for ideas here, launching her fund-raising site here and, finally, talking about the result here.

Sobule (pictured here in cartoon form)–whose big mainstream hit a few years ago was a much-better-than-hopelessly-dopey-Katy-Perry “I Kissed a Girl”–had worked her way through four record labels (she was dropped by two and two went belly-up) with six CDs.

Sick and tired of the way musical artists had their work funded, she essentially asked her fans to become her record label, writing on her site: “It would be a sort of patronage thing, where you guys are the Medici family, except I give you prizes for donations of certain amounts.”

The $1,000 “platinum” level, for example, got the donor a theme song and the $5,000 “diamond” level got a house concert by Sobule.

And what her fans are getting now in the completed album is superb–a sometimes funny, sometimes sad and always moving work. (My young sons cannot stop singing her perfect song, “San Francisco,” for example.)

As Sobule writes:

“‘California Years’ was written over the last three years, following my move to the West Coast. It was influenced by the sights and sounds of the Golden State, especially the seductive, but not always sunny Los Angeles. Maybe the next record will be ‘The Utah Month’ or ‘Back to Brooklyn.’

“The whole thing was made possible by a small but mighty fan base. They gave me the love, encouragement and the dough to do this. I was truly surprised and so very grateful. This record is for them.”

Let’s cheer on efforts like Sobule’s and hope for a hit. Because hers is indeed a small but mighty effort, as all kinds of content creators try to figure out businesses in the new digital age, unafraid of the changes inevitably coming (AP might want to take notes about this).

Here is Sobule in a long interview on NPR last week (which you cannot embed, bad NPR!) and another video below on CNN about her digital project:

And here are two videos I did with her about the effort. The first has one of the songs on the new album, called “Nothing to Prove,” and the other an update on what she wants to do next, digitally and musically speaking:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090413/jill-sobules-internet-funded-album-california-years-debuts-tomorrow/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090311/the-littlest-ipod-packs-in-songs-and-finds-its-voice/ http://allthingsd.com/20090311/the-littlest-ipod-packs-in-songs-and-finds-its-voice/#comments Thu, 12 Mar 2009 01:02:05 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090311/the-littlest-ipod-packs-in-songs-and-finds-its-voice/ In these days of economic distress, it’s nice when technology companies add innovative features to the products at the bottom of their price ranges. So it’s notable that Apple’s cheapest iPod, the oft-forgotten Shuffle model, is getting smarter.

In fact, the latest iPod Shuffle, announced Wednesday and available now for $79, is the first portable music player I’ve tested that announces what’s playing. Push a button and it will tell you, in a computerized voice, the title and artist of whatever song you’re hearing. Keep holding that button and it will recite a roll call of all your playlists, allowing you to select among them. In my tests, this worked as advertised.

In addition, this new Shuffle is almost impossibly small. The company has moved the playback and volume controls off the device and onto a small, convenient module built into one of the earbud cords. That allowed Apple (AAPL) to severely shrink the player itself, which, like the two Shuffle models before it, lacks a screen. Apple claims it’s the world’s smallest music player, smaller than a AA battery or a house key.

The result is an iPod that contains four gigabytes of memory and holds 1,000 songs — twice the capacity of its $69 predecessor — yet is just a little blank rectangle of aluminum, available in silver or black. It’s a mere 1.8″ long, 0.7″ wide, and 0.3 inch thick — including a stainless-steel clip that’s built into the back for attaching it to clothing or backpacks.

This player is so small and thin that it reminds me of the popular “Saturday Night Live” skit in which an actor playing Apple CEO Steve Jobs shows off a series of tinier and tinier iPods culminating in a final fictional model that’s invisible. I actually dropped the new Shuffle while testing it and it took a couple of minutes to locate it behind a table leg.

After using this new iPod Shuffle for a few days, I can say that I like it. It does a good job at playing back music, podcasts and audio books. I found the speech function intelligible and helpful, and the earbud-mounted controls convenient and easy to master. And its tiny size and weight of about a third of an ounce make it an especially good choice for people who use their iPods while exercising.

Apple’s new iPod Shuffle

Only a single button appears on the iPod itself, as opposed to on the earbuds. It’s a sliding power button on the top edge that has three positions — one for “off,” one for shuffling your music, and one for playing your songs in order. Once you set this button, you never have to touch the iPod itself, until you want to turn it off.

The new speech-based navigation feature allows the Shuffle, for the first time, to handle multiple playlists, just like on the larger iPods.

In my tests, I managed to squeeze in more than the 1,000 songs Apple claims. I filled my test Shuffle with nearly 1,100 songs, plus a half dozen podcasts and an abridged audio-book edition of President Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope,” read by the author. My music was organized into about 15 playlists, and I was able to switch among them easily using the voice system.

To pause or resume a song, you click the large center portion of the earbud controller once, quickly. To skip to the next song, you click the same button twice, quickly. To change to the previous song, you click it three times quickly.

If you want the computerized “announcer” to identify the song, you press the center button for a longer time, and you keep holding it to start the playlist roll call. When you hear a playlist you want, you press the button again. Smaller buttons at the top and bottom of this earbud controller adjust the volume up and down. It sounds more complicated than it is. While the voice function is in use, the music keeps playing in the background, at reduced volume.

The computerized voice, available in multiple languages, is hardly perfect. Like all such computer voices, its cadence can sound robotic, and it clips some syllables, but I found it perfectly understandable.

The spoken names of your particular songs, artists and playlists are added when you sync the Shuffle with iTunes. The voice quality is best when using a Mac with the latest operating system. It is slightly cruder on Windows or older Mac operating systems.

Even on the latest Macs, the voice got some words wrong. For a live concert album, it pronounced the word “live” as “liv,” and in another case, it pronounced the Roman numeral “IV” as “eye-vee.”

There are some other downsides. The claimed battery life is just 10 hours, down from 12 on the prior Shuffle model. You can’t fully operate the Shuffle with regular earbuds or headphones that lack the special controller. And, if you have numerous playlists, it could be tedious waiting for the voice control to say all their names until it reaches the one you want.

Still, Apple has packed a lot of new intelligence into a truly tiny music player, at a pretty low price.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090311/the-littlest-ipod-packs-in-songs-and-finds-its-voice/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090311/new-from-apple-ipod-shuffle-hal-edition/ http://allthingsd.com/20090311/new-from-apple-ipod-shuffle-hal-edition/#comments Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:28:10 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=14637 The Apple Store went down for updating early this morning and when it returned, it featured an all-new iPod shuffle. Nearly half the size of its predecessor, this third-generation player features a new aluminum design and holds up to 1,000 songs with its 4GB of built-in storage. It also boasts a new VoiceOver feature that enables it to say the names of song titles, artists and playlists outloud in 14 languages (click here to hear an example).

“Imagine your music player talking to you, telling you your song titles, artists and playlist names,” Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president of iPod and iPhone Product Marketing said in a statement. “The amazingly small new iPod shuffle takes a revolutionary approach to how you listen to your music by talking to you.”

An interesting feature for those of us that can’t always recall a song name or its author simply by listening to it. Reminds me of HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

“Dave Bowman: Tell me the name of the song, HAL.
HAL: I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.
Dave Bowman: What’s the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do….”

As with most Apple (AAPL) products, the design of the device is impressive–sleek and impossibly small. That said, one of its elements may prove off-putting: The new shuffle lacks a click wheel. Its controls have been moved to the earphone cord. Which means it’s incompatible with third-party earphones until someone comes out with an adapter cable that will make it a bit costlier than its $79 price.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090311/new-from-apple-ipod-shuffle-hal-edition/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081001/navigating-microsoft-office/ http://allthingsd.com/20081001/navigating-microsoft-office/#comments Thu, 02 Oct 2008 01:45:04 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://mailbox.allthingsd.com/20081001/navigating-microsoft-office/ Here are a few questions I’ve received recently from people like you, and my answers. I have edited and restated the questions a bit, for readability.

---

In the new version of Microsoft Office, I cannot find a “favorites” capability in the Open dialog box. In my older version, when I began to open a document, I had a box on the left called “Favorites” that I could invoke to find common file locations. Did they really kill this very useful feature?

No, but they changed the way you make it visible in Office 2007. You can get back your “Favorites” category by right-clicking the bar at the left-hand side of the Open dialog. From the menu that appears, click on “Add Favorites,” and your Favorites category should appear in the left-hand bar, and stay there.

If I have McAfee security software, do I need an antispyware program as well?

Everyone running a Windows computer, even a virtual Windows computer on a Mac, should have antispyware software. In some ways, spyware is a worse security problem than viruses, and can lead to identity theft.

McAfee has made many types and versions of security software over the years. Some, especially recent versions of the company’s comprehensive products, include antispyware protection. Check your version to make sure it includes this capability. If it doesn’t, you will either need to upgrade to a more comprehensive suite, or obtain a separate anti-spyware product.

When my friend put a Spike Jones CD of mine into his Mac to import it using iTunes, the CD was misidentified with an embarrassing title. What would cause such a thing to happen? Does iTunes go out to the Web looking for album names, instead of going by what’s on a disk?

Yes. Music programs like iTunes, and all its major competitors, can’t identify a disk directly. So they rely on online databases to identify CDs. Each CD contains a hidden code that the database providers quickly match up with their huge catalogs of CDs to provide the album title, artist, date, track list and other information. But, sometimes, especially when the CD is relatively obscure, the databases are wrong and yield erroneous information. When that happens, you have to type in the information by hand.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online free of charge at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081001/navigating-microsoft-office/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20080916/fresh-discoveries-from-ipod-zune/ http://allthingsd.com/20080916/fresh-discoveries-from-ipod-zune/#comments Wed, 17 Sep 2008 01:16:02 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/20080916/fresh-discoveries-from-ipod-zune/ Amid a speech by its CEO and a musical performance, Apple last week unveiled a new version of its iTunes software and some new iPods.

Meanwhile, Microsoft‘s Zune announced via press release that new players in different capacities and colors would be available this week, along with a software update.

Despite their different approaches, these two announcements shared a notable common thread: integrated music discovery. Each company’s new software features ways for users to find automatically generated suggestions of music they might like, the way Pandora Media Inc.’s popular personalized music lists do. Of course, music discovery also encourages users to buy more.

Apple’s new iPods include a thinner Nano with an accelerometer, which senses the direction a screen is being held in a user’s hands and flips the display horizontally or vertically. These Nanos come in eight- or 16-gigabyte versions for $149 or $199 and are available in nine bright colors. A new, thinner iPod Touch with a built-in speaker was also unveiled, and it comes in eight-, 16- or 32-gigabyte versions for $229, $299 or $399.

Microsoft’s two new Zune players come in 16- and 120-gigabyte capacities for $200 and $250, respectively. All Zunes have built-in FM tuners and wireless capability, but the new upgrade allows users to buy and download songs they hear on their Zunes’ radios via Wi-Fi, when available.

While Apple’s iPod has been a snowballing success for the company, its companion iTunes software is no slouch. To date, 65 million iTunes store accounts with associated credit cards have been set up on Macs and Windows PCs. But iTunes has always been weak on music discovery and community.

Apple (AAPL) calls iTunes 8′s ability to make smart music recommendations the “Genius” feature. The tool can automatically do two things after analyzing a selected song from your music library. First, it can generate a playlist of songs from tunes you own. Second, it can generate a list of songs you don’t own but might want to buy from the iTunes store.

MicrosoftZune’s Mixview feature displays content related to an artist with an explanation of the relationship.

Microsoft’s Zune software discovers and recommends music using categories called “Picks,” “Channels” and “Mixview.” The last of the three, Mixview, generates recommendations for other musicians and albums, as well as other Zune users with whom you might like to connect. The suggestions are based on the artist of the song you’re playing and are displayed in an interactive graphic that explains how each is linked — for instance, if your artist was influenced by a band or if a member of Zune’s social network is a top listener of the artist you’re playing.

After using the music-discovery software from Apple and Microsoft (MSFT), I felt like Apple’s Genius tool still had a lot to learn, though the company says it will improve over time as more people start using it. Zune’s software had some similar issues, but it offered recommendations in a richer, more engaging manner, encouraging me to keep digging around and learn more about my music. Though I didn’t happen to have as much time to use Zune’s software as I did Apple’s Genius, I got more out of my Zune experience.

Apple offers much more content at its iTunes store than Zune. In all categories, iTunes takes the lead: in songs, 8.5 million songs to Zune’s 4 million; in music videos, 10,000 versus 8,500; in television episodes, 30,000 versus 3,000; and in audio and video podcasts, 125,000 versus 6,000.

To analyze and learn from your music, Apple scans the contents of your music library, which may raise privacy concerns for some people. Apple says that the information it collects is completely anonymous, and that it does not and will not associate this information on its servers with you or your account.

Some of my Genius playlists were well-crafted, including songs that meshed well with one another. But outliers cropped up, such as when “Should I Stay or Should I Go” by the Clash was stuck in the middle of a list generated from Coldplay’s gentler ballad, “Green Eyes.” Some songs won’t generate playlists if you don’t have enough related songs in your library; this happened to me with the pop hit “Apologize” by Timbaland, featuring OneRepublic.

Songs from artists whose content isn’t sold in iTunes, such as The Beatles, won’t generate Genius lists, because Genius makes suggestions based only on what it sells in its iTunes catalog. Genius will soon work with songs beyond those sold in iTunes.

Genius has a bigger problem. If you hit “Play” in iTunes, a Genius sidebar appears to offer content related to a selected song. But as play continues, Genius doesn’t continuously generate new recommendations; instead, it’s stuck on the very first song that was selected — which you might have chosen two hours ago. This means music discovery must be a manual process, rather than an as-you-listen convenience.

Genius playlists can be made on a computer or iPod and sync back and forth. I synced Genius lists on two iPod touches, but this didn’t work in one test with an iPhone. Apple said it couldn’t replicate this problem and hadn’t had other reports of it.

Zune software never scans your music collection. Instead, it knows only the number of times you played a song and how you may have rated a song.

Zune’s Mixview adds a real zing to the discovery process. It is a kaleidoscope-like graphic that appears on the screen when a song, artist, album or friend’s Zune Card is selected. The selected item is surrounded by eight to 10 floating squares filled with graphics and text, each holding a related song, album, artist or graphic representation of a Zune listener who’s considered an “expert” on the selection.

Each of these related squares includes a line of text explaining its relationship to the center item. For example, as I played “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones, Cyril Davies appeared as a related artist; an image of Arthur Alexander appeared as an influencer of the Stones; a Zune community member with the tag “Rreynoso” appeared as the top listener for the band and other Stones albums were displayed.

Mixview changes as you explore it. When one of its recommendations is selected, a new Mixview is created around that selection, encouraging discovery. But Mixview has the same problem as Apple’s Genius: When one song ends and another begins, the Mixview graphic doesn’t automatically change; you must manually start Mixview for a new song. Zune says it doesn’t want to change the graphic in case a user is in mid-exploration.

Unlike Genius, Mixview shows songs and artists beyond what Zune sells online. But the company says Mixview does “favor” Zune content, and Zune Picks are limited to items sold by Zune.

Zune Picks and Channels are more passive ways of discovering music: Picks are generated for you in Zune Marketplace according to your listening habits. Zune Channels bring collections of music to Zune devices and software, but these are useful only for Zune Pass members who pay $15 monthly.

Apple’s Genius is a helpful tool when it comes to quickly making a playlist, and its iTunes sidebar might reveal fresh related content. But the Zune software truly allows people to discover more about their own music and that of others.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

• Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://walt.allthingsd.com

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