Katherine Boehret in The Mossberg Solution on December 21, 2010 at 3:02 pm PT
Katie reviews the revamped Myspace, with its focus on topics in popular culture, including television, music, movies, celebrities and comedy.
Katherine Boehret in The Mossberg Solution on May 4, 2010 at 9:03 pm PT
Finally, after years of churning out corporate-centric smartphones, Microsoft has designed a homegrown, cool and truly consumer-focused mobile device. Katie reviews the Kin.
Voices
Nitrozac and Snaggy in News on October 1, 2009 at 5:09 pm PT
Here is the latest comic from our Joy of Tech friends at
Geek Culture, Nitrozac and Snaggy. Joy of Tech appears three times a week in the Voices section of this site. (Click on the image to see a bigger version.)
Peter Kafka in Media on September 1, 2009 at 6:40 am PT
Napster says it has an awesome new iPhone app that will let you stream music directly to your phone–just like the one Apple approved for Spotify, the superhyped service you can’t even get in the U.S. yet. But Napster says you won’t be able to use its app anytime soon, and it blames the big bad music labels.
Peter Kafka in Media on June 17, 2009 at 5:59 pm PT
Digital music start-ups seem to come in two flavors these days: Those being sued by the major music labels and those with expensive licensing deals they can’t afford.
But for some reason, plucky Grooveshark, which runs a very nice, free streaming music service, has stayed out of both of those buckets until now. I’ve confirmed that EMI Music Group is suing the site–whose motto is “Play any song in the world, for free!”–for copyright violation.
Peter Kafka in D7 on May 27, 2009 at 9:31 am PT
As a longtime music executive and talent manager, Irving Azoff has had to find a way to work with everyone from inebriated rock stars to David Geffen. But he’s never had to placate Washington, D.C. before. But that’s what Azoff needs to do in order to pull off the deal of a lifetime: A merger between his Ticketmaster Entertainment, which dominates the ticketing business, and Live Nation, which dominates the live concert business. When Azoff isn’t busy trying to convince people that the merger doesn’t violate antitrust regulations, or running his ticketing company, he manages the careers of everyone from the Eagles to Christina Aguilera. Note the one thing in the music business he doesn’t spend time on: Selling recorded music.
Voices
Marisa Taylor, Tech Reporter, The Wall Street Journal in News on May 22, 2009 at 6:56 am PT
Some day, your cellphone might be able to read you as well as your best friend or significant other, though not if you have a poker face.
Sony Ericsson filed a patent application with the U.S. Patent and Trade Office earlier this month for technology that would allow a device to create MP3 playlists based on a user’s facial expressions.
Walt Mossberg in Personal Technology on March 11, 2009 at 6:02 pm PT
Walt reviews the first talking music player in the impossibly small iPod Shuffle. 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 Walt’s tests, this worked as advertised.
