label

McDonald's, Toyota in harmony with MySpace Music

With rumor and speculation whirling around the launch of MySpace's music service--expected to launch this week--it's nice to finally get some hard news.

The company is expected to announce Monday that McDonald's, Toyota, and State Farm Insurance have agreed to advertise on MySpace Music, the new music store backed by billionaire Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and three out of the four largest music labels. Advertising will be a major component for the new start-up, MySpace executives said. That makes sense as that's what Murdoch's troops understand. Selling music is a new area … Read more

Report: Fees may sink Pandora soon

Tim Westergren, the founder of popular Web radio start-up Pandora, has said in an interview with The Washington Post that his company may be close to a shutdown.

"We're approaching a pull-the-plug kind of decision," Westergren said in the article, published Saturday. "This is like a last stand for webcasting."

The problem, he explained, is last year's royalty hike for Web radio, which makes it extremely expensive for an independent start-up to stay afloat in the business. The royalty increase will eat up 70 percent of Pandora's $25 million in revenue, Westergren said.… Read more

Zebra Technologies introduces G-series thermal printers

Zebra Technologies just announced their new "G-series" line of thermal printers. These little guys fall under the four-inch desktop printer category and, while not specifically for the consumer market, will still appeal to industries that deal with printing labels, receipts, price marking tags, shipping and return labels, boarding passes, ID wristbands and tags, and admission tickets.

The new offerings from Zebra include the GX420t,GX420d, GX430t, GK420t, and the GK420d. Across the board, these printers feature a wide range of convenient, easy to operate printing solutions in the work or home office. Notable specifications include:

Wireless: 802.11g … Read more

A label printer that's hip and square

Forget Dynamo. That handheld click-clacking label printer doesn't hold a ticker tape to this appealing cube version, which will add instant status to any cubicle drone's desk. It appears to be a simple block when closed, but press a little black button and up pops the seamless lid to expose a monochrome LCD screen and keyboard. The sticker even comes out from a tiny slit in the side. Too bad it's sold only in Japan since the King Jim Tepra Pro SR600 Label Writer (23,940 yen, $221) does English, too, with a choice of fonts and … Read more

HP's newest multifunction printer includes a built-in DVD drive

The HP Photosmart C8180 isn't cheap, so we wouldn't recommend you throwing down $400 for this multifunction unless you're an amateur photographer who needs a top-notch printer and won't mind waiting more than a minute for each photo.

We just finished testing the C8180 (full review), and we were impressed by its built-in LightScribe drive. LightScribe is a direct disc-labeling system that uses lasers to burn an image directly onto the disc. The LightScribe system is meant to eliminate the smudges and peeling that inevitably happens with sticker labels, and the fact that Hewlett-Packard decided to … Read more

Report: Apple wants more mobile music

Apple is in talks with the largest record companies as it attempts to boost the iPhone's offering of ringtones and other musical content, according to a report in The New York Times.

Citing several unnamed music industry executives, the Times said that negotiations are "very active" and a final deal has not been set.

A final deal may come after June 9, when Apple CEO Steve Jobs speaks at the company's developer conference, the paper reported. That is when some expect Apple to announce the coming of the next-generation iPhone.

In addition to beefing up ringtones, … Read more

A tale of music, open source, and fortune telling

The problem with the future is that it's, well, the future. Most of make lousy prognosticators, despite our wealth (or poverty) of experience.

Such was the case with the music industry, which stared its digital future in the face and...blinked. The Guardian traces the arc of its unfortunate fall. The problem, as Charles Arthur writes, is that the future often comes far too soon for our liking:

All in all, there's a lot of hostility towards the record industry, but if you put yourself in the comfortable position of that record exec - which John Lanchester, at the London Review of Books in 2002 described as being "reluctant to move from this [CD sales] model in the same way, and for the same reason, a python is reluctant to move when it has swallowed a goat" - then you can understand why. Some technical change is overwhelming. You can be rude about the record industry for not reacting fast enough to downloads, but the fact is that that overwhelming change happened years before it expected.

I believe that Software as a Service and open source are doing much the same thing to the traditional software license model.… Read more

LG Secret: The new Black Label phone

LG has just announced the latest addition to its Black Label series--think Chocolate-- the LG Secret. It's set to be a stylish new phone for fashonistas who want something that looks sexy and functions, er, sexy.

It's also going to be the slimmest 5-megapixel camera phone ever made, at 11.8 millimeters thick, with support for shooting video at 120fps into DivX format. There's also built-in photo and video editing features, including the rather alarming 'facial editing' and technology that automatically alters the lighting in a photo to produce a more enjoyable image.

Other features include … Read more

Images: A glance at green labels

With so many "green" options appearing on everyday products, navigating the marketplace can be tricky if you're attempting to green your life.

Home Depot stamps efficient lightbulbs, low-toxic paints, and other goods as "Eco Options." SC Johnson sells Windex certified by Greenlist, the company's internal effort to reduce toxicants in its product line. Canon labels printers as "Generation Green."

Environmentalists may applaud corporate efforts to sell fewer polluting and poisonous goods and services. But some consumer watchdogs warn that the proliferation of green claims will confuse or mislead shoppers, and prefer that … Read more