napster

The 404 673: Where we turn it off and on again (podcast)

Peter Ha from TIME Magazine's Techland joins us again today to wrap up a week's worth of stories, including yesterday's Facebook meltdown, Adidas sneakers inspired by Boba Fett, Wil Wheaton, Halo: Reach, Moleskines, and more!

We kick off the show with Peter showing off his new limited-edition Star Wars X Adidas Originals ZX800 sneakers with side panels inspired by Boba Fett! You can see that the shoes are influenced by Boba Fett's weathered armor, and the special Mandalorian patches on the heels. Peter definitely made the right choice...the Adidas Chewbacca shoes from the same collection aren't quite as subtle.

Peter also tells us about the news around Techland, and apparently actor Wil Wheaton (Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation) is now writing for the Web site. Check out all of Wil's articles online, including The Evolution of E-mail Spam, Why I Hate DRM, and Recovering from W00tstock.

Apparently CNET wasn't the only office that almost went up in smoke after Facebook mysteriously displayed a DNS error yesterday afternoon. Soon after, Facebook software engineering director Robert Johnson blamed the technical error on a change to the site that caused configuration value errors for every client, causing Facebook's clusters to be "overwhelmed by hundreds of thousands of queries a second.

To fix this error, engineers utilized a classic troubleshooting method that's spanned a hundred of years of electrical design: turn it off, and then back on again. That's all it took, and while some users might still experienced intermittent errors over the next few days, the majority of us can sleep well knowing our profiles are still intact and open for liking.

Today is the last day to sign up for our Twitter contest for a chance to win a pair of tickets to see "The Social Network" with The 404 next Tuesday, September 28. To enter, simply follow us @The404 and RETWEET THIS. You can also become a fan of The 404 Facebook Fan Page to enter, and while you're at it, add Peter Ha on Twitter as well!

Episode 673 Subscribe in iTunes audio | Suscribe to iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Google Docs coming to Android, iPad

  Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded: Napster debuts on iOS VLC player for iPad Beware of the Twitter Hack HP's tablet and printer device iPad editing in Google Docs

Buzz Out Loud 1311: Facebook's not building a phone, or is it? (podcast)

Facebook denies that it's building its own phone, despite its own claims of how great it would be.Captchas get replaced with ads (evil?). HP invents the tablet-powered printer. And Jason joins us on the other side of the board!

Subscribe:  iTunes (MP3) |  iTunes (320x180) |  iTunes (640x360) |  RSS (MP3) |  RSS (320x180) |  RSS (640x360)… Read more

Napster makes its way to iOS devices

Napster has launched an application for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.

The self-titled Napster program allows users to listen to the service's 10 million tracks as often as they'd like. The app includes access to new songs, the top tracks on the Billboard charts, as well as older records dating as far back as 1955. Users can opt to save songs, create playlists, and go back and listen to albums from their iOS-based device. The app also includes an automix feature for users who want to hear artists similar to some of their favorites.

Napster's journey … Read more

Best Buy drops Napster CEO, president posts

Updated at 1:30 p.m. PST to include Best Buy's decision to eliminate CEO and president positions.

Best Buy has decided that the Napster music service is too top heavy and eliminated the music service's CEO and president positions, a company spokeswoman said Wednesday.

Chris Gorog announced that he is leaving as CEO, a move that comes some 15 months after the Web music service was acquired by retail chain Best Buy on the company's blog. Brad Duea, Napster's president, is also leaving the company, the spokeswoman said. She said Best Buy wanted to "… Read more

MOG looks and sounds good, but has big gaps

MOG offered me a free trial to its subscription-based streaming music service, MOG All Access, which launched on Tuesday. The service costs five bucks a month, and gives you unlimited on-demand streams of more than six million songs from all four major labels and plenty of indies. The site is trying to differentiate itself from competitors like Rhapsody and Napster with high-quality streams--all songs are 320kbps MP3s--and some fairly sophisticated music discovery features, like playlists posted by musicians (David Byrne got the featured spot on the day of launch) and other fans with similar tastes to yours ("Moggers like … Read more

MOG entering the music subscription game

If free ad-supported music services aren't going to make it financially, what about paid subscription services? Rhapsody and RealNetworks continue to soldier along, but RealNetworks is apparently looking for investors to take some portion of the Rhapsody business off its hands, and we haven't heard much about Napster since Best Buy, which acquired it a little over a year ago, slashed subscription prices in May in a bid to build membership.

Soon, there will be another competitor in the market: MOG. The company has offered a kind of music blog site with a social-networking spin for a couple … Read more

Q&A: A front-row seat for media's meltdown

During a visit to Hollywood last week, I wanted to talk to people who knew a thing or two about the film industry's burgeoning meltdown. One of the people I sought out was Eric Garland, CEO and co-founder of Big Champagne.

Beverly Hills, Calif.,-based Big Champagne has collected data on file sharing and sold it to media companies for almost 10 years. Garland's company has survived all that time, even while making the same sad pitch. He tells the music labels and film studios they are going to be chopped down at the knees by the Internet … Read more

Touch-enabled Rhapsody on HP TouchSmart PCs

Microsoft is banking on multitouch support as one selling point for Windows 7, and HP--traditionally a loyal supporter of Microsoft's consumer strategy--is helping the push by releasing an update to its TouchScreen PCs.

HP has worked with several partners to create touch-enabled versions of various consumer entertainment apps, including Hulu, Netflix, and Pandora Internet Radio, but hard-core music fans will probably be most interested in the touch-enabled version of Rhapsody.

Among the cool features: you'll be able to write the name of an artist directly on the screen, and Rhapsody will take you to that artist's page … Read more