itunes

Along with the perhaps more exciting announcement of the iPhone (with an integrated wide-screen iPod...who'd have thunk it?), Steve Jobs announced today in his Macworld keynote that iTunes has gained another movie studio partnership for its store. Paramount movies are now available. This is happy news indeed, as the studio is responsible for such favorites as The Italian Job and Zoolander (pictured at right).

Amid all the madness of CES and the impending Macworld, a few distinct trends have emerged. One of those is cross-platform connectivity for all kinds of media: Sony bringing Internet video to TVs, TiVo bringing TV recordings to computers, Motorola spreading TV around the house, and Verizon bringing TV to cell phones. Basically, the big theme of CES '07 is that you don't just have to keep your media in one place. And that's the same message that Avvenu is advocating with its new Avvenu Music Player. But instead of TV programs or YouTube videos, the Avvenu Music … Read more

By this time next week, Steve Jobs' Macworld Expo keynote address will be history. While guesses about what will be announced run the gamut from the mundane (OS X upgrades) to the lustful (iPod phone and/or wide-screen video iPod), it's a near certainty that we'll get more details on Apple's so-called iTV product. The iTV--its final name is still pending--is Apple's take on the digital media receiver. It's a small box designed to stream your computer-based iTunes media (movies, TV shows, music, podcasts) to your big-screen TV and home theater system--basically, a networked &… Read more

Now that Nintendo's coveted Wii is equipped with an Opera browser, the gaming console is now capable of all kinds of Web-based fun! One of the cool gimmicks that I'm pretty pumped about is the fact that you can now control iTunes with your Wii remote. It's possible thanks to the Dot.Tunes application, which can stream music from your iTunes library to any number of devices: other computers, Web-enabled cell phones, and PSPs. On the Wii, you can use the Opera browser to access Dot.Tunes, which has a Flash interface that you can navigate with … Read more

Digg is getting a refresh today. The big changes are in video, which will now be differentiated from news, and a podcasting category also has been added. The interface and the front page will be improved, and the personal profiles will get some navigation fixes.

Podcasting The fundamentally new feature with this release is Digg's podcasting category. Podcasts will be playable from within the Digg Web site. Video podcasts will be playable as well.

Diggers will be able to Digg up podcast feeds (complete podcast series, for example, TWiT or CNET's Buzz Out Loud). Inside the Digg page … Read more

Every blog and major media outlet has reported in recent days about the imminent arrival of a cell phone made by Apple Computer.

Most of the reports have scant evidence and are being written by outlets with dubious track records when it comes to predicting what Steve Jobs & Company are up to. (For the record, CNET News.com quoted a source in September of '05 as saying "we know that they are going to build a smart phone--it's only a matter of time." And who was the source? Ed Zander, CEO of cell phone kingpin Motorola.) … Read more

It's one of the perennial problems of the digital-music era. You buy a couple of songs from an album at 99 cents each and, after listening to them a few times, you think you might want the album.

Trouble is, you've either got to buy the other nine tracks individually or pay the full $9.99 for the album. Either way, you don't get any credit for the songs you've bought.

A source tells us that Apple Computer and the record labels are onto this. Supposedly, iTunes customers may soon be able to buy the album … Read more

Almost anyone who's tried to use the "shuffle" functionality to create automatic playlists can attest that randomizing song lists or libraries is no easy task. I always seem to get one or two songs that appear far too often and some artists who never show up at all.

Enter The Filter (download it at CNET Download.com), a Windows plug-in for iTunes backed by musician Peter Gabriel. The Filter uses artificial intelligence and the All Music Guide database to manufacture custom iTunes playlists based on a variety of user inputs, such as a few songs of your … Read more

No, it's not another portal featuring a new music genre.

CNET News.com has received reports from users that a glitch in the iTunes 7.02 software brings them to the wrong version of the iTunes Store. Instead of the U.S. version, people are ending up in the iTunes Store for France, Canada and Switzerland, among others, which precludes them from viewing and downloading U.S. television shows.

The glitch is easily fixable. Simply scroll to the bottom of the iTunes Store welcome screen and choose the country you live in from the "My Store" scroll … Read more