Death of The Video Rental Store

A few weeks ago, I was sitting at a traffic light by the Hollywood Video store near my home and glanced over at the empty parking lot. This was not an unusual sight because for years the parking lot at the Hollywood Video was always empty. But looking a bit closer, I realized the space… Continue reading Death of The Video Rental Store

How to Convert Cassette Tapes to MP3s for Free on a Mac

My wife recently was deep cleaning and ran across a few tape cassettes that she remembered she really liked and asked if I could convert or digitize the tapes to MP3s for use in iTunes and on her iPhone. I figured it wasn’t a big deal so I told her I could before I thought… Continue reading How to Convert Cassette Tapes to MP3s for Free on a Mac

New Media Companies Turning Traditional Media Outlets Upside Down

Two news items caught my eye Friday in gadget news. First, Apple iTunes increased its dominance as the top domestic music e-tailer. iTunes overtook Walmart in 2008 when it reached 21.42% and now iTunes has captured 26.65% of the overall market. Walmart had 14.99% in 2008 and dropped to 12.54% and retains the second spot.… Continue reading New Media Companies Turning Traditional Media Outlets Upside Down

100 Science Podcasts

You gotta love the Internet for its wealth of knowledge. A great example of this – science podcasts on subjects ranging from biology and astronomy to physics and engineering. Here is a list of 100 such science podcasts. Enjoy, and remember to get some sleep!

Apple to buy music streaming service, LaLa

LaLa is a music streaming service that I’ve been toying with lately. I quite like the interface; they’ve done a great job with it. They also have an interesting business model in that they charge 10 cents for every song that you want to add to your ‘collection’, which you can then put into playlists.… Continue reading Apple to buy music streaming service, LaLa

Apple blocks Palm Pres from accessing iTunes

Wow, c’mon Apple – are you really hurting for more $ that you needed to block the relatively small number of Palm Pre users from getting to iTunes?! Of course, this isn’t really targeted at just Palm Pres, but other non-iPod/iPhone devices, but still. I personally don’t use either iTunes, the desktop software (even when… Continue reading Apple blocks Palm Pres from accessing iTunes

Macworld 2009: Apple iTunes store going DRM-free

You can now get about 8 million tracks free of DRM (copy-protection software) from iTunes with another 2M by the end of April. You can upgrade your existing set of iTunes tracks, but it’ll cost you – 30 cents per track. The downside is that the record labels will now get to set pricing as… Continue reading Macworld 2009: Apple iTunes store going DRM-free

Converting Audio File Formats in iTunes

iTunes is much more than a digital music jukebox. It’s capable of handling many different tasks involving digital media. Some of iTunes’ most popular features include buying music and vidoes online, burning CDs, and syncing files with your iPod or iPhone. But one of the lesser known functions hidden within iTunes is the ability to… Continue reading Converting Audio File Formats in iTunes