DudeAsInCool

Holland joins the ITunes DRM rebellion: The Dutch consumer protection agency became the latest in Europe on Thursday to pressure Apple Inc into changing restrictions that tie songs bought on iTunes to its market-leading iPod players. Consumentenbond spokesman Ewald van Kouwen said his group had filed a formal complaint with the Dutch antitrust watchdog NMa asking for an investigation into what he called "illegal practices" by Apple's iTunes online store. Read More

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The following is music to my ears Chad wasn’t forthcoming on when this new system will be rolled out, but most of the weblog community seems to have taken the remark as a formal announcement. However, I think if done right it’s going to have a similar effect to Adsense, but for video. By that, I mean that the story will be much more compelling if YouTube also share revenue for referral. If someone embeds a video on their site and it gets viewed, will they share the revenue with the publisher. I’d be interesting to see an economy build around that, and what effect it could have on the videos themselves. Would some of them become more viral because more people stand a chance of making a buck? Imagine Scouta, Digg, Boing Boing and other sites generating income from links to video. What about if we then shared that with the community somehow. Consumers making money from the video, movies, or television shows they love. Source

According to news reports, Bill Gates says the internet is superior delivery system than tv, and that he expects tv to implode. Curious to your thoughts about this new article: DAVOS, Switzerland (Jan. 27) - The Internet is set to revolutionize television within five years, due to an explosion of online video content and the merging of PCs and TV sets, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said on Saturday. Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft, addresses a panel on Web 2.0 during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Saturday. "I'm stunned how people aren't seeing that with TV, in five years from now, people will laugh at what we've had," he told business leaders and politicians at the World Economic Forum. Read More

Can you imagine what it would be like to live with that woman for the rest of your life? OMG!

Bonus - here is a video, Wait For the Wheels, from their last album, Ozona. Quite nice, I think you will agree.

Goldrush are a rock band from that hail from Oxfordshire, England. The band is comprised around brothers Robin Bennett (vocals, guitar) and his brother Joe (keyboards, guitar, vocals), and Garo (lead guitar), Growler (bass) and G on drums. The Bennett brothers also run the annual Truck Festival with family and friends at Hill Farm, Steventon, Oxfordshire; last year's festival included the likes of The Futureheads Russia!, MC Lars, The Electric Soft Parade and Regina Spektor. With musical influences like Wilco, Nick Drake, the Byrds and the The Flaming Lips, Goldrush deliver a mixture of quite listenable folk-rock and psychedelia. Check out the new album, With The Heart Is The Place, which is streaming at the band's website and at MySpace. - the track list is below. Enjoy. Buy It here

In his article at Zeropaid, SoulXTC takes a look at GrooveShark, a new P2P music site, which promises to compensate both copyright owners and users. Sounds almost too good to be true. "Grooveshark will be a P2P music file-sharing community that will broker music transactions between members. It will charging for the songs exchanged between members on the site, Grooveshark will compensate copyright holders and users while providing the convenience and selection of P2P file-sharing in an online music community. All Grooveshark files will be DRM-free, allowing users to play the songs they purchase on any PC or portable digital music player. Grooveshark will supposedly combine the best of P2P file-sharing and online music download sites into one convenient service. Users will be able to browse songs uploaded by other members and then pay to download these DRM-free MP3 files. Songs will vary in price, but none will cost more than 99 cents. Grooveshark will then pay the appropriate royalties to music copyright holders by taking commissions from users' transactions and then also compensate users with free music for community participation such as uploading songs, fixing song tags, flagging unwanted files or reviewing music. Members will be rewarded based on their level of contribution to the Grooveshark community." Read more at ZeroPaid. Get on GrooveShark's Mailing List

In his review, "One Nation Under Hip-Hop," Adam Bradley explores two books: "OTHER PEOPLE'S PROPERTY: A Shadow History of Hip-Hop in White America" by Mike Thompson & "To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic" by William Jelani Cobb: Hip-hop is dead. That's what rap legend Nas claims in the title of his latest album. He just might be right. According to Nielsen Soundscan, album sales in all genres declined by nearly 5 percent in 2006, largely attributable to the increasing popularity of digital downloads. Rap sales, however, plummeted by more than 20 percent, the most of any genre. Ironically, this downturn comes at a time when hip-hop seems to be catering to commercial tastes as never before, often at the expense of artistic innovation. But don't write rap's obituary yet. Hip-hop still remains a dominant voice in youth culture, though it undoubtedly faces an identity crisis. Now 30 years old, hip-hop must reconcile the twin tensions of art and commerce -- just as jazz did in the 1940s, when bebop supplanted swing and young lions such as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie emerged as cultural icons capable of crossing the color line. And because the majority of rap artists are black and much of the audience is white, the genre bears both the promise and the peril of interracial encounter. Like jazz, hip-hop has the paradoxical potential to promote understanding and to reinforce stereotypes. Read more at The Washington Post

Red Herring talks about how sites like Revver and Youtube are enabling new filmmakers. Martial arts expert Joe Eigo never imagined he'd win millions of fans and earn $25,000 when he posted a clip of himself performing a series of gravity defying acrobatics to a video sharing site. In uploading his "Matrix - For Real" video to Metacafe.com, Eigo joined the growing number of aspiring filmmakers who are benefiting from the new economics of online video sharing, a phenomenon made popular by YouTube. Read More

SoulXTC at ZeroPaid has written a series of excellent articles on watching tv on the web. 1) His first one takes a look at the TVU and Vidoo, which streams free tv using Bit Torrent technology: TVU Networks currently offers the following TV channels, Sports (ESPN, ESPN (ASIA), ESPN 2, MLB, Star Sports, CCTV 5, Telecapri (Italy), NBA TV), General (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, USA Network, Comedy Central, Disney, Animal Planet, CW, Cartoon Network, TV Land, NASA TV, TeleMundo, Phoenix CN, Star TV), News (CNBC, CNN (low), CNN 1, Class News(Italy), Phoenix Info, CBN, Al Jazeera), Movies (Hollywood, CCTV 8), Lifestyle & Fashion, and Music (LC2, Channel V, Music+, All Music, OnTop TV). They are currently rotating TNT and HBO on the Test Channel 10134 For some of the channels the stand alone TVU Player won't have all the channels listed, like FOX for example, so you have to use its sister site, Vidoo.com instead. Vidoo still uses the TVU client but, has it embedded in the page rather than as a stand alone. Also to note, Vidoo doesn't work in Firefox and must be opened in Internet Explorer for it to run TVU properly. Read more at Zeropaid 2) In his second article, "3 Quick Ways to Watch Movies For Free", SoulXTC takes a look at PeekVid, Movin' Flick and Junk Nova. Read more at Zeropaid 3) In his third article, "TV Links Alternatives For Free TV Shows & Movies", SoulXTC explores 'Surf the Channel', 'TV Life', 'Quicksilver Screen", 'FOMDB' and 'Sidereel': Read the review here 4) In a fourth article, Soul XTC explores "How To Watch Your Favorite TV Programs, Via Bit Torrent" - Read more HERE

SoulXTC at Zeropaid has put together a nifty step-by-step guide on how to turn audio streams into MP3s. Read all about it HERE

Portland, Oregon's Menomena is an idie band that writes collectively, "using software they scripted to assemble songs from their own click-tracks and melody snippets--and then re-learn as new, full-bodied entities. The cumulative effect is often collage-like, with piano and scratchy guitar and drums (and an occasional saxophone) dropping in and out as songs clamber forward, fueled by manic creative immediacy." If you are new to the band, check out some of their previous work at The Punk Guy - pretty catchy stuff. Buy It here

The Vanguard, Portand State U's student newspaper, talks to the hometown indie band about their musical influences and their new album: 'Friend and Foe." Who are your favorite musicians? Brent Knopf: Probably PJ Harvey. I like To Bring You My Love and Is this Desire? When I listen to her, I mostly respect her guitar playing. Danny Seim: Brent and I were in a cover band called The Gay Lon Mabons. It was an all-PJ Harvey cover band. We played one show, at the Meow Meow, opening for a Tooth & Nail band ? I love PJ Harvey as well. Who are your favorite drummers? DS: I know that I like Led Zeppelin a lot, but I don't think John Bonham would have been as amazing without John Paul Jones ? I kind of dedicated my life to The Flaming Lips drummer, Steven Drozd, right around the time Menomena started. I still am impressed with them. It's waned a bit, but I'm impressed by his ability to multi-task. Read More

Maintaining Moore's Law, Intel's announcement of a faster chip should be welcome news to computer owners. If only the networks would improve... Intel Says Chips Will Run Faster, Using Less Power Intel, the world’s largest chip maker, has overhauled the basic building block of the information age, paving the way for a new generation of faster and more energy-efficient processors. Company researchers said the advance represented the most significant change in the materials used to manufacture silicon chips since Intel pioneered the modern integrated-circuit transistor more than four decades ago. The microprocessor chips, which Intel plans to begin making in the second half of this year, are designed for computers but they could also have applications in consumer devices. Their combination of processing power and energy efficiency could make it possible, for example, for cellphones to play video at length — a demanding digital task — with less battery drain. Read more at the NYTimes

The chief executives of 10 major corporations and business groups, on the eve of the State of the Union address, urged President Bush on Monday to support mandatory reductions in climate-changing pollution and establish reductions targets. "We can and must take prompt action to establish a coordinated, economy-wide market-driven approach to climate protection," the executives from a broad range of industries said in a letter to the president. ...The officials, expected to elaborate on their plan at a news conference later Monday, include the chief executives Alcoa Inc., PB America Inc., DuPont Co., Caterpillar Inc., General Electric Co., and Duke Energy Corp. Read More

Red Herring reports that some investors are joining forces with hedge funds, and are using guerilla war web tactics such as wikis, blogs, and videos to take down the current executive leadership at Yahoo: "In its early form, at least, Plan B’s goals are far from modest: institute a cash dividend, repeal anti-takeover measures, and replace current CEO Mr. Semel with CFO Susan Decker. Already, in December, Yahoo shuffled its executives and reorganized operations in response to investor concerns and an internal memo about excessive bureaucracy dubbed the “peanut butter manifesto.” Read more at Red Herring

ArsTechnica reports that France and Germany have joined the European crusade against ITunes: Apple is being challenged once again to open up its DRM by consumer groups in Europe. This time, Germany and France have joined the slowly-growing number of countries who are asking Apple to allow the protected songs purchased from the iTunes Store to be played on other music players besides the iPod. Norwegian Consumer Ombudsman Bjoern Erik Thon told the Associated Press that France's consumer lobby group, UFC-Que Choisir, and Germany's Verbraucherzentrale are now part of the European effort to push Apple into an open DRM system, with more countries considering joining the group. By now, everyone who owns a digital music player of any sort is painfully aware that buying music from a particular online store locks them into that platform. Apple, the current market leader in both online music and digital music player sales, has been particularly stubborn about allowing its protected AAC files to be played on anything but iPods. Read more HERE

Some kind-hearted soul at CyberKnowledge has amassed over 20,000 free and legal music videos at Youtube, catalogued them, and even added a button so you can play them on the spot. Pretty nifty, huh? Check It Out

Bluegrass veteran Ricky Skaggs and pianist Bruce Hornsby have joined forces for an eponymous collaborative album due March 20 via Sony BMG/Legacy. The set includes covers of Hornsby's prior hit "Mandolin Rain" and Rick James' "Super Freak." Backing was provided by Skaggs' band, Kentucky Thunder. "Ricky Skaggs is a deep musical soul, one of the great keepers of the traditional and mountain music flame," Hornsby says. "It was so inspiring -- and educational -- to make this record with these virtuoso musicians." Read more at Billboard

Billboard reports that "Houston rapper Mike Jones will unveil his next album, "The American Dream," in April via Swishahouse/Asylum/Warner Bros. Records. First single "Mr. Jones" was produced by Myke Diesel and is at radio now. Additional details have yet to be revealed about the follow-up to 2005's "Who Is Mike Jones?," which has sold 1.4 million copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan." Read more at Billboard

Wired takes a look at how to boost the sound out of your mp3s and mp3 players" Lossy compression like that employed by MP3 and AAC robs a song of its aural presence -- drums lose their crispness, bass loses its punch and high tones are muddied by artifacts. Ripping at higher bitrates or with a lossless compression scheme helps matters, but what can you do for the MP3 collection you've built up over the years? Re-rip all those tracks? Forget about it. A number of technologies exist to make those lossy MP3s shine. Digital signal processing and various psychoacoustic methods can help coax a more natural sound from all of your digital tracks, bringing the audio fidelity close to its pre-compression glory. A number of technologies exist to make those lossy MP3s shine. Digital signal processing and various psychoacoustic methods can help coax a more natural sound from all of your digital tracks, bringing the audio fidelity close to its pre-compression glory. Read more at Wired

..According to a study by InsuranceHotline.com, a Web site that quotes drivers on insurance rates, astrological signs are a significant factor in predicting car accidents. The study, which looked at 100,000 North American drivers' records from the past six years, puts Libras (born between Sept. 23 and Oct. 22), followed by Aquarians (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) and Aries (March 21-April 19), as the worst offenders for tickets and accidents. Leos (July 23-Aug. 22) and then Geminis (May 21-June 20) were found to be the best overall. "I was absolutely shocked by the results," said Lee Romanov, the president of Toronto-based InsuranceHotline.com. Read more at MSN