MP3.com.au will provide digital music charts of Australia to Yahoo! Australia and New Zealand. This contract is major, since these two Yahoo! portals are very big players in their own countries and Australian music charts is the no. 1 MP3 downloaded chart.
MP3.com total loss in last quarter was .17 per share which beats analysts polls that were appx. .23 per share. Total loss of MP3.com in last quarter was $10.6M.
(article from yahoo.com)
Music.com has chosen Microsoft's WMA technology for its music spreading format instead of industry's de facto format MP3. They say that decision was based on tests that showed that WMA files sounded better than MP3 files even at half the size of MP3s.
Napster, the famous MP3 sharing program, has a serious security leak -- it exposes users' IP addresses, claims Richard Smith, an Internet security consultant. Napster's authors say that they are currently working on the problem, but now, users that think that they remain anonymous, are wrong..
We recommend everybody to use CuteMX, which has received better rankings in many places (including After Dawn) and is more stable MP3 sharing tool. Get it here!
Recording giant BMG has released few of its latest titles in copyright protected CD format that blocks users listening CDs with their CD-ROM drives and older home stereo CD players. The most annoying thing with this solution is that BMG hasn't told consumers anything about this and the CDs that are copy protected don't have any kind of sign on them about the fact. There are consumers that don't have any other CD players in their homes instead the ones that they use with their PCs...
DVD CCA are seeking an emergency ex parte motion to seal Hoy Exhibit B at Santa Clara County Courthouse in San Hose.
Hoy Exhibit B is essentially the DeCSS sourcecode for CSS descrambling from DVD CCA Reply Declaration of John J. Hoy. DVD CCA was looking to get rid of CSS descrambling, and then attached the CSS descrambling sourcecode with a public document.
Related links:
Hoy Exhibit B (Caution! It may be illegal for California and New York residents to download the file. Others need not worry. Atleast not for now.)
A Stanford University Senior has reverse-engineered the Napster Server Protocol. There's also an Open Source Napster Server called OpenNap in the making. It won't take long before we start seeing tons of new Napster servers.
Related stories:
Napster server protocol reverse-engineering info
Open Source Napster Server homepage with Napster clients for several platforms (MacOS, BeOS, Amiga, Java etc.)
Intel Corporation announced that Intel Software Integrity System will feature Lucent Technologies' ePAC (Enhanced Perceptual Audio Codec) audio compression algorithm.
Intel Software Integrity System is a solution that features Intel's patented tamper-resistant software technology, which hides critical code, keys and other secrets from observation and detects attempts to break security mechanisms.
ePAC is a new version of the Lucent Perceptual Audio Coder (PAC), an audio compression algorithm with the highest-quality audio at the lowest bit rates. At 128 kilobits per second, ePAC offers CD-transparent stereo sound.
More on topic:
Intel Press Release
More information on Intel Software Integrity System
Lucent Technologies
Rumour has it that the author of DeCSS, program designed to enable DVD playback on Linux platform, has been arrested by Norwegian police. However there's no confirmation to this as of yet.
What has happened is that Jon Johansen, the author of DeCSS, was taken in for questioning on Monday when the police raided his house. He is being charged with violation of copyright law.
Late last week a U.S. District Court ordered three people to remove DeCSS from their Web sites. You can still find DeCSS here, though.
Related stories:
Police Raids Teen Hacker's Home
U.S. Judge Orders DVD Hack Off Internet Sites
DeCSS v1.21b download
British music company EMI and American Time Warner Inc. announced today they would merge their music businesses, with combined revenues of $8 billion a year, to become the world's second-largest in the field (second only to Seagram's Universal Music).
It was only a while ago when Time Warner was acquired by America Online Inc. (AOL). Fusions seem to be today's trend.
Read the full story at Yahoo's Daily News
Microsoft made an alliance with secure music format provider Liquid Audio - based on this contract Liquid Audio's software will also support Microsoft's Windows Media Audio format (WMA).
Michael Robertson, MP3.com CEO, has responded to the RIAA allegations in an open letter to RIAA.
In his response Michael Robertson questions RIAA's policy: "The RIAA decries that its copyrights have been violated. This is the rhetoric of a monopolist. Your organization says that it controls 90% of the off-line distribution of music. But the question is, to whom does the music belong? When a consumer buys a CD, does the industry get to tell the consumer where she can listen to her music? "
Read the full response at MP3.com
Big boys in RIAA did it again -- this time they are suing MP3.com for its new Beam-It technology saying that it violates copyright laws of U.S. They tried to settle things first directly with MP3.com's CEO Michael Robertson, but he denied to take the technology back. So they'll meet in court.
Lansonic announced an MP3 home stereo system that connects into local area network (LAN) and gets MP3s from PC's harddrive or from its internal 13GB harddrive and plays them. It is also capable of Internet streaming and encoding files on-the-fly from another PCs connected into network.
The Infrared Data Association (IrDA) has formed a Special Interest Group to produce a standard for inter-appliance MP3 data exchange using IrDA's infrared technology.
"Infrared data ports are the smallest, lowest power, highest bandwidth, lowest cost ports available today'' said Lawrence Faulkner, IrDA's Executive Director. "Most of the notebook computers, Palm Computing products and WinCE devices have IR ports. Every major mobile phone brand has at least one IR-enabled handset and coming this fall wristwatches will begin to incorporate IrDA data ports.''
(article from yahoo)
SpectraDisc announced a DVD disc format that works on all existing DVD players, but that becomes useless after certain period of time. Product is aimed in rental markets, where people could rent a movie and don't have to worry about returning it -- basically same audience that "god-thanks-its-finally-dead" -format DivX that needed own special DVD player and a phone-line hook-up to operate.
After first use the disc begins to change into blue and is useless after 2-3 days.
(article from Wired)
Court ruled on Tuesday that StreamBox can continue selling their StreamBox Ripper product that allows people to save streaming data in local harddrives, but they can't distribute other products that could circumvent the copyright protection in RealNetworks products.
Millennium Bug has written a rather thorough article on digital video standards, DVD-ripping, Super VideoCDs, and pretty much everything else you need to know about digital home movies.
Read the full article.
MP3.com, world's leading digital music retailer, and Classic World Productions Inc. made a deal that makes hunders of CWP albums available for MP3.com customers. CWP artists include such a names as Ike and Tina Turner, the Commodores, the Manhattans featuring Gerald Alston and Blue Lovett, Petula Clark, Willie Nelson, Chicago, Dionne Warwick, Judy Garland, Alabama, Tom Jones, Alice Cooper, Engelbert Humperdinck, Nat "King'' Cole, Jose Feliciano, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Chuck Berry.
AudioTrack Watermark Solutions Corp. announced their latest breakthrough in watermarking technology, called AudioTrack Adaptive Watermark. This new technology has beaten all available audio copyright protections in tests. Technology will be available in second quarter of 2000 with a product called AudioTrack Watermark Production Studio.
(article from mp3illusions)
GlobalMedia.com has relaunched its webpage IndieAudio.com -- page has over 150 independent artists that are signed to the Global Media Music Network.
Full story here
Launch.com, an Internet site that offers music video streaming, announced today that it made a contract with Warner Music to offer their artists' videos on-line. This is an amount of 5,000 music videos from artists such as Metallica and Madonna.
Launch has previously contracts with Sony and EMI. Contract with Warner Music (nowadays part of big AOL - Time Warner merger) contains a part that gives Warner Music a chance to buy part of Launch music later.
The Digital Bits announced the first ever Bitsy Awards. The Bitsys are "handed out" to best and worst DVDs of 1999.
Check it out!
Seven major movie studios sued several sites that spread program called DeCSS. DeCSS is a program that decrypts the DVD copy protection codes and that way allow people to copy their DVD movies. In other hand, DeCSS is the only program that gives Linux users ability to watch DVD movies.
Eiger Technology, Inc. (Eiger) (TSE:AXA, OTC BB: ETIFF), a leading computer and Internet peripherals products company, announces the launch of its second generation MP3 player - Eiger Man 2000.
The Eiger Man 2000 is a fully loaded 64 MB internal memory with Smart media card optional upgrade. Also, the Eiger Man 2000 has voice recording for dictation, USB PC interface, Repeat play for selected area, BOOKMARK function, Advanced File Management, 90dB signal to noise ratio, 10 hour playback time battery life, enlarged LCD display and convenient enlarged finger controls.
The BOOKMARK function permits users to conveniently use audio books on the MP3 player, stopping anywhere in the book playback by pushing the
BOOKMARK button to hold one's place.
(Full Article from Yahoo!)
New service for artists is opened in BandPromos.com. They offer services including artist contact info search, webdirectories containing musical web services, etc..
BandPromos
ZD Labs recent tests show that WMA files offer better quality in listening tests than MP3s that are double the size of WMAs.
Full story
TheDigitalBits.com have completed their CES Coverage. Check out the huge picture gallery for a glimpse of some remarkable gagdets!
Manufacturers like Toshiba and Samsung are planning on releasing new generation DVD-players this quarter. The players will have some resemblence to both PCs and game consoles.
With the use of new chip designed by VM Labs it's possible to add graphics capabilities familiar from game consoles to DVD-players.
Read the full story at Yahoo's daily news.
Latest addition to not-so-large MP3 news sites genre is layer3news.org. Site seems to be quite ok, even that layout is quite plain - some people like it, some people don't. Anyway, give them a try.
SwapStation is a new kind of a service for MP3 traders. It allows people to share their MP3 lists and look for a specific MP3s and trade them in email, ICQ, snailmail or whatever form they want to.
Creative Labs released two new MP3 hardware players in Consumer Electronics Show in last weekend. These new devices are Nomad II MG and Nomad Jukebox.
Nomad II MG is basically the same player as Nomad II, it is little bit smaller and has some more functions than Nomad II. But Nomad Jukebox is something new from big manufacturers like Creative; it's home stereo system that can handle up to 6GB of MP3 compressed music.
Pricing is not available yet.
(read full story)
Voquette is a new program that's in beta phase that allows Rio users to securely download content to their devices. Content includes, among others, news broadcasts, webcasted radio shows, concerts and audio books.
Ericsson and Texas Instruments announced a contract that allows Ericsson to use TI's DSP chips in its next generation mobile phones and other multimedia devices. DSPs are meant for processing multimedia information such as audio and video.
World's biggest deal ever is made when AOL and Time Warner are merging. This deal will effect in whole entertainment industry if it's approved by federal goverment.
Read more
DVD-Digest.com pages have been removed from the Web by the site's service provider. Apparently the ISP was contacted by MPAA lawyers, which scared the poop out of them.
Luckily there are mirrors of that page still available:
DVD Download Site
DVD Support Site
DVD Movie Zone
NVIDIA DVD Zone
Last weeks (2nd January - 8th January) software top download list seems to be little bit DVD focused. Here it is:
1. DVDRIP v1.15
2. Power Ripper v1.65
3. DeCSS v1.21b
4. DVD Genie v3.24
5. PowerDVD v2.5 trial
6. DoD Speed Ripper v1.1
7. WinAmp v2.5e Full
8. Alternate CDFS.VXD
9. CuteMX v1.0 beta 8 build 6
10. K-Jöfol 2000 v1.0 beta
Casio released a brand new MP3 player that is connected to user's wrist, model type WMP-1V. Price hasn't been set yet, but read more from their press release.
Happy news for all Gameboy owners -- there is a product called Songboy, a module that allows Gameboy users to play MP3s with their gaming devices. Module costs $99 and it includes encoding and organizing software that you need to transfer and make MP3s.
Universal Music Group, world's biggest music recording company, annouced that they have made a contract with Real Networks regarding their online music services. Consumers will be able to listen music from UMG's artists with RealPlayer.
(news article from mp3place)
Texas Instruments Incorporated and Fraunhofer IIS announced plans to develop the first MP3+AAC encoders for portable audio players. Combining Fraunhofer's software and TI's DSP manufacturers can add on-board AAC and MP3 encoding functionality to portable MP3 players. Consumers can then encode the songs directly from CD without the need for a PC. Brilliant!
Yup, that's right. One wouldn't think there would be any Y2K issues with MP3 playback, but apparently there was. Two MP3 devices from Visiosonic and Audio Box refused to co-operate after the turn of the century. Visiosonic's DLL expired at the end of 1999, and Audio Box's interface software used a buggy algorithm for counting dates. There's a patch available for the Audio Box software.
Grab the latest version of FlasK MPEG from the file-area. The new version fixes some problems with NTSC audio sync, and also has a built-in AC3 decoding! A perfect tool for those annoying DVD to VCD backups!
I-Jam Multimedia and Digital Entertainment announced today a strategic partnership contract. Based on this contract they will open a digital superstore on I-Jam's website offering digital music downloads, music CDs and DVD titles.
The International Standards Organization's JPEG2000 commitee has finalized specs for a new algorithm that compresses images up to 200 times with no appreciable degradation in quality.
The standard will become ISO 15444 when it's officially approved in 2001. So don't hold your breath just yet :-)
Read the full article and see the example!
MP3Lit.com has announced their most popular downloads for 1999. Some of the top names were: 1. Henry Rollins, 2. Dennis Miller, 3. Dylan Thomas, 4. Nicole Blackman, 5. Charles Bukowski, 6. Nick Cave, 7. P.J. O'Rourke, 8. David Sedaris, 9. Mumia Abu-Jamal, and 10. Ben Stiller & Janeane Garofalo.
We made few modifications to our newsletter today; new schedule for newsletter is every 3 days (previously every 2 days) - this is purely because some people don't like the idea to receive too much emails in their inboxes.
Also, removing yourself from our newsletter is under construction and it will be automated during January and we'll inform about the changes when they're done.
We will also add latest software and latest skin lists in our newsletter very shortly so you can see everytime what's happening in our website. Later there will be also latest mp3 additions, but this will come in end of spring propably.
And as usual, I ask everybody to join into our newsletter and ask also your friends to support and visit our site often, since we're really hoping to make this site one of the best multimedia information sites in Internet.
-webmaster
Liquid Audio and AOL's Nullsoft division have made an promotional agreement. Under the terms of the deal Liquid Audio will deliver music content to WinAmp users in Liquid Tracks and MP3s. Contract also requires LiquidAudio to create input plug-in for AOL's WinAmp for LiquidAudio playback.
Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. has blocked Napster traffic in its campus area. They announced that almost 30% of campus' total traffic was caused by Napster..
China announced that they'll start a 15-week campaign against audio and video piracy in China. All pirated material resellers will get huge fines and may lose their business licenses.
Pretec Electronics released a preview of their palm-sized unit that combines features of portable MP3 player, digital still camera, USB camera and voice recorder. Specific facts of this device are not available yet, but they will demo it in this month. And no, it is not a PDA, just a device sized as PDA that combines few portable gadgets in one unit.
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