iTunes Variable Pricing Starts Today

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The inevitable "variable" pricing has gone into effect on iTunes today.  This basically satisfies the music industries' pleas for more control over pricing of the most popular songs.  Chart-toppers will go for $1.29, songs of medium popularity for the former $.99 and catalogue songs go for $.69.  Steve Jobs has said that most of the songs will go for the latter.  It's really unfortunate that the recording industry couldn't be satisfied with the seemingly working "one price fits all."  However, I'll let Apple slide on this one since the contract negotiations forced this structure upon the iTunes Store.  One positive benefit we did get out of this negotiation is DRM-free music (encoded at 256kbps).  Still...with everyone, including myself, taking second thoughts about how they are spending their money these days, I'm afraid over-priced digital music may be one of the first things to cut out.  After coming all this way in digital sales...let's hope that we don't see a spike in music piracy after all of this.

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Creating a 'Favicon' for the iPhone

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I just found a great article on adding an iPhone/iPod Touch optimized favicon to a web site.  Hallahan FavIconThe icon appears on the device's home screen if a user were to add your site as a favorite (otherwise it just appears as an ugly screenshot of the site).  This article provides a Photoshop template for creating the icon.  It is basically a 57x57px PNG.  Save the transparent PNG to your web site's home directory under the name 'apple-touch-icon.png' and you're ready to go.

Last Updated on Thursday, 02 April 2009 12:46
 

Fixing the iTunes "Zoom" control

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 Something that has been bothering me on the Mac version of iTunes is that the Zoom button (the green circle on the title bar) does not work how you would expect.  Instead of making the iTunes window the optimal size (like every other Mac application), it shrinks iTunes to a "mini-player."  This has been bothering me for a while.  The solution?  Option + Click on the Zoom button!  I guess we learn something new every day (no matter how insignificant).

 

Media Today: A Time for Experimentation

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 I just read a fantastic article for my Information Technologies class by Clay Shirky titled "Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable."  Shirky articulates well the old ideology the industry is facing and our extraordinary opportunities for new models for information.  I found most interesting Shirky's proclamation that "[t]he importance of any given experiment isn’t apparent at the moment it appears; big changes stall, small changes spread".  The articles indicates that as media professionals and designers we have great opportunity to create incremental changes to the user experience.  Yes, most of our experiments will probably fail, but let's be glad the digital age is very forgiving to failure.  While everyone out there is trying to discover the "next big revolution," Shirky is saying that those making the small changes will leave a lasting impression on the way we think about journalism.

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Last Updated on Thursday, 02 April 2009 12:50
 


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