Blog Archive for April 2007
Apple and EMI Announced Change In The Music Industry
On Monday, Apple and EMI Music announced that EMI will be taking DRM off of their music on iTunes. The DRM-free singles will cost $1.29 instead of $0.99, but besides being DRM-free, they will also be twice the audio quality. Also, if you purchase the whole album, it is the same price and is the higher-quality, DRM-free tracks. They announced that this would be going live in May. Apple's Steve Jobs says that he expects that more labels will jump on the bandwagon and that by the end of the year, more than 50% of the music in iTunes will be higher-quality and DRM-free.
So is this good? Heck yes. Steve Job's open letter really paid off. People will like it because it has no DRM and/or is better quality. I like both and will be more inclined to buy off iTunes now. However, I still think CDs are a bit nicer and I like the album artwork and such.
Adobe Apollo: Install Flash Applications on Your Desktop
I recently heard about Adobe Apollo, a new system developed by the new Adobe/Macromedia. In a video demonstration, they showed an eBay application using Apollo technology. With Apollo, eBay was able to make a downloadable and installable application that will work on Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux. You can browse the eBay site, post items to sell, etc. The application still functions if you're offline and will post your for sale items when you get back online.
This could have some big potential. It sounds like Google could easily write a Gmail application in Apollo that uses most of the existing Gmail code and allows you to browse or write offline. Plus, if there isn't already, there will be a cooler, nicer interface to browse YouTube videos as well. And for those of us who are web developers, it could be easier to use this technology to make a website work right off a CD. I guess we'll find out.