Google’s last Android-centric event, Google I/O in the middle of last year, treated us to a pair of delectable demos that may now finally be turning into mobile realities. One was a web client for the Android Market with OTA installations — you just browse to an app you want to install while on your desktop and choose to push it to your Android device — and the other was a cloud-based music backup and streaming service. The latter has since picked up the moniker of Google Music in subsequent rumors, and today both are receiving some speculative support for a launch at tomorrow’s Honeycomb event. Android and Me has an insider source claiming the web-based Android Market is finally ready to roll out, whereas BusinessWeek reports Andy Rubin is heading up Google’s digital music team and also has software ready for release, potentially at some point this month. Given the importance of both new additions, it’s highly logical for Google to at least announce and show them off once more tomorrow. Then we can get back to waiting for the next Android update.
The Beatles “Love” album and the “All Together Now” documentary are digitally debuting exclusively on iTunes worldwide later this month. The album includes special versions of old songs as well as previously unreleased songs while the documentary will have many extras. Both will be priced at $12.99 with the album being available on February 8th and the documentary following soon after. Pre-orders start today.
Press Release:
The Beatles’ Grammy-Winning ‘LOVE’ Album and ‘All Together Now’ Documentary Film to Make Digital Debuts Exclusively on iTunes Worldwide
iTunes Pre-Orders Start Today for Both Titles; Two Previously Unreleased ‘LOVE’ Tracks Offered Exclusively on iTunes
HOLLYWOOD, Calif., Feb. 1, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — The Beatles’ ‘LOVE’ album and ‘All Together Now,’ the feature-length documentary about the making of The Beatles LOVE by Cirque du Soleil®,will make their worldwide digital debuts this month exclusively on the iTunes Store® (www.itunes.com). Both titles are available for pre-order on iTunes starting today in most countries. ‘LOVE’ will be released on iTunes worldwide February 8 and ‘All Together Now’ will follow soon after.
The ‘LOVE’ album (US $12.99) includes exclusive, previously-unreleased ‘LOVE’ versions of “The Fool on the Hill” and “Girl,” and comes as an iTunes LP featuring an art gallery that blends images of the Beatles with colorful photos from the acclaimed stage production. ‘LOVE’ will also be available to purchase and download as individual songs.
The ‘All Together Now’ documentary (US $12.99 HD) will be offered with iTunes Extras including the 84-minute film, three bonus featurettes and a trailer for the ‘LOVE’ stage production, and is also available to rent.
‘LOVE,’ a Cirque du Soleil creation and co-production with The Beatles’ company, Apple Corps Ltd., celebrates the musical legacy of The Beatlesandis presented exclusively at The Mirage in Las Vegas. This joint artistic venture, born from the personal friendship between George Harrison and Guy Laliberte, marks the first time that Apple Corps Ltd. has agreed to a major theatrical partnership. Since opening to rave reviews on June 30, 2006, ‘LOVE’ has played to more than four million audience members.
To create the lush soundscape for ‘LOVE,’ producers Sir George Martin and Giles Martin worked with the entire archive of Beatles master recordings at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios. This unique approach to assembling the music for a live show was rapturously received by the critics and Beatles fans and resulted in the groundbreaking album The Beatles ‘LOVE’ garnering two GRAMMY Awards®, in the categories of Compilation Soundtrack Album for Motion Picture, Television or other Visual Medium and Surround Sound Album.
The GRAMMY®-winning ‘All Together Now’ documentary, directed by Adrian Wills, and its bonus features detail the fascinating story behind the unique partnership between The Beatles and Cirque du Soleil that resulted in the creation and launch of ‘LOVE.’
On November 16, 2010, The Beatles’ 13 legendary remastered studio albums, the two-volume ‘Past Masters’ compilation, and the classic ’1962-1966′ (‘Red’) and ’1967-1970′ (‘Blue’) collections were released on iTunes® worldwide as albums or individual songs. On the same date, a special digital ‘Beatles Box Set’ was released on iTunes featuring the “Live at the Washington Coliseum, 1964″ concert film, a worldwide iTunes exclusive which captures The Beatles’ very first U.S. concert. The exclusive box set features all of the remastered audio and visual elements included in The Beatles’ stereo box set, released on CD in 2009 and GRAMMY®-nominated this year in the Historical Album category.
The Beatles have now sold more than five million songs and one million albums on iTunes worldwide.
One of my favorite cities in the US is New Orleans. I was originally introduced to this city when I had to go there on business some 20 years ago and fell in love with its people, food and culture. I take two weeks each year and designate them as eating holidays and, while one week may take place in Asia or Europe, the other week almost exclusively is in New Orleans. This city is known for its wonderful food scene with great dishes like Oyster Po Boys, red beans and rice, gumbo, jambalaya and the mufaletta and my favorite, a N’awlins crawfish feed.
It is also the home of Paul Prudhomme, who put Cajun cooking on the map after he left New Orelans most famous restaurant, Commanders Palace. His replacement, Emeril Lagasse has gone on to become one of the most famous chefs in America thanks to the Food Network, and his great restaurants in New Orleans have helped refine that region’s cuisine.
But what New Orleans is most known for is the Birth of Jazz. As a kid I was always drawn to the TV when Louis Armstrong was playing or when I heard Billy Holiday or Mahalia Jackson singing. But I did not really get a serious appreciation of the history of Jazz and the contribution Armstrong and a legion of early Jazz greats like Scott Joplin, Sidney Bechet, Fats Waller, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Count Basie, Miles Davis and a multitude of others have had on every type of music from the blues to modern day rock and even rap.
That appreciation came when I watched Ken Burns’ PBS special on Jazz and then bought the DVD collection of this special for myself to go back to and watch on my own time. This is a wonderful labor of love that PBS and Burns have given us and anyone interested in music history should watch it sometime in their lifetime.
Now there is a new application for the iPad called the History of Jazz [iTunes link], an Interactive Timeline that takes full advantage of the iPad’s full media capabilities and shows how the iPad and tablets can deliver a completely new way to interact with content. The program is laid out so that there are dates tied to each phase of Jazz’ history starting with Scott Joplin and Buddy Bolden in the 1890’s. In this section you learn that ragtime began as a dance and was the music of the red light districts of America. It highlights these Jazz pioneers and then links you to You Tube videos that either highlight the music of that time, or in the case of later stages where video of these Jazz greats exist, show them actually performing some of their greatest hits. I especially loved watching Louis Armstrong doing “When the Saints Go Marching In” or Fats Waller doing “Your Feet’s Too Big”.
Each timeline segment of Jazz is highlighted by great examples of the musicians and music that defined each period covered. It even has a section on what they call Future Jazz greats and highlights Joshua Redman doing “Jazz Crimes” and a performance of Sherik’s Syncopated Taint Septet’ “ Live @ Easy Street.”
And at $9.99 it is a steal. This is not in any way trying to be a comprehensive history of Jazz. But you do get a wonderful short history of Jazz and some of the iconic music performances helps the history of Jazz come alive and gives people a better appreciation of the impact Jazz has had on the music scene around the world.
If you know anything about will.i.am, a fellow famous for the group of artists he sings with called the Black Eyed Peas, you know he’s explosive. He’s got mass amounts of pop music and colorful directorial zazz up his sleeves, and he’s just been hired on to Intel to be their Director of Creative Innovation. Lots of totally brilliant collaborations and odd action ensues.
This news bit was tweeted by Intel’s official Twitter account, they saying @intel: “Black Eyed Peas will.i.am named Intel Director of Creative Innovation. New#tech #music #visuallifewww.intel.com/newsroom/will.” This info can be corroborated by UK PR Manager for Intel Perveen Akhtar, who also has a Twitter account: @PerveenAkhtar.
Take a peek at this 2010 music video directed by will.i.am to see what all the fuss is about (NSFW if you’re not allowed to use swear words):
As of today, 10 billion apps, thats ten BILLION individual apps have been downloaded from the Apple App Store. The person who fired off the ten billionth download will be receiving a $10,000 USD iTunes Gift Card that can be redeemed for anything in the iTunes store or the App Store including apps, music, audiobooks, television shows, and movies. Supposing the 10 billionth person was a person buying up every app in the world in order to be the magic number last, can you imagine them even having anything left to buy, much less $10,000 worth of digital downloads?
Another bonus the final person might be receiving is either a $1,000 or $5,000 gift card from MacPhun supposing they downloaded either a photo app or specifically the FC Photo Studio app – what are the chances it’s either one of these? We imagine the chances are slim. Good sales tactic then, eh?
And lets talk for a moment about the number 10 billion. That’s huge, especially considering the only comparable number to be coming from the Android Marketplace which, if current projections are right, should be at right around 2,750,800,000. Will the marketplace ever eclipse the market? Currently it appears that another thousand apps are downloaded every 9 seconds in the Android Marketplace while every 3 seconds another 1,000 apps are downloaded in the App Store.
Is this accurate? I’d say sort of. The counter on AndroLib appears to be going at a more random rate than Apple’s did, which I’d guess is closer to the truth, but is also based on an estimate. What do you think – will the Android Marketplace ever overtake the App Store?
Press Release:
Apple’s App Store Downloads Top 10 Billion
CUPERTINO, California—January 22, 2011—Apple® today announced that more than 10 billion apps have been downloaded from its revolutionary App Store? by the more than 160 million iPhone®, iPod touch® and iPad™ users worldwide. The 10 billionth app downloaded, Paper Glider, was purchased by Gail Davis of Orpington, Kent, UK. As the winner of the App Store Countdown to 10 Billion Apps, Gail Davis will receive a $10,000 iTunes® Gift Card.
“With more than 10 billion apps downloaded in just two and a half years—a staggering seven billion apps in the last year alone—the App Store has surpassed our wildest dreams,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The App Store has revolutionized how software is created, distributed, discovered and sold. While others try to copy the App Store, it continues to offer developers and customers the most innovative experience on the planet.”
The revolutionary App Store offers more than 350,000 apps to iPhone, iPod touch and iPad users in 90 countries around the world, with more than 60,000 native iPad apps available. App Store customers can choose from an incredible range of apps in 20 categories, including games, business, news, sports, health, reference and travel.
Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork, and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple is reinventing the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced its magical iPad which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.
It tells of a story of Duke Nukem in the past where he destroyed an invasion of aliens on the planet earth. He died, or at least disappeared without a trace, but now the aliens are back, and of course, there’s more of them, and they’re much more gigantic. All seems hopeless until they begin to kill… the strippers. Duke Nukem, even though he’s been in hiding or dead this whole invasion cannot stand for this, thus, he is reborn in Duke Nukem Forever! All the alien slaughtering and inappropriate nude body touching, hookers, and swearing you remember from the original, and it’s still slated for May 3, 2011, as confirmed by this official trailer.
If you plan on watching this trailer, make sure that not only do you have all the kids and animals out of the room, but that your volume is turned all the way up as well. All your favorite catch phrases are here, the classic first-person shooter gameplay, lots of naked women, and a soundtrack that includes at least one Prodigy song (the song playing here in the trailer is “Invaders Must Die.”) The big payoff joke at the end is the best. Also beware of the urinal.
Whether you knew it as Comes With Music or Ovi Music Unlimited, the sad fact is that pretty soon you won’t know it all — Nokia’s subscription music service is being shut down almost universally, with the exception of a few select markets like China, Brazil and South Africa. Reuters reports that the use of DRM to lock down content to less-than-cutting-edge devices was a major stumbling block in the rollout of what was originally supposed to be a major iTunes competitor. Those who are already signed up will continue to have access to their music libraries indefinitely, but won’t be able to access new tracks once their current subscription expires. From then on, you’ll only have the DRM-free Ovi Music store to keep you warm during those long Finnish nights.
Google’s been teasing cloud-based music features in Android since its I/O conference last year, and the recent leak of a revamped first-party Music app suggests that the plans haven’t evaporated into thin air. Here’s the latest tidbit: GizmoFusion claims that this screen shot comes from a device running Gingerbread, clearly showing “Music” as one of the accounts configured in Android’s settings, which suggests that the system will be pretty deeply-integrated to sync your tracks just as it would your Twitter updates, your Facebook friends, or your calendar entries. Note that we don’t have any new evidence beyond this one shot — and we need to take GizmoFusion‘s word that this is a Gingerbread device — but we’re wondering if maybe this isn’t one of the new features in that Android 2.4 build we’ve been hearing a lot about lately.
Got iTunes? Got a Windows Phone 7 device? Then you’ll probably want to check out the new Remote app in the Marketplace. It promises to make the two sing in perfect harmony by making them talk over a WiFi connection. There’s a basic set of iTunes controls at your WP7 phone’s disposal, including volume, starting /stopping music, and searching by album, artist, and song, and a corresponding piece of desktop software you need to install to make the magic happen. It’s compatible with both Windows (XP and above) and Mac OS (10.5.8 and above), so all you really need now are $1.99 for the mobile app and the overwhelming desire to control your playlists remotely.
As we continue to scout the CES 2011 showroom floor, we came across an eye-catching furniture concept, the Sound Egg. The Sound Egg is fully customizable surround sound chair and comes in many configurations with some sporting connected HD TVs and both HDMI and RCA-out connectivity.
Pricing for the chairs depend on which features you’re looking for. Their basic Sound Egg with 2.1 will feature a 2.1 amplifier, 5 speakers, 1 subwoofer, foam and an uncovered plastic seat and will retail for $1450. Their higher end 5.1 will feature a 5.1 amplifier in place of the 2.1 and will retail for $1850.
When ordering you can customize your color scheme with 11 different colored foam options and 3 shell options. The is currently shipping both the 2.1 and 5.1 systems.
