Excerpt from article by Warren Cohen at Rolling Stone…..

Wal-mart wants every CD you buy to cost less than ten bucks. And the nation’s largest retailer — which moved a quarter of a trillion dollars’ worth of goods last year — usually gets its way. Suppliers who don’t accede to Wal-Mart’s “everyday low price” mantra often find their products bounced from the chain’s stores, excluded from being sold to the 138 million people who shop at a Wal-Mart store every week.

In the past decade, Wal-Mart has quietly emerged as the nation’s biggest record store. Wal-Mart now sells an estimated one out of every five major-label albums. It has so much power, industry insiders say, that what it chooses to stock can basically determine what becomes a hit. “If you don’t have a Wal-Mart account, you probably won’t have a major pop artist,” says one label executive.

Along with other giant retailers such as Best Buy and Target, Wal-Mart willingly loses money selling CDs for less than $10 (they buy most hit CDs from distributors for around $12). These companies use bargain CDs to lure consumers to the store, hoping they might also grab a boombox or a DVD player while checking out the music deals.

Less-expensive CDs are something consumers have been demanding for years. But here’s the hitch: Wal-Mart is tired of losing money on cheap CDs. It wants to keep selling them for less than $10 — $9.72, to be exact — but it wants the record industry to lower the prices at which it purchases them. Last winter, Wal-Mart asked the industry to supply it with choice albums — from new releases from alternative rockers the Killers to perennial classics such as Beatles 1 — at favorable prices. According to music-industry sources, Wal-Mart executives hinted that they could reduce Wal-Mart’s CD stock and replace it with more lucrative DVDs and video games.

“This wasn’t framed as a gentle negotiation,” says one label rep. “It’s a line in the sand — you don’t do this, then the threat is this.” (Wal-Mart denies these claims.) As a result, all of the major labels agreed to supply some popular albums to Wal-Mart’s $9.72 program. “We’re in such a competitive world, and you can’t reach consumers if you’re not in Wal-Mart,” admits another label executive.

This breakdown of the cost of a typical major-label release by the independent market-research firm Almighty Institute of Music Retail shows where the money goes for a new album with a list price of $15.99.

$0.17 Musicians’ unions
$0.80 Packaging/manufacturing
$0.82 Publishing royalties
$0.80 Retail profit
$0.90 Distribution
$1.60 Artists’ royalties
$1.70 Label profit
$2.40 Marketing/promotion
$2.91 Label overhead
$3.89 Retail overhead

From the supertouch blog…. 

Right now the enigma that is known only as SKULLPHONE is easily Clear Channel Communications‘ greatest enemy in SoCal since he hijacked 10 of the advertising giant’s most prominent digital billboards around LA in Hollywood, Westwood, and the art hotspot of Culver City. Hacking into the billboard’s computer network today, our boy positioned his trademark skullphone imagery in between the array of flashing movie, TV, and auto company ads that make up the normal paid advertising barrage on the giant illuminated monitors.

From Mecury News…

A  mystery surrounds satellite broadcaster Dish Network Corp.’s surprise, $712 million winning bid in the government’s recent auction for radio spectrum reclaimed from television stations.

Will Dish start a mobile video service? Will it try to offer interactive services to better compete with cable companies? Or will it simply wing it?

The company is mum. It is barred from talking about its plans until the close of business on April 3, which is the deadline for down payments on the auction winnings. The winners in the auction were announced last week.

Dish won the old UHF channel 56 in the whole country, except for New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Boston. That lets Dish cover three-quarters of the U.S. population, making the $712 million price tag a bargain compared with the combined $16 billion that Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility is paying for larger chunks of the airwaves.

The wireless carriers will use that spectrum to expand broadband services for cell phones, laptop cards and other gadgets, but Dish’s spectrum is likely too narrow to support a competing service, analysts say.

So what is Dish thinking?

From Mercury News:

The Justice Department on Monday approved Sirius Satellite Radio Inc.’s proposed $5 billion buyout of rival XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc., saying the deal was unlikely to hurt competition or consumers.

The transaction was approved without conditions, despite opposition from consumer groups and an intense lobbying campaign by the land-based radio industry.

The combination still requires approval from the Federal Communications Commission, which prohibited a merger when it first granted satellite radio operating licenses in 1997.

The Justice Department, in a statement explaining its decision, said the combination of the companies won’t hurt competition because the companies are not competing today. Customers must buy equipment that is exclusive to either XM or Sirius, and subscribers rarely switch providers.

“People just don’t do that,” Assistant Attorney General Thomas Barnett said in a conference call with reporters.

The government also appeared to endorse a central argument the companies used in pushing for their merger: that ample competition is provided by other forms of audio entertainment, including “high-definition” radio, Internet-based radio stations and even devices like Apple Inc.’s iPod.

“The likely evolution of technology in the future, including the expected introduction in the next several years of mobile broadband Internet devices, made it even more unlikely that the transaction would harm consumers in the longer term,” the Justice Department said.

The buyout received shareholder approval in November. The companies said the merger will save hundreds of millions of dollars in operating costs - savings that will ultimately benefit their customers. The Justice Department also noted that argument in its approval.

The FCC had no comment on the decision Monday. In the past, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has said any approval faced a “high hurdle.”

Martin said last week that agency staff was “drafting various options” in preparation for a final recommendation. The five-member commission could vote against the deal, approve it or approve it with conditions. The agency could require the companies to freeze prices or make part of their satellite spectrum available for public-interest obligations.

Both XM and Sirius declined to comment on the decision on Monday.

From InfoWorld web site :

Microsoft will end OEM and shrink-wrapped sales of Windows XP on June 30, 2008, forcing users to shift to Vista. (System builders, meaning those who do white-box PCs, can sell XP through December 31.) Don’t let that happen!

Millions of us have grown comfortable with XP and don’t see a need to change to Vista. It’s like having a comfortable apartment that you’ve enjoyed coming home to for years, only to get an eviction notice. The thought of moving to a new place — even with the stainless steel appliances, granite countertops, and maple cabinets (or is cherry in this year?) — just doesn’t sit right. Maybe it’ll be more modern, but it will also cost more and likely not be as good a fit. And you don’t have any other reason to move.

That’s exactly the conclusion people have come to with Vista. For most of us, there’s really no reason to move to it — yet we don’t have a choice. When that strong desire to stick with XP became obvious in spring 2007, major computer makers such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard quietly reintroduced new XP-based systems (but just to business customers, so as not to offend Microsoft). Come June 30, however, even that option goes away.

So what to do? Let Microsoft decide where your personal and enterprise software “lives”? Or send a loud and clear message that you don’t want to move?

We’re going for the loud-and-clear option. Join us, and tell Microsoft that you want to keep XP available indefinitely. Not for another six months or a year but indefinitely.

And ask your friends and colleagues to join in, too. Just point them to SaveXP.com for a quick link to this page. And if you’d like to publish our countdown animation on your Web site to help promote this petition, e-mail Executive Editor Galen Gruman for the code snippet.

Don’t think Microsoft will listen? Consider this: Although Microsoft denies that anything is wrong with Vista or that most people don’t want it, the company has already postponed XP’s demise by six months. That’s a start, but it’s not good enough.

Microsoft doesn’t have to admit failure; it can just say it will keep XP available indefinitely due to customer demand. It can take that opportunity to try again with a better Vista, or just move on to the next version that maybe this time we’ll all actually want.

There is a precedent for that, too: In many respects, Vista is like the Windows Millennium Edition that was meant to replace Windows 98 in 2000 but caused more trouble than it was worth. At that time, Windows 2000 was promising but didn’t support a lot of hardware, so users were stuck between two bad choices. Without admitting Millennium’s failure, Microsoft quietly put Windows 98 back on the market until the fixed version of Windows 2000 (SP1) was available. Microsoft needs to do something like that again today.

Make your voice heard to Microsoft. Sign our petition to save XP today. We will present it to Microsoft.

Learn more about why you should want Windows XP to be “saved”.  Vist InfoWorld’s Wweb Page called “Save Windows XP”.

From PC Magazine & Steve Watts………

The latest PSP firmware update enhanced the music functionality of the portable device, and an upcoming PlayStation 3 firmware update plans to do the same for movies.

Scheduled for later this month, the update will include Blu-ray Disc Profile 2.0, which enables the hi-def format to take advantage of extra downloadable videos, ringtones, and games.

The update will also allow photo and music playlists from the PlayStation 3 to be copied onto the PlayStation Portable, along with other new features that include resuming Blu-ray disc play even if the disc was removed, PSP remote play interfacing with music, an enhanced internet browser, noise reduction, and a bump in the accepted size for DivX and WMV formats.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will help the new firmware update with the release of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and The 6th Day, both with extra downloadable content. No word on pricing for the extra content, but ideally “free” is always a nice answer.

Excerpt from article by By Marc Saltzman, USA TODAY

The high-definition-video war may be over now that Toshiba has conceded defeat for its ailing HD DVD format, but those interested in buying a high-def Blu-ray player still might want to wait for new features coming in the fall.

Sure, existing Blu-ray machines can play the nearly 500 Blu-ray discs available. They can deliver gorgeous, top-of-the-line 1080p resolution on compatible high-def televisions. But the next crop of Blu-ray players will be compliant with the upcoming Profile 2.0 standard, which adds Internet connectivity to the machines via a feature called BD-Live.

“Imagine being able to download high-definition trailers to current theatrical releases right to your TV, or selecting additional language tracks or other online bonus materials,” says Josh Martin, a senior analyst at consulting firm Yankee Group.

Depending on the disc, BD-Live will also let people chat in real time during films, type in their mobile phone numbers for free movie-related ring tones, play online multiplayer games or upload custom-made audio commentary.

Sony (SNE) has announced two upcoming Blu-ray machines with Profile 2.0 support: the BDP-S350, available this summer for $399, which can be updated to the latest profile over the Internet when it’s available; and the BDP-S550 ($499), which will ship with Profile 2.0 in the fall.

“Technology always evolves, and new features are added to platforms continually, whether it’s a Blu-ray machine or other consumer electronics products,” says Chris Fawcett, vice president of home video at Sony Electronics.

The new Sony players will include extras such as built-in or expandable memory and multiple audio technologies, including Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus, DTS-HD High Resolution Audio or DTS-HD Master Audio decoding, depending on the model.

The Sony PlayStation 3 ($399) video game system, which also has Blu-ray playback functionality, offers a future-proof solution. Sony says the Internet-connected console can download an update for the Profile 2.0 standard.

For now, the most up-to-date Blu-ray players offer picture-in-picture functionality, also known as BonusView. That allows simultaneous video and audio streams so that you could, for instance, have a small window with video commentary while watching the feature film. Unlike regular DVD players, Blu-ray machines also let viewers turn on some bonus features, such as director commentary, with one button on the remote, as opposed to leaving the film to visit the disc’s main menu.

From TODD BISHOP at The Seattle Post-Intelligencer:  

Like a carmaker recommending a major tuneup, Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday announced the public availability of Windows Vista’s first “service pack” — a big bundle of fixes for the year-old operating system.

The free Service Pack 1 is designed to address issues including the performance and reliability problems that have hampered Windows Vista since its release. It also collects in one package the incremental Windows Vista updates that Microsoft has delivered over the past year.

But in many cases, it will still be awhile before the service pack is actually installed and running on Vista machines. Here are answers to some common questions about the process.

How does a Windows Vista user get the service pack? As of now, the company says Windows Vista SP1 can be retrieved and downloaded manually through the Windows Update feature inside the operating system (in the “All Programs” listing under the start menu) or by using the Microsoft Download Center site, at microsoft.com/downloads.

Windows Vista users who aren’t itching to download the service pack manually can make sure the automatic update option is turned on in Windows Update. The company says the service pack will start being distributed automatically to those users in mid-April, downloading in the background when the PC is online. After SP1 is downloaded in that way, Microsoft says, users will be prompted to install it.

How big is the file? Because of some technological fine-tuning, the download is smaller through Windows Update — 65 megabytes, compared with about 435 megabytes through the download center. Microsoft says Windows Update will also detect whether a computer has any device drivers that have been known to have problems after Service Pack 1 is installed.

Download time will depend on connection speed. For the full file through the download center, Microsoft estimates a download time of more than 1 hour with a fast cable or DSL modem.