A positive early review of Musicmatch’s new online music store, from Paul Thurrott of WinInfo Update. “Musicmatch Downloads also has some unique advantages over competing services, such as higher-quality downloadable songs,” he says. Musicmatch Downloads currently offers more than 200,000 songs for download, and the company says that more than 500,000 songs will be available by… Read More »
A few folk have written in to my column asking how they can fight back at spammers. Here’s one tale that offers hope. Wired reports the saga of graphic artist Andy Markley who found himself the victim of a major spammer who sent thousands of spam messages carefully crafted to appear as if they had… Read More »
More on the health effects of handphones, this time for 3G: Reuters quotes a Dutch government study that found users exposed to base station signals “felt tingling sensations, got headaches and felt nauseous”. There was no negative impact from signals for current — i.e. GSM — mobile networks. The kicker: cognitive functions such as… Read More »
Pointed out by my old friend Robin Lubbock, here’s an excellent essay by Dan Gillmor on the self-righting Internet community, where one bad turn is usually overwritten by several good ones. He makes some sharp comments on the VeriSign ‘domain-stealing’ controversy, which I haven’t touched on in this blog. The bottom line: there are some… Read More »
Riding on the success of Apple’s iTunes, Musicmatch has announced its own digital song-selling business, according to CNET. The service has access to songs from five major labels and more than 30 independents, with pricing set at 99 cents per song and $9.99 for most albums. Customers can play tracks on up to… Read More »