10 Cents Each Music Streaming on iPhones – Apple has confirmed that it has acquired a Silicon Valley online music retailer, Lala.com, which promotes a faster song-streaming application they tout as “the end of the MP3.” Their application, when released by Apple, will allow iPhone users to stream songs from a digital locker for an unlimited time for only 10 cents each.
Experts Urge Checking Return Policies on Christmas Gifts – Consumer experts in Consumer Reports magazine recommend shoppers seek a good return policy before they buy at any store, actual or online. Avoid policies that won’t give a full refund, or only give the customer a small window of time to return anything. Others have large restocking or return fees, which can be up to 25% of the item’s cost, and with online there is a shipping charge for returns. Electronics purchases are especially targeted because some TVs, laptops and camcorders cannot be returned at all. Some of the best stores listed for return policies were Target, Kohl’s and K-Mart.
CDs Still Sell Well – As our readers clearly know. However, if you attended a digital music conference, you might think that the last CD had been bought back in 2005. On this week’s “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” on NPR one of the panelists mentioned seniors as being the sort of group that doesn’t know how to download digital files (and therefore buys CDs & DVDs). One of the older panelists said “What do you mean, we don’t know how to download? What’s downloading?” There are plenty of people out there still paying money for physical optical media. Sure, music sales in the U.S. were down 13% for 2009 so far, but that’s primarily the pop area, with better stats surely being kept by the classical and jazz genres. And Amazon has received more pre-orders for some new pop hit CD (SuBo) than for any other CD in their history. Yes, CDs are declining, but they’re going to be around for a very long time because they are dependable, convenient and ubiquitous. The various digital formats aren’t, and that’s just referring to ordinary data-reduced two-channel MP3-type files. If you want to download hi-res 96K, 176K or 192K multichannel files or true HD videos, you need to be a computer geek or have an amazing amount of patience. We few hi-res multichannel audiophile mavens would like to see SACDs, 96K/24bit DVD-Rs and vinyl stick around forever, but we’re such a small niche the music industry doesn’t care about us.
Avoiding Traffic Jams on Home Wireless Networks – In addition to the expected uses of Internet browsing and email, many homes now stream music and videos, play games online, and perhaps even use the Voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP). Wireless routers maximize the rate at which they transfer data, trying to move files as fast as possible. They don’t normally worry about data packets being dropped and re-sent later, since you’re not accessing the files until they are all downloaded. However, when you’re streaming music or video or talking on the phone, you can’t have dropouts, stuttering, pixilation, lost sync between image and sound, etc. What you need to do is adjust the “quality of service” (QoS) settings in your router to prioritize streaming files over data-file traffic such as text documents, photos, etc. If you haven’t gone into your router before, this may be a bit of a challenge. See the complete instructions on home networking at Computerworld. And while you’re adjusting your router, if you haven’t given your home network a password as yet, this is the perfect time to do so.
