Hard News by Russell Brown

LOLCODE looks cute, but I still think Lingua::Romana::Perligata is cuter.

Hello World is:

scribe egresso dictum sic Hello World cis.

It warms the cockles me heart that the number two song in Aotearoa is now "Buy You A Drank (Shawty Snappin')" by T-Pain featuring Yung Joc.

The people who got digital sales included in the top 40 need to be bawt a drank.

It warms the cockles me heart that the number two song in Aotearoa is now "Buy You A Drank (Shawty Snappin')" by T-Pain featuring Yung Joc.

The people who got digital sales included in the top 40 need to be bawt a drank.

Yes, I think you could certainly say that couldn't have reached that spot on the old chart, with its 50% airplay component.

RB, you might like this guy, specifically second article down, but generally also.

According to appleinsider.com the new YouTube content gets run through Apple somehow first. So it won't all be there automatically. Just "thousands" of clips initially with the rest coming later.

Apparently the YouTube clips will be delivered in H264 and not flash video which is fantastic news - this could explain the need to run it through Apple. Hopefully though this could be the beginning of some improvement on YouTubes videos.

As for the TV Russell - I finally upgraded 3 months ago - you'll love having movies look right and, backed up with XBMC, those TV shows we're not all downloading look amazingly better than the locally broadcast ones using modern compression.
One bad side of this widescreen revolution - watching 4:3 TV hurts.

Just a point, unless it's been changed, which it may have under the new rules, gold is 5000 for a single and 7500 for any album

The shipping certification thing....there was a story (I think it was in Frederic Dannen's Hitmen) about the Bee Gee's Sgt Pepper shipping Platinum sale-or-return, and being certified thus, in the US and returning double platinum, as there were so many pirated copies in the marketplace

I love the idea of direct YouTube, bestofyoutube is already my most watched video blog on the appletv.
BUT, the appletv chews a 20GB bandwidth allocation with consumate ease, 40GB would be closer to the minimum you need :) ( I download the HD movie trailers to & convert with QT Pro so they work on the appletv ).
I was actually really surprised when I got the appletv how much I use it for watching video blogs, it was certainly not one of my motivations for getting it.

For the feature may I suggest OE stories. I'm sure there are some great tales to be told.

Or if you want to be topical - dodgy real estate agents (or landsharks in Cosgrove speak)

AppleTV... bah humbug. An earlier article I saw on appletv (and I haven't kept up to date, so this could be wrong) said that it couldn't play .avi's, iso's, .vobs, .rm or anything actually useful. If thats still the case then this is second rate technology with "nice" packaging for the masses. Sounds a bit like an ipod really... (has any one actually had an ipod that hasn't broken within 12 months?)

(has any one actually had an ipod that hasn't broken within 12 months?)

Yep, first-gen ipod nano. Works like a charm despite several instances of being dropped, getting lost, being left in the car, etc. Two previous flash players did not survive similar treatment, sadly.

I have no interest in appletv for now. Maybe when the tech has matured some..

Oh lord I'm a sad nerd, but a) my 3rd gen iPod is just fine and b) these days I just use TCPMP on my Treo instead.

It was hacked pretty solidly and theres cash incentives to make it even easier open up too. Once its opened up, its quite easy to add the normal Quicktime codecs and have all the necessary filetype support.

I think I would by one right away if some form of XBMC is ported to self boot or run seemlessly in a linux build (something that has just started to happen). For now an XBOX1, softmodded with XBMC is by far the best Media centre experience that even you parents could use.

For my own curiosity if nothing else... can someone clarify - have they now changed it so that:

charts = sales over the counter + digital sales OR
charts = wholesales [still - grrrr] + digital sales...

Having once worked in a music store for three years not too long ago, it was somewhat farcical when you saw an album/single in the, what I would refer to as the hype-charts because of high [whole]sales only to gather dust on the bargain table eg: almost-any-country-ending-in-idol winner - especially NZ, nearly any of the 'collection-of-hits' compilations that were released (excepting perhaps the Now series)... oh and anything by the Feelers [sorry but...]

It would be nice to be able to look at a chart - of any musical type really - and know that the song at the top IS the most popular song in the country. Instead it meant that:
a) that record company has an excellent sales rep - some of them are good bastards.
b) there's a new guy doing the buying for a music store. or
c) people are buying a little too much into someone else being called 'The Greatest/Best/Biggest/Whateverest Band In The World' eg: Coldplay - come on, it was only their third album and it sure it wasn't bad but seriously?!

(has any one actually had an ipod that hasn't broken within 12 months?)

I think it's a problem of perception - people still don't understand that they can't treat their iPod like their old walkman or discman - they need to treat it like their laptop.

And I think the little iPod nano's are awesome.

Adrian,
the charts have always been, from a sales perspective (ie excluding the radio element on the singles) supposedly about counter sales. The only thing that the wholesale sell in defined was it's certification (ie Gold or platinum) which was based on ship (and the "platinum" thing thus bore no relationship to the real sales).

That said, having a huge overstock on a turkey record has long been a way to guarantee a retailer will ensure it charts well. It used to be said that only the top 5 albums bore any relationship to what was selling, the balance was based on retail whims and record company pressure. It has improved somewhat these days, but with current sales I think somebody mentioning the record in the pub is enough to get it into the 40s.

I've had the same ipod (g4) since August 04 without any issues whatsoever. However I actually purchased one (g3) originally back in Jan 04 which fully crashed and I had to get it serviced by Magnum Mac (read replaced).

Oh, has anyone bothered to check how much better the UK Itunes store is that NZ itunes? I assume it is better since its been around longer and services a bigger market, but is it worth bothering about?

For the feature may I suggest OE stories. I'm sure there are some great tales to be told.

Or how about a twist on this - coming home stories.

I mean, most people have a story of some wild and crazy adventure that happened in foreign lands, but what about what it feels like to return to New Zealand.

Whether it's after a weekend in Melbourne or 10 years in the UK, New Zealand always feels different when you step off the plane (or boat?).