It’s very easy to look at large corporations as impersonal monoliths, but often the business they transact is very personal. Take the relationship between AOL’s Steve Case and Bertelsmann’s Thomas Middelhoff: Mr. Case, 44, who formally departs next month as the company’s chairman, still communicates often by e-mail and instant …

Understanding Napster is essential to a grasp of how we got where we are now with P2P, the hysterical flapping of the music industry, and the various possible entertainment-delivery futures. We ran an excerpt from Joseph Menn’s All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning’s Napster from the …

The LA Times has a nice history of the commercial “mix tape” (now on CD) and its role in promoting new hip-hop talent: New York — On clear weekends here, a boisterous bazaar sets up along the sidewalks that bracket Broadway and Canal Street, and anyone in the market for …

Man, there’s a lot of great music out there – it drives me insane when people say “they just don’t make ’em like they used to.” In fact they do make ’em like they used to: right now artists are working successfully in virtually all styles and substyles and combinations …

The tragic sacking of Iraqi national treasures (by its own people) notwithstanding, our military has proved itself once again to be almost unbelievably robust, efficient AND ethical in its handling of the three week war in Iraq. The question now is no longer can our military live up to our …

There's Patriot Act 1, which I was willing to live with until Justice refused to reveal what actions have been taken under it, and now they want to make its provisions permanent. There's the dreaded Patriot Act 2 in the works, and now Justice has sided with the RIAA in the Verizon case. Ashcroft seems to be engaged in a War on Civil Liberties.

Remember the old Sergio Valente jeans jingle? “Oh oh, Ser-gi-oh-oh.” I think Audio-Oh should adapt the jingle to their own uses: “Oh oh, Au-di-oh-oh,” and people who are using it can discreetly signal to their fellow stimulatees, like an auditory wink. I also had a hard time figuring out which …

We appreciate all of the passionate feeback regarding the new design very much – it’s very gratifying to see how much people care. Besides a steady stream of suggestions since the site went that we move to a horizontal format, the immediate catalyst for the switch was the addition of …

We all owe a huge debt of thanks to Phillip Winn for redesigning tbomedia.co.uk. We have moved to a horizontal format with jump links to the various sections from the top for easier reading, which many of you have asked for. The new design also loads much more quickly. We …

Reviews MICHIKO KAKUTANI in the NY Times: Mr. Ferguson pointedly adds, however, that it is the United States, not Britain, that is “capable of playing an imperial role” in the world today. He notes that America’s own history – freeing itself from the British Empire – has made it wary …