For at least the last five years, whenever my father-in-law and I start talking about computers and-or music, he always comes around to a statement something like this: why isn’t there a service where I can pick any song I want and have them make a CD for me? If …

Important conceptual breakthrough – Long Beach, CA offers a free public high-speed wireless Internet network: Web surfers in the cafes along the four blocks of the city’s Pine Avenue thoroughfare, within walking distance of the local convention center, can now log on free to a wireless WiFi network set up …

Fortune looks at legality of TV show swapping: TiVo is a leading brand of personal video recorder (PVR) that saves shows to hard drives instead of cassettes. (Ironically, TiVo counts several of the plaintiffs in the SONICblue suit, like NBC and CBS, among its investors.) Consumers love TiVos for the …

The problem with the homeless is the problem with social welfare policies in general: we want to provide for the individual, legitimately needy, but we don’t want to encourage dependence upon such help, to foster a “culture of dependence.” Santa Monica is a nice, upscale, generally liberal beach city just …

Is there any substance that elicits a more complex set of social consequences and reactions than alcohol? It is almost equally praised and vilified, promoted and banned, embraced and rejected. I personally was a drunk for most of my 20s, quit drinking entirely for almost 10 years, then gradually, cautiously, …

If you haven’t heard of Knoxville’s Jag Star yet, then soon you will. Their song “Mouth,” written by singer Sarah Lewis, won the USA Songwriting Competition Overall Grand Prize and Pop categories. The bouncy new wavish ditty reminds me of a spunky Go-Go’s workout and bodes well of the band’s …

PBS’ Media Matters show is featuring blogs in the episode debuting January 16, with two of our very own Blogcritics, Glenn Reynolds and Oliver Willis, securing heavy face time. Check out the cool video trailer for the show here, and BOW DOWN BEFORE THE ASSEMBLED MIGHT OF G AND O! …

James McReynolds dies of cancer at 75: Backed by their band, “The Virginia Boys,” their first single “The Flame of Love,” backed by “Gosh I Miss You All the Time,” spent weeks on the national charts. Other songs regarded as Jim & Jesse classics are “Cotton Mill Man,” “Diesel on …

Oscar-winning cameraman Hall succumbs to cancer at 76: the Oscar-winning cinematographer[‘s] … bold color experiments enriched such films as “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “American Beauty” and 2002’s “Road to Perdition”… …An expert in the use of light, Hall filmed nearly three dozen movies in a career that stretched …

Image is everything in Hollywood, and one’s mate is among one’s most important accessories. Stars would never be as coldly calculating as this NY Post column suggests, would they? MICHAEL Douglas did it. So did Heidi Klum and J.Lo. We’re talking, of course, about romantic upgrades, a bona fide celebrity …