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Even though we got a lot of mileage out of the first go round of American Idol, I had no intention of watching the show’s return. What’s the point? But 24 comes on at 9 and we turned on Fox early just to make sure we wouldn’t miss anything. The …

This site – like so many others we notice – is disturbing, hilarious, and/or even touching, sometimes all at the same time. It’s “the least coherent encyclopaedia of playground insults on the internet” called The Law of the Playground. Here are two: at least i have a mom, not two …

Reactions to the Rosen MIDEM speech in Wired: Ferrell also raised the privacy issue, albeit in a more personal fashion. “Well, Ms. Rosen, I’ll tell you what: You forward all your e-mail unedited to a public mailing list, scan and post all your private written correspondence to the same list, …

More on the Verizon case from Amy Harmon in the NY Times: “The court’s decision has troubling ramifications for consumers, service providers and the growth of the Internet,” said Sara Deutsch, vice president and associate general counsel for Verizon. “It opens the door for anyone who makes a mere allegation …

A lot of the action in the volatile media and tech sectors takes place at conferences: papers are delivered, speeches are given, debate is engaged, attention is focused. We can’t attend them all, but we can follow them. Art McGee has compiled an excellent calendar of such conferences and confabs …

Blames loss leaders: The company said increasing competition from discount retailers, the rising popularity of CD burning and illegal downloading of music contributed to sagging sales at its 370 stores. The company, which emerged from bankruptcy in 1998, said Tuesday that the move was necessary to streamline its operations, including …

Dawn Olsen doesn’t recognize anyone nominated for the Weblog Awards other than Michele and us, and she questions their selection methods. She proposes a transparent straight voting system and is looking for your help. My view of the situation is that the massive blog community – now somewhere between 500K …

Clay Shirky is looking for someone to come up with a music-filtering system to bypass the label’s hegemony – are we up to the task? Several attempts at such a thing have been launched, but most are languishing, because they are constructed as extensions of the current way of producing …

The RIAA and the music industry are mssing the point - and an opportunity...

Technology not only marches on, but it hums as well – melody recognition sofware will name that tune. Germany’s Fraunhofer Institut, the creators of the MP3 digital audio format, have created “Query By Humming”: on display at this week’s Midem music conference in Cannes that identifies a song by title …