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Music releases move from Monday to Friday in the UK
The weekend is often the perfect time to listen to new music. Maybe you're getting ready for a night on the town, or sitting in the garden soaking up some rare summer sunshine. Whatever your plans, wouldn't it make the most sense if new music was released on Friday? Well, until today most albums and singles were released on Monday in the UK. Which was always a little confusing, given the date fluctuated depending on where you were in the world. Australia? Friday. The US? Tuesday. Thankfully, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has pulled the record labels, artists and retailers together to settle on a new, global release date: Friday. So now, when the next big album drops, there shouldn't be a scenario where it's available in the US version of iTunes and not the UK. To coincide with the shift, the UK is also moving its official charts (including the popular charts show on BBC Radio 1) to Friday, rather than Sunday. So say hello to "New Music Fridays" and wave goodbye to "Not Very Convenient Music Mondays."
Twine uses your interests to match you with singles
Twine (free) launched today, and it offers a novel approach to the age old problem of meeting other singles. While niche sites like Cupidtino come and go, your Facebook profile, check-ins and activity provide a map of your interests. Twine looks at those interests, the people around you (more or less), and suggests a "twine" for you to try and connect. You then chat semi-anonymously, and if you hit it off you can later reveal your profile pic and personal info. Design Twine is absolutely lovely to look at. There's a minimum of buttons, subtle design elements are lovingly crafted and the typography and textures are elegant. The app oozes class, which is good for a singles app. Interaction is very intuitive, which is good because Twine, like any social app, is going to need as many users as possible. Users who are confused will be deleting the app quickly. A small cue indicates you are still hidden from the other chat participant by sliding a visor across the eyes. A lightbulb to the left of your text input area makes suggestions on what to say, with a logical plus sign to the right to add that to the text area (you an still edit the text afterward). Twine allows you to move between the main screen, your twines (and chats) and your profile by swiping left and right, somewhat like Facebook's app. Functionality Twine tries to keep the male to female ratio even, so it's possible if you are a guy you'll have to wait to get to use it. So far the line isn't long -- I had only one person in front of me. There's another attempt to rate limit creeps by Twine after you find "twines" (connections with others). You can only "find a twine" so many times every so many hours. I looked up about four people before I "ran out of juice" and had to wait six hours to try again. This is an interesting way to ensure people are only connecting to good matches, I suppose. If you are used to casting a wide net, however, you'll be limited by design. Speaking of a wide net, I would note that as Twine is young, the user base isn't very high yet. There's no telling what the future will bring, but the more users generally the better matches will appear for you. Once you've found a "twine" you can start chatting. Chat is a very Messages-like experience (in a good way), and Twine offers a neat shortcut if you're stumped on conversation starters. By pulling your Facebook data, it suggests things like "How often do you go to [place you've checked into]"? Based on my testing it was trying to match up similarities. Both I and my girlfriend like Weird Al, and Twine suggested the text "What is your favorite Weird Al song?" Being data, it can sometimes be... vague. One question was whether she had seen the movie The Well, when it is in fact a local bar we've both been to. Luckily the text pastes in already selected so you can edit it before you send. I'm not sure if it encourages laziness, but it certainly is a quick way to find common interests. Conclusion If Twine can keep adding users I think it will become a fun way for people to meet. The only drawback I see is, aside from "making connections" there's no other utility. I've met people on Flickr who weren't just into photos, but had a cool picture of something they did. Likewise, I've made friends on Facebook based on groups that do something. While dating sites are general purpose, being social is often built around personal choices of activity. Then again, what you've done and what you're into -- insofar as it shows up on Facebook -- is how Twine tries to connect you to others. I have to hand it to the team at Twine for connecting those dots, but I am curious to see if the app is used extensively enough for those connections to become real. Pros: Matches according to interests, check-ins via Facebook Great design You can stay relatively private Cons: Age gate a little iffy (someone's profile said 16 when the agreement is for 17 and up) Given small population, "local" is a wide net sometimes (had someone in DC suggested for someone in TN) Ratio balancing means one female per male, so guys may have to wait or invite a female via Facebook
iTunes offers first Beatles ringtones
Apple started selling albums from The Beatles last year and now the company has released a set of ringtones taken from the band's most popular albums. The selections span a wide range of titles including early titles like A Hard Day's Night and later tracks like the 1970 chart-topper Let It Be. You can buy the ringtones from the iTunes app using your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. Each ringtone is US$1.29 and can be found in the Settings > Sounds > Ringtone > Buy More Tones. Be careful to click on the link for Ringtones. Also listed, as shown above, is the 1 collection for $12.99 which has 27 songs, not ringtones as I first though, from the band's twelve studio albums and 22 singles. [Via ipodnn]
Kindle Singles available now on Amazon
Hey, kids! Kindle Singles -- Amazon's really, really short books for people with short attentions spans -- have finally gone live. And you know what that means? You can finally get a copy of Mark Greif's Octomom and the Politics of Babies delivered to your e-reader via Amazon Whispernet for the low, low price of $2. Even if you're not keen on hearing some academic sound off on a certain Ms. Nadya Suleman (at least, that's the impression we get from the description) it looks like they have quite a selection of essays, articles, and memoirs on the Singles site. Hit the source link to check 'em out or, if you're still not convinced, peep the PR after the break.
Amazon announces Kindle Singles: really, really short books
It looks like Amazon has finally admitted what we knew all along: most books are too long. And boring. We need more e-publications that reflect our torn jeans, frayed hair, coffee swilling, ca. early-1990s slacker lifestyle. Kindle Singles, as announced by "the man" in an ironic blast of "PR," are described as e-books anywhere from twice the length of a Maximum Rock'n'Roll feature article to a few chapters in a typical book. "Ideas and the words to deliver them should be crafted to their natural length, not to an artificial marketing length that justifies a particular price or a certain format," said Jeff Ament, Vice President, Kindle Content. "With Kindle Singles, we're reaching out to publishers and accomplished writers and we're excited to see what they create." To be considered for Kindle Singles (you know, "sell out"), interested parties should contact digital-publications@amazon.com. PR after the break.
Meet guys at the Apple Store
I believe that a good percentage of our staff here at TUAW is married, female, or both, so being the bachelor that I am, I'll be the one to post the news that Apple Stores are a great place to meet single men, sent to us by reader Naveed (and I do believe this might be the first and hopefully the last time that TUAW has ever linked to Cosmo). Yes, Cosmopolitan ranks the Apple Store as the number one place for women to meet guys (although it is on the same long list as political rallies and steakhouses, so maybe Cosmo has no idea what it's talking about).But hey, the single male bloggers of TUAW can't help but agree that yes, if you're going hunting for us, there's no better place to go than your local Apple retailer. Not only are us male Mac-heads intelligent, green, and playful, but when you single ladies want to know how to share your iTunes media, or hook up your new Time Capsule, we'll be right there with the answer.
Universal, Warner, and EMI to sell music on flash drives
The major record labels' ongoing fixation with physical media continues on, as Universal, EMI, and Warner have each announced plans to sell music preloaded on flash drives. Universal says the move is "aimed at the younger, 12 to 24 year olds, who no longer believe that the CD is as cool as it used to be," but that "people still want to own a physical product." Yeah, too bad that physical product is a DAP. Predictably, the $10 flash drives will cost twice as much as normal CD singles but contain additional content -- just like that ridiculous "ringle" concept we just heard about, only with more plastic and manufacturing involved. There's no word on what format the music will be in or what the DRM will be, but it's not like it really matters, since no one is going to buy these anyway. No word on when we'll see this Stateside, but UK teenagers can expect to be patronized by the record labels sometime in the next few months.[Via Pocket-lint]
Apple to credit song purchases towards full album sales?
Also known as "the feature that should've been there from the start," it sounds like Apple is finally working out deals with labels to allow for the purchase of singles on iTunes to act as credit towards the purchase of the full album from whence they came, at least within a limited time frame. Such a deal has been rumored before, but this time the word is from the New York Times, citing "people involved in the negotiations," which sounds decidedly less sketch. Obviously, there's still much to learn, since we don't know what kind of time period Apple has in mind, and we don't know how many labels it has on board, but we can think of many a DRM slave music consumer that would benefit from this deal -- and don't get us started on season passes.[Via Ars Technica]
Turn Google gadgets into widgets, widgets into apps
Google, like seemingly almost every other web services company on the planet these days, offers a personalized Google homepage that allows you to customize the page with more or less the internet version of widgets. Google calls them gadgets, and you can drag and drop them to create just the page you want.Recently, Google announced they were breaking the chains that bind their gadgets to their homepage, allowing anyone to copy and paste some simple HTML to place any gadget on their own site. But why stop there? Dan from Uneasysilence dropped us a line about Mesa Dynamics, an interesting app company who has created two widget and gadget wrangling apps.First up is Amnesty Generator, a free utility that turns any Google gadget into a Mac OS X Dashboard widget. It sounds like one catch with this process, however, is that any gadget-cum-widget is 100% internet dependent, even if it's something like a standalone game. This makes sense to me though, since the HTML is still calling out somewhere to get whatever makes up the gadget widget.Second on the list from Mesa Dynamics is Amnesty Singles, which unleashes widgets from the Dashboard and turns them into full-blown apps. This utility costs $9.95 and requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 (though it's Universal), and I would imagine the internet dependence still exists for Google gadgets when turned into apps, though I would imagine Mac OS X Dashboard widgets which don't need the internet to begin with will act just fine without being online.So there's your time-waster for the day: gadgets to widgets to apps, oh my!
Music/video combos added to iTunes
Apple has added music/video combo deals to the iTunes music store [iTunes link]. A new page has been set up that lets you buy either the song you're after for $0.99US or its accompanying video for $1.99US (as usual), or you can get both for $2.49US.It's not huge news (I'm still waiting for the update that will bring all the Nike stuff), but it's there.
