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Apple Music adds global and regional top 100 charts
Apple is adding a new feature to its music streaming service today -- charts of Apple Music's top-streamed songs. Rolling Stone reports that the company now has 116 "top 100" charts, which include one global chart and one for every country in which the service is currently available. They're rolling out to users through a software update today.
UK gets official Top 100 music streaming chart next week, Billboard seen crying in the corner
Used to be, musicians were judged (commercially speaking, of course) by how much radio play they got and how many albums and singles they sold. The UK's answer to Billboard, the Official Charts Company, has seen a future filled with streaming music from services like Spotify, Napster and Deezer and decided that it needed a streaming chart to truly judge the success or failure of today's, and tomorrow's, top tunes. Thus, a Top 100 streaming chart was created and is set to launch next Monday, May 14. So, who rules the web across the pond, sonically speaking? You'll have to wait for the full list, but a preview of the top ten artists awaits in the PR below.
Tim Cook among Time's most influential people
Time unveiled its 2012 list of the top 100 influencers in the world on Wednesday and Apple CEO Tim Cook was included on this list. "Cook has already led the world's most valuable and innovative company to new heights while implementing major policy changes smoothly and brilliantly," says Apple board member Al Gore. Cook is in good company. Other notable names on the Time 100 list include author Walter Isaacson, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, investor Warren Buffett and President Barack Obama.
PC World 100 Best of 2007 honors Parallels, Tiger
When a leading computer publication has a revolving-door editor-in-chief hiring policy, it can make other weird editorial decisions look sane and prudent by comparison. Exhibit A: the annual PC World "100 Best" feature, which presents the 100 best products of 2007... online in May, and in print for July. Not even half the year has gone by, but the farsighted crew at PCW has already figured out the best of the bunch! Might as well take the rest of the year off, then...The real reasons that the 100 Best comes out mid-year (covering the end of 2006 and the start of 2007) are detailed in a post from once-and-current big kahuna Harry McCracken. It comes down to legacy scheduling of the product awards around the June date of the no-longer-extant PC Expo trade show. That's a relief; I was worried that we were changing the calendar again.Anyway, more to the point: the list is top-heavy with some big Mac products, including TUAW darling Parallels Desktop at #6 (the top-ranked application on any desktop platform, not counting #1 Google Apps Premier Edition), Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger at #9 and AppleTV at #11. The Intel Core 2 Duo processor that powers new Macs is a top pick at #2. Noticeably absent from the top 100 was the latest hotness from Redmond, which may correlate with PC World's comment on the Tiger ranking: "Name a good Vista feature that goes beyond what's in Tiger. Yeah, we can't either." Brrrrr.
DS games pepper Next-Gen's top 100 games of 2006
Where can you find Hannah Montana hanging out with FFIII? No, not on a shelf at your local GameStop -- in Next Generation's list of the top 100 best-selling games in North America in 2006. But you get more than just a regular ol' list; they also broke the games down by average critical rating, and it's pretty interesting to compare sales with review ratings. More signs that the review system could use an overhaul? Or just an indication that critics and gamers often look for different things?Some interesting things we noticed while perusing the list: Bratz outsold a lot of very good DS games, including Tetris. We can only guess that Games 4 Girls campaign worked. Also, we're now certain that Bratz dolls should be banned, due to the fact that they're obviously both evil and insidious. People really dig Cars. DS games started to get fewer and further apart as the list wound down. We suspect that's simply because there are too many great DS games for people to buy. Our wallets hurt. Really. But we're not complaining. Nintendogs barely made it into the top 50. We're surprised. The highest ranked DS exclusive: New Super Mario Bros., which came in at number 5.
Toshiba HD-A1 grabs #14 on PC World's top 100 list
HD DVD may yet get totally steamrolled by Blu-ray later this year, or face years of struggle against its mortal enemy (that shares its Achilles heel in restrictive AACS DRM), but at least it has had one day in the sun. The Toshiba HD-A1, the first HD DVD player on the market came in 14th on PC World's Top 100 list. With shortages, glitches and a dearth of content, quite frankly we're surprised to see it up so high. When all is said and done, it does get the 1080i HD picture to the screen that aficionados have been waiting for and at least right now it's all we've got. (Also congrats to our friends at Engadget for slotting one spot higher at #13.)
Gaming products dominate top tech list [update 1]
PC World's list of top 100 tech products of the year praised our sister blog Engadget and gave Apple lots of love but the categorical winner of the list is undoubtedly gaming. The following products aren't all directly gaming related (you could use some of them to run spreadsheets) although there's a quite clear video gaming subtext underlying many of the choices. Lets just say that they're as close to being gaming technology as Uri Geller is to being locked up in an asylum. 1. Core Duo - the first chip to enable desktop level performance in games on laptop computers.2. Athlon 64 X2 - for that ultimate gaming rig you always wanted (but couldn't, and still can't, afford).10. Boot Camp - Apple's Mac gaming solution.16. GeForce 7600GT - hits that price/performance sweet spot.19. Guitar Hero - we think that this is some kind of video game.55. Raptor X - 10,000RPM Hard Drives were invented for gaming.58. X1900 XTX - ATI's biggest, baddest GPU. Stupid name though.63. A8N32 mobo - it's all about the SLI, baby.89. Xbox 360 - we've heard of this! Isn't it designed to hold your lunch?92. GeForce 7900 GTX - nVIDIA's biggest, baddest GPU. Stupid name though.I personally own several products identical or similar to products on this list (a MacBook with a Core Duo CPU running Windows via Boot Camp is being used to write this post - I'm off for some Eve Online in a sec). Do you agree with these choices? What's missing?P.S. If anyone from PC World is reading this, I apologize for desecrating your logo.[Update: "top tech," not "top ten tech". Thanks Ahms!]
