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U2's free album spread to 81 million iTunes users
So, just how far did U2's Songs of Innocence spread during its tenure as a free, exclusive iTunes album? Pretty far: according to Eddy Cue, Apple senior VP of internist software and services, 81 million customers heard at least one song from the album during its free period. While those numbers represent just partial downloads of the album, Cue told Billboard that 26 million iTunes users nabbed the whole thing. Those are huge numbers -- he told the publication that before the promotion, only 14 million iTunes customers had purchase the band's music since 2003.
Bono says he's working with Apple on a new music format to fight piracy
Bono's already inserted himself into everyone's iPhones this week, but now he wants even more control over the way you enjoy music. The Irish singer says that he's been working with Apple on a new audio format that'll get people paying for music once again. In an interview with Time magazine, which won't be published until September 29th, it's said that the band has been working on a secret project that's "so terribly exciting to music fans that it will tempt them again into buying music." It's all part of U2's noble cause to see that songwriters and, especially, artists who can't recoup lost earnings through live gigs - like U2 - are properly compensated for their labors. Of course, given Apple's historic preference for secrecy, we can't imagine it'll be too pleased that Bono's running his mouth off in public. Then again, it wouldn't be the first time that a musician has blown one of Tim Cook's future announcements.
Wolfram launches open CDF format, adds visual pizzazz to charts and graphs
Amazon's Kindle DX and RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook were supposed to be the business world's answer to an on-the-go office. Turns out, PDFs viewed in e-ink or on a tethered slate don't offer much in the way of interactive app experiences -- they're still just documents, no matter the tablet they're wearing. Well, Wolfram Group's got an open format contender to Adobe's throne and it's hoping you'll adopt it. Introduced today, the Computable Document Format "puts easy-to-author interactivity at its core," breathing animated life into otherwise static infographics. Not a programmer? No need to worry, the company promises the two-way diagrams are "easy enough for teachers, journalists, managers, [and] researchers to... create." We've seen Microsoft's XPS take a similar crack at dethroning the reigning format king, only to find itself in portable document oblivion. We'll just have to wait and see if CDF's a more noble contender. In the meantime, head on over to the source to download the free player and see for yourself the possible future of live textbooks, tables and charts.
YouTube starts transcoding all new uploads to WebM, already has a third of its library ready
Google's resolve to bring WebM video streaming to the masses doesn't seem to have been weakened by a general lack of interest from the rest of the tech world, and the company's announced that each and every new YouTube upload will now be automatically transcoded into a WebM version. Nearly a third of YouTube's archives have already made the transition to the open source format, though if you think that's a small proportion, you should probably know that those 30 percent account for 99 percent of all views on the site. Apparently, we all have a narrower set of interests than we like to believe. So, with all popular vids encoded and every incoming one getting the transcoding treatment, all you really need now is a compatible browser -- Chrome (naturally), Firefox 4, Opera, or IE9 with a plug-in -- and to enroll in YouTube's HTML5 trial linked below to get rolling with WebM playback. Appending "&webm=1" to a search string or a video's URL will also help you ensure you're getting the good stuff.
Sharp's XMDF format looks to bring e-books into the next generation
When it comes to boring 'ol text and images, there are plenty of formats that modern e-readers can manage -- your EPUBs and OPFs and the like. But, when it comes to integrating multimedia content into a kind of next-gen e-book experience, the sort Wired is pushing on the iPad, things are rather less standardized. Sharp wants to be on the forefront of bringing that style of content together under a single standard: XMDF, or ever-eXtending Mobile Document Format. It enables video and animations and flashy presentation to be mingled in with the text, surely with the intent of distracting you from actually having to read anything. Of course, XHTML can manage all this stuff too, but it never was particularly great at the sort of precision text layout publishers crave, and presumably that's also being addressed here. Naturally we're a little more excited about hardware, and Sharp showed off two prototype readers measuring 5.5- and 10.8-inches respectively... though it didn't have much to say about them otherwise. More details later this year, supposedly.
Major labels show eagerness to fail with new CMX digital audio format
Let's think about this, shall we? How did Sony's ATRAC format do? How did all those DRM-laced formats fare? Call us zany, but we've got a feeling an all new format developed by the astoundingly brilliant (ahem) minds at the world's largest record labels is apt to follow the aforementioned formats right on down to Irrelevant Boulevard. According to Times Online, Sony, Warner, Universal and EMI are currently looking to go head-to-head with Apple's own "Cocktail" by introducing a CMX format (codenamed) that will "give music fans a computerized version of the sleeve notes that come as standard with a CD, including lyrics and artwork, and videos." Reportedly, the format is expected to launch in November in an effort to boost whole album downloads (as opposed to singles), and while the labels approached Apple in order to gain its support, the Cupertino-based company purportedly decided to concoct its own mixture. Oh, and you can pretty much consider this extra DOA should iTunes not support it; fair or not, that's just the way it is.[Via Guardian]
DivX Connected v1.5 now friends with MKV / H.264
DivX Connected v1.4 brought us the highly anticipated addition of Hulu support last September, and now v1.5 is bringing a few extras that are also quite delicious. The v1.5 Beta, which is out this very moment, adds in support for Matroska (MKV) and H.264, though you'll need the newly unleashed DivX 7 installed in order to experience the magic. The entire changelog is surprisingly lengthy, so we'll point you to the read link for those details as well as a download URL. A demonstration vid is just past the break.[Thanks, Karolis]
Mac101: Always Open With
A file icon's stylized display often shows you a relationship between the file and the application that it opens in. For example, an HTML file that stores web page information might display a small Safari compass or a Firefox globe. Word files are marked with a blue W, Powerpoint files with a P, QuickTime movies with a stylized Q. These icon hints indicate which program will open and attempt to read the file when you double-click it in Finder. Many file types can be used in more than one program. For example, you can play MP3 files in QuickTime or in iTunes, you can open a text file in TextEdit or in Word, movies in QuickTime or VLC. Finder allows you to change the application associated with each file. Here's how: Control-click (right-click) any file. A contextual menu opens over the file. Release any keys you are pressing and then press the option key. The menu item that had said "Open With" changes to "Always Open With". Select any application from the Always Open With submenu. Two things happen. First, your file will open in the application you select. Second, Finder updates the file's association so it will always open in that application. Its icon updates, changing to reflect its new "native" application. Say, however, you want all your MP3 files to open in QuickTime or all your text files to open in TextEdit, or so forth. Do this instead. Select any representative file in Finder and choose File -> Get Info (Command-I). Locate the section of the Info pane named "Open with". Select the Application you want to use from the pop-up menu and then click Change All... By doing this, you instruct OS X to change the application association for all files on your computer that share the same type, text, MP3, MOV, XLS, or whatever.
Screenshot Settings 1.1 applescript
Just like its title implies, Screenshot Settings 1.1 is a simple little GUI applescript that allows you to change both the image format Mac OS X uses to capture screenshots, as well as the default location where these images are stored. While altering Mac OS X's screenshot format is pretty simple with this little utility (see: this post's screenshot), the trick to choosing a new default location for storing screenshots is a little less obvious: simply drag the new location from Finder onto the utility to set it as the screenshot hotspot for your Mac.
