Harvard Medical School - WebWeekly

HMS course lectures became available for download onto the iPods of students, faculty, and staff.

Oprah Signs Deal With XM Satellite Radio - New York Times

The Winfrey deal is relatively small in comparison with the $600 million, five-year agreement that XM's rival, Sirius Satellite Radio, signed last year with Howard Stern, the raucous radio personality. Mr. Stern began broadcasting on Sirius last month.

HBO wants its programming to be off-limits for DVRs

HBO has joined the fray with a recent FCC filing in which it argues that its programming—and all "Subscription Video On Demand" services—should fall into the category of "Copy Never."

FCC favorably views "a la carte" cable, while cable industry looks downright dirty

The Further Report finds that the 2004 report also relied upon unrealistic assumptions and presented biased analysis in concluding that à la carte "would not produce the desired result of lower MVPD rates for most pay-television households.

LiveScience.com - The Science of Hit Songs

Researchers created an artificial "music market" of 14,341 participants drawn from a teen-interest Web site. Upon entering the study's Internet market, the participants were randomly, and unknowingly, assigned to either an "independent" group or a "social influence" group.

Slashdot | Network-Monitoring Data Put to Music

software that translates network and server activity into music. And, their IT department operators can interpret the music to detect problems in the system.

True "Video iPod" To Debut This Spring? :: iPod Hacks :: The Latest and Greatest News and Info for Your iPod

According to the site, a completely revamped iPod with a large 3.5" color display and a physical clickwheel that has been replaced by on screen "wheel" navigation is close at hand.

MP3 Inventor Develops Tool to Fight Piracy - The Data Compression News Blog - c10n.info

He referred to the Fraunhofer approach as an alternative to DRM (digital rights management) systems, which he says require special players and are prone to hacking.
Watermarks are "prone to hacking" as well.  But the real issue is that DRM isn't about piracy.  If there were perfect indelible watermarking available, I doubt the content industries would stop campaigning for DRM.  It'd be a good test of their true intentions though.

Digital Music News

CDBaby recently revealed huge sales gains in 2005, which now includes a growing digital profile.

--Ari