A Night In Macau
Feb 20, 2011
Ragbag Headliners
Sony Launches Music-Streaming Service In U.S.
With MTV now focused less on music and more on hard-partying Italian-Americans from New Jersey beaches, Sony sees an opportunity to bring music back into the living room.
Sony plans to leverage its role as a top television and video game console manufacturer to promote a new music-streaming service with the unwieldy name of Music Unlimited, powered by Qriocity.
Bent on a quick international rollout, Sony was set to launch Music Unlimited on its Qriocity site in the United States, Australia and New Zealand at 6 p.m. ET (11 a.m. GMT) Thursday, company spokespeople said.
Music Unlimited opened to the United Kingdom and Ireland in December, and expanded to France, Germany, Italy and Spain in January. It adds musical offerings to Qriocity, which Sony launched last year as an on-demand video service.
The goal is to swiftly cover most regions where Sony operates, said Shawn Layden, the chief operating officer for Sony Network Entertainment, a new venture encompassing some of Sony's online divisions.
But operating in each country generally requires cutting new deals with record labels and publishers there.
That stipulation is what has slowed the expansion of Spotify, a competing music service that is popular in many of the European countries Qriocity is in.
Sony has had an easier time negotiating deals with the four major record labels, allowing Qriocity to offer more than 6 million tracks on demand. It helps that Sony owns one of those major labels, Sony Music Entertainment.
But Qriocity is not out to shake up the streaming subscription model, which makes it an even easier sell to record companies.
Like Napster, Rhapsody, MOG and Rdio, Sony's on-demand streaming plan costs $10 a month.
These services, which give access to millions of songs pulled from the internet rather than downloading them to a hard drive, have largely failed to hit critical mass or steal many customers away from Apple's iTunes. When you stop paying monthly dues, your songs disappear.
Sony declined to provide details about how many people have subscribed to Qriocity in Europe.
Spotify has succeeded in attracting people to its subscription offering by giving away a computer program that does on-demand streaming and then charging $10 (the price for when it launches in the U.S.) for access to smartphone players.
"We would not just launch a subscription model -- because we don't think that's going to work," Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said at a conference in December. "We really believe in our model."
Sony Music has already agreed to offer its catalog to Spotify in the U.S., reports say.
Qriocity also offers a $4 monthly basic subscription for what's essentially an internet radio service. By contrast, popular internet radio service Pandora is free, although it offers an upgraded version for $3 per month that contains no ads.
Most of the major streaming-music competitors already have apps for the most popular smartphone platforms.
Sony plans to come out with an app for Android later this year, and it's considering other platforms after that, Layden said. The PlayStation Portable game system will get the service in the spring, he said.
Qriocity's Music Unlimited offers Web-based streaming and is accessible from any computer. But a feature that lets users synchronize their downloaded music library so those songs are readily available won't work at first on the Mac.
Layden hopes consumers' living rooms will serve as the doorway that helps Sony gain traction elsewhere. Sony is aiming to promote Qriocity through display ads in stores, plus ads embedded into its TV sets, video players and the PlayStation 3 gaming console -- places where competitors have struggled to go.
"None of them have association with a hardware provider," Layden said."Let's take music back into the home." -CNN Tech
With MTV now focused less on music and more on hard-partying Italian-Americans from New Jersey beaches, Sony sees an opportunity to bring music back into the living room.
Sony plans to leverage its role as a top television and video game console manufacturer to promote a new music-streaming service with the unwieldy name of Music Unlimited, powered by Qriocity.
Bent on a quick international rollout, Sony was set to launch Music Unlimited on its Qriocity site in the United States, Australia and New Zealand at 6 p.m. ET (11 a.m. GMT) Thursday, company spokespeople said.
Music Unlimited opened to the United Kingdom and Ireland in December, and expanded to France, Germany, Italy and Spain in January. It adds musical offerings to Qriocity, which Sony launched last year as an on-demand video service.
The goal is to swiftly cover most regions where Sony operates, said Shawn Layden, the chief operating officer for Sony Network Entertainment, a new venture encompassing some of Sony's online divisions.
But operating in each country generally requires cutting new deals with record labels and publishers there.
That stipulation is what has slowed the expansion of Spotify, a competing music service that is popular in many of the European countries Qriocity is in.
Sony has had an easier time negotiating deals with the four major record labels, allowing Qriocity to offer more than 6 million tracks on demand. It helps that Sony owns one of those major labels, Sony Music Entertainment.
But Qriocity is not out to shake up the streaming subscription model, which makes it an even easier sell to record companies.
Like Napster, Rhapsody, MOG and Rdio, Sony's on-demand streaming plan costs $10 a month.
These services, which give access to millions of songs pulled from the internet rather than downloading them to a hard drive, have largely failed to hit critical mass or steal many customers away from Apple's iTunes. When you stop paying monthly dues, your songs disappear.
Sony declined to provide details about how many people have subscribed to Qriocity in Europe.
Spotify has succeeded in attracting people to its subscription offering by giving away a computer program that does on-demand streaming and then charging $10 (the price for when it launches in the U.S.) for access to smartphone players.
"We would not just launch a subscription model -- because we don't think that's going to work," Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said at a conference in December. "We really believe in our model."
Sony Music has already agreed to offer its catalog to Spotify in the U.S., reports say.
Qriocity also offers a $4 monthly basic subscription for what's essentially an internet radio service. By contrast, popular internet radio service Pandora is free, although it offers an upgraded version for $3 per month that contains no ads.
Most of the major streaming-music competitors already have apps for the most popular smartphone platforms.
Sony plans to come out with an app for Android later this year, and it's considering other platforms after that, Layden said. The PlayStation Portable game system will get the service in the spring, he said.
Qriocity's Music Unlimited offers Web-based streaming and is accessible from any computer. But a feature that lets users synchronize their downloaded music library so those songs are readily available won't work at first on the Mac.
Layden hopes consumers' living rooms will serve as the doorway that helps Sony gain traction elsewhere. Sony is aiming to promote Qriocity through display ads in stores, plus ads embedded into its TV sets, video players and the PlayStation 3 gaming console -- places where competitors have struggled to go.
"None of them have association with a hardware provider," Layden said."Let's take music back into the home." -CNN Tech
A Dreamer And His Dream
He was known to his family and friends as Jesse.
Jesse hated his job. And you would too, if you had his job because Jesse was a chicken plucker. That's right. He stood on a line in a chicken processing plant and spent hours and days pulling feathers off dead chickens. It wasn't much of a job. And at the time, Jesse didn't think he was much of a person.
His father was a brute of a man, who was actually plagued with mental illness, and who treated Jesse very roughly.
Jesse's older brother was not much better. He always picked on Jesse and beat him up. Yes, Jesse grew up in a very rough home in West Virginia. Life was anything but easy for Jesse, and he thought life didn't hold much hope for him. That's why he stood on the chicken line, doing a job that darn few people wanted.
In addition to all the rough treatment at home, Jesse was always sick. Sometimes it was real physical illness, but way too often it was just all in his head. As a child, he was small and skinny which didn't help his situation any because when he started school, he became a favorite prey of the school bullies.
For Jesse, tomorrow did not look promising and not something he looked forward to. To add insult to injury, he turned out to be a hypochondriac of the first degree.
Jesse hated his job. And you would too, if you had his job because Jesse was a chicken plucker. That's right. He stood on a line in a chicken processing plant and spent hours and days pulling feathers off dead chickens. It wasn't much of a job. And at the time, Jesse didn't think he was much of a person.
His father was a brute of a man, who was actually plagued with mental illness, and who treated Jesse very roughly.
Jesse's older brother was not much better. He always picked on Jesse and beat him up. Yes, Jesse grew up in a very rough home in West Virginia. Life was anything but easy for Jesse, and he thought life didn't hold much hope for him. That's why he stood on the chicken line, doing a job that darn few people wanted.
In addition to all the rough treatment at home, Jesse was always sick. Sometimes it was real physical illness, but way too often it was just all in his head. As a child, he was small and skinny which didn't help his situation any because when he started school, he became a favorite prey of the school bullies.
For Jesse, tomorrow did not look promising and not something he looked forward to. To add insult to injury, he turned out to be a hypochondriac of the first degree.
But be that as it may, believe it or not, he had dreams. He wanted to be a ventriloquist. He avidly digested books on ventriloquism, practiced with sock puppets, and saved his hard earned dollars until he was able finally to get himself a real ventriloquist's dummy.
When he was old enough, he joined the military. And even though many of his hypochondriac symptoms persisted, someone in the military recognized his "talent" and put him in the entertainment corps. That was when his world changed. He gained confidence. He found that he had a talent for making people laugh so hard that they often had tears in their eyes from all their laughing. Yes, the little, skinny, and wimpy-looking Jesse had finally found his niche.
As is common knowledge today, history books are full of people who overcame some handicap and went on to make a success of themselves. Jesse is one of the few who didn't overcome his handicap of hypochondria, but who used his paranoia to make money. He became one of the best-loved comedy characters of all time. Yes, the little paranoid hypochondriac used his nervousness as his key to launch his successful career in television and movies. He holds the record for having won the most number of Emmys awarded in a single category.
That nervous, talented comedian who appeared in several Hollywood movies and who portrayed Barney Fife, the bungling and klutzy sheriff's assistant in The Andy Griffith Show, was Jesse Don Knotts. –Author Unknown
This is a true and wonderful story.
Feb 13, 2011
Feb 6, 2011
We No Speak Americano ft Cleary & Harding
Here is a video of an Irish Hand Dance from two who have toured with the Riverdance Troupe.
To create this video, they spent five days working with film director Johnny Reed, rehearsed another five days, and then set the hand dancing to electro beat song "We No Speak Americano." Then it took two hours to film, although the final video is only 2 minutes and 20 seconds long.
Elk Decoy
Two deer hunters brainstormed about how to improve their chances of "bagging a deer". They came up with the following notions:
1) Deer don't have the best eyesight in the world;
2) There are scents one can buy to blend in with the deer's natural surroundings; and finally
3) Why not make a deer costume as a disguise to both "look and smell" like a deer?
They then decided to do a "test run".
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