The Moth is a non-profit group based in New York City devoted to furthering the art and enjoyment of storytelling. The stories range from funny tales by comedians to heartfelt tales of horror from people who survived Hurricane Katrina.

The Moth was founded in 1997 by poet and novelist George Dawes Green. Previous notable storytellers have included Andy Borowitz, Ana Marie Cox, Joe Lockhart, Jonathan Ames, Ethan Hawke, Darryl "DMC" McDaniels (Run DMC), Adam Wade, George Plimpton, Gay Talese, Mira Nair, Moby, and Lili Taylor.

Subscribe: The Moth Podcast (via iTunes)

This month The Moth finally launched a podcast. I just subscribed to The Moth Podcast on iTunes [link] so I can watch it on my iPhone. Unfortunately the podcast is currently only offered as audio only. I hope they launch a video version soon. It's fun watching these storytellers up on stage.

Here's a clip I found on YouTube of Adam Wade winning The Moth's 2006 Grand Slam Championship of storytelling. Adam Wade was a former NBC Page For Late Night With Conan O'Brien. Wade's story is about his adventures with some of the members of the crew.





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Labels: itunes, podcasting

The biggest American reality show on TV has finally joined the iTunes platform. Fox Broadcasting, Fox Interactive Media and FremantleMedia signed an exclusive deal with Apple to bring American Idol audio and video performances to iTunes as single song-sized snippets available the day after they premiere on air.

Audio performances of the top 24 contenders run 99¢ per song, and videos of the top 12 finalists performances will be priced $1.99/each from March 11.

Apple will also become one of the show's premiere sponsors and maintain a branded presence on AmericanIdol.com, where some free streaming performances can be seen.

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Labels: itunes, music

Last week Apple announced they needed another couple of weeks to finish updating the Apple TV software that will finally allow users to rent movies directly from the TV rather than having to download on the computer and sync or stream the video to the Apple TV device.

This anticipated software upgrade will be available as a free software download to existing Apple TV users sometime in February. By the end of February, Apple’s iTunes online music store should have more than 1,000 movie titles available including more than 100 high-definition titles. The DVD-quality movies will be available to rent for $2.99 for older titles and $3.99 for newer titles while high-definition costs a buck more.



Also last week, Apple announced the MacBook Air has started shipping. Hopefully Apple packages the MacBook Air in something a little more sturdy than the envelopes featured in the ads!

Here's a video of the old Apple TV software:




Source: Gizmos for Geeks.

Labels: apple, apple tv, itunes, macbook, tv

According to a press release from Apple, the iTunes store has sold 4 billion songs to date, including 20 million songs this past Christmas Day alone. The store has also sold 125 million TV shows and 7 million movies.

What are people using to enjoy all this digital content? Apple also announced that iPhone sales totaled 4 million units in the product's first 200 days.


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Steve Jobs announced an update to the Apple TV at Macworld San Francisco this week as well as iTunes Movie Rentals, which were already rumored to be part of his Macworld keynote speech.

Jobs admitted that Apple's online video plan had been a disappointment and that users didn't take to watching online video the way Apple had expected. When Jobs first announced the Apple TV last January, Apple's initial video plan was too complicated for many people. Getting a movie or TV show onto your Apple TV required customers to buy the video from the iTunes Store, download it to their computer, then sync/stream the file using an Apple TV.



Although Apple has already sold 7 million movies, Jobs said: "That’s more than everyone else put together, but it did not meet our expectations."

Apple plans on overhauling their strategy by making 2 major changes:

1. Adding a new online movie rental service
2. Updating the Apple TV's software so that viewers can stream movies direct from the internet sans (that's Middle English for without) computer.
   

Jobs thinks that viewers would prefer to rent movies, not buy them. As a result, the new Apple TV software will allow users to rent first run films from every major movie studio including Fox, WB, Paramount, Universal and Sony in HD. Jobs called it "A better way to provide movies to our customers." Blockbuster and Netflix can't be happy right now.



1000 films ready for rental will be available on iTunes starting in February. Going forward, movies will be available to rent 30 days after they are released on DVD. Broadband users won't have to wait for these giant movie files to download. Moments after you rent the film using your Apple TV, it will be watchable immediately via streaming. How much are movie rentals? $2.99 to rent older titles, $3.99 for new releases. Add one more $1 to those prices if you want to rent the movie in HD.

Thomas Lesinski, president of Paramount Pictures Digital Entertainment, joined Jobs on stage at Macworld and called the rental service a "defining moment" for the distribution of digital video content. "This is really going to take things to the next level," he said.



The new Apple TV software features will be included in a free Apple TV update scheduled to be released in February. You can update your Apple TV by selecting "Update Software" from the Settings menu.


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Labels: apple tv, itunes, macworld

Forget all the hype around iTunes movie rentals. Looks like something even bigger will get announced at MacWorld this year.

According to the rumors buzzing around the Interweb, Apple is launching a record label with Jay-Z, who's set to step down from Def Jam once his employment contract with Universal Music Group expires. Jay-Z has one more album left in his current contract with UMG. I wonder if he could just push out a quick greatest hits album?

Does that mean there might be another Apple vs. Apple lawsuit in the works? Not so fast. The last settlement between Apple, Inc. and Apple, Corps (The Beatles' record label), gave Apple, Inc. all rights to the name "Apple." Apple Corp. now licenses the right to use "Apple" from Apple, Inc.

Maybe now the RIAA will just lay down in the grave they dug for themselves during the Napster era and die already.

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Labels: itunes, music

According to reports, Apple is close to announcing plans to make Fox and Disney movies available as online rentals via iTunes (US). Apple CEO Steve Jobs is likely saving the official announcement for his Macworld Expo keynote on Jan. 14.

Customers would pay a fee to download titles viewable on computers, iPods, iPhones and presumably Apple TV devices that would expire after a short window of time. Netflix, Amazon.com and Blockbuster's Movielink are competitors in this space.

Wal-Mart, however, has thrown in the towel. Wal-Mart.com quietly pulled the plug on its video download service late last month as Hewlett Packard decided to discontinue the back-office technology that powered it. The service, popular with studios because it offered variable pricing, struggled with compatibility issues. Wal-Mart downloads could not be burned to DVDs or watched on video iPods.


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Labels: itunes

UPDATE: YouTube has reworked their site again in response to this article. They absolutely hate us. If you get an error when trying to download a YouTube video, please try some of the plug-ins and scripts listed in step #3.

YouTube.com is a great resource. Not many sites allows users to freely upload, view, and share video clips like YouTube does. YouTube even lets users easily post videos on their blogs and personal web sites. But because anyone can upload a video clip on YouTube, copyright violations are rampant.

In an effort to prevent the widespread distribution of illegal copied video files, YouTube encodes its video files in the Adobe Flash format, which prevents viewers from downloading files and making digital copies.

Here's a step-by-step tutorial on how to rip video files off YouTube.com and convert them for Apple TV, iPod Video, iTunes and iPhone. This trick will work on Mac or PC using Firefox or Internet Explorer.

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Labels: apple tv, iphone, ipod, itunes, tutorial

Universal Music is in talks with Sony BMG and Warner Music about launching a downloadable music subscription service to challenge iTunes' dominance.

The service, dubbed Total Music, would be optimized for rival devices such as the Microsoft Zune as well as mobile phones and would be free to the user. In the proposed Total Music model, device manufactures would pay the music companies for access to their catalogs.


Here's a quote from BusinessWeek:

[Total Music will] get hardware makers or cell carriers to absorb the cost of a roughly $5-per-month subscription fee so consumers get a device with all-you-can-eat music that's essentially free. Music companies would collect the subscription fee, while hardware makers theoretically would move many more players.

Personally, I can't believe that companies are still trying to make the "subscription" music model work. I don't know anyone who uses Rhapsody or Urge.

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Labels: itunes, music

With the impending release of The Darjeeling Limited, Wes Anderson (Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou) fans everywhere can get a taste of what's to come with his short film Hotel Chevalier.



The 13-minute short film is a prequel for Darjeeling stars Natalie Portman and Jason Schwartzman who play estranged lovers that meet one last time. Hotel Chevalier is a free download on iTunes (US).

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Labels: itunes, movies

If you have kids, then you'll be excited for this story. Sesame Street posted 6 free episodes on iTunes from a new series called "Learn Along With Sesame." Each educational episode covers a different topic ranging from lead poisoning to to asthma.

• Happy Healthy Ready for School - How Elmo gets ready for School
• Music Works Wonders - Hoots and Elmo perform a concert
• You Can Ask - schoolyard bullies
• Lead Away - the dangers of lead poisoning
• Talk, Listen, Connect - learning how to listen
  
• A Is for Asthma - learning about Asthma
  

Here's the official iTunes description:

Join your favorite Sesame Street characters as they learn, play, and grow. Elmop and his friends explore an exciting range of topics, from getting ready for school to discovering the wonders of learning with music. So sing, dance, and "Learn along with Sesame."

You can download the episodes here.

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Labels: itunes

Apple's iTunes could face a run for its money in the coming months from a competitor that knows how to compete on price. Wal-Mart announced the launch of a new "DRM-free" zone on its website featuring tracks from major labels including EMI and Universal for the bargain price of 94 cents each or $9.22 per album. (In comparison, Apple is selling a limited number of DRM-free EMI songs for $1.29).



Wal-Mart will also continue to sell WMA-formatted 128 kbps downloads for 88 cents each. Digital music has only accounted for 15% of all recorded music sales in the U.S. until now. Will that number increase as DRM-free tracks open the market up to more competition?

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Wish you could free your iTunes Library from your computer and take it with you in your pocket? GetUSB.info put together an excellent tutorial on how to run a mobile iTunes Library from a USB stick or hard drive. This method will run the entire iTunes application from the storage device, making it easy to manage iTunes libraries for a mobile user. I believe this is how iTunes should have be developed. Having a library specific for each computer is a frustrating way to enjoy your music if you use multiple computers everyday (ie. work, home, laptop, etc.).

What pushed Greg from GetUSB.info over the edge, was his wife wanting to purchase music from iTunes at work and then sync up iTunes with her computer at home. Typically this is done by purchasing the music and downloading directly to the iPod. But his wife is a CPA and travels from location to location for audits and doesn't even use the same computer all the time. The solution was to run iTunes from a USB flash drive so she could just manage a single Library.

Read full tutorial: Run iTunes from a USB Drive

Of course this method also works for larger storage hard drives - basically anything that appears as a Mass Storage Device on your PC system. If you are looking for a long term strategy for managing your iTunes music, I strongly recommend doing this process to an external hard drive that is, at least, 120GBs.

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Labels: itunes, tutorial

Even if you’re not a Harry Potter fan, you have to admire J.K Rowling. Not just as a writer with a world-class imagination, but also as a businesswoman and entrepreneur. She seemed to come out of nowhere to create one of the biggest entertainment franchises ever.

It’s hard to believe that she used to be unemployed, surviving on U.K. state benefits. That was 1995. Now it's 12 years (and hundreds of millions of dollars) later, and she’s just finished her seventh and final Harry Potter novel, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”

iTunes Link: J.K. Rowling Interview

Rowling recently did an interview with Meredith Viera for the American news programs The Today Show and Dateline NBC. I only caught part of her Dateline NBC interview, so I was pretty happy to see that they posted the whole thing on iTunes. The interview is an interesting glimpse inside the world of Harry Potter, and it offers some real insight into the woman who created a billion dollar world of magic.

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Labels: itunes, movies

On Tuesday, the American soap opera, Days of Our Lives, debuted on iTunes (US). Full episodes of the soap will be offered at the standard $1.99, but consumers will be able to shave that cost down to 50¢ per episode by ordering a 20-episode multipass for $9.99.

iTunes Link: Days of Our Lives

The producers of the show have had several conversations about including bonus scenes from Days of Our Lives in the iTunes version, though nothing has been decided yet.

Days of Our Lives will now be the most widely distributed daytime soap in the U.S., with episodes available on broadcast (NBC), cable (SoapNet) and online (iTunes).



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Labels: itunes

On Wednesday, Apple released an update to iTunes (US) that added DRM-free AAC music files to the iTunes Store. Dubbed iTunes Plus, the new version of iTunes will allow you to either download DRM (Digital Rights Management) files for the standard $0.99 or spend $1.29 on DRM-free songs.

In addition to iTunes Plus, Apple added a new section to iTunes 7.2 called iTunes U, where you can download lectures from various universities around the US free of charge. In addition to lectures, many Universities are offering language lessons, lab demonstrations, sports highlights and campus tours. Participating schools currently include Stanford University, UC Berkeley, Duke University and MIT.

It's probably only a matter of time until someone claims that they graduated from "iTunes U."

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According to Billboard magazine, a deal to make The Beatles' back catalogue available for sale online with iTunes is "virtually settled."

Paul McCartney told Billboard, "I don't want to pre-empt anything, but we're well on the way to something happening there, which is very exciting."

Some reports say McCartney is rumored to be making over £200 million from the deal.

Efforts to clear The Beatles' music for digital distribution have been previously held up by a long-running feud between Apple Inc and The Beatles' label, Apple Corps. Both sides finally settled the dispute in February, paving the way for distribution via iTunes and other digital retailers.

McCartney is doing a press tour for his new album, "Memory Almost Full," his first to be made available for download and streaming on PCs and mobile phones. The album is due June 5 on Starbucks' new Hear Music label. Starbucks previously announced that the McCartney album will be available on its Hear Music section of Apple's iTunes Store.

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Disney has sold 23.7 million TV shows and 2 million movies to date on iTunes, according President/CEO Bob Iger. Since last September, 92 million ad supported episodes have been requested on ABC.com. 91 million episodes have been initiated on DisneyChannel.com in the last year.

When questioned by an analyst about iTunes pricing for movies (priced lower than what DVDs sell for in stores, which is preventing more studios from jumping on board,) Iger claimed the revenue split the company receives from both windows is identical.

Maybe we'll start seeing more movies offered on iTunes now.

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Labels: itunes