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The Apple iTunes Music Store is up and running at apple.com/music/store/ following yesterday's announcement (stream). We all knew it was coming: what we didn't know was what it would look like, the exact details of pricing, how DRM would be handled, what music would be available, and so on.

I have not yet bought any music: I'm on a self-imposed ban to prevent myself from going nuts and sp a hundred bucks. I'll wait until both the massive swell has died down (it seemed to cause problems yesterday) and my own interest has subsided. In the meantime, I'm re-encoding all of my songs into AAC. However, I do want to share my thoughts on the service. First, the whirlwind tour of "the bad" and my dismissal of some of the points raised.

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Bill Bumgarner has figured out how to get direct links to the iTunes Music Store, and they look like this: itms://phobos.apple.com/
WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/com.apple.jingle.app.store.DirectAction/
viewAlbum?playlistId=395839.

I wonder how he did that. I want to be able to do that. I want to have my iTunes list on this site link to ITMS search results instead of Google search results. Is this possible? How is this done? Does anyone know? Bill - care to share?

Update: I believe it's been solved. See the expanded update for more…

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Glamour makes me think of the magazine by the same name. Like Cosmo, but is it worse or better? Maxim is like Cosmo for guys, except they don't take themselves seriously, and I'm quite afraid that the women of Cosmo do. "How to get a Man to Buy You a Big Engagement Ring" seems like typical Glamour fluff, right beside "How to Get Off Without Your Man" right alongside "Choosing Killer Heels Will Get You Promoted." I sometimes wonder how any woman with an IQ above 40 sees these as anything but comedy rags.

This 60-second entry was brought to you by today's word from OneWord™.

Question: What is your single favorite and least favorite feature of the iTunes Music Store?

My Answer: Good: the thirty second previews are awesome - just long enough to get a good listen, no plugin, great quality. Bad: lack of selection. I wanted to pick up Chris Rock's Bring the Pain but it wasn't available. Disappointing. Luckily the selection will grow over time, hopefully rapidly.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

I wonder if, when/if In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida is ever available for download, if it will be $0.99. Cuz, y'know, that's like six cents per minute. More thoughts on the latest version of the Music-Playin' iApp tomorrow in this space (or not - that'd be really lame of me). I'm too grumpy right now to say much else and I think I need sleep.

P.S. Good point: no Metallica in the ITMS.

I went with someone special to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse for dinner tonight. It was good. The waiter (Matthew) never said the "'s" part of "Ruth's" and it annoyed me. I got a baked potato and brought the sweet potato home for lunch tomorrow. I'm in a bit of a funk right now, for a variety of reasons, but some friends did their best to pull me out, and that made me at least appreciate that I've got some friends willing to do their best to pull me out of a funk. 🙂

Question: If you could design the next version of iTunes, what features would it have?

My Answer: Library sharing (like the Rendezvous one demonstrated last July), integration with this "service" thing that's not yet been announced, the ability to "buy now" from streams (and better display of the song being played in a stream), and… Uhhhh… I have no idea. iTunes is pretty darn great the way it is for me.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

They say that the devil is in the details, and fortunately for Apple watchers, it's the details that we don't know yet. This is one of the least exciting "big" Apple announcements of all time, perhaps. What don't we know? What do we know? Everyone's saying that the announcement is:

• Music download via new version of iTunes with an average cost of $0.99/song
• New iPods

That's what everyone's saying.

The question I've got is this: what is everyone missing? Is it just the details (like what kind of DRM - bear in mind the Hilary Rosen has voiced her support for the service - will it have?). Or is it something big that Apple's managed to keep out of Billboard, the LA Times, Wired, etc.?

I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

In doing some research, Jamie found this webcam of Victoria BC, Canada. Quite by accident I discovered that by clicking the webcam image you get a popup window. The "Server Info" button in that popup reveals:

Server: /24.65.184.121:80
Administrator: Pullman
Administrator e-mail:
OS Info: Mac OS X, 10.2.5, ppc
Java Info: Apple Computer, Inc., V 1.4.1_01
Server: English, United States 10.02.2000 - 16:51:06

I was looking for a webcam and I found Mac OS X. Nice. 🙂

Update: It's not the Server OS as it led me to believe, it's the user's. D'oh!

From Michael comes a link to a site with lots of tiny badges.

I didn't get in trouble as I previously thought, but I am replacing the hole that the red badge leaves with one of the ones I'll find at the site linked to above. I'm not sure which just yet…

Erik: I love how in the foreword to UHH, the guy says "If this book doesn't kill Unix, nothing will. As for me? I switched t the Mac. No more grep, no more piping, no more SED scripts."
Mike: HAHAHA
Mike: sucker

People everywhere keep talking about that Honda Ad. People everywhere keep saying "it's real!"

Uhhh, last time I checked, tires didn't roll uphill any more than they liked to stay still on an incline. They are, after all, round.

Question: If you were to name the most difficult thing about a relationship, what would it be?

My Answer: getting your stuff back. I'm only half joking about that, too. This one depends mightily on the quality of the relationship, of course, but in any "" there's bound to be some emotional turbulence. Your wife of 50 years? A little more than the girl with which you had three dates.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Word on the street is that Apple has "signed" up bands, such as The Eagles and No Doubt, for their new music service (y'know, the one that's not yet been announced). What's special about The Eagles and No Doubt is that these groups, like many others, have not yet allowed their music to be distributed digitally.

I've long said that a band could probably make a good amount of money selling their singles and some live versions, things like that, online for some small fee. Even if they sold things cheaply. I think Natalie Merchant was going this route, wasn't she? Your average recording artist gets about a three cents for every album sold, making most of their money from merchandising and touring. At $1/track, even if the artists get only 5% directly, they're making more money from the sales of a few million songs instead of albums.

So this is just a long way of saying that I hope Apple's music service kicks more money back to the artists. The era of "big business" in the recording industry may be coming to a close. The Internet has been empowering small companies to make it big for about a decade now - it's about time big-name musicians hop on board, because in the scheme of the current recording industry, they too are pretty small.

P.S. From someone who's spent a few hundred dollars on rare and imported R.E.M. CDs (live and otherwise), it'd be pretty awesome to get access to more "offbeat" tracks like that as well.

I'm attempting to fix some JavaScript issues with this site, specifically regarding the items discussed in the comments of of this article by Phil Ringnalda.

I believe I may have accomplished this by doing the following in my "Individual" and "Comment Listing" templates (and rebuilding the former).

//	document.comments_form.email.value = getCookie("mtcmtmail");//	document.comments_form.author.value = getCookie("mtcmtauth");
//	document.comments_form.url.value = getCookie("mtcmthome");
document.getElementById("comments_form").email.value = getCookie("mtcmtmail");
document.getElementById("comments_form").author.value = getCookie("mtcmtauth");
document.getElementById("comments_form").url.value = getCookie("mtcmthome");

Why did I remove 'name=""' from my templates? XHTML 1.1 doesn't support it, and I'm trying to support XHTML 1.1 throughout.

Please post any comments, compatibility reports, ideas, etc. to this entry. I hope to have it "fixed" by the end of the day on every major browser.