A co-worker sent me an amusing link about a guy talking about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle craze from back in the day and the various food products that were marketed with them. A funny and nostalgic article.
With Ninja Turtles, half the kids idolized by way of signing up for ninja class. The lazier half just ate more pizza.
I mentioned earlier that Toto released a new album, but so far they’ve only had deals with European and Japanese labels to release it. I had word that they are still shopping for a US label for the release, but I have also just discovered that they are also selling the album online as downloadable files. What’s so different from every other badn selling their music on iTunes? I tell you what: universal availibility and choice.
Songs iTunes or or other download sites are typically sold in a compressed propietrary format that can only be played in certain players. While one can typically “free” their purchased songs by burning it to CD and then re-ripping it, some sound quality is usually lost in the process. Also, songs that are on sale in iTunes in the US may not be available in iTunes UK, and vice-versa.
Toto, however, is making their music available on the internet in a way that I believe is close to the dream setup for buying music online. They offer three formats for downloading the album: 128kbps MP3, 320 kpbs AAC/MP4, and losslessly compressed FLAC format. This means these songs can be played in pretty much every player on the market or any player on your computer. If you’re particularly picky about paying for full on sound quality like me, the available of the FLAC format is essential. But they don’t stop there – part of the download includes a high resolution image file of the album’s liner notes and booklet. You can buy the whole album or individual songs, and you can get it straight from their website, so anyone with internet access can get it.
The best part? The cost of the album to download is only 8.99 euros, which is roughly $11. That’s cheaper than paying nearly $20 to buy the European import from CDUniverse (Amazon has it for almost $30!). You get all the tracks, even the Japanese bonus track (the Japanese import would’ve been about $40!). Even if the album gets released in the US, it will still more than likely be expensive.
Let’s review: From anywhere in the world, you can download the album as full-quality audio files that you can play anywhere and it comes complete with the liner notes, and you can buy it for less than what any other place is selling it.
Thank you, Toto, for getting it right. 
Buy & Download Toto’s “Falling In Between”
In the same vein, you should also check out Magnatune, an “internet record label” that does the same thing with a wide variety of independent artists. You can listen to every song they sell in streaming MP3 format and then purchase the music in any format you like for (and here’s the kicker) any price you like above a certain minimum. 50% of what you pay is guaranteed to go straight to the artist.
I generally don’t like much of TV, and I also usually am not terribly thrilled about movies. However, one of my favorite shows on TV is actually a movie review show – on Austin Public Access. The show is called “The Reel Deal” and it simply features a bunch of funny, interesting guys talking about movies. They recently ended their “live” run of shows after doing it for 10 years citing creative exhaustion, but the show now goes on in a new animated format. While it does not have the tasty spontaneity of doing a live show, the new animated bits retain a lot of the same entertainment value. Now I can share my love for these guys with you, as they are now also posting these reviews on their website in Quicktime format. Note that these guys have no problem with using offensive language.
There’s a site that allows the download through a BitTorrent client of public domain movies for free. This site is simply called Public Domain Torrents. Sweet.
Some more interesting things I came across getting my dose of Internet news:
The UN has given approval to the manufacturing and distributing of laptops to schools. These are special low-cost laptops that cost about $100 each. Even though they have built in wireless capablity, it’s other notable features are its lime green casing and manual crank-shaft to charge the battery. It probably won’t find it’s way into the mainstream market, but I love the idea of cranking your laptop. Article here.
Looks like holding out on getting a Gameboy DS was a good idea because, and really not surprisingly, a new version of the DS is in the pipes. It’s called the DS Lite, and the only new feature is that it will be thinner and lighter than the current DS. Right now the only release date for it will be in Japan in March. I imagine there will be little to no delay for its release in the US. Article here.