albums

Study: Free beats fee for Radiohead's 'In Rainbows'

LAST UPDATE: 3:54 p.m. PT--Those who predicted that Radiohead would see mass financial support after allowing fans to pay whatever they wanted for the band's latest album appear to have been a tad optimistic, according to a study released Monday.

Of those who downloaded Radiohead's digital album, In Rainbows last month, about 62 percent walked away with the music without paying a cent, reported ComScore, an Internet research company.

About 17 percent plunked down between a penny and $4, far below the $12 and $15 retail price of a CD. The next largest group (12 percent) … Read more

Organize your pictures with Geophoto for Mac

Almost everyone takes pictures when traveling so they have something to bring back the memories once their vacation is over. A few years ago I went to several countries across Europe and took a ton of pictures with my digital camera. When I flip through the albums now, in some cases I'll forget where some of the more nondescript or interior pictures were taken. Today I found a program for Mac which not only solves that problem, but makes it more fun to view pictures from around the world.… Read more

Killer Download: Get your photos on the Web for free

Digital cameras keep getting better, and as a result, just about anyone can get an extremely high-quality camera without breaking the bank. These days, you can get 7.1 megapixel cameras for less than $200. It doesn't seem like it was that long ago when a 2-megapixel camera went for twice that much, but one of the great things about technology is it always gets better--and cheaper!

If you're a serious photographer you probably like to use a full-strength image editor for color correction, filters, and other advanced features. But if you just use your camera for holidays and family events, how do you manage and display your pictures? There are a number of online sites like CNET Webshots, Flickr, and Shutterfly, which do a nice job of presenting your pictures, but if you want to keep your work local before pushing it out to the Web, want to post pics to your personal site, or want a few more customization options, a downloadable program might be your best bet.… Read more

There may be hope for those warped LPs

With luxury turntables reaching prices well into six figures, a salient question arises: What about the quality of the albums themselves? Even the most ardent vinyl collector has lost a few records to warping over the years.

That's where the "DFV-1 Record Flattener" will prove its worth as long as it stays true to its name. The device, made by Tokyo-based Furutech, claims to be a "one-stop, one-button solution" that uses a "carefully controlled heating and cooling cycle it flatten all your warped records, even those with only slight irregularities that still unsettle your … Read more

Album art finder lets you get grabby

Josh's iTunes Album Art Grabber is a pretty good resource for those of us who like getting their album art from one place. It's not perfect, but it's simple in both form and function, despite being tied to the iTunes Store at the same time it helps users free themselves from it.

… Read more

People bought more music in the early 90s

Market research firm eMarketer recently published a study about U.S. consumer spending on music since 1980. Most commenters have seized on the fact that the study shows a higher percentage of people are buying music today than ever, but that those users are spending much less, probably due to the rise of single-song downloads. (eMarketer calls these "MP3 downloads"--in fact, the #1 source of legal downloads, iTunes, offers them in the AAC format, and many other sites offer downloads in the Windows Media Audio format.)

But I also noticed that music spending per capita rose dramatically … Read more

Publishing your photos

Taking digital pictures is simple; transforming them into a constructive project is a whole 'nother story. Web services like Flickr, Picasa, Shutterfly, Webshots, Snapfish, and countless others let you create photo galleries that are hosted on their servers, but what if you want to create a gallery for your own Web site?

Personally, I'm the sort of guy who wants to start with my raw images and my trusty NoteTab Light text editor, but I seem to have lost my patience for HTML and CSS (not to mention JavaScript and XML) over the last five years.… Read more

iPhone Tip: Adding art to Cover Flow

It breaks my heart to see an iPhone that's missing album cover artwork. There you are with the most beautiful iPod ever created, but your music collection looks like an endless series of generic boxes. Prove yourself worthy of owning such an advanced piece of technology by using my step-by-step guide for adding cover art to your iPhone's music collection. It's the least you can do. Respect your iPhone, people.

You can even use the guide to find out how to replace your album art with custom photos. You haven't truly lived until you've seen … Read more

Tomorrow: Use Flickr, be in a book

Many Yahoo photos users will soon be making the exodus to Flickr, so we thought we'd give everyone the heads up on a fairly cool "event" going on tomorrow. It's called 24 Hours of Flickr, and it's challenging people to go take pictures all day Saturday and then upload their favorite shots to a Flickr group specifically created for the day.

Flickr editors will go through the photos, pick some of the best, and add them to a coffee-table book (designed using Blurb) that will be made available for purchase this summer.

Anyone who gets … Read more