News Blog

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

Audiophiles never gave up on vinyl, but now kids are driving a current LP boom.

Kristina Dell's feature article in Time magazine looks at the trend of people, including teens, turning to vinyl to escape the awful digital grime of downloads and MP3s.

"Bad sound on an iPod has had an impact on a lot of people going back to vinyl," one teen says. Another teenage vinyl devotee tells Time, "Most things sound better on vinyl, even with the crackles and pops and hisses."

And when you figure that LPs usually cost a little more than CDs and iTunes, you can conclude that some kids are willing to pay more for what they truly value! Wow, the kids really are all right!

Sure, the retro appeal of vinyl, the large format, cover art, and the tactile feel of the vinyl experience are responsible for the resurgence. The Warner Music Group posted a 30 percent increase in vinyl sales last year, and indie labels are cranking out new vinyl titles all the time. Used LPs, selling for a buck or less are easy to find at yard sales, used bookstores, and I've personally found dozens of perfectly good records on the street. The future of CDs may be in doubt, but vinyl will be around for the long haul.

Steve Jobs, the most powerful business person in the world

(Credit: News.com)

Five of Fortune magazine's top four most powerful businesspeople in the world are very familiar to the tech world--and one of the names you might have expected to crack the top five isn't there.

Yeah, I said five of the top four, but this is Fortune's list, so blame the magazine for the accounting. But we'll get to that later.

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs came in at the top of the list, which was posted to the magazine's Web site Tuesday. The magazine noted that Apple's chairman and CEO "twice altered the direction of the computer industry"--with the introduction of the graphical user interface and the conception of "desktop publishing" (the quote marks around desktop publishing are courtesy of the magazine). Also noted prominently were Jobs' forays into the entertainment industry with the introduction of iPod and iTunes, as well as his success with animation powerhouse Pixar.

No. 2 on the list is publishing magnate Rupert Murdoch. The News Corp. chairman and CEO caused quite a ripple on the Internet with his recent purchase of The Wall Street Journal, but nothing close to the splash created by MySpace, which he acquired for $580 million in 2005. MySpace, the world's largest social-networking site, has some 100 million users worldwide. In light of a recent deal with Microsoft that valued competitor Facebook at a cool $15 billion, Murdoch got one of the better deals in tech history.

Next on the tech list is where Fortune's accounting gets a little out of whack. But, hey, we are talking about the guys from Google. If you could count as high as their checking account balances, you could make up your own rules too. Coming in at No. 4 are Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, and Sergei Brin. What started out as the company that powered Yahoo's search engine in 2000 is now one of the biggest companies in the world. In addition to "massively" disrupting the advertising industry, the magazine notes that the ambitions of Google's CEO and co-founders are "boundless," with new focuses on the wireless industry and renewable energy.

At No. 5 is Warren Buffett, and while not being a major tech player, he is quite a card player who has been known to move markets as well as athletes to action. He also moved his famous friend and fellow contract bridge enthusiast Bill Gates out of the top five shuffle.

Yeah. Not in the top five. Not No. 6 either (that would be ExxonMobil's Rex Tillerson). You have to go to the next stop on Fortune's list to find Microsoft's co-founder and chairman, or the seventh most powerful person in business (or No. 9 not applying Fortune accounting). The magazine notes that he "invented the software industry, (and) masterminded the rise of the PC," but is it giving him lower ranking due to his impending part-time status at the software giant?

The other power player keeping Gates out of the top five was Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs (No. 3).

Tech players rounding out the list are Cisco Systems Chairman and CEO John Chambers (No. 11) and Hewlett-Packard Chairman and CEO Mark Hurd (No. 16). Nope, no Intel CEO Paul Otellini, no eBay CEO Meg Whitman, nor Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who was recently named tech's most influential person.

A couple of other names not on the list were Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, who once upon a time tried to buy Apple but decided against it, and Gil Amelio, who resigned as CEO before Jobs returned to the company's helm and engineered its long string of successes.

Girls and women are under all sorts of pressure to look perfect--and to make it look easy in the process. Duke University identified this new unattainable standard as "effortless perfection."

As individual women, it can be easy to wonder why we fall into the trap of trying to live up to an unattainable standard. It's something we absorb on an almost subconscious level. Deconstructing this month's Redbook magazine cover shows us just how manufactured the images of beauty we see really are.

I didn't think twice about the cover image of country singer and actress Faith Hill when I first saw it. But an untouched original photo obtained by Jezebel shows just how much "digital magic" even a certified star needs to be ready for her close-up.

Faith Hill photo before retouching, as shown on Jezebel.com

No. 2 overall & online

No. 3 overall

More advertising dollars are flowing to the Internet, in a trend that started years ago. Advertising Age has come out with its annual look at the United States top-100 advertising spenders. There are few surprises, but it's confirmation of what you've probably been seeing and expecting. Internet ads now account for 5.5 percent of total spending by the top 100 advertisers in the U.S. That adds up to nearly $10 billion, and the Internet's about even with radio and ahead of outdoor.

What are the biggest losers? TV's share of ad spending has been dropping annually for 16 years, after it peaked at nearly 70 percent. TV now accounts for less than 59 percent of American ad revenue. Newspapers had a serious drop of revenue in the 1960s, then slowly began to recover, only to fall off a cliff following 2000. That year papers collected 16 percent of all ad revenue; in 2006 it was less than 12 percent. Since 1970, magazine ad revenue has been fairly flat, but that means not keeping ahead of inflation. Glossy print still is No. 2 in total ad dollars garnered. That leaves the Internet as the only clear winner among major ad media.

The big advertising spender is Proctor & Gamble, which leads at $4.9 billion. Second and third are AT&T with slightly more than $3.3 billion and General Motors with just less than $3.3 billion. These are followed by Time Warner, Verizon Communications and Ford Motor.

Other carmakers on the list are Toyota Motor at No. 12, DaimlerChrysler at No. 14, Honda Motor at No. 21 and Nissan Motor at No. 23--all spending well more than $1 billion annually. Other big spenders are No. 12 Sony at nearly $2 billion and No. 15 Sprint Nextel at more than $1.7 billion.

Tech brands? Microsoft is No. 45, Dell is No. 47 and Hewlett-Packard is No. 51. Each company spends less than $1 billion. Apple ranks No. 89, while Philips Electronics barely makes the list at No. 98.

Of the big 100 spenders, Vonage spent the most online in 2006 with $185 million, more than a third of its total amount spent. The No. 2 online spender was AT&T at nearly $170 million. They were followed by Dell, Walt Disney and Verizon.

TV is still leading the Internet by more than $50 billion. Anybody predicting the Internet and TV ad dollar curves will ever intersect? That'll depend on whether TV retains control of the most prized copyrighted material or whether Internet sites begin to compete with live sports and original programming with big-name stars.

Ziff Davis Media announced Thursday plans to sell its enterprise group for approximately $150 million in cash to a New York-based private equity and venture capital firm.

An affiliate of Insight Venture Partners of New York is snapping up Ziff's publications EWeek, Baseline and CIO magazines, according to Ziff's announcement.

But before jumping to the conclusion that CIO magazine has been sold, keep in mind that CIO is owned by rival IDG. The CIO magazine Ziff is selling is CIO Insight.

Ziff is also selling a number of online publications as part of the deal. These include EWeek.com, Web Buyers Guide, CIOInsight.com, Baseline, Microsoft Watch, Channel Insider and DeviceForge.com.

The sale of these online properties, ironically, comes as a number of brick-and-mortar print publications are searching for ways to grab an online presence, in order to chase after advertising dollars migrating online.

The deal, which is expected to close in the third quarter, also wraps in the company's worldwide events and database of 3.5 million users.

(Credit: Larstan Publishing)

You'd think that bloggers and podcasters would be happy with their respective media. After all, how much better can it be to have free worldwide distribution of whatever it is you want to say at any moment.

But if you think that's enough for them--and hey, why not lump them all together in one large group--you'd be wrong. We know this because Larstan Publishing has just announced the launch of, well, Blogger & Podcaster magazine, a new monthly dedicated to chronicling the latest and greatest happenings, and the biggest names in, er, blogging and podcasting.

"Believed to be the first publication to launch simultaneously in three distinct formats," according to a press release announcing the new venture, the magazine "promises to deliver news, features, tips and profiles written for, and by, those who want to use these thriving online media to leverage their voice and expand their businesses' opportunities."

The magazine, which features famous blogger and podcaster Robert Scoble on the cover, has a Web site, of course, on which most of its content will be available for free. And it also has a free podcast edition. Why anyone would pay $79 for a subscription to the print magazine is not entirely clear.

All told, however, it is aiming its sights at the more than 80,000 podcasters and 60 million bloggers it says industry estimates say there are.

Initially, the magazine will have a circulation of 20,000, but it expects to grow to 250,000 within a year. That's a lofty goal given that most magazines simply flop.

Regardless, given the content, we should all expect to soon be reading diatribes about the new publication, both in its pages and out on the Intarweb, from Dave Winer.