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The Gillmor Gang is back (sort of)

One of my long-standing favorite podcasts was the Gillmor Gang, and there was definitely a void on my iPod over the past year. Thankfully, the Gang is back . Well, sort of. Steve says "to be clear, this will not be a resumption of The Gillmor Gang; the reasons the show was stopped remain in force...

Posted to Tim Marman's Loosely Coupled (Weblog) by Tim on 11-26-2007
More on UrgeMS.exe

UrgeMS.exe seems to be causing issues for a lot of people. I mentioned previously that you can disable the process via security policy, and someone pointed out a registry setting to disable it a little cleaner. I was hoping they'd fix this in the future, but it looks like all they did was make it worse...

Posted to Tim Marman's Loosely Coupled (Weblog) by Tim on 07-01-2007
Is Apple about to launch a subscription service?

Rumors of an iTunes subscription service have resurfaced . At first I thought that the DRM-free announcement meant a subscription service was less likely , but perhaps the opposite is true. First of all, album purchases will already be the DRM-free "premium" versions. As for individual tracks, the new...

Posted to Tim Marman's Loosely Coupled (Weblog) by Tim on 04-12-2007
Was DRM-free music an Apple innovation?

Some people have tried to paint the recent announcement by Apple as example of Apple innovating and Microsoft following . Headlines like " Microsoft changes tune on selling DRM-free songs " are simply misleading - none of the technology companies truly wanted DRM, but they were a necessary evil in selling...

Posted to Tim Marman's Loosely Coupled (Weblog) by Tim on 04-09-2007
More on the Music Industry's Slow Death

This letter from a former customer further illustrates how the music industry is alienating its customers. While I would like to say I responded with something witty, I must admit to being completely flummoxed. There I sat, a loyal music fan who has shelled out actual money to a business that is supposed...

Posted to Tim Marman's Loosely Coupled (Weblog) by Tim on 03-22-2007
Disabling UrgeMS.exe

I noticed my machine running slower lately, and UrgeMS.exe (URGE Media Scanner) was thrashing the disk and running up to 50% CPU. Obviously, this is part of MTV's URGE music store, the default store for Windows Media Player 11. It appears that the process is related to the "Auto-Mix" feature, which I...

Posted to Tim Marman's Loosely Coupled (Weblog) by Tim on 02-05-2007
A look at Apple and Microsoft strategies

I've been thinking about some of the interesting strategic decisions that Microsoft has made lately. I already discussed their curious IP licensing strategy , and their choices with Zune and Windows Media Player have me similarly baffled. In many ways, these moves have been something I expect more from...

Posted to Tim Marman's Loosely Coupled (Weblog) by Tim on 01-01-2007
Podcast support in Windows Media Player 11

There is one other issue I need to deal with before I can totally switch to Windows Media Player 11 - podcast support. Microsoft made the head-scratching decision not to include native podcast support - one area where iTunes really excelled. Someone wrote a plugin over the summer , but it doesn't work...

Posted to Tim Marman's Loosely Coupled (Weblog) by Tim on 12-28-2006
dopisp adds iPod support in WMP 11

Like most people, I would prefer to use a single media player to manage my library. I like Windows Media Player 11 more than iTunes 7 , and this is especially true since I've subscribed to the Urge subscription service . (I really wish Apple would provide a subscription-based service for the iPod). The...

Posted to Tim Marman's Loosely Coupled (Weblog) by Tim on 12-28-2006
TWiL is finally out, and it's excellent

The first episode of TWiL (This Week in Law), Denise Howell 's new podcast on the TWiT network, is (finally) out . It is excellent, which should come as no surprise given how good her previous efforts with Bag and Baggage and Sound Policy were. This episode features special guest Hank Barry along with...

Posted to Tim Marman's Loosely Coupled (Weblog) by Tim on 10-24-2006

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