Showing newest 12 of 41 posts from 09.2008. Show older posts
Showing newest 12 of 41 posts from 09.2008. Show older posts
  • Tuesday, September 30, 2008 2nd EntreCard Contest at Gosublogger.com Gosu at GosuBlogger are starting his 2nd entrecard contest. It’s very easy to enter the contest, all you need to do is simply subscribe to his FEED by email.

    The Prizes:


    1. 2000 Entrecredits + Review on GosuBlogger + Domain name + Celebrity e-mail
    2. 1500Entrecredits + Link on GosuBlogger + Link on Template Footer + Celebrity e-mail
    3. 1000 Entrecredits + Link on Template Footer + Celebrity e-mail

    How to Enter:


    • Write a review about this contest.
    • Subscribe to Gosu feedburner via E-mail.

    1 Comment | Read More...


  • Monday, September 29, 2008 How to Use Icons and Web Buttons in Your Blog Recently I published two articles which brought before you set of Icons and web buttons that you can use in your blogs and web sites. After reading the article, one of my friends and a reader of this blog sent me a mail asking how can we make use of these icons in our blogs.
    Free Web Icon and Button Sets  Web 2.0 Icons
    Use Icons and Web Buttons in Your Blog

    This post will tell you how to use Icons in your blogs to enhance the style and appearance of your blogs. Icons are used in blog and sites mostly in two parts. One, they can be used instead of link texts, that is, instead of having a text link to one of your posts or an external blog/site, you can put an icon or button. This is pretty straight forward use and can be done by anyone.

    An example of using icons or buttons as links is as given below. Click on the icon and it will take you to the RSS Feed for this blog.

    The code for this is a so simple as given below
    <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/feedburner/JOZS" title="Click here for the RSS Feed"><img src="http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll161/templatehell/main/ico-arcfeed.gif" border="0"></a>

    Now the second use is as background for headers and some other information. You can see the user icon shown below the post title in this blog, just before my name. You cannot click this as this is specified as the background for the division which holds my name. Well, this is also pretty simple and the background is defined in the CSS.

    We will see how to add an icon as background to a post title. We already have an article published on how to edit post title in your blog. For this we need to find the style definition for your blog's post title or header. This usually comes in the style sheet of your blog template. If you are using a customized template, chances are that the style is defined in the title tag (<h2>) itself.

    To do this find search for and find
    <data:post.title/>
    in your blog's template code. This XHTML tag is normally wrapped inside a
    <h2 class="CLASS_NAME"/>
    or a
    <h3 class="CLASS_NAME"/>
    tag. This differs from template to template. But in almost all the cases it will be either and h2 or an h3 element. Also chances are that this will be like
    <h2 id="ID_NAME"/>
    or a
    <h3 id="ID_NAME"/>
    .

    At present the header will look like this as given below, without any backgrounds. Just a plain header.

    THIS IS THE POST HEADER


    Once you found this tag, get the CLASS name or ID name, in the example above it is
    CLASS_NAME
    , as specified in your blog's template code. Search for it in your blog template's style sheet. If it is defined as
    class="CLASS_NAME"
    , it will appear as
    .CLASS_NAME
    , or if it is defined as
    id="ID_NAME
    ,
    then search for
    #ID_NAME
    .

    If it is defined as a CLASS then the style should be defined as given below. There might be difference in the contents, but it will be wrapped like this.
    .CLASS_NAME {..................}

    If it is defined as an ID then it will appear as given below.
    #CLASS_NAME {..................}

    Now check whether there is a property called
    background
    defined inside this. This normally comes like this.
    background: #ffffff; /*background color*/

    Change this as given below
    background: #ffffff url(URL_OF_THE_ICON_WHERE_YOU_STORED_IT) no-repeat left;

    Replace URL_OF_THE_ICON_WHERE_YOU_STORED_IT with the URL of the icon you want to show as the background.

    This is the resulting header, with a background icon added to it.

    THIS IS THE POST HEADER


    As you can see, the heading comes above the background and it hides the background. we don't want it to happen like this. We need the background also to be shown.

    For this, find for the
    padding
    property inside the style definition.We need to change this also so that the image is shown before the heading, not below it. We have to move the header a little bit to the right so that the background is shown. At the end of the CLASS or ID definition add
    padding-left: 25px;
    as given below. Take care that you place the line above the
    }
    , the closing parenthesis. This is to ensure that if there is some left padding properties defined inside this CLASS of ID, this will override that definition. So the resulting code will look like this.

    .CLASS_NAME{
    ..............
    ............
    existing properties
    ............
    ............
    background: #COLOR_CODE url(URL_OF_THE_ICON_WHERE_YOU_STORED_IT) no-repeat left;
    padding-left: 25px;
    }

    OR
    #ID_NAME{
    ..............
    ............
    existing properties
    ............
    ............
    background: #COLOR_CODE url(URL_OF_THE_ICON_WHERE_YOU_STORED_IT) no-repeat left;
    padding-left: 25px;
    }


    Replace the #COLOR_CODE with the color code for your blog background or the background color of your choice. Also replace URL_OF_THE_ICON_WHERE_YOU_STORED_IT with the URL of the icon you want to show as the background.

    THIS IS THE FINAL POST HEADER

    You can increase or decrease the padding-left depending upon the size of the icon you are using as the background. Also please take sure that you don't make changes to other properties which are defined inside the CSS CLASS or ID.

    You can download excellent and beautiful icon sets from here.
    1. 10 Free Web Icon and Button Sets for Web Designers
    2. Coquette Part 2 - Free Icon Set for Download

    Hope this will help you to understand how to make use of icons and buttons in your blog. This background property can be used with any of the element, like the sidebar header, the comments header etc.

    Let me know if you need any help regarding this and will be happy to assist you in that. Please leave your suggestions, questions and comments.

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  • Sunday, September 28, 2008 Adding Digg Button Inside Your Blog Posts - With More Options Earlier, somewhere in July, I published an article about how to add a Digg button inside you individual blog posts. Even though nobody hasn’t said anything about the article, or no one has any comments about that article, I can see a lot of people referring to that article through my site statistics. So I decided to publish an updated article about how to add a Digg button inside your blog posts, with some extended features.

    In the earlier post we saw how to add a simple Digg button inside your individual articles. It just takes you to Digg site, with the reference to the article URL as shown below.
    Adding Digg Button to Your Blog
    Adding Simple Digg Button to Your Blog


    In this post we will see how to send the Article Title along with the article URL to the Digg website. This will avoid the need to type in the Title Digg website, when the readers are submitting the article. So after adding this the submit form in Digg will look like as given below.
    Add Digg Button To Your Blog Posts With More Options
    Add Digg Button To Your Blog Posts With More Options


    To have this function enabled in the Digg button embedded in your blog, you need to make some changes in the code which I had already published in the earlier post. If you don’t have the Digg button embedded in your blog posts, refer my previous article about how to add a Digg Button to you Blog.

    The code which I had already published in my previous post is given below. We will make some changes in the code. Take care that the steps are same as in the previous post. We are only going to make some changes additions to the existing code.

    EXISTING CODE / FINAL CODE IN THE PREVIOUS POST


    <div style="float:right; margin: 3px 3px;">
    <script type='text/javascript'>
    digg_url = ";<data:post.url/>";
    </script>
    <script src='http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js' type='text/javascript'/>
    </div>
    <p><data:post.body/></p>


    In this code we are going to add two additional JavaScript variables
    digg_title
    and
    digg_window
    , of which,
    digg_title
    will be used to hold the Article Title and
    digg_window
    will hold the condition whether you want the Digg submission page to be opened in a new window when the reader clicks the Digg button. If the value for
    digg_window
    is left blank the Digg submission page will open in the same window as your blog article page.

    Now those who already have the above code in your blogs, replace the above piece of code with the piece of code given below. Those who are not having a Digg button embedded in their blogs, they can also add a Digg button be copying the code given above and pasting it inside your blog template code. The steps to follow are described in the previous post about >how to add a Digg button.

    MODIFIED DIGG BUTTON CODE WITH ADDITIONAL FUNCTIONS


    <div style="float:right; margin: 3px 3px;">
    <script type='text/javascript'>
    digg_url = "<data:post.url/>";
    digg_title = "<data:post.title/>";
    digg_window = "new";

    </script>
    <script src='http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js' type='text/javascript'/>
    </div>
    <p><data:post.body/></p>


    The code, if you use it exactly as given above, will open a new page wit the Digg article submission page, with the Article Title field already filled with the title of your blog post, when a reader clicks on the Digg button. If you don't want a new window to be opened up replace the line
    digg_window = "new";
    with this
    digg_window = "";
    .

    Now, there are more things that can be passed to the article submission page automatically.

    1. First one is the Topic under which you want to submit the article. Before submitting an article in Digg, you need to select the appropriate Topic. Using this option inside our code might be a tricky one as most of the blogs publishes articles in diverse topics and we can only set a single topic for the whole blog.

      But if your blog articles comes under a single topic, say World News, then you can send this as the default topic of all the articles which are being digged by your readers. To enable this in your Digg button add a new line to the code which we modified above. Modify the code as given below.
      <div style="float:right; margin: 3px 3px;">
      <script type='text/javascript'>
      digg_url = "<data:post.url/>";
      digg_title = "<data:post.title/>";
      digg_window = "new";
      digg_topic = "World News";
      </script>
      <script src='http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js' type='text/javascript'/>
      </div>
      <p><data:post.body/></p>

    2. Second one is the background of the Digg button. By default, the background color shown for a Digg button is white and this will not look good in a blog/site which is having a different background color.

      To change the background color or the Digg button change the code as given below and replace the BACKGROUND_COLOR with the color code of your blog/site background. For example, if the background of your blog/site is black, replace the BACKGROUND_COLOR with #000000
      <div style="float:right; margin: 3px 3px;">
      <script type='text/javascript'>
      digg_url = "<data:post.url/>";
      digg_title = "<data:post.title/>";
      digg_window = "new";
      digg_topic = "World News";
      digg_bgcolor = "BACKGROUND_COLOR";
      </script>
      <script src='http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js' type='text/javascript'/>
      </div>
      <p><data:post.body/></p>
    Hope this article will help you in adding Digg buttons to your blog/site with more options enabled. You might not know that submitting your article to social bookmarking sites like Digg, Yahoo Buzz, Technorati, deli.cio.us gets you more readers and traffic. Try this and let us know about how this helped you to get more readers.

    PS : Adding Digg button to your blog/site is fine and should do. But, don't forget to Digg this article.

    4 Comments | Read More...


  • Saturday, September 27, 2008 10 Free Web Icon and Button Sets for Web Designers Presenting before you in this article is another set of web icons and buttons for web designers and bloggers, which are free to download and use. The collection contains some inspiring and cool designs.

    1. Web 2.0 Icons


    Cool nice icons (RSS, YouTube, Flickr, Technorati, Del.icio.us, Feedburner) in sizes of 48×48 pixel and 32×32 pixel free for download.
    Free Web Icon and Button Sets |  Web 2.0 Icons
    Download [211 Downloads]


    2. RSS Feed Icons Wood Design


    Free Web Icon and Button Sets | WOOD RSS FEED ICONSThis set contains a collection of RSS Feed icons designed in wood shades and styles designed by WebFruits.This set contains 12 icons in .png format and are licensed under Creative Commons, which means that they are free to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work except that you may not use this work for commercial purposes.

    Download [40 Downloads]

    3. Blog Social Bookmarking Icons


    This set includes three set of icons for Del.icio.us, RSS Feed, Technorati, Flickr, YouTube which are designed mainly for blog users and are very attractive, also from WebFruits.

    Free Web Icon and Button Sets  Blog Social | Bookmarking Icons
    Free Web Icon and Button Sets | Blog Social  Bookmarking Icons
    Free Web Icon and Button Sets  Blog Social  Bookmarking Icons
    Download [118 Downloads]


    4. Social Web Buttons


    This set includes buttons for Anobii, coComment, Del.icio.us, Digg, Facebook, Flickr, Last-FM, Pownce, Slideshare. A stunning collection of Social Web buttons from Webfruits.
    Free Web Icon and Button Sets |  Social Web Buttons
    Free Web Icon and Button Sets   Social Web Buttons
    Download [100 Downloads]


    5. Silk Icons


    “Silk” is a smooth, free icon set, containing over 700 16-by-16 pixel icons in strokably-soft PNG format. Containing a large variety of icons, you're sure to find something that tickles your fancy. And all for a free from famfamfam.

    Download [42 Downloads]

    6. Aquatics Social Icons


    This icon set contains 30 iPhone-inspired icons (in Aquaticus flavor) of the various social networking/Web 2.0 sites, from Quake9.Each icon is available in these 4 sizes: 60×60 pixels, 48×48 pixels, 24×24 pixels, and 16×16 pixels.

    Free Web Icon and Button Sets | Social Web Buttons
    Download [212 Downloads]


    7. On Stage Web Icons


    The set contains 49 free vector icons including PSD which can be useful for both corporate and personal setting. You can use the set for free — without any restrictions whatsoever. This icon set was designed by Deziner Folio.



    8. WebDev Social Bookmark Icons


    Download this free icon pack for your Website or Application. It is an Add-on to IconTexto Webdev icon pack. 8 icons in PNG (128x128, 48x48, 32x32, 16x16) format.



    9. Function Free Icon Set


    A beautiful set of 128 free icons free for any use. Includes various popular social media Icons.

    Free Web Icon and Button Sets | Function Free Icon Set
    Download [131 Downloads]


    10. Free Developers Icons


    90 Free Developers Icons in this set, Including three kinds of color ,Blue, Green and Yellow, in Png and Ico formats. This set contains icons of size 32x32, 24x24, 18x18 Pixels.

    Free Web Icon and Button Sets | Free Developers Icons
    Download [118 Downloads]


    After selecting the Icon sets and downloading them, leave your comments about this so that I can provide you all with more and more posts of this kind. Suggestions and critics are Most Welcome!

    2 Comments | Read More...


  • Friday, September 26, 2008 Create CSS/HTML and Images for Rounded Corners Easily Many websites and blogs use divisions or blocks with rounded corners these days and needless to say they are pretty good too. Ever wondered how to create rounded cornered divisions in your blog or website? We already have an article about creating rounded corners using CSS. But I would like to introduce to you all a smart website which is dedicated for rounded corners. This is just around the corner as well. Just Kidding...

    All right, here is the main thing of this article. Guys from RoundedCornr are there to help you to create rounded cornered divisions or sections for your blog or site.

    Create divisions or sections with rounded cornersThis website offers you pretty simple ways to create divisions or sections with rounded corners. All you need is to specify the corner radius in pixels, the background color, and the color of the box. Click the button and you can see the preview how the box will look like. They also generate 4 images for four corners to be downloaded.

    The best part is they will tell give you the CSS & HTML codes to create the rounded corners. This is the highlight of this service as the process is simple and is understandable by even a layman. Only thing you need to take care of is to specify the background color as same as the background color of the page where you want to place these sections with rounded corners.

    create rounded corners with gradientsYou can also create rounded corners with simple gradients through this site. This generates code for a box with rounded corners and a color gradient, just like the box surrounding this section. 'Gradient height' determines the distance to make a complete transition from the top color to the bottom color. You can specify any gradient angle between 0 (vertical) and 90 (horizontal) degrees.

    When you are at this site, don't forget to checkout the Rounded Corner with Border and Single Rounded Corner services. If you want to make some good buttons with rounded corners use the Single Rounded Corner Image service. You can create a single GIF image of a box with rounded corners, border, gradient, and/or text. You can use this image as background for your buttons, tabs, text box, etc.

    If you are not at all interested in creating rounded cornered boxes/sections/divisions with images, then your should check out here to know how to create rounded cornered divisions with just CSS.

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  • Thursday, September 25, 2008 Coquette Part 2 - Free Icon Set for Download Guys at DryIcons has just released a new set of Icons, 2nd in the Coquette series. These are the better, improved version of one of DryIcons' most downloaded and most popular free icons sets. They have included 50 brand new icons in this set for the users.
    Download Free Icon Set from DryIcons


    This playful free icon set contains curvy and colorful free icons made with one goal, to get all the affection to your projects. These free icons flirt with style! "Coquette" free icon set contains 50 high quality, free icons in these sizes: 16x16px, 32x32px, 48x48px, 64x64px and 128x128px and 32-bit transparency PNG file format.

    They come in .ico, .ong and .icns ( for Mac users). You can donwload the whole set of icons from DryIcons web site. Also a complete list of these icons are also avialable for preview.

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  • Thursday, September 25, 2008 EntreCard Giving Credits for Blog Posts - This is Awesome! This is Awesome! Really Awesome!!I was going through my Entrecard account and saw that my points had increased enormously. Yesterday when I was in my account and after purchasing some advertisements, the left out points were around 200. But today it is showing more than 1000 points in my account.

    Entrecard giving away credits for blog posts
    EntreCard Giving Credits for Blog Posts


    I was surprised to see this as this never happened with me and as far as I remember I haven't won any contests that give entrecard points. I checked into the transactions list and saw as shown above.

    I was given EC Credits for my blog posts! That too 25 EC credits for a single post...I don't know whether this is an error from entrecard side or not. Whatever it is I am happy that I am getting something in return to the time I am spending to post these articles. Thanks Entre Card.

    I do agree that entre card drives traffic to your site and mine. But it is a fact that no users stay in the site for more that 3 seconds. That is the time they need to drop on the entrecard widget. Everyone is interested in getting credits via drops and not in the blog or blog contents. This is really sad and also affects the bounce rate in our sites as there users are coming in and leaving in seconds.

    I hope entrecard will do something to keep the users in the site for at least 30 seconds. Being done that entrecard droppers will stay in your site or blog from some time.

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  • Wednesday, September 24, 2008 How to Style Different Elements in Blogger - Post Title Recently I was going through the site statistics of my site provided by statcounter and found an interesting thing. I saw a lot of blogspot users searching for terms like "how to change font size of date in blogger", "how change color of post title" etc. Well even though these things are simple queries and can be done by anyone, I also searched for these terms and found nothing.

    How to Style Different Elements in Blogger - Post Title
    How to Style the Post Title in My Blog


    It is interesting to see that there are hundreds of blogs providing tips and tricks to customize the blogger template, there are no posts for these basic things. So here we go. In this article we will see how to change the font size of different elements in a blogger blog.

    Before editing your template or performing any action in your template I would prefer you read this article about editing your template.

    How to Change The Post Title Font Style

    All the styles for different elements in a blogger template is defined in the Style sheet that comes in between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags. So to change the style of an element we need to find under which ID or CLASS name the style of that element is defined. Finding this is pretty simple. Follow the steps given below.

    1. Go to Blogger Home

    2. Click on Layout option for the blog and click on Edit HTML

    3. Now check on the "Expand Widget Templates" check box at the top right corner of the HTML Editor.

    4. Inside the HTML search for the piece of code as given below.
      <b:includable id='post' var='post'>

    5. For almost all the blog templates the Title of the Post comes immediately after this. This is an <h2> element in 99% of the blogger blog templates. This should look like as given below.

      <h2 class='title'>
      <b:if cond='data:post.link'>
      <a expr:href='data:post.link'>
      <data:post.title/>
      </a>
      ..............
      </h2>

    6. In this case the class which defines the style for the post title is title as you can see in the line <h2 class='title'>

    7. Now search for the word .title in your style sheet. Don't remember the .[dot] before the title as this helps you to get the class definition easily.

    8. If you can't find anything like that in your style sheet don't worry. we will add a CSS Class of property with that name.

    9. If you already have a class or id named title in your style sheet, you can edit it to change the font style. If the font styles are already defined, edit them as per your needs. The basic font styles used are font-family, font-size, font-weight, font-color.

      So, to have a title with color black, size 22pixels, of family Arial, Verdana or Tahoma, and which is bold, add the blow given piece of code in your title style definitions.
      .title{
      font-family: Arial, Verdana, Tahoma;
      font-size: 22px;
      font-color: #000000;
      font-weight: bold;/*replace bold with normal to make the font normal*/}

      OR
      #title{
      font-family: Arial, Verdana, Tahoma;
      font-size: 22px;
      font-color: #000000;
      font-weight: bold;/*replace bold with normal to make the font normal*/}

    10. Save the Template

    If you dont have this class or id in your style sheet, or if no class or id is specified inside the <h2> tag, don't worry. We can add them in the style sheet.

    First you need to create the class in the style sheet. Copy the code given in STEP 9 as given above (copy the one with the .title) and paste it inside your style sheet ( best place will be above ]]></b:skin> ).

    Second, find the place where the Post Title is placed. For this refer the steps 4 & 5 given above. When you find the <h2> tag replace it with <h2 class="title">. Take care that no other class or id is not defined inside the <h2> tag.

    Save your template and you are good to go. The post titles in your blog will be displayed as in black, bold, Arial letters with a size of 22 pixels.

    Now even after this, the style is not changed its is because of this. Your post title is also an acnhor text. That is, it is a link to the page where that particular post is displayed individually. There might be some styles defined for links which are also h2 headers.

    In this case, the style we specified for the title class we defined comes before the style which is defined for the h2 a(the link object).

    Now to change this you need to find something like this in your template code and edit it to meet your requirements.
    h2 a {..........}


    To find more options and CSS styles for the font property you cna refer this article which tell you everything about font styles.

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  • Wednesday, September 24, 2008 Promote Your Website With Host My Post! What's your story? Hi there! Welcome to Host my Post! We're a bit different, but in a good way. We're going to talk to both sides in the game, so hang loose. Should you keep reading? The headline news couldn't be better. "Both sides benefit!" So keep your eyeballs tracking.

    First on to the mound to pitch: Advertisers Who? You're the content producers, the guys who slave over every crafted word and then want to see those words get out there. You could be a PR or advertising agency. You've got a marketing campaign to get underway and you need fast distribution for your Press Release or SEO optimized infomercial articles to the maximum number of high ranking sites.

    Welcome to Host My Post! Couldn't be easier. Just load up your copy, offer to pay the going rate for Publishers to take your content, and watch your copy fly out round the net. There's no easier or faster way to get distribution. This is the single, most cost-effective way of running a campaign. You could be an author (perhaps running your own sites). You want to establish your expert status by getting your work out there. More importantly, you want inbound links to your own sites to boost their ranking.

    Welcome to Host My Post! If your content is good enough and fits what the Publishers need, it will fly out of the virtual door for just a few dollars of promotion funding. First up to the plate: Publishers You're the guys who run those thousands of websites with the higher rankings. Stand up and take a bow. Thanks for coming.

    You're here for two reasons: (1) you want to boost your rankings even higher by getting those inbound links so you're going to act like an Advertiser and offer some of your content to other Publishers; and/or (2) you're in business to make money (now there's a radical idea!) so you're going to take the cash to publish other people's copy when it fits into your sites. More good content on your sites. No need to commission it. No need to pay for it. Better ranking. More advertising and affiliate revenue. Can't see a downside here!

    Welcome to Host My Post! Just register your sites. We'll check out their ranking - the higher the better - and then leave you to view the content on offer. Whenever you see something that fits your sites, you download a copy and take the dollars on offer. What could be easier? Well, if you run WordPress sitesWordPress sites, we've got a neat piece of code that automates the process so you just keep taking the money while your sites do the rest! So there you have it.

    Advertisers meet Publishers, exchange content and cash. Everyone wins in this game! Sign up today!

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  • Tuesday, September 23, 2008 Coming Soon - Music Albums Sold on Memory Cards Just as vinyl once gave way to compact discs as the main physical medium for music, could CDs be replaced now by a fingernail-sized memory card?

    Perhaps not entirely, but SanDisk Corp., four major record labels and retailers Best Buy Co. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. are hoping that albums sold on microSD memory cards will at least provide an additional stream of sales.

    The companies unveiled plans Monday to sell memory cards loaded with music in the MP format, free of copy protections. Called "slotMusic," the new format is meant to address two intertwined trends.

    Most albums are still sold in a physical format — 449 million were sold on CDs in 2007, while 50 million were sold digitally, according to Nielsen SoundScan — yet CDs are decreasingly popular. Albums sold on CD dropped almost 19 percent last year.

    Given this, the record labels — Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group Corp. and EMI Group PLC — are hoping slotMusic can be another physical revenue source, and one that is more versatile than CDs given the kinds of gadgets people carry around these days.

    Unlike when the CD was introduced and people had to buy new players, many people already have the ability to play slotMusic albums, since many cell phones and multimedia players support microSD cards.

    These new albums will come with a small USB dongle that lets buyers use them with computers, too. [The USB dongle will also enable users to transfer the songs to iPods, which don't have memory-card slots, via a PC.]

    Buyers will be able to use extra space on the cards to hold songs and photos from their own collections.

    [The files will be MP3s encoded at a bitrate of 320 samples per second, the highest possible setting ensuring roughly CD-quality sound.]

    The cards and dongles will come in boxes similar to current CD packaging, and Schreiber expects the cost of slotMusic releases to be "in the ballpark" of current CD prices.

    It's not yet known exactly when — or how many — albums will be initially sold in the format, but Schreiber expects retailers to give a "sizable amount of shelf space" to slotMusic albums.

    The albums are expected to debut at multiple retailers, including Best Buy and Wal-Mart stores in the U.S., and later in Europe.

    1 Comment | Read More...


  • Tuesday, September 23, 2008 Google Phone Debut Scheduled for Oct. 22 | Price : $179.00 The first phone that harnesses Google Inc.'s ambition to make the Internet easy to use on the go was revealed Tuesday, and it looks a lot like an iPhone.

    T-Mobile USA showed off the G1, a phone that, like Apple Inc.'s iPhone, has a large touch screen. But it also packs a trackball, a slide-out keyboard and easy access to Google's e-mail and mapping programs.

    T-Mobile said it will begin selling the G1 for $179 with a two-year contract. The device hits U.S. stores Oct. 22 and heads to Britain in November and other European countries early next year.

    The phone will be sold in T-Mobile stores only in the U.S. cities where the company has rolled out its faster, third-generation wireless data network. By launch, that will be 21 cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Houston and Miami.

    In other areas, people will be able to buy the phone from T-Mobile's Web site. The phone does work on T-Mobile's slower data network, but it's optimized for the faster networks. It can also connect at Wi-Fi hotspots.

    The data plan for the phone will cost $25 per month on top of the calling service, at the low end of the range for data plans at U.S. wireless carriers. And at $179, the G1 is $20 less than the least expensive iPhone in the U.S.

    Android, the free software powering the G1, is a crucial building block in Google's efforts to make its search engine and other services as accessible on cell phones as they already are on personal computers. The company believes it eventually might make more money selling ads that get shown on mobile devices than on PCs, a channel that will generate about $20 billion in revenue this year.

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