Apple iTunes

On Friday night, the authors and graphic designers of the latest book from the deadpan satirists at The Onion walked the one whole block from their office to the Apple store in Soho, to promote Our Dumb World: The Onion’s Atlas of the Planet Earth (73rd Edition) -- now with "fewer clouds on maps," "better-veiled xenophobia," and "curvier latitude lines."

In a shameless act of cross-promotion between new and old media, a narrated slideshow was recorded so that iTunes users could download it as a podcast--which, of course, would promote the audiobook version of the atlas (available on iTunes for $15.95, natch).  read more »

Will Oldham has always been fascinated with pop icons (check out this video for Kanye West’s “Can’t Tell Me”). He’ll take on R. Kelly, Danzig, and Bjork with his Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy outfit release Ask Forgiveness. It will include eight covers in all.

New York Mag inspires us to finish The Brothers Karamozov starting tonight. We swear!

Jay-Z will come out of his 23rd retirement to perform at the Hammerstein Ballroom on Nov. 13.

iTunes revs up their film archives. Selma Blair’s boobs, which star in Ed Burns’ new movie Purple Violets, are going to look mighty tiny on the iPod screen.

A documentary about Karl Lagerfield will screen at Film Forum tomorrow night, with the director on hand for discussion about black clothes and Nicole Kidman.

The day Steve Jobs announces the release of yet another breakthrough mobile wireless gadget that everyone is going to own within a year, it seems reasonable to look at New York City's wireless internet structure -- or lack of it.

The new iPhone lets callers surf the net, access iTunes, and do other fun Internet stuff. In political terms, it may also be the gadget the pushes the issue of city- or region-wide access to wifi technology.

If my understanding is correct, the Apple iPhone will work wherever there's cell phone reception, but it really designed to get up to full revs when it's in wifi range.

The Economic Development Corporation is still conducting a feasibility study about whether or not to build a wifi system for the city, something that is already in place in Philadelphia, San Francisco and Albany.

New York City is currently moving to create a wifi system, but it would for use only by the fire and police department.

As internet activist Andrew Raisej likes to say, "We're leading in Broadway, but not with broadband."

In other net news, Hillary Clinton released a statement reaffirming her dedication to Net Neutrality.

In an aptly timed statement, she said, "It is clear that we must continue to build on the innovations brought forth by the Internet. This means ensuring more affordable broadband access and ensuring that there continues to be open, unimpaired and unencumbered Internet access for both its users and content providers."

-- Azi Paybarah

It must be nice to be Eliot Spitzer right now.

At an appearance this morning in midtown at the Personal Democracy Forum, he gave a lengthy policy speech without once referring to the fact that he's not technically governor yet.

Nor did that fact come up in a subsequent question-and-answer session with ABC News political director Mark Halperin and with members of the tech-obsessed audience.

Spitzer's talk on New York's "digital divide" and the need for state government to facilitate universally accessible, affordable broadband technology went over well enough, drawing repeated applause in an auditorium filled with people balancing computers on their laps.

When the clapping died down after one line about a "comprehensive statewide broadband initiative," Spitzer said, "If that line didn't work here, I was going to give it up."

He went on to lay out a vision of the near future that was heavily inspired, by the sounds of it, by Personal Democracy founder Andrew Rasiej: upstate farmers remotely controlling milking machines, fire and police dispatchers receiving marching orders from anywhere in the field and constituents complaining to their elected officials through wireless broadband technology.

Under questioning from Halperin, Spitzer correctly named the price of a single-tune download from iTunes, but pled ignorance on his monthly bill for internet access at home. When asked about his broader plan, Spitzer declined to get too specific about how the state would farm out the work of assembling the statewide broadband network, or how much any of it might cost.

Still, it's a nice problem for him to have: a genuine wonk, he's talking about governing half a year out from the actual election, even before his policy platform is fully formed.

At some point, he'll have to fill in the pesky details. But the mere fact that Spitzer is now spending his time testing out policy themes in front of specialized audiences doesn't say much for his level of concern about his Democratic opponent, Tom Suozzi, who has been reduced to the old he-won't-debate-me campaign theme in an effort to make voters aware that there still is, in fact, a race to be run. (Surely, the campaign volunteer in the chicken suit can't be far behind.)

"The future of New York," Spitzer said, "doesn't belong to the armies of the status quo."

He seemed pretty confident today that it belongs to him.

On the never-ending frontier of newspaper self-criticism, The Washington Post has launched a project in which individual staffers take turns reading the previous day's paper and writing an internal memo commenting on it. Today, Style section scribe Hank Stuever took the opportunity to deliver an extended riff of meta-criticism---second-guessing not merely page-one placement decisions but the whole theory and practice behind newspaper-improvement initiatives. "I think we've overlistened to people who never read the paper, and yet insist it include more about their neighborhoods, lives, and concerns," Stuever wrote. The opening sections of the memo:

*** Hank Stuever, Style reporter

First my screed, then my critique. (Sorry, that's how it goes, and it might run long - I might not get another chance at so many eyeballs.) This forum seems to have a lot of focus-group fallout, calling for: shorter stories, faster formats, oh my it's all too much to handle, I can't possibly read it all, I don't know where to start, I get everything I need from my (pet electronic doodad). And, my favorite, from a critique a couple of days ago, the assistant news editor guy who reads the NYT, WSJ (so navigable! Huh?), then gets online and reads everything else, and then and only then might deign to read The Post, which is, again, too this and too that and is an incredible intrusion on his time. Remarkably, the paychecks navigate their way to his bank account every other Friday, which is another way for me to say that I firmly, firmly believe that if you can be bothered to work here, you can bother to read this paper - the meatspace version, not the Web, the printed result that we all worked so hard to make -- every day before you read someone else's. This is why I can never be allowed to observe focus groups: I will surely bust through that one-way glass window and administer hard spankings to each and every participant who seems incapable of just paging through a newspaper, looking at headlines and pictures, and deciding whether or not there's something worth stopping on.

I think we've overlistened to people who never read the paper, and yet insist it include more about their neighborhoods, lives, and concerns. A newspaper is filled with criminals, celebrities and fools and I for one am happy when it doesn't include my life or neighborhood in theirs.

Then again, no one is interested in my new slogan for The Post: "News Flash: Everything's Not Always About You."

Why are we obsessed with the paper being too much, too large? Our counterparts at McDonalds, Google, iTunes, Comcast Digital, The Cheesecake Factory and Barnes & Noble have already learned: People do not complain because something is too big and they can't possibly read, listen to, watch or eat it all in one sitting. (American consumers so rarely seem to be saying this, except in newspaper focus groups. Otherwise, they seem to enjoy being overwhelmed.)

I have worked at newspapers that fretted, angsted and test-marketed all sorts of "news you can use" and entry points and time-savers. We added geegaws, rails, skyboxes, refers, breakouts, sidebars; we set the articles in ragged-right and whacked the living shit out of them. It helped not one bit, but this identity crisis ultimately created a paper you really could read in 10 minutes. And soon enough, it started to feel like something that wasn't worth the 50 cents they charge for it.

So I really do reach for my air-sickness bag when we start passing around prototypes of a redesigned A1 with rails and time-savers, and an AME wonders (in yesterday's critique) if it might be good idea execute a blanket reduction in story lengths. If we want to redesign the paper to make it look like the coolest thing on the planet, fine, that's an image crisis I can live with. I prefer that if we do, the aesthetic end result reminds me of walking into the Apple Store, and not of a bulletin board in a middle school social-studies classroom.  read more »

They will never let me do this critique again.

A young woman named Lucy Diamonds, a rapper, claims that she's being persecuted by Oprah Winfrey. (The Transom sometimes feels that way as well!) Ms. Diamonds' claim, as reported by Radar, is that Oprah even went so far as to squelch a distribution deal between the rapper and iTunes, because Ms. Winfrey was offended by such lyrics as "Yeah I got drunk and I finger-fucked Oprah."

Now The Transom loves the image of Oprah Winfrey, world's top-earning synergist, stomping on some lil' 20-year-old gal over an allegation of digital manipulation, as it were.  read more »

But according to a published one-sided correspondence between Ms. Diamonds and Bill Bastone, the document-loving honcho of The Smoking Gun, and one of the best reporters in the biz, no such hubbub can be proved. Mr. Bastone wrote to Ms. Diamonds:

the purported letter from winfrey's lawyer is a fabrication from you or "your team." perhaps that's how you think publicity will be generated. however, we spoke today with counsel at oprah's production company and her outside law firm and both said they knew nothing about the letter. also, we spoke with marty singer's office at lavely & singer and they, too, disowned any knowledge of the letter (and, i might add, were not pleased to hear that someone is trying to make it seem that he has authored a threatening cease and desist letter). perhaps this misguided action will eventually result in some real legal letters directed your way.

Oh, tarnation. Nothing like real reporting to mess up a good scandal. —Choire Sicha

The latest version of iTunes, released late last month, features a podcast hub, organizing hundreds of streaming audio programs by genre and content. The browser includes a real-time Top 100 chart--heavily populated by podcasts about Apple computers and/or sex, but with an assortment of other subjects. Ten selected highlights from the list, as of this afternoon:

2. The Al Franken Show 5. Podfinder with Adam Curry 7. Queer Eye Hip Tips 11. Z100 Phone Taps with Elvis Duran 13. ABC News--The Shuffle with Jake Tapper 17. The Mac Observer's Mac Geek Gab 21. Adam Curry: Daily Source Code 30. KCRW's The Treatment with Elvis Mitchell 41. Open Source Sex 86. CNN Marketplace Update  read more »

--Leon Neyfakh

Poker is the new Tribeca: prime media real estate.  read more »

Musical style and technology have always been in conversation, each one pushing the other along.  read more »