Service Provider Journal

Allan Sherman albums on iTunes!

Allan Sherman was most famous for his early 1960s comedy audio hit "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah (A Letter from Camp)." And while, curiously, that's one of the songs still not available on iTunes, it's a joy to report that most of his songs have been available there since February. For unknown reasons, most of these songs have been out of print since the vinyl editions ceased production. Only a sampling of Sherman's greatest hits apparently ever made it to CD. But there is so much more to Allan. If you've never heard One Hippopatami, I See Bones or Here's to the Crabgrass, hop over to iTunes and enjoy!

Update: True believers rejoice! Rhino has released a limited-edition Allan Sherman box set.

Sony Hi-MD shortage eases

Following up on my earlier post, it appears that the shortage of 1GB Sony Hi-MD disks has eased. I was able to buy several at the Sony Style store in San Francisco on Tuesday. I'd been checking periodically in recent weeks, and after several near-misses ("We'll be getting some tomorrow"), I hit paydirt at last.

Radio Time: Shark food for the iPodders

Peter Christy also turned me onto Radio Time, which for $40 a year provides a sort of iPodder-like experience for listening to numerous licensed radio stations anytime, anywhere. Of course, to the iPodder crowd, this is simply a challenge to try to expand the definition of fair use to record and RSS-ify licensed radio and release it via BitTorrent and iPodder, for $0 a year. I smell future lawsuits!

A sad story, or why your phone isn't going to replace your iPod yet

The always-entertaining Peter Christy is about to take the stage at ISPCON. Before his talk, he told me a sad story. Seems his Motorola V710 phone from Verizon has a wonderful new mini-flash storage card called TransFlash. Not only can he download audio into this and play it back via this phone, he also has the v710's optional FM Stereo Radio Headset, which turns the phone into a stereo FM radio.

Now for the sad part.

When Peter closes the phone while listening to either form of audio, the audio stops!

As long as customers have experiences like this with phones, the iPod doesn't have to worry much about being replaced by phones incorporating iPod features.

Sony's 1GB Hi-MD disk: Out of stock!

Recently, I purchased a Sony Hi-MD Walkman (model MZ-NH900), a phenomenal little audio recording device which uses a Sony 2.75-inch disk that stores a gigabyte. Turns out this disk is sold out, nationwide, and no one can say when it will be back in stock. Seems Sony has more troubles than I initially thought. Meanwhile, I'll be making sure I don't lose track of the one disk I have which came with the Walkman.