Tuesday Links: Purple Pain Edition
|
Written By Reprise Media | July 11, 2006 | Share This
|
|
Rock legend Prince’s 5-plus year dalliance with online music distribution has come to a close, says PaidContent. The Purple One’s site, formerly known as NPGmusicclub.com (named for the artist’s band, the New Power Generation) shuttered its doors yesterday because it “had evolved as much as its current form will allow,” according to a statement. NPCMC had weathered complaints about stingy offerings and steep membership fees for years before coming back to win the 2006 webby award. We’ll try to follow its lead, and go out on a high note with these end-of-day links:
Pow! Zoom! To the…uh…map! Just a quick note on a couple of new Google Maps features, noticed by Loren Baker. It used to be that double clicking on the map re-centered it, but now a double-click with the left mouse button centers and zooms in one level; as you might expect, a right-button double click zooms out one level. Google also installed “a smooth, continuous zoom animation” for Firefox and Internet Explorer users. It doesn’t sound like that much, but try it out. It’s actually pretty cool.
“Oh, pictures of ladies, what can’t they do?” You’ve seen them on TV, you’ve seen them on billboards, and you’ve seen them in spam. Now it seems that images of the female form are being used to scare up fraudulent clicks. Adotas has a screenshot of the dirty tactic in action: pics of girls are placed directly beside Yahoo! ads that are totally unrelated (”Target.com: Add a drawer,” anyone?), but sized to the ads’ exact height so that it appears that the pics are part and parcel of the ad unit. This tony strategy comes to us from MassDestraction dot com, the people who brought you such tasteful fare as “Violent B*tch Fites.” Stay classy, guys.
“I’m on my way, I’m making it” Guba might not be top banana in the video sharing space (that distinction is YouTube’s to lose), but they’re getting awfully popular with the Hollywood suits. News.com reports that Guba has cozied up to Sony Pictures in a deal that will have the site selling 100 of the studio’s feature length titles out of its online retail store. This comes on the heels of a similar deal with Warner Bros. a couple of weeks ago, good for 200 films.
Although Guba’s profit-making revenue model has impressed studios, users might not be thrilled with the limitations of its download-to-own movies. New releases cost $19.99 and library titles $9.99 (not exactly a discount), and can be played using Windows Media Player and “usually on up to 2 devices,” according to the FAQ. Although a DVD backup can be created in most cases, a playable DVD can’t, since “currently no DVD player supports Windows Media DRM.”
Topics: Technology |