Transcript
P EACH
PEOPLE 3 TELEVISION 4
5
BRIDGE
THE BLADE, TOLEDO, OHIO
INSIDE: Poll cites creepiest celebrities 3
S AT U R D AY, O C T O B E R 2 9 , 2 0 11
SECTION D
TECHNOLOGY
The Blade says, Boo!
Check out Halloween times for Toledo and the surrounding communities on toledoblade. com. Click on the button on the right side of the homepage to find dates and times.
History-making music player celebrates its 10th birthday
E-book best sellers NEW YORK TIMES
Fiction 1. Shock Wave, by John Sandford 2. The Affair, Lee Child 3. The Mill River Recluse, Darcie Chan 4. The Help, Kathryn Stockett 5. Can You Keep A Secret? Sophie Kinsella
Nonfiction 1. Killing Lincoln, Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard 2. Boomerang, Michael Lewis 3. Seriously ... I’m Kidding, Ellen DeGeneres 4. Heaven Is For Real, by Todd Burpo with Lynn Vincent 5. Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand.
By GREG KOT
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
A
cultural shift that eventually became a landslide began 10 years ago this month, though almost no one noticed at the time. Apple Inc. rolled out a portable MP3 player it dubbed the iPod, and after a promising opening quarter in 2002, sales dropped more than 50 percent. The next year, Apple opened the iTunes digital music store; even though it held only 200,000 songs, a natural synergy was created with the iPod. Sales of the portable player quadrupled in 2004 to more than 4 million units. The pocket-sized player with the white ear buds was endorsed in iconic television commercials by bands and artists such as U2, Gorillaz, Feist, Daft Punk, Black Eyed Peas, and Coldplay. Now the iTunes store is the single biggest music retailer in America, with more than 20 million tracks available and 160 billion songs downloaded since its launch. And the iPod is by far the most popular digital music player, commanding nearly 80 percent of the market and piling up a staggering 300 million sales since 2001. “Even artists who were longtime holdouts, like the Beatles, are now part of the [Apple] ecosystem,” technology analyst Michael Gartenberg says. “They realize this is where consumers are listening to their music and, more importantly, buying their music.” Undeniably, the iPod and iTunes have brought a previously unimagined portability and convenience to music-hungry consumers, but at what price? Has the ease of distributing, listening, and replenishing music made it all feel somewhat disposable? Technological shifts in how music is made and delivered are nothing new. They created entire industries over the last 100 years. The invention of the phonograph led to the rise of record companies, and radio’s emergence widened their reach exponentially. The introduction of the cassette and then the compact disc culminated in a $16 billion business by the end of the 20th century, and fueled the rise of portable players such as the Walkman and Discman. Now the iPod has been central to a new way of making, distributing, and listening to digital music. The iPod was not the first portable MP3 player, but it was the one that changed the music business and the culture around it. In a few short years, the ability to pack an entire music collection in a device that fits in your pocket made the rituals of dropping a needle on a vinyl album, rewinding a cassette, or figuring out how to strip the cellophane wrapping off a compact disc seem so quaintly 20th century. Not that some diehards don’t still cling to their turntables and CDs. Vinyl album sales have surged in recent years, driven by connoisseurs, audiophiles, and young music listeners longing for a deeper, more
Toledo Library’s Most Downloaded 1. The Help, Kathryn Stockett 2. Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin 3. Smokin’ 17, Janet Evanovich 4. Son of Stone, Stuart Woods 5. 1st to Die, James Patterson 6. Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen 7. Secrets of Bella Terra, Christina Dodd 8. Shelter, Harlan Coben 9. One Day, David Nicholls 10. Confession, John Grisham
Q&A
Getting a response from stalled software By J.D. BIERSDORFER NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
Q:
What causes a long pause with “Not Responding” indicated at the top of a program’s window?
A:
The “Not Responding” label at the top of a program’s window (or in a task manager utility where a list of running programs is displayed) means that particular program has stopped communicating with computer’s operating system. This could be because the program is tied up doing some sort of intensive processing work behind the scenes, and it may become responsive again after it finishes its task. The not responding tag may also mean that the program has just stalled into a completely inert state and needs to be restarted. Programs can get hung up and stop responding for a number of reasons, including programming errors, hardware glitches, or conflicts with other applications on the system. If a program always hangs when you work on a certain document, there could be a problem with that particular file. Malicious software may also be interfering with your programs and draining system resources. If you have not updated your antispyware and antivirus software lately, update the programs and run a system scan. (If you do not have any security software, even a free program is better than nothing.) If you notice that programs stop responding when you use certain peripherals like a printer, check to make sure you have all the latest drivers for your hardware. Updating your operating system with the latest security patches and system software may also help, as well as making sure you have the most recent updates for the software that stops responding most often. ■ Get the latest RSS feeds at www.toledoblade.com/rss
See IPOD, Page 2 BLADE ILLUSTRATION/TOM FISHER
Revolutionary camera coming into focus, but after holidays NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
Changes in cameras and photography are often incremental: a faster autofocus, a smaller body, a better sensor. Which is why change — real change — is so surprising when you encounter it. The startup Lytro has introduced a kind of camera that makes a significant leap forward. What’s the big deal? With Lytro’s camera, you can focus on any point in an image taken with a Lytro after you’ve shot the picture. The problem? It will not be available until after the holidays. (And the Lytro works only with Macs, but Windows software is in development.) When viewing a Lytro photograph on your computer, you can simply click your mouse on any point in the
image and that area will come into focus. Change the focal point from the flower to the child holding the flower. Make the background blurry and the foreground clear. Change the focal point as many times as you like. Lytro does this by capturing what is called lightfield data. The technology has existed in research facilities for more than a decade, but early lightfield cameras were the size of a wall unit in your den. Lytro’s camera fits in your hand. By capturing the angle of light beams, all pictures shot with a Lytro camera are also natively 3-D (if you have the display and the glasses). More important, the camera no longer has to focus because it’s capturing every focal point, which means there’s no focus lag.
Images taken with a Lytro are saved in file sizes similar to regular photos, so you can email and post them easily. Each file contains the viewer software, so friends can see them. The entire assembly weighs about half a pound. Blue and gray models have 8 gigabytes of built-in storage (about 350 pictures) and cost $399. A red model has 16GB of storage (about 750 pictures) and costs $499. Orders can be placed on lytro. com, but delivery will not take place until the beginning of 2012.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Lytro camera.
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