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The new banner has been installed. By a wide margin, this banner was definitely the most popular! Many thanks to The Mad Admin for the design and to everyone who participated!

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Have you voted for the new sarahintampa.com banner yet? Let your voice be heard! We’re at 39 votes as I post this…I’d like to see it hit 50. So, if you haven’t voted for the new banner, get to it!

It began with the Apple/EMI deal to release higher-quality, DRM-free tracks on iTunes: the first major unshackling of the onerous restrictions placed on digital music since the dawn of…well…since the dawn of iTunes. The EMI CEO, Eric Nicoli, speaks as if he knew the PR we wanted to hear, saying "Our goal is to give consumers the best possible digital music experience. By providing DRM-free downloads, we aim to address the lack of interoperability which is frustrating for many music fans." Yet, a breath later, he reveals his true motives, which are not grounded in an altruistic belief that music should be free: no, the goal is to make more money, of course. Nicoli continues, "we believe that offering consumers the opportunity to buy higher quality tracks and listen to them on the device or platform of their choice will boost sales of digital music."

So, we get the freedom we want for a small fee…the DRM-free tunes cost $1.29 instead of the usual 99 cents, but then again, they are higher quality. Yet, quality alone won’t make me want spend more. Not to offend all the audiophiles out there, but sometimes low-quality is just fine for my musical flings, such as that brief addiction to "Fergalicious." The question will not be whether you will buy un-DRM’d, but what tracks will be worthy of it. If DRM becomes an option, as opposed to a requirement, three tiers of music will arise: the high-quality, unrestricted tracks from your favorite artists; the DRM’d tunes for your music-of-the-day; and the free tunes your friends share with you (now that they have the option) which, in turn, may prompt you to buy more music after you hear how great their favorite band is.

Next in line to free the tunes is Microsoft…maybe. Playing catch-up, M$’s Zune marketing director, Jason Reindorp, announced "We’ve been saying for a while that we are aware that consumers want to have unprotected content." But me-too! Microsoft has to wait and watch Apple blaze the trail, hoping that freed-up tunes will loosen the tight bond between the iTunes store and the iPod. Microsoft is definitely eager to compete with the iPod based on things like service, colors, and screen size.

In the end, that leaves us, the consumers, on what may be the beginning of a DRM-free (for a small fee) era. Soon, it will be the cool thing to be the company that offers the most unprotected music for sale. Even if this option costs us a few more cents, it’s well worth the price to turn the tide - to get the labels thinking that the best way to profit in the digital world is to unlock the music. And if we can bring the labels around, then, hopefully, the studios will follow.

Time to vote! If you had a banner you wanted to submit, you can still email me - I may use it in the future. In the meantime, please vote for your favorite banner from the banners below, all of which were submitted by my readers! Thanks guys!

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Thank you, everyone!

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At some point, Google inexplicably reverted all of its satellite imagery of New Orleans to pre-Katrina conditions on both Google Maps and Google Earth. The question people were asking was why? Many residents affected by the tragedy felt as if the images were an attempt to "airbrush" the truth of the devastation, by displaying only pre-disaster images. On March 30th, 2007, Rep. Brad Miller (D-North Carolina), the chairman of the House Science Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, requested Google explain its motives, specifically inquiring in a letter addressed to Google CEO Eric Schmidt if Google was contacted by FEMA, USGS, or any other federal agency concerning the satellite images. A conspiracy! What confuses me is Google’s response, which indicates that "in September 2006, the storm imagery was replaced with pre-Katrina aerial photography of much higher resolution as part of a regular series of global data enhancements." In fact, the Google Blog states, they "continued to make available the Katrina imagery, and associated overlays such as damage assessments and Red Cross shelters, on a dedicated site, earth.google.com/katrina.html." If that’s the case, then why did this controversy just spring up now? I think the true conspiracy is whoever decided that, 7 months after the switch, this is a now an issue.

At last! As a regular iTunes user, this is a feature I’ve been dying for! There have been many times where I’ve purchased a single or two from an album and then found I wanted to download the whole album. However, downloading the album meant that you would have to pay for and purchased those tracks a second time. Now, a new iTunes feature gives you a $.99 credit if you buy the rest of the album after buying previous tracks. Credits will be given for every song of a record you’ve already purchased. Thank you, Apple!