Music

Get that song out of your head the scientific way

To date, my method for banishing the dreaded earworm is to sing a song I actually like in an attempt to "trump" whatever piece of pop fluff is driving me batty. Apparently scientists at Western Washington University, led by psychology professor Ira Hyman, have discovered a much better way.

The trick, it seems, is to solve puzzles -- sudoku, for example. But by far the most effective puzzle was five-letter anagrams. … Read more

Spotify tries to go mainstream, launches splashy ad campaign

Spotify today is rolling out a major advertising blitz, including a series of TV spots as the company hopes to reach a mass audience in the U.S. The campaign, called "For Music" and created by Droga5, will debut tonight during NBC's "The Voice" and will have Web and social media components.

Spotify's push comes at an important juncture for the company, which now has 24 million active users and 6 million paid subscribers. Spotify, which offers both on-demand music and Internet radio, said in December that it had passed 1 million paid subscribers in the U.S. … Read more

Is Spotify gearing up to take on Netflix? Not soon

Spotify, the largest on-demand music service with 24 million active listeners, is in the early stages of exploring a possible video service, according a person close to the company. But CEO Daniel Ek says building a Netlix competitor is not something the company is gearing up to do anytime soon.

"I won't rule it out because we're a company that looks at what we're doing incredibly long term," Ek said in a recent interview with CNET. "But right now, we're all focused on music."

The idea of a Spotify video service came … Read more

Propose and cons: 'Will you marry me' meets social media

It used to be a new business pitch. Now, it's a Hollywood movie.

It used to be an intimate affair. Now, you're having to keep an eye and an ear on the fact that it'll be a visual and aural feeding of 5,000 supposed friends.

Now, it seems, if you're committed to going down on one knee, you have to be down with who is going to script the event and who is going to direct it. You might even need a few co-stars to make the production big enough.

Indeed, as the San Francisco Chronicle proposes it, … Read more

In trouble, tech CEO? Bash the iPhone

I've spent the whole week uttering rude words at my iPhone 5.

Some had four letters, some have had fewer. Several had four syllables. All were expressions of utter disdain, frustration or disappointment.

I'm very suggestible, you see. And this week, two very clever tech CEOs publicly denigrated Apple's lucky charm, making it seem like it was the result of a couple of parts that had fallen off a Segway.

First, there was BlackBerry's Thorsten Heins, who declared that the iPhone user interface is as old as Jay Leno's jokes. Well, his actual words were: &… Read more

Samsung: Sorry about that sexist show

"Well, yes, maybe we do lack a little taste. Maybe. OK, if you really insist. But doesn't everyone like jokes about drunken women? Doesn't everyone like a booth babe or two, swimsuit or no swimsuit? No? Oh. Really?"

This might have been the inner monologue in certain areas of Samsung's vast collective cranium, after again falling foul of accusations of, well, giving a bad show.

You might not yet have forgotten (and my colleague Molly Wood certainly hasn't) Samsung's touchingly misguided attempt to launch the very fine Galaxy S4 on a New York … Read more

Game maker: Apple banned our sweatshop iPad game

Education becomes more difficult by the day.

Kids have their heads buried in gadgets and bongs. For them, virtual communication is the only real communication there is.

So how can you get them to think about the wider world? One game developer, Littleloud, thought it would be stimulating to create an iPad game called Sweatshop HD.

This tasked the young players to maintain, yes, a sweatshop. It was, indeed, helpful during the game to ignore human rights and hire frightfully young employees. Just as in real life.

Apple, though, felt it was too much like real life. According to Pocket Gamer, … Read more

Google's Eric Schmidt: Why I love my BlackBerry

Sadly, we never got to see the headline: "Steve Jobs: Why I love my Nexus 7."

Nor are we likely to be soon struck by the words: "Steve Ballmer: Why I use my iPhone in the bath."

Yet in a candid and refreshing interview, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt cheerily admitted that his own company had yet to drag his dextrous fingers away from his precious BlackBerry.

Speaking with the Guardian's editor in chief, Alan Rusbridger, at the Activate conference in India, Schmidt explained: "Look, I've tried to go cold turkey. I've tried … Read more

Mind-reading headphones pick music based on your mood

It's late afternoon. It's warm out and you're ready for a nap. You put on your Mico headphones and, as your eyelids droop, your headphones select a soothing mix of Kenny G, Enya, and Air Supply. An electroencephalograph sensor sits on your forehead to help the device scan your brainwaves and interpret your mood. Soon, you're off to la-la land.

Mico works with an app. The headphones relay your mood to the app, which then selects songs from its database of mood-tagged songs. It would be really cool if you could think "Spinal Tap" and then have Nigel Tufnel rip off a guitar solo, but that's out of the technological realm for Mico -- for now at least. Currently, it can only figure out if you're stressed, sleepy, or focused.… Read more