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The combined companies will bring together computers pre-loaded with all the music-playing software a body could want (Compaq) with CD burners (HP). Not that anyone is paying much attention to that.

DOT DOT DOT COM: THIS TIME
IT'S IMPERSONAL

It’s Just Another Day in the Exciting World
of Technology!!!
GRACENOTE? AIN’T THAT WHERE ELVIS DIED?
Gracenote announced today a complete rollout of technology solutions to support consumer electronics manufacturers. The company has rolled out CD players, MP3 jukeboxes with hard drives and networked CD players and jukeboxes. Excited yet? All right, consider this: Gracenote’s CDDB music recognition technology eliminates the need for consumers to manually input artist, album or song information when adding CDs to a personal music database. The company’s advanced services provide additional content such as album cover art, artist biographies and something called "advanced play list management," a phrase that could have raised $15 million in venture capital two years ago but that now generally elicits confused-chicken noises.

ONE FOR THE EXPENSE ACCOUNT
MP3.com will host the first-ever Artist Community Event (ACE) October 4-5 in San Diego. In the do-it-yourself, interactive sessions, musicians will have the opportunity to learn how to escalate their careers, using the latest in music technology. Between networking with producers and labels, the artists will have the chance to hear industry pros speak at sessions such as "How to Get Your Music Reviewed" and "How to Get Your Music on the Radio." Technical discussions on HTML, audio editing and artist administration sessions are also planned. Artists can register for the event on MP3.com’s website, safe in the knowledge that the $50 fee is a little too rich for the cheapskates at HITS. Would-be sponsors interested in some hot-and-heavy chat about booths and goodie bags can e-mail [email protected].

WHEN COMPUTER COMPANIES MATE…
Computer giant Hewlett-Packard has acquired fellow computer giant Compaq in an all-stock purchase valued at $25 billion. (Sources inside my head confirm that the combined company will be called Hewlett-Compaqard.) According to experts—meaning people other than those you might find in this building—the merger will give HP "the ability to challenge IBM in the enterprise space." Well, actually, it was HP’s own Chairman/CEO Carly Fiorina who said that. But she's a Chairman/CEO and probably owns a jet, so that should be good enough for you. Over the last few years, both companies have been aggressively trying to remake themselves into information technology service provider companies that offer enterprise service, software and support beyond mere computing hardware. The combined companies will also bring together computers pre-loaded with all the music-playing software a body could want (Compaq) with CD burners (HP). Not that anyone is paying much attention to that. Then again, it's not like anyone is reading this.

SOMEONE "ROBUSTLY EMBEDDED" THIS STORY IN
MY HEAD

The U.S. Patent Office issued another patent in the field of digital watermarking for audio and graphic content to Digimarc, making U.S. Patent Officers about the only non-Digimarc employees who have faith in digital watermarking. Digimarc, self-proclaimed as "the world leader in digital watermark technology" (sort of the tech version of "snipe hunt champion"), currently holds 28 patents in watermarking, with a staggering 240 pending. Interestingly enough, not one of those patents, nor all of them combined, raises even the tiniest bit of concern in the hacker community. In related Digimarc news, the company is suing Verance—the self-proclaimed "leader in digital watermark technology"—for the third time, because Verance has allegedly infringed on some technical hoo-hah which "concerns methods for robustly embedding a digital watermark into"…er… things, which apparently Digimarc had dibs on. To show how little the company is concerned about this suit, Verance has opened new offices in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. If representatives from both companies would only agree to meet in a neutral location, we'd gladly knock their heads together.

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