TODAY'S TECH ROUNDUP: NOW WITH 20% MORE JARGON!

ClickRadio has inked an interactive license from Ole Productions, a new company led by producer John Alagia (Dave Matthews Band). Alagia's deal will bring a host of emerging artists and ATO/RCA's David Gray to ClickRadio listeners. ClickRadio, as readers of this space ought to know by now, is a free digital radio service that plays secure CD-quality music offline while allowing users to personalize the service via the Internet. The company has already signed interactive radio licenses with Universal Music Group, BMG, Warner Music Group, Koch and Alligator Records, but we've reported on those—and since you don't miss a day, you knew that too. Right, smarty-pants?

Angela Pumo has been named CEO of EverAd Inc. What with the recent string of layoffs at dot-coms it's great to hear that somebody's got a job. Pumo comes to EverAd from content-convergence company CNX Media Networks, where she was Executive VP. EverAd integrates online and offline advertising, and are they ever rad.

Since it's to promote a movie about a rock critic, we'll be kinder than usual in reporting that one-time Rolling Stone writer and current Hollywood power player Cameron Crowe is using his old RS connections to hype his new, mostly autobiographical flick, "Almost Famous." Cameron has contributed a streaming media mix tape of some of his favorites via Myplay's Celebrity DJ Mix. Crowe's editor at RS was Ben Fong-Torres, a character in the flick and, more importantly, Myplay's Editorial Director. Ah, synergy. The filmmaker's mix includes tracks from Jackson Browne, Led Zeppelin, Alice In Chains, David Bowie and Chris Cornell, among others. The mix is ten hours long, just like "Jerry Maguire."

Tower Records has announced that it will install Liquid Audio's Liquid Kiosk Network for its in-store, uh, kiosks. Tower customers will be able to preview music and create custom CDs from the kiosks. One has already been installed in the Berkeley, CA, making Tower the first U.S. record retailer to join the Network. The kiosks include a CD Factory, which automatically records CDs and prints liner notes, and a Liquid Server, which handles rights reporting and stores all the music and provides virtual fulfillment. Development of the virtual surly record-store clerk continues apace.

Toshiba has developed a news series of single-chip digital signal processors (DSP) for digital audio players. The DSPs offer signal encoding and decoding capabilities. You care about this because relatively few digital audio players let users transfer music directly from CD; the usual process is CD to computer to digital player. These hot new chips let users put music straight from their CDs into their portable player of choice. Samples will be available by the end of 2000. Mass production will begin in the first quarter of 2001, and lawsuits should begin soon thereafter.