This CNet story is suggesting that Amazon's new digital download service is going to give the iTunes Store a hurry-up. Well, it's not as pretty as iTunes, but it's nearly as easy -- and it's plenty cheaper. I bought Arcade Fire's 'Keep the Car Running' for US89 cents. It's a 282k MP3 file with no DRM -- and Amazon supposedly has a million songs in the same format to sell you.
Amazon even offers you a handy little downloader that will add your new song to your iTunes library.
There's someone who will be more concerned about this than Apple -- and that's the local branches of the major record companies. Amazon doesn't appear to care who it sells to so long as you have a valid credit card.
Meanwhile, I've also downloaded and installed Glenn Anderson's New Zealand Daylight Saving Time patch, which will fixes the problem that Apple apparently can't be bothered with. The new, earlier Daylight Saving Time kicks off at 2am next Sunday morning. There's useful information here.
And, meanwhile, I thought I'd leave the story about Bill English's son's Bebo page, with its apparent homophobic and racist invective, to GayNZ, but it appears I was the only one. There are two ways of looking at this. One is obvious: this is a 14 year-old kid, FFS (although before it went private, his profile had him as 18 years old). The other is that if a politician's teenage son had been caught in various other forms of anti-social behaviour that might embarrass his father, it would be news. (Indeed, it seems lately, if it's on Bebo, it leads.)
Jay Bennie has an editorial and The Press reports that Bill English is consulting lawyers.
Having clicked around the Bebo page in question, and those adjacent, yesterday, I formed the view that it might all be a bit more complex than what's been reported. In the meantime, it would probably be a good idea for Tom English to set his profile to private too.