Fan Fare

from MediaFile:

Entrepreneurs swarm at iPhone launch

In New York, the annual launch of iPhone upgrades has morphed from being a odd meeting of tech-geek-love into an  giant marketing opportunity for scrappy business-minded folks looking to promote a small business.

Hey, why not? Where else can you find hundreds of potential customers, stuck in line for hours with wallets deep enough to buy a pricey piece of hardware, a swarm of TV news cameras as well as myriad other member of the media (including yours truly), and minimal security?

As far as the business of the day -- Apple selling a new phone; customers buying them -- the iPhone 4 launch was business as usual. The real show in New York was on the periphery, watching entrepreneurs at work hawking websites, phone-swapping services, a radio station, vampires and more. Is there an economy growing here?

Here's a sample of the show on Manhattan's midtown this morning:

AOL Lifestream, a system that aggregates networks like Facebook and Flickr, brought muffins.

Nicole Richie gives birth to Sparrow

If it’s tough being a celebrity these days, and it’s getting even harder finding a unique name for a celebrity baby.

But Nicole Richie and husband Joel Madden have come up with something new to greet the arrival of their new son, born “In the middle of night, the very early hours of September 9, 2009.”

The 7 1b 14 oz (3.6 kg) baby boy has been named Sparrow James Midnight Madden, Richie, 27, announced on her web site .

Sparrow is baby brother to big sister Harlow Winter Kate Madden, who was born in January 2008.

Sparrow is the latest strikingly unique name chosen recently by celebrities for their offspring, including Bronx Mowgli (son of Ashley Simpson-Wentz), Apple (daughter of Gwyneth Paltrow), Zuma (son of Gwen Stefani) and Sunday Rose (daughter of Nicole Kidman).

At least Nicole and Joel didn’t announce the birth of Sparrow with a Tweet…

from MediaFile:

Beatlemania re-surfaces on eve of Apple event

Britain's Sky News caused a bit of a stir on the blogosphere on Tuesday after it cited John Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, as saying the Beatles back catalog was finally going for sale on iTunes: seemingly confirming a longstanding rumor that had gained momentum ahead of a widely watched Sept 9 Apple music-entertainment event.

But the report by the 24-hour news service, spotted by 9to5Mac and TechCrunch, among others, was stricken off the Sky News Web site hours later and discredited by a numner of other media outlets including Cnet. In response to Reuters' queries, EMI, which owns the master recordings, sent us this from Ernesto Schmitt, EMI's global catalog president:

"Conversations between Apple and EMI are ongoing and we look forward to the day when we can make the music available digitally. But it's not tomorrow," Schmitt said in comments first made to the Financial Times. Apple declined to comment.

Mind you, the arrival of the Fab Four on the world's most popular online music sales portal will be no less than a seminal event. Hence the unrelenting speculation from Apple's legions of rabid fans who stand rapt at the consumer electronics giant's every move, and the intense interest from the band's own not-unimpressive cohort of faithful followers.

On Sept 9, the same day Apple is expected to unveil a new line-up of iPods with digital cameras (with potentially master showman and CEO Steve Jobs set to make his first public appearance since taking leave in January to undergo a liver transplant), "The Beatles:Rock Band" video game will debut for sale from North America to Australia.

The game's debut will mark the Fab Four's first leap into the world of digiral music. And their launch on iTunes -- currently held up by fears of digital piracy, among other issues -- may indeed soon follow.

Just perhaps not on Wednesday.

Bob Dylan peeved about iPods, Johnny Cash’s comeback

Bob Dylan may have starred in a television commercial for iTunes, but don’t look for him to become an iPod pitchman anytime soon.    In a Rolling Stone magazine cover story, the 67-year-old troubadour rails against modern technology like cell phones, iPods and video games. The man who wrote “The Times They Are A-Changin’” almost 46 years ago evidently thinks the times have changed a little too much.    “It’s peculiar and unnerving in a way to see so many young people walking around with cell phones and iPods in their ears and so wrapped up in media and video games,” Dylan told interviewer Douglas Brinkley, a professor of U.S. history at Rice University in Houston.   “It robs them of their self-identity. It’s a shame to see them so tuned out to real life. Of course they are free to do that, as if that’s got anything to do with freedom. The cost of liberty is high, and young people should understand that before they start spending their life with all those gadgets.”      Dylan teamed up with Apple’s iTunes music store in 2006 to promote his new album “Modern Times.” A commercial showed him singing and playing guitar while an iPod-sporting woman danced to the music. He released his latest album “Together Through Life” this week.      In the Rolling Stone interview, Dylan also expressed some backhanded nostalgia for the early recordings of his old friend and duet partner Johnny Cash, in the process describing the country legend’s acclaimed 1990s comeback albums as ”notorious low-grade stuff.”

Cash died in 2003, riding high on a decadelong comeback masterminded by producer Rick Rubin. Over that time, they recorded a series of Grammy-winning albums that showcased Cash’s acoustic side. But Dylan said he started missing Cash ”10 years before he actually kicked the bucket.”

“I tell people if they are interested that they should listen to Johnny on his Sun records (of the 1950s) and reject all that notorious low-grade stuff he did in his later years. It can’t hold a candlelight to the frightening depth of the man that you hear on his early records. That’s the only way he should be remembered,” Dylan said.