The Beatles will be releasing their original 13 albums that found their way to CD in 1987 on the Internet very soon according to Neil Aspinall, the head of Apple Corps Ltd. Aspinall is the man responsible for protecting the assets of the Beatles and the man behind the Apple Corps vs Apple Computer (now Apple Inc) law suits. While much speculation has been running a buzz in the media of a Valentine surprise on iTunes, Aspinall told Roger Friedman of Fox News that everyone would be sharing in the love of Beatlemania when online downloads happen. “It will be on all the services, not just one,” Aspinall told Friedman. This means iTunes, Rhapsody, and Napster will all have it.

Aspinall offered little more details about the release of the most popular catalog in the music world other than to say it will definitely happen. No dates or specifics were given. All you need is love…and patience.

Everyone’s got a rewards card these days. Some offer free gas, others airline tickets, and others gift certificates to stores such as Amazon.com. With the rewards market becoming crowded, it seems difficult to find something new and exciting that a customer would dump their current card for but Juniper thinks it’s got one.

The new iTunes Visa gives you iTunes dollars as a reward for all your debt creation. Like an other Visa, you get the same benefits from the charge card company as well as no interest on purchases for 90 days, no prepayment penalty, no annual fee, open line of credit up to $25,000, and as already mentioned, a reward point for every purchase.

I’ve got to say, with the 90 days same as cash feature, this is a pretty cool card to have in your pocket. Now you will have to make a minimal payment each month and after the 90 days of free cash, you’ll have to pay between 13.74% variable and 22.74% variable APR. Depending on your credit, you may get the low 14% or for you frequent defaulters, 23%.

If you’re looking to transfer all that Christmas debt and get something out of it, this may be a good card to look into. If Apple would share it’s FairPlay with others such as Sonos, I’d ditch my Amazon card for this, but since I can’t play my iTunes purchase on my Sonos, I’ll stick with buying free CDs for now with my current reward system.

equinux has updated its cover finding software for iTunes to 2.3. It now brings your iSight or QuickTime compadible camera into the act. If you’re a lucky camper with a ultra rare disc or album that you can’t find the cover to on the Internet, then hold it up to your iSight and — CLICK — it’s in your iTunes. That simple. Also new is cover editor and Split Search (”Search Amazon and Google Images not only for artists but also entire albums.”) Other features CoverScout include searches for covers from Amazon.com & Google Images, filter your library to locate missing covers and more, automatic bulk import directly into your iTunes music library, as well as clipboard save of all covers found.

While iTunes automatic cover find is great, it’s not the best. CoverScout jumps in where iTunes falls short. Give it a look and try it for free today and see if you can finally get covers for all of your missing albums and tracks.

Hollywood continues to dig its grave with examples like U2’s latest (yet another) greatest hits. As is the custom of the labels for the last decade, greatest hits now find themselves with a new song (at least) or two (at most) tagged onto the end of the release to entice even the die hard fans to splat down another $20 for songs that they already have. When CDs was the only media to get your goods from, I would basically wait for a friend to buy it and then record it to tape than spend the $20. Then MP3s made it even easier to grab the new stuff. When iTunes announced it would allow one to purchase on a song-by-song basis if desired, I was relieved. My relief was quickly dismayed when the first best of compilation was released and I saw that I had to purchase the entire album for the one new track. You can guess what I did.

The RIAA keeps telling everyone how illegal downloads is a major problem, yet it continues to bite the hand that feeds it with bone-head marketing tactics that force fans to either buy a ton of what they have already or go underground. The labels greed, AGAIN, blinds its rationale. Why, oh why, can it not see this is a problem? iTunes forcing you to purchase the entire album isn’t Apple’s fault, it’s Hollywood’s. The RIAA really needs to wake up to the fact that this ploy won’t work very well in the download music age anymore.

Yet, it’s that time again for another label to make a quick few million and mega-artist U2 is the banner group to help Hollywood get its fill. I love U2, but won’t pay $20 for this best of. Sorry, I couldn’t do it with the last two tries, why now? It’s too bad, too, because truth is, I probably will just take a web browser trip to Russia for those three songs and grab them in AAC format. It’s too bad, because I’m not the only one in this boat.

Beerman37 sums it up in his iTunes Store review entitled “ITunes [sic] mess” which he gives a single star to which he writes, “ITunes [sic] again using their annoying habit of not allowing fans to buy the new tracks for 99 cents, thus forcing fans to but [sic] a bunch of songs they already have. Just a terrible practice. no wonder why people steal….ummm, ‘borrow’ songs elsewhere.”

Are you listening Hollywood or just filing more lawsuits?

Hey, living in California is tough for a Steelers fan. Ya, it’s tougher than the season Pittsburgh is having right now. Any true Steelers fan will do nearly anything to see a game, or highlights, of his or her favorite team no matter how poorly their “I always were a helmet” quarterback is doing.

So what gives on iTunes, two days after the blow out against KC, on no highlights? I understand that the previous three weeks were a joke but come on, give a little here! We need to see those glorious 45 points being scored. At this point, I’m not even stressing the outrageous $2 fee. But man, keep lagging on me Apple and NFL, I may start looking for a torrent…

Motorola and Apple teamed up to bring the iTunes to your phone via the ROKR last year. Unfortunately, Apple didn’t seem willing enough to really give you the full experience and Motorola’s button layout and access to the iTunes software was less than desirable to use. No worries music fan, you can still get that iTunes feeling on your Motorola…or any other smartphone for that matter with SimpleTunes!

Visual IT has masterfully replicated the iTunes menu (or should we say Creative’s menu?) and even added some soft buttons that pretty much give the iPod experience as well. Coupled together, one can easily navigate one-handed much like the real iPod itself. The only thing it will not due that iTunes will is play AAC files. Protected or not. It’s just a plain Jane MP3 player.

We found those that have tried it like it. With the ability to fast forward or rewind within a song (something you can’t do with Windows Media Player that comes with all Windows Mobile smartphones,) and the ability to easily play music form an external card, the $20 may fit just right in some budgets. Give it a try for free for three days and see if it fits your smartphone.

Leave it to Beck to make CD packaging cool again. While the booklet liner notes blew away the sleeve with lyrics protecting vinyl of yesteryear, it kinda got old after a decade or so ago. (Remember the long boxes and the debate of waste around those?) So when Apple started including those very linear notes with full album purchases, it left the CD with little to offer. Or did it?

Like I said, leave it to Beck to make the CD cool again. His new stunning release, The Information, comes with a blank white booklet and a bunch of stickers. His thought? You make the cover. Lay it out the way you want. Put on what you do and leave off what you don’t like. Brilliant! Add to the fact it’s free of any DRM (digital right management). Thus you can play it on your iPod, Sonos, car, friends computer, or where ever. Brilliant! It’s not hard to find the disc for $12.99 so this makes it a dollar more than the iTunes Music Store. So why bother with the protected download at this point? Good question. (No, the videos are cheesy and no one cares about those.)

Apple is up against a difficult problem before it. DRM. What to do about it. While the most lenient in the business, it still won’t let you play it on other non-iPod devices such as Creative’s offering or the home entertainment system by Sonos. This is starting to become an issue not just with techies but with regular non-technical users as well. I’ve already heard a few people tell me they went back to buying CDs because, “It won’t play on my [insert hardware device here].” Funny how Hollywoods little scheme seems to be not working (again). Surprise, surprise!

With such a change in current, Apple will start to see its sales level off at the Store. Sure, the lazy at heart may still go with a quick download here and there, but for the most part, you’ll start seeing more and more CDs being purchased (or visits to AllofMP3) as more users become aware of Apple’s desire not to share FairPlay with others. I haven’t made an iTunes Store purchase in a year and I gladly embraced it when it first opened. Many others are doing the same.

Truth is, the iPod will not be number one for ever and when that happens, Apple will no longer make money off of the iTunes Store as other venues for the other players will be available. Further, as additional music lovers become more frustrated with DRM in the coming months, they, too, will find themselves back in Target, Wal-mart, or online at Amazon, purchasing hard copy material as they once did in the ancient times of the digital frontier.

The unfortunate thing about all this is that those obeying the laws of the land are the ones that end up getting punished. Trust me, the majority of those that were taking advantage of file sharing or questionable sites like AllofMP3 will continue to uses these platforms for obtaining their music. Like gun control, DRM doesn’t work. (Come on flamers, I know you want to take that one on! ) Apple needs to ease up on FairPlay and the RIAA on DRM. Until that happens, legitimate stores such as Apple’s iTunes Store will see a leveling and most likely a spike in illegal downloads…along with some rise in hard copy sales. Maybe. Hopefully, however, Apple will be smart enough to avoid this and really play fair.

So I hear the latest iTunes update has major bug fixes and iPhone sneak peaks yet I can’t even open it because I’m told that my version of QuickTime is too old. Re-install, iTunes instructs me. Okay, I do that and again I am greeted with the same issue. My Macs are happy but to no avail, I can not get Windows to open up and let in the fresh new air of iTunes 7.0.1. Ugh. What to do? Trouble shot.

After a few re-installs and getting the same error (even after installing with nothing running with a fresh reboot,) I finally just uninstalled QuickTime itself along with iTunes. Rebooted and made sure nothing else was running, again. (Make sure you have Outlook closed, too, folks as iTunes updates it for the calendar integration.) With that, I again installed iTunes for Windows version 7.0.1.8 and was able to open it without a restart this time. That was a good sign and sure enough, up came the EULA and I was back in business. Yes!

So if you’re experiencing similar problems, uninstall QuickTime and iTunes and then reboot. Install iTunes with no other programs running in the background and you should be good to go.

The first time I wiped out my PowerBooks hard drive and then realized that I was at my limit of authorized machines (it was three at the time,) I was a bit stressed out trying to figure out how I was going to deauthorized a phantom install. Fortunately, Apple was gracious enough to allow for a “deauthorize all” option and that’s exactly what I did. I was back in business minutes later.

After that frightening incident, I pretty much figured I’d resort to the deactivate all option any time I had to wipe out installs of my PC or Macs lying around the office and home. It was an easy enough solution when adding deauthorizing a machine as a task prior to a clean install just adds to the headache of doing a quick-and-dirty install. Well, easy no more. Apple has changed it’s policy and talk about a crap-crap-crappy one at that.

According to the iTunes Music Store Authorization FAQ, unlimited mass deauthorizations are no more as, “You can only use this feature once a year.”

What gives? Has Hollywood tightened it’s leash on Steve Jobs and crew? Is Disney the reason behind this? Whom ever is the reason, it smells of Sunset Boulevard stench all over it and it’s a shame that one of the most liberal DRM schemes would pull back even more.

So digital music lovers, here’s yet another reason to keep buying CDs and ripping them. DRM sucks and we’ll keep ripping and sharing with whom ever asks for a copy.

I’m loving the latest iPod update (though I was hopping for a 120 GB drive instead of the 80 GB Toshiba, makers of iPods hard drive, we’ve been hearing about) but had to laugh at the $4.99 game option. Now how is it I can get an episode of Lost for $1.99 but a 20 plus year-old game is going to sport a $5 price tag? Steve, come on, man!

Now let’s move over to the Disney side of things and talk about the ridiculous price of new movies. Are we kidding, $14.99? Most DVDs can be had for the same price (sometimes less) that include better resolution, Dolby 5.1 (or higher), extra features, and even different languages. So who is going to pay $15 for a movie…or a two dollar discount for getting it the week of release? Not me. I’ll be hitting Wally-mart or Target, thank you. And once again, no DRM to worry about there.

Oh yes, these high priced feature-less laden movies will also be protected in a way that you can not burn them to DVD, just like Lost and other TV shows at the iTunes Music Store. Hey, this is really looking like a deal now, huh?

The only thing these movies offer that other services or formats do not is convenience. That’s it. Easy download; easy iPod transfer. Is that worth $15? Not for me.