Adidas and Puma end 60-year feud
Adi and Rudolf Dassler
The two brothers never resolved their feud
The German sportswear companies Puma and Adidas are to end a feud started 60 years ago by their founding brothers.
Adi and Rudolf Dassler started making sports shoes together in their mother's wash-room in the 1920s.
They fell out during World War II, probably over political differences, and founded firms on either side of a river in southern Germany.
On Monday 21 September, employees of both companies will shake hands and then play a football match.
It is a big deal in the cobblestoned Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach, where two of the world's largest sportswear companies are based.
First joint activities
When the brothers set up their separate companies in 1948 the town was also split, with residents loyal to one or other of the only major employers.
In a joint release, the two companies said they were making up to support the Peace One Day organisation, which has its annual non-violence day on Monday.
They say that the events will be the first joint activities held by the two companies since the brothers left their shared firm in 1948.
Neither group is now controlled by the descendants of its founding families, although Rudolf's grandson Frank Dassler raised some eyebrows in the town by working for both Puma and Adidas.
Since 2007, Puma has been majority-owned by PPR, the French luxury goods maker that also owns Gucci.
Adidas Group is much more widely-owned, with no individual shareholder having more than 5%.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Sunday, September 13, 2009
A Long Song
Longplayer – The Longest Musical Composition
Today saw a group of musicians take over the performance of Longplayer, a thousand year long musical composition that began on the 31st of December 1999 and will continue without repetition until the end of 2999, when its cycle will be complete and the piece will begin again.
Longplayer was composed by musician and computer scientist Jem Finer to be played on singing bowls, a traditional standing bell from Tibet, and can be performed by humans or machines.
Jem Finer is best known as a founding member of The Pogues (think Fairytale of New York, the best Christmas song ever) but has also won awards for his innovative cutting edge musical compositions.
Among his recent works are Score for Hole in the Ground, where hidden percussive instruments are played by an underground waterfall; Landscope, which detected storms on Jupiter, and The Centre of the Universe, a spiral tower that generated music from the cosmos.
At present Longplayer is being streamed live over the internet and is being performed by computer, but just for today 26 musicians will take over the performance for 1000 minutes at The Roundhouse, Chalk Farm Road in London.
Because the piece is ultimately intended to play across several centuries a special trust has been formed to ensure that it continue without interruption, and will appoint a never ending series of caretakers to preserve the music in whatever form the future makes necessary.
In this way, the composer hopes that Longplayer will evolve as a social organism and flow organically through various mediums during the next thousand years.
Today saw a group of musicians take over the performance of Longplayer, a thousand year long musical composition that began on the 31st of December 1999 and will continue without repetition until the end of 2999, when its cycle will be complete and the piece will begin again.
Longplayer was composed by musician and computer scientist Jem Finer to be played on singing bowls, a traditional standing bell from Tibet, and can be performed by humans or machines.
Jem Finer is best known as a founding member of The Pogues (think Fairytale of New York, the best Christmas song ever) but has also won awards for his innovative cutting edge musical compositions.
Among his recent works are Score for Hole in the Ground, where hidden percussive instruments are played by an underground waterfall; Landscope, which detected storms on Jupiter, and The Centre of the Universe, a spiral tower that generated music from the cosmos.
At present Longplayer is being streamed live over the internet and is being performed by computer, but just for today 26 musicians will take over the performance for 1000 minutes at The Roundhouse, Chalk Farm Road in London.
Because the piece is ultimately intended to play across several centuries a special trust has been formed to ensure that it continue without interruption, and will appoint a never ending series of caretakers to preserve the music in whatever form the future makes necessary.
In this way, the composer hopes that Longplayer will evolve as a social organism and flow organically through various mediums during the next thousand years.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Talented 3 piece.
Them Crooked Vultures To Tour Australia
Them Crooked Vultures is Dave Grohl (Nirvana/Foo Fighters), Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) and John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin).
More at undercover.com.au
Hands on with the Spotify iPhone app
It is one of the most hotly anticipated apps yet to appear on the iPhone.
From today, Spotify – the digital music application credited by some for finally luring listeners away from online piracy – can sit alongside iTunes on Apple’s mobile, as well as on phones running Google’s Android software.
On the PC, Spotify allows its users to listen to any of its millions of tracks for free, supported by advertising. On a mobile, users must upgrade to its premium subscription, which costs £9.99 a month or £119.88 a year (and also provides ad-free listening on the PC).
The achievement in bringing Spotify to the mobile is not just technical. It has negotiated wireless rights to its entire library (no mean feat) and even allows users to store some songs for “offline” listening, in spite of fears that Apple would prevent it from doing so for fear of competition with iTunes. For Spotify, the mobile app is a crucial tool in selling subscriptions to its millions of free users.
I’ve been playing with the Spotify application on my 3G iPhone after downloading it from the App Store this morning and in general the experience has been good – but perhaps not a complete replacement for iTunes.
Connected to the O2 3G network in central London, the first song I searched for was an early B-side from Britpop band Suede (just to stretch the catalogue a bit). Finding the song was simple – you can search by track, album or artist – and you simply tap the title to start it playing. In a nice touch, more results automatically load as you scroll down the list.
After a brief moment, the song started playing, paused 5 seconds in, then played for another 24 seconds before another little break. After that the track played judder-free for the remaining minutes. The music plays at roughly the same bitrate (a measure of sound quality) as the standard desktop player, around 160 kbps, although premium subscribers get up to 320 kbps on the PC. On my home wifi network, which runs at around 6 mbps, the experience was smoother.
Listening to tracks offline – in an aeroplane, for instance, or on the London Underground – is one of the features that makes Spotify stand out over other music apps. But this requires a little preparation before departure. First you set up a playlist or two, which is possible on the iPhone itself but easier on Spotify’s desktop software. Because you use the same login details, these then automatically appear on the mobile version. You can “cache” a maximum of 3,333 tracks on the phone, if its memory can take that many.
Downloading them to the iPhone requires a wifi connection. It took me about 5 minutes to sync two dozen tracks, so a whole flight’s worth would take some advance planning.
Caching works to a limited extent when out of wifi range. As I was descending the escalator down underground to the Tube platform, Blur kept playing in my headphones for a short while after my mobile connection had disappeared. After it cut out, I was able to rewind to the beginning of the song and listen to most of it again.
Out of habit while on the Tube, I closed the Spotify app to read emails on the iPhone – and the music stopped. With the iPhone’s own player, the music would keep playing but the device doesn’t allow other applications to keep playing in the background. Spotify at least helps to ease the frustration of this by picking up where I left off when I reopen the app.
Back above ground, the search bar becomes green to indicate that the mobile network is available (although I couldn’t search again without restarting the app). The 3G experience has been pretty faultless after that early wobble. However, listening via O2’s 2.5G Edge network was not so successful, with juddering every few seconds, which could be a problem for those outside urban areas.
The Spotify app’s biggest limitation could be its impact on battery life. Just a couple of hours’ listening this morning used up a third of my iPhone’s charge, although most of that was over-the-air streaming; cached music would presumably be less power-hungry.
Some users have complained on Twitter that the app intermittently closes itself, but that hasn’t dented enthusiasm for the service, which is among the most-discussed topics on the micro-blogging service.
On Twitter, Spotify’s product chief said that a BlackBerry app is on its to-do list and other mobile platforms will follow, including Symbian S60, which could see it competing with Nokia’s Comes with Music service too.
On first impressions, Spotify is a worthy addition to the mobile-toting music fan’s toolkit. Whether it can help justify Spotify’s $250m valuation, however, is another matter.
From today, Spotify – the digital music application credited by some for finally luring listeners away from online piracy – can sit alongside iTunes on Apple’s mobile, as well as on phones running Google’s Android software.
On the PC, Spotify allows its users to listen to any of its millions of tracks for free, supported by advertising. On a mobile, users must upgrade to its premium subscription, which costs £9.99 a month or £119.88 a year (and also provides ad-free listening on the PC).
The achievement in bringing Spotify to the mobile is not just technical. It has negotiated wireless rights to its entire library (no mean feat) and even allows users to store some songs for “offline” listening, in spite of fears that Apple would prevent it from doing so for fear of competition with iTunes. For Spotify, the mobile app is a crucial tool in selling subscriptions to its millions of free users.
I’ve been playing with the Spotify application on my 3G iPhone after downloading it from the App Store this morning and in general the experience has been good – but perhaps not a complete replacement for iTunes.
Connected to the O2 3G network in central London, the first song I searched for was an early B-side from Britpop band Suede (just to stretch the catalogue a bit). Finding the song was simple – you can search by track, album or artist – and you simply tap the title to start it playing. In a nice touch, more results automatically load as you scroll down the list.
After a brief moment, the song started playing, paused 5 seconds in, then played for another 24 seconds before another little break. After that the track played judder-free for the remaining minutes. The music plays at roughly the same bitrate (a measure of sound quality) as the standard desktop player, around 160 kbps, although premium subscribers get up to 320 kbps on the PC. On my home wifi network, which runs at around 6 mbps, the experience was smoother.
Listening to tracks offline – in an aeroplane, for instance, or on the London Underground – is one of the features that makes Spotify stand out over other music apps. But this requires a little preparation before departure. First you set up a playlist or two, which is possible on the iPhone itself but easier on Spotify’s desktop software. Because you use the same login details, these then automatically appear on the mobile version. You can “cache” a maximum of 3,333 tracks on the phone, if its memory can take that many.
Downloading them to the iPhone requires a wifi connection. It took me about 5 minutes to sync two dozen tracks, so a whole flight’s worth would take some advance planning.
Caching works to a limited extent when out of wifi range. As I was descending the escalator down underground to the Tube platform, Blur kept playing in my headphones for a short while after my mobile connection had disappeared. After it cut out, I was able to rewind to the beginning of the song and listen to most of it again.
Out of habit while on the Tube, I closed the Spotify app to read emails on the iPhone – and the music stopped. With the iPhone’s own player, the music would keep playing but the device doesn’t allow other applications to keep playing in the background. Spotify at least helps to ease the frustration of this by picking up where I left off when I reopen the app.
Back above ground, the search bar becomes green to indicate that the mobile network is available (although I couldn’t search again without restarting the app). The 3G experience has been pretty faultless after that early wobble. However, listening via O2’s 2.5G Edge network was not so successful, with juddering every few seconds, which could be a problem for those outside urban areas.
The Spotify app’s biggest limitation could be its impact on battery life. Just a couple of hours’ listening this morning used up a third of my iPhone’s charge, although most of that was over-the-air streaming; cached music would presumably be less power-hungry.
Some users have complained on Twitter that the app intermittently closes itself, but that hasn’t dented enthusiasm for the service, which is among the most-discussed topics on the micro-blogging service.
On Twitter, Spotify’s product chief said that a BlackBerry app is on its to-do list and other mobile platforms will follow, including Symbian S60, which could see it competing with Nokia’s Comes with Music service too.
On first impressions, Spotify is a worthy addition to the mobile-toting music fan’s toolkit. Whether it can help justify Spotify’s $250m valuation, however, is another matter.
Apple allows Rhapsody music streams on iPhone
Apple allows Rhapsody music streams on iPhone
September 10, 2009 7:53pmby Joseph Menn
Apple has approved RealNetworks’ Rhaspsody music-streaming service for the iPhone, once again opening its doors to an iTunes competitor. The decision announced Thursday comes a week after Apple, now the world’s top music retailer, blessed an iPhone application by music service Spotify, which for now will work only in Europe.
The ad-free Rhapsody service costs $15 per month and includes 8m songs andRhapsody-programmed playlists. It only works when the phone, or an iPod Touch, is connected to the internet via 3G or WiFi.
Unlike the Spotify application, Rhapsody’s includes links to the iTunes store, which is helpful to Apple. A free app already available, from Pandora, requires listening to some unsought tracks similar to those a user selects.
Once quite critical of subscription music offerings, Apple has been more open-minded of late. The approvals may have something to do with scrutiny from the likes of the US Federal Communications Commission, which is investigating smartphone tie-ups with telecom carriers in general and Apple’s recent rejection of a voice application by Google in particular.
Meanwhile, the update to iTunes released yesterday once again blocks Palm’s Pre devices from syncing with iTunes playlists. Clearly some limits to Apple’s openness remain.
Check out more blogs like this
September 10, 2009 7:53pmby Joseph Menn
Apple has approved RealNetworks’ Rhaspsody music-streaming service for the iPhone, once again opening its doors to an iTunes competitor. The decision announced Thursday comes a week after Apple, now the world’s top music retailer, blessed an iPhone application by music service Spotify, which for now will work only in Europe.
The ad-free Rhapsody service costs $15 per month and includes 8m songs andRhapsody-programmed playlists. It only works when the phone, or an iPod Touch, is connected to the internet via 3G or WiFi.
Unlike the Spotify application, Rhapsody’s includes links to the iTunes store, which is helpful to Apple. A free app already available, from Pandora, requires listening to some unsought tracks similar to those a user selects.
Once quite critical of subscription music offerings, Apple has been more open-minded of late. The approvals may have something to do with scrutiny from the likes of the US Federal Communications Commission, which is investigating smartphone tie-ups with telecom carriers in general and Apple’s recent rejection of a voice application by Google in particular.
Meanwhile, the update to iTunes released yesterday once again blocks Palm’s Pre devices from syncing with iTunes playlists. Clearly some limits to Apple’s openness remain.
Check out more blogs like this
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
McTrademark
McCurry wins row with McDonald's
McCurry's owners say they now plan to open new branches
The American fast-food giant McDonald's has lost an eight-year legal battle to prevent a Malaysian restaurant calling itself McCurry.
McDonald's argued that the use of the "Mc" prefix infringed its trademark.
But the Federal Court in Kuala Lumpur ruled that there was no evidence to show McCurry was trying to pass itself off as part of the McDonald's empire.
The owner of McCurry insists its "Mc" prefix is an abbreviation for Malaysian Chicken Curry.
Long process
McDonald's, which has more than 180 outlets in Malaysia, first sued the McCurry restaurant in 2001.
 McDonald's has more than 180 outlets in Malaysia |
A High Court ruled in favour of the international chain in 2006, but then McCurry took the case to the Court of Appeal, which overturned the ruling.
McDonald's then went down its final legal avenue, taking the case to the Federal Court.
But chief judge Arifin Zakaria said on Tuesday that the three-member panel had unanimously dismissed the application.
"We feel great that this eight-year legal battle is finally over," McCurry owner P Suppiah told reporters.
"We can now go ahead with whatever we plan to do such as opening new branches," he said.
McCurry opened for business in Kuala Lumpur in 1999, and serves Indian dishes, including fish head curry and breads including tandoori naan.
Lawyers for McDonald's told the Associated Press news agency that the company accepted the judgement.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Che - Image and Article
It may well be the most reproduced photograph in history, its meaning diluted and appropriated to the point where it has almost become meaningless. We’re talking of course about "Guerilla Heroico", the image of Che Guevara taken by fashion photographer turned documenter of the revolution Alberto Korda.
Article here>>
Gallery here>>
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