Labels posts

Beverage choice should be simple: coffee or tea to rev up, wine or beer to spin down (App Store links). Of course, when it comes to drink choices, there's definitely an app for that: from the makers of espresso-instructions app Barista, we now have the $0.99 Cellar (under App Store review and appearing momentarily). Cellar's slick UI and quick data entry make keeping track of your wine library almost as fun as actually drinking the wine you collect.

When you start up Cellar, you face an empty winerack; you can add bottles one by one, entering both vintage details and customizing the look/label of the bottles with photos of the bottle labels. You can adjust the number of bottles of each kind of vino you have stored away, and then as you polish them off the 'empties' are stored in the Garage area of the app for reference or repurchase.

Cellars isn't an industrial-strength wine database or collection manager (My Wine or Velvet Vine Wine Pro might be better choices there, or a general-purpose database like Bento), but it is a handy way to remember what you've bought and liked. I'd like to see future versions support importing label images from the photo library (for iPod touch users) or download them from online wine libraries. Update: Apparently the library-select feature is already in place for iPod touch users. Readers also suggest checking out Drync for higher-end wine cellar management.

Cellar's $0.99 introductory price won't last for long. Check out the gallery for more Cellar shots.

In today's New York Times, Tim Arango tells a story of a heated conversation between Sony Music's Rolf Schmidt-Holtz and Steve Jobs on Christmas Eve -- one that "ricocheted around the music industry."

Apparently, before the announcement at Macworld, all the labels except Sony had agreed to a new pricing deal. Sony wanted the new pricing to take effect immediately after the announcement, but Jobs wanted a longer rollout. After the phone call, according to the Times, Sony agreed to the longer waiting period.

During this time, Jobs was allegedly on medical leave, recuperating at home from his much-publicized illness. Arango notes that Jobs' point-man on music industry relations, Eddie Cue, and Apple's entire staff "do their best to follow Mr. Jobs's style in their own negotiating." That is to say: Hardball.

Music executives, according to an unnamed source, are afraid of angering Apple, as Apple can single-handedly remove a label's catalog from the iTunes store, angering the label's customers. At the same time, Apple can claim that their hands were tied, the decision wasn't theirs, and that all the ire should be directed at the music industry. Such a thing hasn't happened -- yet -- but the threat is there, and real.

The labels, on the other hand, feel like they brought Apple back from the dead, blessing the company with content.

Even so, David Card of Forrester Research offered an interesting coda to the story: "if it weren't for Apple, God knows how bad the music industry would be," he said.

[Via 9-to-5 Mac.]

Avery Office Products, the purveyor of labels, blank business cards, binder dividers, greeting cards, and iron-on t-shirt transfers, has released a free application called Design Pro for Mac.

This software was demoed at Macworld Expo in January and is now available for download (registration required) from the Avery website. Design Pro contains over 2,000 clip art and photo images, as well as over 1,300 pre-designed templates for various projects. It is integrated with iPhoto as well, so you can use all of your own photos to create CD/DVD labels, birthday cards, and other fun projects. If you're burning your own music CDs, Design Pro can grab playlist or tune information from iTunes, and it's also able to use your Address Book for doing mail merges.

Avery Design Pro for Mac requires Mac OS X 10.4 or 10.5. Be aware - the download is 262MB in size!

[via Macworld]

There's something about hand writing the names and address of each of your holiday card and gift recipients. That "something special" is frustration! Hand cramps, errors, wasted envelopes. How pleasant.

Forget all that and let Apple's Address Book take care of it for you.

First, create a new Smart Group. I went through my list of contacts and identified the lucky few who will receive cards from me this year (jealous?). In the note field of each, I added the keyword "holiday."

Next, I selected "New smart group..." from the File menu and set the criteria to be "Note contains 'holiday'." Next, I named the Smart Group "Holiday" and presto! My list was complete. In the future, I can add new contacts to the list by simply typing "holiday" in their notes field.

Now to print. Address Book prints directly to standard Avery labels. With your new Smart Group selected, simply select "Print." The print dialog box appears. First, set the "Style" menu to "Mailing Labels." Then, click the "Layout" tab and select the labels you're using. Then click print and you're all done!

Pretend you're a struggling musician. How much money would you rather take home for each track sold? £0.70 or £0.005? Not even a close contest, is it? Jacqui Cheng of Infinite Loop writes about a huge disparity between UK music services. iTunes just totally pwns the competition when it comes to artist and label payments. Cheng links to this Macworld story which suggests that iTunes is doing a far better job of getting money to artists than many other online music stores. If I were a struggling UK musician (as opposed to a person who can merely carry a tune in a bucket, or perhaps two buckets) I know where I'd spend my marketing dollars and which service I'd be promoting the hell out of.

To be honest I've never really gotten the Finder's colored labels. That is to say, I've never really understood how to use them to good effect. However, this video tutorial from Living With Mac convinced me I need to take another look at the usefulness of labels, particularly when combined with Smart Folders. The idea is rather simple, but also potentially powerful. Label your files for different project names, or with different status designations (e.g. "needs to be finished", "waiting for" (some other information or person), "archive") then create Smart Folders that search for those labels. That way your files can remain in appropriate (hierarchical) folders, yet can be temporarily grouped according to status, project, etc. As mentioned in the video, this can also be a good way of "Getting Things Done." I'll warn you the video is perhaps a little under-rehearsed, but nonetheless it has some great tips you can use right now.

Hey Folders! is a handy utility from the maker of Mail.Appetizer that extends the Finder's colored label feature to labeled folders themselves. As you can see, the entire folder icon takes on the color of the label, though files (fortunately) do not receive the colored overlay treatment (I wager that would result in some really funky looking icons). Hey Folders! requires a small amount of manual work to get it to start with each login, however, as you simply need to add it to your startup items if you want it to augment your finder 24/7 (it's a background process known as a daemon; it won't appear in the dock or menubar - only in a process list like Activity Monitor). Full instructions are listed at the Hey Folders! site. Note: at the moment, Hey Folders! is PPC only, but the developer told me a Universal Binary version is 'coming soon.'

Hey Folders! is offered as freeware from Bronson Beta.

The New York Post is reporting that the record companies "might be on the verge" of finally throwing in the towel on the fight for variable pricing in the iTMS. The labels are reportedly pulling out all the stops, with some executives even telling the Post that they are considering allowing their label's deal to simply run out so they could pull their catalog from the store.

With neither side backing down, and the subscription model not even an option in Jobs' eyes, it sounds like things might get interesting soon as every label's contract is due for renewal within the next couple of months. Oddly, the Post forgot to mention that, even with the current iTMS flat-rate $.99/song model, the labels are already raking in far more cash with each song and album sold than with traditional CDs.

While Engadget sounds like they're clamoring for an iTMS subscription model that revokes your entire library the moment you decide to cancel service, I have to say I'm hopeful that Jobs can successfully stick it to the labels and make them deal with a pricing model that actual *gasp* favors consumers. Stay tuned for more iTMS drama as it unfolds.