News written by Jari Ketola (July, 2006)

Due to a problem with one of our servers the administration frontends of both my.afterdawn.com and MP3Lizard.com had problems with file uploads.

The problems were caused by a failed hard-disk drive, and have now been temporarily solved. There will be a short downtime when the failed drive is replaced within the next couple of days.

We're sorry about any inconvenience caused by the problem. If you tried to upload files within the past 24 hours, and the uploads have failed, please try again.

UPDATE - It seems that we also had problems with about 10 or more software items that were uploaded on July 28th on both AfterDawn.com and Filepedia.com. Attempting to download the software ultimately lead you to a 404 error page. All downloads should work now.

UPDATE 2 - The failed disk has been replaced, and everything is back to normal. There was no need to bring down the server for maintenance, so no services were interrupted.

Again, sorry for any inconvenience caused, and be sure to report any further problems you might find.

--AfterDawn.com staff

The High-Definition Multimedia Interface (or HDMI for short) is more likely to appear on consumer electronics devices after the licensing fee was cut by 30 percent. HDMI Licensing, LLC, the agent responsible for licensing the HDMI specification, announced it has reduced the annual administration fee for HDMI adopters from $15,000 to $10,000.

According to HDMI Licensing the fee reduction was made possible by HDMI’s growing success in the marketplace, but more likely the cuts were made to get more Chinese consumer electronics manufacturers to implement HDMI on their devices. Chinese and Taiwanese have actively adapted their own, competing specifications to western standards, whose licensing costs they feel are too steep.

"The reduction of the annual fee, which was already minimal, will make it easier for smaller manufacturers to license the HDMI specification and will help ensure that all companies, large or small, can implement cutting EDGE HDMI technology into their products," said Leslie Chard, president of HDMI Licensing, LLC.

The China Video Industry Association (CVIA) announced it would promote and support the use of HDMI by the consumer electronics industry in China.

Yahoo! Music is offering a "personalized" version of a song called A Public Affair by Jessica Simpson in DRM free MP3 format. The song costs $1.99, double the prize of regular DRM crippled songs bought from online music stores, and will be personalized to the buyer by including his or her in the lyrics.

More important than the personalization of the track is the fact that the song is available in MP3 format, and can thus be freely copied on any type of portable music player or other MP3 capable device, burned on a CD etc. Yahoo! is actively trying to persuade record labels to sell music in MP3 format with little success.

"Our position is simple: DRM doesn't add any value for the artist, label (who are selling DRM-free music every day — the Compact Disc), or consumer, the only people it adds value to are the technology companies who are interested in locking consumers to a particular technology platform," says Ian C. Rogers of Yahoo! Music, and continues "We've also been saying that DRM has a cost. It's very expensive for companies like Yahoo! to implement. We'd much rather have our engineers building better personalization, recommendations, playlisting applications, community apps, etc, instead of complex provisioning systems which at the end of the day allow you to burn a CD and take the DRM back off, anyway!"