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Today was the big day in the Apple Calendar – the keynote speech by Steve Jobs – at MacWorld. There had already been plenty of rumour about what was coming (and lawsuits to boot!) and it seems like they were right. Most interesting to me:

The iPod shuffle: tiny new iPod with no face, upload 240 songs and away you go for up to 12 hours. Only $149, too. Perfect for working out or doing stuff where you don’t care about choosing tracks etc.

The Mac mini: a barebones Mac, add your own keyboard, mouse and monitor. Stylish and ergonomic as one would expect, and only $499. I’ve wanted a Mac in the house for ages but couldn’t justify the price, this just might be the way to do it. With a DVD-burner superdrive, maybe it can become the business machine, though it might not be fast enough.

Amazingly, Apple sold 4.5 million iPods during the 2004 holiday quarter, compared to 733,000 in the previous year’s quarter. Holy cow! Is there anyone left on the planet who doesn’t have one??

One of the more cool Christmas gifts was a copy of the brilliant album A Grand Don’t Come for Free by The Streets. Maybe not quite single of the year but check out the video for (and most importantly the lyrics) to Fit But You Know It

In the spirit of the season, this week’s single of the week is the Barenaked Ladies and their rendition of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings. And check out their recently released holiday compilation Barenaked for the Holidays

I love my iPod, I love iTunes and I even enjoy buying music from the iTunes Music Store. This weekend I was overjoyed to find that I could hook up to Music Stores in other countries, and almost all the music I like from UPop was available on the UK site. But then I tried to buy some tunes and met with resistance: you can only buy if you are registered on that country’s site, and to register you need a credit card with an address in that country. Wah!

According to Apple this is due to “copyright concerns” but if I was an artist abroad I’m sure I would want my music to be available for purchase anywhere. More sales means more $$ for the record companies, especially as now I’ll probably have to download the songs from some filesharing site if I want them. Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if I could buy from all the stores?

Whenever I am set to learn to fly a new plane, the Santa Ana winds return. It was a blowing a gale over the mountains this morning, and it makes for very bumpy conditions in the air. It will not be any fun this week.

Prop B is a California proposition appearing on next week’s ballot. At stake is whether a landfill at Gregory Canyon gets built or not. Like most propositions, both sides have numerous television spots contradicting each other, confusing the issues and making it difficult to take an opinion. However, the really confusing thing is that a yes vote for prop B is a no vote for the landfill. If people in Florida can’t manage to follow an arrow on a ballot to know which box to put their ‘X’ in, how will people understand that if they don’t want the landfill than they have to vote yes? Or if they want the landfill they have to vote no?

No single of the week this week. Instead, I’m picking an anti-single of the week. William Shatner has covered Pulp’s Common People and its really scary. You can check it out here if you dare.

This week’s single of the week is the excellent Dry Your Eyes by The Streets. The Streets are an English hip-hop/garage/beat combo with two tunes in heavy rotation on U-Pop. Both are good but this one is my favourite.

I hear a lot of good tunes on U-Pop but never remember their names to go look them up. I wish the website would have a playlist or something I could go look at. Also, because a lot of the music is from outside the USA, getting hold of it on MP3 or AAC is near impossible. The Streets do not appear in the iTunes music store.

Somewhat different from last week’s choice, this week’s top pop pick is First of the Gang To Die by Morrissey. It is somewhat interesting that both artists are 80s icons making it big (again in M’s case) in 2004. I was never a big fan of Morrissey first time around but when I hear his music now I find myself enjoying it.

The tune of the week has definitely been Chocolate by the delicious Kylie Minogue. Its amazing to me how big she has become these days since she’s been around forever in the UK, having started out in the soap opera Neighbours before trying her hand at singing and having tons of hits before ‘breaking out’.

Her album Body Language is highly recommended.

(2 updates in one day, aren’t you all lucky!)

I’m loving my iPod, already have 15Gb of music on it but I’m not having any joy with the music delivery system, aka the headphones. I’ve never been able to get the ‘inside your ear’ style to stay in my ears so I bought some that clip on to the top of the ear but after an hour or two they start to hurt. So now I’m back to the regular ‘sit on your head’ type, and will see how those work for me.

Song of the day: Emma Bunton Crickets Sing For Anamaria