Sunday, June 22, 2008
[NEWSFLASH] KANYE WEST & MOBY x NIKE+ HUMAN RACE!
Music takes center stage on the heels of the official registration opening for the Nike+ Human Race, the world’s biggest one-day running event taking place on August 31, 2008. The race brings together the power of sport and music to inspire and connect runners from every corner of the planet. Participants in this unprecedented event will experience an exclusive music performance by some of today’s top artists in each of the 25 designated race cities.
In Los Angeles, nine-time Grammy Award winning artist Kanye West will headline the run’s post race concert for the grand finale of the 25-city Nike+ Human Race. Runners will take to the streets passing the city’s most famous landmarks before ending at the LA Coliseum to see West take the stage.
“I’m hitting the stage in Los Angeles for the Nike+ Human Race, Nike's dopest 10k run ever. This race is bringing together hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world to run and listen to some great music while serving a higher cause, and I’m excited to perform in L.A. as part of the grand finale.”
West’s performance will bring to a close, an unprecedented day of races and activities around the globe starting in Taipei, ending in LA and including cities across Europe, Asia and North and South America.
Beyond running and music, the Nike+ Human Race is also an opportunity to give back. Participants will be able to run for a worthy cause and support the three official Nike+ Human Race charitable partners: the Lance Armstrong Foundation – uniting people in the fight against cancer; WWF - the global conservation organization addressing the causes and impacts of climate change; and the UN refugee agency's ninemillion.org campaign – bringing sport and education to refugee youth. Together, Nike and runners will raise funds to donate at least USD $3 million to the Nike+ Human Race charities. Money will be raised via givebacks from registration fees, a percentage of Nike+ Human Race t-shirt sales and a donation of USD $1 million from Nike.
The Nike+ Human Race will also feature an online pledge tool so individual runners can donate additional funds to the cause of their choice and invite friends and family to contribute on their behalf.
“As a committed runner and a cancer survivor, I’m proud to be participating in the Nike+ Human Race,” Lance Armstrong said. “The race offers the best of both worlds by bringing together a global community to run together and support worthy causes like the Lance Armstrong Foundation, the UN refugee agency’s ninemillion.org and WWF in our combined efforts to have a positive impact on the world.
Other Nike athletes will also be joining the movement to run with the world and for a cause. Like Lance Armstrong, they will serve as honorary athlete ambassadors for the charities and join in Human Race activities. Six-time marathon winner and current NY Marathon Champion, Paula Radcliffe and middle distance runner Kara Goucher will be running to support WWF, while marathoner Meb Keflezighi will be representing ninemillion.org.
Nikeplus.com will be the official destination for the Nike+ Human Race and for all pre-race training needs. Here, runners can create a personal profile page or stay motivated by sampling and downloading the latest in Nike+ Sport Music offerings. Sport Music offers runners the best in original Training Run and Coaching Mixes designed specifically for treadmill and road runs. Beginning June 15, runners will also be able to visit Race City pages covering local race info and news, Training pages for information and links to in-city training runs, events with official race partners including 24Hour Fitness and Starbucks and Nike+ Coach training. Gear pages covering the latest in Nike performance training gear and Nike+ product will also be offered.
About Nike+ Human Race
On 08.31.08, Nike hosts a run like no other before with the Nike+ Human Race - the World’s Largest One Day Running Event. Nike’s first global race will take place over the course of one day, with a goal of one million runners, across 25 cities and featuring 25 top musical acts. The 10k event celebrates runners and their sport, offering participants across the globe the chance to run and compete together in an unprecedented race experience. Spanning multiple continents, Nike+ Human Race cities will include LA, New York, London, Madrid, Paris, Istanbul, Melbourne, Shanghai, São Paulo and Vancouver among others. Following races in each city, participants will be treated to an exclusive music concert featuring one of today’s top artists. Participants will be able to run for a cause as a portion of funds raised will be donated to three Nike+ Human Race beneficiaries: WWF, the global conservation organization, Lance Armstrong Foundation and UN refugee agency's ninemillion.org campaign. The race will be open to anyone, anywhere. Runners outside of the 25 race day cities can join by logging into nikeplus.com. With the help of Nike+ and the Nike+ SportBand, every city and every road can become a race-day course. For more information, visit nikeplus.com.
I Want My (Digital) Rights!
It does seem unfair... you paid for those songs and now you can't play them outside of the iTunes environment, on hardware not supported by Apple, or on operating systems not supported by iTunes.
That's because the iTunes tracks that you purchase and download are in a "protected" AAC or M4P audio format. Only it's not YOU that is being protected, it's Apple, or rather Apple's bottom line. Apple explains this by saying that their proprietary format gives you superior sound quality, but that's a smokescreen. It's all about DRM, and DRM is all about the money.
The ability to make copies of copyrighted materials is seen by the recording industry as a threat to its profitability, and perhaps rightly so. DRM (Digital Rights Management) was created by digital media publishers so they could control the duplication and dissemination of their content. But DRM is actually a misnomer. Because rather than granting rights, DRM actually restricts the consumer from doing perfectly valid and reasonable things with music they own.
MP3 is the standard for digital audio. An MP3 music track can be played on almost ANY player, whether it's portable or computer-based. You can burn MP3s to a CD and they'll play just fine on almost any modern CD player.
But Apple's iTunes software doesn't create MP3 files when you buy a song. The files are "protected" and cannot be played on a computer which does not have the iTunes software. You CAN copy them to your portable music player, as long as you bought that player from Apple and it says iPod on it. Understandably, this makes Linux users, and the millions of owners of non-iPod music players a little upset.
Converting iTunes to MP3
If you right-click on a music track in iTunes, there is an option to Convert Selection to some other format. Probably it says "Convert Selection to AAC", which is useless because your iTunes tracks are already in AAC format! So click on Edit / Preferences / Importing then change the Import Using from the default setting to "MP3 Encoder". Click OK to save this setting. Now when you right-click on a music track, there is an option to Convert Selection to MP3. But just try it... iTunes will tell you that "Protected files cannot be converted to other formats."
Converting AAC to MP3
Bzzzt! Sorry, thanks for playing. It turns out you can only convert non-protected formats (such as WAV or WMA) to MP3. So what can we do? Fortunately, there are two ways to get around this annoying restriction.
Method 1: Burn the track(s) to a CD, then you can open the CD in iTunes and the Convert Selection to MP3 will do exactly what you want. Just be aware that you'll have TWO copies of that song in iTunes -- one in the original AAC format and one in MP3 format. You can delete the AAC version if you like.
Method 2: If you have lots of music, you might need a big pile of CDs to convert everything with the "burn and rip" method above. That's where the JHymn software can help. JHymn was created to allow you to exercise your fair-use rights under copyright law, and will free your iTunes music from DRM restrictions with no loss of sound quality. JHymn provides a drag and drop graphical interface for both Mac OSX and Windows users. But currently, JHymn will not work with iTunes Version 6 or higher. If you have an earlier version of iTunes, keep it, or visit http://www.oldapps.com/itunes.htm to search for a backlevel version.
Note that JHymn is not meant to aid music piracy, but it does contradict the iTunes user agreement, and may not be legal in your country. You should be aware of the legalites of DRM circumvention in your country and make your own decision whether using JHymn software is right for you. Then use JHymn only for making archival copies of your own music, for copying tracks to an MP3 player, or for playing your music on a non-Itunes platform. If you decide against using JHymn, you might want to look into TuneBite. The makers of Tunebite claim that it lets you make "totally legal" unprotected copies of copy-protected music files by recording them while they are being played.
Reprinted from: http://www.askbobrankin.com/convert_itunes_to_mp3_format.html
BOB RANKIN... is a tech writer and computer programmer who enjoys exploring the Internet and sharing the fruit of his experience with others. His work has appeared in ComputerWorld, NetGuide, and NY Newsday. Bob is publisher of the Internet TOURBUS newsletter, author of several computer books, and creator of the http://LowfatLinux.com website. Visit Bob Rankin's website for more helpful articles and free tech support.
