Tuesday, May 23, 2006

FUN WITH SCHEDULING

It just doesn't get any cooler than Apple.

I've signed up for a free trial of .mac, Apple's online storage and publishing service. Depending on how the trial run goes, I might lay some money down.

One of the cool things we can do is publish our calendar, through iCal, onto the web. It can be set to publish manually or automatically, and the online version can be "synched" to the calendar at the studio so if we make changes - or if a client makes changes - the calendars will all update.

Check it out.

It's funny because we generally don't list times on our iCal, so it looks like most sessions should be starting at 11pm. Well, that's about right.

The idea here is for the calendar to be available to anyone looking for time. They simply go to this page, see what's available, and book or hold time if they want. I don't know how far to go with allowing users to make modifications - for now it'll just show what's booked and what's open.

Sure beats trying to keep up with email threads about sessions...

9 Comments:

At 10:56 AM, Blogger Chrispy said...

That may be the way to go.

I don't know that we really need all of the .mac features - but there's some good stuff on there.

 
At 1:36 PM, Blogger Jackson said...

No, I don't. Anything that starts with a small 'i' is a disaster, at least thet's what iThink.

 
At 3:03 PM, Blogger Chrispy said...

I don't agree with Jackson's sentiments.

Other than a few minor annoyances, what's the problem with iTunes?

What's the problem with iCal?

These programs are hardly "disasters".

 
At 3:34 PM, Blogger Jackson said...

i'M just being sassy.

iJust do that sometimes, iDunno, maybe i'M just silly.

iTunes does charge more for downloads than it would cost to buy the CD.

iCal is cool, iGuess.

i'M falling out of love with Apple - but iThought you knew that.

 
At 3:41 PM, Blogger Chrispy said...

iHave no problem with Apple. What's the other choice? No PC will ever be welcome in any studio that iCall home... hell, DP doesn't even run on anything other than Apple.

Apple has allowed us to do what we do. If we were still banging our heads against the OS9 wall, we'd have hung it up long ago.

 
At 4:43 PM, Blogger Jackson said...

Hey just because the love has died doesn't mean the marriage is over - we (us and apple) have to stay together for the kids.

 
At 10:56 AM, Blogger stinkrock said...

iTunes is artist-friendly. I don't know how big record companies structure digital royalties into their agreements, but iTunes pays a huge chunk of that .99 per song to the artist. About 150x more than eMusic does.

Also, I notice that this Friday is Chrispy's last day of sucker work at the Day Job. Huzzah!

 
At 12:08 PM, Blogger Chrispy said...

So iTunes may actually be far better for the artist than a regular record contract... interesting.

 
At 12:44 PM, Blogger stinkrock said...

well, I did a little poking around and here's what I found. Apple pays about 70 of the 99 cents out to the labels. If for instance you sign up to distribute your music on iTunes through CDBaby, they'll charge a nominal set up fee and then keep 9% per song or 7 cents, and I get 63 cents. Not bad.

How much do, say, the Allman Brothers get from Sony Music? 4 1/2 cents per song.

http://www.mp3.com/news/stories/4310.html

So the label's keeping 65 1/2 cents. What's worse, major labels just pushed Apple to raise their per song download to $1.25. Thankfully, Apple backed down.

I'm 90% sure that major labels are paying a reduced royalty on discounted Amazon sales as well.

 

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