digg_url = 'http://digg.com/apple/Huge_iPod_Turned_into_Porta_Party_Kissing_Booth'; A couple weeks ago during LA Art Weekend, the Japanese Maid Cafe, Royal/T, opened to great success in Culver City (if you haven't seen these photos, definitely check it out, then go drink tea there and check out the art). Within the exhibit was one installation that was extremely cool, except you had to have an iPod or iPhone on you to make it work. Luckily, we had one... and then......

I've got a conundrum, folks. You might, too: In a study entitled "The End of the Music Industry As We Know It" (suggested subhead: "And consumers feel fine"), Forrester Research, Inc., is reporting that half of music sales will be digital by 2011, and digital sales will surpass CDs entirely by 2012. It should be pretty clear to everyone that the CD is beginning to go the way of the VHS tape - even......

The Super Bowl isn't just the center of the universe for the sports business, but also for anybody working at E! or People. Even TMZ had a giant mobile billboard just outside the stadium in Glendale -- probably reminding party-goers to send them any interesting photos. While the teams were sequestered away under heavy guard (a cop only seemed to half-joke about shooting me when I pulled into a wrong driveway near the Giant's hotel),......

A group of enterprising young researchers in UCLA's graduate Computer Science department have discovered a fun new way of using your iPod playlist: Wi-Fi enabled software sends your music preferences to whatever computer is nearby. Then music tailored to your preferences pumps out of the speakers -- can you imagine walking into a coffee shop, and the Carrie Underwood track playing shuts off, and a Matthew Good album slides into the rotation instead? How......

Spotted on Sunset Blvd. west of Crescent Heights......

I'm still waiting for all your hot happy hour tips, Los Angeles! We'll be posting happy hour listings at least a few times weekly in 2008; send your secret spots and recommendations my way at carrie@laist.com. And besides, what better way to get 2008 started than with some cheap booze at some happening city spots? Here's a few more we managed to dig up this week: Miss T's Barcade, Koreatown, Happy Hour 5-9 pm:......

LA is a gadget kind of town. We’re also, it seems, swiftly becoming quite the literary town. And so, as the year draws nigh and you scramble around the city trying to score the latest whatever for your loved ones this holiday season, it would be wrong of us to ignore Kindle. Amazon’s Kindle has been out for a month now. Many in the book world deemed it a failure from the outset. Many booklovers......

Everybody's doing it, right? I don't pretend to be hip or edgy or rebellious. I mean, I grew up on Billy Joel and Madonna and Motown and then the Gen Xer's basic dichotomy of KROQ versus Top 40 in the 90s. I find it increasingly harder to fall in love with albums in the downloading age, and am one of those people who obsessively compiles mixed cds for friends and iPod playlists full of......

Listen to the interview here: Deborah Harry is on her way to LA to play the Music Box at the Henry Fonda Theater tomorrow, Friday the 7th. She's got her first new solo album in fourteen years out, Necessary Evil, and you can hear some samples of it at her MySpace. Unfortunately our conversation sounds like I'm contacting her by sat-phone somewhere in Tibet but these are the days of multiline patch-ins so it couldn't......

Nine are dead in Omaha, Nebraska today after a man opened fire in a shopping mall, and then shot himself. Police do not have a motive so far. Did you have this conversation this morning? "Sorry, boss, I can't come in to work today...a terrible cough, I, uh, flu symptoms, definitely -- what waves? Uh, I don't know what you're talking about...." Lots of SoCal surfers took a sick day and busted out on......

The announcement that Tom Petty will play the halftime show at this year’s biggest football game got me thinking about those of the recent past. It seems like only yesterday that men across America froze their Tivo to catch a glimpse of Janet Jackson’s nipple ring during the Super Bowl XXXVIII performance. This notorious halftime show also featured Kid Rock wearing the American flag as a shirt and P. Diddy and Nelly flanked by scantily......

Not long ago a little band called Jet had a little tune that sounded like the White Stripes a little. Apple used the hyperactive rockabilly flavored single "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" to hype its iPod and the band went on to sell millions of records because of the arrangement. Tonight Feist, an artist no one knew about until Apple used her catchy little song for an iPod commercial, is headlining at the......

The Blood Brothers - "Love Rhymes with Hideous Car Wrecks" One of our favorite bands has announced today that they are throwing in the (bloody) towel. The Blood Brothers had an experimental sound that utilized two singers (one who had a screeching voice) to produce a one-of-a-kind style, that sadly was a little too good for the average iPod user. Here's the email that was just sent to us via their PR peeps: After......

There's so much to love with this picture, taken by Sundogg using his Canon 10D. It's just perfectly framed, cropped, exposed, everything. But the best for us, is something that can't even be controlled, and thats the little kid's open hand as he appears to change the song on his little Shuffle. Actually we like pretty much any picture where someone is riding their bike and not being honked at by a bus or......

- Green LA Girl takes her show to the LA Times via The Emerald City - congrats Siel! - LAT - Laker center Kwame Brown gets popped for Disorderly Conduct in Georgia on Saturday after his cousin was charged with drunk driving after going the wrong way down a one-way street. Laker fans would like to see that sort of effort in the paint - AP - Even though it's only 56-years old, and......

Photo by imacri via Flickr You're still running to Eye of the Tiger? Then it's time to download some new tunes for your run. Most of these songs are much more aggressive than Eye of the Tiger -- Hard Metal Rock, Techno and Industrial. For people like myself, it's difficult to find good songs to run to. Everybody likes Coldplay but you can't really run to it. Here at LAist we like to encourage......

Steve Jobs is a very smart and powerful businessman. So did he purposely bite his tongue last week when he announced a $200 iPhone price cut -- just two months after launching the product? Was it a plot to steer additional hype toward the iPhone so the new iPods wouldn't steal all the thunder? Did he plan all along to offer store credit to those who shelled out $600 for an iPhone? Was Master......

Every since we announced that Canon would be playing tonight at Union Station, I've started to really like their music after buying a few tracks on iTunes (they even were an iTunes Staff Pick). Since then, they have become staples on my iPod for working out and for at home background music. Tonight, they play for free, well not really. It will at least cost you $1.25. Your Metro ticket is your admission into the......

Loyal Apple customers flipped their shit yesterday at the news that the iPhone was dropping $200 in price a mere two months after its debut. Early adopters felt betrayed by the fact that they threw down a large amount of money to be part of the exclusive early adopter crowd, only to be undercut by a massive price cut -- and worse -- a thrifty version in the form of the iPod "Touch". Steve Jobs......

Were you dismayed and confounded by the iPhone madness of June 2007? Did it disgust and disturb you to see your friends and colleagues giddily wait in line to drop $600 for the most-hyped mobile phone in history? Well that sniveling trickster, Steve Jobs is back, and he may be the only one laughing this time. Jobs' announcement of a new iPod came as a surprise to nobody. It looks and functions exactly like an......

As if I don't feel badly enough for shelling out nearly $600 for my iPhone. Today Apple unveils a bevy of product updates. The iPhone's touch screen, internet browsing glory was jacked for the brand new "iPod touch", a Wi-Fi ready iPod with a 8GB or 16GB capacity. This is essentially the iPhone without the phone capabilities and much more thinner. Great. So, what you're telling me is that I'm not going to be one......

Are you getting sick of your old iPod? Are you feeling a little envious of the iPhone? Various sources are reporting that a new redesigned iPod and iPod Nano will be released at the Apple Expo on September 25th-29th in Paris, France. Although Apple has not used the the Apple Expo to launch new products, September corresponds usually as the time that Apple's iPod line refreshes to correspond with their Back to School promotion,......

Lace up those tennies and grab that trusty iPod! Our good friends over at Metro and LADOT in conjunction with the Confederation of Downtown Assoc. are now offering free podcast tours of downtown L.A. through the program Downtown LA Walks. Downtown LA Walks describes itself as an urban “way-finder”, and was designed to help people navigate their way around via new signage noting landmarks, and historical facts. The fun and informative podcasts offer several......

On a personal blog called ...yep by a guy named Glenn, the Los Angeles transit system is examined. Glenn has never taken the subway in L.A. before and he commutes one-hour by car everyday. He's not complaining though, "it’s just a way of life here in the city," he states pragmatically. He finds it to be "a fairly pleasant experience" and listening to podcasts on his iPod is a much better choice than some......

Next time, don't go to Yosemite and bitch about the crowds. Consider a secret little place my family's been vacationing in for years now: Three Rivers. A tiny town in the foothills of the Sequoias, Three Rivers is a pretty idyllic little spot, and home to many families, artists, and musicians. In short, it has a lot of character. Highway 198 runs right through the middle of it, up to Kings Canyon, a 462,901......

As Guest Day Editor, Siel, a.k.a Green LA Girl, will be joining LAist with a few posts throughout today. Read her interview here and check out her site. Drinking and driving isn't cool -- Which is why I made the logical decision to ditch the car a few months ago. Now, not only can I drink all I want most nights, I also have a few hundred extra bucks for my drink budget each month.......

Looking for new music to check out? Well look no further. LAist is giving you the 411 on what's moving up and down our playlists. Lisa, Music Editor: The Bees (U.S.) - High Society Kind Hearts and Coronets - Rampart Castle Joan As Police Woman - Real Life Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga The 88 - Kind of Light Tony, Editor: Dinosaur Jr. - Beyond Kayne West - Can't Tell Me Nothin......

This summer could be a bummer for LA's biggest celebrity. Paris Hilton pleaded no contest (guilty) to alcohol-related reckless driving in September and she got probation. In late February she got caught speeding down Sunset Blvd. with her lights off. It was the second time she had been stopped while driving with a suspended license. Violating such a probation as the one she agreed to was served could amount to 45 days in the......

People talk shit about our local paper. Sometimes we're the ones talking shit. But every day there's gotta be ten things that you can learn from the Times. Right? 1. Houston's in Century City doesn't do reservations but accepts "call ins". 2. Rancho Cucamonga's mayor was once a heroin addict. 3. The Times uses Wikipedia as one of its sources. 4. Two people arguing at a Laguna Beach resort were shot and killed by......

Welcome to the latest edition of 'Ask the MACist', the column where I answer your Macintosh and other technology questions. Our question this week comes from Josh in Los Angeles. He asks: There's no problem downloading .avi files, converting to .mov, and playing on the Apple TV, is there? Or showing .mov files generated by iMovie? Also, does it run with 10.3.9? The answer to your questions are pretty simple, fortunately. Anything you can......