daverea.com

So far, this week has been pretty much wall-to-wall rain, with the consequence that every time I’ve both wanted to get out for a bike ride, and had the time free to get out for a bike ride, it’s been pouring. I’m not terribly averse to getting wet, but the Dakar is just too new for me to get muddy yet, and road riding in heavy rain would only really appeal to me if there weren’t any cars on the road.

So needless to say, I’ve had a little extra indoor time to burn. We started working on the dining room (fixture removal, wall texture, floor prep) and we’re starting to get the freshly-painted parts of the house put back together. An unexpected plumbing problem on Monday left us with water coming through the family room ceiling, so a new painting task has been added to the queue as well.

In between all this, I managed to catch an announcement from Verizon that they’re rolling out a new phone with Motorola, and in the press release they touted the (apparently ground-breaking) availability of DRM-free music from Rhapsody via the VCast music service. This I had to see…

It turns out Rhapsody – former DRM-secured fortress of helix-encrypted music files, playable only by bowing to the might of Windows Media Player – has very recently (OK, well, at the end of June) rolled out a new MP3 Store, where you can buy DRM-free tracks for $0.99, or albums for $9.99. The pricing and the model seem pretty similar to Amazon’s, but you can listen to a few full-length track previews each month, rather than relying on a 30-second clip to make your purchase decision.

I haven’t purchased any tracks from Rhapsody’s new MP3 store yet, but I may give them a try for a future edition of Saturday Morning Tuneage. Stay tuned…