LIVEdigitally

Leaving aside the legality/morality of downloading mp3s, I have one major beef: Teenagers or otherwise culturally unfamiliar sorts mislabeling artists.

Not all African-American female vocalists from the ’60s, ’70s or ’80s are Aretha Franklin. Similarly, there were women other than Janis Joplin and Joan Baez recording folksy, bluesy roots back in the day. (Not to mention Janis is not Joan and Joan is not Janis. If there’s a duet with Bob Dylan, it’s 99.9999% Joan, since they mostly lived on the same coast and slept together.)

No one other than Melanie Safka would have ever wanted to record “Brand New Key.” The worst I’ve found so far was Scottish, Christian rockers the Proclaimers one-hit “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” attributed to the Pretenders. Yeah, because female Pretenders front Chrissie Hynde sounds so much like a pair of young Scottish lads.

Except for honest-to-God concert bootlegs, the original ripper must have some sort of CD or source media with an album insert showing at least the artist’s name in front of him/her, and, I don’t know, maybe a little thing called Internet access. So, how does the mislabeling happen?

No matter how great our digital camera technology gets, one ancient rogue will ruin our pictures.

The ever dreaded closed eye shot. It could even make Paris Hilton look like she belongs in special ed. But now there is a way to always avoid it. A new camera developed at the University of Electro-Communications, on the outskirts of Tokyo, Japan will forever rid your album of mid-blink photos.

The camera takes 15 shots in .5 seconds and special sensors can detect which pictures caught you mid-blink and which found your best face forward.