For the same price as the 32 GB Wi-Fi iPad 2 ($599, 100 bucks above the iPad 2’s entry-level model), Engadget reveals that the Motorola Wi-Fi Xoom will show up on March 27.

Good luck with that.

Because I was curious to see whether anyone was actually reading my rants on this website, I installed an exciting statistics doohickey two weekends ago, and it’s amusing to note that even on a blog such as this one, the usual suspects kick the face off of all other articles (in terms of traffic, rather than literal face-kickage).

I’m happy to report that even on days where I don’t write anything, Revert to Saved still has traffic, and that the stats aren’t swaying me in the slightest regarding any new content I’m going to write. They do, however, show how tempting it must be for a publisher to follow the AOL way and just churn out shit to appeal to search engines.

For example, I spent a few hours a couple of days ago writing a long, considered review of GarageBand for iPad. Even online on a typical tech blog, it’s the sort of thing I’d expect to have gotten around £150 for. By contrast, I also that day fired off a bitchy little rant about an Adobe video that pretty much went WAH WAH WAH APPLE COCOA WAH CS5 JOBS HATES US WAH WAH WAH. The Adobe piece got ten times as many visits as the GarageBand review.

Similarly, keywords in titles make a big difference. A two-year old article Steve Jobs is going to die! still gets lots of hits, no doubt fuelled by people eager to know that the CEO is about to pass. (How disappointed they must be to find an article essentially telling everyone to leave him be, that Apple will be fine without his daily involvement, and ending with “Get well soon, Steve”.) This knowledge won’t change anything on the site either, because I admit to ensuring titles are likely to be picked up by search engines and roving eyes, but then that’s been something I’ve done since first writing for magazines a decade ago. You write interesting titles for articles, or the subs rewrite them for you and get all grumpy at the extra work.

The only exception to not making changes due to statistics has come from the interview with Rob Janoff, which is still bringing in a lot of traffic—if only I’d had stats running the day that went live!—which has made me wonder whether I should reprint some other interviews I’ve done over the past year or two. I’m not sure any would have quite the same impact as the Apple logo designer, but the interest seems to be there. Some of these are uncut interviews with people like Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov, which could be presented in a similar fashion to the Mike ‘Hellboy’ Mignola interview I posted a few years ago. Any feedback on this would be appreciated.

TechRadar reports that changes are on the way at eBay.

eBay is to give 50 free listings a month to all users, from April, in a bid to tempt sellers back to the site.

A smart move, which might drag people back from Amazon Marketplace. Presumably, eBay will cover its loses by upping its commission rate?

The once-dominant auction site, which has seen its market share damaged by the Amazon Marketplace in recent years, will also charge lower commission on items sold by the site from July.

Blimey. It looks like eBay has finally gotten a clue and stopped being total idiots, having introduced lots of stupid ideas and fees that screwed over small sellers (i.e. individuals) in recent years.

Hurrah!

Wait, what’s that?

The California-based company will also encourage merchants to offer free shipping to customers by charging a higher commission to those who charge buyers to have their items delivered.

Oh.

The music industry continues to both live in cloud cuckoo land along with taking advantage of rights laws that still haven’t been updated to tackle digital. A Law.com article reports that 13 record companies suing LimeWire demanded $75 trillion in damages, citing that “Section 504(c)(1) of the Copyright Act provided for damages for each instance of infringement where two or more parties were liable”.

Luckily, in this case, the federal district court judge wasn’t having any of it. Kimba Wood called the damages request “absurd”, adding:

As defendants note, plaintiffs are suggesting an award that is ‘more money than the entire music recording industry has made since Edison’s invention of the phonograph in 1877.’

Bon Jovi, in an interview with the Sunday Times:

Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business.

He’s an angry rich rocker. Jobs, he says, has RUINED MUSIC FOR EVERYONE, the bastard.

Kids today have missed the whole experience of putting the headphones on, turning it up to 10, holding the jacket, closing their eyes and getting lost in an album; and the beauty of taking your allowance money and making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it.

Yeah, you tell them, super-rich rock guy! After all, we all have wonderful memories of buying a shitty album based on the jacket, and that’s way better than being able to preview whatever you want, whenever you want, to make your purchasing decision based on the quality of the music. ONLY IDIOTS DO THAT KIND OF THING.

And, man, albums, eh? I’m really gutted that people will lose the ‘album’ experience, instead cherry picking the best songs. After all, this never used to happen at all (if you ignore, say, the entire singles market), and there’s no way whatsoever any band could ever persuade someone to buy an entire album these days (apart from by making every track worth buying, rather than shitting out an album with two decent tracks and eight lumps of turgid filler—BUT THAT WAY LIES MADNESS). And let’s also ignore the way in which Apple legitimised the download market, getting quite a few people to pay for downloads, rather than grabbing them from Limewire and Napster, because, as Bon Jovi says, JOBS HAS KILLED MUSIC. Never forget this as you go to iTunes, Amazon or 7digital to preview the tracks you’re interested in and then buy precisely what you want, with significantly more freedom than people had in previous decades. Just remember, as you click ‘buy’ on the one good track from Has Been Band’s new album (also grabbing a dozen tracks from a fantastic indie band you’d never have heard of without huge access to digital previews) that Steve Jobs has killed music for everyone.

Whether you’re religious or not, I hope you’ll join me in a silent prayer, to remember ‘music’ (which is now dead, apparently) and common sense (which followed it the second Bon Jovi opened his stupid rich rocker mouth).