Today there is a little bit of nostalgia to be brought for your reading pleasure. In the early days of dot com boom, when the internet was taking off, there was a service called Napster which allowed users to download entire music albums in MP3 format for free. Logically you needed an MP3 player to listen to these songs and there came Winamp - the most popular MP3 player at the time with a lot of features like sound equalizer, bitrate adjustment, and more. The users of this piece of software especially liked it because of the one thing - customization. You could have applied all kinds of skins to it, and users distributed a lot of them online. From anime to TV shows, you could find all kinds of skins for it. So to honor the software, there is now an online museum containing over 65.000 skins that you can view in JPG format and download to apply to your Winamp application. You can check out the museum here.

Napster Inc. begins selling MP3s Tuesday, a move the online music service hopes will lure iPod users and turn around Napster's sliding fortunes. The company is the latest to make the switch to the unrestricted file format, which makes it music tracks compatible with virtually any music player or other device.

Napster Inc. said Sunday it will begin selling music downloads as unprotected MP3 files in the spring, joining other online retailers. The file format change will apply only to single tracks and album purchases, according to a company press release. Tracks downloaded as part of the company's music subscription service will continue to have copyright restrictions. Unlike music files that come with copy protections embedded, MP3 files are compatible with most portable music devices, including Apple Inc.'s market-leading iPod media players, Microsoft Corp.'s Zune and mobile phones that play music. "The ubiquity and cross-platform compatibility of MP3s should create a more level playing field for music services and hardware providers and result in greater ease of use and broader adoption of digital music," Chris Gorog, Napster's chairman and chief executive, said in a statement. The company did not say which record companies had agreed to license music for sale as MP3s via Napster.

Napster Inc, the digital music service, said on Tuesday it plans to attract more customers by moving to a Web-based platform allowing users to play their music from any computer without having to download any additional software. The move is intended to open up the service and attract more paying subscribers by making the Napster platform more flexible and compatible with any Internet-enabled device. Before now most Napster subscribers could only listen to their music after downloading the Napster software application on to their personal computers.

With this new platform Napster can easily be integrated into consumer electronics devices or integrated into other Web sites such as social networking sites,

said Christopher Allen, chief operating officer at Napster.

Napster and AT&T are teaming up for a new service that will give phone users free unlimited access for one year to more than 3
million song tracks through Napster To Go. The service will cost $14.95 per month. Available beginning Sunday, April 1, across the company's nationwide wireless footprint with qualifying plans - as well as across the company's entire 22-state traditional service footprint with qualifying wireless, home phone and broadband triple-pack bundles - the offer enables consumers
to conveniently access their favorite songs across multiple screens, including the PC, the wireless screen and other compatible music devices. The offer builds on the company's effort to deliver anytime, anywhere access to enhanced content. Read the full story here.