A look into the stats behind iTunes' Party Shuffle

OmniNerd has an interesting discussion on the stastics behind iTunes' Party Shuffle feature, which allows users to play back higher-rated songs more often. The author looks at how star ratings affect playback counts: "For the rating-biased trial the preference algorithm appears to be linear from 12% to 27% for the rated songs. Moving from the 5-star rating downward, the linear preference declines around 4% with each step down in rating, but doubles over the drop from 1-star to unrated with a fall of 8%. While one star may seem like the lowest rating, no-rating proved the black sheep of the lot."

Apple to help fund Detroit high school initiative

Apple has committed to help fund a new education initiative in Michigan that will bring a small, high-quality high school to Detroit. According to The Detroit News, Apple will give more than $1 million over five years to the new Detroit-area high school, which designed as a model to improve the state's failing education system and also may be the first in a series of initiatives that leverage and link businesses to state high schools. Apple will help finance, equip, and finance the school: "Details of the Detroit school will be announced Tuesday. It will eventually house roughly 400 students, starting in the first year with just freshman and sophomore classes. Teachers will be hand-picked and will get ongoing training from Apple, as well as other support. The computer maker will put more than $1 million over five years into the school, which will open this academic year in an existing building."

Apple secures Freescale PowerPC G4 chips through 2008...

Apple on Friday said that Freescale Semiconductor will supply its microprocessors for orders placed by Apple through the end of 2008, according to MarketWatch. "In a regulatory filing, Apple said that under the terms of the purchase agreement signed Aug. 22, it is under no obligation to purchase Freescale microprocessors other than for work in progress that was in place at the time the agreement was executed." The G4 chips are used in Apple's notebook computers and the Mac mini. [update; first published 8/26]