Long a spot for promoting artists and their tours, MySpace is getting into the act with its first official tour this fall. The tour kicks off in Seattle on October 16th featuring co-headliners Hellogoodbye and Say Anything. Other bands, including MySpace Records’ own Polysics, are also expected to join in on the 30-city nationwide tour.

MySpace users will be able to start getting priority tickets tomorrow and will also have access to special content like tour blogs and photo galleries.

The move into the tour realm seems like a no-brainer for the social networking site.

“MySpace has served as a platform for countless bands and musicians around the world to showcase and promote their music to millions of fans online,” said Tom Anderson, president and co-founder of MySpace. “With the new MySpace Music Tour concert series we are able to bring people face-to-face with the bands and artists they’ve come to know and love on the site.”

[Via PR Newswire]

Chicago is the latest city to run into troubles with municipal broadband. Its ambitious plan for a citywide Wi-Fi network was scrapped yesterday due to cost and concerns that it wouldn’t be used by enough residents. The plan would have made Chicago one of the largest cities to implement blanket Wi-Fi coverage.

Covering 220 square miles, the system would have cost as much as $50 million to build and another $150 million to keep it going for six years, according to industry sources. There were also concerns that technology has been getting better since these plans were initially made and the cost of broadband has been going down, making it more attractive for residents to seek broadband from commercial sources.

According to The Chicago Tribune:

“There’s a serious dose of reality, much needed, that has come into play after all the hype last year about free, ad-driven Wi-Fi,” said Craig Settles, a wireless business strategist and consultant based in Oakland.

Outside Chicago, there’s been trouble on the Wi-Fi front, as well. Work in San Francisco on a citywide plan has stopped as officials continue to discuss plans. In Houston, work still hasn’t started even though the city came to an agreement with Earthlink on providing the service. And in Lompoc, California, the city has been unable to sign up more than 500 of its 40,000 residents for its services.

It was bound to happen at some point. A teenager in New Jersey spent his summer vacation figuring out how to unlock the iPhone from AT&T’s wireless network. By unlocking the much-hyped iPhone, 17-year-old George Hotz was able to use it on the T-Mobile network, which is the only other U.S. network compatible with the phone’s technology.

More importantly, his efforts mean the phone, which is currently only sold in the U.S., could be used in other countries.

Hotz used his blog to post instructions on how to unlock the iPhone, a process which should take about two hours. It’s still complicated but Hotz says he has no intention of starting an unlocking service.

His unlocked iPhone is up for auction on eBay.

According to The Record of Bergen County, it took Hotz about 500 hours and the help of a few people to develop the unlocking process.

Drivers with a lead foot, take note. Nissan is equipping its vehicles with a gauge that lets drivers know how their driving impacts fuel economy.

Known as a fuel-efficiency meter, the device is already being used on the 2007 Nissan Altima, and the 2008 Titan, Armada, Infiniti G35 and QX56. The automaker is also planning to make the gauge a standard feature on all future models.

Nissan says drivers using the gauge can reduce their fuel usage by as much as 10 percent.

According to USA Today:

“You will become a little less lead-footed if you can see what putting your foot to the pedal does to your fuel economy,” suggests Nissan spokesman Tony Pearson.

Similar gauges are found on some models by other automakers, especially hybrid and luxury vehicles. But Nissan’s move to put them on every model demonstrates how automakers are racing to be fuel conscious as high gasoline prices weigh more heavily on consumers.

London’s Daily Mail reports that a record number of text messages have been sent by smokers who want to pass the time over a cigarette while banished to outside venues.

In the two weeks after the ban on smoking in confined spaces came into force on 1 July, mobile phone company Orange said 7.5 million more texts than normal were sent across its network.

Experts have now dubbed the phenomenon ’smexting’.

David Pogue of TNYT reviewed five tabletop internet radio players. He liked the The Phoenix from Com One because it’s portable, but the SoundBridge product from Roku ultimately struck a more resonant chord.

If the other radios are frozen diet entrées, this one is Wolfgang Puck working in your kitchen. It’s in another league.

Roku is the only company that focused on sound quality, which could be considered an important feature of a radio. The SoundBridge radio has two stereo speakers plus a built-in subwoofer, and the results are stunning — it sounds like a great bookshelf stereo system. And why not? Why shouldn’t Internet radio get the full treatment?

I’m interested in these machines, but what would really work for me is an iPhone that picked up the AM/FM bands and internet radio. Now that, I might stand in line for.

Two dudes in San Francisco want people to leave their leftovers on top of trash cans for the hungry and homeless. They’ve branded their movement, Replate, even though there don’t seem to be any plates involved.

Replate made the local news, but the city’s health inspector cast a dark cloud of bacteria on the idea.

JoshSpear.com points to Desktoptopia, a new desktop background manager for the Mac that automatically loads and displays designer desktops on your monitor. Users set the pace of change, every five or ten minutes or longer. One can also pause. It’s an A.D.D. world on these otherwise wonderful internets. Thankfully, there’s a mountain of worthy art and design to share.

When a designer submits their work, and their desktop appears on a user’s machine, an embedded link leads back to the source. So it’s great exposure and a traffic builder for participating designers.

From the golden age of lounge culture comes Tiki Bar TV, a video podcast where inspiration for each show is driven by one specific cocktail.

Each episode commences with a humorous skit and concludes with a cocktail-making demonstration. The show is currently in the top 15 Comedy podcasts on iTunes and ranks in the top 70 of all podcasts.

According to Broadcast Newsroom, Wizzard Media will now help the program secure advertising revenue from national brands appropriate to each show’s content.

“As one of the first video podcasts developed, we’ve been waiting for the right opportunity to fold advertising into our programming, basically waiting for a way that is smart and respectful of our audience,” said Jeff Macpherson, creator and director of Tiki Bar TV. “We’re very excited to strengthen the business and revenue aspect of our creative work.”

eMarketer forecasts that spending on podcast advertising will grow nearly tenfold in the next five years, reaching $400 million in 2011.

A recent Arbitron study of bars and nightclubs found the average brand recall was 43% for an ad on the Ecast platform, an out-of-home ad-serving network available on 10,000 digital jukeboxes across the country.

“What surprised us was the number of people who use jukeboxes themselves or watch someone like a friend using one,” Diane Williams, Arbitron’s product manager for custom research, said. “They interact with it like they would ads on the internet.”

[via Advertising Age]