Author: Daniel Sung
Espresso Book Machine hits the UK for instant in-store printing
The Espresso Book Machine has landed in London. Blackwell’s on Charing Cross Road has been fitted with the first of the £120,000 instant printing binding wonders in the UK and many dealers hope it’ll present a series challenge to online giants, Amazon.
The Espresso provides customers instant access to 500,000 books, which may even have gone out of print, and would otherwise take up over 23.6 miles of shelving, the equivalent of 50 book shops.
The machine prints 100 pages per minute and, according to one eye witness, “the quality of the paperback was beyond dispute: the text clear, unsmudged and justified, the paper thick, the jacket smart, if initially a little tacky to the touch”. The only tricky part is that some rare works cost up to 10p per page. Better hope they’re short.
Blackwells hopes to roll the Espresso out to all of its 60 shops as soon as they can.
(via Tech Radar)
Liverpool FC Legends Edition mobile phone – £14,490, no camera
It’s not often you’d be asked to shell out £14,490 for a feature phone, even when it’s made of 22-carat gold, comes encrusted with diamonds and a sapphire crystal screen. However, stamp it with Liverpool FC, serve it up in a presentation box and make them a limited edition of 250 and suddenly you’ve got a bunch of players, WAGs and Anfield box owners wallets a-twitching. Ian Rush is said to be first on the list.
The phone itself, as made by Galentia, is most likely a bunch of arse and I can’t see so much as a camera on it let alone any HSDPA abilities but, then, that’s not the point. The Liverpool FC Legends Edition handset comes with 18 diamonds drilled into with each one representing one of Liverpool’s league titles. Presumably they waited until now to make sure they weren’t going to be one short.
(via Born Rich)
Guitar Hero Smash Hits: Activision lays track down
Activision has given Guitar Hero addicts more ways to part with their cash by announcing more tracks for their June 16th release of Guitar Hero Smash Hits. The game, which sounds horribly like a teen magazine, sees the relaunch of a batch of songs from previous editions of Guitar Hero and this time it’s the turn of the second pack’s resurrection.
This list as follows is:
Avenged Sevenfold – “Beast And The Harlot”
Rage Against The Machine – “Killing In The Name”
Rush – “YYZ”
Lynyrd Skynyrd – “Free Bird”
Wolfmother – “Woman”
Foo Fighters – “Monkey Wrench”
Iron Maiden – “The Trooper”
Nirvana – “Heart-Shaped Box”
Lamb of God – “Laid To Rest”
The Police – “Message In A Bottle”
Danzig – “Mother”
Kansas – “Carry On Wayward Son”
Stone Temple Pilots – “Trippin’ On A Hole In A Paper Heart”
Warrant – “Cherry Pie”
Alice in Chains – “Them Bones”
Jane’s Addiction – “Stop!”
The Sword – “Freya”
Reverend Horton Heat – “Psychobilly Freakout”
Motley Crue- “Shout At The Devil”
Previously announced tunes:
Pantera – “Cowboys From Hell (Live)”
Franz Ferdinand – “Take Me Out”
Queens of the Stone Age – “No One Knows”
Joan Jett & the Blackhearts – “I Love Rock N’ Roll”
Incubus – “Stellar”
Boston – “More Than A Feeling”
White Zombie – “Thunder Kiss ’65”
Blue Oyster Cult – “Godzilla”
Helmet – “Unsung (Live)”
Queen – “Killer Queen”
The Exies – “Hey You”
Ozzy Osbourne – “Bark At The Moon”
Deep Purple – “Smoke On The Water”
The Donnas – “Take It Off”
Twisted Sister – “I Wanna Rock”
Poison – “Nothin But A Good Time”
Heart – “Barracuda”
DragonForce – “Through the Fire and Flames”
As usual there’s a frustrating mix of jaw droppers and those I couldn’t give a monkey’s about. “Killing in the Name” and “No One Know” are probably enough on their own for me to part with my cash but there’s still plenty of treats in the shape of “Smoke on the Water”, “Message in a Bottle” and all those others that I don’t know I know. Rock on.
(via Wired)
Yahoo! to drop GeoCities later this year
Early adopters and original archeticts of the internet are in mourning this, er, morning with the news that Yahoo! will be shutting down GeoCities. A release from the internet powerhouse readers:
We have decided to discontinue the process of allowing new customers to sign up for GeoCities accounts as we focus on helping our customers explore and build new relationships online in other ways. We will be closing GeoCities later this year.
GeoCities was the web’s easiest and most user friendly way of designing your own piece of internet real-estate for years before it was bought up by Yahoo! for the princely sum of $3bn back in the dot com boom.
On the one hand, I won’t miss it as someone who a) never used it and b) was eternally frustrated when my search results came up heavy with GeoCities logos like badges of untrustworthy fact. On the other hand, I’ve never built my own website. It might have been a good place to start. Oh well.
(via Mashable)
What happens to your user name when you die?
User names are starting to become an issue. One’s identity online was never really a problem beyond trying to get the top result in a Google search – not an easy feat if you’re name’s John Smith but as Dan or Daniel Sung, depending upon how I’m feeling, I’ve always enjoyed the luxury of being somewhere near the top.
The trouble is, that my name’s not so rare that I always get my choice of user name on all the big services out there. Most people’s aren’t but, again, that was never really a problem when it was just about e-mail addresses, but now that Google profiles becoming all the rage and services like Twitter actually affect my career, suddenly, my juvenile choices of [email protected] and [email protected] aren’t very useful any more.
I can’t get [email protected]. It’s too late, unless I want to add a bunch of underscores and a three digit number, and because of that I can’t get the vanity URL I’m after. Regardless of whether [email protected] has actually clued up to the possbility of his http://www.google.com/profile/dansung address (and he hasn’t because the link’s dead) the fact is that I can’t have it because I don’t have the [email protected] user name in the first place. Instead, I have to be satisfied in my petty revenge that enough spambots should have picked up his credentials by now and sent a few thousand messages to clog up his account.
So, how do I go about getting my name back, aside paying the guy for it? What if it’s some kid who never uses the account? What if the owner of [email protected] is dead? Any chance then?Well, I seem to remember in the terms and conditions when I signed up to hotmail that if you don’t use your account for 60 days or so, then MSN terminates it, and, in fact, having asked around all the majors – Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and Twitter, that does seem to be largely the case. Here’s how it runs.
Gmail
Google was very helpful on the matter, answering my question directly and then pointing me towards the supporting terms and conditions.
Google will terminate your account in accordance with the terms of service if you fail to login to your account for a period of nine months is the phrase I was looking for along with the fact that people can actively delete their accounts.
Now, the tricky part is that, although the user names will become freed up, it will only happen after an unspecified time period and I’ve no idea whether that’s a matter of days, months or years. Still, there is some hope for [email protected] to eventually arrive at its rightful owner.
Yahoo! Mail
Yahoo! was also most accommodating. The answer was very different though. It seems, with their service, that once your name has gone, it’s gone forever. As it stands, inactive accounts are not terminated and will lie idle indefinitely.
On the plus side, they did launch Ymail just last year, so I might be in for a shout at bagging that one while the service is fresh. Yep, all mine. Eat that one [email protected].
MSN
No reply back from MSN as yet but I’ll stick with that 60-day account termination I remember from back in the day. No word on whether they recycle the addresses but I’m infuriated to see that I’ve only got a choice between hotmail.co.uk and live.co.uk with all .coms presumably available to those in the States or behind proxy servers of some sort, or, in fact, those with some other way round which I have, as yet, to work out.
Accounts that are inactive for more than 6 months may be removed without further notice
That’s what Twitter has to say about things, but notice the use of “may” rather than “will”. I would assume that Twitter does recycle user names, though, because they’re hot on name squatting. Go and have a look at the whole section dedicated to it if you don’t believe me.
The catch is that I happen to know of a chap desperately trying to get his user name in full knowledge that its current owner has done sod all with the account for well over the six month period. He has petitioned Twitter but they’ve done nought about it. All mouth and no trousers it seems.
The trouble is that the internet is still young; an adolescent really. It’s only now that this kind of thing is becoming an issue and, given the surprise of most of the press officers when I called, it’s something that we the users are realising a lot faster than the big web players.
So, there’s a few ways this can go. Either they get wise to this and realise that they need to start releasing user names or they get wiser and start charging some kind of premium for them. That was Facebooks toe in the water this morning. I wonder how well that would go down if Google tried the same?
So, what happens to your user name when you die? Well, that depends. For now, it’s very possible you can take it with you to the grave. Then, it seems my choices are either begging Google for some kind of alert service for when my name is released or a cash offer to the current owner. If you’re listening [email protected], how does fifty quid grab you?
Toshiba & Star Trek team up for products, downloads and prizes
I’ve never heard of a lapjack in my life. In fact, I have a feeling Toshiba has just invented them, but brand anything with the new Star Trek film and you’ve got my attention. Apparently, they’re “highly-durable, good-quality skins that enable you to personalise your laptop, as well as adding an extra layer of protection”. They seem to be some kind of photo-quality sticker. Maybe a bit thicker than your average. Maybe not.
Anyway, this is all part of a deal that Tosh has got with the Star Trek picture that also involves downloads, such as the wallpaper after the jump, and a competition that you’ll automatically enter when you buy certain Toshiba goodies that you find on the dedicated Trek/Tech site. See what I did there?
The winner gets a trip out to Vegas where they’ll be able to experience the dream of weightlessness through the simulator aircraft known as G-Force One. Now, if memory serves, that’s a stripped out Boeing 727-200 affectionately known in the movie trade as the Vomit Comet which goes up very high and then drops into virtual free fall. Good luck with that one.
Instead, if you prefer your semi-digested food on the inside, then just head over and pick yourself up some wallpaper. Enjoy.
3 offers free Skype voice calls on their network
In a world’s first, 3 is offering all those with Skype enabled phones free Skype-to-Skype calls and IM from 1st May. Whether you’re pay-as-you-go or contract you will not have to pick up a penny of the cost for your Skype data so long as you have a 3 Skype-enabled handset and you are calling within the network. In theory, all you’ll have to do is buy a 3 SIM, stick it in a Skype-enabled phone and away you go.
What’s more, for the summer, 3 is extending the deal such that anyone on an unlocked 3G handset will be able to take advantage of the offer whether or not they’re on 3’s network.
The deal looks like a fantastic way for the youngest of the networks to grab a whole load of customers and pick up the money from the non-Skype calls at the same time. It’s an excellent move and really good offer. Time to fork out the £1.99 for a 3 SIM.
T-Mobile asks users to Pay Once for a BlackBerry Pearl
You may have thought that there were only two ways to go about organising your phone bill but T-Mobile has come up with a new solution – Pay Once. It’s not quite as deliciously inviting as the name suggests but it’s certainly interesting to see a fresh approach to the tariff structure.
The way it works is that you pay £179.99 in exchange for a silver BlackBerry Pearl 8110, like the one in the picture, with a 2-megapixel camera and GPS, and in return you get as much data as you can crunch in a year. There’s no voice or texts included, so you’re still topping up for that lot but, then, maybe you won’t need to if you use VoIP and web based SMS services?
It works out as around £15 a month to put it into some kind of perspective, so we’re not necessarily talking about a bargain here, just a different way of doing things. Nothing’s set in stone as yet but the idea is that, once your year is up, you’ll either be able to Pay Once Again at the same cost with an upgraded handset or slightly less if you just want to keep your Pearl. Interesting.
I don’t think Pay Once will change the world but, marketing aside, an extra package probably doesn’t cost T-Mobile an awful lot in the long term, so what the hell? It’s probably worth a punt for them and it certainly keeps them looking progressive.
Pay Once is available from 1st May and I expect to see it doing very well.
BlackBerry Pearl 8110 Review:
Why hasn't Nokia's Comes With Music succeeded in the UK?
There’s never been a lot of love for Nokia’s Comes With Music service on Tech Digest. Duncan is essentially a DRM Nazi and, as far as I’m concerned, if it’s not free, I don’t want to know about it. But I’m going to give Nokia a break today – well, as best I can. They probably need it after news that just 23,000 CWM subscriptions have been taken up in the UK.
Now, before we right the whole project off as an utter failure, which the UK figures would suggest, it should be noted that CWM is doing a roaring trade over in Singapore where it’s increased the digital music market by 30%. No mean feat. So, what’s the problem in the West? Why don’t we like our music free-ish and DRM heavy over here?
First up we need to look at how the service is being packaged and, right now, you can only get your year’s subscription when you pick up one of three handsets in the UK – the N95, N96 and 5310. In Singapore, and elsewhere, Comes With Music comes with the Nokia Xpress 5800 which we all used to know as the Tube.
The 5800 may not have turned out to be an iPhone killer but CWM would certainly be a lot more attractive when packaged with something as apparently desirable. Perhaps, more to the point, the millions of subscriptions to the service worldwide might have really been by-products of people who wanted to own the 5800 regardless of what kind of media it does or doesn’t come with? But then, I don’t suppose that makes the picture any prettier for Nokia.
I own a Nokia 5310. (It’s something to do with not being able to decide between an iPhone, a G1 and half being on the look out the Pre, Magic and TG01. Don’t ask.) I registered my CWM credentials and therefore would count as one of Nokia’s 23,000 but I can’t say I’ve downloaded a single track.
There’s a small handful of relatively well documented reasons as to why this would be – aside my general laziness which, as it goes, is probably as good a reason as any – and most of them a are related to the DRM.
I could link you through to a thousand of my colleague’s quite reasonable, if passionate, rants on the subject of music file freedom, but the fact remains that it’s a pain in the arse to have your music collection split up into those that you can play anywhere and those limited to your PC and phone without so much as CD in sight.
On the mobile side of things, not only do you have to invest in expensive microSD memory sticks to turn your phone into a decent MP3 player but you’re going to be putting a serious drain on battery power which will limit your web surfing and video watching, as well as your bread and butter voice and text services that you bought the thing for in the first place.
On top of that, stick the fact that, generally, the audio quality in phones isn’t necessarily as good as many other dedicated music players. Who cares how much music you have when it sounds rubbish, or perhaps, more to the point, not as good as your deditcated PMP because that’s really what we’re looking at as the key CWM’s elusive success.
It’s a good service if it can replace your media player but, if can’t, then it’s just an expensive, unnecessary bolt-on. The 5800 is the only Nokia device you might consider leaving you iZune home for and if they’re not offering it with CWM over here, then that’s got to be a serious mistake.
At the other end of things, back at home, the DRM’s still getting you because you’ve got to use the Nokia player for the service to work. I don’t like being strong-armed into my choice of PC music player.
The catalogue is actually superb. Comes With Music has all sorts of Pink Floyd, Metallica, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and 4 million tracks that the mighty Spotify can only dream of at the moment. But Spotify is going to waltz right in and take from under their noses what maybe CWM was always supposed to be, if only the vision had been bolder. Yes, Spotify will still have problems with audio quality on a phone once the mobile service is up and running but it’s not such a big deal when you’re not paying for it.
As it stands, the choice is between costly MP3 downloads, semi-dodgy piracy or a “free” service that you laid out for in the cost of your handset in the first place. All choices make you pay but the CWM option is by far and away the one with the most hassle and without the carrot of a sexy handset. Why would anyone not decide to go with something else plus a PMP instead?
I really didn’t mean to sit here and have a go at Nokia for Comes With Music. I’ve got plenty of love for the Finnish giants but perhaps that’s just the trouble with the service. It’s this fantastic idea utterly crippled by rules and regulations to the point of madness. It just isn’t practical.
No one is asking for a free ride here. I’m not necessarily suggesting they drop the DRM like a stone but give it as a reason to buy the N97 over any other smartphone this summer. Keep that 4 million and counting catalogue three steps ahead of everyone else, make your own Nokia PMP to play video content as well as what you would otherwise carry around and, maybe then, CWM will begin to fly.
The trouble is, that in less than a year the Comes with Music model already looks dated. With Apple making you pay for music but ditching the DRM, and Spotify not letting you own but offering free access, CWM looks like some terrible half-way house hotch potch of the two. All it really adds is a degree of customer confusion and good dollop of inconvenience.
So, in answer to my own question, that’s why Nokia’s Comes With Music hasn’t succeeded over here and why, in its current guise it probably never will, but consider this – perhaps Nokia isn’t interested in how it does over here? Nokia already has some kind of giant market share in both Europe and the Developing World. Maybe it was the East they were after all along? There were queues for the 5800 when it launched in Singapore. Would that have happened for a Nokia phone if it weren’t for the Comes With Music package?
The Majors are based over here. So, you’re going to need presence in the West, and with all the talk we hear about the state of piracy in other parts of the world, perhaps the labels were only too happy to back that kind of gameplan. It’s win-win for all of them.
So, if Operation CWM part A has actually turned up trumps, exactly what is it Nokia that has up their sleeves for world domination?
GADGET SHOW LIVE 2009: Tech Digest "How To Theatre" Talks
Zara, Duncan, Chris and I spent last weekend up at the Birmingham NEC for the Gadget Show Live meeting hundreds of Tech Digest readers and making plenty of new friends while we were there too.
We had a fantastic response from our series of 30-45 minute “How To Theatre” guides to everything from HDTVs to free music and software but for those that couldn’t make it up there for the day, or those who couldn’t scribble everything down fast enough, we’ve compiled them into written form for you to digest, consider and cogitate at you leisure:
How To Theatre Talks
How to buy an HDTV and set up a home cinema
How to get all the software you’ll ever need for free
How to get the most from your mobile phone
How to take better photos and get the most from your digital camera
