Tag: duncan geere
Nokia pumps out three new music phones, and comments on the N97, Spotify and Comes with Music
Nokia seems to have decided that music is where it wants to be. The Finnish handset-maker has announced three new handsets today – the 5730 XpressMusic, the 5330 XpressMusic, and the 5030 – which doesn’t have an XpressMusic suffix, but does have an XpressRadio one.
The handsets range from budget to high-end. Starting at the bottom, the 5030 XpressRadio is a candybar with a built-in FM radio antenna, not the internet radio that Nokia’s been pushing to date. It’s very cheap, at just €40 before contracts come into play. Budget-tastic. It’ll be available in Q2.
Then there’s the 5330 XpressMusic, which has a different design to many Nokia handsets. More square. It’s a slider, and it has a 3.5mm headphone jack, 24 hours of listening time battery life, and some sort of crazy light thing going on. If you have any idea what that’s about, then free free to comment. Unfortunately, the 5330 won’t be running S60 – just the cut-down S40 version. It’ll cost €184 before taxes or contracts get involved. It’ll be available in Q3 2009.
Then, at the top of the range is the 5730 XpressMusic which comes in black/red, black/grey, grey/blue and black/pink. It’s got both a numeric keypad and a slide-out QWERTY, which shrinks the screen down a little, but it’s the only phone of the three to be running S60.
Specs-wise, the 5730 has got Wi-Fi, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a 3.2-megapixel camera, HSDPA, and GPS. You can also access your media from the home screen, which will be handy for those who want easier access to their content on the go. It’ll cost €280, and will be available in Q3 2009.
The phones were announced with a webchat this morning, and as part of that chat, the Nokia team also answered a few random questions from the audience. Here’s a few interesting tidbits that they came out with.
Firstly, when asked about the N97, Product Manager for Music Solutions, Steven Stewart, said the handset is “like sex in your hand”(!). The device hasn’t been announced as a Comes with Music device, but Stewart said it would be “perfect for getting unlimited free music downloads”, which sounds like a hint to me.
The inevitable question about Spotify was asked – Nokia responded: “Yes, the music team is aware of most all types of music services and devices. Spotify is one of many interesting new services. Social Music is an important part of the music experience which our teams are busy as beavers working on!”. Given Spotify’s now-officially-announcedmobile ambitions, a tie-in could be very powerful.
Discussing Apple and competition, Stewart said: “Nokia is doing many exciting things with music that apple is not. Nokia has a large range of devices for most every taste, style, and use. Nokia also has a subscription model for unlimited free music that users keep even AFTER the membership ends. But we do look at ALL of the competitive intelligence to make sure we are developing music experiences that consumers want.”.
Lastly, with regards to Comes with Music, the service will shortly be announced in Italy, Sweden, and Mexico. There are no current plans to unbundle the service from handsets, so that it’ll be usable with any device. I suspect that’s because, like Apple, Nokia wants to carefully control the ecosystem and not have to deal with supporting other manufacturer’s handsets.
The DRM on the service is “a requirement of the labels and publishers at this point”, says Stewart. “Nokia Music team is looking for the best experiences for Music Lovers. Getting DRM free music is one of the things which we are in discussions with the labels and publishers about.”
Nokia 5730, 5330 and 5030.
Hyundai's MB-910 touchscreen watch-phone
Oh dear, I hear the rumblings of the forming of a bandwagon. The £1,000 LG G910 wasn’t enough for you all? Hyundai doesn’t think so, because it’s making its own variant – the similarly-named MB-910.
As well as being a watch, it’s a tri-band phone, with 3 hours of talk-time battery life, bluetooth (for a headset), SMS, MMS and video playback. No video calling, I’m afraid. Best feature of all? POLYPHONIC RINGTONES! Hurrah – I missed those.
Available within the next few months (“Q2”), Hyundai’s watchphone will cost £200. A bit more reasonable than LG’s effort, at least.
(via Reg Hardware)
Plug mug, stops office-based mug theft
Do you have a mug problem in your office? Where some tosser always steals your mug from the cupboard just as you *really* need a soothing cup of tea? Well here’s your answer.
The Plug Mug, from IWOOT, has a removable plug in it that you can keep on your keyring and only apply when you’re drinking. That way, it’s useless to anyone else. It’s dishwasher safe and everything.
Yours for just £10, available right now.
Plug Mug (via Technabob)
VIDEO: See how fast SSDs can get
Most people know that the hard drive is one of the slowest bits in most modern computers, and we’re all eagerly anticipating the arrival of affordable, capacious SSD drives, but I hadn’t quite realized how fast these things were until I saw this video, from Samsung’s marketing team. Watch it above.
A set of 24 SSDs in RAID can open the entirety of Microsoft Office in half a second, the entire start menu (53 programs!) in 18 seconds, and can copy a DVD from place to place in less time than it takes to throw the aforementioned DVD out of the window. Best of all, the system can defrag in just three seconds. Impressive!
(via Gizmodo)
Sources sugggest Apple launching netbook after all
After months of will-they, won’t-they action on the subject of an Apple netbook, the latest reports suggest that they-will is winning out. Apple is apparently working with a Taiwanese corporation, Wintek, to produce 10″ touchscreens for such a device.
The launch could be as soon as the second half of the year, and it would likely be packing a stripped-down OS, somewhere in between standard OS X and the iPhone OS. The touchscreen is almost a given, after how well multi-touch on the iPhone has gone down.
One thing that remains under question – will Apple drop the specs to match other netbook manufacturers? Or will they try and cram high-end components into a tiny shell? Apple’s never been one for making budget models of its computers, and there’s no reason why it might start now.
(via CNN Money)
Guardian opens its content to the world, launches API
The Guardian, a British newspaper, has today launched the Guardian Open Platform. “What’s that?”, you may ask. It’s an open API for all the Guardian’s web content. More simply, it’s a way for anyone to freely use Guardian content and data for whatever they want.
You may be wondering why on earth the paper would give its content away for free, given that it charges for it in paper form. Well, the answer is that the Guardian wants to be an all-pervasive source of knowledge on the web, rather than just a site that people have to go to to get that content.
Using the new system, anyone will be able to integrate Guardian data into web applications. The Guardian, in return, gets ad revenues. For the moment, it’s limited to just 5000 queries a day, and it’s all still in beta, but with any luck the Guardian can use their strong trusted position to become the default content provider for many sites on the net.
Guardian Open Platform (via TechCrunch)
iPhone prototypes now available on eBay
Want to get your hands on a piece of tech history? Of course you do. Someone’s managed to get hold of a couple of iPhone prototypes and has chucked it on eBay, because that’s what people who get rare bits of tech do.
Phone #1 powers on, and displays an odd interface. There’s a plastic matte screen. It can make calls, and surf the net. It won’t send texts, though.The second model won’t turn on at all, but has a glass screen.
The bidding, at the time of writing, has reached $940, but the seller will ship worldwide, so don’t be put off by those dollar signs. There’s a day to go, so the bidding will almost certainly escalate quite a bit as the auction nears its end. How much do you really want a couple of barely-working iPhones?
(via iLounge)
Spotify confirms mobile ambitions, and outlines roadmap
PaidContent UK has a great interview with Daniel Ek, the CEO of the so-good-it-makes-us-weep music streaming service Spotify. It’s very wide-ranging, but the most interesting bits cover Spotify’s plans for the future.
Ek discusses whether Spotify is viable as ad-funded alone – saying: “We launched probably at the worst possible time in 70 years for advertising.” He points out, though, that the service has A-list brands involved and average listening times per user are “over an hour per user per day”.
The other option is funding the service by pushing the site’s premium offering. Although Ek acknowledges that the vast majority of users aren’t paying, he says: “Rest assured, we haven’t really started doing the kind of features that we think will really drive adoption of becoming a paid user.”
What might those features be? Ek discusses user-created radio stations, exclusive interviews and cross-platform interoperability. On that last note, he’s talking about mobile service – the area where Spotify could finally drop the axe on the iPod.
But, like Apple, he wants to do it right: “The success of Spotify is based on its simplicity – we won’t do another mobile thing where it works (only) so-so – we’re going to do it where it’s simple, easy and just works.” He also promises plenty of upgrades for the desktop client in the meantime.
There’s more discussion of Spotify’s plans for launching in the States and Ek’s take on the Pirate Bay court case in the interview – go check it out. Then come back here and let us know in the comments what features would make you pay for a Premium subscription.
YouTube blocks music videos in Britain
YouTube, the fantastically popular video streaming service owned by Google, is in the midst of payment renegotiations with the Performing Rights Society, an agency formerly known as the MCPS PRS Alliance that collects royalties for songwriters across both digital and traditional media.
That renegotiation isn’t going too well. Talks have completely broken down, and YouTube has vowed to block British viewers from watching all “Premium” (i.e. major label) music videos from next Monday.
It’ll be possible to get round the block with a proxy server, I suspect, but the vast majority of people will suddenly wonder why their favourite band’s videos have suddenly been removed from the service.
It’s almost certainly just a strongarmed negotiating tactic from Google, and for PRS’ part they’ve asked the site to reinstate the videos until an agreement can be reached. But at the same time, Google’s trying to use its clout to bring down rates that have caused the exit of Pandora from Britain, as well as the despair of many other streaming services.
YouTube claims that PRS are responsible, saying that they’re asking for “many, many factors” more money than their previous agreement. PRS, on the other hand, say Google is trying to drive down payments despite its traffic having grown further.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens here – whether PRS will balk and cave in to a hail of bad publicity that will arise next Monday. The organisation is notoriously tenacious, though, and the whole situation could devolve into a staring match. In that case, consumers will just vote with their feet and go elsewhere – to competitors like Vimeo and MySpace video.
(via Epicenter)
New invention lets you control gadgets with face movements
Stick your finger in your ear. Now smile, or wink, or wrinkle your nose. Can you feel the inside of your ear move? That’s the idea behind a Japanese invention called the “Mimi Switch”.
The device looks like a pair of earbuds but instead of containing speakers, they contain tiny infrared sensors that measure the movements inside your ears that are generated by different facial expressions. Inventor Kazuhiro Taniguchi says:
“You will be able to turn on room lights or swing your washing machine into action with a quick twitch of your mouth. An iPod can start or stop music when the wearer sticks his tongue out, like in the famous Einstein picture. If he opens his eyes wide, the machine skips to the next tune. A wink with the right eye makes it go back.”
It could also monitor your mood – Taniguchi also suggests that someone who ‘isn’t smiling enough’ could be forced to listen to only happy music until they cheer the fuck up. Call me moody, but I can’t think of anything worse. There’s also health applications – one mounted on a hearing aid would be able to monitor a person’s breathing or how much they sneeze.
The device will apparently be available within “two to three years”. But that’s in Japan, which has technology that’s practically indistinguishable from magic. Expect it over here sometime next century then.
(via Physorg)
