Tag: duncan geere
See how much your parking space or garage is worth with Park Let
Here’s one for the financially-motivated amongst you. Park Let is a website that lets you find out exactly how much that parking space outside your house that’s just housing a skip, or garage full of old lego, could be rented out for.
It’s free to use, and gives you a range of prices from low to high in your local area, based on data from the company (which makes its money from letting out those spaces). It’ll probably drive down prices a little bit, but at the same time, it’ll also likely bring them a whole bunch of new customers.
Whether or not you want to rent out your garage or parking space, it’s interesting to see how much it would go for. One outside my house in North London goes for £112 in the medium/all category. How much is yours worth? Play Parking Space Top Trumps in the comments.
(via CrunchGear)
Apple explores new music options – iTunes Pass
This is what I like to see – innovative new ways of buying music that encourages people to actually spend money on bands they love. Venturebeat reports that Apple is experimenting with something called iTunes Pass, which allows fans to buy a pass for a certain group or artist and then get everything that artist releases for a given time period.
Apple’s piloting it with Depeche Mode. You can buy a pass for $19 and you’ll get the band’s new single right now, the album when it comes out, and some other exclusive tracks too. You’ll also get any videos and artwork that the band puts out before June 16th, which is when the pass expires.
All the content you get is DRM-free, though it will show up in Apple’s AAC format. Apple also guarantees that the value of the pass won’t exceed the value of the individual items, so you’re getting a good deal however you look at it.
For my favourite bands, I’d definitely sign up for this. For stuff I’m less excited about, I wouldn’t, but that’s not really the point of the scheme. It’s about making fans feel special, giving bands a greater connection to those people, and maybe actually making some money off music again. Good work, Apple.
Is it something you’d use? What bands would you sign up for if they were offered? Let us know in the comments.
(via Venturebeat)
Olympus shows off the E-620
Olympus does a fine line in mid-range DSLRs, and this is the latest addition to the family. It’s the E-620, a 12.3-megapixel jobby with a 2.7″ LCD, that doesn’t appear to be a touchscreen. Akihabaranews suggests that it’s a cheaper alternative to the E-30 and E3 cameras.
You have the choice of aspect ratios – 16:9, 3:3 and 6:6 are all offered – and ISO goes up to 3200. Size-wise, it measures 30 x 60 x 94mm, and it weighs 475g. We’ve got not pricing or release date info, but I’d expect it to be cheaper than the aforementioned E30 and E3, which pegs it in the sub-£1,000 region.
(via Akihabaranews)
Two MSI X-Slim laptops announced
These little Apple-aping beauties are the X340 and X600, from MSI. They’re part of the X-Slim range, which also includes the X320, which we spotted at CES.
The smaller X340 has a 13.4″ screen, with the X600 going up to a more standard 15.6″. They both offer HDMI-out as well as VGA and pack Centrino 2 processors. The X340 is suggested to cost somewhere between $699 and $999, which is a bit like saying London is between Spain and Scotland.
No release date, or UK prices yet. Shame, because these do look rather nice, even if they’re a tad on the derivative side.
(via Engadget)
Last.fm accused of handing U2 album leak user data to the RIAA
If you’ve been listening to a leaked copy of U2’s “No Line on the Horizon”, then it’s possible that the RIAA know exactly who you are, if you believe Techcrunch who got all in a tizzy on Friday over the suggestion that Last.fm has been handing over listener data to the record company.
Last.fm immediately denied the accusations, saying:
I’d like to issue a full and categorical denial of this. We’ve never had any request for such data by anyone, and if we did we wouldn’t consent to it.
Of course we work with the major labels and provide them with broad statistics, as we would with any other label, but we’d never personally identify our users to a third party – that goes against everything we stand for.
The RIAA followed that up, with:
“[We’re] not sure where that rumor came from. It’s not true.”
So you’re probably safe for now, but given how much personal data many people share on Last.fm, if you’re one of the first with a copy of a leaked album, then you might want to be careful about scrobbling that fact. Just a thought.
VIDEO: Spotify iPhone application in action
Digital Buzzard’s managed to get hold of a video of a Spotify iPhone application in action. We’ve been aware of the iPhone app being in development for a while, as well as an S60 app, and presumably an Android one, but we haven’t seen it running before now.
As you can imagine, it looks fantastic. It promises to give you access to over-the-air streaming of Spotify’s entire music library, as well as playlist access. Best of all, you’ll be able to cache playlists while in Wi-Fi areas so that you’ll be able to play them back when you’re on the go. Initially it’ll only be available to Premium users (presumably because it’s tricky to work out how to serve ads in cached mode).
But the big question here is “will Apple let them do it?”. This service completely replaces everything that the iTunes store does on the device, offering on-demand access to songs. We’ve seen what happens when companies try to improve existing iPhone functionality.
That said, Last.fm exists happily on the device. The difference might be that the Last.fm application won’t let you listen to tracks on-demand, just offers you various radio stations based on your listening habits. It won’t cache songs, either.
Proper streaming mobile music is the holy grail for a lot of people. Already I barely listen to my MP3 collection on my PC any more, relying almost totally on Spotify. If I could get it on my mobile phone, too, reliably, then my Zune might end up totally retired.
(via Digital Buzzard)
LG watch-phone to cost £1,000!?
Gosh, that’s rather a lot. Mobile Today reckons that the LG watch phone that we covered here will be exclusive to Orange and cost a massive £1,000. Wow. The mere thought inspired Nate Lanxon from CNET to create the wonderous venn diagram over the the right there.
The G910 watch-phone was announced at MWC last week, and LG showed it off at CES too. Considering its appalling specs, requirement that you constantly wear a headset, and – now – massive price tag, it’s clear that Orange see this as a novelty for rich people, not a real device.
(via Mobile Today and CNET)
New Zealand's guilt-on-accusation copyright law postponed
New Zealand, as we’ve previously reported, wants to take a hard line against people accused of copyright infringement by cutting them off without any attempt to ascertain whether they’re actually guilty.
The copyright owners argue that this is necessary, because successfully prosecuting someone is a time-consuming and costly business. Of course, copyright owners have a history of falsely identifying acccused infringers.
As a result, there’s been uproar in the country, with many across the world “blacking out” their social network profile pictures to draw attention to the law, due to come into force this Saturday (28th Feb 09).
Thanks to their actions, and the media spotlight placed on the country from across the world, the law has now been postponed. Although it’s only postponed for a month, it’s still a major victory for consumers, who’ll now have a chance to input on a code of practice for the implementation of the law.
If no agreement is reached on the code of practice, then the law will be suspended further, and the government has also promised a review of the effectiveness of the law six months in, to see if it’s had any effect on volumes of filesharing. My guess? It won’t.
(via Stuff.co.nz)
Roll-up cooking mat design could prove useful in small flats
He’s a clever chap, Designer Maurizio Maiorana. He’s put together a concept design for a cooking mat that can be folded up and used on any surface without burning it. It’s all thanks to the remarkable thermal properties of silver.
There’s three hotplates on the device, and they’re surrounded by holes that blow out hot air, keeping the bottom cool while keeping a pan hot. As it connects with just a normal plug, this could also be useful for campers, or people in caravans.
It can handle temperatures of -60 to 280 degrees Celsius, and should be pretty easy to clean, too, thanks to the liquid silicone rubber that the whole thing’s made of. I want one.
Stair lights – they're allegedly for safety purposes
Got dark stairs? No. Nor do I. Nor does ANYONE. So “safety” can’t be the real reason that these awesome stick-on lights were created. No, they were blatantly made because they’ll make your stairs look like the spaceship in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
What would be even cooler is if you could rig these up with pressure pads so that they only turn on when you step on the relevant step, or perhaps turn off. You can bet your bottom dollar that someone’s making a music video of that RIGHT NOW.
(via The Design Blog)
