Tag: Radio
Hunted Radio in cool Myspace app shocker
Sadly, it's not often Tech Digest find many positive stories to cover about Myspace any more. However, while the social network struggles to re-align itself in the wake of Facebook's massive successes, we were pleasantly surprised to find a cool…
Texting on the Tube made possible? Teenage inventor builds low-frequency radio for underground communications
We've all been there; on the phone, on the verge of breaking the meaning of life during the daily commute when your train hits a tunnel and your signal cuts out. We can send a man to the moon, but…
BT launch new Vision + box
In keeping with the big green trend in electronics right now, BT are re-launching their Vision range of set top boxes, claiming a 12% reduction in power consumption. The new BT Vision + box doesn't just give you Freeview TV…
CES 2010: Final Thoughts
The Consumer Electronics show, the behemoth of tech, the Valhalla of gadgetry, has come and gone for yet another year. But this time, rather than arriving with a bang, it slinked into sight with something more like a whimper. CES…
CES 2010: Day 3 Round-Up
Another day, another Tech Digest CES 2010 round-up. Fancy Tweeting hands-free in your car or controlling your PC by breathing? Check today's top stories below and find out how. Twitter coming to Ford cars The digital equivalent of drink-driving? Motorola…
New listeners tuning into Spotify and Last.fm
Online music services such as Spotify and Last.fm are rapidly picking up new listeners, new research has revealed. Rajar, the radio audience measurement body, has seen figures for "personal radio" services hit 4.5 million users in the UK through November….
Five budget DAB's from Alba, Technika, Tesco, Argos and Bush to make you go Radio Ga Ga
The only way is down for digital radio price tags.
DAB receives major setback as Germans and Swiss say no
The future of DAB radio took a bit of a kicking today when Germany and Switzerland’s commercial radio stations refused to invest in developing the DAB system to replace existing FM/AM transmissions. Their argument was that it didn’t make financial sense to do so.
The news has big repercussions for the UK and the rest of Europe. The Digital Britain report stated that the government would “work with our European partners, including the European Commission, to develop a common European approach to digital radio”. Well, it seems like all of the European partners aren’t interested in coming to the party.
The move could also be bad news for consumers. DAB radios are already much more expensive than their analogue brethren and the lack of a Europe-wide market is hardly going to help the cause. Car manufacturers are also less likely to include DAB radios in cars if they’ll only get maximum usage in selected countries.
The whole DAB scenario has been a bit of a shambles from the start really. Some DAB radios in the UK- reportedly as many as 9million – won’t even work if/when the system gets upgraded to the superior DAB+ system.
Campaigns such as Save FM argue that there is no need to take radio digital anyway – with many people arguing FM audio quality is, in fact, superior. The rise of internet radio also raises questions for the need of a digital radio network.
(via The Register)
Last.fm bans third party mobile streaming applications
Last.fm has had rather a bad day for PR, making two very big, very bad announcements for its consumers. First of all, the company announced in a forum post they’re removing access to their API for third party mobile applications. That means that users of Mobbler on S60, Pocket Scrobbler on Windows Mobile, and FlipSide on BlackBerry devices will soon find themselves without a way of listening on the go.
The ‘official’ applications for the iPhone and Android will remain in action, which seems a little odd. If this is a licensing problem, surely the same rules are in place for whatever platform the content is delivered on? Relatedly, the service will also be stopping non-subscribers from accessing the radio APIs, simply because Last.fm wants more money.
Secondly, the company also announced in a blog post that it will begin charging for its previously free service outside of three countries – the UK, the USA and Germany. Customers anywhere else will be charged a fairly slim €3 per month for the service.
The company admits that the reason for this change is because it’s having trouble selling ads outside of these markets. The UK, USA and Germany all have relatively mature ad markets, where funding the service through advertising alone is possible. Outside of these countries, though, the company is having trouble.
What will remain free for all users is the scrobbling aspect of the site – where it charts your music taste and allows you to compare taste with friends and other users, as well as the social network that sits on top of everything. Although I’ve never pushed very hard to fill out my friends list on Last.fm, it’s grown incrementally over the years and now it’s not too bad.
I’m deeply disappointed that I’ll be losing access to Mobbler, even if it was a little rickety and didn’t work properly on the bus. Let’s hope that services like Slacker make their way over this side of the Atlantic sooner rather than later.
Pioneer's DEH-P4100SD – a car stereo with an SD card slot to aid choice and/or piracy
Pioneer’s just revealed its latest in-car entertainment solution for the businessman trapped in a snow drift with no mobile signal or radio reception – the DEH-P4100SD.
The big selling point of the P4100 is its SD Card slot, allowing you to do away with the middle man (DJ, CD writer, iPod, cable) and load up your MP3 collection to a cheapo SD Card and whack it straight into your car via the slot hidden behind the removable faceplate.
Pioneer’s “rotary commander” dial-slash-joystick lets you navigate through tunes while still managing to pay some attention to the road, while there’s also full support for iPod playlists if you’re the sort of person who likes to spend your spare time painstakingly sorting all your music into very tightly-organised playlists…
