March 19th, 2010 | Posted in ZNF | 
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A periodic roundup of relevant news from our friends at Zatz Not Funny…
Return of the Android set-top box
Dave Zatz: As it turns out, it does look like Google aims to conquer the television with a dedicated offering. And why wouldn’t they take their open source platform and ad serving business to a larger screen? Continue reading »
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March 16th, 2010 | Posted in Other | View Comments
Perhaps this will put the vapourware accusations to rest.
OnLive, the streaming games start-up, has announced that it will begin rolling out its subscription service ($14.95 per-month plus the cost of purchasing or renting the games themselves) to customers on the 17th of June 2010 to coincide with this year’s E3 gaming conference.
It will be a US-only offering, however, at least for the foreseeable future, restricted to “to early registrants throughout the 48 contiguous United States”. This is in-line with their beta test program which requires users to be within 1000 miles of one of OnLive’s data centres.
The idea behind OnLive is that rather than having a powerful games console in your home, OnLive handles all of the heavy duty computation and graphics rendering. Then, a video stream of the game is sent back to your screen, and your controller inputs are sent back to them, and so on. Continue reading »
March 15th, 2010 | Posted in Mobile, Net TV | View Comments
When Engadget Editor-In-Chief Joshua Topolsky says something is game changing I tend to take notice. That’s how he described developments in the Windows Phone 7 world (previously Windows Mobile) in reference to a demo given at today’s MIX10, Redmond’s developer conference.
Specifically, Topolsky was referring to a Netflix streaming app (Watch Instantly) powered by Silverlight running on Microsoft’s latest mobile OS, along with support for XBox Live gaming.
Both moves clearly demonstrate that Windows Phone 7 series is the Zune phone that many have been wishing for. It’s also evidence of how the company plans to exploit what is arguably its strongest consumer brand – XBox – to give its mobile OS and the third-party hardware that will be running it, fresh impetus. Much needed in the face of so much competition from the likes of iPhone, Android, Palm, BlackBerry and Nokia.
A video of Netflix on Windows Phone 7 is embedded after the jump… Continue reading »
March 15th, 2010 | Posted in Mobile | View Comments
I’m typing this from my local coffee shop on a Nokia Booklet 3G, the Finnish handset maker’s entry into the crowded Netbook ‘mini laptop’ space. And there’s no doubt that I’m in possession of one of the better looking devices of this type that are on the market.
Nokia’s design cues feel like they’ve been taken directly from Cupertino, the hardware aesthetics are certainly Apple-inspired.
But then so is the price.
Retailing for just shy of £650 from Nokia’s own online store, for what is for the most part under the hood an average Atom-powered (1st generation?) Netbook, seems a little ambitious. Then again, your average price savvy Netbook buyer clearly isn’t the customer. Continue reading »
March 15th, 2010 | Posted in Audio | View Comments
Cannonical enters the music market
Cannonical are making some interesting moves with respect to making their desktop Linux distribution, Ubuntu, more friendly to mainstream users. They now have a Dropbox like service called Ubuntu One. Of which, the short term goal is to sync users’ files and application settings, via the cloud, across all of their Ubuntu computers.
Further to this, it seems that Cannonical clearly has aspirations to deliver DRM free music to desktop users. They have already given a vague outline of incorporating an ‘Ubuntu One Music Store’ into their default music player, RhythmBox. An alpha tester, “Popey”, of Ubuntu’s next desktop release, 10.04 “Lucid Lynx”, has already blogged that Cannonical are likely to use 7digital as the back-end for this service (link). He has also blogged that RhythmBox has been prepared to both: feature the music store, and look for MP3 tracks stored on users’ UbuntuOne drive (link). The latter means that when a user buys music from the Ubuntu One Music Store, the MP3 files will be available to the user on any of his/her Ubuntu computers.
The final tantalising piece of the Puzzle is that another Ubuntu 10.04 alpha tester has reported that it is now possible to view tracks and playlists stored on his non-jailbroken iPhone. Continue reading »
March 12th, 2010 | Posted in Mobile | View Comments
YouTube's new application homepage on S60
It’s taken a while but YouTube has finally added support for user accounts in its updated client for phones running the Nokia-led Symbian OS.
Announced on the 10th of March, users can now log into their YouTube account enabling them to access their favourites, subscriptions, and videos. YouTube stated that it has taken them this long because they wanted to focus on speed of search and playback. Also new to version 2.4 is suggested search terms as you type in a search query. Continue reading »
February 22nd, 2010 | Posted in Net TV | View Comments
After rumors circulated in January that US retail giant Wal-Mart was eying the video-on-demand service Vudu, the New York Times is reporting that it’s a done deal. Still no official word from either company but Dan Rayburn via one of his sources says the ink has dried and that’s good enough for me. It’s also an interesting end to a pretty long story:
Vudu started as a feisty silicon valley startup, unfashionably entering the consumer hardware space with its own set-top and accompanying HD video download store. Whilst its offering received good reviews based on the UI, movies were relatively expensive, as was the box itself, and I was always skeptical that consumers in great numbers would pay for hardware just to enter the store. The Vudu box was a one trick pony, providing a store front to the company’s content, or that’s how it felt to me. Competing consumer set-top boxes seemed to offer a lot more.
Eventually, Vudu opened up a little, supporting services other than its own, and lowered the price of its entry level hardware, but that still didn’t seem to be cutting it. Continue reading »
February 17th, 2010 | Posted in Mobile, Review | View Comments
Back in August, I was pretty bullish when Hutchison-owned INQ announced the INQ Chat 3G, a follow-up to the INQ1, the company’s so-called Facebook phone.
The updated device adopts a BlackBerry-esque form-factor in favor of the INQ1’s candybar, adding a full QWERTY keyboard to support a host of social messaging capabilities, including ‘push’ email (via Gmail), Facebook access, Instant Messaging through Windows Live Messenger, Skype, and a Twitter client that provides ‘always-on’ connectivity to the micro-messaging social network so that updates are pushed ’straight to the homescreen’.
That’s a lot of functionality for a fairly low-cost device – it retails for £99 on a pre-pay (PAYG) tariff on 3UK – leading me to describe the INQ Chat 3G as taking aim at overpriced QWERTY touting smartphones.
It wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago, however, that I actually got my hands on the phone. Read on for my thoughts… Continue reading »
February 15th, 2010 | Posted in Mobile | View Comments
They were already known to be sharing technology with regards to their separate Linux OS efforts but now Intel and Nokia are to merge their respective distributions.
Intel’s Moblin and Nokia’s Maemo operating systems are to be combined into a new Linux-based OS called MeeGo that will target “multiple hardware platforms across a wide range of computing devices, including pocketable mobile computers, netbooks, tablets, mediaphones, connected TVs and in-vehicle infotainment systems.”
Intel is desperate to get its chips into devices that aren’t a traditional PC and Nokia needs a viable and developer-friendly platform to replace Symbian as the latter moves further down into mass-market smart phones that in-turn are replacing feature phones. Continue reading »
February 15th, 2010 | Posted in Mobile | View Comments
The Symbian Foundation, the custodians of the Nokia-led open source mobile OS of the same name, has published a concept video showcasing the User Interface changes we can expect in version 3. The UI is seen as a major weakness of Symbian, especially as it transitions away from its S60 ’scroll-and-click’ non-touch roots to something more finger-friendly. So how is Symbian S^3 shaping up?
Pretty darn good, if the video is to be believed.
The UI borrows plenty from the iPhone but also adds a splattering of Palm-esque app switching – similar to WebOS’ card view (see review) – as well as building on some of Nokia’s own UI ideas, such as the widgetized home screen we first saw on the N97. Only this time there are revolving homescreens – Android-style – so that a user can access many more widgets.
Check out the video after the jump… Continue reading »
February 2nd, 2010 | Posted in Mobile | View Comments
3UK’s CEO talks about how the network is planning to address its ‘legacy perception problem’ and why bidding for the iPad would be like trying to sign a premiership footballer
I’ve just got back from a fascinating press briefing with mobile carrier 3UK’s CEO Kevin Russell and CTO Graham Baxter, billed as a discussion of the “themes, trends and challenges that will shape the mobile industry in the UK in 2010.” Although the subtext was something more along the lines of: how is 3 addressing what was described as its legacy perception problem.
People still, wrongly or rightly, often associate the network with poor coverage and/or service. This despite the fact that the network’s coverage and capacity has and is improving and that in my view 3 is one of the most, if not the most, innovative of the UK networks, especially on pricing, data services and positioning.
Here’s what I learnt during two presentations and the very frank Q&A that took place afterwards: Continue reading »
January 31st, 2010 | Posted in Audio, Mobile, Net TV | View Comments
Now that the dust has settled and I’ve had time to gather my thoughts, here’s what I make of the iPad, Apple’s own take on the tablet computer.
It’s an Internet appliance not a computer
While the tablet computer is nothing new, the iPad is, arguably, a completely new product category, which appears to occupy the middle ground between a smartphone and a laptop. If, of course, such a middle ground exists.
Unlike the raft of Windows Tablet PCs, which Bill Gates once claimed would be the future of personal computing, replacing the desktop and laptop, the iPad doesn’t appear to replace anything. It’s certainly too big to replace a smartphone. And it’s not capable of undertaking many tasks for which a laptop or desktop computer – read: fully-fledged desktop OS/applications and mouse/hardware keyboard – is required. But in many situations – web browsing and consuming content – the iPad is arguably better. Continue reading »
LONDON - Steve O'Hear reporting from the trenches of convergence (more)
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