Weekly wrapup, 17 – 21 September 2007

by Steve O'Hear

September 21st, 2007 | Posted in last100 weekly wrapup | No Comments

Here’s a summary of the week’s digital lifestyle action on last100. Note that you can subscribe to the weekly wrapups, either via the special weekly wrapup RSS feed or by email.

Top digital lifestyle news

This week’s news was dominated by announcements from the major U.S. televisions networks, relating to their developing Internet TV strategies. CBS Chief Executive Les Moonves talked up the company’s relationship with Apple’s iTunes Store; NBC announced that they will be launching a new TV catchup service called “NBC Direct” which will enable users to download and view some of the network’s more popular shows, free of charge, for up to one week after broadcast; ABC has begun streaming some of its most popular shows on Time Warner-owned AOL; and Fox are offering free downloads of season premieres of seven of its shows through iTunes.

As Tim Hanlon, a media consultant told the L.A. Times:

“What we are seeing is a rather messy and inelegant fumbling into the future of video distribution.”

The other big news story this week was an Apple press event held in London, in which CEO Steve Jobs — joined by O2 UK boss Matthew Key (no surprise there) — gave full details of the iPhone’s UK pricing and carrier details. The device will launch in the UK on November the 9th, priced at £269 available exclusively on O2.

More digital lifestyle news:

Features

Two reviews this week. First off, Ryan Jarrett took a look at the upcoming new version of Winamp, which sports two potentially controversial features: support for mp3 blogs and the ability to stream your music collection over the Internet.

Next up, we reviewed SpiralFrog’s ad-supported music download service, in which users are asked to view adverts in return for downloading free music. The catch: you have to log-in once a month (and watch more adverts?) or the music you’ve already downloaded will expire.

Finally, in a post titled ‘Do we really need live TV on our cell phones?‘, Daniel Langendorf questioned the appeal of mobile TV, noting that we live in a world increasingly dominated by on-demand and time-shifted content.

That’s a wrap. Have a nice weekend!

last100 is edited by Steve O'Hear. Aside from founding last100, Steve is co-founder and CEO of Beepl and a freelance journalist who has written for numerous publications, including TechCrunch, The Guardian, ZDNet, ReadWriteWeb and Macworld, and also wrote and directed the Silicon Valley documentary, In Search of the Valley. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.