Weekly wrapup, 1 – 5 October 2007

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.

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Top digital lifestyle news

The major digital lifestyle news this week on last100 was Microsoft’s announcement of second generation Zunes, the company’s line of digital audio players. New flash-based models were introduced, along with a beefed up 80GB hard drive-based version. The company also announced that its online music store, Marketplace, will offer 1 million DRM-free songs for purchase, and that the company is launching a music-based social networking site called “Zune Social”. In a follow up post titled ‘Zune 2: five things Microsoft got right’, last100 editor Steve O’Hear wote: “while the new Zune lineup is at best evolutionary rather than revolutionary, especially when compared to the User Interface innovations found in Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch, Microsoft has made some significant improvements — and, dare I say it, done a few things from which even Apple might learn a thing or two.”

The other big news this week was the band Radiohead’s decision to to release their seventh studio album, In Rainbows, completely on its own with no label and a pay-what-you-want price tag.

More digital lifestyle news:

Features

In a post titled ‘Internet TV’s future: PC or set-top-box?‘ we pondered the future of Internet TV in relation to set-top-boxes or devices that bridge the gap between the PC and TV. Noting that many companies in the online video space such as BitTorrent, Apple, and DivX, already have a hardware strategy, we asked if full-screen Internet TV apps, Joost, Babelgum and VeohTV need one. Also see our follow-up post: Joost on a set-top-box within 18 months, based on a quote from Joost CEO Mike Volpi in a recent interview. Volpi went on to say that Joost isn’t yet ready for the mainstream: “I wouldn’t expect the mainstream to go with Joost. I would expect the mainstream would probably get to Joost when they see the platform on television.”

Later in the week we asked why “media extenders” haven’t yet reached mass adoption, the way that MP3 players have.

Guinevere Orvis wrote a really interesting guest post on how social media is helping to boost TV ratings. Guin writes: “Broadcasters have a dirty little secret. I work in broadcast and I’m gonna let you in on this secret, only because I love the internet and I’m tired of hearing it get blamed for TV’s woes.”

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.

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