June 4th, 2008 | Posted in Other | 
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A lot is being made of cloud computing these days, especially in light of Microsoft’s Mesh initiative and the various online products and strategies cooked up by Google.
With the rumored changes coming to Apple’s .Mac product, could a revamped MobileMe or Me.com — whatever it is ultimately called — eventually become my personal cloud?
I hope so. My digital life needs one, whether supplied by Microsoft, Google, or Apple, it doesn’t matter.
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June 4th, 2008 | Posted in Net TV | No Comments
Another set-top box aiming to bridge the gap between the Internet and our televisions is due to hit the market later this summer — at a sweet price point of $99.
The work of startup Verismo Networks, “the PoD” (Apple legal department look away) will deliver a range of online video content to the living room TV, both through official partnerships — starting with YouTube, video search engine vTap, and BitTorrent — along with the box’s ability to support Windows DRM-based services such as Amazon UnBox and Cinema Now, without the need for a PC the company claims. The latter sounds a little too good to be true but we’ll hold our judgement until “the PoD” actually goes on sale.
Our friends over at NewTeeVee got a sneak preview of the tiny looking device at this week’s Under the Radar conference in Mountain View, Calif., and published a short demo and Q&A with Verismo Networks CEO Prakash Bhalerao. Full video after the jump…
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June 4th, 2008 | Posted in Net TV | No Comments
Six months after their U.S. debut, Apple has finally made movies rentals, along with purchases, available to iTunes customers in the UK.
On the plus side, new film releases for purchase will be offered the same day as their DVD release and, in a near industry-first, the viewing window for rentals has been extended to 48 hours (from 24), whereby customers have up to 30 days to start watching a rented download, and once the movie starts they have two days to finish it or watch it multiple times. As we wrote in our earlier analysis of Apple’s U.S. iTunes movie offering (Content, pricing and convenience. How do movie rentals on iTunes fare?), a 24 hour limit “makes it impossible to split a film over two nights, a requirement that is more common than you’d think, especially for those with kids”.
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June 3rd, 2008 | Posted in Audio | 1 Comment
It seems like a millennia ago when music fans huddled around the radio to listen to Casey Kasem’s “American Top 40” or the television on Saturday mornings to see what new artists appeared on “Soul Train.”
Now, all you have to do is fire up the Internet and head over to any one of a million or two music sites like iTunes and last.fm to find new artists and “Top 40” lists that mix the familiar with the obscure.
Three such sites — SpiralFrog, We7, and The Filter — are in the news this week and each, in its own way, is working hard to introduce you to new music and entertainment content.
SpiralFrog, the free, ad-supported music download service, today announced a digital distribution agreement with EMI Music.
EMI’s catalog of digital music and videos will be available to consumers for legal downloading from SpiralFrog in North America. EMI artists are certainly recognizable — from The Beach Boys and Miles Davis to Norah Jones and Coldplay — but while your listening to old favorites it’s impossible not to stumble on indie artists and breakout bands while using the site.
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June 3rd, 2008 | Posted in Net TV | 3 Comments
Sony might not yet be ready to roll out its own Internet TV service for the PlayStation 3 but the company is launching an original interactive HD video show to be distributed through the game console’s online service.
Called “Qore”, the magazine-style show will feature “exclusive multimedia news, developer interviews, in-depth game previews and behind-the-scene looks at the hottest PlayStation games”, according to the press release. “Subscribers will also have special access to game demos, betas, add-ons and other downloadable and game-related content.”
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June 2nd, 2008 | Posted in Net TV | 1 Comment
CBS Interactive is launching a new online video player this week, with more features to be added throughout the summer. It’s one we may actually end up cheering about.
Our normal reaction to news that a traditional media company is releasing a new online video player might go something like this: Big deal. They’ll just cripple it so we spend time watching shows on their network.
No so fast buckeroo.
AdAge wrote today that the CBS player will use a content and advertising engine powered by technology acquired in the purchase of Last.fm, the popular streaming music site. The new player will include an HD viewing experience that does not require a separate download, sharing features, and social viewing rooms that let people watch and discuss content together.
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June 1st, 2008 | Posted in Mobile | 2 Comments
It’s hard not to be impressed by the latest demonstration of Android, Google’s soon-to-be-released open-source mobile OS. While my colleague Dan Langendorf is reserving judgment until a killer application and real handsets emerge, I’m already sold on Android’s User Interface, which looks to have borrowed just enough from Apple’s iPhone, as well as some of the design Zen of the original Palm OS, to more than satisfy my needs.
Of course, the biggest promise of Android isn’t its UI but its openness, and it’s here where comparisons to the iPhone are also inevitable. On the one hand Google wants us to believe that Android isn’t a direct response to Apple’s own offering (which, chronologically, may well be true), but at the same time is keen to remind developers that in contrast to the iPhone they won’t need to get Android applications certified by anyone, nor will there be any hidden APIs (application programming interfaces) accessible only to handset makers or mobile operators — another dig at Apple.
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June 1st, 2008 | 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.
Details are scant, but Amazon will be launching online video streaming service soon
Amazon, the world’s largest Internet retailer, will be launching an online streaming video service in the next several weeks, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said a little too matter-of-factly at the D: All Things Digital conference. One detail: The streaming service will start immediately for viewers, unlike Amazon’s Unbox product, in which users are required wait a period of time as content downloads.
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