Here’s a summary of the last 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.
Hulu goes social, it’s all about the ads
Right in time for its first anniversary, video site Hulu has announced that it is dipping its toe into social networking.
CBS to stream NCAA’s March Madness on iPhone and iPod touch
Buoyed by the success of last year’s March Madness on Demand and, presumably, its experiment with live streaming on Joost, CBS is making video coverage of the college basketball tournament available to owners of Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch.
Will Apple’s ‘Netbook’ be open or closed?
Rumors of an Apple Netbook or Internet tablet have resurfaced once again. Perhaps the most important design decision for Apple will be whether to build the company’s future Netbook on an open or closed platform.
Usability guru: Amazon’s Kindle is great for reading novels, poor for everything else
Usability guru Jackob Nielson has given Amazon’s Kindle eBook reader the once over. His conclusion: perhaps unsurprisingly, the device is great for linear reading – think books, and in particular novels – but falls down badly when consuming non-linear content, such as electronic versions of magazines or newspapers.
Android-based G1 helping to prop up T-Mobile in the UK, but I’ve yet to see one in the wild
Apparently, the T-Mobile G1 now accounts for 20% of the carrier’s contract sales here in the UK, a figure that I find quite surprising considering I’ve yet to see a single handset in the wild (aside from on display) nor do I know anybody who’s bought one.
Vodafone Music’s DRM-free move makes Apple and Nokia look bad
Vodafone, which currently operates music download stores in over 20 countries, is to become the latest company to jump on the DRM-free bandwagon, announcing this week that it will soon be transitioning its music catalog away from the copy-protected WMA format to standard MP3s.
Perhaps to the disdain of mobile carriers, Nokia continues to ramp up its own music offering. Three new music-focused handsets were announced today, along with expansion of the company’s own music download store and all-you-can-eat ‘Comes With Music’ subscription-based offering.
That’s a wrap! Thanks for reading,
– Steve
