Weekly wrapup: INQ1 review (the Facebook phone), Nokia E75 hands-on, Internet TV news round-up, and more

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.

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Mobile

Hands-on review: INQ1 a.k.a. the ‘Facebook phone’

Over the last week I’ve been playing with the INQ1, the so-called ‘Facebook phone’. Designed by the same team behind mobile carrier 3’s original “Skype Phone” (see last100’s coverage), like its predecessor, this fairly nondescript 3G candy bar slider masks plenty of innovation on the software side.

Hands-on: Nokia E75 (hardware preview and pics)

Regular readers of this blog will know that I’m a huge fan of Nokia’s QWERTY-touting E71 and currently use the device as my primary smartphone, along with testing a whole bunch of new handsets. That said, I’m as fickle as the next geek, and ever since Nokia announced the upcoming E75, I’ve been eying it up as a potential replacement.

Internet TV

ZeeVee’s consumer set-top box too expensive and too complicated, says company CEO

It was an interesting take on a familiar problem: how to bridge the gap between the PC (Internet video) and the TV. And yet ZeeVee’s consumer-focused set-top box never took off, selling “just a few thousand units” and has since been canned. The reason, says ZeeVee’s CEO Vic Odryna, is that the product was too expensive and too complicated.

Internet TV news: BlackBerry, Blockbuster and TiVo, Netflix on PS3?

A few Internet TV-related stories have been doing the rounds over the last few days that I’ve not yet had a chance to comment on. Here’s a quick catch-up.

Digital Music

Last.fm starts charging international users, kills third-party mobile apps

After news last week that SpiralFrog has shut its doors, another reality check for ad-supported music services. CBS-owned Last.fm has started charging users outside of the US, UK and Germany, €3 per month (approx. $4.40), to make up for the short fall in advertising revenue.

That’s a wrap, thanks for reading.

– Steve

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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