Archive for November, 2007

Weekly wrapup, 29 October – 2 November 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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Last100 headlines this week:

Note: Apologies for the late and sparse wrapup this week. Normal transmission should resume next week!

Nokia's Ovi stumbles as N-gage is delayed and Warner doesn't want to play

nokia oviNokia’s newest brand, Ovi, hit a bit of a snag this week. Touted as “the key that unlocks every door”, Ovi apparently isn’t unlocking the game portion of its site, N-Gage, until December.

Nokia, which introduced its long-awaited gaming service at a large media event in August, said N-gage would be available globally in November. Due to software testing issues, Nokia said today it is delaying N-gage’s launch until December.

“Software testing is taking a bit more time than we expected,” Nokia spokesman Kari Tuutti said.

Additionally, the Warner Music Group Corp. said today it is withholding its music from the just-lauched Nokia Music Store over concerns about illegal downloads at Nokia’s file-sharing site, Mosh, The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) noted today.

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NBC Universal willing to take risks and fail, expected to axe DotComedy

dotcomedyYou got to admit one thing about the TV networks. Unlike the digitally-careful print media, these TV guys are willing to experiment with digital strategies, fail, dust themselves off, then try something new in hopes it will stick.

Just look at NBC Universal this week. They start off with the beta launch of Hulu, the online joint venture with News Corp. that was first touted as a “YouTube killer” but ended up being a boutique streaming site for the networks’ content.

A couple of days later, NBC U president and chief executive officer Jeff Zucker spits on Apple, saying the Steve Jobs-led company has “destroyed the music business” and must be stopped before it does the same to video. Just a few months earlier, Zucker said NBC Universal was pulling all of its content off iTunes when the network failed to get what it wanted in contract renegotiations with Apple, a bold move to be sure.

Now NBC U is reported to be shutting down its stand alone comedy site, DotComedy.com, according to Mike Shields of MediaWeek. Shield’s sources indicate that DotComedy, which launched in mid-2006 as a part of NBC’s focus on digital media, will fold and move the site’s content and traffic to NBC.com and, presumably, Hulu.

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Nokia Music Store launches – video review

Nokia Music StoreThe Nokia Music Store that we wrote about in late August, has finally opened its doors.

A quick recap: designed to run on the company’s flagship multimedia handsets, the N81 and N95, as well as a Windows PC, the service offers individual songs costing €1 and albums at around €10, from a catalog featuring “millions of tracks” from major artists and independents. Music can be bought “over-the-air”, as well as being able to be purchased and “side-loaded” via a PC, with synchronization offered both ways.

A subscription-based service is also available through a PC, though, curiously, isn’t supported on a cell phone.

Here’s what we wrote when Nokia first announced it music store:

Like with Apple’s iTunes/iPod ecosystem, Nokia is now in a position to control the whole user experience, by designing both the software and hardware required to use its music download service, and this is obviously one motivation behind the company’s attempt to bypass the networks. However, a second, and perhaps, bigger reason behind…. [the] launch is that profits from hardware sales are falling, requiring the company to reinvent itself as one that provides a broad range of mobile services — and in doing so, will inevitably have to wrestle some power away from the carriers.

James Burland over at Nokia Creative has produced a video review of the Nokia Music Store running on an N95. Check out the video after the jump….

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