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.
Top digital lifestyle news
The big news story this week was Amazon’s purchase of Audible.com, the leading online supplier of “digital spoken word audio content” (think: audiobooks, magazines, newspapers and radio programs). We noted that the move “clearly signals Amazon’s intent on placing ever greater bets on a digital future, whereby consumer demand for DVDs, CDs and “dead tree” books, will be replaced with movie downloads (UnBox), digital music (AmazonMP3), eBooks (Kindle), and now audiobook downloads too.”
Lots of digital music-related news this week, including the bungled launch of Qtrax, a free and legal peer-to-peer (P2P) music sharing service supported by advertising. The company was forced to admit that they had in fact only persuaded one out of the four record major labels to sign on, despite originally stating otherwise — leading us to ask if a free legal music service on the scale of Qtrax is too good to be true?
In a follow-up post we conducted a Q&A with Steve Purdham, CEO of We7 (backed by Peter Gabriel), another ad-supported music download service. Purdham talked on a range of issues including the company’s mission, DRM, resistance by the major labels, new business models and We7’s competitors.
We also reported on comments made by U2’s manger, calling for ISPs, telecos, device-makers to combat music piracy on Web.
In mobile-related news, the FCC reached important milestone in 700MHz spectrum auction, there’s trouble at Motorola, as theNo. 3 handset maker may spin off or sell Mobile Devices business, and rumors that Google and Dell are working on mobile phone.
More digital lifestyle news:
- Hulu to replay 2008 Super Bowl commercials immediately following game
- Bummer: Apple delays “Take Two” software upgrade
- Analyst estimates more than 1 million iPhones are “unlocked”; here’s what it means
Features
This week’s feature post was a review of SyncTV, a new Internet TV service.
That’s a wrap. Enjoy the rest of the weekend.
