Archive for April, 2010

Palm is dead. Long live Palm.

by Steve O'Hear

April 28th, 2010 | Posted in Mobile | Comments1 Comment

BREAKING: HP is to acquire Palm for $1.2 billion or $5.70 per share.

It’s perhaps no surprise that Palm’s been bought – a sale has been on the cards – but nobody that I know of, me included, had considered HP to be in the mix. That said, upon reflection it seems quite a good fit.

First up, the companies’ cultures (and brand) have a good chance of being compatible. Both are US-based, have their roots in Silicon Valley, and are strong brands in North America. HP obviously has much leverage globally too.

Best of all, HP clearly values Palm’s relatively new webOS and unlike other potential buyers isn’t soaking up Palm purely for its patent portfolio. Engadget reports that HP is “doubling down” on webOS and has mentioned Internet tablets and other mobile devices along with smartphones. This is excellent news as it’s webOS that most excites me about Palm’s future…

Continue reading »

Zattoo turns off BBC streams, could TVCatchup be forced to do the same?

by Steve O'Hear

April 26th, 2010 | Posted in Net TV | CommentsNo Comments

Following a request from the public broadcaster, Internet TV app Zattoo has stopped carrying the BBC’s content.

Although only available to viewers in the UK, Zattoo was able to live stream all of the BBC channels because, it argued, of what is effectively a legal loophole.

From our previous coverage:

Because each channel carries a public service remit, under section 73 of the UK Copyright Act, cable operators can re-transmit broadcasts live and uninterrupted without first seeking permission. Zattoo is effectively piggybacking the existing cable television provision.

Interestingly, along with pressure from the Beeb, Zattoo tells paidContent that it also paves the way for the service to launch a browser-based version alongside its existing desktop client. So in that sense, it may be partly a commercial decision, as presumably Zattoo doesn’t feel its legal defense holds enough water when competing with the BBC’s own browser-based iPlayer.

Continue reading »

Virgin Media launches movie streaming service – rentals-only

by Steve O'Hear

April 26th, 2010 | Posted in Net TV | CommentsNo Comments

Virgin Media has launched its own browser-based movie streaming service, available to anybody in the UK not just the cable provider’s own subscribers.

It’s a pretty bog standard VOD affair: movies are available for rental-only, with prices for new releases set at £3.99 for 48 hours access once you press play.

Picture quality-wise, we’ve yet to test the service but we do know that the video streaming is powered by Microsoft’s Silverlight technology and that two different streams are being offered. ‘Normal’ quality is unspecified, while ‘High Quality’ is pegged at 1.8 Mbit/s.

Continue reading »

WorkSnug – an iPhone app to help remote workers combat cabin fever

by Steve O'Hear

April 26th, 2010 | Posted in Mobile | Comments1 Comment

I work from home a lot. And I mean, a lot.

It’s both a privilege – I get to enjoy an extra hour in bed and avoid a lengthy commute – and a pain. Just ask any remote worker and they’ll tell you that sooner or later cabin fever sets in.

That’s why it’s great to be able to up root and take yourself and your laptop someplace else to work other than home. You know, a coffee shop, a public or co-working space or anywhere with a free table, coffee and WiFi.

And guess what? There’s an iPhone app to help with that too. It’s called WorkSnug.

From my TechCrunch Europe post:

Continue reading »

Quick review: HTC Legend

by Steve O'Hear

April 23rd, 2010 | Posted in Mobile, Review, Social | Comments2 Comments

I didn’t have as long with HTC’s Legend as I normally require for a full review – so I’m going to keep it short. To sum up the Legend: it takes everything we liked about its predecessor, the HTC Hero, and turns it up a notch.

As regular readers may remember, the HTC was the phone that restored my faith in Google’s Android, largely because of HTC’s Sense UI, which adds much needed polish to the out-of-the-box Android experience and other improvements, such as social networking integration, a better virtual keyboard and web browser.

Continue reading »

Review: TVCatchup – Streaming live TV to your browser

by David Gilson

April 21st, 2010 | Posted in Net TV, Review | Comments1 Comment

tvcatchup frontpage

TVCatchup is a UK-only VoD site with a difference. When the site launched in late 2007, TVCatchup offered live streams of UK Freeview TV channels, along with the ability to record programmes. Unfortunately, copyright concerns saw TVCatchup withdraw their site, until relaunching, sans PVR functionality, in late 2008 (Source).

In its current form, TVCatchup is very simple, offering only live streams of almost all UK Freeview (free to-air) channels. The website gives a list of all available channels which can be clicked on to view. Better still, there is a TV/PVR like programme guide, showing a horizontal timeline of what’s on currently, and allows you to go forward (and back) in time to see what’s coming up. It also allows users to drag and drop TV channels into any order they like. However, there’s no EPG data available. Along with the channel list, there is a tab giving access to UK Freeview radio stations, this is in a testing phase, and during this review the audio player loaded but didn’t stream any audio. We’re sure this will be fixed soon though.

Continue reading »

The Gadget Show Live: Forget iPad, supersize your iPhone says Elonex

by Steve O'Hear

April 16th, 2010 | Posted in Mobile, Net TV | CommentsNo Comments

“What is an iPad? An iPad is basically a big iPhone”, argued Nick Smith, Elonex CEO at last week’s The Gadget Show Live.

“Err, it’s a bit more than that”, I replied, before politely indulging in a product pitch for the company’s iDock XL, a portable 10inch screen that houses an iPhone (or iPod touch) and displays any video content coming from the device. It’s available for pre-order and costs £149.

Continue reading »

Review: MSN Video Player mixes it up with classic TV, news & gossip

by David Gilson

April 15th, 2010 | Posted in Net TV, Review | CommentsNo Comments

MSN Video Player Front PageMSN Video Player is Microsoft’s offering into the video on demand (VoD) market, which launched last month in the UK. It’s reported to have launched with around 1000 hours of content, licensed from various sources. However, Microsoft hasn’t cut the type of deals with UK broadcasters required to enable MSN Video Player to be a way to catch up on recent TV.

The bulk of content on MSN Video player is made of back catalogue TV shows, although there is other material. The ‘Clips’ section, has sub-categories of: News, Viral, Celebrity, Sport, Gaming and “MSN Originals”. The sports content is further broken up into individual sports, but don’t get excited, as it’s just a long string of interviews with players and coaches. Viral and Celebrity videos are self-explanatory, but don’t expect to find any deep or insightful content. The news videos are quite useful, and are taken directly from ITN and MSN’s own news service. The “TV clips” and “MSN Originals” categories seem to overlap somewhat with the Celebrity videos, and are all quite random in topic and duration

Continue reading »

Nokia wants to connect everyone with 3 new QWERTY-touting handsets

by David Gilson

April 13th, 2010 | Posted in Mobile | CommentsNo Comments

Nokia-c3-c6-e5Nokia unveiled three new phones today as part of their Everyone Connect launch, (press release here). “Everyone Connect” is Nokia’s attempted at bringing E-Mail, Instant Messaging and Social Networking together into a unified whole. As part of this messaging emphasis, all three phones have a QWERTY keyboard. This is a loud and clear message from Nokia as to what they think about touch screen keyboards. Another theme that ties these three phones together is their low cost with Nokia clearly wanting to bring smart phones to the low and mid tier markets. While none of these phones are ground breaking, and may invite yet more of the same-old tired Nokia bashing, these three may prove to be ideally placed to sell in large numbers, thus maintaining Nokia’s market share.

Continue reading »

The Gadget Show Live: Elonex £99 touch screen colour eBook reader

by Steve O'Hear

April 12th, 2010 | Posted in Mobile, Other | CommentsNo Comments

At last week’s The Gadget Show Live, Elonex showed off a new eBook reader, which will retail for £99 and features WiFi and a 7 inch colour touch screen. It doesn’t utilise eInk for the display, of course, instead it’s plain old TFT and as a result won’t be as easy on the eye for long reading periods and won’t offer eInk’s amazing battery life.

On that note, I suspect the Elonex rep featured in the video below got his wires crossed when talking in terms of page turns when describing power consumption, and the device on show wasn’t a working model either, so overall we’re holding our judgment.

Continue reading »

« Older Entries