Big day in the Apple TV world yesterday. No, not the DRM free update. Not the Jobs/Gates conference at D5 either. Certainly not the YouTube announcement or the 160gb BTO option (seemingly US only?).
No, it was a big day because…
…Apple killed my AppleTV!
UK music service last.fm has been sold to US media giant CBS, whose empire covers TV, radio and Web.
Last.fm is the darling of the ‘new’ Internet kids, as it is based on buzzword-tastic technology. While that’s true, it doesn’t take away from the fact that it is really rather good, using the listen preferences of everyone else on the service to automatically pick the tracks that probably match the music that you like.
Its major strength is that it throws in tracks that you may well have never found under your own volition – vital in a world where personal playlists can kill variety.
At £140m ($280m) the BBC are calling it the “largest-ever UK Web 2.0 acquisition.” Quite how that’s defined is anyone guess, but it is a lot of lolly, so trebles all round.
One of the founders, Martin Stiksel told the BBC that “this move will really support us to get every track ever recorded and every music video ever made onto Last.fm,” quite an ambition, but as he added, “with a strong partner like CBS, this is now within our reach.”
It’s planned that the site and company will continue to operate separately under it’s own branding.
Stiksel also bigged up the UK’s capital city, by saying “being in London has helped us; it’s the best place to do things with music full stop. It’s the place that leads the world.” Hurrah!
(Via)
We know you love it when people port software on to unlikely platforms, so thought you’d like to see this video of the old (pre-osx) Mac operating system running on an Sony PSP.
How real it is, isn’t 100% clear, but it appears to be running a PSP version of Basilisk II, an open-source Macintosh Emulator project, called, unsurprisingly, Basilisk II PSP.
(Video follows) Continue reading Basilisk II PSP: Running PSP Mac 7.5 OS: Video
The integration between YouTube and Google is becoming ever-stronger.
We were doing a bit of research on Google today and noticed that they’ve now included the ability to actually watch the videos that are coming up as search results, _within_ the Google search results.
Continue reading Play YouTube Videos Within Google Search Results
We know Tech is hitting all media businesses, but how are they currently responding?
Howard Scott covered North One TV yesterday; today it’s Sony BMG; and the final piece tomorrow is Kempster, their work with European football and the conclusion.
Highlighting through italics are ours.
Duncan Bird, VP of Futures, Sony BMG
Duncan Bird is an ex-Leagas bod, just like me – so he’s got to be cool, right?
For Duncan, change in anything is good and is often the best way to learn. For Sony BMG, the music industry is in a state of constant change, and as an example, the Justin Timberlake album (got you copy yet? No? Strange!) sold in 71 different formats. That’s a big change from CD, Tape and Vinyl!
Continue reading TV, Music and Marketing: Their Current Response To Digital Media (pt 2)
The dreadful television programme, that those involved have tried as hard as possible to turn in to an ‘event’, Big Brother, comes on to some UK TV screens tonight. That isn’t of interest really, is it?
What is worth noting is how Channel 4 and Endemol have dropped the price of the phone calls that the show relies on to provide the votes that influence if contestants stay or leave the programme. Being ‘interactive’ with the audience they call it.
By way of a background to the price reductions, it’s relevant to understand that the UK has seen a large and considerable kerfuffle about how TV stations and production companies have been ripping off viewers who have called in to premium rate phone lines. Often the calling contestants had no chance of winning.
The call price drops
This year eviction votes on Big Brother will drop from 50p per call to 25p (from a BT landline). Of this, 10p will go to charity and the reminder to Channel 4 for ‘administrating’ the calls.
Big Brother SMS voting will be dropped completely.
External vote monitoring
There have for years been unsubstantiated claims that the voting for Big Brother has been rigged by the production team to try and spice up things when it’s looking too flaccid.
This year the voting will be monitored by an external law firm.
Summary: Investigate Previous Years Voting
All of these changes that are being made around Big Brother appear like they’re being made to clear the decks before this years show.
With these moves, especially the SMS voting, is it just us who thinks that there are questions to be answer about the previous years voting, if those votes cast were properly taken account of and whether income generated over those years was legitimately gained.
A little bird has told us that they have received an email from Christer Holloman of … shock, horror … First Tuesday. It’s time to sell up and ship out of any and all Internet-touching businesses as Christer tells all that they are to carry out a “secret launching event in London after the summer.”
First Tuesday, the Bastard child of Nick Denton (See picture) and a couple of others, quickly became a byword for greed in London back at the end on the ’90’s.
Continue reading First Tuesday Returning: Warning Bubble Burst 2.0
For years Big Brother has been actively encouraging the audience to vote using SMS messages from the mobiles.
No more. They’re completely dropping the SMS voting, claiming “the mobile phone operators cannot process the votes within a time frame suitable for the voting procedures on the programme.”
When did this change? Is this a new development?
The failure of SMS voting is NOT news
I remember speaking to the tech wizards at the Australian Broadcast Company (ABC) back in 2004 at Broadcast Asia who told that they decided that they could not legitimately use SMS voting as the delivery of it was not reliable enough, especially if there was a need to do it within a certain time period – like gathering votes before a deadline.
They opted for another mobile-based technology, that although slightly more involved for the viewer to use, at least gave a truthful representation of what was going on.
We received our first Micro-SD memory today. The SanDisk microSD/Transflash is _tiny_. Truly minuscule.
Obviously we’d seen a few press shots of them around, but that doesn’t prepare you for actually getting them in your hands – or fingertips.
It’s not news that the capacity of memory in increasing and that the amount of physical space needed for that memory is reducing, so we thought it would be fun to do a comparison.
We dug out some old memory – NEC D41256C-12 to be precise – which was the state of the art circa 1979/1980. It has been bought on eBay five or so years back as parts insurance for the in-house Stargate Defender machine we love sooo much.
(Photo follows) Continue reading SanDisk microSD 1GB: Gosh It’s Small
We know Tech is hitting all media businesses, but how are they currently responding?
Howard Scott went along to a meeting, Talking Tech, organised by the European Sponsorship Association to investigate the current state of play – covering the world of TV, Music and entertainment marketing.
Today’s piece covers North One TV; tomorrow, Sony BMG; and the final piece, Kempster, their work with European football and the conclusion.
Highlighting through italics are ours.
ESA Talking Tech
Another day, another conference. A couple of weeks back I attended the ESA Sponsorship Seminar entitled Talking Tech. Even though the title was “Talking Tech” I didn’t let that put me off.
It was aimed at the Sponsorship industry with a slant to how digital tools (lots of reference to new media, but is it still new?) have/can/will later that side of the marketing business.
The panel of speakers for the event had some interesting people on board, and in my usual style I’ll go through each of them in turn now.
Continue reading TV, Music and Marketing: Their Current Response To Digital Media