We’ve been holding back with Apple news since the vomit-inducing coverage of the iPhone launch that many publications gave (Engadget and Gizmodo appearing top of the list, in that order).
Here’s one worth noting though, Apple has announced that they’ve now sold over THREE BILLION tracks.
Continue reading 3 Billion iTunes Track Sold
BSkyB has agreed terms to buy set top box maker Amstrad in a £125m deal.
The two companies have already been working together for several years, with Amstrad supplying around 30% of Sky’s set top devices – with those orders making up a hefty 75% of its business.
Continue reading BSkyB Scoops Up Amstrad
By the looks of a product leak slipping around the web, Samsung look set to make a big break with their traditional mobile phone designs with the release the all-metal i550.
Running on Symbian OS S60 UI, the phone bears some design similarities with Sony-Ericsson’s W880, and is rumoured to be Samsung’s first Samsung GPS-enabled smartphone – and the company’s first bar shaped phone.
The 3G and HSDPA (3.6 Mbps) phone also sports a generous 2.6″ display and wedges in a 3.2 megapixel camera (plus a low red front mounted camera for video calls), dedicated keys for GPS, music player and Internet browser.
Jimmy Wales, the founder of the hugely popular online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, has outlined his plans for a new search engine service to rival Google.
Wales’s new start-up firm Wikia has bought up a web crawling technology called Grub from LookSmart, and released it under an open source licence. Like the famous SETI project, Grub relies on users donating their personal computing resources as well as human editors.
Continue reading Wikipedia Founder Launches Google Rival Wikia
Impatient lotharios and time-challenged romance hunters should welcome the launch of online dating service, Match.com’s new MatchMobile text application.
The new service for cell phones sends subscribers text messages when they get a ‘wink’ or e-mail from another Match.com subscriber, and if they don’t like the look of them, they can also search for other potential matches from their mobiles.
Continue reading Match.com Introduces MatchMobile Dating Service
Illegal music downloads have soared to an all-time high, with more people than ever filling up their hard drives with MP3 booty according to the Digital Music Survey 2007 study.
Now in its fourth year, the survey – carried out by Entertainment Media Research in conjunction with media lawyers Olswang – found that 43% of UK consumers admitted to downloading music without paying for it, adding up to a hefty hike from 36% in 2006.
Samsung have let rip with three new models to their NV series of point’n’shooters – the eight mega pixel NV8, 10 mega pixel NV15 and 12 mega pixel NV20.
All three new cameras feature the unique Smart Touch interface which lets users navigate through the menus by sliding a finger across the control buttons running outside the cameras’ 2.5″ LCD screen.
Continue reading Samsung Announce NV8, NV15 and NV20 Cameras
Billed as the “ultimate Mobile Workstation” for graphics pros, gamers, CAD/3D wizards and video content creators, Eurocom’s quad-core D900C Phantom-X looks something of a fearsome beast.
The shiny quad-core monster comes with an upgradeable processor, with the top of the range Intel Core 2 Quad option (Q6700, 2.66Ghz, FSB1066) packing 8MBof L2 cache and adding a whopping $755 (£370, €550) to the already wallet-frightening base configuration of $2,999 (£1,500, €2,200).
Continue reading Eurcom D900C Quad Core Phantom-X Laptop Goes On Sale
Sky have announced, in the presentation of their final year accounts, a joint venture with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe to offer PSP owners in the UK and Ireland a content download service.
Saying that PSP-owners can “turn their devices into personalised on-demand video libraries,” will be a big boost for the PSP UK-side, where Sony claim that there’s 2 million of the blighters.
The start date has been pencilled as “early 2008,” making it the first in Europe. With delivery to the handheld via wireless or PC-connection, it’s that expected content such as “sports, entertainment, movies, music and animation,” will be available, interestingly from “both Sky and 3rd party channel partners.”
Sky is being really prolific in distributing its content (apart from Virgin customers :) ), arguably better at it than the BBC – whose have a specific remit to do so.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
Today the BBC has opened a list for up to 500,000 UK TV license payers to sign up for access to iPlayer – if they have an appropriate computers setup.
Over the next six months, those who sign up will be let on to the Beta trial to use iPlayer. (Those of us who have been on the 15,000 people iPlayer trial will have noticed that there was a new release of the software last night.)
Let’s be clear, we do think that the iPlayer is an advance for the BBC, and the functions and control it gives views are welcome.
Where it really lets itself down is that it is dependant on a very thin slice of technology needs.
Continue reading BBC iPlayer: A Flawed Gem