With a keen eye for drumming up a handy bit of pre-release publicity, Scottish band The Fratellis will be releasing their new single tomorrow on a USB memory stick.
Although it’s not the first time that a USB stick has been used to release a pop single – last October the soporific Keane released copies of “Nothing’s In My Way” on the same format, and managed to sell out stocks in a day.
Around 7,000 Fratellis USB sticks will be made available exclusively at HMV stores and on the company’s website, although sales of the stick – like the Keane single before it – won’t be included in the charts.
Ready and willing to start plugging ‘product’, Lee Jenson, marketing head of Fratellis’ record company, Island Records, said: “The success of the Keane single last year convinced us that music fans would welcome more audio releases on this format.”
“If demand really does start to take off, it may well become viable to think about releasing selective albums on USB as well, especially if they were to become eligible for inclusion in the chart,” he added.
After the official UK chart rules recently changed to allow song downloads to be counted towards the Top 40, there’s been growing demand for making memory sticks eligible, although it seems like a mighty wasteful format to us. Do we really need a housefull of low capacity USB sticks?
Priced at £3.99, the (Mac and PC compatible) USB stick will include a copy of the “Baby Fratelli” single and a free video.
The security bigwigs reported that more than six million bot-infected computers were detected during the second half of 2006, with over a third of all computer attacks originating from US-based PCs.
The company also noted that ‘underground economy servers’ were being being used by dodgy perps to flog stolen personal information, including credit cards, bank cards, PIN numbers and other forms of ID.
Try as we might, we can’t think of the last time we said to ourselves, “You know what? We could really use a Bluetooth enabled cushion,” but the good news is that if ever such a thought should cross our minds, urbantool.com has the answer.
Powered by a rechargeable lithium ionic battery, call status is displayed via a series of LEDs, which indicate if the, err, pillow is in active standby mode or taking an incoming call.
Although we couldn’t argue with anyone claiming that it’s the most comfortable phone on the planet, the idea of someone actually sitting at home talking into a cushion would suggest the presence of magic mushrooms to us.
On display at the CeBit hi-tech fair last week was a new mobile phone offering a built-in emergency button.
The phone comes with extra loud volume options for speaker and ring tones and has a powerful vibration alert to ensure the owner knows that someone’s calling.
There seems to be some debate about just how old the target market actually is: the 
Blokes are generally an easily pleased bunch when it comes to magazines – just shove in loads of high tech gadgets, big cars, some football, lots of wobbling booby babes, video game reviews, pics of dangerous sports and perhaps a page or two on cooking to show off their sensitive side – and they’re as happy as a pig in dirt.
The phwoaar-tastic Loaded site apparently has the “greatest affinity” with men, with 88% of visitors to their site being of the geezer persuasion, followed by Nuts (83%) and Zoo (81%).
“The last quarter has seen the big three online men’s lifestyle magazines – Maxim, FHM and Monkey – vying for top spot. On its official launch in November 2006, Monkey climbed straight to the top of the tree but the last two months have seen a slight, if steady, drop in popularity to fall behind Maxim and FHM,” commented Alex Burmaster, European Internet Analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings, commented:
Major news agencies made great use of public camera phone footage after the London 7/7 bombings, with several images 
With Getty’s well established media network, amateur snappers should expect increased prospects of shifting their work, although Getty hasn’t commented if the payment share is to remain the same.
Yesterday, the electronics big boy elbowed its way onto the Flash Memory table clutching news of their Intel Z-U130 Value Solid-State Drive, offering USB 2.0/1.1 interfaces.
Although some may already feel that walking around Brixton is akin to taking a stroll around another planet, we began to think we might have been transported to a parallel universe when we spotted bright garish yellow billboards appearing all around town exclaiming, “THEY WANT YOUR POD!”
In smaller text underneath the screaming headline, “BEWARE” the sign goes on, “Street robbers are targeting persons using mp3 music players in this street!”
Although the sign doesn’t actually tell you what to do to prevent being ‘jacked’ (
Fresh outta hi-tech Fat Farm, the new Zen Vision M and W models have managed to reduce their bulk by 15% on previous versions while wedging in a bigger hard disk.
The rather desirable little fella weighs in at a light as heck 170g (and that includes the battery) and comes with a 2.5 inch colour screen.
Vision W
When?
Three Quarters Of Consumers Naffed Off With Mobile Web
Mercer joined Apple in 1987 and was the lead designer of Version 7 of the Macintosh finder before founding a software tools firm called Pixo which was involved in designing the first version of the iPod user interface.
Voice-recognition software, Apple’s most advanced to date, can recite a speech highlighting the features of the device while injecting several clever digs at competitors.