Due to hit the shelves in March, Samsung Electronics’ new YP-Z5 MP3 player is causing a stir because it was designed by Paul Mercer – the very same programming genius who created the interface for Apple’s runaway success, the iPod.
The veteran Mac software designer led a team of programmers at Iventor Inc to create a user interface to match the iPod’s well regarded touch-sensitive scroll wheel approach.
Samsung is confident that through his skills their YP-Z5 can succeed where a zillion ‘iPod killers’ have failed and make a real dent in the download music market currently dominated by his old employers.
Samsung is already making a big noise about the YP-Z5’s interface, which apparently offers super-duper transparency effects and other interface treats.
The Z5 is pitched directly against the iPod Nano and comes with a 1.8-inch colour screen and a claimed 38-hour battery life.
At $199 (~e167, ~£113) to $249 the pricing is similar Apple’s product, and – crucially – Samsung is promising a seamless connection between player and download service via Microsoft’s PlaysForSure digital music standard.”
Measuring 1.66″ x .45″ x 3.54″, the Samsung YP-Z5 comes in 2BG and 4GB flavours and offers an extended feature set over its rival, with MP3, WMA, WMA-DRM10 (PlaysForSure) and OGG support.
Sadly, there’s no FM tuner to be found (an order-canceller for us), but it comes with photo viewing and DNSe Digital Natural Sound Engine 3D audio processing if that floats your aural boat.
In a reflection of the growing convergence between phones and digital cameras, Sony Ericsson have declared their new K800 and K790 phones to be worthy of the Cybershot brand.
To help share your photographic masterpieces, Sony Ericsson have struck a deal with Google to enable easy photo blogging with the search engine’s Blogger service.
Sony Ericsson have also announced two additions to the K series along with a new phone in the Z range.
EntertainmentMusic Player (MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+ support)
In a flurry of press announcements, Sony have announced no less than four shiny new cameras to add to their popular range of digital compact cameras.
Both cameras come with optical zoom lens offering a huge range of 36-432mm (35mm equiv) at F2.8-3.7.
The DSC-H5 camera will be available in May for about $500 (~£287, ~€420) and the DSC-H2 a month earlier for around $400 (~£230, ~€337).
Featuring 8.1 and 7.2 million pixels respectively, the DSC-W100 cameras offer a 3x zoom (38-114mm), eye-level viewfinder and a 2.5-inch screen.
Battery life is an impressive 360 shots on a single full charge, with the W100 coming with 64MB of internal memory and the W70 58MB. Both cameras use Sony’s Memory Stick storage.
Google has struck up a partnership with the US National Archives to digitise their historic movie collection and provide free access to the public through their video search service.
“Our new strategic plan emphasises the importance of providing access to records anytime, anywhere. This is one of many initiatives that we are launching to make our goal a reality,” he added.
Happily, this was not the case, as a Google spokesperson explained: “Video uploaders, using Google Video’s ‘Advanced Options’ feature, can choose to blacklist countries. In this case the uploader blacklisted the US and only the US. When uploading the video the content owner set a preference not to show this content to users in the US.”
It is with great sadness that we hear that UK IPTV innovator KiT (Kingston interactive TV) is to close its doors on 3rd April. We’ve always been huge fans of their work.
It’s always struggled to get sufficient subscribers to support the service. Hull is an area with much financial deprivation with the average family income around £14,000/year. It’s understood that the high point of subscriptions, 10,000 at the start of the service, has lead to the current low point of 4,000. The level of financial loses and the need for KiT to refresh its now 7 year old IPTV kit is understood to have lead to the decision. The parent company, Kingston Communications (KC), feel that they can no longer justify supporting the service
Unknown to many, Blockbuster Video have been running a VoD trial on KiT for a couple of years. Their first in the world.
There has been some wondering around the Digital-Lifestyles office if the delay in closing KiT has been a considered position by the KC. By waiting until now to close KiT, the rest of the world now realise that they all need to be in IPTV, and the number of potential purchasers will have increased.
We understand from good sources that BT is set to announce the name of the buyer for a major slice of its Media and Broadcast operations.
In the frame for the buyout, which is likely to involve the transfer of over 100 employees, is the Australian-backed Arqiva and a major UK bank.
The days of smugness of Apple Macintosh users are coming to an end. Symantec is reporting that they’ve recently identified a virus for Macs. It’s a pretty rare occurrence, given there’s only been about 10 Apple viruses in the last 10 years.
By identifying the four most recently executed apps using Spotlight, it uses this information to attempt to infect these files.
Sony Ericsson has slipped out is slimmest-ever 3G handset at the 3GSM conference in Barcelona, Spain.
Naturally, there’s an integrated music player lurking inside the rounded lines of the K610, with supported formats including MP3, AAC and e-AAC+.
Sony Ericsson K610i Specs: