Four months after releasing their first iTunes-enabled mobile phone, the disappointing Motorola ROKR E1, Motorola have had another stab at creating the perfect music phone.
Their new, none-more-black SLVR L7 is a slinky non-folding affair, with a design reminiscent of the box-shifting RAZR clamshell phone.
Motorola are hoping that that the new handset will go down better than the ROKR E1, whose well documented shortcomings pinned sales around the 84,000 mark last year – compare that figure to the tens of millions of RAZRs that flew off the shelves in the same period.
The biggest complaint was the laughably feeble memory on the ROKR that could only hold a maximum of 100 iTunes songs – regardless of memory capacity – and a treacle-slow song transfer rate.
Crazily, the SLVR L7 doesn’t fix these sales-losing issues, and comes with the same ridiculous storage limitation for iTunes files and the same Ye Olde Super-Slowe USB 1.1 connection.
Someone’s ‘avin’ a laugh, surely?
Looking at the spec sheets, things get even worse, with the handset lacking the useful music-oriented features seen on the ROKR – there’s no external stereo speakers or dedicated headphone jack, so ‘phones have to be plugged into the charging jack via an adapter. And that’s rubbish.
At least the L7 looks a lot better than its predecessor, with a glass-infused plastic case, anodised aluminium back, stylish flat-keypad design and a large, 176×220, 262k-colour screen.
The pocketable quad-band handset (1.93″ x 4.47″ x 0.45″) also comes with a VGA camera, TransFlash memory card slot and Bluetooth (but not for listening to music).
In a flurry of arty waffle, Steve Lalla, vice president and general manager for mass-market products at Motorola, explained that the, “L7 is really in what we call our ‘self-expression portfolio,’ where design and style is the key premise behind the product”.
We suspect punters would have been far happier if they’d just designed away the ridiculous 100-song limit instead,
The Motorola SLVR is expected to be available in Q3 2005. Pricing to be announced.
SPECIFICATIONS: Sleek, super-thin design without sacrificing advanced functionality
PTT with icon presence indicators for one-touch connections
Integrated VGA camera with 4x zoom and video capture and playback
Bluetooth Class 2 for hands-free connectivity
MP3 player to store, repeat, shuffle and play favorite tunes; 22Khz polyphonic speaker
Up to 512 MB or removable TransFlash memoryWAP 2.0
Downloadable wallpaper, screensaver and MP3 ringtones
J2ME™ MIDP 2.0
Integrated hands-free speakerphone
Messaging via MMS*, IM Wireless Village* and email (POP3, SMTP)
Motorola’s SCREEN3 technology solution featuring zero-click access to news, sports, entertainment, and other premium content.
Google have released version 4 of their popular toolbar for Web browsers, with groovy new features to lure more visitors to their sites.
The Bookmarks functionality has also been enhanced to allow users to create and label bookmarks that can be accessed from any computer – something noticeable missing from arch-rival Internet Explorer.
By ramping up the feature set Google is hoping to grab a larger share of Web users (and thus more advertisers) and steal a march on Yahoo and Microsoft who both offer their own toolbars.
Seven branches of the already-wireless central Seattle library are going WiFi. The 
Neither report, it seems, is talking of the inevitable spectrum conflict looming as domestic WiFi proliferates, and City WiFi spreads through the same areas.
“There is a long queue of companies waiting to undergo the same certification process. Then, they can proceed to ‘wave 2’, covering security and quality-of-service, and when they too are certified, we can expect to see larger numbers of products actually reaching the market,” was one comment. But Solis added:
A great shame to hear that ZipTV has had to enter receivership.
They way it worked was, as the punters were watching ‘normal’ TV and an advert from one of ZipTV’s clients was shown, a press of the Red button on the remote control (the UK standard for interaction), would take the punter away from the ‘normal’ TV show, to a dedicated TV channel. This gave the advertiser the opportunity to show an 8 minute video advert, but just pay for a 30-second spot-ad to get them there.
You see Sky, and it’s very competent employees and owner, Rupert Murdoch don’t muck around. If they see some bright young things coming along with a super wheeze they will drain their income – it will get their attention – and not in a good, cuddly way.
It was with great disappointment and a heavy heart that we heard that Google had compromised their search results in China, excluding results the Chinese government didn’t find acceptable. In effect becoming the government’s censor.
It’s not that we think that people will stop searching on Google, it’s just that they won’t trust Google implicitly any more
Sony has announced the Japanese release of two new laptops featuring the Intel Duo Core processor.
The new super-skinny SZ series (0.9″ wide) comes with either a 945GM Express or the GeForce Go 7400 graphics card which offers an unusual SPEED/STAMINA switch.
Sony F TV Series
According to Sony Japan’s website, the laptops will be available in a range of configurations and made available in Japan over the next few weeks.
BT’s dominance of the UK home telephone is coming under fresh pressure as the phone call market becomes the most liberal in Europe. Previously, their pricing levels have had to be agreed in advance with the UK regulator Ofcom, but with it understood that this is going to be lifted soon, price cuts are expected.
Technical-savvy Skype callers have for a long time taken advantage of VoIP calling to obtain free or cheap calls.
A few years ago, you’d be greeted with a blank face or a call to the local psychiatry service if you started going on about ‘listening to your downloaded podcasts’, but figures released from the BBC show how the format is continuing to grow in popularity.
The chart also revealed that nearly two million downloads took place during the BBC podcasting trials over December.
Simon Nelson, controller of BBC Radio & Music Interactive was enthusiastic: “It’s fantastic to see how the demand for radio downloads has grown since we first offered them in 2004. These figures underline the enduring relevance of radio in the digital world.”
Over the last couple of weeks there’s been a lot of speculation that Disney are going to be bidding to buy Pixar, the digital animation studio that’s supplied the majority of Disney’s successful computer-generated animation successes.
According to an online survey conducted by brand-meisters Brandchannel.com, Google has held on to its title as the world’s most influential brand in 2005, pushing Apple out of the numero uno spot for the second time this decade.
Globally, top honours went to Google, who outflanked brand rivals Apple with an avalanche of punter-pleasing freebies like Google Mini, Desktop and Google Earth, described by Brandreport as, “arguably the greatest thing to hit the Internet since porn” (steady on, chaps!).
Although Google whipped Apple globally, the company still rules the roost on their home turf, with Steve Jobs’ outfit being declared the leading brand in North America in front of their rivals.
It’s a story of booze and beer in the central & Latin America segment, with Corona and Bacardi sitting proud in first and second places respectively.