We’ll be sooooooooo glad when today is over. This blessed iPhone launch is just getting totally out of control.
The latest daft part of the over-coverage is that Mogulus, providers of online video tools, are running a dedicated iPhone Launch TV channel.
Watch it after the jump
Continue reading iPhone Madness: Live Web TV Channel In NY Shop
With just over a week until the whole of humanity is saved and we shall never have to worry about disease again launch of the iPhone in the US, Apple have let it be known that they have been getting even closer to YouTube.
YouTube have been busily re-encoding lots of their videos to H.264 and the Apple iPhone (aka Mankind’s Saviour) will be the first phone to make use of them. The advantages to Apple is PR (You’re reading this) and the playback of H.264 should be more battery efficient, as it doesn’t need the whole of a Flash player to render the videos on the handset.
Over 10,000 video will be available on the 29 June (iPhone day) with all of the other videos following suit, it’s expected, by Autumn (Fall) this year.
By way of a lovely tie-up, it’s also the day that sees the YouTube on Apple TV go live – after they do the download update to their little boxes.
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)
Car rental giants Avis have starting offering their Autonet Mobile-based Wi-Fi service – known as Avis Connect – in their rental vehicles.
The service – priced at an upmarket $10.95 (unlimited usage) a day in addition to the car rental fee – lets multiple users connect to each other and to the Internet via a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot device, powered by the car’s power adapter or cigarette lighter.
Continue reading Avis Offers In-Car Wi-Fi Service
Professor Eric Faden of Bucknell University has been a clever bunny. He’s used clips from many of Disney’s films to explain how copyright law and fair use works in the America.
Even if you’re a copyright nut who thinks that these rights should be extended indefinitely, excluding others from benefiting for the same advantages that Disney had, of building on others works that came before, you’ll appreciate the skill and patience that were required to make it.
(Watch it after the jump)
Continue reading A Fair(y) Use Tale
Just after the back-patting of the release of the upgraded Apple MacBooks last week, there news that Apple is the target of a class-action in the US.
The case for false advertising and misrepresentation centers on the claims by Apple that the MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks display supports “millions of colors” and offer views “simply unavailable on other portables.” The plaintiffs say this isn’t the case and that they are only capable of displaying the “illusion of millions of colors through the use of a software technique referred to as ‘dithering.”
To get all medieval on your arse with the numbers – the monitors is only capable of 6 bits per channel (18-bit colour), rather than 8 bits per channel. This enables the displaying of only 262,144 colours without dithering, as opposed to the 16 million colours that 8-bit could do.
More when we hear it.
(via Appleinsider, where you can find a PDF copy of the complaint)
Sony is adapting their idea of the PS3 online store, taking it to their handheld games machine, the PSP – in the US at least.
It’s expected that a wide variety of content could be downloaded to it – demos, full games, possibly even music and videos.
With a planned start date of Autumn, or Fall for our US readers, access will be via the handheld’s Wi-Fi, using the Web browser that comes built-in.
It’s not exactly a lightening move, given that the UK release date of the PSP was September 2005 – and that was behind the US and Japan. This was acknowledged by Jack Tretton, Sony Computer Entertainment America president, “I think the advent of a long awaited and quite frankly long overdue ability to deliver a downloadable service for the PSP will help us out a great deal.”
With a chilling wind stirred up by a tornado of law suits blowing their way, MySpace has announced that it will be implementing new technology to stop members’ using copyrighted material without permission.
Based on Audible Magic technology, the new content protection system regales under the name, “Take Down Stay Down,” and MySpace is hoping that it’ll do what it says on the tin.
Continue reading MySpace Introduces Copyright Protection For Videos
Online buying has become so commonplace in America that sales of everyday items like clothing and shoes have outstripped the more traditional ‘techie’ big sellers like computers and software.
A report by Shop.org (part of the National Retail Federation) estimated online clothing sales at around $18.3bn in 2006, ahead of the $17.2bn spent on computers in the same year.
Continue reading US Online Sales Continue To Soar
Grace Borrelli is Managing Partner of the TMT Practice for Europe at CTPartners. She gives us her view of the diversity, or lack of it, in senior management in the TMT (Technology, Media & Telecommunications) companies that deliver services and products to us.
One of the key issues in TMT currently is whether executive teams have the right skill mix. As head-hunters, we were concerned by the apparent lack of diversity on both European and US Boards and decided to undertake research to look into this issue more thoroughly.
Continue reading TMT Companies: Lacking Diversity At The Top? (Exclusive)