Software
Another one falls.
Vodafone have announced that they are switching their music catalogue from Universal Music, Sony Music and EMI away from DRM-protected music to MP3 format.
This makes Vodafone the first global mobile operator to do it.
Not only will these tracks but DRM-free in the future, but people who have bought DRMd tracks already will be able to change them to MP3 for FREE. Are you listening Apple? No DRM-dropping tax.
A detailed study by tech spods Nielsen Online has found that UK users spend one in every six online minutes browsing social media and blogging sites.
Facebook continues to be the don of social networking sites globally, visited monthly by thirty per cent of users in the nine markets tracked in the study (UK, Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland, and the US) with Facebook’s global audience now a phenomenal 108.3m users.
Expect Apple’s over-worked legal department to go into overdrive if the strictly non-official Cydia App Store ever appears online.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that a developer is planning to launch the Cydia service soon, and it will sell hundreds of iPhone applications for “jailbroken” iPhones.
Brandishing virtual pitchforks, a user revolt against a new Terms of Service (TOS) agreement foisted on Facebook fans has seen the company perform a swift volte-face.
Faced with growing masses of outraged users and tenacious Twitterers – and with the thread of the Electronic Privacy Information Centre (EPIC) coming onboard – Facebook crumbled in the face of complaints that their updated terms equated to nothing more than, “We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever.”
First mentioned on Digital Lifestyles back in October 2008, the music playing Spotify app has impressed us so much that it’s become a regular feature in the office.
In case you’ve forgotten already, let us refresh you about what the program does: Spotify serves up instant, legal access to millions of tracks completely free of charge via an interface every bit as slick as iTunes.
iTunes has been bugging me for a while about upgrading, but frankly, I’m not that interesting in anything beyond it playing me music occasionally, so I ignored it.
UK sales of video game hardware and software in 2008 have lept to £4.034 billion, so say industry body ELSPA.
Looks like fans of video games are refusing to listen to the doom-sayers and have been buying video games in ever larger numbers taking software sales to £1.905 billion.
Now the detail …
While Christmas is traditionally the time that sees traffic levels plummet on websites as folks head off to far flung families or incoherent revellers find themselves unable to type due to dangerous lager levels, Facebook enjoyed a veritable festive frenzy.
Nick Curtis has written a poorly-researched piece in the Evening Standard that attempts to take a chunk out of Twitter, while asking if ‘Twitter is the new Facebook.’
Why poorly-researched? Well, he starts the piece saying that Tweets are 160 characters long – and as anyone who has ever looked at the sevice will know, they’re 140, the large ‘140’ beneath the input box being the clue. He then moves to tell us all how he didn’t really understand it.
If you’re looking to expand your network of Twitter friends, but are finding that it’s taking more time that you thought it would, or aren’t able to find that time, Twollow could be a solutions for you.