DigitalOutbox Episode 82
In this episode the team discuss the Amazon Cloud Player, Google +1 and an expensive fail for Rupert Murdoch.
Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3
Shownotes
1:21 – WWDC Announced
– June 6-10
– Focus on iOS and Mac OSX
– Rumour – iOS5 preview?
– Lion launch?
– No hardware?
– Sold out in 10 hours – last year took 8 days
7:03 – Amazon Cloud Drive
– Play your media from anywhere – music, video etc
– Cloud Drive is name of media storage space on its servers
– Any album bought through Amazon MP3 is stored for free in your Cloud Drive — a very nice perk.
– If you buy one album from Amazon MP3, they’ll upgrade your Cloud Drive storage to 20 GB for free for a year — another nice perk.
– Normally, 20 GB of Drive storage will cost $20 for a year. 50 GB is $50. 100 GB is $100. And so on. All the way up to 1 TB for $1,000.
– The Cloud Drive storage isn’t just for music — Amazon notes that 1 TB will hold 70 hours of HD video.
– Other files can be uploaded — this includes music, movies, photos, and even documents.
– The MP3 uploader accepts MP3 or AAC files, but they must be DRM-free (.wma, .wav, .ogg and others are not supported)
– Old Amazon MP3 purchases aren’t put in your Cloud Drive, only new purchases going forward (though you can manually upload).
– Cloud Player is name of…the player
– Player for web, Player for Android and player for….nope – none for iOS
– The Android Cloud Player is built into the Amazon MP3 app — it’s in both the Android Market and Amazon’s new Appstore.
– This is for U.S. customers only for the time being.
– Cloud Player for the web works on IE 8 and above, Firefox 3.5 and above, Chrome, and Safari. There is no Opera support. And Flash is required (but for uploads only).
– There’s also a stand-alone uploader app for Mac and PC.
– You can’t upload music from your mobile device “at this time”.
– What about legality? Can upload any DRM free music. Amazon statement – “We don’t need a license to store music. The functionality is the same as an external hard drive”
– Browser doesn’t work from iOS – blocking mobile version of Safari?
– You can play songs via service on iOS by downloading the file to the device – Safari’s built in player will then play file – not ideal
– Another workaround – iCab – http://mashable.com/2011/03/29/cloud-player-ios-guide/
– Amazon out first ahead of rumoured similar services from Google and Apple
12:39 – O2 Tarriff Changes
– new one-year contract allows customers to upgrade their handset too. You pay as much as you do on a monthly basis for an 18-month contract. If you want lower monthly payments, you’ll need to take out a new two-year plan.
– Standard packages run from 50 minutes of airtime and 250 text messages – £15.50 per month for 12- and 18-month deals, £10.50pm for a 24-month contract – to unlimited messages and minutes for £62pm and £57pm, respectively.
– You can opt to pay an extra £3, £6 or £10 per month for 100MB, 500MB or 1GB, respectively, of data, which now includes phone tethering a no extra cost. Until now, it cost you £7.65 extra. That’s handy for folk who want to use their iPhone 4’s newly gained Wi-Fi hotspot feature, or the same on an Android handset.
17:42 – Google +1
– +1 is a small button that will reside next to each and every Google Search result. If you like the result, you click the +1 button and it gets shared with your social circle — and the public (more on that in a bit).
– The button also works on the ads that appear in Google Search. If you like those and think they can be useful to friends, you can also hit the button there to highlight them
– Google’s Like button
– If you’ve upgraded to the new Google Profile, you will have a new +1 tab that will keep track of all the results you’ve clicked the button for. From here you can easily remove any result as well if you no longer want to publicly indicate that you like it. And when you’re adding +1 to search and your profile (it will be opt-in at first), you’ll notice that there’s a check box to opt-out of using your +1 information to “personalize content and ads across the web.”
– +1 is an easy way to recommend things to the world
Your profile and +1’s appear publicly in search, on ads, and across the web.
– Trying to make ad’s social – and better targeted to your and your graph
– +1’s will also spread to sites – just like the like button has.
Problem is, the like button works because there are a great many people linked to their friends on Facebook… In reality, this will be a great resource for Google’s use but the benefits to a userbase that’s not linked together as fully (people just using Google search without a Google associated account) is limited.
21:47 – RadioPlayer
– Radioplayer, BBC backed internet radioservice launched Thursday 31st March
– All BBC stations, 140 commercial stations from one place
– Within a year, all 400 stations in UK will be available
– Makes a more level playing field for all stations
– Search by station, location, programme, presenter or interest
23:44 – NY Times spend $40million on a paywall…that doesn’t work
– Last Monday the New York Times finally implemented its content paywall on its website. But at a staggering cost of $40 million, you would be surprised how easy it is to circumvent the security. Guy Daniels reports.
– The site allows access to 20 free stories per month, after which it will prompt you to buy a digital subscription for $15 per month. Two questions were occupying the thoughts of many bloggers last week: one, why bother; and two, how on earth could it cost $40 million?
– Circumvent – unhide CSS style, remove ?gwh=numbers’ from URL, plus many other ways
– Well done Rupert. Well done
Picks
Ian
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery
– Old style graphic adventure for ipad
– Delightful graphics, awesome soundtrack
– Buy it.