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DigitalOutbox Episode 27

DigitalOutbox Episode 27
In this episode the team discuss Apple Lala, Google gaga.

Playback
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Shownotes
2:29 – Johnston Press Charge for Online Content
– The Johnston Press websites will either ask users to pay £5 for a three-month subscription to read the full articles, or direct them to buy the newspapers for 6 regional newspapers
– Sites in the pilot scheme include the Worksop Guardian, the Ripley & Heanor News and the Whitby Gazette. The Northumberland Gazette is also included in the trial. In Scotland, the Carrick Gazette and Southern Reporter are taking part. They own The Scotsman that does similar. FT also charges
– Johnston, which owns more than 300 papers across Britain and has suffered from a drop in advertising revenues, says the introduction of “paywalls” is an experiment to assess the impact of charging for content.
– Once you start restricting access on the websites, if you have content that can broadly be found somewhere else, then you really restrict the number of people coming to websites,” the Guardian’s director of digital content Emily Bell told the BBC. “I think it’s great that people are experimenting with lots of different models because undoubtedly we need to find more money in the market,” she added.
5:40 – Google Changes News Service
– Google limits access to free news
– Newspaper publishers will now be able to set a limit on the number of free news articles people can read through Google
– Under the First Click Free programme, publishers can now prevent unrestricted access to subscription websites.
– Users who click on more than five articles in a day may be routed to payment or registration pages.
– Change to spiders and robot – can index only preview pages – first couple of para’s only, subscribed content locked away
– If a publisher chooses to have spiders crawl their articles in this manner, they will be labeled with “subscription” within Google News
– Google blinked
8:46 – Google Public DNS
– Google launches DNS resolver
– http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/
– Easy to change
– According to Google’s FAQ, the company will only keep temporary logs and erase all the information it collects through the public DNS service within 24 to 45 hours. The company promises not to keep any information that is linked to IP addresses in its permanent logs.
– I’ve switched – it’s fast but any faster than opendns?
– test via this site – http://www.manu-j.com/blog/opendns-alternative-google-dns-rocks/403/
– test shows opendns still faster, for me in the UK at least
16:05 – Google Dictionary
16:37 – Google UK Property Dimension
18:10 – Bing Maps Beta
– Needs Silverlight
– Street View (Street Side in Bing), Photosynth, Apps
– Nice animations, slick but hate the need for plugin
– Many of the features are US only at the moment
– Google search event this Monday – isn’t competition great
24:13 – Apple buys Lala
– Lala, unlike Apple’s iTunes, lets users play the music they own from the Web — or in tech industry parlance, from the cloud.
– Is it buying the company or the engineering talent?
– Lala’s engineers have built a service that music enthusiasts say is very easy to use. Lala scans the hard drives of its users and creates an online music library that matches the user’s collection, making it painless (and free) for people to get their music in the cloud.
– is this what the massive data centre that Apple is building is for?
– 2010 – the year of streaming wars
27:36 – iTunes 12 Days of Christmas
– 26 Dec – 6 Jan
– Free song or music video, app, TV episode or film
– Offer runs for 24 hours each day
28:55 – Square
– Let people quickly and easily accept physical credit card payments from their mobile phone
– small device attaches to the phone via the headset/microphone jack
– Device is free, works on iPhone and Droid
– Receipts via e-mail, sms
– Sign with your finger on iPhone screen
– Associate photo with account so vendor can check it is actually you
– Looks awesome – quick and a great way to pay
32:39 – End of the Crunchpad
– It’s no more – another mythical tablet bites the dust
– Breakup of the team, grubby takeover attempt by hardware partner – they got screwed basically.
– Looks like it was days/weeks from demo/launch
– Now to be settled in court – this will run and run
– Only one side of the story at the moment
– Could someone not step in and save it? Something smells fishy.
– Media event planned for Monday – Chandrasekar “Chandra” Rathakrishnan, founder and CEO of Fusion Garage, (who arrington blamed for killing the crunchpad) will speak to reporters (give his side of the story) and demonstrate “the device” both in a video call and in private briefings scheduled for later Monday at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco
37:12 – GT5 Time Trial Demo
– Dec 17th, Time Trial Competition
– participants will be able to race a Nissan 370Z around a new Gran Turismo 5 circuit. The fastest times recorded in each of the 20 participating countries will be advanced to a national final. An elite group of 20 drivers will then secure a place at the GT Academy.
– Still on track for March 2010 release
39:20 – World Cup shot in 3D
– Up to 25 games shot in 3D
– Using Sony tech
– No announcements on broadcasting – in the coming months more will be announced
– selected games will be broadcast live at “Fan Fest” locations in seven cities around the world: London, Berlin, Mexico City, Paris, Rio De Janeiro, Rome, and Sydney
– World Cup in 2006 saw many jump on the HD bandwagon – will 3D see same take up?

Picks
Ian
Click 2 Flash
– safari
– Block evil Adobe Flash
– Displays nice grey background allowing you to click if you want to use it
– Improve cpu, better battery life
– Higher quality YouTube, Play videos in QuickTime (H.264), not Flash

Chris
TrueCrypt
– The mother of all encryption
– Creates an encrypted drive that, once mounted works on the fly.
– Can encrypt a whole drive. Can encrypt a whole system. Can create mini encrypted areas (mount them as drives.)
– Can even create a “false bottom” drive if you want.
– PC, MAC & Linux

DigitalOutbox Episode 22

DigitalOutbox Episode 22
In this episode the team discuss Droid, Google Navigator, Shakeel gets struck off and not much Apple news.

Playback
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Shownotes
1:51 – Internet Turns 40
– Who could have predicted just how engrained it would become
5:26 – Google Maps Navigation
– Connected to net
– Free
– Search in plain english and by voice and search along route
– Traffic flow – shows traffic, easy to find alternative route
– Satellite and street view – great
– Android 2.0 at the moment. Great USP for Android phones – killer app. Google are ‘working with’ Apple in bringing it to iPhone
– UI looks great – if only the other Google app’s had same care and attention (harsh – web based gmail is great)
– Garmin and TomTom shares down 16 ans 20%!
– What happens if you’ve no signal?
– Reviews say it’s not bad but has major UI and usability issues.
13:06 – Droid and Android 2
– Droid
– Nov 6th, $199 (after $100 rebate)
– 3.7inch screen at 480×854 pixels
– Removable 16GB SD memory
– Removable battery
– 5MP camera
– Physical and virtual keyboard
22:46 – Twitter Lists
– Rolled out to all users
– Allows users to create lists of twitter users
– Lists are public by default (but can be made private) and the lists you’ve created are linked from your profile. Other Twitter users can then subscribe to your lists. This means lists have the potential to be an important new discovery mechanism for great tweets and accounts.
– Sounds trivial – replaces follow friday
– Allows groupings of users
– Some great lists out there – http://twitter.com/DigitalOutbox/podcasters
25:40 – Three Strikes Then Disconnect
– cost of monitoring to be spread between ISPs and Rights owners
– ISP’s preparing legal challenge saying proposals are “wrong in principle, and won’t work in practice”
– Lord Mandelson seems more and more clueless whenever he opens his mouth on this issue.
– From 2011 but bill heard in late November
30:59 – Spotify Drop Prices
– Now only £6.99 for the first 6 months – offer ends soon
– CTO has left the building, announced he’d was taking “a better offer” on twitter
– Competition stronger than ever, with a price war going on.
– Noticed that some tracks are now listed as “Premium members only”… hadn’t seen that before but time limited to certain artists and releases – Chris
– Some albums and tracks were released early to premium owners for a couple of months now….I think…maybe – ian
34:38 – Google Powermeter
– Partnered with first:utility, small energy supplier
– See power usage on the web, in igoogle
– Free service
– Also partnered with http://www.alertme.com/
– £69 for device and £3 monthly subscription
36:07 – Microsoft Watches Family Guy
– What a surprise, after seeing a recording of the half hour show, MS have pulled out saying that “the content was not a fit with the Windows brand”
– Apparently jokes about deaf people, the Holocaust and incest – normal Family Guy content then!!
– Chickens
37:27 – VMWare Fusion 3
– Excellent Windows 7 support
– Improved speed of XP too
40:50 – iTunes 9.0.2
– Apple TV 3 support
– Kills Palm pre sync
43:15 – Apple Patents
– iShoe
– head mounted mp3 player
46:43 – iPhone on Orange Nov 10th
– Day after O2 exclusivity finishes (Nov 9th, 2 years from original sale of iPhone)
– Prices….still no news
48:07 – Sky on the 360
– October 27th it’s launched…
– October 27th it’s removed…
51:57 – DSi XL
– New DS, exactly the same functionality, just bigger
– Q1 2010 in Europe – strange time to announce a new product next year
– Interested?
54:24 – Demon’s Soul
– bit of a sleeper hit, gaining a large following world-wide purely through word of mouth and high review scores
– ultra hard
– out in US now, published by Atlus.
– no UK availability, but it’s region free so you can import it from a site such as Video Games Plus for around £41 + P+P
– http://www.videogamesplus.ca/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=demon+souls

Picks
Shakeel
RedLaser
– surprisingly accurate, even with the crap iPhone 3G camera
– searches for items on Amazon and Google
– for me so far, more fun than of real use
– but … if i was out and saw something I wanted to buy, then it could come handy

Ian
Listorious
– The directory of awesome lists on twitter
– View lists by type/tag
– Great way of finding useful content
– Can add your list to listorious

Henry
Mockups
– demo version online allows you to create mockups of web apps, iphone apps etc
– export to PNG or XML, import from XML if you’re collaborating with someone.

Spotify Launches Offline Mode

Spotify launched a new feature today to it’s desktop client – Offline Mode. Premium users selecting a playlist will now have the ability to click an ‘Available offline’ button which will download the tracks locally for playback when not connected to the internet. I tried the service this afternoon and the results can be seen in the video below.

Spotify are really stepping up and offering something different to the current digital music stores. Stream for free in lower quality with ad’s or pay for great quality music that you can access from anywhere, offline or online. Not only that but with the addition this week of PayPal as a payment option they are making it easier than ever to subscribe to their service. Couple that to 4 million tracks available via search and many great playlists available online and you’ve got a very compelling service. It’s enough to keep me subscribing for another month after the launch of their iPhone app a few weeks ago. Over to you Apple?

DigitalOutbox Episode 17

DigitalOutbox Episode 17
In this episode the team discuss Microsoft Courier, Pay for your broadband and music, Google innovates and PS3 news from the Tokyo Game Show.

Playback
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Shownotes
0:49 – Digital Britain – time to pay!
– 50p tax on landlines to go ahead
– Presented in bill before christmas
– Is this the right thing to do?
5:17 – Music At War
– Two camps emerging. Those that think that everything possible should be done to eliminate illegal file sharing. Although I can’t find details of what they are suggesting.
– Another camp saying that what’s the point in trying to stop file-sharing – nothing will work anyway.
– And now the two camps are at war.
– Come up with a sensible solution. Fight clever. Work with new technology and the new music listener – don’t fight a losing battle to protect old infrastructure.
– Lily Allen and artists come to some agreement on piracy stance
– http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/09/lily_unites_musicians_against.html
– http://www.featuredartistscoalition.com/showscreen.php?site_id=161&screentype=folder&screenid=2990&newsaction=showitem&newsid=2588&dc=6&sn=News
– We the undersigned wish to express our support for Lily Allen in her campaign to alert music lovers to the threat that illegal downloading presents to our industry and to condemn the vitriol that has been directed at her in recent days.
– Our meeting also voted overwhelmingly to support a three-strike sanction on those who persistently download illegal files, sanctions to consist of a warning letter, a stronger warning letter and a final sanction of the restriction of the infringer’s bandwidth to a level which would render file-sharing of media files impractical while leaving basic email and web access functional.
11:18 – Charge for iPlayer?
– Lorraine Heggessey, chief executive of TV production company Talkback Thames.
– Industry want to charge micro-payments for catch up services but BBC scuppering this.
– BBC have no plans to charge. Licence fee covers this content.
13:31 – Google Chrome Frame
– Plugin for IE 6(and 7 & 8) that replaces rendering engine in IE6 with Chrome
– Will this force Microsoft to be more aggressive on moving from IE6?
– http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10360850-56.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=Webware
– “With Internet Explorer 8, we made significant advancements and updates to make the browser safer for our customers,” Microsoft said. “Given the security issues with plug-ins in general and Google Chrome in particular, Google Chrome Frame running as a plug-in has doubled the attach area for malware and malicious scripts. This is not a risk we would recommend our friends and families take.”
– So, time to remove Silverlight?
18:10 – Google SideWiki
– Commenting for the web?
– Needs google toolbar
– Not original, been tried before and failed but will it be successful due to Google’s brand and market share?
– Yet another comment source – fragmentation of the conversation although there is an api
22:42 – Push GMail
– Google sync now support gmail
– Setup exchange account on iPhone to get push calendar, contacts and gmail
– Google working around Apple’s limitations and choices
– Only 1 exchange account available on iPhone
25:26 – Picasa 3.5
– Face recognition, similar to picasa albums online
– Share albums based on name
– Better geotagging and uploading/sharing options
26:15 – Bing increases market share
– From 8.9 to 9.3% in US market.
– OK it’s only a small increase but considering everyone said it was impossible to even steal a small share away from Google was impossible.
– May mean that Bing is a default choice for some users now.
27:21 – Apple Acknowledges battery concerns
– Users can log battery issues with Apple
– Also can install Battery Life Logging and report issues back to Apple
– http://www.theiphoneblog.com/2009/09/20/apple-seeking-info-iphone-31-users-reporting-poor-battery-life/
30:01 – USB IF Sides with Apple
– Palm issues dismissed
– Your letter also states that:
“Palm will shortly issue an update of its WebOS operating system that uses Apple’s Vendor ID number for the sole purpose of restoring the Palm media sync functionality.”
I attach for your information the USB-IF’s adopted and published policy regarding Vendor Identification Numbers (VIDs). Under the Policy, Palm may only use the single Vendor ID issued to Palm for Palm’s usage. Usage of any other company’s Vendor ID is specifically precluded. Palm’s expressed intent to use Apple’s VID appears to violate the attached policy.
Please clarify Palm’s intent and respond to this potential violation within seven days.
– GET OUT!
34:48 – iTunes Update
– Resolves issues browsing the iTunes Store.
– Addresses a performance issue where iTunes may become unresponsive.
– Fixes a problem where iTunes may unexpectedly quit.
– Fixes a problem syncing Podcasts in playlists to iPod or iPhone.
– Fixes a problem sorting albums with multiple discs.
– Addresses an issue with the Zoom button not switching to Mini Player.
– Improves application syncing for iPod touch and iPhone.
– Genius is now automatically updated to show Genius Mixes.
41:37 – Tiny Blu Ray PC
– Like a Mac mini – but with BluRay (kind of what we were talking about last week) £650 or £450 without the BluRay.
– Comes with media centre remote.
– Don’t know what kind of storage it has but media centre seems pretty good at streaming.
42:22 – Microsoft Courier
– A booklet, not a tablet
– Late prototype
– Touch and stylus driven,camera,7inch screens
49:24 – Sony at Tokyo Game Show
– Sony Motion Controller
– Japan release March
– Spring 2010 for rest of the world
– 4-5 million units worldwide
– Old games will be adpated to support it
– 250GB PS3 Slim
– Oct 1st
– On Amazon for £285 – bundles on the way
– PS3 Firmware issues – ian
– Tam mentioned this…
– http://www.engadgethd.com/2009/09/25/ps3-3-0-3-01-firmware-update-making-blu-ray-drive-unusable/
– Issues with 3.0 and 3.0.1 for people
– Been perfect for me
– God of War 1 & 2 bundle to include E3 demo of God of War 3
– PS3 Rumour Leaks
– wants to sell all PS2 titles on PSN – PS2 emulator ??
– special “Japanese Import” section for titles only released in Japan – ie Yakuza 3
– leaked document mentions possibility of Dreamcast titles appearing on PSN

Picks
Shakeel
Snippet
– sits on menu bar
– nice and clean interface
– pop-up menus and mini-windows, very little clutter
– easily search for your snippets of code, copy then paste into new projects.
– search by tags
– no need to hunt through previous/old projects
– easily create new snippets from any text
– select type of code, add tags
– primarily designed for programming but just as useful for storing other regularly used information
– for blocks of text, can copy a small selection instead of the whole lot, all from a mini pop-up window
– when code or text is copied, focus automatically returned to the last used app

Ian
Halo 3 ODST
– Co-op
– Firefight
– Multiplayer maps
– Good Value

Chris
MS Windows 7 Parties
– Ooooooo Mmmmmm Ggggggg

DigitalOutbox Episode 16

DigitalOutbox Episode 16
In this episode the team discuss Eid Mubarak and some tech news too.

Playback
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Shownotes
1:57 – EBay Sued
– Follow up to the previous story – Joltid, the licence holders for technology underlying Skype – are filing suite to eBay. They say the 100,000 or so downloads of Skype made every day are seeing the suite grow by $75m per day for continued breaches of licence.
– Story details updated that eBay sourced unauthorised copies of the Joltid source code, made unauthorised amends and made the code available to third persons.
– eBay respond via spokesman John Pluhowski: “Their allegations and claims are without merit and are founded on fundamental legal and factual errors,”
5:41 – PAF Leaks Online
– Postcode Address File (PAF) leaks online. 241mb, 1,841,177 postcodes – no names and addresses in each file
– Useful – should this data not be free?
– Data will quickly go out of date – 4000 new entries, 2000 removals per month
8:07 – BBC Watchdog reports on faulty PS3’s
– Watchdog report suggests a manufacturing defect in the 1st gen 60gb PS3’s after being contacted by 155 viewers with faulty consoles, and from the opinion of 3 commercial repair technicians.
– faulty units displayed a high number of “voids” – faults in the solder
– sets up repair team ‘PRAT’ outside Sony London offices, offering free repairs for PS3’s that Sony charges for (but it seems PRAT’s repairs are not free!!)
– Gamesindustry.biz claims the repair stunt falls flat http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/watchdogs-ps3-repairs-stunt-falls-flat-interview
– “11 users getting their consoles repaired for free. During the show tonight, it admitted four of those consoles repaired by “experts” were no longer working”
– “report claimed the PlayStation 3 costs “£400” and with repair will total “£528” according to show presenter Anne Robinson, who also said “thousands upon thousands” had broken”
– ” x-ray of the PlayStation 3 showing “trapped gas”, although no explanation of this was offered.”
– Sony claims the ‘YLOD’ is non-specific indicator of a fault and doesn’t necessarily mean the console has died.
– nothing but a publicity stunt
– Watchdog criticised for wasting tax-payers money on producing an inaccurate and biased report http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/sony/6206575/BBC-Watchdog-criticised-over-PS3-story.html
– the number of faulty consoles with yellow light, reported to Sony complaints, represent less than 1/2% of 2.5m PS3’s sold. Hardly conclusive of an inherent fault
– compare that to 360’s confirmed failure rate 54.2%
– claims of bias as Iain Lee, one of the ‘reporters’, is an XBox fan.
– TheSixthAxis games site sends an open complaints letter to BBC http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2009/09/18/an-open-letter-to-bbc-complaints/comment-page-3/
– “You then skimmed over a six-page letter from SCEUK, summarising their lengthy (and apparently warranted) misgivings about the way you were handling the issue, in a few smirking sentences.”
– “you failed to mention that your “free” fix wasn’t actually free”
– “here was no indication of why the problem occurred, no discussion of which models it was being reported for and no information regarding possible preventative measures. ”
17:18 – BBC Protecting HD Content
– BBC have approached Ofcom to request the ability for them to encrypt TV listings for their HD content.
– Request made in response to content providers fears for illegal pirating of content.
– BBC aren’t allowed to encrypt their actual broadcast but by encrypting the channel listings and only permitting licences for trusted hardware manufacturers they are effectively render the station useless to users with non-trusted hardware.
– Usual arguments about the fact that this will not be effectual at all in stopping someone looking to pirate but will massively effect the everyday user and low end/cheap hardware manufacturers using open source operating systems for their products.
20:48 – Pay for News
– Wall Street Journal to charge weekly fee for web and mobile access
– $1 – applies to iPhone and Blackberry app’s
22:30 – Microsoft Application Store
– There was concern over a “kill switch” that had been implemented to allow MS to pull apps off of users devices. This has since been clarified by MS to only relate in cases where software causes harm or “unforeseen effects” and refunds will be issued in such cases. Most cases where the app is removed from the store for whatever reason will not remove the app from the users device.
– Revenue shared 70% / 30% in favour of the developer. Any carrier costs will be taken off MS share.
– $99 for first 5 submissions – then $99 for each subsequent submission
– Apps replacing core functionality – including mapping and navigation – will be rejected
– However, any apps rejected are still supported by the platform – just not via the app store.
– Video of free app on Zune – 30 sec video add everytime you start chess – http://vimeo.com/6612641
– 12 hours to convert an iPhone app to the Zune HD – impressive – http://mashable.com/2009/09/19/iphone-zune-hd-port/
26:27 – Office Online
– MS response to Google Docs.
– CNET UK got a taste. Brief summary being:
– Excel and Powerpoint both functioning. Both good online representations of the full PC apps. But slower thatn Google Docs because of that.
– Word Online not yet available for anything other than viewing word docs. View looks fine. Apparently, when editing is released it won’t add collaborative simultaneous editing on release, although it is on the roadmap.
– Sharing is currently achieved in a arse about tit way and needs addressing ASAP – based on folder shares rather than doc shares.
– Won’t work on Google Chrome – although will work on IE, Firefox and Safari. MS say that’s about “prioritising” ready for 2010 release.
– Summary – should be good for individual users looking for feature rich apps but slower than Google Docs and doesn’t have the simultaneous collaboration in Word. Sharing is terrible and needs to be addressed.
28:51 – Google
– Google Data Liberation
– http://www.dataliberation.org/home
– How to get your data into and out of Google tools
– Important consideration for cloud computing
– Google FastFlip
– Labs app – read the news by flipping quickly between sites
– Quick, works on iPhone and Android too
– Shares advertising revenue between Google and partner sites
– Can’t click on the links on each page. Nice for tablet???
– Google Chrome 3
– Faster, omnibox improvement, HTML support, themes
– Still no mac version (by year end)
– Currently 3% market share, in the next year 5%, within 2 years 10%
– Google Voice
– Google claim that it was rejected by Apple (Phil Schiller)
– http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/09/fcc-releases-confidential-details-of-google-voice-app-rejection.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss
– This is going to get messy
– Someone is lying – who?
– Rumour – Google has screenshot of app rejection.
33:48 – Apple TV Price Drops
– Apple TV Price Drops – shakeel
– $229 in US for 160GB, no more 40gb
– £219 in the UK for 160gb – was £263 in UK for 160GB, £195 for 40gb
– iMac and MacBook refreshes due within weeks http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/09/16/apple_predicted_to_release_new_imacs_macbooks_in_weeks.html
40:17 – OS 3.1 Issues
– The latest iPhone OS (3.1) now blocks the teathering option on any unlocked handset.
– This affects officially unlocked handsets legitimately being used on alternate carriers, as well as unofficially unlocked and jail-broken.
– Apple Customer Support = “Nothing we can do to help”.
– other issues post 3.1 update
– random shut downs (yes, I’ve been a victim of this)
– occasional screen freezes
– poor(er) battery life
48:51 – Copyright in games gets sneeky
– Code inserted into Batman: Arkham Asylum removes essential controls from the game if you are running a pirate copy.
– Caught out a person on Eidos forum who posted about a bug in the game only to be told he had a bug in his moral code!

Picks
Shakeel
Create your own iPhone/Touch dock
– French designer Julien Madérou, has designed a template which can be downloaded and printed to a card.
– Then cut and fold into shape of a sturdy dock – cool!

Ian
Runkeeper
– Great for tracking your runs, cycles, walks etc on the iphone
– Great website
– 100% reliable for me
– Can edit routes, export to Google Earth
– Leave auto tweets and facebook updates on comleted runs/walks
– RunKeeper Free is ad-supported and RunKeeper Pro is ad-free. RunKeeper Pro also has audio cues (hear your stats via your headphones), and we recently added training workouts as well (hear intervals via your headphones).
– @runkeeper

Chris
Jing
– create screencasts on Mac / PC for free
– http://www.jingproject.com/
– Capture windows, screen areas or whole desktops.
– Capture microphone as well for commentary.
– Save as SWF – either host on screencast.com or save locally (Mp4, youtube possible in Pro version)
– Limited to 5 mins.
– Take a look at the Google Chrome overview to see the outcome!

Free To Party

While exploring the newest updates in iTunes 9, I stumbled across a feature which although I was aware of, I’d never really paid much attention to: Free on iTunes.

Every week Apple release a single of the week which can be downloaded for the princely sum of £0.00, free, nada, nothing. From the few times I’ve checked, the music usually comes from unknown or upcoming artists and bands. This can be an excellent way of building up your music library for free and also for discovering new music. It’s also beneficial for the artists and bands as it provides them with exposure to the iTunes community helping them build a fan-base. In addition to the single of the week, there is additional content also available for free. This varies, but can consist of more music downloads and videos.

I tried this week’s free single, 40 Day Dream by Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, and thought it was pretty good. I was also very surprised to find the first four episodes from series 2 of The Inbetweeners, also available for free! The remaining content was a mixed bag consisting of featurettes from shows like Lost, Friends and Scrubs and a couple of short films. Hopefully the content is updated on a weekly basis like the free single and I’m really looking forward to the next update. I’m not sure why I haven’t tried using this feature more but I fully intend to from now on.

DigitalOutbox Episode 15

DigitalOutbox Episode 15
In this episode the team discuss the Apple keynote edition. We’re more awake this week – if you get to the end though you deserve a medal. And a kip!

Playback
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Shownotes
1:58 – WordPress Hack Outbreak
– Is WordPress the Windows of blog tools?
– Hackers exploiting old version to spread comment spam and diguide links to dubious (spyware/malware) sites
– If your running anything but 2.8.4 you’re at risk
– Easy to update now – one click
– If you customise then updating is more hassle
– Posterous, tumblr even hosted wordpress a better option?
– If you keep vigilant, you should have nothing to fear
– Is wordpress targeted because of it’s size, ease of hacking – both?
– RSS Cloud
– Push notification of blog updates
– http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2009/09/07/rss-in-the-clouds/
– The idea is to deliver news faster, without relying on a single company to do all the work.
– Lazyfeed and river2 support RSS Cloud – others to follow? The biggie is Google reader though.
– Enabled on wordpress.com, plugin too
– After the Deadline
– http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/08/automattic-acquires-spellcheck-plug-in-after-the-deadline/
– Really smart spelling, style and grammer checker
– Plugin – enabled on wordpress.com
7:34 – DSG Facebook Action
– DSG have said they are disturbed by reports that an unofficial facebook group for staff of DSG has seen disparaging comments about their customers posted by staff.
– They will investigate and follow up with action where appropriate.
– Aren’t all PC World customers stupid by definition? They are buying in store when they could by better and cheaper anywhere online!
– Wider issue of paranoid companies starting to sensor their employees even out of work…
10:20 – T-Mobile and Orange Merger
– Merger creates the biggest UK company in the mobile market. (Around 37%).
– O2 current leaders with 27%
– Deal expected to commence in November.
13:10 – Lies, Damned Lies…and Google
– Many stats have UK/Euro focus – way!
– More or Less: Behind the stats
15:55 – Steve Jobs at the Keynote
– Apple Event
– It’s Steve!
– iPhone 3.1
– App store update – genius for app’s
– New list – apps by revenue – is this to support premium app’s i.e. Tom Tom
– Longer backups!
– Save video from mails to photo roll
– 75,000 app’s, 1.8 billion app store downloads (excluding updates) (Really? An average of 36 downloads per device?)
– 50 million iPhone OS devices in existence (30 million iphones)
– Games demo’s – getting quite advanced looking! Nova and Madden look superb
– iTunes 9
– update UI (a bit odd?)
– http://static.maniacalrage.net/bucket/itunes/
– easier to get album info – click on i, all tracks
– uses webkit and html5 for some of the ui
– inconsistent across Mac UI
– Application organisation on iPhone – finally
– Genius Mix – not too bad – genre mixes more than anything else
– No speed improvement (not 64 bit)
– LP’s
– Animations, lyrics, videos etc
– Extras
– DVD extras really
– Better sync options
– Sync by genre, artist
– Sync photos by album, faces, events
– Movies now have better options
– Ringtones
– 30,000 ringtones
– They cost
– Home Sharing
– allows iTunes media to be copied and shared among 5 authorized computers in the same household, with settings available to make copying new purchases automatically
– Currently lax controls on this and apparently you can authorise a remote computer. Share apps and music, then unauthorise again. Effectively stripping and sharing content between accounts. This is sure to be addressed soon.
– Limited social networking – twitter, facebook, upload mix to imix for friends – only share from the store, not your library
– Wish List – add store stuff to wish list – just like Amazons
– This replaces shopping cart – eveything is now one click to buy! Click Buy, it’s bought. Be careful!
– Pre media sync – get out!
– Media organisation
– http://www.tuaw.com/2009/09/10/itunes-9-focus-itunes-media-organization/
– iTunes now automatically adds new music to your library from a watched folder they quietly added to the iTunes Music folder structure. Apple did its darndest to sneak this new feature in under the radar among several who-cares features, but for our money, it’s absolutely the best feature to come to iTunes 9. So how does it work? Just find the folder named Automatically Add to iTunes in your iTunes Music folder (~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Automatically Add to iTunes/ in OS X; C:\Users\Your Username\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Automatically Add to iTunes\ in Windows). Any music that finds its way into that folder will automatically be imported into iTunes.
– iTunes Media organization. It moves your folders around into a much more logical structure, with separate folders for audiobooks, iPhone apps, movies, music, podcasts, ringtones, TV shows, and voice memos.
– iPod Touch – 64 gb, reduced prices 8 – £149, 32 – £229, 64 – £299
– No camera!
– 50% faster – what does that mean? Faster than previous Touch?
– Shuffle – reduced prices, colours – 2 – 45, 4 – 59
– Classic – 160gb – 189
– iPod Nano – 8 – 115, 16 – 135
– Camera and mic, speaker
– It’s a video only camera, no stills!
– FM Tuner
– Pedometer
– Spotify on the iPhone
– Awesome
– No last.fm, no background app
– Could background running of a streaming service be an iTunes 9 announcement?
– 4 million tracks to choose from
– C64 Emulator
– Shak?
– Pay per game – deals being made with original IP owners
– Why are people so excited? All games ranged from pretty pap to utter cack…
– Pulled by Apple. They asked for Basic to be removed – dev hid it instead of removing (like Yelp), then told everyone, then Apple removed it. New version uploaded without Basic now. Keep pants on everyone.
– Flickr app
– Official from Yahoo/Flickr
– Free
– Quick
– Upload photo’s and video
– 10.6.1 Update
– Flash, security, minor bugs
– New ad – http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/
1:17:47 – Dreamcast is 10!
– 10 years old!
– memories, thoughts?

Picks
Shakeel
Free on iTunes
– free content to download (every week?)
– Free single of the week
– The Inbetweeners: Series 2 – first 4 episodes currently FREE!!
– good way to build your library for free
– try stuff you probably wouldn’t normally bother with, only to be pleasantly surprised
– Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros – 40 Day Dream

Ian
Madden on iPhone
– Good version of Madden
– Controls a bit fiddly
– Graphics good though

Chris
Trials HD
– XBox Arcade – PC as well I believe.
– Kick-start in your living room!
– Great game. Around £10. Good looking.
– Axpansive – user content. Starts easy, gets mega hard. Highly adictive.
– Frustrating at times but has the “one more go” in spades.

Episode 1 Feedback

Just a quick post to say thanks for the comments, tweets and e-mails on our first podcast. Lot’s of great feedback and useful advice which we’ll try and incorporate on our next episode which should with a bit of luck will be out over the weekend. One thing we didn’t expect was this:

Caught this snap on Sunday (I think) so I’m not sure if we were higher than this at some point. Call us stat whores – we were delighted! Easily pleased even though we’ve no idea how iTunes calculates it’s charts. Hopefully we won’t become obsessive over this though as I fear a fall in the near future if we do.

One thing we will be trying to do is make the podcast a bit shorter, more punchy. One snag – new iPhone this week. Someone gag me now.