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MP3 Player News & Headlines
Google To Allow New EtherPad Creation; Will Release EtherPad Source
(PC World)
PC World - Last week was a busy one for acquisitions: Apple bought Lala, a streaming music service, and Google acquired AppJet, makers of realtime collaborative text editing software EtherPad. Google announced that the AppJet developers (many of whom previously worked for Google) would be joining the Google Wave team, improving the services offered by the new Wave product.
Apple Intros New Mac minis; More Expensive, More Powerful
Apple today unveiled two new Mac mini computers with the Intel Core Duo processor. The new models are more powerful, and at $599 and $799, more expensive than ever.
France Telecom follows Apple's lead, launches applications
(Reuters)
Reuters - Taking a page out of Apple's book, France Telecom's mobile phone unit Orange launched its own shop to sell downloadable videos, games, music and other content to its 130 million mobile phone subscribers.
Phone thieves "targeting more live music gigs"
(Reuters)
Reuters - Music-lovers watching their favorite acts at live concerts are increasingly becoming targets for gangs of mobile phone thieves, British police said on Monday.
Apple: More than 70 Percent of 2007 Cars will have iPod Support
More than 70 percent of 2007-model US automobiles will offer iPod integration.
Citigroup sued by Terra Firma over EMI deal
(Reuters)
Reuters - Private equity firm Terra Firma sued Citigroup Inc, accusing the bank of fraud in connection with Terra Firma's purchase of music business EMI Group in 2007, court documents filed on Friday in New York showed.
iriver clix: iPod/iTunes Killer?
iriver has introduced the clix portable media player, a new media player that integrates with the new Windows Media Player 11 and the public beta of MTV Networks URGE digital music service
MP3 Tech Commentary
Timing the Weather Recently, the portables site featured a talking clock in this very space. Certainly, a voice-enabled clock is nice and all. But if you equate the ability to talk with nagging, then perhaps you prefer the strong, silent type. Enter, the Ambient Flurry clock. While this clock doesn't talk, it does offer a pretty neat feature — the ability to tell you the weather. Hey, isn't that how small talk usually starts? On that note, feel free to check out my Ambient Flurry review. Timing the Weather originally appeared on About.com Portable Entertainment on Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 00:01:52.
So How's That Kindle 2.3 Update Treating You? Is the third time of the second time a charm? With Amazon dropping its Kindle 2.3 update around Thanksgiving, Kindle owners have had plenty of time taking it out for a spin. So is it everything you hoped it would be? Or was the update weighed, measured and found wanting? Personally, I think native support for more file formats would've been nice. But that's just me. If you happen to have no idea what I'm talking about, here's the quick lowdown on the Kindle 2.3 update. So How's That Kindle 2.3 Update Treating You? originally appeared on About.com Portable Entertainment on Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 at 00:07:49.
Paper Bag Records Celebrate Anniversary With Free Album Download This week we bring you a whole album to download for free! The Toronto based music label, Paper Bag Records, is offering up a free 12-track album to celebrate their upcoming 7th birthday. The suitably named album, The Seven Year Itch, is a compilation of songs from some of the record label's artists - a few unreleased tracks have also been included. To get your hands on the free album download, simply visit The Seven Year Itch download page on Paper Bag Records' website. Related Articles:
Paper Bag Records Celebrate Anniversary With Free Album Download originally appeared on About.com Digital Music on Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 05:13:08.
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Free Music Downloads This Week In our music discovery spotlight this week, we showcase another selection of free promotional tracks that cover a wide range of genres designed to broaden your musical horizons :
The free promotional track, Repetition, is a taster of the type of sound that garage rock band, The Willowz produce. This free music download is from their new album, Everyone, which is now available digitally from the iTunes Store; the physical will be available to purchase from stores on Dec. 15 (Dim Mak/Downtown Records). If you want to take a look behind the scenes, there's also an interesting video of the making of Everyone that you can watch via YouTube.
- You've Changed (3:10)
- Hand Me Down (3:22)
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- Top 5 streaming music sites
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- How to use iTunes to listen to thousands of free radio stations
Free Music Downloads This Week originally appeared on About.com Digital Music on Friday, November 27th, 2009 at 09:18:32.
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Is Apple Finally Jumping Into The Streaming Music Business? Apple has announced that it has completed its acquisition of the streaming music service, Lala. With streaming music services being increasingly popular with music fans these days, it's no surprise to learn that Apple is potentially dipping its toes into a technology that provides music lovers with a smörgåsbord of endless tracks. We say, "Potentially", because there's no word from Apple yet on what their business model will be. Interestingly, Lala also provides 'cloud storage' for its users -- this means remote storage for your music that you can then use to stream to anywhere. The big question now is, "what is Apple going to do with its latest acquisition?" For many consumers, the obvious answer would be an integrated streaming music element in the iTunes Store. Arguably, this is something that Apple should have done a long time ago, rather than sticking to an outdated pay-per-click only service. But wait a minute? Could Apple also be thinking of using cloud storage? There's little doubt that if they also implemented this, it would cater for consumers who want to be able to stream their music and have a secure remote storage solution.
Related Articles:
Is Apple Finally Jumping Into The Streaming Music Business? originally appeared on About.com Digital Music on Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 at 09:11:40.
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Top 10 Portable Devices: The Most-Searched Portable Electronics for 2009 Human beings are driven to look for stuff. Ponce de Leon searched far and wide for the Fountain of Youth. James Tiberius Kirk trekked across the stars in the search for Spock. Jason Hidalgo recently spent 15 minutes of his precious time looking for a matching pair of socks in his drawer of mismatched foot covering paraphernalia. Great as they are, these three grand adventurers aren't the only practitioners of the grand art of the search. Even humble, old you — yes, you my wonderful readers, and all the denizens of the Interwebs are prolific searchers as well. Here are the Top 10 most searched portable electronics devices according to AOL, complete with links for info and pricing seekers: 1. iPhone: Now there's an unexpected surprise (yeah, right). That clap-like sound you hear is the symphony of Apple fans applauding and Apple haters smacking their foreheads all at the same time. [Check prices] 2. iPod Touch: The Mini-Me of Apple's "Evil" portable empire. I will now officially change my name and add a small "i" at the beginning as a way to boost my popularity with the ladies. [Check prices] 3. Sony PSP: Nintendo's mighty DS line may have thoroughly outsold Sony's portable darling since they both hit the scene. But while the PSP hasn't won the war, it apparently won the search battle so far this year. I wonder how many of those searches were driven by PSP hackers looking for custom firmware updates... . [Check prices] 4. Palm Pre: Talk about a comeback. The former PDA has-been now has one of the more viable alternatives to the iPhone. Even old dogs can learn new tricks after all. 5. Microsoft Zune: Congratulations, Microsoft. Your perseverance has now gained enough mindshare for your portable media player to be the Tubbs to the iPod's Crockett — which certainly is eminently better than being Noogie Lamont (Who? My point exactly). Now if you can only drop your hatred for cash, I will be literally in your debt. (Sounds like somebody has a problem with leftover Microsoft Points!) [Check prices] 6. BlackBerry Storm: The Storm appears to have rebounded from that launch plagued by interface issues. Either that or plenty of folks kept searching all year for the firmware update that fixed said issues. True story: I was interviewing the president of a local Realtors association for a business story and she mentioned out of the blue that her Storm is much improved now. Just thought you'd like to know. [Check prices] 7. Garmin Nuvi: A search for stuff used for searching makes me chuckle for some reason. Yes, I'm that easily amused. [Check prices] 8. BlackBerry Curve: It's official. People love smartphones. And this isn't even the last phone on this list. [Check prices] 9. Sidekick: What is it with the Sidekick and its penchant for being involved in juicy news (e.g. the Paris Hilton hack and, more recently, the case of the missing user data)? Whatever the reason, it apparently helped the phone crack into the searchable top 10 for portables. [Check prices] 10. Amazon Kindle: eReading is apparently fundamental for searches, too. For more on the Kindle and other readers, check out our eBook reader section. Top 10 Portable Devices: The Most-Searched Portable Electronics for 2009 originally appeared on About.com Portable Entertainment on Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 00:01:05.
Two Publishers Delay eBook Versions of Books If you like to exclusively get your new books via their "e" version, be prepared to wait, at least if they're coming from these two publishers. According to the Wall Street Journal, Simon & Schuster and Hachette Book Group will be delaying their eBook version releases — 35 big titles for Simon & Schuster in early 2010 and a "vast majority of titles" for Hachette. Lead times for hardcover books will be four months for Simon & Schuster and about three to four months for Hachette. The news comes at a time when the eBook reader industry is experiencing huge sales growth. Simon & Schuster says the delay is a move that must be done now before the eReader install base reaches a level that would make implementing a delay impossible (I guess it's kind of like how newspapers now are having a hard time charging for online content after offering it for free for so long. I'm specifically talking about changing the consumer mind set, of course). The CEO of Hachette sounded even more dire, calling the move necessary for the preservation of the industry while describing the $9.99 typically charged for eBooks as "bargain-basement" pricing. In short, they're not making as much money off eBooks as they do with real books. 'Kind of reminds me of the ruckus raised by the music industry when digital music downloads first started to take off. So what do you think of the move? Regardless, it would be interesting to see if more publishers follow suit. Photo © Barnes & Noble Two Publishers Delay eBook Versions of Books originally appeared on About.com Portable Entertainment on Thursday, December 10th, 2009 at 02:37:25.
Multisession Discs: Burn MP3s to The Same CD or DVD More Than Once If you prefer to backup your music library to CD or DVD, then have you tried creating a multisession disc? Simply put, a multisession disc makes it possible for you to add data to the same CD or DVD using more than one burning session; if there is free space still left on the disc then you can add more data to it at a later date. There have probably been times in the past when you've been frustrated by not being able to burn more information to a disc that still had free space on it. The obvious advantage of using a multisession disc is that you don't have to fill up a disc in one go, but you can burn chunks of data until your CD or DVD is full. Popular CD and DVD disc recording programs such as Nero can create this type of format enabling you to burn your media files at your own leisure. Even though this method isn't as space-efficient as burning all your files in one go (a small amount of space is lost using a multisession disc), it's a lot more user-friendly and is well worth doing if you don't currently have enough data to fill an entire disc. If you're interested in finding out more, then our tutorial on How to Create a Multisession CD or DVD using the free CDBurnerXP program will get you started. Related Articles:
Multisession Discs: Burn MP3s to The Same CD or DVD More Than Once originally appeared on About.com Digital Music on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 09:00:52.
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