You wait 80 years for a device that’ll stream television from the living room to wherever you happen to be, and then two come along at once. Yesterday we were drooling over the chocolate-bar-shaped Sling Media Slingbox; today we’re ogling the paperback-book-sized Sony LocationFree base station (first encountered at CES). Both these products squirt television …
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July, 2006
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21 July
Pandora’s music box inspires fans
SAN FRANCISCO–Tim Westergren could be thought of as a modern-day Santa Claus with a bag full of compact discs you’ve probably never heard of. The founder of Pandora, a 7-month-old, so-called music-discovery engine, Westergren travels from town to town, sharing his time and story with fans who, because of his service, say they’ve rediscovered a love of newfound music. From …
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19 July
Crave Talk: Sky high with Net fever
By Sunday evening, the weekend is wearing off. Usually. Last Sunday, I had my doubts: gently dozing through The Simpsons‘ closing credits, I heard a snatch of conversation so bizarre it had to have been a hallucination. Fortunately for those with reality issues, new technology now exists to help work out which side of the blood-brain barrier such voices originate. …
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14 July
Packard Bell Smart TV 320: Ultra
When Packard Bell said it has some cool stuff to show us, we should have guessed the venue would be the Absolut Ice Bar in Mayfair. The evening was pretty cool (ho hum) — we were greeted at the door by a pair of well-trained huskies, checked out some products in the warm room, then froze our ears off in the …
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14 July
Where indie music meets mainstream media
For those who produce commercials and television programs, finding the right background music is essential. And for the musicians who make the music, having their work used in a commercial or on a TV show soundtrack is a nice, sometimes lucrative, bonus. Pump Audio, an online service that specializes in cataloging music by independent musicians and marketing it to producers, …
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6 July
Sky+ Remote Record: Control your Sky+ box from anywhere
We’ve all been there: stuck on the motorway, in the sweltering heat, hours later than you than you meant to be, sick as an overheated parrot because your favourite show is about to start. Meanwhile, your perfectly formed Sky+ box is sitting on its perfectly formed posterior, doing absolutely nothing because you forgot to program it. Sky+ Remote Record fluffs …
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June, 2006
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30 June
What’s on your iPod?
We are buying the gadgets, but not the music. While interest in MP3 players and multimedia downloads is rising, more music is being ripped from CDs than downloaded, according to a study released Thursday by Ipsos Insight. Twenty percent of Americans over the age of 12 own at least one portable MP3 player. Among teens exclusively, ownership reaches 54 percent, …
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26 June
Tower stacking up downloads
Music retailer Tower Records is preparing to take the shrink-wrap off its digital download store on Tuesday, when Tower.com/Digital goes live with a comprehensive service powered by Puretracks. Tower will market the digital alternative across all media in tandem with the chain’s retail business, which comprises 89 stores in the United States. Initially the store will offer a catalog of …
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23 June
France rolls over on iTunes DRM
France has given the thumbs-up to the defanged version of a controversial law that would have forced Apple Computer to open up its iTunes digital rights management to players other than its iPod. The Dadvsi law, which originally included provisions to allow people to crack DRM protections and oblige Apple to interoperate with its rivals’ music download services and vice …
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23 June
How Sony failed to Connect, again
Early in 2005, more than a dozen Sony employees from the company’s consumer electronics divisions gathered for an unusual meeting in the tiny Palo Alto, Calif., headquarters of digital media start-up Kinoma. Kinoma Chief Executive Peter Hoddie, an Apple Computer alumnus, had been put in charge of high-profile Sony software development, including the Connect digital music project. For a company …
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