14 September, 2008, 8:14 pm
After my Future of music – my vision! article posted in January 2008, Wired has just put up an article regarding the new Microsoft Zune MP3 players, where it seems that the Zunes will implement the ability to purchase songs heard on the Zune’s FM radio.
My original thoughts were that Apple would be the first manufacturer to get there but it looks like Microsoft got there first. This is good for competition. Let’s hope that competition becomes more competitive, perhaps even with Sony or Creative getting into the action too. As a Zune and iPod owner that makes me feel real good!
Copyright © 2008 Kulvinder Singh Matharu – All Rights Reserved
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12 July, 2008, 1:10 pm
I own an Apple iPod touch (32GB). Now that the 3G version of the iPhone is out, the latest software firmware (version 2.0) for the iPod touch has also been released. The cheek of it is that Apple are trying to charge me £5.99 to obtain this firmware!
Are Apple really trying to make me regret purchasing the iPod touch?
Apple, Apple, Apple. You continue to disappoint! It’s just such greed from Apple that encourages people to modify the iPod firmware…this modified firmware allows the customer the freedom to install other software on the iPod and to break out of the restrictions imposed by Apple. “Think different”? Sure…
Copyright © 2008 Kulvinder Singh Matharu – All Rights Reserved
7 April, 2008, 6:37 pm
Having bought the 80GB Zune 2 MP3 player, I treated myself to the 32GB iPod touch from Kuala Lumpur after all that hard work on the Borneo Orangutan Adventure.
The iPod touch is a really sleek design, a joy to hold and look at. However, even with the latest firmware (1.1.4), the iPod touch crashes on a frequent basis. By “crash” I mean that in the middle of web browsing or listening to music (for example) the iPod touch will crash whatever it was doing and revert to the main start screen. Not nice at all!
In addition, the album cover flow screen sometimes doesn’t show the album covers which kinda defeats the main purposes for having the album cover flow screen.
And it seems that I’m not the only one who’s experiencing these problems. A quick web search revealed the extent of these problems. I imagine that Apple will eventually get the bugs ironed-out with future firmware releases but I paid a lot of money for what turns out to be a flawed jewel. So, at the moment, I’m really disappointed with Apple’s latest iPod.
Copyright © 2008 Kulvinder Singh Matharu – All Rights Reserved
22 January, 2008, 6:11 pm
A device, whether mobile or fixed, such as a laptop, a mobile telephone, a desktop, etc which is used (as one of its functions) to receive “radio” stations from the air (using radio techniques such as VHF/FM, DAB, etc) or “streamed” such as from an Internet connection over xDSL, WiFi, etc. Such a device, using automatic user-matching preferences, or through manual intervention by the user, flags a received song/tune/audio which then actions the device to immediately (or stored later for such action) to access a relevant music download site such that the flagged song/tune/audio track can be purchased (or made available free of charge) and downloaded to the device such as to allow the user to playback the downloaded track at any suitable time.
A simple scenario. Basically, you’re listening to a traditional radio station or Internet radio station on your 3G/WiFi smartphone/MP3 player and you hear something you like. You press a button and the device goes to iTunes or other site and the track gets downloaded to your device. Instant impulse purchase! The device (or even the music store) could also determine that you like that particular type of music or that artist and it could provide recommendations for further purchase.
This is my vision of the future and it doesn’t take any leap in technology as all the buildings blocks are already there. And I’m sure that the idea isn’t that novel as it’s just a trivial and perhaps obvious example of putting such blocks together. I think Apple could put such a system together very easily using the iPhone (but perhaps with a 3G upgrade!). So the rest of you companies out there, wake up and smell the coffee…you’ve got a lot of work to do! And with GPS built-in such a device would be a real killer! Location based services are going to sky rocket but that’s the subject of a different article.
I want now!
Copyright © 2008 Kulvinder Singh Matharu – All Rights Reserved
