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“If it weren’t for electricity, we’d all be watching television by candlelight.” – George Gobel, American comedian 1919 – 1991
This week we began with the great news that I, at last have an iPhone. Hurrah! Unfortunately we also discovered that its tied to Apple’s exclusive UK partner O2. Whose network makes AT&T’s look perfect and ubiquitous in comparison. But it has been fabulous fun playing with my new gadget. Then Gareth had to force me to talk about this weeks stories instead of my iPhone.
But we did begin with this…
Google Voice apps rejected – There is a dark side to the iPhone, its the App store approval process. Whether this is down to Apple or AT&T is unknown, but the FCC is weighing in and demanding answers. So play nice guys or the government’s gonna take away your toys.
Microsoft’s retail stores – The Redmond behemoth is once again eschewing originality, and deciding just to copy wholesale the Apple Store model. Right down to the ‘cleverly’ named Guru bar. If monkey boy thinks this is going to turn the company’s fortunes around, well I think he’s going to be sorely disappointed. But I believe the Guru bar will be an unqualified success, in fact it will probably be fully booked, forever.
iTunes to support Blu-ray -It is rumoured that the next version of iTunes will support Blu-ray discs. You’ll be able to rip in your discs, transfer the movies to your Apple TV. All you have to do is slip the disc into your Mac’s Blu-ray drive and……Doh!
Wireless power system demo’d – A U.S. company called Witricity as demonstrated a system to wirelessly transmit power to all your favourite gadgets. No more forgetting to put your mobile on charge. As soon as its within range of this system it’ll start to charge automatically. It works by magnetic resonance, which to me sounds a lot like ‘flux capacitor’. So I don’t hold out much hope for it coming out anytime soon.
Is there rhyme or reason to the Twitter attacks? – It seems the attacks on Twitter, Facebook and numerous other social networking and blogging sites really were targeted at just one Georgian blogger, by Russian sympathizers. And it raises questions about the structure of the internet itself. With the attacks being so ‘random and unpredictable’, how can we adapt internet security to cope. I think its because we’re not all using Internet Explorer anymore, like good little sheep.
Jack White’s Vault – The musician wants to put the romance back into buying music. He believes that downloading ‘cheapens the experience’. Wanting to make it more of an experience, with video extras and access to online gigs. And with Apple and music execs trying to reinvigorate the album format, maybe he’s on to something. But if he wants to sell more records he could always include his sister’s ‘home’ movie, that’d do it.
News International plans to charge for news content by next summer – Calendar this as the final nail in the coffin for newspapers. By charging for content, especially when there is free content available. (Content, I must point out, that in the UK at least, is impinged with a vociferous right wing leaning that would make good old Dubya look liberal). Rupert Murdoch will lose enough money to forget all about newspapers and concentrate on making the Simpsons.
And that was…
