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It’s typical, I buy some tunes from the iTunes Store and then the very next day Amazon announce their new mp3 Store
Though the songs I got from the iTunes Store were iTunes Plus (ie DRM free) the mp3 files from Amazon are encoded at 256 Kbps compared to the 128 Kbps at iTunes.
Hearing about the US version on MacBreak Weekly I am pleased to see we now have our own version here in the UK.
See what they have at the Amazon.co.uk MP3 Store
I have realised lately that I am downloading more video from the iTunes Store than in the past. I am downloading films and TV series as well as renting films too.
I quite like the fact that I can get a TV series for £10 and downloaded Life on Mars. However that was a special offer and most series are if you buy every episode quite expensive as a result!
I still think renting is expensive at £3.49, but at least here in the UK we have 48 hours in which to watch the film, over in the USA it’s only 24 hours. Due to busy lifestyle sometimes I want to watch a movie over two evenings. I have watched a few of the 99p rentals which I think are value for money, and if there were more then I would probably rent more, but one a week!
Not tried HD, but as I don’t have an Apple TV or a HDTV not much use to me!
I see that the Nokia N97 has been announced. A very nice new phone which as well as a touchscreen also has a slide out keyboard.
Obviously designed to compete with Apple’s iPhone and Google’s G1 it is Nokia’a answer to the new internet phone now being demanded by consumers.
There are some early reviews out now, CNET and ZDNet.
My Nokia N73 is giving me a few headaches, basically it keeps crashing and turning itself off.
I thought a firmware update might help, well at least reset the device. This is not as simple as it could be as the software is Windows only. I thought I could run it in Parallels, well I could, but I couldn’t pick up the N73 through the USB cable. I could in OS X but not pass it through to Parallels.
So in the end I installed the software to a Windows computer. What I couldn’t quite understand was that I went to the Nokia site downloaded the PC Suite software. When I ran the installer it asked if I wanted to check for a newer version. Well there couldn’t be a newer version as I have just downloaded it could there.
Yes there was.
Huh!
So having just downloaded a 36MB installer filer, I have to download a new 36MB version!
Once that was installed, I then had to install the firmware updater.
Once all that was done I could update the phone.
This was done.
However I am not sure if it has fixed the problem.
Well the BBC have fixed the issue with the device detection, so BBC iPlayer now works on the iPod touch with firmware 2.2.
Yay.
Well a couple of interesting bits of information have come my way since I posted yesterday about how firmware 2.2 on the iPod touch stops the BBC iPlayer from working.
Though Apple updated the firmware, and the BBC did not change anything, it is looking like the BBC’s platform/connection detection code is coming to the wrong conclusion.
That code according to FrustratedByiPlayer on the BBC Message Boards, looks like this.
case ‘STATE_CONNECTION_TYPE’:
// hack for demi – in case demi variables mysteriously disappear as they are prone to do.
if(data.response.DEMI_ERROR_FAILOVER === ‘true’ && _failOverCount < 3) {
_failOverCount++;
return device.connectionType();
}
else if(data.response.DEMI_ERROR_FAILOVER === ‘true’) {
_self.setState(“STATE_MEDIA_UNAVAILABLE”);
return;
};
if(data.response.ALLOWED_NETWORK === ‘true’ && data.response.IP_IS_UK_COMBINED === ‘yes’) {
_state = ‘STATE_IS_MEDIA_AVAILABLE’;
_mediaAssetProfile = data.response[_serviceType.toUpperCase() + ‘_MEDIA_ASSET_PROFILE’];
_self.setMediaAssetProfile(_mediaAssetProfile);
return mediaSelector.mtis(_versionPid, _mediaAssetProfile);
}
else if(data.response.ALLOWED_NETWORK === ‘true’) {
_state = ‘STATE_OUTSIDE_UK’;
_self.setState(_state);
return;
}
else {
_state = ‘STATE_NON_WIFI’;
_self.setState(_state);
return;
};
It is the _state = ‘STATE_NON_WIFI’; which is the result of the detection code failing to correctly recognise the iPod touch as a wireless device and thinking it is a 3G iPhone.
Note that the 3G iPhone on wifi works fine!
By adding the correct device to the detection code by the BBC web development team this should solve the issue.
Lakeuk on the BBC boards has been able to recreate the error on Firefox.
User Agent for FW 2.1.1 works:-
Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F138 Safari/525.20
User Agent for FW 2.2 gives the error everyone is getting:-
Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2 like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5G77a Safari/525.20
According to the BBC Message boards this message has been passed onto the BBC team.
BBC iPlayer on the iPod touch is one of the best things that arrived on my iPod touch. However bad news if you upgrade to firmware 2.2, you won’t be able to access BBC iPlayer on your iPod touch!
When you try you get the following error message.
Sorry, programmes can only be accessed over a wifi connection.
Hello!
The iPod touch only does wifi!
It would appear that the fault lies with both Apple and the BBC.
The BBC use a browser detection script which identifies that the user is using an Apple iPhone or an iPod touch. I would assume before firmware 2.2 that the browser identifier used by the iPhone and the iPod touch were different when on wifi compared to when the iPhone was using 3G or Edge.
With firmware 2.2 it would appear that the BBC script incorrectly identifies the wifi iPod touch as a 3G iPhone. Now this could be because of a change by Apple on the mobile version of Safari.
So alas at the moment we have no way of watching BBC iPlayer on an updated iPod touch!
BBC reports on Microsoft’s new free security offering.
In a surprise move, Microsoft has announced it will offer a free anti-virus and security solution from the second half of next year.
The new software, code-named Morro, will be a no-frills program suited to smaller and less powerful computers.
I don’t have a Flip camera, but certainly have thought they could be useful.
MacWorld reports on the release of the Flip Mino HD.
Pure Digital Technologies on Wednesday announced the release of the Flip MinoHD, which it bills as the world’s smallest HD camcorder. The Flip MinoHD can store up to 60 minutes of HD video.
Andy Ihnatko (from MacBreak Weekly) has written an informative blog post comparing the Flip Mino HD and the Kodak Zi6.
I’m actually planning a rather ambitious comparison of cheap HD cameras in the next week or so. But there’s certainly been an enthusiastic — bordering on, well, “annoying” — amount of interest in a direct comparison between the Mino HD and its natural commercial enemy: the Kodak Zi6.
I think I might get one.
Finally after remembering to register the application on the phone I was able to use JoikuSpot in the wild!
I am really pleased that I made the upgrade. I can now check e-mail and use Twitterfon. I only checked with an iPod touch, so I still need to check it works with a laptop.