tech, news, productivity, views and stuff
BBC’s Click has a nice article on the mobile web.
It is estimated that just one in five people with phones that are able to connect to the net actually do. But the iPhone, however, is having a profound effect on the willingness of its users to go online.
Here in the UK it is (still) illegal to rip a CD to your computer (so when using iTunes or Windows Media Player you are technically breaking the law if you import a CD).
However the BBC reports that this may soon change…
Copying music from a CD to a home computer could be made legal under new proposals from the UK government.
Millions of people already “rip” discs to their computers and move the files to MP3 players, although the process is technically against copyright law.
This is of course of those things that we do on a regular basis, but is in fact still illegal, I would suspect most people don’t even realise it is illegal.
There is Channel 4’s 4oD service, BBC’s iPlayer, now we have plans for a new on-demand service for television.
The BBC is reporting how the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 are going to work together to provide a new on-demand service for viewers.
The BBC, ITV and Channel 4 are to launch a joint on-demand service, which will bring together hundreds of hours of television programmes in one place.
The service is set to go live in 2008 and will offer viewers access to current shows and archive material.
Despite a lot of scepticism and negative coverage about Amazon’s new digital book reader, the device has sold out according to the BBC.
Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader has sold out despite scepticism about whether the device will prove popular. A notice on the Kindle pages on the Amazon web store said “heavy customer demand” for the device meant it would be out of stock until 3 December. Since its launch on 19 November the device has been widely examined but opinions about it are mixed.
Looks like people are interested in this digital book reader. Is this the device for e-books what the iPod was for digital music? We will have to wait and see.
Big news yesterday was the launch of Amazon’s digital book reader.
BBC reports that:
Online retailer Amazon has unveiled an own-brand wireless electronic book reader called Kindle.
The paperback-sized device is on sale immediately in the US for $399 (£195). It can store up to 200 books in its onboard memory.
Kindle does not need a PC to be loaded with books, blogs or papers – instead content arrives via wireless.
Amazon said 90,000 books, including bestsellers priced at $9.99, were available for Kindle at launch.
Reuters is reporting that most companies do not block employees from downloading illegal content.
Most companies do not stop staff from downloading music from the Internet, despite the risks posed to work computers, a survey has found.
I have to admit that I do like Mashable’s take on the article.
Of course, we all know that this is because most of those computer managers are leeching ten times more data than regular employees, and they don’t want to lose their uber BitTorrent ratios. And, when the boss asks why he’s getting all those weird e-mails from the RIAA and MPAA, they can always point to “that weird guy who works in the tiny office on 3rd floor and never talks to anyone”.
I suspect that this is probably quite true! Not necessarily always the manager, but at least the support teams.
After running my tech blog for many years using iBlog I have decided to move over to WordPress. I have been using WordPress for my new(ish) food blog and have been impressed with the ease of use and the “interoperability” with the Web 2.0 world.
I suspect though the main reason for moving over is a current problem I have with iBlog, in that I have had to reset the blog and republishing is taking days…
Also iBlog been an application (and a PPC Mac application at that) restricts me to updating to one machine only and I expect to retire that computer as my day to day computer in the next six months.
I am hoping though that I can “import” my previous blog entries, and I certainly won’t be deleting the old blog so those entries will remain online.