Airfoil IS a “poor man’s Sonos”! January 11, 2008
Posted by James Webster in : apple, gadgets , add a commentTwo years ago I suggested that Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil could potentially be turned into “a poor man’s Sonos”. Well it looks like they have made that happen with the release of Airfoil 3. The only missing piece I can see is an iPhone-optimised web interface to Airfoil to take the place of the Sonos Controller.
The new Slim Devices/Logitech Squeezebox Duet looks quite interesting as well, although given its cross-platform nature it may not survive a rumoured acquisition by Microsoft with its current feature set intact.
Given I currently live in a pokey London flat from the middle of which I can see into all four rooms simultaneously I don’t think this is a segment of the gadget market that I need to buy into just yet!
Out with the old, in with the new… June 5, 2007
Posted by James Webster in : gadgets , add a commentA rare bit of gadget news…
I have FINALLY gotten rid of my ancient Nokia 6600 that I purchased four years ago on the last occassion I was living in London. I have just replaced it with a shiny Nokia N95.
I am really impressed so far. In case you have been living under a rock and have completely missed the buzz surrounding this phone the highlights are; GSM and 3G mobile network access, 5 megapixel camera + reasonable quality video, Bluetooth, Series 60 OS (which some people love and some hate… I love it), high-resolution screen AND integrated GPS. Also, it doesn’t have nearly big enough a battery to power all that connected goodness however I have yet to really find that an issue. The only time that I have seriously used the GPS I was in a car driving around Wales and could have used a cigarette-lighter adapter to keep the phone charged up. Check out the reviews by Gizmodo, Engadget or All About Symbian’s 5-part monster.
The only real issue I have with it at the moment is that since I purchased it on plan from T-Mobile, the firmware updates do not appear to be forthcoming as quickly (or indeed, at all?) as they do for the completely unlocked phones… the latest firmware upgrade would fix an issue I am having with connecting to a computer-to-computer WiFi network hosted by my MacBook.
The photo quality is pretty good for a phone and gives compact point-and-shoots a run for their money. Here’s a set of photos I took when Trafalagar Square in London was turned into a village green for a couple of days.
T-Mobile’s Web N Walk plan is great as well… I can finally use my phone to access the Internet wherever I want (subject to 3G network coverage) and not worry about quickly exceeding my download limit; 3Gb of mobile downloads is a pretty generous download allowance for mobile browsing.
The integration with online services such as Flickr and Vox is cool. I have authored a couple of posts on my new Vox blog directly from the phone; take a photo, write some text (admittedly a bit painful) and upload. Done!
It looks like Scoble shares my view that the N95 might be better than the iPhone although, damn, it IS sexy.
Amazon Unbox is Windows and US-only… pah! September 9, 2006
Posted by James Webster in : web, apple, gadgets , 1 comment so farI had been planning on using a cold and wet Saturday in Sydney to give Amazon’s new movie download service a go. However it appears that it is US only. I was all fired up to watch the Star Trek episode, ‘The Trouble with Tribbles’; I have never seen this episode but understood that the Tribbles were the inspiration for the Trumbles in the Commodore 64 version of Elite. I downloaded the Amazon Unbox player (in my Windows XP virtual machine running under Parallels) and was ready to hand over my $1.99USD when I was confronted with a checkout screen that wanted me to enter my U.S. state of residence. Dang!
Perhaps the international Amazon stores (Canada, Japan and various European countries) will get a locally-branded Unbox soon enough. This is unlikely to help us Down Under however. Apple and iTunes are no better; despite television content being available from the US iTunes store the only video content Aussies can purchase or download are video clips, Pixar shorts and movie previews.
Of course a key barrier preventing the sale of episodes of Lost, Desperate Housewives or whatever is the exclusive agreement that the local broadcaster has (in Australia’s case, channel 7 for both shows) to show them first. BitTorrent is an effective way to route around any such agreement for those with the know-how and willingness to break copyright. At the same time though it appears that local broadcasters have been quite unwilling to open their own content up to streaming or download, with the exception of the ABC (the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, our government-owned television and radio broadcaster) who have been increasingly dipping their toes into internet distribution. Thank goodness for The Chaser’s vodcast!
The key to opening the floodgates of movie and TV downloads might be solving the problem of how people actually watch it. Watching short clips or TV episodes on a laptop or video iPod is fine but does not cut it for feature-length films. The content has to get onto the CRT, LCD or plasma TV in the living room. Microsoft has an offering of sorts with Windows XP Media Center edition and the XBox 360 can act as a media extender (I don’t see any reference in the Amazon Unbox FAQ as to whether the high-resolution version of the downloaded videos can be watched on an XBox 360?). Intel keep threatening to actually come up with a coherent strategy surrounding Viiv that might result in some kind of set-top box. Ultimately Apple have the opportunity to really innovate in this space… will this coming Tuesday’s “It’s Showtime” Apple event reveal the announcement of a video-compatible Airport Express or a media-centre docking station for a Mac mini? If only iTunes movie downloads are unveiled without additional hardware a great number of people will be disappointed.
Maybe when it comes down to looking for true innovation in the distribution of video online, I will have to consider something more Democratic.