Rattleblog: Tales from the blogosphere

29-08-2007

by Damien Mulley

The latest update from Rattleblog is music themed, with talks of new distribution deals and the unshackling of digital downloads.

Let's get this over with right away. All the news outlets are talking about it. The iPhone has been unlocked. Engadget reports the fact that just software alone now will unlock your iPhone. This comes hot on the heels of news that a school student also unlocked the iPhone to work on any compatible phone network, though his technique took two hours of hardware hacking to do it.

Engadget also reported that you can now play the old-style NES games on the iPhone using the touchscreen.

Staying with Apple, uber-tech-investor Fred Wilson points out that good things might come from the partnership of MTV and online music service Rhapsody. Rhapsody has been getting great reviews but so far has not built up an audience strong enough to challenge iTunes; the MTV deal could make it a credible force and might be enough to increase competition in the Apple dominated area.

Meanwhile, Universal, which was once great with Apple, is now going ahead with its suggestion of killing off Digital Rights Management (DRM). It won't be offering DRM-free songs on iTunes, instead Universal will be partnering with Amazon.

Staying with Universal, while it seems to be making all the threatening noises to Apple and taking lawsuits against various video sites, video website Veoh has gotten a bit sick of all its threats and turned the tables on Universal by suing it. The new David and Goliath battle seems to be happening in the courts now.

In other DRM news, Google recently killed its pay video service and when it did all the videos purchased died too as the DRM server was also shut down. The move instantly brought a backlash, and Google, who thought that offering vouchers to Google Checkout would be enough to keep former customers happy, realised that people wanted their money back instead. The web giant is still having issues when it comes to dealing with people and not machines.

Staying with Google, it seems customers of its newly purchased communications company -- GrandCentral -- were miffed when they got told their 'number for life', which is what the service offers, was in fact a number for a few months. The sales pitch for the service was that there would be no need to ever reprint your business cards; however, about 500 customers had to do just that when Google changed their phone numbers.

Lastly with Google, it finally pointed out that the rumour that a black-screened Google would be good for the environment could be completely wrong. It was falsely reported on a website that white backgrounds on websites used up more energy, when in fact the choice of colour did not affect energy usage on most modern computers. We wonder though will users go back, once they've tried the non-white version?

In Yahoo news, Bear Sterns has strongly warned that in order to keep momentum going, Yahoo is going to have to figure out a plan for social networking and tightly integrate it into its web empire. Yahoo, being the most people-friendly of the web goliaths, would be best suited to making social networking a prime business segment for the company. So far though it seems unable to acquire a social networking firm or build its own service.

In "Oh Please Not Another Social Network" news, Nokia has entered the game with its Mosh service, according to Smartmobs, but most people seem to be underwhelmed by it.

Nokia too seems to have gotten a kick from mobile partner Orange,which this week made lots of noise about its new music service. The timing, just before Nokia's own big music service announcement, was not welcomed one bit.

And finally, despite the Australian Government spending AUD84 million on a content filtering system for parents to install on their kids' computers, one student cracked the system within 30 minutes making a mockery of it all. When the Government issued a fix for the crack, the same kid cracked it in another 40 minutes. Legendary Irish hero Cuchulainn couldn't stop the sea, and it seems you can't stop a teenager from accessing porn.

Damien Mulley is an Irish blogger and works as a technical writer in Cork.