Digital Trends
Finland’s Nokia is continuing to push its XpressMusic platform forward, based on the idea that when people buy a phone they also buy a time-limited license to all the music they can download…and when the license expires, they can just buy a new phone. The latest addition is the 5530 XpressMusic, which also hooks in to social networking services like Facebook and MySpace and offers 4 GB of onboard memory for music and media storage.
For centuries people have hunted the lost, and probably mythical, city of Atlantis, which was located…well, somewhere. It supposedly vanished around 9000 BC, "in a single day and night of misfortune" according to the philosopher Plato.
At the start of this week, however, British tabloid newspaper The Sun said that aeronautical engineer Bernie Bamford had spotted a suspiciously square grid of lines in the Atlantic off the coast of West Africa, using Google Earth.
Was this, the newspaper wondered, the lost city of Atlantis?
No, Google responded, it wasn’t. Instead the grids were marks made by boats using sonar technology to collect data from the ocean floor.
It’s a sign of the changing times. Atlantic Records has said that its digital sales exceeded physical CD sales in the 12 months that ended on the 30th September, the Guardian reported.
Now part of the Warner Group, 51% of Atlantic’s revenues came from digital sales during the year, figures helped by its merger with the Elektra label in 2004.
Atlantic’s chairman and chief executive, Craig Kallman, said:
Do mobile services have the potential everyone believes? Google certainly hopes so. Last year it launched Android, its OS for mobiles, as well as offering a newsearch service for phones in the US. Now, with faith in the future, it’s launched that bigger and better (but actually more local) mobile search service in four other countries –Britain, Germany, France and Canada, as well as setting up engineering groups on both sides of the Atlantic to come up with new mobile applications, according to the BBC. Where people searching Google on mobiles had to be specific about search types or make their choices between images, websites or local results, the new searchshould offer the most relevant results from a number of different information sources. "Mobile search is more about seeking than browsing,” a Google spokesman said. "If you arelooking to buy a digital camera then you are not going to do all the research for it on your mobile phone – it’s not practical. But if you are looking for a restaurant and you are out and about, it’sas easy to access the number and address on your phone as it is to call a directory service." By remembering the recent locations where a user has searched, subsequent searches can beautomatically geared to that area, as Google believes that users tend to use mobile searches for information like restaurant and cinema listings.
Online music services might make it seem like every track that’s ever been recorded is now available for purchase and digital download—with each service claiming to offer millions of music tracks—but the simple fact is that vast collections of music are not available online in any form. Sometimes these are limited-release recordings on obscure labels, where master recordings may not be available, and many others are archival or historic recordings that may never make it online. But there are a few holdouts among popular performers, too: Metallica took a long time to come around to digital sales, and (of course) The Beatles catalog has yet to come online.
Folks who were hoping the iPhone hype might die down a bit following the item’s hectic June 29th launch might be in for a disappointment: according to a new survey (PDF) of U.S. residents from Lightspeed Research, nearly one third of respondents (32 percent) say they intend to purchase an Apple iPhone, with 8 percent planing to do so in the next three months, and 22 percent planning to do so in the future.
Google has added muscle to its Google Calendar application with Google Calendar Gallery. It’s a widget that allows users to import listings and events from other sites.
By giving Calendar users access to a numberof public listings of all kinds, Google’s modest aim is to turn the application into “the next best thing to a personal concierge.” With a single click, events or complete calendarscan be imported to the user’s calendar.
The Gallery feature has listings for TV (sorted by ZIP), sports and music, DVD releases, as well as more specialized offerings such as NBA games,Disney park events, concerts for Atlantic recording artists and a number of others, as well as festival schedules.
A new study has examined online usage and penetration in Europe, revealing that the average European spends 24 hours a month surfing the Web, and goes online 16 and a half days during the month. More than 122 million Europeans over the age of 15 go online every day. The survey was carried out by comScore to examine the online habits of people across the continent, and reveals just how pervasive online usage has become. Leading the pack for numbers online is Germany, where over 32 million people go online each month. But Brits were the most active online. At a peak almost 22 million of them were online during the day, spending over 34 hours online each month. Favorite online destinations were tracked for the survey, with Google the most popular, followed by Microsoft and Yahoo, showing that the big three’s dominance easily extends across the Atlantic. Internet penetration continues to grow, too. It’s highest in Holland, where over 80% of the population is online, and through Europe, only three countries (Russia, Spain, and Italy) are below 40%, with Russia lagging seriously, where only 11% of people go online. However, although the survey offers a good snapshot of European surfing habits, comScore Europe managing director Bob Ivins noted, “While the study reflects average net usage and penetration, 20% of users account for 60% of usage, with some people spending hundreds of hours online each month.” He predicted that the line between on- and offline will blur as more people take to watching television on their PCs. As a comparison with Europe, in the U.S. an average of 121 million people are online each day.
LucasArts and video game developer Day 1 Studios have announced a new high profile title for next generation systems including the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Fracture will combine "next-generation gameplay, an intriguing storyline and compelling characters" to create what may be another major hit for LucasArts.
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