The unveiling of the first cell phone with Google's Android operating system made the most noise this week. But news about new and improved online music services also played loudly in the background (as did the ongoing U.S. economic crisis).
T-Mobile USA and Google on Tuesday unveiled the first phone powered by Google's open platform to much New York fanfare. The phone, previously code-named the HTC Dream, is now called the T-Mobile G1. It goes on sale in the U.S. on T-Mobile's network starting October 22 for $179 with a two-year service contract.
T-Mobile USA's parent company Deutsche Telekom will also be selling the device starting in November in the United Kingdom through its T-Mobile service. And the phone will be available throughout the rest of Europe via T-Mobile starting in the first quarter of 2009.
By most accounts, the G1, from a hardware perspective isn't a game changer. The device, which has a full QWERTY keyboard that slides out from a touch-screen exterior, looks similar to other devices on the market, such as the T-Mobile Sidekick or Verizon's LG Voyager.
But inside, the Google Android software offers an improved mobile Web experience, making it a viable rival to Apple's popular iPhone (click here for comparisons between the iPhone and the G1) and a winner over other smartphones. Of course, until other partners in the Google-spawned, 34-member Open Handset Alliance bring their Android products to market, the G1 is shouldering a lot of ambitions.
Incidentally, Google has since released the software developer kit that will allow programmers to create applications that will run on Android phones. Click here for more details on the G1's offerings, or here for a roundup of all of the week's Android news.
The music plays
One feature in the G1 that got a bit overshadowed in the launch hype is the inclusion of Amazon.com's DRM-free MP3 store, which comes preloaded on each Android phone. That's bound to catch on once users start to realize that--unlike with iTunes--you can put songs downloaded from the store on any mobile device.
Also big news for online music aficionados this week was MySpace's much-anticipated debut of MySpace Music, which many see as the official stand-off between media mogul Rupert Murdoch and Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
MySpace Music, backed by all four of the largest recording companies, represents the most significant challenge to Apple--at least in terms of firepower--in some time. This is the first time the top labels have all joined in taking a stake in an iTunes competitor.
As with the Android phone, MySpace Music songs come from Amazon in the DRM-free MP3 format.
But among the many challenges the service faces is that it offers no hardware solution. Apple can provide everything a music listener needs--hardware and software. Also, while MySpace has long been an Internet concert hall, where bands went to market their wares to the Web, neither MySpace nor its owner News Corp. have much experience in music retail; consider that Apple has zoomed past Wal-Mart to music retail's top spot. Some critics have said that something like MySpace Music should have been in place on the site years ago.
Also in music news this week, mobile phone company Sony Ericsson announced Tuesday that it will launch a music service called PlayNow Plus, which will feature unlimited music downloads, also from all four of the major labels.
PlayNow Plus will compete with Comes with Music, the music service launched by Sony Ericsson rival Nokia earlier this year. And out of the gate, PlayNow can offer a more complete music library than Nokia's offering. EMI has yet to join Comes with Music.
Later in the week we also learned that Universal Music Group, the largest of the major recording companies, plans to launch a "Hulu-like" video portal.
The new venture would offer professionally produced music videos as well as other original programming that features the label's artists. The Killers, Mariah Carey, Kanye West, and Amy Winehouse are just a few of the company's acts.
The effort, sources say, allows the the label to squeeze more revenue out of music videos and offer artists a new and more polished platform to display their talents than what's available online now. And it could help draw larger numbers of premium advertisers to music videos. Right now, YouTube has become the most prominent online venue for music videos, and all four of the major labels have licensed music to the video-sharing site; YouTube's troubles at attracting top-tier advertisers are well chronicled.
And for those with an eye for indies, Muxtape founder Justin Ouelette this week explained that the bureaucracy of the music industry was just too much for him to deal with, which is why he took down the playlist creation Web site that became a hipster craze earlier this year. The site will be relaunching soon, he said, but strictly as a service for independent bands to share their own music.
Also of note
Microsoft's Windows 7 won't include built-in programs for e-mail, photo editing, and movie making...Social news site Digg has raised $28.7 million in a Series C venture round...Mad Men star joined company executives in the launch of the "APT by Yahoo" ad platform...Oracle entered the hardware market with a storage server to ride shotgun with database intelligence...and Microsoft has had to delay Windows Mobile 7, a much anticipated update to its cell phone operating system.
The iPhone 3G is proving to be a gold mine for Apple, but some users feel like they are getting the shaft.
Apple has raked in about $30 million in sales of iPhone applications in the one month since the company opened its App Store and brought the iPhone 3G onto the market, according to CEO Steve Jobs. And Jobs sees big numbers ahead, if Apple continues its current pace of selling an average of $1 million worth of applications per day. At that rate, Apple would reap up to $360 million by the first anniversary of the launch of the iPhone 3G and the App Store.
Jobs also confirmed the existence of the so-called "kill switch" capability, following last week's ruckus over early reports of just such a function. The intent behind the capability is high-minded, Jobs said. Apple would need it in case a malicious program inadvertently were to be distributed to iPhones via the App Store.
Something Apple isn't too keen to talk about is the widespread complaints about the iPhone 3G's reception that have spread across the Internet in the month since Apple and AT&T released the successor to the original iPhone. The companies insist that nothing is wrong, but the complaints have been mounting through e-mails, water-cooler discussions, and message boards on Apple's own Web site; some iPhone 3G users are having trouble connecting, and staying connected, to the 3G networks in their areas.
Affected users say the iPhone 3G will switch between 3G networks and EDGE networks even when the device is sitting still. They'll lose reception in the middle of a call while traveling through a 3G-rich environment. Friends with other 3G phones on AT&T's network are not reporting similar problems. And the issues don't appear to be confined to AT&T's network: iPhone 3G users in other countries report similar problems with their new phones.
Repeated attempts over the past week to get Apple and AT&T to even acknowledge the uproar--if not the issues specifically--proved pointless. Apple didn't even attempt to answer the questions, deferring inquiries to AT&T, which declared that there were absolutely no widespread problems with the iPhone 3G on its network.
A financial analyst believes Apple's iPhone 3G reception issues may be the result of some faulty chips. Richard Windsor of Nomura published a research note singling out the iPhone 3G's chipset, made by Infineon, as the probable culprit for the reception problems. The dropped calls, service interruptions, and abrupt network switches experienced by iPhone 3G users reminded Windsor of similar complaints five years ago, when 3G phones were first launched in Europe.
A Swedish wireless researcher who investigated the iPhone 3G claims that the phone is not as sensitive to 3G signals as other phones. Claes Beckman said that the iPhone 3G's nominal sensitivity is below that of published standards for 3G phones, meaning the phone drops the connection with a 3G tower more quickly than other 3G phones as it moves away from the tower and averages slower data speeds when connected.
The good news, however, is that Apple reportedly believes it can fix the problems with a software upgrade. Some have suggested the problems would have to be solved through some sort of recall, but Apple and Infineon are said to be testing a software update that could be released perhaps as early as the end of this month.
In the chips
Intel has developed technology that lets people remotely power up their computers and retrieve files across an Internet connection. The technology, called Remote Wake, will work only on PCs that use a recently introduced chipset from Intel and requires new software to be loaded onto the PC.
Programs that let people remotely access files on their PCs are already on the market, but those computers must be left turned on to allow access to files. Remote Wake will allow access when people put their PCs in "sleep" mode, thereby conserving energy.
As part of the program, Intel has teamed up with JaJah, a California-based voice over IP start-up, to allow JaJah users to receive calls on their PCs when their computers are in "sleep mode." The deal with Intel also means that JaJah technology will come already configured into certain PCs so that users don't have to download any software to make Web calls.
This makes it different from other PC-based IP telephony services, like Skype, which require users to download a software client. JaJah provides users with local phone numbers and routes calls over the Internet to allow users to call any fixed or mobile phone anywhere in the world for a fraction of what they would normally pay.
Intel also released a specification revision for next-generation USB 3.0 technology that resolves a dispute with Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, which had threatened to develop their own USB 3.0 standard.
USB 3.0--also known as SuperSpeed USB--is a next-generation high-speed connection standard due in 2009. It is significant not only because all future PCs and devices will use connectors based on the standard but because it will offer 10 times the speed of USB 2.0--used in virtually all PCs introduced in the last few years--or roughly 5 gigabits per second.
Games get gold and gripes
The Olympic Games in Beijing is proving to be a hit in the workplace. Traffic to Olympics-related Web sites soared Monday, the first full workday after the official opening of the games Friday. More than 2 million people visited the video section of NBCOlympics.com, up nearly 140 percent from Sunday when the site had about 858,000 visitors, according to Nielsen. Overall visits to the site increased 40 percent to 4.6 million compared with Sunday's 3.3 million.
As big of a hit as the Olympics are both online and on TV, the video restrictions NBC is placing on more popular sports is fueling frustration for many viewers, such as Rafe Needleman, my colleague at Webware:
In nearly every U.S. household, the best place to watch a sporting event is on the big TV in the family room. You have a better screen, more comfortable chairs, and a video feed that's fluid and detailed. So why isn't NBC showing the videos live on the Web and shunting people over to their couches for the viewing experience we all want, anyway?
NBC and its local stations--each of which has its own Web site--could, in theory, create a combined TV-Web schedule or experience for its viewers. The right combination of live big-screen events and Web-based packages for background and catch-up could be more compelling than either experience by itself.
Meanwhile, Ina Fried, my CNET News colleague, takes issue with NBC's execution of its online video content:
At first I found the online commentary helpful, right up to the point at which it told me that a particular (softball) player flied out a good 30 seconds before it appeared on video. NBC officials assured me that wouldn't happen. Moments ago, they told me Crystl Bustos would hit a home run just before she did. To avoid a repeat, I turned off the commentary.
It's one of several issues I have with the coverage. Unlike others, I'm not dinging NBC for saving a few events for the TV coverage. To me the real benefit of online video is to be able to see the events that are not and would not be on TV.
Some 35 million people in the U.S. watched in awe as China put on what some say was the best-ever Olympics opening ceremony ever. The crowd in attendance was also treated to what may be the world's largest Blue Screen of Death on one of the stadium's projectors.
Some eagle-eyed spectators caught it on camera, clearly showing the error message usually associated with serious software issues or hardware problems in a computer running Windows. Thankfully, this didn't mar the otherwise excellent show. Most people would have missed it with the explosion of sight and sound around them anyway.
Also of note
A federal judge let stand a temporary restraining order preventing three Massachusetts Institute of Technology students from discussing or disclosing their research into security vulnerabilities in the payment system for the local subway system...Fire Eagle, Yahoo's formerly experimental geolocation platform, is officially opening up to all users, and several companies are announcing products that work with it...Scientists say they are a step closer to developing materials that will render people and other objects invisible.
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