Okay, all you Spotify coveters who say you can’t wait to get the much hyped app on your iPhone, here’s your chance: Pony up $15 a month and you can get Rhapsody’s app, which does exactly the same thing.
One of the hottest start-ups of 2009 had to fend off investors this summer–even if many people don’t understand exactly what the service does or who is supposed to use it. Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley explains.
The Kindle gets plenty of attention, but the e-book reader is still a niche device. When will that change? When it gets cheaper. A lot cheaper, says a new Forrester study.
Napster says it has an awesome new iPhone app that will let you stream music directly to your phone–just like the one Apple approved for Spotify, the superhyped service you can’t even get in the U.S. yet. But Napster says you won’t be able to use its app anytime soon, and it blames the big bad music labels.
If you’re out of town and on the move and still want to watch your favorite baseball team, Major League Baseball is about to make you a very interesting offer: The ability to watch a game streamed live to your iPhone, for 99 cents a pop. That will make baseball the first pro sports league to sell mobile access to live games on an on-demand, a la carte basis.
Apple’s long-awaited entry into the Chinese phone market is finally here. Or at least it will be by the end of the year: China Unicom says it has struck a three-year deal with Apple to sell iPhones in China that will kick in during the fourth quarter.
Here’s another company choosing a side in the coming e-book war: Irex Technologies, a Dutch company that plans on selling a Kindle-like reader in the U.S. this fall, has allied itself with Barnes & Noble’s online bookstore. Earlier this summer, would-be Kindle rival Plastic Logic announced a similar pact. And in other “e-book reader made by someone other than Amazon” news, Sony has a press conference scheduled for tomorrow.
Sure, your iPhone may be cool. But can it turn your oven on, against your will? That feature, apparently, is only available on certain Sony Ericsson models.
From the “that makes sense” file: Smartphones like the iPhone and the BlackBerry now account for almost one in three phones sold in the U.S. And if they keep getting better and cheaper–remember when iPhones sold for $600?–that share is only going to increase.
Flickr is one of the Web’s most popular photo-sharing sites. Flickr users’ camera of choice? The iPhone–even though the image isn’t great, the flash is nonexistent, and the only way to zoom is to move your hand closer.
Time to get the rumor mill kicked into high gear: Multiple music industry sources say Apple executives have told them the company is planning one of its famed keynote events for the week of Sept. 7. But in true Apple fashion, the company has been noncommittal about the exact date of the event and what it will be showing off.
BlackBerry’s new Tour has garnered fairly positive reviews from the geek press. But you know who really loves it? Oldsters in the 35-49 age bracket. Or at least that’s what a new online brand survey says.
Novelist Nicholson Baker loves books, but not Jeff Bezos’s device: “Amazon is very good at selling things. It isn’t so good, to date anyway, at making things…fortunately, if you want to read electronic books there’s another way to go. Here’s what you do. Buy an iPod Touch.”
Everyone knows that one of the iPhone’s best selling points is the amazing array of apps developers make for the handset. But if you still need convincing, check out this “Daily Show” clip, which highlights some of the phone’s most popular programs.
Here’s another set of customers for AT&T: People who buy e-book readers from Plastic Logic, the would-be Kindle killer due out next year.
Privately held Plastic Logic says it will rely on AT&T to supply its gadgets with a wireless connection, in the same way that Sprint is the network provider for Amazon’s Kindle.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
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