More toys

:tongue Well I’ve done it again… A few months ago I found an article about a new Bluetooth toy for SonyEricsson mobile phones… Introducing the CAR-100

“You are what you drive. And the Bluetooth Car CAR-100 is an impressive statement. In addition it’s also an incredibly fun gadget. Use your Sony Ericsson Bluetooth mobile phone to charge and control the CAR-100 and you’ll have hours of fun. Gaming doesn’t need to be a piece of software anymore. “

I searched and searched but couldn’t find anywhere selling it, only a few sites taking pre-orders. A couple of days ago an email arrived saying it is now in stock. Credit card in hand I quickly placed an order, a day later it arrived!

SIP Phones the end of landlines?

:wink Ok so I have now tried the X-Lite SIP software phone, and I’ve got to say that the quality is excellent. I’ve registered with Free World Dialup (FWD) and so can now be called on my PC from any other FWD user for free.

Three devices that are (or soon to be) available that will complete my VoIP setup are: -

1. The Cisco ATA-186 Analogue Telephone Adapter connects directly into a broadbanded network and allows you to plug a standard telephone into it, allowing you to make free phone calls to anyone who is on the network.

2. Alternatively the IPP2000 USB Analogue Telephone Converter preforms the same function as the Cisco above but plugs into a PC (so a little cheaper)

3. The Vigor 2600V fully integrated VoIP broadband router

This way you can use a standard phone rather than having to put on a headset and sit in front of your pc to make a call.

iTunes vs P2P

:tongue So the windows version of iTunes has had 1 million downloads in 4 days and Mr. Jobs thinks that it’s a $100 million a year business…

I think the reason is that Apple / iPod / iTunes has been so successful is because it’s products and services are geared towards the affluent, middle aged, middle classes. With highly desirable (if over priced) hardware – £400 for an iPod, it is lifestyle technology, for the middle-aged trendies, those who don’t know enough about, or are too intimated by tactical communications from the RIAA to investigate P2P. Don’t get me wrong, I’m finding a way to justify the expense myself, and it’s only a matter of time…

This desirability combined with the fact that iTunes is independant from specific music suppliers, and so as a consumer, you would hope to be able to find lots of music which further increases the appeal. So they have managed to hit their audience perfectly. This means that they can sell to a (relatively) small but affluent group of internet users.

Sony who also make devices for the same demographic have failed in that their portable player is tied to their own DRM format only, has limited capacity, and they would probably (when they finally launch a service) end up tying the customer down to their own music catalogue.

All in Apple’s iPod and iTunes are a great product with a great service to support it…. but only if you can afford the device in the first place…

I think that cost is the problem in that there is an entire (younger) generation who are used to getting free content (children, students etc with little disposable income). I would suggest that they are a bigger proportion of internet users and music listeners. They are also likely to have pc’s in their bedrooms which they use as their own media centres (music and video playback). They are the ones without credit cards, and now are the ones taking advantage of the terabytes of data available on the P2P networks. iTunes has a million downloads in 4 days, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a million downloads an hour on kazaa lite and the like.

The concern for the industry must be that this generation is effectively going to be future target audience for iTunes and similar services, and when they get to the stage that they have disposable income and credit cards, what incentive is there to pay for the content when they already know and have used the free content available elsewhere. iTunes works because their demographic haven’t tried the alternatives, whereas the future audience has.

Flash Weather

:sun Nice link to a flash site that shows local weather information…

Personal Telephone Exchange

:blink Hmmm…. I have now been informed (thanks Dean) of some Linux based software (Asterisk) that allows you to use a broadband connection and become your own IP based telephone exchange. Hopefully cheap international calls and other services you end up paying through the nose for virtually nothing.