Remember Joost? Joost was created by the founders of Skype; and has now made a joint venture in China, teaming up with a Hong Kong-based company and will show content sourced from many production companies around China, including the state-run television CCTV.
Prepaid iTunes gift cards will no longer be on sale at several stores, including Coles, Myer, JB Hi-FI and Target as their payment provider to the iTunes gift cards Bill Express is now placed into administration.
Customers would have encountered problems as many checkouts were advising that vouchers were unavailable.
Bill Express had been the provider for iTunes gift cards since the introduction of the iTunes Store in Australia, but was placed into administration earlier this month.
However, other retailers like Big W, Dick Smith Electronics, Safeway and Woolworths are still selling the gift cards. This is because they use a different supplier - E-Pay.
The ABC has launched its rental and download service called ABC Shop Downloads, after an eight-month development period. However, there are just a few things wrong with it - and it has nothing to do with the content, which consists of current hits like the Chaser to vintage, archived programming like Aunty Jack.
For most programs, you can rent programs for unlimited viewing during a seven day period for $2.95. However, it will offer several programs as free downloads for testing purposes. You will, however, still need to register your credit card for the free downloads, but they say it won’t result in charges.
The service was developed by Hyro and uses Windows Media technologies and Microsoft’s Flash competitor Silverlight. And since it uses Windows Media and its DRM, you will not be able to play anything on a Mac or Linux computers except previews.
But, they are planning to move once Silverlight 2 is out for the Mac, and will be using PlayReady later in the year.
Yes, and it sucks - and I would not bother to try it; unless you want to see Chaser recaps and vintage ABC programs. This is not a review - I have not reviewed it, but based it with information made available from many sources.
Apple is currently in discussions with music companies to allow customers to have unlimited access to the entire iTunes music library in exchange for paying a premium for its iPod and iPhone devices (presumably for the life of the device).
The plan sounds similar to Universal’s Total Music Plan in which the cost of music is embedded into the music player itself. Based on the wording of this article, it seems Apple’s version of the plan adds the cost on top of the iPod or iPhone.
The negotiations are currently being held up due to disagreements in pricing. Apple is reportedly only offering $20 per device, while Nokia is playing almost $80/handset for a similar plan. Other possibilities appear to include a subscription based service for iPhone users ($7-8/month, for example) with the capability to keep up to 40-50 tracks/year even after the subscription lapses.
Historically, the Financial Times has been a reliable source of information with early details of Apple’s plans to introduce iTunes Movie rentals well ahead of its release,
Digital Radio will be rolled out across the nation starting next year, after long-running tests were held around the country that allowed listeners to rewind and pause live coverage and introduce new elements like images and song information.
The ABC and SBS will open their signals at the same time, with a phase out date for the old FM radio stations is yet to be established as there are no plans to end the current system. However, video content will not be allowed to prevent competition against the major television networks.
Stations who have signed up to the new radio stations include the Nova, Vega, Today and Mix Networks; ABC’s Classic FM and DiG; SBS Radio; and from Sydney: 2GB, 2CH, 2KY, 2SM, WSFM and 2UE.
In order to listen, you will need to buy a digitally equipped wireless receiver in order to listen.
Apple has quietly released a 1.1.5 firmware upgrade for the iPod Touch. The 1.1.5 firmware remains a free upgrade path for firmware 1.1.4 users who chose not to upgrade to 2.0 ($9.95US).
From what we can tell upon first blush, there are no major (or even minor) changes that are easily detectable, which indicates that perhaps Apple has merely tweaked some of the underlying architecture. After all, there were a number of security updates included in iPhone/iPod touch firmware 2.0, so those may also be integrated into iPod touch 1.1.5 as well.
The 2.0 upgrade was released over the weekend and brings support for MobileMe, Exchange, 3rd Party Applications (App Store) and more. Based on early reports, firmware 1.1.5 appears to add no new features but may improve the speed and stability of existing applications. The update is available through iTunes.
Meanwhile, it appears that Apple is currently testing version 2.0.1 of the iPhone and iPod Touch firmware.
All of Australia’s broadcasting corporations, including the public broadcasters and the regional affiliates, have announced a new initiative to follow the footsteps of similar plans in New Zealand and the UK, Freeview.
The ‘Freeview’ initiative was started in the UK to help drive the take-up of free-to-air digital television in Australia, with the ABC’s Director of Television, Kim Dalton, will chair the organization in Australia. In New Zealand, almost of all of their stations are apart of their version of ‘Freeview’; and it has exceeded expectations with installed receivers in over 100,000 homes.
In Australia, Freeview will contain all the free-to-air stations and their respective HD channels. As well, it will air ABC2, SBS World News Channel and the commercial stations’ new SD channels - bringing to to 15 channels.
Netflix, a US movie rental service, is set to stream its movies and TV Shows on the Xbox 360 in the fall, meaning that many subscribers of the service will now be able to watch the 10,000 movies and TV shows in their collection.
This comes to its new Live Party feature, coming to the Xbox 360 soon. This means you can watch the same movie as eight other people, or watch a movie from one of your friends - meaning that you can basically watch the same crap your friends are watching.
But, we should also note that Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings sits on the board of directors over at Microsoft. Though he claims it is not related.
Sooo, you want to smash your iPhone open? Well this is exacly what two guys done on youtube. Really all you have to do is get a big hammer and break it. So why don’t you try it yourself? Link.
For animation studios, computers need to contain high quality chips and high quality components or else your animation would look crap. Upgrading, however, is a different story - as they want to get the “next-big” thing.
And taking that up is Dreamworks Animation and the have signed a deal to replace their AMD-powered computers to brand new Intel-powered computers from HP. HP provided the now-obsolete computers powered by AMD chips.
The chips will be used to help the studio to produce films n stereoscopic 3-D. The first film that will be using the new computers will be “Monsters vs. Aliens”, who will make its debut on March 27, 2009. The financial deal were not disclosed.
