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Free music by WE7

by on May 29, 2007 in Uncategorized

While the terms “free” and “legal” aren’t usually used together to describe the business of music downloading, a new platform called We7 has developed a system that does just that. Currently in beta, We7 gives brands the chance to communicate with users by “grafting” a short (around 10 seconds) audio or video ad to the front end of the file. Custom tailored to each user through demographics and preferences supplied by the user, these ads in turn provide revenue to the artists. And after about four weeks, users are given the option to have the track ad-free. Users can play their DRM-free files on any device, and can share these files via We7 with whomever they’d like.

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TV as thin as a paper

by on May 28, 2007 in Uncategorized

Sony has developed a new protoype OLED display that is extremely thin, flexible, and capable of displaying a full 16.7 million colors (eight bits per channel). The display is 2.5″ (6cm) across, a mere 0.01″ (0.3mm) thick, and it has a resolution of 120×160, which works out to pixel density of 80 pixels per inch—the world’s highest definition, according to Sony. To make the display bendable, Sony combined organic LED (OLED) and organic thin film transistor (TFT) technologies.

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Steve Ballmer interview on iPhone and my new toy

by on May 1, 2007 in Uncategorized

I just came across this interesting interview with Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer. He talks about the iPhone (and that it wont make a huge difference in the business market) and other stuff.

That brings me to my thought on the iPhone and Apple’s strategy on the business side (not that Apple would care in any way:-) ).

First off, I am a big Apple fan and I like their Hardware and their OS a lot. Some years ago, I felt that Apple should have brought out a MacOS X for the Intel chip, now that they have done so, I still don’t understand why they don’t come out with a MacOS X for “the rest of the Intel world”, meaning not only Apple Hardware. I understand that Apple wants to convert users to the Apple Hardware, and in the long run will succeed with it, but they could gain some momentum if they would release a MacOS X which would run everywhere right now.

There is also another factor, that I think Apple is badly missing, and it is the Business side of computing. Sure, there is a Office for the Mac and in this year there will be the Intel Version of it as well (and I can tell you it will be fast and nice (I am a MS beta tester and use Entourage 2008 right now)), but that it just not enough. Now, Apple came out with a iPhone, looks nice and sure will sell, but from an aspect of a office user, a IMAP access will just not do it. Today’s business users want to have access to their corporate email, calendars and contacts. This is something that RIM with their Blackberry and Microsoft with their Exchange Server services have realized. Constant access to any information everywhere is the key and if Apple wants to enter this market they will have to allow their users and hardware to talk directly to the mentioned services.

Nevertheless, one can use today’s business solution with a Mac already. This leads me to our setup we have here.

We got a Exchange Server 2003 installed, that handles our eMail, Calendar and Contacts for the Office. Since SP2 of the Exchange Server Microsoft features the Push-eMail functionality. Thus one can use a Active Sync enabled Phone to deliver eMails directly to mobile devices. Now we just installed a Blackberry Enterprise Server so that Blackberry users can access the Exchange Server, also. As a Mac user, we have Entourage installed which allows us direct access to the Exchange Server. This setup works great. Adding a calendar event within Entourage, syncs it within minutes with the mobile device and vice versa. Same goes with the eMail.

Regarding the Blackberry, I personally switched to a Blackberry device as well. The Windows Mobile device I used to use, drove me crazy. Windows sometimes refused to sync correctly with the Exchange Server, sometimes I could not pick up calls, in the end I had to reboot the device every day just to get it working correctly. I hope this will now be over with the use of the Blackberry device.

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