After making its appearance at Verizon earlier today, Sprint also announced that the BlackBerry Curve 8530 smartphone is coming soon to its lineup as well. Potential customers can register now to receive updates on the handset. Preloaded apps are the primary difference for Sprint's Curve 8530 and include the Sprint Music Store, Sprint TV and Pandora radio.
Google at a Los Angeles event tonight unveiled its widely expected advanced music search feature. The addition (a video of which is available below) automatically parses regular searches for music from all four major labels and automatically filters it by artist, album or track; users can then either sample or buy the tracks through Lala or MySpace's iLike. Those who use recommendation-based Internet streaming service like iMeem, Pandora or Rhapsody can also find related music.
MySpace has expanded its music-oriented services to include a new Artist Dashboard utility and Music Video portal, while users can now download tracks directly from iTunes, Amazon or Jamster. The new Music Video hub provides recommendations, browsing tools, and a new video player with "Buy" buttons for ads.
Google's rumored Audio music service will be less controversial than rumored at first based on two follow-up leaks. Multiple contacts tell Reuters that it will automatically provide players for MySpace-owned iLike or Lala when users search for songs on Google and provide at least the option of playing a sample or else buying the MP3. EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner are all believed to have linked their music to the service.
Specs and a video of the recently introduced Acer Liquid smartphone have been leaked, thanks to GPSandCo. The Android-powered device will be Acer's first with the Google-developed OS, and also its most powerful application, as the handset sports Qualcomm's 1GHz Snapdragon CPU. The video reveals the Liquid will be available in black, red or white and that it sports a 5-megapixel camera.
T-Mobile this afternoon set out official launch details for the Motorola Cliq, its newest Android phone and Motorola's first touchscreen smartphone. Pre-orders for existing users should start on October 19th while the phone should ultimately arrive in stores on November 2nd; those who order in advance may get the phone early, T-Mobile said. The handset itself is priced at the same $200 on contract as its tougher competition, including the iPhone and BlackBerry Tour, though it's more expensive than the $150 prices of the Palm Pre or T-Mobile's own myTouch 3G.
Samsung has launched the Corby S3650, its first touchscreen phone aimed towards young mobile users. As such, there is support for Facebook, Twitter and MySpace online social networks. The color scheme of the device also reflects its target audience, with bright yellow, pink, white and orange as color choices for most of the outer shell.
Facebook is looking to acquire Spotify in what may represent a significant change in the way listeners get music, a rumor claims. While Facebook has supposedly been in talks to buy the unlimited music streaming service for the past year, TechCrunch has heard that the recent MySpace buyout of iLike has stepped up the pressure to take action in the past week. Those associated with the company have lately been expressing public interest in the company, including compliments to Spotify from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in a status update and investor Li Ka-Shing putting money into Spotify alongside the social network.
MySpace this afternoon confirmed rumors by making clear its intention to buy iLike. The deal, unofficially thought to be worth about $20 million, will give MySpace's social network control over the music service, which today lets users play and share song recommendations on sites like Facebook and also has its own fledgling downloadable music store. Existing staff at iLike should remain in the project and at their current Seattle location.
MySpace may be close to upending the music market with an acquisition of iLike, a rumor this morning suggests. More than one TechCrunch source has the social network giant buying the music recommendation and playback app for about $20 million in a deal that could be made public later this week. The purported agreement would be separate from the MySpace Music download and streaming service available today.
Sprint today gave little time for rumors to spread by formally launching the Samsung Reclaim. The carrier's first turn at a green phone is made from 80 percent recyclable material and comes in suitably recyclable packaging. Similarly, the phone is free of toxic chemicals like BFR or PVC and abandons the paper manual in favor of a web version.
AT&T today jumped at Motorola's messaging phone lines with the addition of the Karma QA1. Like the Hint, it has an unusual, squat design with a QWERTY keyboard that slides out vertically instead of horizontally; the form factor is supported by front-end links to Facebook and MySpace as well as IM chat on multiple networks. In an unusual turn for this class of phone, the Karma also has a native 3.5mm headset jack and microSDHC for music listening.
Wireless provider Sprint on Monday has announced it has added the LG LX370 and Samsung Exclaim handsets to its lineup. The former is an entry-level vertical slider while the Exclaim is a dual-slider that open horizontally to reveal a QWERTY keyboard or vertically to offer a numeric keypad. Either connects to Sprint's 3G network to access many online features and services, including social networking sites through customizable shortcuts. A 2-megapixel camera and Bluetooth are also shared by the two handsets.
Sprint's rumored dual slider messaging phone, the Samsung Lucello, has received a more concrete name and launch date courtesy of a leak. The device is now identified by SprintGurus as the M550 Exclaim and, as promised, has a user interface focused heavily on social networking: the front menu has quick access to the web and Google searches but also Facebook and MySpace. It should also come in blue and pink models and ship on June 7th, roughly and unusually at the same time as the Palm Pre.
Samsung will soon begin shipping its Tocco Lite touchscreen handset in the UK. With an emphasis on lowering the price of entry, the Lite utilizes the company's TouchWiz user interface and has GPRS/EDGE data network support. There are newfound social media features, including touchscreen shortcuts to Facebook, MySpace and YouTube from the 3-inch screen. Uploading photos taken by the Lite's 3.2-megapixel smile- and face-detecting camera to said social networking is also made simple, and users can tag photos of their contacts.
T-Mobile this morning finally confirmed the existence of its 2009 update to the Sidekick LX. The new model is the first ever to support 3G and draws on HSPA to allow both faster web browsing as well as to enable video streaming directly through the browser as well as Internet radio and video uploading. GPS is also new and exploits Danger's connection to Microsoft to let users search for nearby locations (including fuel and movies) using Live Search.
Motorola today ended speculation by launching the QA4 Evoke, one of its very few full-touchscreen phones not originally designed for the Asian market and its closest current rival to the iPhone. Pitched as a social networking device, the phone's 2.8-inch display is used as a large view for a full HTML browser, RSS feeds and shortcuts to MySpace and YouTube but becomes a landscape QWERTY keyboard when the phone is tilted on its side. A slide-out number pad streamlines calling.
Music from iTunes and other download stores now makes up exactly one third of all music sold in the US, according to NPD Group findings. The jump comes after the number of buyers climbed from 28 million in 2007 to 36 million in 2008 and these new shoppers bought more tracks. By contrast, CD sales have continued to plummet and saw about 17 million Americans stop buying CDs altogether in 2008, resulting in a drop for CD sales of about 19 percent.
Nokia today bolstered the Symbian Foundation with the addition of multiple key new members. HP, MySpace and SanDisk lead the new sign-ons and each have their own different reasons for joining the open-source mobile OS project. HP hopes to improve its support for managing Symbian; MySpace hopes to further refine its MySpace app for the phone throuhg the open code; SanDisk hopes to improve the use of storage for multimedia apps. None of the three has given clues as to how soon products will appear that take advantage of Foundation membership.
There is no universal policy in place against Facebook access in Apple Stores, investigation is said to show. Reports began to circulate on Friday that Apple was imposing a complete ban on Facebook, as a means of deterring people from loitering for the sole purpose of Internet access. Although bans on Facebook (as well as MySpace) have been put into place in Richmond and Los Angeles stores, Palo Alto and Washington DC locations continue to allow social networking sites.
Danger and its hardware partners may be preparing a major update to the Sidekick LX that turns it into an advanced media and social networking device, a survey given to a Hiptop3 reader suggests. When asked about smartphones, the reader says she was reportedly presented with an image that shows an Sidekick LX 2009 that centers on an unusually sharp, 854x480 3.2-inch display. It would also have other hardware firsts for Sidekicks, including 3G data, GPS with turn-by-turn navigation and a 3.2-megapixel camera with both flash and video capture.
Pure Digital today launched its response to a recent wave of ultra-simple HD camcorders from newer rivals with the launch of the Flip Mino HD. The camera matches the 720p widescreen, fixed zoom capture of most of its opponents but opts for a built-in 4GB of flash memory rather than the SD cards of others. This gives it an hour of storage for HD out of the box in the Mino HD's native MPEG-4 format, which also makes most videos relatively portable both to web video and to video editing tools, including iMovie. Pure estimates about two hours of battery life with the extra demand from the improved footage.
MySpace is considering the possibility of producing its own portable media device to match its Music service, the social network's co-founder Chris DeWolfe has noted at the Web 2.0 conference. While non-committal, DeWolfe says hardware from MySpace is "possible" and that the company's focus "right now" is on its just-launched commercial music format, which is available either as a free, ad-subsidized stream through the web or through paid MP3 downloads.
A previously hinted-at Facebook music service could be true after all, a claim made by VentureBeat suggests. Previously discredited, a now supported rumor asserts that the social network is allegedly planning to team up with a partner such as iLike, imeem, Lala or RealNetworks' Rhapsody to offer a way of at least streaming full songs over artist pages or those friends who bring up songs in the regular Facebook news feed. The service would potentially let users buy downloads, though whether this would involve the partner or simply linking to a third party such as Amazon or iTunes is unknown.
The developers of Flock have announced v2.0 of the browser, which is launching today across multiple platforms. Flock is oriented towards social networking sites, and thus has built-in functions for sites such as Digg, Flickr and Twitter. The second edition adds support for MySpace through the MySpace Data Availability platform, which lets users track contacts via the People Sidebar, and browse or share photos, links and videos.
MySpace tonight kicked off the formal appearance of MySpace Music, its first commercial music service. The feature takes advantage of existing hooks for streaming music to offer on-demand, ad-subsidized playback of full tracks from the website but also lets members purchase unprotected MP3s of songs through an Amazon MP3-supported system with similar prices; the normal MySpace Flash player now includes links to buy songs or add them to a playlist.
Research in Motion continued a string of announcements today by revealing that the BlackBerry would get extra media and Internet features through a trio of new deals. In addition to the earlier TiVo deal, RIM today said that Internet radio outlet Slacker would release an app that streams audio from both its free, limited-control service and its paid Premium subscription service. Users will have the ability to favorite or turn down tracks and skip a varying number of times depending on their service level. The download itself should be free and will appear in October.
Better known for its audio gear, Clarion has announced the ClarionMiND, a forthcoming GPS unit. Unlike most such systems however the MiND is also designed to operate as a mobile Internet device (MID), a category currently dominated by Apple's iPhone; the MiND connects primarily through Wi-Fi, which enables web browsing as well as the use of special MySpace and YouTube apps. Unlike the iPhone, though, cellular access requires tethering through a Bluetooth 2.0 connection.
The upcoming MySpace Music service may ultimately be run by another major online music store, say alleged sources for TechCrunch. The social networking site is described as most likely picking Amazon MP3 to handle the commerce behind the store but is also said to be entertaining offers from other companies, including Apple and RealNetworks. No commitments have yet been made.
Yahoo is still entertaining the prospect of a full deal with AOL even in the wake of ending talks with Microsoft, alleged sources tell the Wall Street Journal. Those claimed to be aware of negotiations say AOL's parent company Time Warner is still interested in handing AOL to Yahoo in exchange for a minority stake in the search engine company. The talks aren't said to be as in-depth as when Yahoo still faced the threat of a hostile Microsoft takeover.
Microsoft is actively exploring bringing other companies into a deal that would dismantle Yahoo as it's known today, says the Wall Street Journal. The newspaper cites anonymous sources aware of discussions who say Microsoft is still interested in buying just Yahoo's search business but has asked both News Corp. and Time Warner about merging what would be left of Yahoo into one of their respective properties, such as MySpace or AOL. A meeting between Microsoft and Yahoo was scheduled for Monday but canceled because Microsoft has so far been unsuccessful in lining up a partner, according to the report.
Pure Digital on Wednesday is launching its anticipated Flip Mino, its newest entry into its unusually popular simple camcorders. The Mino shrinks the design of the original Flip camera by 40 percent to where it's smaller than a typical cellphone while adding features that aren't present on the originals: the updated software bundled with the Mino lets it upload directly to MySpace as well as providing existing hooks for AOL and YouTube. Pure keeps the concept simple by preserving the 2X digital zoom lens that limits the camera but concentrates on the shot itself.
Facebook is preparing to launch Facebook Connect within the next few weeks, a service designed to compete with MySpace Data Availability. According to TechCrunch, this is Facebook's first attempt at creating a new version of its API for third party websites, allowing users to link to their Facebook profile, friends, and privacy to a website. The website can also use features from the Facebook Platform to enhance functionality and personalization.
MySpace today introduced a new initiative that will see its users' data shared outside of the social network. The Data Availability framework will let any member of the MySpace service opt in to share profile info, friend networks, photos and videos to sites that will support the approach on their networks: MySpace users will have the option of posting their biography and latest blog updates to their Twitter profiles, for example, or bring images to Photobucket. eBay and Yahoo will also allow portability, with Yahoo's new Open Strategy allowing users to automatically fill in a profile that is viewable across much of the site's network.
Smaller music labels may soon get better deals and rights for their content at iTunes and other online stores through moves being made in recent weeks by indie music collective group Merlin. The organization has recently opened signups and says it has already received the support of more than 12,000 labels that will unite to press for better conditions for their artists.
Research firm Ipsos has released a new study on the digital music industry, the results of which position Apple as the leader. Some 82 percent of American music downloaders are familiar with iTunes, versus a next-best figure of 76 percent for Napster. Some 38 percent of downloaders think of iTunes first when it comes to digital music, and while most major online outlets have had their name recognition increase during 2007, only iTunes showed a substantial growth in use past the first 30 days, up to 24 percent last year from 18 percent in 2006. Services such as Rhapsody and Walmart.com saw their 30-day-plus use decrease.
Everex in conjunction with gOS on Monday introduced a limited-edition MyMiniPC that runs on gOS Space 2.9, a Linux-based operating system made for MySpace users with brand new MySpace Apps. Basically a special edition of the Everex gPC mini, the computer is unique thanks to the OS and a new icon dock made up of the newest MySpace Apps and Web 2.0 entertainment media sites. The mission of MyMiniPC is to offer quicker, more efficient and user-friendly access to MySpace and its numerous offerings, all the while bringing Linux more mainstream.
MySpace and three major record labels -- Warner, Universal and Sony BMG -- have confirmed earlier reports by announcing the creation of MySpace Music, a new online store. Visitors will have at least two options in visiting: streaming music for free, with the costs covered by advertising, or paid downloads, making MySpace the latest rival to outlets such as Amazon or Apple's iTunes Store. Also possible may be some form of subscription service, but this is still under consideration. No launch date has been announced.
MySpace's frequently rumored music download store could launch as early as today, according to a rumor put forward by CNET. The publication claims to know sources who say that an initial announcement is planned that will expand the site's currently hands-off music section into a service that offers a combination of downloads and streams. Mirroring past stories, the feature would allegedly let users either pay to download full MP3 songs and ringtones or else stream songs for free on the web. Users could also buy their concert tickets directly from the site.
Yahoo today said it would both join Google's OpenSocial and that it would help found the OpenSocial Foundation, a new collaboration that involves Google as well as MySpace. The move would see Yahoo ensure that any social networking elements it develops can be ported between any OpenSocial-based social network and that the platform will be protected in the future. The Foundation will ensure that OpenSocial remains neutral and dictated by the public rather than controlled by any one company, according to its launch partners.
Two major music labels are close to signing a deal for the rumored MySpace Music online store, say sources talking to the New York Post. Both Sony BMG and Warner Music are reportedly near the end of talks that would make their catalogs available the service, which is still expected to offer paid MP3 downloads as well as ad-subsidized free streams of music and videos. The feature is also now said to have downloadable ringtones through a deal with News Corp.-owned (and MySpace sister company) Jamba.
Google-owned YouTube accounted for the majority of the more than one-third of all 9.8 billion videos watched online in January, as measured by comScore Video Metrix service and reported on Friday. More accurately, the 3.36 billion video views amounted to 34.3 percent of the total, far outpacing the next-highest, Fox Interactive Media’s MySpace, at 6.0 percent. This marks a 1.7 percent improvement over December 2007 results, where a record 10.1 billion videos were viewed.
MySpace has officially entered the public beta for its Developer Platform, a framework that lets coders produce applications using Google's OpenSocial standard. Because of OpenSocial, some creations may eventually migrate to other social networking sites, such as Friendster. Both OpenSocial and the Developer Platform are seen as a challenge to Facebook, whose popularity has been attributed to web apps such as iLike and Scrabulous.
Facebook is investigating the possibility of its own music store, say reported insiders. While the social network recently launched its Music on Facebook service for following artists and buying their music through iTunes, the company is reportedly in talks with major labels to offer content of its own. While no aspects of the deal have been finalized, label officials reportedly say that a deal would most likely include free, ad-backed streaming audio similar to MySpace's profile pages but allow paid MP3 downloads usable on any operating system and portable player.
MySpace is in the midst of developing a native iPhone and iPod touch application, Electronista has learned. Although details of what the app involves remain closely guarded, the product is known to be the result of early SDK access and is described as impressive compared to current mobile versions of the social networking site. Whether it will support MySpace's signature music and video services is unknown, though neither are likely given the lack of a native Adobe Flash port for the handset or else iPhone-friendly content on the site's servers.
MySpace is currently in talks to create a music service that would offer both free and paid service, according to alleged leaks from those familiar with the negotiations. The social networking site is reportedly securing rights from all four major music labels for a simply-titled MySpace Music service that would allow it both to provide free, streaming music from its pages as well as paid MP3 tracks; the cost of the former would be offset by the advertising that already forms a staple of the company's web pages.
News Corporation is planning a musical equivalent of its Hulu video venture with NBC, a new report claims. News is allegedly after a deal with the four major music labels -- EMI, Warner, Universal and Sony BMG -- who would each provide equity for a new opeartion. It would be carried and controlled by News' MySpace division, but the intent is to create a shared portal, where people would be able to listen to DRM-free music in exchange for subjecting themselves to advertising.
Hoping to create a new way for even amateur video providers to make money, Overlay.TV says it has developed a new platform that can integrate ads into the content itself in an unintrusive way. The self-title service takes Flash-based videos from many common video sites (including MySpace and YouTube) and lets users create clickable areas in a video that tie into related ads; ads can be as subtle as links hovering over products that are already part of the video or as conspicuous as normal ads, Overlay.TV says. The resulting videos can then be embedded anywhere that accepts normal HTML code such as blogs or social networking sites.
Yahoo has added News Corporation to the list of potential partners that could save it from purchase by Microsoft, says The Wall Street Journal. The newspaper -- which itself has been purchased by News Corp. -- cites anonymous sources, who say that in exchange for a cash infusion, Yahoo would have to surrender a stake worth as much as 20 percent or more, thereby granting News influence over many websites and the world of online advertising. News already owns MySpace, IGN and Rotten Tomatoes.
Yahoo today used Mobile World Congress as the platform for the release of oneConnect, a new service both for its mobile website and for its Yahoo Go 3.0 mobile portal. The front-end is designed to eliminate the isolation that often exists between most forms of communication on cellphones and online services: a widget interface provides access to multiple common webmail services such as Gmail or Yahoo's own service, while both instant messaging and SMS text messaging across multiple networks can be merged into a single, iChat-like interface that boasts threaded conversations.
