Here is an interesting site http://www.audioscrobbler.com/
They put a plugging on your PC and track your music habits. This is rather amazing. As soon as they have critical mass they should be integrated directly into Amazon.com. Amazon.com will be able to predict best sellers and losers, manage shopping trends and best of all Amazon.com will be able to make intelligent recommendations for music purchases.
If Apple are serious about their iTunes business (which they seem to be as iTunes is now the number 1 seller of digital music) they should probably rush to buy this before Amazon.com. Think about it a box could popup in your iTunes player as you are listening telling you what else you would enjoy....
I am rather surprised this is isn't built in to iTunes, after all iTunes does create a statistic on your PC and is connected to the Net for the Store function and for software upgrade.......
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
VoIP2Go (part 2)
On my last visit to New York, I enjoyed the FREE WiFi service many Parks in NY have.
Bryant park a square block spanning 42nd Street between 5th and 6th avenue has a superb connection. One can literally sit on the steps of the New York Public library and do all your work. Working the corner of 42nd street can take a new meaning. If I just had a battery operated DTA and battery operated WiFi Access Point (someone should come out with these), I can sit and call the world and be fully accessible, using my Packet8, Vonage or other VoIP service.
Then again I had my Laptop so I could call using any one of the soft-phones out there, I could actually run a few with different bases to maximize costs savings. I could use BT Communicator (http://www.bt.com/btcommunicator/index.jsp) for calls to or from the UK and I could use SkypeOut (http://www.skype.com/products/skypeout/) or Net2Phone (http://web.net2phone.com/consumer/commcenter/) for the US. The best being from Jeff Pulver (He is amazing!), using his FWD service (http://www.pulver.com/communicator/) and his extensive peering numbers I can call any of my friends globally that already have VoIP based phones and they can call me with out paying a penny (other than Skype which are still not running a globally accepted SIP protocol, more in a different blog devoted to the future of Skype).
Which brings me to another thought, why don’t Packet8, Vonage and the others come out with a soft-phone line BT that I could use when I am away from my home, where their DTA is installed? Would be a great feature.
A few weeks passed since I was being overly productive on the corner of 42nd & 5th when I got an email recently from my friend Bini. I was supposed to call him but he was catching a flight from New York to Frankfurt and by the time I remembered he was in the air. The email asked if I was still up and if I was I should please call him on a New York number. The email was post-what-I-remembered as his take-off time, so I figured he got delayed, the area code was 718 which is the same area code of JFK.
I called…… The connection was not bad at all, and we proceeded to have a 35-minute conversation. Bini was in the Air on Lufthansa using his laptop logged in to the Lufthansa Internet Broadband service FlyNet (http://portal.lufthansa.com/online/portal/!ut/p/_s.7_0_A/7_0_4VGH?cID=6_0_UGE&nID=7_0_4VGI&l=en&nodeid=1331277#availability) and using the new SkypeIn (http://www.skype.com/products/skypein/) service.
The Future is Here!!!!
You can imaging even the sky is no longer the limit to the offerings….. AiPhone for example should get their act together quickly!!! They should offer unlimited calls in the air for one fixed low cost for example. Watch you last IP-TV-DVR/PVR saved episode anywhere in the world, etc.
VoIP2Go (part 1 here http://effys.blogspot.com/2005/01/who-needs-umts.html )
Bryant park a square block spanning 42nd Street between 5th and 6th avenue has a superb connection. One can literally sit on the steps of the New York Public library and do all your work. Working the corner of 42nd street can take a new meaning. If I just had a battery operated DTA and battery operated WiFi Access Point (someone should come out with these), I can sit and call the world and be fully accessible, using my Packet8, Vonage or other VoIP service.
Then again I had my Laptop so I could call using any one of the soft-phones out there, I could actually run a few with different bases to maximize costs savings. I could use BT Communicator (http://www.bt.com/btcommunicator/index.jsp) for calls to or from the UK and I could use SkypeOut (http://www.skype.com/products/skypeout/) or Net2Phone (http://web.net2phone.com/consumer/commcenter/) for the US. The best being from Jeff Pulver (He is amazing!), using his FWD service (http://www.pulver.com/communicator/) and his extensive peering numbers I can call any of my friends globally that already have VoIP based phones and they can call me with out paying a penny (other than Skype which are still not running a globally accepted SIP protocol, more in a different blog devoted to the future of Skype).
Which brings me to another thought, why don’t Packet8, Vonage and the others come out with a soft-phone line BT that I could use when I am away from my home, where their DTA is installed? Would be a great feature.
A few weeks passed since I was being overly productive on the corner of 42nd & 5th when I got an email recently from my friend Bini. I was supposed to call him but he was catching a flight from New York to Frankfurt and by the time I remembered he was in the air. The email asked if I was still up and if I was I should please call him on a New York number. The email was post-what-I-remembered as his take-off time, so I figured he got delayed, the area code was 718 which is the same area code of JFK.
I called…… The connection was not bad at all, and we proceeded to have a 35-minute conversation. Bini was in the Air on Lufthansa using his laptop logged in to the Lufthansa Internet Broadband service FlyNet (http://portal.lufthansa.com/online/portal/!ut/p/_s.7_0_A/7_0_4VGH?cID=6_0_UGE&nID=7_0_4VGI&l=en&nodeid=1331277#availability) and using the new SkypeIn (http://www.skype.com/products/skypein/) service.
The Future is Here!!!!
You can imaging even the sky is no longer the limit to the offerings….. AiPhone for example should get their act together quickly!!! They should offer unlimited calls in the air for one fixed low cost for example. Watch you last IP-TV-DVR/PVR saved episode anywhere in the world, etc.
VoIP2Go (part 1 here http://effys.blogspot.com/2005/01/who-needs-umts.html )
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