Online music retailer AnywhereCD is closing down within the next few days. The online retailer took a different approach toward music sales than pretty much anybody else around. The company's business model was based around selling CDs and throwing in free MP3 downloads. Or maybe it was the other way around.
If you ask us, there were two fatal flaws in the plan:
They were selling DRM-free tracks, which kept many record labels from signing on (they had only managed to get a contract with Universal).
They were hardly adding any value to your CD purchase, since anyone who buys a CD can rip their own MP3s just as easily as they can download them from the internet.
Anyway, AnywhereCD never really caught on, and plans to shut down as soon as its contract with Universal expires. In the meantime, the site is having an "everything must go" sale, which means you can pick up complete albums for $7 a piece. But you'll have to navigate a pretty difficult site to find the music you're looking for. You can browse by genre or search by band name. But if you're not sure the artists you're looking for are on the Universal Label, good luck. [via paidContent and socalTECH]
Beginning November 12, One Laptop Per Child will be offering a special twofer - when you spend $399, one laptop will be donated to a child in need in a developing country, and another one will be sent to your child. Of course, you could just spend $399 and have the laptops go to two children in developing countries where they have little access to education, or on the other hand, you could reward yourself for doing such a good deed and have your own child benefit. Either way, you win and children win.
If you're interested in the 'give one, get one,' promotion, you can sign up and OLPC will send you a reminder email.
OLPC was started by Nicholas Negroponte and a core of Media Lab veterans. Its vision is to empower children in the remotest parts of the world and expose them to knowledge and their own creative and problem solving potential via laptops, the ultimate portal to ideas.
About the interface Check out our previous video walkthrough of Sugar, OLPC's user interface. As you would expect for a $199 laptop, there aren't a lot of fat apps and video games bells and whistles, however there's plenty of opportunity for learning and connecting.
About the laptop The XO is Linux-based, with a dual-mode display-both a full-color, transmissive DVD mode, and a second display option that is black and white, reflective, and sunlight-readable at three times the resolution. The laptop will have a 500MHz processor and 128MB of DRAM, with 500MB of Flash memory; it will not have a hard disk, but it will have three USB ports and an SD-card slot for expansion. The laptops will have wireless broadband that, among other things, allows them to work as a mesh network; each laptop will be able to talk to its nearest neighbors, creating an ad hoc, local area network. The laptops are designed to be extremely power efficient, enabling the use of innovative power systems (including wind-up).
Don't expect any drastic changes. Most of the updates are cosmetic. For example, you can choose categories to search and browser through a navigation panel on the left side of any screen. You know, pretty much just like you can do now. The difference is you'll be able to choose categories and subcategories by hovering your mouse. No more waiting for a fresh page to load.
Overall, it's a bit more web 2.0-ish. Don't be surprised if you don't see the new site the next time you load Amazon.com. The new design is being rolled out slowly, and may not be available to all users right away.
Monthly fees can add up. While you probably realize the monthly fees you pay for your car or mortage add up to tens or hundrds of thousands of dollars, how often do you stop to think of the other fees in your life? How much money have you spent over the years on cable or cellphone bills? What online storage space?
iForem has come up with a way to eliminate the monthly fees for its online backup storage site. It just charges a really high price up front. We're talking $20 for 20MB of storage, or $1024 for 1GB. Sure, you can get storage from services like Mozy and Carbonite for a fairly low monthly fee, but if you stop paying, you lose your storage.
What makes iForem's model unique (beside the high price) is a guarantee that your data will always be available. The idea is that iForem will take your ridiculously high up-front payment and invest it in a trust. As your money makes money for the company, some of that revenue will be pumped back into server space, security, and all the other things you'd want from an online storage site. Over time, as your friends continue to pay monthly fees to their online backup companies, you'll (theoretically) realize that they've paid more money over the years than you have.
But the way we see it, there's at least three problems:
You can already get 5GB for free from services like Xdrive.
1GB in 20 years will probably seem pretty tiny.
If the company goes under in less than 15 years, you're not going to get your money's worth.
In the world of web developers there are two standard ways of laying out a web page. The classical way is to use tables and structure your web page like you would an Excel Spreadsheet or a Word document. The second is to use Cascading Style Sheets that let you create elements on the page and position them according to your needs. For a large variety of reasons CSS based layouts are the way to go: they use less code, they are more customizable, they support various effects that aren't possible with tables, and they run faster in modern web browsers. The problem? They are darn hard to code!
Enter the CSS Grid Builder from the good folks at Yahoo!. Yahoo! has spent thousands of hours crafting web pages and testing them across all the possible OS and browser combinations (yes, even Opera). The end result of all this testing was the public release of the Yahoo! User Interface CSS and JavaScript libraries. The CSS Grid Builder is a simple web-based interface for quickly creating any number of layouts that rely solely on YUI's CSS files. This gives you the advantage of easily and visually laying out designs without using tables, and they will work the same way in every popular browser
We're always on the lookout or good screencasting software her at Download Squad HQ. While we showing you screenshots of new programs and websites, sometimes you need a video, or at least a whole bunch of photos to really get a point across.
QlipBoard is a free application that lets you create a video out of images. You can either load in a series of photos or screenshots and put them in order, or use QlipBoard to capture images. It's sort of like Microsoft Photo Story, but with a few extra options like the ability to narrate and annotate your slideshow.
While CamStudio and Screencast-o-matic are both useful free video capturing applications, it's always nice to have a few extra tools in the arsenal. We made a quick and dirty little slideshow showing the installation process for QlipBoard using QlipBoard. How meta is that?
QlipBoard comes in free and paid varieties. The free version includes ads, while the paid version includes advanced features and upgrades for a monthly or annual fee.
As expected, the Microsoft Windows Vista Team has released an early version of Vista Service Pack 1 to a selected group of testers. Brandon LeBlanc at the Windows Vista Blog has been running SP1 for a little while already and shares these thoughts:
The update will show up through Windows Update, and will show a size range from 51MB to 680MB. Because the update includes a number of hotfixes and compatibility packs that you may have already downloaded and installed, we're guessing your download will be on the lighter side if your PC is pretty much up to date.
There's also a standalone installer for IT administrators who don't want to download the same file 400 times.
LeBlanc reports that his updated computer is more responsive when logging into a network.
The updated Disk Defragmenter will let you choose which volumes to work on.
Vista Enterprise and Ultimate users will be able to choose which hard drives to encrypt using the BitLocker Control Panel.
LeBlanc says his computer is a bit more responsive overall.
Copying files from one directory to another is better.
His laptop battery lasts longer.
His PC performs better when resuming from Sleep or Hibernation modes.
Windows Vista SP1 also lets users change their default desktop search provider. If you like Microsoft's desktop search product you'll have to reenable it. But you can also set Google Desktop as your default desktop search engine.
We don't expect to see a full release until early next year, but it's possible a public beta might be released before that time.
While competition continues to heat up in the online video space, it appears the online music space is getting smaller and smaller. Just weeks after Sony announced it was closing its online music store, Virgin is shutting down its Virgin Digital web site.
Virgin Digital offers users the chance to download songs a la carte or subscribe for content a la Napster/Rhapsody. The service, which was only available to users in the US and UK will officially shut down on October 19th, although Virgin Digital has already stopped accepting new customer registrations.
Anyone with more than a month of subscription credit will get a refund. If you've got credit for song downloads, there won't be a refund, so it's time to start a downloading binge or you can use your credit on Napster.
Students at Arizona State University are being offered a chance to test a new product that will be launched later this year by an unnamed major company. Although the beta is available only to ASU students, and participants have to sign a nondisclosure statement to sign up, one student snapped a couple of images of the signup page.
So here's what we know. The questionnaire asks about social sites like Facebook, Friendster, and MySpace. There are also hints the project involves 3D modeling and video games. And one question is whether users have a Gmail account and/or would be willing to sign up for one, which is leading to speculation that this is a Google project.
What kind of Google project is kind of up in the air, but since we love some good speculation, we're willing to go with the theory that Google plans to launch some type of Second Life competitor. While Second Life and other virtual worlds are merely virtual, Google already has access to boatloads of satellite imagery which is used in Google Maps and Google Earth. Imagine a social network where you could walk an avatar down the street to your friend's house to chat, or wander into a store in Japan to check out its inventory and buy virtual or real life goods.
Of course, this is all just speculation. It's possible the project has nothing to do with Google or virtual worlds at all.
A few months back we realized that we don't know Kentucky from Kansas thanks to Statetris, an online game that combines geography with Tetris. At the time, all we could do is bungle the placement of US states. But now that Statetris has gone international, we realize just how little we know about world geography.
There are new versions of Statetris for Africa, Europe, France, Japan, the Netherlands, the UK, and for some reason, the state of South Carolina.
Game play is pretty much the same for each version. Just drop geographical locations into the appropriate place on the map. Depending on which version you're playing, the goal may be to put states, provinces, or countries in the proper location. Play often enough and you might just be able to figure out how to find Latvia on a map.
Back in 2004 when Google announced its new e-mail service would "read" your messages in order to serve up relevant advertisements, privacy advocates around the world shuddered. Three years later, most folks hardly bat an eye at the concept.
But there's still something a bit creepy about a similar business model put forward by internet telephony startup The Pudding. The web service will let you make free phone calls from your PC to any land line. The Pudding is completely web-based. There's no software to download, you just plug a headset into your computer, open up a web page and dial away.
Here comes the creepy part. The reason The Pudding can let you make phone calls for free is because the site will serve up relevant advertisements. And it will determine relevance by listening in on your conversation.
There won't be a room filled with people listening to you talk with your best friend about relationship trouble with your spouse. But a computer will be listening and using voice recognition software to serve up on-screen ads for divorce lawyers. The company is also working on a way to send ads to the cellphone screen of the person you're calling.
We imagine at first people will just make sure to only use The Pudding for completely trivial conversations. But if the service proves trustworthy, at some point, they'll forget about the eavesdropping and use it on a regular basis, much as they do Gmail. And while there may be no real difference between the two companies' business model, eavesdropping still feels a bit more invasive than screenreading.
Apparently it's foreign language week here at Download Squad, because a few days ago we told you about Mango, an excellent online resource for learning a new language. And today we've discovered LiveMocha, a site that not only lets you learn to speak a new language, but also lets you practice your language skills with other users.
Fortunately you don't have to choose between the services because they're both free. But since there's a social aspect to LiveMocha, we have to warn you that once you sign up, you should expect to receive a bunch of emailed friend requests. This is great if you're looking for folks to practice speaking with, but can be annoying if say, you registered with the site just to check it out for a few minutes.
Like Mango, LiveMocha features a number of easy to follow lessons in several languages. LiveMocha lessons are available in Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, and Spanish. The site features a clean interface with illustrative pictures and easy to understand voices. But what really makes LiveMocha stand out is its social angle.
You can do text chats or have voice and/or video conversations with users who want to practice a language you speak. In other words, if you're an English speaker trying to learn Hindi, you can find someone who speaks Hindi and start a conversation. Or if someone else wants to learn English, they might try you. This is miles ahead of the old fashioned, practice with the person sitting next to you in German 101 method.
On Saturday night Facebook took my life away, now I'm asking nicely, can I have it back please?
As a blogger for Download Squad I've followed the rise and rise of Facebook with fascination, the a social networking site has demonstrated viral spread on the scale of an influenza pandemic. I watched in fascination as my inbox was bombarded with friend requests from seemingly every part of my life and every corner of the globe.
Succumbing to the Facebook phenomenon, I was quickly drawn in by the combination of applications, messaging and of course the competitive instinct to rapidly gather a vast following of like minded friends who would be able to share with me the excitement of online photo albums, holiday maps, interest groups, online graffiti or the simple pleasures of turning fellow Facebookers into zombies, vampires or pirates (arrrr).
And then, on Saturday night I was framed for a crime I didn't commit, and now I'm on the run Richard Kimble style - trying to clear my name of one of the worst crimes that an Internet user could be accused of - being a spammer
It's an unwritten law of technology: Each subsequent generation of electronic equipment will shrink in direct proportion to how long it's been on the market. Back in the day, mobile phones had to be carted around in bags large enough to fit Paris Hilton's Pomeranian. Now they're so small you could accidentally ingest one if you're not careful.
Memory cards are a great example of this, too. CompactFlash and memory sticks have given way to postage stamp-sized SD cards, and its little brother, the mini-SD. All these variations on portable memory had to start somewhere though, right? Taking the laws of shrinking gadgetry into account, how much bigger do you suppose 1 GB of memory was 20 years ago than it is today? Now go find out if your guess was accurate.
Snoopr.net is a Digg inspired website for finding deals. Users submit deals that they find to the site and then other users can "snoop" deals that rock their world. Each deal has a "Snoop Gauge" beside it that shows how popular a particular deal is with the Snoopr.net crowd. Like Digg, deals with the highest score earn top billing on the site. Unlike Digg however the deals score takes into account not only the deals amount of snoops but also time and the comments the deal has received.
Users on the site can earn points for getting positive snoops on deals they've submitted, and for commenting on and snooping other deals. There are promises made on the website for "cool prizes" that can be purchased with the points however we did some snooping and couldn't find a prize section on the site where you could redeem them. The site is currently still in beta, so maybe thats "in the works." Deals and prizes? What could be better?
Online music retailer AnywhereCD is closing down within the next few days. The online retailer took a different approach toward music sales than pretty much anybody else around. The company's business model was based around selling CDs and throwing in free MP3 downloads. Or maybe it was the other way around.
