I’m re-blogging a post by Roberto Galoppini, a huge advocate of open-source. Apparently the Italian government has cancelled the funds for open-source. It’s disappointing that to save money they cancel this type of fund, but they keep paying millions for all the license of MS Windows, Office and so on. There are alternatives today and they would be so much cheaper only in licenses.
Anyway, you can see the full article here.
Apple’s iTunes has been massively successful for two reasons, I think. First of all it got popular thanks to the iPod, of course, but also it did sell well because of a very simple pricing model that Apple could enforce on the content providers. I think most customers loved this (except for linux users that did not like the idea of being locked into a proprietary solution, of course).
On the other hand, according to rumors, the TV shows and movie side of iTunes never took off and I believe the reason was that Apple wanted to enforce a certain pricing model and most likely studios were not so happy. The result of this is the NBC is out of the game, the Apple TV never took off and while I enjoy from time to time to watch video podcasts, having shows would be better. Also, did I mention that in countries other than the US most movies and shows are not available?
Now Amazon’s music download service (Amazon MP3)is not yet selling as good as iTunes, but they have been able to sign all the major labels to provide un-protected music and they are using MP3 that while less efficient than AAC it’s still a good format and is supported by all portable music players. Looks like Amazon is suddendly a few steps ahead of Apple and I can’t think why the next step should not be to sell movies and shows.
Apple still has one advantage, the iPod and the Apple TV, but they need the content. The iPod was successful prior to the iTunes store because people could load their own music, the store was a subsequence.
If Apple wants to keep up with Amazon, they need to become less rigid and think about the business they can build around iTunes and not only on selling the hardware. If they can make iPods and Apple TV’s and iTunes store complementary, they can probably stay ahead of the competition.
When you wake up in the morning and the first thing you think about is that the last lines of code you wrote were not correct and you already know how to fix them.
I was reading this article that does not seem to be huge news in itself as it mentions Apple will lower the prices in the UK in iTunes to match the price applied in the other European countries where the service is available.
What is interesting, though, is that Apple is saying that it wants to have a pan-European view for the content it provides and the pricing that is applied.
I live in Italy and most films and shows are dubbed, nevertheless sometimes I’d love to watch them in English, but unfortunately so far this hasn’t been possible in most cases, unless someone made the distribution in Italy. It is annoying when you read about online movie rentals or sales and then discover they are only available in the US. NBC lets you watch their shows online and for free, but only if you’re in the US.
I think that everyone who knows technology a bit and is an internet addict as I am, is waiting not-so-patiently for the day content will be available worldwide and for the same price.
I actually think this would also be a great solution against piracy. Think of being home, bored, you want to watch a movie, these are the options you have available:
Honestly for 4USD I would rent PLENTY. I often discover there’s nothing on SKY Movies when it’s too late to rent a movie (and this also makes me wonder why I pay a subscription to SKY).
See here the article: Apple to standardize iTunes music prices across Europe
I will be in Barcelona for the next Mobile World Congress and I see that many of the regulars of the mobile web will be there.
I plan to be there for the full week and lots of mettings are getting arranged, it’s going to be a very intense week. Luckily I won’t be in the booth all the time!
If you plan to be there and want to meet, please contact me.
A video found by chance on YouTube, definitely worth watching:
It looks like there has been a change in the DNS for wurfl.com and t.wurfl.com went lost with it.
I think t.wurfl.com was a great resource and I’ve seen a lot of hits without much publicity.
I’ve decided to keep it up and register a new domain for it. Some of the names I would have wanted to use were taken, already so I’ve gone for logme.mobi. Hit it with your mobile and you’ll get everything you used to get with the old t.wurfl.com. logme.mobi/query is still there, of course.
Let me know if you see any issues, I quickly fixed the URL’s, but maybe some links are not fixed, yet. Allow a few hours for the DNS to propagate.
Christmas holidays were long enough to spend some reasonable time with the family, short traveling (Tuscany is always beautiful) and even resting and playing with the iPhone.
I tried quite a few iPhone “native” applications, many seem to me to be mostly useless, but some are quite nice. iSMS is the extension to the Apple SMS client that we all wanted (the UI is OK and takes advantage of the UIKit, of course you don’t get the iChat-like layout). iPhysics is a great game, inspired by Crayon Physics, it takes advantage of the touch screen perfectly, it uses the accelerometer when needed and is also a fun game. Reminds me a lot of The Incredible Machine, but with a spin. If you have an iPhone, I strongly suggest it, there are already plenty of custom levels.
The iPhone firmware 1.1.2 adds Italian, that’s a fact.
Something I haven’t seen around, though, is what I think is the final proof that Apple was ready to release the iPhone with TIM. This is the list of settings pre-installed in a 1.1.2 iPhone (US iPhone, by the way):
A little bit late to post about this upcoming event that I had booked in June or so, but if you are in London and are going to MAPOS, please come to say hi. I’ll be there on the 5th speaking at 2pm and then in a panel at 2:30pm.
You can read more about the event on the official site, Mobile Application Platforms and OS ’07.
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