Watch out Spotify!

Google & Apple are hot to take on Spotify, the subscription based music delivery service.

Hear a track you don’t know, Shazam it. Spotify it. Got it. Simple. And all for a tenner a month! (Unless you’re a Beatles fan, and a few others who haven’t signed up). I’m still desperate for a ‘Genius’ style button so I don’t have to make playlists, but apart from that, Spotify just works. It’s great.

So what’s the problem?

For us, the consumer there isn’t one. It’s happy days. We get great music, easily, quickly and cheaply, but Spotify is soon to become the victim.

Apple has been waiting in the wings, watching Spotify prove the business model. Knowing that if iTunes profits were to fall, or if Spotify were a hit (uhuh), they *could* simply turn on a subscription based version. Plus, to nail coffins – This side of Xmas, Google are releasing their own cloud based music service.

So what happens to Spotify?

It will eventually sink I imagine. Unless they move into movies, offer a better service or diversify in some other way. They do have the heads up but Apple and Google have the infrastructure, the licensing agreements and a HUGE international customer base.

Sign up to alternatives now and see what you think. Also keep your eye on Apple TV & AirPlay (especially how the latter could be used in non-Apple products. V interesting.)

PS Watch Facebook Places kill Foursquare & Gowalla location based social media platforms. A sad .com fact of life. Sometimes the 15 minutes is cut a little short.

Dan

www.theengineroom.co.uk

Making sure IT doesn’t start with S and H

Email is Rubbish

Create an iPhone App using HTML5

Alexander Kessinger has put together a rather handy guide on how to make your own iPhone App by writing it in HTML5 and saving as an icon on any iOS device.

You’ve been depressed for like a year now, I know. All the hardcore Objective-C developers have been having a hay-day writing apps for the iPhone. You might have even tried reading a tutorial or two about developing for the iPhone, but its C—or a form of it—and it’s really hard to learn.

I don’t want to say that you should give up on the objective: you can get it eventually. But in the meantime, there is something else that you can do.

You can create a native app that lives with all the other apps, and for the most part, it’s going to be a pitch-perfect imitation.

You can do this with the skill set you probably already have: HTML(5), CSS, and JavaScript.

I’ll show you how to create an offline HTML5 iPhone application. More specifically, I’ll walk you through the process of building a Tetris game.

Offline?

What am I talking about when I say “offline”? Well, it means that we have a custom icon, a custom startup screen, a native look-and-feel, and you can use the app even when the phone isn’t connected to the Internet.

The app should be as functional as it can when it is offline, just like normal native mobile apps.

This is a tutorial specifically for iPhones but most of these techniques apply to all phones that have HTML5-capable browsers.

You can read the full article here.

Google Mail doesn't work

Google email isn’t reliable as a business tool. There I said it. It pains me to do so because I love Google. What they stand for, do and will continue to do.

Nothing is perfect in IT land but our experience over the past year with various clients has been poor at best.

Outbound (SMTP) servers fail, inbound delays, Blackberry syncing woes, I could go on… If email is important to your business, use a proven and trusted supplier like Rackspace or Cobweb. It’s that simple. Let the rest of the world early adopt and I’ll let you know when to jump over. Dan

www.theengineroom.co.uk

Small Business Technical Know-all

Steal from the best

Giz Explains: Why Everything Wireless is 2.4GHz

Gizmodo have a very cool run down as to why most wireless electronics in your house use only a certain frequency range:

You live your life at 2.4GHz. Your router, your cordless phone, your Bluetooth earpiece, your baby monitor and your garage opener all love and live on this radio frequency, and no others. Why? The answer is in your kitchen.

Why 2.4?

Now, there are many, many frequencies that qualify as “unlicensed,” but only a handful get used in our phones, routers, and walkie talkies.

In the case of something like phones, which are sold paired with a specific base station, choosing the right unlicensed frequency is a pretty straightforward calculation: A 900MHz system will be more easily able to broadcast through a multi-floor house, but a 2.4 GHz system will generally require a smaller antenna, which keeps the phone’s size down.

Wi-Fi routers started as proprietary, paired systems operating on all manner of frequencies, only settling on a standard—5GHz—with the codification of 802.11a. Then the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers agreed that 2.4GHz, with its wide channel selection and range/penetration/cost potential, was a safer bet. Today, some Wireless N routers can operate on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands concurrently. Routers could function just as well at 2.3 or 2.5GHz, but they’re not allowed. It’s the rules. The 2.4GHz band, which runs from about 2400 to 2483.5Mhz, is where routers have to live.

You can read the full article here.

iPad accessory of the decade

Cell Phone Obsessed? [Infographic]

Via: Cell Phones

Google is Super Clever – Gmail Priority Inbox

Intelligent email filters based on previous email behaviours. Brilliant it if works.

The Dark Side of Email

The dark side of email usage, and it’s real cost to the work environment isn’t discussed that often. Some of the lessons we can learn from it just as easily apply to social media sites.

You can find the full list here, but here are some of the highlights:

• Jackson et al (2002) found that people set their mail program to check for new mail every 5 minutes.
• They also found that people reacted to 70% of emails within 6 seconds and 85% within 2 minutes.
• Email doesn’t convey emotions very well, emoticons just don’t cut it compared to face-to-face interaction.
• People are less co-operative over email and even feel more justified in being less co-operative.
• People are more likely to lie over email, as it feels more like chatting and less permanent than a letter.
• People are less restrained due to the online disinhibition effect.

Now you could just as easily apply most of these findings to Social Media. How often do you check Facebook or Twitter for updates or instantly respond when someone asks you something over it?

How long do you keep Hootsuite/TweetDeck open in the background and keep tabbing to it to see if something new has shown up? I know I keep checking it much more than I do email.