Cool Tech Reviews

Peter Cohen at PC World reports that PayPlay.FM has joined the DRM-free MP3 market:

PayPlay.FM on Tuesday announced that it’s now selling its catalog of 1.3 million tracks of DRM-free music in MP3 format, for $0.88 each. The company said it’s offering twice the number of DRM-free tracks it pledged to offer in October, 2006 during a “Day Against DRM” event.

PayPlay.FM focuses on offering independently produced music in a variety of different genres ranging from classical to country, folk, jazz, latin, pop, rock, spoken word and more. PayPlay.FM’s library includes more than 80,000 artists.

Previously, PayPlay.FM had only offered DRM protected WMA format music files and they still do offer those at $0.77 each.

As had been promised, Dell today announced three computers with the Ubuntu 7.04 Linux distribution preloaded. There was a bigger surprise, however, in the other announcement that Dell would start selling exclusive models of their PCs at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club retail stores in the USA and Canada. 

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Most cell phone users have a love-hate relationship with their cell phone company with perhaps more of the latter. Don’t you sometimes wish that you owned own cell phone provider and could tell your old nemesis to ring off? Well, it’s now possible (in a way at least) without building a lot of tall towers and hiring annoying salesmen through the services of a company called Sonopia.

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I just got finished gushing over Amazon’s forthcoming DRM free music store which features tunes from big publisher EMI and many independent labels and now comes news that puts the whole DRM free music download movement in doubt:

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Back in April I observed that the Apple-EMI deal to provide DRM free downloads in the iTunes store was non-exclusive, and today the second shoe dropped as Amazon announced they will “will launch a digital music store later this year offering millions of songs in the DRM-free MP3 format from more than 12,000 record labels” including EMI and a lot of minor players:

“Our MP3-only strategy means all the music that customers buy on Amazon is always DRM-free and plays on any device,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder and CEO. “We’re excited to have EMI joining us in this effort and look forward to offering our customers MP3s from amazing artists like Coldplay, Norah Jones and Joss Stone.”

Amazon didn’t specify when exactly the store would open or how much the tunes would cost, but Bruce Houghton at WebProNews has some rumors:

While the official announcement says “later this year”, sources tell us that Amazon is pushing for an “as soon as possible” launch that is primarily being held up by technology and data issues. June or July would seem a likely launch time frame as Amazon is anxious to beat competitors to the inevitable rush of DRM free product.

Amazon is also said to be offering flexible and lower pricing with full album downloads retailing at $4.99 to $8.99 and individual tracks ranging from $.89-$.99.
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We hear rumblings of more labels including perhaps some Universal product and the catalogs of some larger indies and distributed labels that have previously held onto DRM signing onto Amazon prior to launch.

Perhaps naively, I think this is the beginning of the end of DRM based music downloads, and the fact that Amazon is offering MP3s may even put a crimp into iTunes whose DRM-free offerings are only in AAC format. Who knows, even the CD’s days may be numbered.

Even though the 802.11n specification appears to be 2 years from ratification, the Wi-Fi Alliance today announced they are starting a logo program for “pre-n” Wi-Fi networking gear:

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 802.11n draft 2.0 products sporting an eye-catching new logo will soon reach store shelves, as the Wi-Fi Alliance certification program nears its late June launch. The Alliance today unveiled a re-designed consumer logo for Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 802.11n Draft 2.0 products, and announced the products and reference designs that will comprise its test bed for interoperability certification.

The practicalities of the matter are that while there is a lot of bureaucratic jockeying going on over the details of the final 802.11 n spec, Draft 2.0 is close enough that presumably all logo certified gear will be upgradeable to the final standard with just a firmware upgrade.

Since there are no Draft 2.0 products shipping yet, a natural question is whether any pre-n products currently available will be upgradeable to Draft 2? The answer is “that depends” and to check with the manufacturer, although there is a good chance that any Draft 1 pre-n gear will be firmware upgradeable. The vendors should be very upfront since this kind of thing kills sales dead until the information is forthcoming.

On the other hand, if you prefer to avoid the excitement of a firmware upgrade, hold off on any new Wi-Fi gear until June and look for the following logo for the certified 802.11n Draft 2.0 products: