iPhone

Medialoper Bebop Episode 24: Steal This Podcast

November 30, 2011 by Jim Connelly

This week, Tim, Kirk, & Jim discuss the the following Rolling Stones-permeated topics.

First off, you’d think that a newly-released Rolling Stones live album from the early 70s would be a cause for celebration, but as it is confined to Google’s Android platform, it’s as cause for consternation and the spur for a long, serious discussion about how music exclusivity — whether via artificially high prices or artifically enforced platforms — encourages piracy.

Not only do artists like U2, Nirvana & Bob Dylan end up burying musical treasures in “Super Deluxe” box sets with exorbitant prices, it’s gotten so bad the Elvis Costello wrote a blog post encouraging his fans not to purchase his recent live album until next year. (2:20 – 23:20)

Then, on the heels of a report that she might be pro-life, we do an interview with the iPhone’s built-in personal assistant, Siri, to try and determine what her politics are once and for all. (23:30 – 30:15)

Finally, even though Kirk’s mix is a bit of a mess, he still has time to talk about the new album from Tom Waits, reissues from the Rolling Stones and the entire Linton Kwesi Johnson catalog. (30:16 – 40:30)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:35 — 66.8MB)

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Medialoper Bebop Episode 3: Conversation Fear

May 10, 2011 by Jim Connelly

On this week’s Medialoper Bebop, Jim, Tim & Kirk discuss the following:

Whether or not the huge popularity of Netflix Instant is making a dent in video piracy, and why Hollywood continues to drive people to, er, other methods of getting content, despite evidence that people want to pay for stuff.

Why fewer and fewer people are using browsers to access the internet, as Kirk & Tim have seen their digital lives reconfigure with the advent of the iPad.

And finally, we induct our very first album into the Medialoper Great Albums Hall of Fame — R.E.M. – Murmur. Of course. What else could it be?

All of this, and Coco Crisp! On an all-new Medialoper Bebop.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:44 — 33.7MB)

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The Day Apple Didn’t Change the World

January 27, 2010 by Kirk Biglione

Apple’s latest gadget is everything we hoped for, and so much less. Granted, the iPad is very cool, but it’s more evolutionary than revolutionary. It is essentially an extra-large iPod Touch with optional 3G wireless.

In my last post I identified five things I’d be watching for during the iPad event.

Here’s what I saw: [Read more…] about The Day Apple Didn’t Change the World

How the Apple Tablet Will Help Amazon Dominate the eBook Market

January 8, 2010 by Kirk Biglione

After two years of non-stop rumors and wild speculation the Mythical Apple Tablet (aka the Unicorn) will apparently become a reality later this month.

Among other things, the Unicorn is expected to single handedly (hoofedly?) save newspapers, magazines, and book publishers, while simultaneously killing Amazon’s Kindle. That’s a tall order for a device that no one outside of Apple has actually seen yet. These expectations are not surprising considering the amount of wishful thinking that has been projected onto the device by print industry insiders desperate for salvation in a world that is increasingly turning digital.

I have no intention of adding to the ill-informed speculation about the Unicorn’s specifications or magickal capabilities. Instead, I’d like to take a moment to dissect the claim that an Apple tablet will somehow kill the Kindle.

The logic seems to be that Apple’s tablet will provide a superior user experience to the Kindle (a reasonable assumption), and that consumers will favor a multi-purpose device over a dedicated reading device (probably true). As a result, the tablet is expected to become the digital reading device of choice. In other words, the Kindle is toast!

Well, maybe. [Read more…] about How the Apple Tablet Will Help Amazon Dominate the eBook Market

Imagining an iTunes eBook Store

January 27, 2009 by Kirk Biglione

Update: This post was published on 1/27/09 – exactly one year to the day before Apple announced the iBookstore. For an update on what was announced, see The Day Apple Didn’t Change the World.

Confession time. I was wrong about reading ebooks on the iPhone.

When I evaluated various ereading devices a few months back, I came to the conclusion that the iPhone was not suitable for long form reading. Months later, I’ve now read several books on the iPhone and I have to admit that the experience is growing on me. In fact, I frequently find myself looking at my bookshelf and thinking, “I wish I had that book on my iPhone”.

In most cases those wishes are an impossibility because there’s no (legal) way to get the book in question onto my iPhone — or any other reading device, for that matter. In some cases, where digital editions are available, they aren’t available in a format that would work with any of the current iPhone reader applications.

There’s hope that all of this may be changing soon, as publisher interest in the iPhone/iPod Touch seems to be growing by the day. Publishers are rushing to experiment with all manner of ebook releases targeted at the iPhone.

In part, publishers are turning to the Apple platform as a way to neutralize the momentum building behind Amazon’s proprietary Kindle platform. Ironically, not long ago record labels were headed in the opposite direction, offering up their catalogs to Amazon in hopes that Amazon’s MP3 Store might neutralize some of iTunes’s momentum.

Why I’m Thinking About Abandoning My iPhone

September 25, 2008 by Jim Connelly

I have an iPhone. Old-school, 4GB, purchased on a whim last summer and, despite a glitch here and there, it’s been an amazingly handy and even transformative device.

That said, I’m dumping it because now that the T-Mobile Google Android-based G1 is out, I’m over the iPhone, which sucks sucks sucks. Not really, though I’m assuming that some of the comments on this article will act as if I said just that.

What is true is this: I didn’t purchase a 3G; and when my original AT&T contract is up next year, I’m going to take a good hard look at whichever version of the G1 is out there vs. whichever version of the iPhone is out there.

And here are some reasons why.

Reconsidering the Future of Ebooks

September 9, 2008 by Kirk Biglione

Like most gadget lovers I dream of the perfect digital reading device. In my dreams this device is pretty much identical to the interactive book in Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age. Unfortunately, the technology behind Stephenson’s nano-tech powered ereader is still decades away. In the meantime, we’re stuck with a motley assortment of devices that attack the challenge of reading digital content from a variety of different angles. From dedicated eInk readers like the Sony Reader and Amazon’s Kindle, to PDA’s, and multi-purpose mobile computing devices like the iPhone. None are anywhere close to perfect, but they’re all we have for the time being.

Knowing full well that I’m not about to find the “ultimate” ebook reader anytime soon, I spent a bit of time this summer evaluating the merits of two very different devices: the iPhone and the Kindle.

While comparing the reading experience on both of these devices was an interesting exercise, I found that the relative strengths and weaknesses of each product lead me to consider bigger questions about the future of ebooks and digital content.

My iPhone Crash

August 8, 2007 by Jim Connelly

My iPhone crashed yesterday. Just before lunch, I woke it up, but the unlock slider was acting all funky. When it finally unlocked, my phone was frozen. Dead. Solid.

There have been a couple of times before where it has acted weird — the most major one being Safari spontaneously shutting down and returning the phone to the home screen. In those cases, and in this case, I’ve done what we’ve done to computers since time immemorial: I reset it.

And that’s when I got The Yellow Triangle Of Death.

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