Relient K will be playing a FREE acoustic show Saturday April 14th, at The Apple Store in Downtown San Francisco, CA! It’s all part of Absolutepunk.net’s AbsoluteAcoustic series! The show starts at 1PM is open to the public. For details and directions, check out the AbosluteAcoustic web site..
Every time EMI and Apple are mentioned in the same line, everyone thinks its going to be a pending Beatles catalog announcement. Well, that’s what happened this weekend when word was sent out from EMI that it had a big announcement and Steve Jobs was a special guest. Once the let down of the absence of the Beatles catalog was realized today, EMI fronted to the world a new way to purchase its existing catalog on iTunes: DRM free. Not only will there be no digital protection on the music files you will be able to download for $1.29 each at the iTunes store, but the quality will be twice that of the current DRM versions with a bit rate of 256 kpbs.
“We are going to give iTunes customers a choice—the current versions of our songs for the same 99 cent price, or new DRM-free versions of the same songs with even higher audio quality and the security of interoperability for just 30 cents more,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We think our customers are going to love this, and we expect to offer more than half of the songs on iTunes in DRM-free versions by the end of this year.”
If desire to upgrade your current EMI iTunes-downloaded music to the new higher grade ball-and-chain free versions, you can for a mere 30 cent upgrade per song.
Apple intends to have more than half of its offerings in DRM-free AAC format by years end. With this announcement, any music player such as iPods, Zens, and music players on computers such as Windows and Mac OS will be able to play the new version from iTunes. Further, digital network players, such as the Sonos music player, will be able to play your purchased music from iTunes without any worry.
We here at SvenOnTech applaud EMI and Apple and urge the rest of the record industry to follow suit…now!
From the CTIA WIRELESS 2007 show today, Verizon Wireless, operator of the nation’s most reliable wireless network, and Motorola, Inc. announced the exclusive availability of the new Motorola Automotive Music & Hands-free System T605. Available at Verizon Wireless Communications Stores across the country on April 6, including those within Circuit City stores, this new car kit gives music-lovers access to digital music and phone calls directly through one car sound system.
“Customers will enjoy the fact that their music will stream wirelessly from any Bluetooth stereo mobile phone, but when a call comes in the T605 pauses the music and resumes it when the call ends,” said Patrick Bucci, director of accessories for Verizon Wireless. “This is an easy way for Verizon Wireless customers to take their music with them wherever they go.”
“We are thrilled to team-up with Verizon Wireless for our first in-car streaming audio solution,” said Robert Levine, general manager, North America, MobileME, Motorola. “The T605 expands Motorola’s Bluetooth enabled automotive solutions to give people choice and flexibility for their connectivity needs in the car.”
The T605 also lets Verizon Wireless customers enjoy uninterrupted conversations. Just turn on the ignition and the T605 automatically syncs with a compatible Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone.
Equipped with digital signal processing for noise and echo reduction and enhanced technology that lets the volume increase as background noise increases, full duplex capabilities and version 2.0 Bluetooth wireless technology* the Motorola T605 is engineered for advanced call quality and clear connections.
Complete with a sleek, dynamic finish, an improved user interface for intuitive navigation, and Motorola’s exclusive EasyPair technology, this hands-free system promises ease-of-use.
If you’re in the market to buy a new Mac Pro, then you may want to head over to Silverado Systems as its sweetening the deal to an incredible tower computer with some free stuff. Silverado Systems is celebrating four years of business and it want to give YOU the present. Purchase a Mac Pro with AppleCare between now and the end of March and Silverado Systems will give you at no additional charge Airport, Bluetooth, and wireless keyboards/Mighty Mice in your order! If you’re looking to get a MacBook Pro (with AppleCare), then you’ll get a free Booq PowerSleeve valued at $100.
Spymac announced yesterday that it has sent out it’s first wave of checks to users who have posted on their site, Leapfrog 2.0, the most popular content. Users receive a cash award for having the most popular music, videos, and pictures uploaded onto the website. Winners are chosen using two criterion: 1) most revenue collected from that users uploaded content and 2) the popularity of that content. Spymac is sharing the money it earns from the website with the people who helped earn that money, not a bad deal!
“Our unique revenue sharing model has proven to be a hit with uploaders, we’ve already sent out thousands and we’re now getting ready to pay out the large monthly jackpot to January’s top contributors” said Spymac’s CEO Holger Ehlis.
With Spymac, users have unlimited storage space for whatever they wish to post, and several useful tools they can use to promote their uploaded items. Users also have the ability to chat with other people and network to share their content around the globe. There are versions of Spymac available to 95% of the online population in 18 different languages. This gives pretty much anyone and everyone the chance to win large daily and monthly Jackpots.
“Last week, we were getting more than 500 uploads a day, and that number has quickly climbed to more than 1,000 uploads from around the world every 24 hours — about a new upload every minute of the day…Already in the first month, we have individuals making enough money that they can literally quit their day-job and spend all day creating videos and uploading to Spymac,” joked Ehlis. “We are paying out between $3,000 to $5,000 a day.”
SvenOnTech informed you of one way to watch Flash-based movies from your Mac last week and this week we’ll show you another one entitled Democracy Player. As America spoke yesterday with swinging the House to the Democratic party, the Participatory Culture Foundation has cleared its throat and brought to the Mac, Windows, and Linux world an interesting player for us all to enjoy and love for free.
Democracy Player is an open-source player that brings all sorts of content to you. With over 700 channels to chose from, you could spend a lot of time with this nicely laid out player. If you find a channel that you really enjoy, you don’t have to even view the movie in a small window. With a flick of a few keys or a click of a mouse, you can delight it in full screen.
But what really is Democracy Player? Well, the authors themselves tell us that it is a player that lets you get, “the best internet TV shows in one powerful application: any video RSS feed, video podcast, video blog, or BitTorrent file. Fullscreen, high resolution, 100% free and open source. New channels arrive daily in the built-in Channel Guide.”
In a nutshell, that’s it. Using the freeware Quicktime plug-in Perian, the Democracy Player will bring you hours and hours of fun to your Mac, PC, or Linux host for sure. Now go download it and waste esteem some time!
I knew this day was coming and like me, tons of other blogs are going to have broken images in their archives. flickr had this great set up that it would allow you to view as many pictures as you wanted for free. The only catch was that you could only upload 20 MB per month. No biggy…for the user. Yahoo, after it’s purchase of flickr, saw its bandwidth bill go sky high and after yesterdays disappointing earnings announcements, well, things had to change. The free account was one of those things.
Now the free account for flickr users can only display the 200 most current pictures. After that, it’s broken image time with a nice little message encouraging you to go Pro. Pro will cost ya $24.95. Yahoo is plastering, “Holy smokes! That’s cheap!” but truth is, the previous set up was cheaper.
Everyone knew this day was coming and I would have to say for SvenOnTech, it’s better than losing all of your images at once because Yahoo pulls the plug on flikr. So, things could be worse.
Guess I have to pull out my credit card now. Excuse us for a moment…
These three men think they’ve concocted a way to create energy that will never run out. Yes, create. Now calm down all you physics people, we know one of that the Principle of the Conservation of Energy says this ain’t so, but hey, these guys say it is. In fact, they took an ad out in The Economist challenging scientists around the world to look at this and prove ‘em wrong.
Steorn, the company these three are leading into the new realm of energy, says we won’t need batteries or gas or coal to produce energy for so many of the things we use today. Nope, the technology that Michael Moriarty, Michael Daly and Richard Walshe (left to right in the picture) along with CEO Sean McCarthy have invented are daring our thinking and saying that ships, buses, cameras, phones, farming equipment, autos, home appliances, and even industry as a whole will all run of this technology. No emissions and no need to renew the energy; it’s always there.
High claims that may even find these men dead. I mean, how will Al Qaeda fund its operation without the world buying oil? Iran and Saudi Arabia will be pretty much what it should have been decades ago, a desert. Dead. Oh ya, just like these guys may find themselves if this is true.
Many will find this claim just too hard to believe like cars running on water instead of gas, but hey, this may pan out this time. Or maybe not. But if it does, wow, what an amazing source of energy and what a change the world will see if this is the real deal. Here’s hoping as I pay of last months electric bill of $497!
We’re tired of saying Apple needs to bring wireless to the iPod as we’ve been saying it for over a year, but in light of the Microsoft iPod-killer rumors, we’ve got to say it again.
It now looks like that Redmond-based Microsoft will be trying its best shot against the mega-popular Apple iPod with its very own digital audio player (DAP) ready for this Christmas. It’s said it’ll have a bigger screen than the current iPod (how much you want to bet it’s like .2″ bigger?) as well as built-in wireless. For what you ask? Um, downloads direct from some new Microsoft music store. “Wow, isn’t that what SvenOnTech has been recommending Apple do?” Yup. Guess Bill Gates reads our page and took our advice.
Supposedly, the new device will allow users to purchase and download music directly to their new Microsoft DAP anywhere a Wi-Fi connection is. To further entice iPod defectors, Microsoft is going to buy you every iTunes Music Store purchased song from the Microsoft music store. For free. On Redmond. It’ll be interesting to see how it handles customers like SvenOnTech who did really well in the Pepsi cap “game” two years in a row (over 300 songs just from that) and whom liked using all those hundreds of dollars in gift certificates. I’d say we here at SvenOnTech easily have over a grand in music in our iTunes library.
Anyway, Microsoft is doing the right thing, it’s taking music lovers to the next level. For what ever reason Apple sits on its fanny on this, who knows. It is most likely that Apple is working on this and it’s that full-screen LCD that is slowing down the announcement of the next great iPod. Heck, we wouldn’t be surprised to see this out by Christmas from Apple, either, but man, Apple has had so much time and with its past releases being so quick, one has to wonder if Apple has become too comfortable in its supremacy.
We welcome Microsoft’s new wireless DAP. It’ll be nice to have duplicated iTMS music in WMA format…on Microsoft. 
Now we’re curious if the packaging will be anything like this.
PC users and IT administrators around the world know and love the software Symantec picked up a handful of years ago called Ghost. Ghost lets you take a complete “picture” of your hard drive and either duplicate for tons of other PCs in your shop (the IT crowd) or re-image your drive if Windows decided to die on your because of various reasons such as maybe spyware gone bad.
Ghost to many has been worth its weight in gold but today, it’s cost is light as air. With rebates and all, Ghost will cost you nothing. Not a cent. Even after shipping (when using Buy.com’s free shipping method.)
For any one running a PC, SvenOnTech highly recommends you jump on this offer!