Does Streaming Music Sound Right?

The past couple of months has seen an explosion in services that offer streaming and stored music access for a set monthly fee. Sony’s got its Qriocity service, Samsung offers up its Music Hub, JB Hi-Fi offers its NOW service, and the latest service to launch is Rdio, another streaming service that’s been available internationally for some time now.

Despite the (slightly) differing pricing, the core of all these services is basically the same. You pay a set monthly fee, with cheaper subscriptions offering a smaller subset of either features or methods of access, build up playlists of artists and then have your subscription period to listen to “your” music as much as you’d like. Some services are more closely tied to specific technology platforms — so it’s no shock that there’s a Qriocity client for the Playstation 3, or for that matter a Music Hub application for the Galaxy SII and Galaxy Tab — but it’s still music. The hook for all of them is the breadth of the offering; for around ten dollars a month you’re getting much more than the equivalent amount would buy you in cold hard compact discs.

Well, sort of. The big and most obvious difference between buying a CD and these kinds of services is that you never actually own the music you’re paying for. Buy a CD and you own it; you can listen to it endlessly, quite legally transfer it to other devices for your own personal listening pleasure or use it as a shiny coaster if you have a sudden epiphany and decide that, say, Romanian trumpet sonatas aren’t actually all that thrilling after all. Whereas with a subscription, all you’ve got is the time you’ve paid for, and that’s all.

In case you’re concerned about the absolute value of a service, it’s worth noting that most of them offer some kind of limited time trial period for you to peruse their archives and make sure that their musical selection matches yours. Everyone’s tastes are different, and there’s bound to be some obscure tracks that are missed over; most of these services do cater to the mainstream.

In one sense, streaming music isn’t all that different from the way that many people enjoy video entertainment; while many folks own impressive DVD or Blu-Ray collections, there’s plenty more who plunk down a set number of dollars each month for a Foxtel or Austar subscription, and that’s entertainment that’s solidly there while it’s being watched and then gone.

Music To Your Ears?

Fifteen years ago, if you wanted music for your computer, it was a pretty simple affair. You went out, and you bought a CD from a shop — or  perhaps via mail order if you were a serious distance from the nearest CD store.

CDs are all but dead in the market today; while it’s still possible to find music stores, they’re a dying breed, and the range they offer pales in comparison to the offerings that can be found online. Apple’s iTunes still dominates the local scene in terms of outright sales,  and while we’re stuck paying slightly higher rates for individual tracks than, say, American consumers  –an unfortunate legacy of the kinds of deals that Apple struck with the major name labels, although Apple clearly isn’t suffering for charging a little extra anyway.

But you’re not limited to iTunes, especially if you’re not fussed about music ownership anyway. No, I’m not advocating music piracy — far  from it. Recent months have seen a number of online music subscription services emerge in the local market, offering access to potentially millions of tracks for a single set fee. You don’t keep the tracks you’re listening to, but then you’re not charged by volume; instead simply a monthly fee for access, rather like PayTV. Sony has a service labelled as Qriocity, Microsoft has Zune Music Pass and Blackberry has the not terribly inventively named Blackberry Music locally; it’s expected that online service provider Rdio will launch in Australia sometime in the new year.

It might seem counterintuitive to pay for music on your computer (or smartphone, or tablet — most of these services will work across multiple devices, because you’re typically signing into a service rather than downloading a file) that you don’t get to keep, but the subscription model has some definite upsides. There’s the obvious appeal of having access to millions of tracks; while there may be thousands you don’t care for, that kind of wide spread virtually assures you of being able to find something you’ll like. Many of them will offer initial short trial periods, so you can ensure that you’re happy with what’s on offer. Access to lots of music is also a great way to widen your musical horizon, and most services will suggest similar artists to those you’re already listening to. That can have social aspects as well; the recently launched Blackberry Music does limit the number of tracks you can access on your smartphone, but cleverly allows you to “share” your collection with other Blackberry Music listeners. If you’ve got lots of friends, in other words, your collection could be massive — and you’ll also get an insight into their tastes along the way.

Have eBooks become must-read articles?

Electronic books have been around a lot longer than most people think, dating all the way back to the late 1960s when the concept of the Dynabook (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook) was first mooted. It’s only been in the past few years, however, that there’s been real traction for the eBook concept, speeded along by devices such as Amazon’s Kindle and Kobo’s eReader and the willingness of publishers to come on board with electronic publishing.

Formats come and formats go — it’s somewhat hard to buy a cassette tape outside of roadside truck stops, for example — but will the rise of eBooks put paid to the format they’re supplanting, namely the printed book? Amazon certainly seems to think so, and to give them credit, they’ve got some impressive stats to back that up. The company is already one of the world’s leading book sellers, and it recently announced that sales of Kindle eBooks had overtaken its sales of both hardcover and print books combined. For every 100 physical books sold, Amazon’s stating (http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1565581&highlight=)  that it sells 105 Kindle eBooks.

Impressive figures, and I’ll admit that I’ve been doing a bit more Kindle (and iBook and Kobo) reading than print reading of late, but that’s largely been due to some (but not all) digital books that I’ve been after being cheaper in digital format. That’s not a given, and that in itself is a barrier to adoption; most consumers, no matter the economics of the argument, will baulk at paying more for a digital eBook with minimal transmission costs than they will a physical book. There’s still also the challenge of lending. If I want to lend my mate a book I’ve enjoyed, I simply pass it to him. For him to borrow a Kindle book, I’ve got to pass him the entire Kindle, or authorise my account on his device — at which point I’ve got to trust he won’t start buying books on my credit card!

What do you think? Are print books likely to go the way of the LP, assigned simply to dusty specialist stores?

What’s New In Consumer Technology for 2011

January brings with it the start of a new year, and along with it the promise of all kinds of new technological gadgetry. This isn’t just a case of the year rolling over, either; January is also when the largest consumer technology trade show, CES (the Consumer Electronics Show) takes place in Las Vegas. It’s a chance for the heavyweights of the consumer technology trade to show off their latest and greatest wares, as well as the products that we should see on store shelves over the next couple of years. It’s a mixture of what you might think of as “pure” technology products, as well as more consumer-centric fare. As an example, last year’s CES was dominated by 3D Televisions, and they were still a presence this year, although with more focus on a glasses-free experience. TVs had to sit side by side with some major technology announcements, however. While Apple largely had the tablet computing field to itself in 2010, that’s not going to be the case in 2011, with new and rather exciting tablets on the table from LG, Dell, Lenovo, Asus, Motorola and RIM all on show. Some feature slide-out keyboards for those still not sold on the whole touchscreen motif, and many use NVIDIA’s powerful dual-core Tegra 2 chipset. One of the factors that has been a problem for Android-based systems recently has been the differing hardware that lies underneath each different Android phone. If the market consolidates around Tegra 2, those problems may become a thing of the past. Microsoft talked up its successes in 2010, particular surrounding the Kinect technology, as well as launching a revision of its business centric Surface technology, dubbed Surface 2. If the Tablet is the hot new thing, then the Surface is, in essence, the hot new thing on growth steroids. The original was, quite literally, a table, but one that happened to be touch sensitive. Costing over $20,000 each, these were serious promotional machines for hotel lobbies and the like. The new Surface 2 cuts the cost considerably (although Australian Surface buyers had a significant cost premium to pay, and it’ll be interesting to see if that premium continues with the second generation Surface), adds a tough gorilla glass exterior and a fascinating technology that turns each pixel on the display into a tiny sensing camera. Previous generation surface relied on specially designed tags that the Surface could “read”. The new Surface 2 may be able to do without them altogether.

Intel also used CES to launch its “Sandy Bridge” line of 2nd generation Core i7, Core i5 and Core i3 processors. As you’d expect, Intel’s busy talking up the improved processing speed of the new CPUs, and frankly, I’d be stunned if they promoted anything else. CES also sees its share of concept products, product pitches and things that are just plain weird. I’d have to say that the strangest I’ve heard of on the CES floor would have to have come from graphics chip giant NVIDIA. Not content with powering many of the best tablet computers on the show floor, somebody at NVIDIA got the bright idea of combining computing and beer, in the form of the Kegputer. The recipe’s pretty simple; a high end Sandy Bridge Intel Chip, Two NVIDA GTX 580s for graphics processing… inside a working beer keg. I figured somebody was pulling my leg when they mentioned it, until I found video of it online. Who wouldn’t want one of these?

Getting the bargain you expect when shopping online

Online commerce has changed the way we buy all sorts of things, from music to DVDs to clothing and even whitegoods. I wasn’t that surprised the other day to see an eBay advertisement at a bus stop suggesting that you check out the quality of a particular thing at Westfield — and then buy it online. I’m sure the Westfield folks aren’t too thrilled at that prospect, but there’s equally no doubt that it happens.

What do you do for products that aren’t sold at your local Westfield, or if your local Westfield (or similar shopping centre) are too far away to make it feasible? There’s also whole ranges of product only available online — most Apps for smartphones, certain brands of consumer electronics (such as those offered by Kogan or Millennius )

There’s always word of mouth, which has value — as long as you know somebody with the product you’re after. Online reviews can be good as well, although it pays to know if a particular site has a  bias towards a particular product or style before interpreting a review. Product reviewing is a big part of what I do day to day as a journalist across a number of publications, and I’ll always try to remain looking at the big picture, but the practical reality is that no review is 100% objective.

Bear in mind also that for goods sold in Australia by Australian companies, the same consumer protection laws cover your purchases. The laws vary a little by state and for some products, but generally speaking if the goods you get aren’t what they were stated to be, you should be entitled to a refund or replacement, and your point of call should be the merchant you purchased from. They may suggest you seek warranty from the original manufacturer, and sometimes that’s wise, but as the sales point of contact they’re still liable if the manufacturer can’t be found or won’t live up to the supposed warranty.

There are bargains out there online, but equally there can be flat out duds. One of the more amusing ones that came to my attention recently was conducted deliberately to draw out a dud; in this case American Song/Poem companies that will create music for your compositions for a fee. The folks behind alternative label Dual Plover sent these companies a bunch of classic Aussie rock anthems to do their worst to, choosing classics from Skyhooks, Rose Tattoo, and Australian Crawl. The results aren’t exactly quality-inspired, and at least at the time of writing you could download them free from here: http://dualplover.com/ozrock.php.

Personally, I’ll never be able to listen to Cold Chisel’s “Cheap Wine” quite the same way again.

Beware Of Tech Bargains

I recently flew back from the UK, and as I waited at Heathrow Airport, I looked at the longest queue in the airport. Not for checking in, but for reclaiming VAT (the UK equivalent of GST) on items purchased within the UK. As a foreigner, you’re technically exempt from that particular tax and can claim it back when you leave the country. There was one bloke in line with a 50″ Plasma TV.

Not exactly carry-on material, your average 50″ Plasma TV, and my thoughts quickly turned to the fact that whatever VAT saving he was about to make  once he got to the front of the queue was going to be totally obliterated by excess baggage fees, and then some.

Taxes and duties do add to the prices of the technology goods we buy, but even that extreme example (which most of us wouldn’t follow) is only part of the story. Wandering through the duty free section of Sydney’s International airport on the other end of the flight, I quickly ducked past the perfume and cigarettes (neither is my thing) and had a quick look at the technology and gadgets on offer.

Most technology gear isn’t what you’d commonly call cheap. Often decent value for what you can do with it (needs permitting), but the initial outlay is often quite high. As such, you’d think the removal of taxes should lead to some real bargains.

At least from an initial glance, it isn’t exactly so. Plenty of folks around me were scooping up cigarettes like their lives depended on it (an irony in itself) but the products laid out before me were priced more like they were in a high end department store than the theoretically cheap paradise of duty free. All of them, naturally enough, had huge notices proclaiming exactly how much of a bargain they were.

It’s a pattern that’s not restricted to duty free shopping for technology, however. I’ve lost track of the number of “cheap” printers, music players, notebooks and monitors I’ve seen in any number of ordinary retail outlets that have given me pause for thought on price grounds. Sometimes the “saving” price quoted is the RRP, but it’s an RRP that nobody ever actually pays, because every other retail outlet discounts the same thing at the same rate to get customers in the door. Sometimes it’s because the item in question did sell at the stated RRP twelve months ago when it was still new, but it’s now been superseded by a newer model with better features. Somehow, the stores never make note of that fact.

Does that mean that there’s no such thing as a technology bargain? Not at all. It’s all a question of research and preparation. Most technology purchases aren’t spur of the moment matters, so knowing the real value of a product upfront is key. Price search engines such as StaticICE (www.staticice.com.au) can help with working out a reasonable price bracket for a given product before you shop, as can keeping up with the current status of a given product. If the new model has features you don’t need and the old one is really cheap, that’s the very definition of a bargain. Conversely, if you find you need the new features quickly, it’s no bargain at all.

Netbook or Tablet?

If you want a small portable computer with a bit more screen space than a smartphone, you’re rather spoilt for choice right now. The choice as it stands currently is between the newer crop of tablet style devices epitomised by Apple’s iPad, but soon to be joined by efforts from Samsung, who recently unveiled the Galaxy Tab running Google’s Android operating system, as well as options from Asus and Toshiba.

On the other hand, you could opt for a cheap netbook. The netbook market is now a couple of years old and there’s plenty of choice on store shelves right now. So which should you opt for?

Tablets:

Upside:
They’re generally much simpler to use, because they run quite specific touch-capable operating systems, rather than Windows or Linux bolted onto smaller screens. The add-on applications markets for both Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android platforms is expanding rapidly, and most software just works rather than having to work around problems of smaller screens or lower power processors, which is a concern for netbook users.

Downside:
As they’re all screen, you’ll have to pay more for a Bluetooth or similar keyboard. Apple notably controls the Apps available for its platform, and what they can do, with an iron fist, while the upgrade nature of Android-based devices is often a little shaky.

Netbooks:

Upside:
Inbuilt keyboards give flexibility, as does the use of standard notebook/PC operating systems. Pressure from the tablet and even notebook markets has also driven prices right down, and it’s rare to see a netbook on a retail store shelf for more than $500.

Downside:
They’re not very powerful machines, and under the weight of Windows or Linux and applications, some netbooks can be very sluggish systems. The keyboards present in most netbooks are pretty cheap and very small, which won’t suit some hands.

Invariably, some users and uses will suit one over the other, and we’ll clearly see some more interesting plays in both the netbook and tablet spaces in the next twelve months. It’s well worth trying a few “store models” out before making your decision, as it’s much better to get a system that suits you rather than one you have to force to work the way you want it to.

What can you do with 1TB of data?

Recent weeks have seen some immense shifts in the home broadband space in Australia. It all kicked off when Telstra announced new and surprisingly competitive plans. I say surprisingly simply because, historically speaking, Telstra’s been amongst the last of the ISPs to shift its data offerings forwards, pursuing more of the premium market (through its Next G wireless) or bundled offerings through mobile phones and landlines.

Suddenly, for less than $100, you could get 200GB of data per month, from Telstra. Competing ISPs weren’t happy, not the least because some of these prices were cheaper than they were selling wholesale to other ISPs. Many of them rely on using Telstra’s wholesale services in bulk to make their money, and if consumer rates are cheaper than wholesale rates they can’t do that.

While that plays out in the legal sphere, the other ISPs haven’t been sitting still. A week after Telstra dropped its pricing bombshell, Internode answered with plans offering 240GB.  A week later iiNet announced plans with a total of 1TB (1,000GB) per month download plans. Within hours, Primus was offering 1.1TB plans, and TPG now offers a 1TB plan as well.

Storage is cheaper than it’s ever been, but it’s a fair guess that many readers won’t have that much storage space in their entire PC. So, if relatively few users have 1Tb per month to spare, is there actually value in these plans?

To an extent – and it’s even a legal extent –  yes, there can be. The ISPs in question aren’t banking on every user on a 1TB plan using the whole 1TB per month. Like many services, they figure most users won’t go through that much, but they’ll get the money either way.

What 1TB does buy you is a fair amount of security in terms of getting shaped. You could download a month’s worth of legal download movies (from, say, iTunes) and still be within your cap. Stream an awful lot of video from those services that the given ISPs don’t already allow under the cap, catching up on as much free-to-air TV as you like.  Obviously there’s a market of people who will never need 1TB, but if you’re sitting on a plan where you consistently get shaped for the last couple of months of your plan, and it’s close to the typical $99 price point that many of these plans go for, there’s a strong argument to say that you could be doing better.

Getting a Web perspective

I don’t watch a lot of TV news these days, largely because I often find the news a little quicker online.  Just like watching the news on TV, though, it can sometimes be tough when following news to judge the scale of events, especially those of a tragic nature. I find that the often obvious TV film script is usually more concerned on the fate of individuals, because there’s no easy way to convey a disaster of any scale in simple TV terms.

The Web isn’t constrained by the terms of television, however. I’ve recently become aware of a fascinating project being undertaken by the BBC, called Dimensions. Dimensions is, in its own words, an experiment in “in trying to find new ways to communicate history.”. Specifically, what Dimensions does is use global map data — if you can name it you can find it — and then superimpose the effects of a given historical event over that area, to give the reader a genuine sense of the scale of an event.

There’s some fun stuff in there — like being able to see how long the Space Shuttle runway would be if it was located in the middle of Melbourne (http://howbigreally.com/dimension/space/shuttle_runway#Melbourne) or what would happen if you dropped St Peter’s Basilica in the middle of Canberra (http://howbigreally.com/dimension/festivals_and_specticles/pope_st_paul#canberra).

What really grabbed my attention were the disaster superimpositions. It’s all too easy to forget about a crisis when it’s a thirty second news spot and the camera only focuses on a couple of people. But drop it into your neighbourhood, and you get a proper sense of the scale, and almost inevitably start thinking about the consequences. The recent floods in Pakistan might seem quite far away, but if you dropped them, on say, Adelaide (http://howbigreally.com/dimension/environmental_disasters/pakistan_floods#adelaide), the scope of the disaster shifts from distant to breathtakingly close.

Or take the Pacific Garbage Patch. This was one I didn’t know anything about, and the short version is this; there’s two large swirling patches of garbage floating either side of Hawaii, held in place by ocean currents. When you think of Hawaii, you probably think of dusky island maidens and delicately lit beaches, rather than fetid stinking pools of swirling plastic and muck. But hey, it’s only a little garbage in a big ocean, right?

Well, not so small. If you superimpose it over, say, Alice Springs (http://howbigreally.com/dimension/environmental_disasters/great_pacific_garbage_patch#Alice_Springs) you’ll get a better idea of the scope of the problem — especially as that’s only half of it!

Smartphones in all shapes and sizes

The mobile phone market is seemingly inexorably shifting towards smartphones. You may not think that you could or would want a smartphone, but it seems as though the market is deciding for you, with any number of phone vendors offering up either direct smartphones, or so-called “feature” phones that offer many of the core smartphone offerings. That’s features like included email, web browsing and if you’re lucky a little light document reading.

It’s arguably a similar kind of situation that existed with mobile phones around fifteen years ago. Mobiles themselves were still pretty clunky creatures, and plenty of folk could rather easily say that they had no use for a phone that was always on them. In today’s connected world, there are few that would make that claim. A smartphone just takes that to the next level, matching up your email and other functions to your location no matter where you are. We’re even starting to see some reasonably priced data plans to go with smartphones, taking the bill shock problem out of the equation.

We’re also seeing a lot more variance in what smart phones look like. For the past couple of years, most manufacturers have made smartphone that, for better or worse, aped the simple style of Apple’s iPhone lines. iPhones have been popular, so it made a certain amount of sense to do so. Still, there are those who don’t want a touchscreen-only phone, or don’t want an Apple phone full stop.

I went to a preview — not quite a launch, as it’s not quite clear as to what the company involved will actually sell in the Australian marketplace — of a number of new technology products from Chinese company Huawei recently. You’ve most likely never heard of Huawei, although the chances are decent you may have interacted with some of the company’s technology in one way or the other. As an example, outside of Telstra, all the USB modems currently offered for mobile broadband by Australia’s telecommunications companies are Huawei modems.

One of the potential products that Huawei executives showed off to me were a range of Android phones. There were, predictably, phones that carried that standard “iPhone” style big-screen experience, for those that want it. There was a Google-branded phone that we may see by the end of the year, similar to the HTC Desire but a fair bit smaller, and potentially a bit cheaper. Also in attendance was an oddly small Android phone, the U8300 that featured a tiny physical keyboard. From a very brief test of the phone, it’s not going to challenge a Blackberry for keyboard dominance, but if you wanted a cheap smartphone with a keyboard, it might be worth considering.

There’s no clear indication that any of these phones will come to the Australian marketplace, and even if they do they’re highly unlikely to be directly labelled as Huawei phones. That mirrors a much larger tech reality, however, as many seemingly “competing” tech products come from the same core providers to a given tech company’s recipes. Yes, even Apple’s products are sourced this way.

I guess at least if we are all going to be gently shoved into the smartphone world, it’s good to see that it’s not going to be within a one-size-fits-all model, and variances for taste, style and usability will still be possible. What shape smartphone do you want?

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