Apple has rolled out movie rentals and purchases in both France and Ireland. This makes eight countries where users can get movies from iTunes.
Android is doing Motorola some good: the company posted better-than-expected profits for the first quarter.
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Reuters
April 30 2010
The day the music dies: Lala flips the off switch May 31
Online CD swapping service turned online music streaming service Lala is beginning the process of shutting down starting today. The service is no longer accepting new users, and current users won’t be able to upload new songs from their library. Web streaming and mp3 downloads will continue to be available until May 31.
Lala spent the last couple of years transforming itself into a viable streaming service, offering DRM-free mp3 downloads as well as a 10 per song web streaming option. Last fall, the company also struck a deal with Google to provide streaming music clips for relevant artist, song, or lyric searches. Despite its successes, Lala wasn’t yet in a position to turn a profit any time soon.
Limited Facebook and Twitter support will be coming to the Kindle with the 2.5 software update.
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Gizmodo
Rumor has it that Apple wants to charge advertisers around $1 million per campaign to be part of iAd, and up to $10 million to participate in the iAd launch.
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Wall Street Journal
Found magazine cofounder Jason Bitner has started a new project: “How I Met Your Motherboard,” a collection of stories about people’s first computers. Turn up the nostalgia!
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How I Met Your Motherboard
April 28 2010
Hands-on with Wii Classic Controller Pro: fingerprinty!
So we were sent a Wii Classic Controller Pro, the $20 update to the first-generation Classic Controller for the Nintendo Wii. Does it look more “pro” to you?
The controller is laid out very similarly to the first Classic Controller, with the exception of the fins coming down from the bottom of the controller. These fins are thinner than they look in pictures, and they take some getting used to. The idea here is to give the player a better grip than the SNES-style original, but in practice they never seemed to be positioned where we’d like them.
WWDC 2010 is set to take place the second week of June, and the June 7 keynote is the most likely time that Apple will announce the fourth-generation iPhone hardware. Unnamed sources speaking to Mashable claim that Apple now plans to put the new device on sale immediately following its announcement at the keynote. However, we’re not so sure that would be a wise move.
The first iPhone was announced at Macworld Expo in January 2007 and went on sale the following June. Subsequent iPhone models were announced during WWDC, then went on sale several weeks later in late June or early July. Supposedly, AT&T has barred retail employees from taking vacations during June—a practice the company employed for previous iPhone launches—and earlier rumors suggested a launch on or around June 22. (If I were a betting man, I’d put money on June 25 or July 9.)
WWDC 2010 is set to take place the second week of June, and the June 7 keynote is the most likely time that Apple will announce the fourth-generation iPhone hardware. Unnamed sources speaking to Mashable claim that Apple now plans to put the new device on sale immediately following its announcement at the keynote. However, we’re not so sure that would be a wise move.
The first iPhone was announced at Macworld Expo in January 2007 and went on sale the following June. Subsequent iPhone models were announced during WWDC, then went on sale several weeks later in late June or early July. Supposedly, AT&T has barred retail employees from taking vacations during June—a practice the company employed for previous iPhone launches—and earlier rumors suggested a launch on or around June 22. (If I were a betting man, I’d put money on June 25 or July 9.)
April 28 2010
Hands-on with Bento for iPad
Bento is the consumer version of popular database software FileMaker Pro. The new iPad version of the software joins the Mac version, currently at version 3, as well as the iPhone version in the growing stable of Bento implementations. At $4.99, the iPad application is 10 percent of the price of its desktop sibling, but the desktop software isn’t necessary in order to make use of it.
