« May 2013 »
S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29 30 31
You are not logged in. Log in
Entries by Topic
All topics
Computers  «
Internet
Mobile
Vehicles
Blog Tools
Edit your Blog
Build a Blog
RSS Feed
View Profile
Sources
TechCrunch
Engadget
Share

Share on MySpace
Tweet Compartir
Technoblog
Saturday, 2 April 2011
Amazon’s Cloud Player Tests The Limits Of The Record Labels’ Patience
Topic: Computers

Amazon may have introduced its digital locker music service, the Cloud Player, before similar services from rivals Google and Apple (that are widely believed to be launching this year), but that doesn’t mean it will be an easy existence. Not long after the company published a note on its Web site inviting users to give Cloud Player a try did one of the major record labels offer a warning. “We are disappointed that the locker service that Amazon is proposing is unlicensed by Sony Music,” a Sony spokesman said. Is Amazon on a collision course with the music industry, and if it is, could that be a good thing for consumers?

The Amazon Cloud Player gives users the ability to listen to their music collection from anywhere they have an Internet connection, either via a Web app that’s compatible with all major browsers or an Android app. (The service is officially incompatible with iOS devices such as the iPhone, but users have nonetheless reported partial success using Mobile Safari.) Users upload their music files, either in MP3 or AAC format, to their online account (or “locker”), and can thenceforth access these files with the Cloud Player. It’s your music anywhere and everywhere you happen to be. Amazon gives everyone with an Amazon account—and who doesn’t have one of those?—5GB of free storage, with premium options available for more storage space. (Not that hard drive space is expensive these days. Scroll to the bottom of your Gmail inbox and you’ll see that Google already gives you more than 7GB to play with by default.)

The idea of streaming music isn’t new. Services like Spotify in Europe and Rdio in the U.S. have long given users the ability to stream music using a variety of desktop and mobile applications. The key difference between these services and the Amazon Cloud Player is that Amazon’s allows you to upload your own music to its servers (“the cloud”), and then access those as you see fit. If you have an old Rolling Stones CD ripped to your hard drive you can’t upload those files to Spotify’s cloud, but you can upload them to Amazon’s. The record labels, which have hardly been friendly to the digitization of music since the days of Napster, don’t necessarily approve of this feature, saying that Amazon doesn’t have the proper licensing agreements in place to offer that kind of capability.

Sony Music has been the most vocal opponent thus far. It told Reuters that it didn’t think its licensing agreement with Amazon would permit streaming music. (The record labels differentiate between giving users the ability to download a song once versus being able to call upon that same song as you see fit. Think you own a song when you download it from iTunes? Think again, as you’ve only purchased a license to download the file once. Ownership of digital music is a thing of fiction.) More ominously for Amazon, it also said that it was “keeping its legal options open.” But what type of problems could Amazon run into?

Julie Samuels, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says that Amazon may model its defense on how Cablevision successful argued for its remote storage digital video recorder, or RS-DVR, in 2006TKTK. Users would use the RS-DVR as they would a traditional DVR—pause live TV, rewind, re-watch recorded content, etc.—except all of this content was stored on Cablevision’s own servers. Cablevision argued that despite the fact that the hard drive in the DVR was located somewhere else, its functionality was identical to that of a traditional DVR. Amazon could argue the same thing, that all its doing is putting somewhere else the users’ hard drive that otherwise would be sitting on their desk.

Perhaps to avoid all of that, Amazon is now said to be “aggressively” courting the record labels to ensure that the service doesn’t land the company in a federal court.

Amazon’s not the only company that’s offering such a service. MP3Tunes.com also offers a digital locker, and an assortment of desktop and mobile applications to access that locker. It just so happens that EMI, one of the big four record labels (and founding member of the Recording Industry Association of America), has been fighting the service in court since 2007.

But if Amazon is able to convince a judge that what it’s doing is just that, merely giving users access to a hard drive that just so happens to be available somewhere else.

Unless the record labels are prepared to argue that it’s illegal to set up a Web server (thisismymusiccollection.com) and access its files, in which case the nation’s copyright laws are truly uselessly antiquated.

 

Source : http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/04/01/amazons-cloud-player-tests-the-limits-of-the-record-labels-patience/

 

Posted by misteriosnuevaenergia at 12:30 PM EDT
Sunday, 2 January 2011
Google Cr-48 Chrome laptop preview (update: in-depth impressions!)
Topic: Computers
Well, would you look at what showed up on our frigid doorstep this morning? That's right, we are now the proud owners of Google's first Chrome OS laptop -- the Cr-48. Obviously, we ripped open the box and got right to handling the 12.1-inch, Atom-powered laptop. So, what does the thing feel like? How's that keyboard? And more importantly, how's Chrome OS looking? Stand by for our impressions, which we'll be adding in depth over the day. First impression: this thing is different.

Mega update: We blew this thing out! There's that video we already showed you, along with a way deeper dive into the hardware and the OS. It's all after the break, and you'd be a fool to miss it.

Google Cr-48 Chrome laptop preview

Cr-48: a second look



Look and feel

The Cr-48 may look like just any other laptop, but we can tell you right off the bat that it feels considerably better than most of those plastic netbooks sitting on store shelves right now. The entire body (that means the lid, edges, and the underside) is made of a soft, rubber-like matte black plastic -- in fact, it feels a lot like the back of the Droid, though it feels a bit less rubbery. Overall, it looks a lot like the old black MacBook, including a magnetic latch with a split spot for getting your finger in and lifting the lid and a sunken screen hinge. We're obviously pretty taken with the hardware design look and feel, but the laptop itself isn't going to turn heads or win any beauty contests, and that was clearly intentional on Google's part -- remember this one isn't for consumers, but more for those less stylish developers and early adopters. 

When we first picked up the 0.9-inch thick laptop we expected it to be a tad lighter -- according to Google it tips the scales at 3.6-pounds. If you ask us it just feels a bit too weighty for the size, however it's still easy enough to transport from the couch to the desk with one hand. On the flip side, we're impressed with its thin body and the fact that its battery fits flush with the bottom of the chassis. Yes, thankfully, there's no awkward battery hump like its closest competitor the Jolibook. Let us not forget about the ports: the left side is home to a VGA socket and the right side a USB port, 3.5mm headphone jack and an SD card slot. 

Chrome is super limited on drivers right now, but we did mount an SD card and a USB flash drive -- there's just no dedicated, easy way to get to the file browser. Interestingly, earlier versions of Chrome OS have given a pop-up within the browser for surfing through an external drive, so we don't know why Google has excised that at the moment. The USB port did work for attaching a mouse, however.

The laptop doesn't get nearly as hot as some of the worst offenders we know, but while it started out very cool, it did warm up over time -- though, so far we haven't managed to kick on the fan once.

Keyboard and touchpad

Surprise! Under the lid is that chiclet keyboard we showed you prior to the Cr-48's official birth. The keys, like the rest of the system, have a soft rubbery coating and feel pretty darn nice on the fingertips when typing. But as you can see from the picture above, the keyboard layout is probably the hardware aspect of the system that differs most from other netbooks out there. That's right, it's not your grandfather's keyboard, and Google made some real changes to the traditional layout -- it ditched the Caps Lock button for a search key, nixed the usual function control row and wiped out the Windows or Command button so there's now room for ultra-wide Ctrl and Alt buttons.

For the most part though, the changes didn't take much getting used to. There's an option to change the search key back to a Caps Lock, but we preferred keeping it as is since it automatically launches a new tab when pressed. And as you can imagine, the top row's back, forward and refresh keys were also incredibly convenient for the browser-based OS. We should also note that all of the typical Chrome keyboard shortcuts work out of the box, including Ctrl + the number of the tab, or Ctrl + D to bookmark a page.

We're not going to lie, we got pretty scared when we saw a ClickPad in place of a regular touchpad with real mouse buttons on the Cr-48 -- as you've probably heard, our experience with these hasn't been the best -- but the navigating experience isn't as bad as we expected. That doesn't mean it's perfect, but the plastic surface is responsive when navigating with a single finger or using two to scroll down the length of a webpage. However, things start to get shaky when you try and use the pad like a regular mouse button -- you know, with a thumb hovering on the left mouse button and an index finger on the pad itself. That setup causes either the cursor to mistakenly jump or not move at all. Our guess is that Google's using the older Synaptics ClickPad here, and as we've seen, future versions should help with those issues. We should also mention that there's no right click button, so to do so you have to tap two fingers on the pad itself.

Screen and speaker

The matte screen overwhelms us with gratitude. Thank you, Google. Thank you. Interestingly, it packs a 1280 x 800 resolution into its 12.1-inch dimensions, which strays from the typical 1366 x 768-resolution on most 11.6-inch and 12-inch laptops today. That means you can still get plenty of information on the screen, and we certainly didn't feel as cramped browsing as we traditionally do on sub-13.3-inch laptops. We did notice that the screen is a little dark, and while it's passable on viewing angles, you can really blow out the blacks further by viewing the screen at a lower than optimal angle.

We pumped a little bit of MOG and Pandora music through the speakers, and there was nothing offensive in the noise, it certainly wasn't spectacular. Think ThinkPad, not Dolby.

Performance and Chrome OS

With a tap of the power button the OS warms up, a graphical logo splash occupies the eye for a few seconds, the cursor comes alive, and then you're into the login screen in around 15 seconds. If you need to create a new user you just enter your Google account info (Google will allow different login forms, like OpenID, in the future), tap sign-in, snap a picture of yourself with the built-in webcam to use a profile shot, and "boom," you're into the OS. If you already have a profile stored, you need to type in a password every time you jump in, and it takes around 5 seconds to login.

While the boot is not what we'd call "instant" (although certainly very good), waking from the low-power standby mode is basically instant, certainly less than a second. Google claims you can stay in standby mode for around eight days, which seems pretty great to us. Clearly, we haven't had the time to test that just yet.

Once you're in the OS, you're in the browser, obviously. There's no minimize button up top, and the OS's best impression of an app launcher is the "new tab" button, which lists your apps, with "most visited" and "recently closed" sites below that. If you've seen Chrome, you've basically seen Chrome OS. Outside of tabs, there is a basic form of window management. If you hit Ctrl + N you get a new window, and you can toggle between your multiple windows with one of the action keys above the keyboard, sort of like virtual desktops.

There's a connections drop-down on the top right corner, which allows you to turn WiFi on and off, switch networks, or turn on your Verizon 3G. To the right of that is a simple battery life indicator, and, unfortunately, right now there's no way to control some power saving features, like the automatic screen timeout. You need an internet connection for the very first setup and login, but you can login to an existing user while the device is offline, and access anything that's cached or HTML5-stored on the device -- like some of those new Chrome Web Apps.

Our bookmarks and web apps carried over from desktop Chrome, but only after we remembered to set up sync on that copy of the browser -- it's on by default in Chrome OS, however. Even when we deleted our user on the Cr-48 and re-added it held onto everything just fine. The one exception to this symmetry was the small selection of default apps that Google has installed on the laptop, including EA's Poppit!, one of the most mundane Flash games we've ever come across. Those never get pushed to our other Chromes.

Even non-browsery things take place in the browser, like browser and system settings (the latter of which is laughably minimal, primarily concerned with setting the time zone). Google Talk is a pre-installed extension, and pops up a little dialogue from the bottom of your screen, which can be minimized into a small bar -- think of a purtified version of the separate GTalk chat "windows" in Gmail. A similar pop-up exists for downloads.

Wait, did we say downloads? Yes, we did. There is actually a filesystem, which we've seen two separate views for. When you upload a file on some random web app (like the excellent Pixlr Editor), you get a Linux-style file browser, with a full view of the file system, including the ugly OS-level stuff -- we doubt Google wants us to see this, in fact. However, if you upload a file from a blessed web app like Gmail, you get a very simplified file browser that shows any files you've downloaded and any screenshots you've taken. Ctrl + O opens that "file browser" up as the downloads pane, in case you want to rummage through screenshots you've taken or files you've downloaded without actually uploading them somewhere.

The other biggest difference between this version of Chrome and the desktop version that we noticed was that not all extensions can be installed, even ones that are listed with pretty new icons and meta data in the Chrome Web Store. Luckily our favorite was no trouble: FlashBlock.

And speaking of Flash... it seems to be this laptop's Achilles' heel. Even things as minor as Pandora seem to be putting a huge strain on the system, and cause everything else to slow down. When Google claimed Chrome OS ran the web "natively," it seems like it was ignoring the fact that Flash feels like emulation. Still, it's nice that it can run Flash. Is that hypocritical of us? The fact that Pandora or MOG can act as a music player on an OS that doesn't have a music player seems vitally important to the future of this OS. 

Flash was the most painful when trying to deal with video. YouTube videos weren't perfectly smooth, but were at least passable at standard resolutions. Hulu videos, however, were unacceptably choppy. Also, the choppy, laggy, blurry video chat we attempted through Google Talk made us want to murder someone. It felt like we'd just wound back the clock and were using a hopelessly underpowered netbook, and we doubt that's how Google would like its shiny new OS to be perceived. Luckily, Adobe has already stated that it's on the case, and 10.1 (which means hardware acceleration) is in the works. In the meantime we found HTML 5 video, including clips from Youtube.com/HTML, to be an improved experience. At full screen video is still very choppy, but we're inclined to blame part of that on the N450 processor -- having a dual-core N550 CPU in here probably would have improved that experience. 

One feature that we didn't get to spend too much time with but could be pretty clutch is Cloud Print. Basically, you set up your copy of Chrome on a regular computer to recognize printers on that local machine, which then get shared via your Google account with any other Chrome browser you've logged into, like your fancy Chrome OS machine, which can then print to any printers associated with that host machine. It might not sound as fancy as Apple's AirPrint, but it's probably going to be a lot more useful in the short term.

Google already went over this, but in case you missed it: multiple users is a breeze. Not only is it easy to set up a new user and sign in and out (though you have to enter your password every time it seems -- we didn't see a way to make one user a default), but the guest user spawns an "incognito" browsing mode, that not only stops the guest from accessing any of your info, but also covers the browsing tracks completely of the guest user. We figure the Googlers responsible for Chrome OS have some pretty shady friends, so we can't blame them for taking precautions.

Now, we've given our thoughts on a lot of this OS because we like you guys, but at the end of the day it's beta software running on non-commercial hardware, and that's why this is a preview, not a review -- none of this is final. Google has made it clear that it has plans to make a lot of improvements to the OS before it launches, and it certainly needs it. We encountered plenty of bugs and slowdowns, to be sure. On occasion when we went to sign out we ended up losing our session, as if it had "crashed" -- though thankfully a "restore" dialogue came to our rescue each time. Some extensions that worked for us initially stopped working later on, and some sites would perform really well one moment and really sluggishly the next. Interestingly, Google touted the OS as immune to the sort of slowdowns you get over weeks and months with a desktop OS like Windows, but we noticed slowdowns over a matter of minutes and hours. Hopefully these kinks can be ironed out, but we also wouldn't mind if third party manufacturers use some more powerful hardware than what Google's cobbled together.

Verizon connectivity and battery life

As promised, this was pretty much a snap to set up. All Chrome OS laptops are getting 100MB a month of free data from Verizon for the first two years of their laptop, but if you want more data than that there are a variety of pay options. Ten dollars gets you unlimited data for a day, and there's a meter on the tab that reveals how much data you have left. Pretty helpful, Google.

Google promises eight hours of battery life. Our units came with a halfway charged cell, which means we'll be updating this portion of the preview when we get this thing filled up with juice and can use it out and about. Right now at least one of our units seems about on pace for Google's estimate.

Wrap-up

This is a tough one to sum up. It's not a "real" product, in the sense that you can't buy it. Still, it represents the infancy of a series of products that will be very real and probably pretty well priced. We can already see some reasons why particularly browser-bound folks might consider this over a netbook, but for most people we'd say Google has a long ways to go to create a true netbook or laptop alternative -- besides, how many secondary and tertiary devices does one person really need? While the OS is pretty much all that matters here right now, and the internals are nothing special, our favorite part of the Cr-48 probably happens to be the one true inessential element: the design. We wish more computer manufacturers would take a note out of this understated book.

Posted by misteriosnuevaenergia at 5:05 PM EST

Newer | Latest | Older