The last few days I’ve been cruising around in my car listening to a selection of music on my iPhone that I haven’t paid for. No, it’s not via some illicit P2P network. Rather, I’ve been using two streaming services — last.fm and Flycast — to deliver high quality music over the 3G network to my phone. Both work remarkably well anywhere that 3G data is available.
To hear a selection of music similar to my tastes, I simply turn on last.fm on the iPhone, and start it playing. Based on information it has previously obtained from my music library at home, it finds and plays similar music. If I like something I’m listening to, I can reach over and tap the screen to get more like it. If I dislike, similarly I can tell last.fm to ignore others from that artist.
Flycast is an internet radio application. Again over 3G, it lets me tune into a wide selection of internet radio stations. For the last couple of days I’ve been indulging in a little nostalgia and listening to KMTT “The Mountain” in Seattle. I really miss the Mountain Music Lounge. I’ve been revelling in their great live accoustic performances while driving the kids here and there.
Both of these services are simple software downloads for iPhone. In contrast, our satellite radio is a daunting bucket of hardware that needs to be installed in the vehicle. I still haven’t done it. It was easier to just plug the iPhone into the AUX port in the car and start listening.
Is there room for satellite radio in a world of ubiquitous 3G and devices like the iPhone? Net radio stations are still figuring out the business model, but it seems only a matter of time until the “radio” is simply a piece of music selector software loaded onto a device like iPhone.
And in the meantime, I’m thankful to be free of Ottawa’s endless Classic Rock stations.
Are you frustrated by those irritating robots that answer the phone at virtually every corporation today? You know… “press 1 for sales, press 2 for support…” Well, you’ll want to listen to this call then. Shai Berger was my guest on the Squawk Box today. Shai is CEO of Fonolo, which has developed an innovative application to map those phone trees, and let you navigate directly to the person you need.
The application is in private beta right now. There will be a public beta by September as well.
Enjoy the show. And now, I am going to go and take in the remainder of the holiday monday here in Canada.
easyJet, easyInternetface, easyCar… and now easyMobile.
easyGroup, the revolutionary brand that has brought low-cost airfare, Internet and rentals to Europe is now launching “the world’s cheapest phone call service”, easyMobile, in partnership with Rebtel.
The two companies have teamed up to offer Rebtel-powered services for making low cost international phone calls from any mobile phone, over any UK network, which will be sold and marketed on easyGroup’s Web site.
“Making international calls using traditional mobile phone operators is no longer the most cost effective and efficient way of staying in touch,” said Anthony Robb-John, Managing Director of easyGroup IP. “Mobile VoIP works and is easy to use. There is a big market for this kind of service to and from the UK.”
Ever wonder why voicemail systems seem to universally use the 7 key to skip to the next message? I'll give you a clue… the 7 key also includes the letters PWRS underneath it. Yes, "S" is for "skip". That was pointed out to me in 1985 when yours truly was a student programmer working on the Meridian Voicemail system for Nortel. It was a quick mnemonic hack that enabled the geeky programmers (like me) to remember which keys did what on the voice mail system. Fast forward 20 years, and we're still using 7 for skip. It's still geeky and it still sucks.
Voicemail systems are the cockroaches of telecom — primitive, stupid and they just won't go away.
Thankfully a crop of new telecom startups have appeared trying to address this. The latest I've seen is Pinger Voicemail, which, if it were available in Canada, I'd probably switch to immediately. With Pinger Voicemail users can:
Record unique, personalized greetings for each of their friends, family members or co-workers.
Receive visual voicemail showing envelope information about the sender, message duration, date and time for each voicemail.
Manage their voicemail accounts and access and reply to their messages from the web.
Reply to and forward messages directly from their voicemail without making separate calls.
Store voicemail messages forever.
The best part, though, is that you don't have to change your phone number to get it. Simply dial 408-916-5008 to switch your voice mail from your carrier provided voice mail to Pinger. It's free, and if you don't agree that it doesn't suck, they'll help you switch back to your old voicemail system when you're done trying it.
Pinger Voicemail was announced yesterday and is available to customers on AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Alltel.
Is there room for satellite radio in a world of ubiquitous 3G and devices like the iPhone? Net radio stations are still figuring out the business model, but it seems only a matter of time until the “radio” is simply a piece of music selector software loaded onto a device like iPhone.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=d199a1fa-452d-4158-a264-04c7fbb08e5d)
