google calendar, lost online, itunes
google calendar is now live and according to zawodny, the world could really use this. i’m testing it now and it’s very robust, easy to use, and it’s portable — you can go anywhere with an internet connection and can know your schedule (if you make the whole calendar or pieces of it public then others can know your calendar too). very cool.
lost, the tv show, is now free and viewable online. abc is freeing their content and making it viewable on the web. disney gets the future of media. this is one of the big companies that gets it.
techcrunch recently did an interesting analysis on the buy vs rent music market and the players in it. in part 1, techcrunch analyzed the players in the “buy” market. of course, itunes dominates this market, but the surprising winner is: allofmp3.com — in their words:
The choice for best overall service is dead simple. The best service by far is AllofMP3.com. Music costs $0.02 per MB (about 9 cents per song at medium quality levels), and it can be downloaded in any common audio format and quality level. It is so cheap and easy to use that many people choose to download music from AllofMP3 in lieu of ripping their own CD collection.
The problem is that AllofMP3 operates under a different set of rules (Russian copyright law) than the rest of the companies. The service has been around for years and has many loyal users; however, its continued existence is in question. Some people have ethical concerns with using the service since no money makes its way back to the artists or labels.
Of the remaining services, the first question is what music player you will use. If you want to use an iPod, you need to use iTunes (or AllofMP3). If you want to use a non-iPod device, any of the others will work. The clear winner of the non-iTunes services is rhapsody
. They have one of the largest selections of music, quickly include new music, and have the cleanest user interface on the store. rhapsody
part 2 of techcrunch’s analysis on the “rent” for music market just came out. for this market, they looked at aol, napster, rhapsody
, yahoo! music
, and virigin digital. based on their criteria, the winner was virgin digital — in their words:
Overall, the best service based on pure stats is Virgin Digital, which boasts the largest catalog of music (2 million songs) and the best overall price at $8/month. Unlike all of the other services, Virgin charges one price for both the PC and to go versions. Virgin also has excellent additional features like user reviews of music create a social atmosphere.
All of the services require the download and use of a special player, except AOL, which uses a web based approach along with the Windows Media Player.
For the flat out cheapest price, yahoo! music
comes in at the lowest point with a basic plan of $5 per month (althought the to go plan is $10/month, higher than Virgin’s single price plan).
But based on pure joy of the user experience, rhapsody
last night i downloaded “the injury” episode of the tv show The Office. The online tv market, as we see Disney doing, may totally change in the next little while. there may not be a need for a techcrunch analysis on the online tv market like they’ve done for music. perhaps soon, tv shows online will be free.
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Hey Pete – I like Shmula! I’m going to add it to my favorites list and I’ll make sure I get my daily dose of shmula!
Julie