Astak’s EZ Reader Pocket Pro Beats Kindle’s price by $100

Posted by Mark Rollins Categories: Handhelds

A lot of e-book readers get a lot of comparison with the Amazon Kindle, but Astak is the first one who is quoted saying that they will give the Kindle “a run for its money.”  They already have the price point beat with their $199 price point ($100 cheaper than the cheapest Kindle.)

The 5-inch EZ Reader Pocket PRO will feature a 400MHz processor, 512MB of memory, 8-level grayscale E-ink screen, an SD-expansion slot, and a background MP3 Player.  It plans to ship later this month in the colors seen in the photo. Just don’t expect any sort of wireless connectivity at this price.

Read More | Press Release

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Amazon Kindle-Gate: Purchased copies of Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 disappear

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Handhelds, Wireless / WiFi

I have no idea what to even say about this, other than that we are severely, severely disappointed with Amazon and how they are allowing their publishers to treat Kindle users. In a nuthsell, Kindle users who purchased George Orwell’s 1984 and/or Animal Farm found yesterday that those two titles had mysteriously disappeared from their Kindles, and that they were credited $.99 for each purchase. Why? That’s because the publisher decided that they no longer wanted to sell the books on the Kindle Store. Now, that’s all fine, but did they really have to take it away from those who had already made the purchase?

The Kindle edition books Animal Farm by George Orwell. Published by MobileReference (mobi) & Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) by George Orwell. Published by MobileReference (mobi) were removed from the Kindle store and are no longer available for purchase. When this occured, your purchases were automatically refunded. You can still locate the books in the Kindle store, but each has a status of not yet available. Although a rarity, publishers can decide to pull their content from the Kindle store.

Click to continue reading Amazon Kindle-Gate: Purchased copies of Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 disappear

Read More | Amazon Kindle Mysterious Orwell Refunds

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How to Stream Your Zune Tracks to Your iPhone

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Cell Phones, Features, Handhelds, Microsoft, Music, Software, Wireless / WiFi

It’s no secret, we are big fans of Microsoft’s Zune - both the service, and the device. I’ve had a Zune Pass since the service launched, and use it daily (my Zune Pass profile.) If you aren’t sure what that is, it’s an unlimited music streaming and download service. You can listen to as much as you want for just $15 a month. In addition, you get to keep any 10 tracks of your choosing each month as well. Yours to keep, forever. Did you know, though, that you can stream any of your downloaded Zune tracks to your iPhone? Yeah, that’s one of the best parts. When you start connecting the dots, you soon realize that you have the potential of having an entire catalogue of music available to you, on your iPhone, regardless of the amount of storage you’ve got.

But, wait…how do you stream Windows Media Audio files to the iPhone, which doesn’t support that format? Furthermore, Zune tracks that aren’t downloaded as part of your 10 free keepers per month are riddled with DRM. Yeah, we hear you. There is no Zune app available for the iPhone itself. What you need is to install a piece of software on your PC, along with downloading an app on your iPhone. Join us, as we open up the musical floodgates.

Click to continue reading How to Stream Your Zune Tracks to Your iPhone

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Scribd Adds E-Commerce

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Corporate News, Internet

Pay attention, starving novelists. Scribd has begun beta testing an e-commerce platform to sell documents. The site, which already claims 60 million readers and millions of documents, will allow the publishers to set prices and DRM options, and receive 80% of the revenue. Scribd’s objective is to obtain new content and they plan to work on an iPhone app. Prices are currently set from $1.00 for a graphic novel to $5,000.00 for a market research report.

Read More | Scribd via Forbes

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Sonos Controller for iPhone 2.8.1

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Music, App Updates, Free Apps

The latest version of the Sonos Controller for iPhone has been released, and it is the one we’ve been personally waiting for since the app was first made available. Why is that? Well, aside from all the other features, Sonos Controller 2.8.1 now supports DRM-protected Windows Media files, and Windows Media shares show up and are now browsable, as they’ve always been on the regular Sonos Controller. This means I can browse all my Zune music from the iPhone, and that makes me a happy boy. Here’s a look at all the new features:

• Full-featured alarm and timer functionality so you can wake up or fall asleep to your favorite music. Set, edit and delete Sonos alarms right from your iPhone.
• Support for 7 languages. Now you can control Sonos from your iPhone or iPod touch in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, and Swedish.
• PC-free setup of your network music folders.
• Support for DRM-protected WMA files.

In order to take advantage of these, you’ll also need to update your Sonos system as well, to software version 2.8.

Read More | Sonos Controller for iPhone

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iTunes Prices Raised

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Apple, Corporate News, Music

You may have noticed by now the change of pricing on iTunes. As of Tuesday, Apple has begun to sell some of its most popular titles for $1.29 each. Others will be lowered to $.69 while some will remain at $.99. Recording companies decide the prices and Apple has also dropped DRM, so that others sans iPods can enjoy the downloads, as long as they support the company’s AAC encoding. It might pay to shop around though, as Amazon offers many of them for 79 and 89 cents.

Read More | USA Today

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iTunes goes DRM-free, gets price adjustments

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Cell Phones, Music, Software, Wireless / WiFi

In the final announcement of the MacWorld 2009 keynote, Phil Schiller listed off some of the changes coming to the iTunes ecosystem. First and foremost, in our mind, is that iTunes is going completely DRM-free. Starting today, 8 millions songs on the service will be DRM-free, and by the end of March, all 10 million will be without DRM. Consumers will be able to upgrade their entire purchased music library to iTunes Plus, which means no DRM and much higher quality at 256 kbps.

In a related note, Apple also announced that the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store is no more, and that instead, your iPhone can now download iTunes tracks no matter what connection you are on - that means no need to find a Wi-Fi hotspot in order to download the latest from Flo Rida. Of course, iPhone downloads are also DRM-free and sport the same quality.

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Zune Pass now includes 10 keeper songs per month

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Corporate News, Hot Deals, Microsoft, Music

Wow. The best deal in music just got a whole lot better, as Microsoft has announced that the $14.99 per month Zune Pass will now allow subscribers to download and keep 10 tracks per month, which is a $10 value. Those tracks are yours, permanently, even if your Zune Pass subscription comes to an end. Participating labels include EMI Music, Sony BMG, Universal Music, Warner Music, and independents like INgrooves, Independent Online Distribution Alliance, and The Orchard. Tracks downloaded from Sony BMG and UMG will be DRM-free MP3s, which tracks from EMI and Warner also include MP3 files, there are also some WMAs still hanging around. The Zune guys say that soon, 90 percent of the music in the Zune Marketplace will be in the MP3 format.

So when you break this down, if you subscribe to the Zune Pass, and download 10 tracks a month, you are really just paying $5 for unlimited access to the huge catalog of music available in the Zune Marketplace. We can’t think of a better, legal deal in music than what Microsoft is offering with Zune right now. Can you? At this point, we see no reason to fire up iTunes to do our music purchasing.

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Datz Music Lounge £99 Subscription

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Cell Phones, Hot Deals, Internet, Music, Portable Audio / Video

What a kewl holiday gift for your fave music lover (or treat yourself.) Datz Music Lounge is offering a year’s subscription to its service for £99 (~$154.00.) Select an unlimited amount of DRM free tunes in MP3 format from their catalog. Choose from classics, current music, or new artists. Best of all, you can sync them to your PMP, cell phone or iPod and keep them forever. Check with their “Who’s Playing” page to check out their latest musical additions.

Read More | Datz

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Netflix Watch Instantly steaming coming to Macs by end of year

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Home Entertainment, Movies, PC / Laptop

One of the main reasons we switch from Blockbuster Online to Netflix here at our home is the Netflix Watch Instantly functionality that is set to come to the Xbox 360 with the New Xbox Experience Fall dashboard update. However, if you don’t have a 360, or you just want more variety in your Watch Instantly lifestyle, you’ll be pleased to know that the functionality is finally gonna hit OS X by the end of this year, after being available only on Windows for almost two years. By our estimation, that means sometime in the next three months, and that excites us. Apparently, the holdup was based the fact that the DRM used on Windows boxes wasn’t compatible with OS X, and since Apple doesn’t license out their FairPlay DRM to third-parties, Netflix had to roll their own. From Netflix:

And, for all of you Mac users (of which I am one) we’ve been busy working getting a solution that will allow you to watch instantly on your Mac. So hang in there - we’ll have something for you by the end of the year.

Good news all around.

Read More | Netflix Blog

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