7digital To Take On iTunes

Popular music download service 7Digital is planning to compete with Apple’s iTunes on its own turf by submitting its application for approval on the App Store.

The service, which is already available on BlackBerry and Android devices, will allow iOS users to download music on their devices, access them offline and even sync wirelessly, a feature which is yet to arrive on iTunes.

The UK-based firm also announced that it would be powering the music download service of Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Tab Android-based tablet device.

Ben Drury, CEO of 7digital, said in a statement: “Our partnership with Samsung in the creation of the music service on the incredible new GALAXY Tab illustrates the flexibility of 7digital’s open technology and geographical reach.”

“The deep integration of our APIs within the GALAXY Tab music application, combined with our extensive catalogue of MP3 music, provides a fantastic user experience that makes it simple to discover and purchase music.”  

7Digital’s service will also feature on Toshiba’s upcoming Folio tablet device as well.

Tags: 7Digital, itunes

Apple iTunes 10

Apple’s iTunes, the default music player for over 160 million people worldwide, continues to expand with new features that give it a leg up over the competition. iTunes 10 adds Apple TV integration, 99-cent TV show rentals, Apple Airplay support, better app management, and a few cosmetic changes. The real meat of this update, however, is Ping, a Facebook-like music-oriented social network that lives inside the media player software. Whether you want another social network or not, iTunes is still the media organizer to beat.

iTunes is jammed full of extra features?far too many to detail in this review. Genius playlists and Genius mixes are a great example of this. They automatically create playlists based on song styles and moods. iTunes LP is another, giving you liner notes, photos, and video to go along with an album. Its DJ feature lets you create a live mix in which friends can make requests and vote on songs. This is in addition to what other players give you?an equalizer, Internet radio, and podcast subscriptions. See our previous reviews of iTunes for more on these features. In this review below, I’ll mainly concentrate on iTunes 10′s new features.

Setup and First Impressions
iTunes is, of course, available for Mac OS X (version 10.5 or later), as well as Windows XP (SP2 or later). If your PC is running a 64-bit version of Vista or Windows 7, you’ll need to download the separate 64-bit installer. By default, the installer makes iTunes your default player for audio files, though you can uncheck this if you also like to use Windows Media Player, Winamp, etc.

After you install the software on a Mac, a setup assistant asks you questions that help it customize your installation. The Windows version asks you whether you want to add all songs, audio, and convert and add Windows Media Audio (WMA) files. You can also have iTunes organize your library by renaming files and moving them to the folders that match. A final privacy check asks if you want the app to download album art.

After you first launch iTunes, you’re offered nine tutorials that cover topics ranging from the new Ping service to iTunes U; these offer a good, simple way to get you started with unfamiliar features. A nice new view in addition to the list, thumbnail, and Cover Flow of previous versions, called “Album List” view, shows the album art instead of repeated album titles, for a more skimmable view on your library.

Apple doesn’t add new file format support with this release, and while its companion QuickTime player does offer a good assortment of media files, you’re more likely to be able to play that difficult file in the excellent VLC (Free, ) media player, which supports over 20 video formats alone, compared with iTunes’ seven.

Ping?The Walled Music Social Network
The biggest news in iTunes 10 is the Ping music-focused social network. Ping lets you follow (in the Twitter sense) performers and other iTunes users, meaning you’ll see which songs they “liked, purchased, or commented on.” It also lets users indicate concerts they plan to attend, and offers to find you tickets, too. Really, it’s just a direct link to TicketMaster’s page for the event. The activity stream looks a lot like Facebook’s, down to the blue theme.

You’re very limited to what you can post to Ping, as compared with Facebook?no photos, links, or videos, and the lack of a Web version means that Ping lives strictly within iTunes’ walled garden. Sure, Apple claims over 160 million iTunes users as potential Pingers, but do users want to open a particular app to take part in a vertical social network, when vertical social networks have pretty much fallen by the wayside anyway? Gmail has more users than iTunes, but Google Buzz is still having trouble getting off the ground.

Privacy is well handled in Ping. You can choose to manually designate which actions to share with your followers, require your approval before anyone can follow you, or not allow others to follow you, if you just want to see what other musicians and fans are up to. If someone you want to follow has protected their posts, you’ll get a request-to-follow message box.

A few other drawbacks are that you must use your full name on your Ping page, you can’t see “friends”‘ libraries (let alone stream them), and there’s no way to find Ping friends from Facebook or Twitter. In the end, Ping seems more of a marketing tool than a social network, with nearly every post including a buy link. Web-based alternatives like Last.fm (Free, ) actually let you listen to your contact’s music in full, rather than just the first 30 seconds iTunes’ preview restrict you to. That way you can just buy your MP3 from Amazon.com or whatever other online store you like and still have it noted in your social music net. Ping is a decent service?but whether or not it succeeds will depend on the extent to which iTunes’ vast pool of users adopts it. For more on Apple’s new social network, read my Apple iTunes Ping: Hands On.

Apple TV Support
If you buy one of the new Apple TV devices, you’ll need iTunes running on a Mac or PC so that saved content can play through it. But even if you don’t have an Apple TV, you can still take part in the 99 cent TV show rentals, and even play them on your big-screen TV with the right connectors (preferably HDMI). But when I tried this with a middling power Windows 7 laptop (2.6-GHz Core 2 Duo with 3GB RAM and Nvidia GeForce 8400M GS graphics), the 720p HD size stuttered in playback. On a better desktop machine, the playback was smooth and sharp?though not quite Blu-ray sharp, of course.

The selection of TV shows was pretty rich, including HBO hits like Curb Your Enthusiasm and British imports like Skins. You just can’t this depth of content choice in Windows Media Center. And the same goes for music?the iTunes store is well organized and massively stocked. I only wish previews transcended the 30 second limit, as was speculated before this version release. Another ding that we seem to repeat every review is the lack of a subscription music service, like that offered by Zune and Rhapsody.

AirPlay
AirPlay is Apple’s answer to Windows 7′s Play To feature, which lets you stream music to other compatible audio devices in the home. Unfortunately, I was unable to test AirPlay, since the devices it works with are not yet available. By comparison, there are already over 8,000 devices on the market compatible with DLNA, the open standard used by Windows Play To. What’s more, DLNA can handle video streaming and photos, which will require an Apple TV to work with iTunes’ AirPlay. Apple’s iTunes mini-site suggests that deals with the consumer electronics makers are in place, however: “AirPlay wireless technology will be fully integrated into speaker docks, AV receivers, and stereo systems from companies such as Bowers & Wilkins and Denon.”

Simpler Syncing
When I synced the iPhone to my MacBook, iTunes 10 did a couple of things better: it displayed a clear bar indicator of how much memory was being used by songs, images, and apps. iTunes let me drag any of my 99 apps to any iPhone screen from within the app, and disable or enable them. It definitely makes iPhone apps more pleasant to work with in iTunes. But I still wish you could simply plug any iDevice into any computer with iTunes and drag a few songs back and forth, especially now that all music you buy is DRM-free. The ability to sync an iDevice with more than one PC and more easily switch users would also be welcome.

Should you Ping iTunes 10?
When it comes to CD ripping, music organization, and playback, Windows Media Player is just as good as iTunes, but iTunes adds goodies like Genius, DJ, and using an iPhone as a remote. Windows Media Player does have the advantage of letting you Play To a lot of existing devices and can make your media accessible over the Internet. And as far as playing the most types of media, don’t forget the free VLC. But it’s really all of iTunes’ extras and Apple’s enormous content offerings, particularly HD video content, which hurdles it past the competition and earns it our Editors’ Choice.

More Music Software Reviews:
?   VLC media player 1.0.5
?   Zune Marketplace (September 2009)
?   Napster (Spring 2009)
?   Winamp 5.55
?   Last.fm (Winter 2009)
?   more

Ping Is Apple’s iTunes For Everything

What do you get when you connect your customers to each other? If the customers like your product (and I’d say 10 billions songs sold shows definite positive bias) you get more sales. This echo chamber is what everyone – from Facebook on down – is trying to create and while I don’t believe Apple will pull it off, I think Ping is the first step in the right direction for online sales.

First, take a gander at what El Gruber has to say about Ping. He notes: “One way or another, though, if Ping proves popular, it shouldn’t remain focused solely on music.” He comes at the Ping question from a usability standpoint – shouldn’t there be a separate Ping app? Something completely disconnected from iTunes? In this way, Apple can add books, movies, apps, and the like to Ping and separate it from the lump of code called iTunes.

Ping isn’t perfect. I’m surprised its so clunky right now. However, it does point to better things down the road.

While Apple’s decision to stick Ping into the iTunes app is fairly elementary – it essentially traps users into the Ping way of thinking and when they see the tab they become curious, potentially signing up (I’m john at crunchgear dot com, BTW. Add me. I’d like to see what music you all like) – what we are really seeing is the first social shopping app that disguises itself as a social network inside a dedicate istore. It’s very meta.

Apple is great at co-opting concepts and tweaking them to maintain allegiance to their products. Take Genius Mixes, for example. Genius Mixes are, in short, a sort of Internet radio for non-connected devices. Genius Mixes constitute themselves out of your own music, some of which you probably haven’t listened to in months or years, and give you a new way of “discovering” artists. Genius Mixes work best on big libraries and where do those libraries come from? iTunes purchases or CD ripping or, dare I say it, piracy. But once Genius digs Cory Chisel out of your library to remind you that you like soulful singer-songwriters, you could go back to iTunes and buy more goodies. That’s the thinking, anyway.

But it’s easy to see the problem with Genius Mixes – they never send you back to iTunes. Instead, you orbit around your own collection. But along comes Ping and you’re now depending on friends for your new music discovery from within Ping and now Apple is guaranteed a sale.

So extrapolate a little and we see Ping for Apps, Ping for Books, Ping for Laptops, Ping for… Shoes? Perfume? Monkey Chow? I think the thought experiment here is how Apple can expand the Ping concept to other products and then how competitors can create similar networks around already existing sales systems. Note that Ping is bolted onto an e-store and not the other way around.

I doubt Apple will start selling monkey chow, but I’m sure its in someone’s interest to grab iTunes customers as quickly as possible. Could we see Katy Perry’s candy bustier for sale next to her latest hit? I dread the thought, but welcome the opportunity to see how many of my friends buy one.

Comments are kind of dead right now, so feel free to tweet your comment with hashtag #pingit

Live Nation Gains; Powers New Concert Listings In Apple iTunes
By Eric Savitz

Live Nation (LYV) shares got a lift in Wednesday’s regular session from news that the company is providing the concert listings that are now being included on the Apple (AAPL) iTunes music service.

“We are thrilled to power the concert listings feature on iTunes and deliver this new and simple way for millions of iTunes users to purchase concert tickets at Livenation.com and Ticketmaster.com,” Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino said in a statement. “Our partnership with Apple is a key part of our strategy to empower fans with the greatest access to live entertainment.”

LYV today jumped 62 cents, or 7.2%, to $9.26.

Los Angeles rock band The 88 are excited to announce the upcoming release of their new album, simply titled The 88 on 88 Records, via Rocket Science, which will be available exclusively through iTunes for two weeks starting September 14. The record will be available at retail and through all digital Read more below

Source

Licensing Proving Troublesome For Cloud-Based iTunes? [Apple Rumored To Be …

When digital music downloading was first made available through illegall venues like Napster, it was a godsend. Prior to these times people had never experienced what it had felt like to acquire music quickly and efficiently from the comfort of the own home. Sure, some users were slapped with some hefty lawsuits and the service saw its demise only to be reopened later as a legal service but there’s no question about it: Napster dropped us into the high paced digital downloading society that we’ve come to know and love today.

Back then, downloading MP3s was a perfectly fine alternative to buying physical CDs. Like I said about it was face, efficient and above all, easy. However, not a days with so many devices all featuring their own storage drives, keeping everything in sync ash proven itself to be a bit troublesome. Lucky for us cloud based music services like Pandora and LaLa have emerged to give us on-the-go music consuming folk easy way to consume our music.

While Napster rules the airwaves back in the day, Apple’s iTunes has enjoyed the top spot in terms of virtual music sales for quite some time now. This can largely be attributed to the fact that Apple’s entire lineup of iDevices (iPad, iPod, iPhone) feature out of the box compatibility with iTunes.

If you’ll remember, not too long ago we let you in on some rumors that after acquiring streaming music website LaLa, Apple would go on to create a cloud-based iTunes. This would allow users to not only stream songs (for a price, presumably) but also sync up their entire line of devices wirelessly making it much less of a hassle.

Well, while this rmor hsa yet to be confirmed we have some additional information regarding its release. Apparantly, the reason we have yet to see a cloud-based iTunes is due to some licensing issues that have come up between Apple and those who own the music.

Let’s hope they get this sorted out soon as syncing by iPod’s music library over WiFi would be quite useful. What are your views on the matter? Would you use a cloud-based iTunes? Let us know.

Easily save Web pages, documents in iTunes for use with iOS devices

Have you ever wanted to be able to save a Web site or document you wanted to read later to your iPhone or iPad? Follow these simple steps and take any offline reading you need to get done with you on your iOS device.

This hint requires a Mac using the latest version of iTunes and an iOS 4-compatible device with iBooks 1.1 installed. Once you’ve completed each step, you will be able to save Web site pages, documents, or any other data that any Mac OS X application allows to be printed to PDF directly into iTunes for use on your iPhone or iPad.

Step One. To add a Web page or document to your Books in iTunes, you must first save it as a PDF. To easily accomplish this from any Mac OS X application that has the capability of saving as PDF (from the Print Dialogue Box), you must first create an alias for iTunes. Open a Finder window and select the Applications folder. Highlight iTunes and right-click (Control + click). In the contextual menu, select “Make Alias”. An alias for iTunes will appear.

Step Two. We now have to tell PDF Services that it can save PDF formatted files to iTunes. Open a new Finder window and click on your Home Folder (your username). Click Library, then PDF Services. You may notice other aliases in this folder (Evernote, for example, takes advantage of this function).

Switch to your first Finder window and drag the iTunes alias into the PDF Services folder in the second window. You can also rename the alias to something like “Save PDF to iTunes” (the file name is what shows up in the Print Dialogue Box).

Step Three. Find a Web page that you’d like to save for reading later on your iOS 4-enabled device with iBooks installed. For the purposes of this hint, I used Matt Rosoff’s article on iPhone Atlas Handicapping the mobile music services. From the application menu bar (in this case, Firefox) choose File > Print.

Step Four. In the Print Dialogue Box that appears, look at the lower-left corner for the button that says “PDF”. Click it to reveal the drop down menu for PDF Services.

Choose “Save PDF to iTunes” (or whatever you renamed your iTunes alias). If iTunes is not already open, it will launch and add the PDF to the Books section, ready to be synced the next time you plug in your iPhone or iPad.

Step Five. Sync your iPhone or iPad. Be sure you have checked to sync Books in your device preferences. You can now launch iBooks on your device and read Web pages or other documents saved as PDFs right from your iPhone or iPad.

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HP Buys Melodeo, Suggests Ability to Stream iTunes Library to WebOS

The cloud is coming. The days are almost over when it matters how much storage your phone has. Why bother moving music over to your phone when you could just stream it? That’s the direction mobile media is going, and all the major companies know it.

Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Phone 7 streams music over 3G from your Zune library at home to your Zune app on your phone. Google announced the same plan for Android at this year’s I/O conference–the company bought Simplify Media to help with that transition. Apple bought Lala, a streaming music company, and is allegedly deep in talks with record labels to allow streaming to its iOS devices.

And now HP, the owner of the fourth modern mobile operating system, Palm’s WebOS, has purchased Melodeo, likely for the same reasons. Melodeo has previously created the Nutsie app (an anagram for iTunes), which streams iTunes playlists to Android devices. Melodeo told reporters that streaming of the full iTunes library was next on the agenda–looks like HP may want that development all to themselves.

HP is very likely to pop Melodeo’s services into WebOS. Of course, we have no idea what HP plans to do with WebOS–the only firm comment HP has made on the subject is that we’ll see WebOS in printers. But WebOS is one of the best mobile OSes on the market (some would say the best), and HP probably (hopefully) won’t let it go fallow. This acquisition is a good start to a next-gen WebOS mobile device.

Dan Nosowitz, the author of this post, can be followed on Twitter, corresponded with via email, and stalked in San Francisco (no link for that one–you’ll have to do the legwork yourself).

The music experience on Android handsets is far inferior to the iPhone and iTunes, and Google sees this as an opportunity to rectify a competitive weakness.” It’s true that Android has no “home” media system, but that’s one of the reasons we love it. No matter where you look, there’s plenty of options for digital music lovers to get a hold of new tunes. Or will it be an iTunes-like store. We sure hope so; iTunes needs a major competitor in the worst way. So, the question is: who’s not in the music business these days.

Will it stream. But when your name is Google, the market tends to make room no matter what. We’ll have to wait and see if this really pans out, but it’s definitely believable. Microsoft has their Zune subscription service, and then there’s Rhapsody, Napster and a whole host of smaller alternatives. Subscription based. Apple forces iTunes onto their iPhone users, and we aren’t at all convinced that that’s the best approach. And usually, when Google touches something, it tends to turn out well. No one on the outside really knows, but people are already buzzing about what may soon be a reality. Or pay-per-song/album. Reportedly, unnamed sources have it on good authority that Google will be soon revealing a “Google-branded music play.” There’s no real details yet on what exactly the service would be like.

This means it is likely the issue is with how specific artwork imports are being handled. Choose a location and name the library, and when you click “Save” the program will open with a blank library.

Post them below or email us. If you have seen this problem happen for a few items only, then you can try using iTunes to delete and re-add the album artwork to the music files. This was also the case with newly-added songs in iTunes 9.2 for which I have added artwork. It seems to happen when artwork has been added manually or with third-party tools. A window will pop up asking you to create or choose a new library, so click the option to create a new one. Hopefully the problem is limited to an improper import of the album images, and using iTunes will rectify the problem.

Rebuild the iTunes library. Regardless of my inability to replicate the problem, numerous people have confirmed it to happen; however, it is not a universal problem. I then updated it to version 9.2, but the artwork still appeared properly, both in iTunes and in the Finder. So far there is no telling if this problem happens because of errors in the iTunes library, but if so one option may be to rebuild the library.

HP buys iTunes jailbreaker
HP buys iTunes jailbreaker

Beefing up its mobile OS

By Andrew Orlowski • Get more from this author

Posted in PCs & Chips, 25th June 2010 10:09 GMT

Free whitepaper – The Register Guide to Improving Systems Agility

HP has bought one of the more interesting music startups for an undisclosed sum. Melodio’s nuTsie software looks up what’s in your iTunes library, including the playlists, then matches it against a catalog of music on its own servers, from where the music is then streamed.

It creates recommendations based on machine algorithms – which isn’t so interesting. But nuTsie offers a legally acceptable, if expensive (streamers must pay webcast royalty rates), way of migrating a user base away from iTunes.

The software runs on Apple, RIM and some other smartphones.

Free from its exclusive reliance on Windows after all these years, HP is seriously going after the mobile consumer electronics dollars. The company picked up Palm for $1.2bn in April, bringing it with it WebOS, the slickest and most capable competitor to Apple’s iOS.

Palm too realised the importance of cracking open the iTunes library – but made a promise that was hard to keep. Palm vowed ongoing two-way sychronisation between its devices and an iTunes library by masquerading as an iPod. This resulted in a tedious cat-and-mouse game with Apple, and users were never sure whether it would work, or for how long.

Blackberry and Nokia, among others, have managed the less ambitious but perfectly acceptable feat of making a (partial or complete) mirror of the iTunes library on their devices. Which works well enough for most people. ®

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The final price has yet to be announced. Presumably, Apple doesn’t want somebody else doing it because they’re working on such a service themselves, but for a while longer, at least, iPhones will remain pathetically chained to iTunes while BlackBerries ( Blackberries!? ) will enjoy carefree wireless syncing. So, absolutely No cables – no hassles – no problems. Key features. Do you have a healthy iTunes library full of music. Unlike streaming solutions, once music is downloaded, no wireless connection is required meaning no more data is used – saving money and battery power and providing a dependable music listening experience regardless of cellular reception. Since everything runs in the background, once the app is installed all you have to search them out one at a time and download manually. Then it would cost you $14.99 one time purchase. ( NOTE: This price is for a limited time.) So, what are you waiting for. You can take a 30 day trial to try and test it.

Smart App. The trial price, when the app launches any day now, will be $15. It wirelessly and automatically syncs your iTunes music playlist and your smartphone, so that you have your music with you anywhere, anytime. Founded in 2008, ParkVu’s WithMe family of software meets the smartphone consumer’s demand for instant access to their media files, regardless of location, time or file size. Let me know what you think of it. For now it supports Blackberry, and support for Maemo, Symbian, and Android is coming soon.

Biggest Threat To Apple iTunes Is ‘Google Music’ Hitting A High Note

While Google has been battling it out with Apple for quite some time on the hardware front – Droids vs iPhones – and on the mobile advertising side – AdMob vs Quattro Wireless – it now appears to want its own music download service to go mano-a-mano with Apple’s iTunes, as well.

While Google doesn’t always grasp the brass ring each and every time it circles the digital carousel, in this case, it does have a fighting chance of scoring big if they do it right.

A major component of Apple’s core business model is built around its iTunes platform. The music download services has beat out the competition markedly over the years and its been a direct conduit for users to move from apps to hardware, i.e. iPods, iPhones and now the iPad.  Google, like Amazon before it, has its eye on the same prize and thinks it came make a dent in Apple’s marketshare of 26.6 percent of music downloads (with Amazon in a distant #5 spot) according to an AllNewsMac report.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, while Google has linked to Pandora and iLike music Web sites via SERP results for specific music, it realizes the monetary value attached to these searches – and feels its losing out on an untapped lucrative revenue source.

So, the first step for Google’s music service would be a Web store comparable to iTunes where users could purchase and download tracks of music. Then when searchers use Google.com to find a particular group or song, they will be served a link to the company’s own music store, most likely by-passing Pandora and iLike (or at least not having them show up on the first page of search results).

While Google and Apple refused to comment on the Wall Street Journal report, Google’s push into music retailing makes a lot of sense and would more than likely be well received by music labels that are concerned about the control Apple currently has in the music market.

In a Mashable report, Google introduced technology at Google I/O Conference that would allow Android users to stream music off of their desktop computers directly to their smartphones. This is what a cloud-based subscription service may offer in the future.

The report goes further to say that if your Android-based Google TV could also stream any music you want to your home stereo, that becomes an Apple TV without limiting users to their libraries – a direct blow against another of Apple’s hardware products.

There is also an opportunity for automobiles with Android-embedded systems to acquire ease of access. When these products make it to market, Google’s ability to access a streaming subscription from your car, your home and your phone could make a Google-branded music subscription service succeed where so many others have failed.

Catching that brass ring would be a major coup for the search engine giant, and could potentially put Apple in overdrive trying to compete? Question is would you chuck iTunes for this type of comprehensive music subscription – or would you need more bells and whistles?  Or are you too loyal to leave the tried-and-true iTunes music service? Let us know your thoughts?

The complete guide to the iPhone’s new OS

The new iOS 4 firmware update has arrived for newer iPhone and iPod Touch models. Here’s what you need to know to get the most out of the new, improved operating system.

First off, have you actually upgraded? If not, here’s how.

Afterwards, be sure to go to iTunes and download the apps updated for iOS 4. Now, let’s look at what the new OS will do for your phone or iPod.

Multitasking and fast app switching
The big one. Here’s how you try it.

1. Open the phone app
2. Hit the home button once, then open Safari and go to any site
3. Double tap the home button, which will bring up a little menu tray
4. Select one of the “open” apps to switch directly to it

You can also swipe left and right to scroll through the different “pages” of apps you have open. If your app is multitasking-enabled, it will resume exactly where you left off. Games will continue from pause mode, web pages will be where you left them, music will continuously play even while you’re in another app, and so forth. The standard multitasking benefits.

So yes, this allows you to listen to Pandora in the background while you do other stuff. Well, as long as you grab that new version of Pandora. Strangely enough, YouTube backgrounding does not work, even though I remember specifically talks of that working. Not sure what happened there, or if the YouTube app needs an update.

The big picture is you can do a lot of stuff now that you couldn’t do before. You can have a Skype phone call and use your phone simultaneously, have a GPS turn-by-turn navigation app keep your place and keep routing you even while you go and send a text message, or even just load up a web page and have it full in in the background while you go change a song.

To close a running app
Steve Jobs doesn’t recommend that you even deal with closing running apps, because the phone will take care of it automatically. But if you want to shut off Pandora, or AIM, or anything else that’s running in the background and giving you alerts or doing something you want to end, here’s what you do.

1. Double tap the home button from any app
2. Press and hold on an app icon. The dismiss “minus” icon will pop up on each app and the icons will start shaking
3. Click the minus icon to kill an app. You can do so repeatedly for all the apps you want to close.
4. To get out of this mode, hit the home button

App folders
The hell of countless app screens is finally gone — or at least manageable in a sloppy way now. The folders in iOS 4.0 aren’t perfect but they help organization just a bit and they’re simple to use.

All you need to do is press-and-hold any app to trigger rearranging app icons and you’ll be able to drag them onto each other to create folders. Done. Your iPhone will even automatically suggest a name for the folder based on the type of apps you’re sticking in there (though you can change that with a tap).

Folders aren’t exactly perfect though. They fit twelve apps, but only show tiny versions of 9. Once opened, folders show apps in rows of four — which leaves a net nine-app folder looking awkward once open. No matter though, we’re content with being tossed at least a scrap here and hope that future iOS upgrades will address the some of the shortcomings of folders.

It’s not surprising, but it’s good to know that you can in fact stick folders into the dock.

Improved Mail features (mail threading)
We’re glad to see that the Mail app received a bit of a feature makeover of sorts. All the new changes appear to be in response to complaints we’ve had our heard from other iPhone users.

The email threading feature is surprisingly solid. When you’ve got it turned on, emails will be grouped by replies — like in Gmail for example — and you’ll see a little number indicator next to the most messages in your inbox to show you how long a thread is. Tap that most recent message and all others will pop up.

Speaking of Gmail! Those users will be happy to see that the “delete” button that shows up after a swipe has turned into an “archive” button. Makes things just a bit more logical.

We’re also happy to see that there are now “smart” links in emails now. This means that you can tap on dates to add events to your calendar, press tracking numbers to pull up the UPS website, or open the Maps app when there’s an address included.

And the best change to the Mail app? The long-awaited unified inbox. You can finally view emails by inbox or in one large dump. When replying to a message from the unified inbox, your iPhone will automatically use the correct email account.

If you receive an email from a person who has a picture in your contacts, you’ll now see a tiny image of him or her in the corner. Kinda cute.

Note syncing
There is now an option to sync notes over-the-air with some email accounts—such as those through MobileMe.

New iPod multitasking controls
While you can no longer get a pop-up set of iPod controls by double-tapping the home button, you do have a decent replacement in the multi-tasking drawer. By swiping over to the very left of the drawer, you’ll be able to access some minimal iPod controls next to the orientation lock. Play/pause, forward, back. It’s just enough to make some quick adjustments to song selection, but we still miss the old pop-up-style controls a bit.

iBooks
That book e-reader program that’s already out on iPad is coming to iPhone! (Yay.) But it’s not built in. (Wha?) You have to hit the App Store and manually download the iBooks ap. It’s free. Maybe for competitive purposes? Who knows.

In any case, you can sync ePub and PDF books directly from iTunes by using the iBooks section. If you have books in other formats other than ePub, use calibr to convert them.

Custom homescreen wallpapers
If you have an iPhone 3GS or a late-model iPod Touch, you can set backgrounds for your home screen. Like on the iPad. Here’s how.

1. Go to Settings
2. Tap Wallpaper
3. Tap on the two icons that represent your two current homescreen/lockscreen wallpapers
4. Choose a picture from either the Wallpapers list that Apple included, or use one of your own photos from your photo album
5. Decide whether you want it on your lock screen, your home screen, or Both
6. Hit the home button to see your new home screen

Unfortunately, iPhone 3G users don’t get to have Wallpapers. But if you want those Lost wallpapers, here you go.

Digital zoom
Keep in mind that this is digital zoom, so the already-wanting quality of the iPhone 3G/3GS camera will get even worse when you go 5x bigger. This is no enhance, enhance, enhance magic.

But to do so, just open up the Camera app, tap somewhere on the middle of the screen and the slider will appear. Slide it right to zoom, left to un-crappify. Note, zooming doesn’t work on videos, where you can only tap to focus, but not zoom.

Bluetooth keyboards
Pairing a Bluetooth keyboard — almost any Bluetooth keyboard, not just the slender Apple-branded kind — is as simple as pairing any other Bluetooth device. Turn the keyboard on, turn on Bluetooth, let your phone detect the keyboard, and tap a few numbers. Done. It works quite well, though it takes a while to get used to not having the on-scree keyboard pop-up while a Bluetooth one is connected.

Turn off cellular data
If you’re traveling abroad and want to make sure you stick only to Wi-Fi, you can now turn off cell data. Go to Settings, General, and then Network.

Tethering
You can now tether your phone to your computer over USB or Bluetooth. But how? The first step is turning on tethering on your account, which you can do by going to att.com/mywireless and enrolling in the tethering plan. It’s an extra $20 a month, and you get to share whatever data plan you have on your phone with your computer.

Charging an extra $20 just for the privilege of using the same data you’re already using on another device seems seems pretty lame, but that’s a gripe for another time.

iAds
What, you’re in such a hurry to look at ads on your iPhone? You’ll have to cool it for a bit, because the ads themselves aren’t available until July 1. What you can do, though, is opt-out of the targeting portion of the ads by going to oo.apple.com, but that isn’t live until July 1 either.

Making playlists on your phone
You can do this now! Just hit the “Add New Playlist” from your playlists screen, and follow the on-screen instructions.

Quick Web, Wikipedia search
Swipe left from the home screen to get to the quick search area, where it now brings up not just local results, but gives you web and wikipedia links as well.

Speed
This isn’t exactly something you “try”, but compared to 3.1.3, iPhone 4 (on a 3GS) is definitely faster. Everything is snappier and quite fluid. Any of the sluggishness found in the betas is definitely gone.

New contacts screen
Adding a new contact is streamlined so that you don’t need to keep jumping to a new input page in order to add a field, making everything just slightly faster.

Sync Events, Faces and Places from iPhoto
If you use iPhoto, you can sync discrete Faces, Events and Places from within iTunes, making it easier than setting up a hack-workaround album solution that doesn’t work quite as well as Apple’s native feature.

Spellcheck
There’s a built-in spellchecker, which is useful, unless you’re deliberately going for misspelled words in an ironic text, then it’s horrifyingly annoying.

Search with Yahoo or Bing
Under Settings, Safari, Search Engine, you can change your default search engine to one of the non-Google alternatives, if you’re the type of person who likes those engines more.

Send full-sized, any-sized photos when you’re emailing
No longer do you have to sync your iPhone to your computer to get full-sized photos off of it. You can also have the option of resizing to a small, medium or large size, in case it’s something you don’t need super clarify for.

SMS character count, MMS disabling, searching
Like the Mail app, the Messaging app got a few new features. For the most part the changes are minor — there are now options to toggle off MMS and grouping of messages with multiple recipients as well as a character count. The best new feature though is the SMS search. It’s not really different from any other search in the iOS. It simply live-updates results as you keep adding to your query.

Easier adjustment of location services

Now with apps being able to grab and use your location in the background, there might be multiple apps knowing where you are at the same time. The locations menu lets you keep track of who’s used your data in the last 24 hours, or if you want, you can shut off location for certain apps entirely.

Better enterprise support

There’s a small segment of you that will care about this, but the iPhone OS 4 can do a bunch of Enterprise stuff. And here it is, courtesy of Ars Technica:

• You can now encrypt your e-mail or attachments with your iPhone PIN code. The API for this is also available to developers so that you will be able to encrypt data inside of third-party apps as well.
• Apple now offers a mobile device management solution so that someone deploying lots of iPhones within a company can manage them.
• Wireless app distribution: no longer do you have to deploy apps across your company’s iPhones with a physical connection. You can distribute apps to anywhere in the world from your own servers.
• As we mentioned in the Mail section, you can now have multiple Exchange accounts on a single phone.
• There’s now support for Exchange Server 2010.
• There’s now also support for SSL VPN.

Improved lock codes

For the frustrated and paranoid, Apple has finally added an option to toggle from four-digit “simple passcodes” to longer alphanumeric lockcodes.

Custom dictionaries
You can now finally stop telling people to go “duck” themselves because they’re such “ducking” idiots by adding your favorite terms to a custom dictionary. The only stupid thing is that the option to edit a dictionary only appears if you add a foreign keyboard in the “International Keyboards” menu.

Cosmetic changes
Plenty of minor cosmetic changes in iOS 4. A few settings — like the Spotlight search customization — are now easier to find and some app icons are just a tiny bit prettier. A few of the changes are actually useful though, such as the ability to finally view your Photo Roll in a horizontal orientation and YouTube in a vertical one.

How it runs on iPhone 3G
There’s no multitasking in iOS 4 for the iPhone 3G. (Or wallpapers or Bluetooth keyboard support.) Which would be fine, if iOS 4 delivered that other thing iPhone 3G owners really wanted: speed. It’s no faster than OS 3.1. The hangups, the stuttering and the chugging, still make the iPhone 3G kind of infuriating to use, or at least make you really want to buy a new iPhone.

But iOS 4 still makes it a better experience overall: The unified inbox and folders alone make it worth the jump. After all, it’s not any worse than 3.1.

What we still didn’t get (and want in iOS 5)
SMS tone customization. Seriously! C’mon!’

• Facebook integration, or any kind of cloud-contact syncing
• iTunes cloud streaming, direct from an iTunes.com
• Better multitasking, because only having four icons visible at once is arbitrarily clumsy. Why swipe through so many apps to find the one to “quickly” switch to
• A solution to the modal popup problem. I don’t want to be locked out of what I’m doing whenever I get an IM
• Widgets in the multitasking tray
• A lock screen that shows email count, IM count, SMS count and other info to be determined by the user
• Home screen widgets even
• Free turn-by-turn application (Android can do it, why not one for iPhone)
• Ability to remove Apple’s default apps
• Horizontal homescreen
• Ability to disable spotlight searching entirely, for both privacy reasons and for clumsy-swiping reasons
• iChat mobile, with FaceTime on iPhone 4 somehow worked in to video chat with desktops
• A “mark all as read” or “select all” button in the Mail app would be nice.
• Email account specific email signatures could help us avoid forcing our work signature on all our personal email accounts.

Google planning iTunes downloads rival?

Rumours are abound today regarding Google’s massive iTunes rival music and media download service coming to a computer near you in arrive by the end of the year, according to music industry sources

Rumours regarding a Google iTunes rival started earlier on in the year when the tech giant Google bought out Simplify Media, and the ideas started to form around a Google download system for PC’s and Android systems, plus an inclusion in the forthcoming Google Chrome operating system that is set to be coming to computers and smart devices in the coming months.

Google + Music

Google are reportedly in talks with many music execs regarding the service and have been pushing for a music service that will not only tie in the search engine giants search functionality but will also be live and searchable on Android handsets and OS operating devices.

One of the features recently talked about at the Google I/O conference was a new desktop app and Android service that will allow users to stream music direct from their home computers to their phones through a dedicated internet service which would be likely to feature in any future Google music download system

Currently Google are keeping pretty quiet but as Apple have recently found out, you can’t keep a good secret in for long.

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Tags: 2.1, 2.2, Android, Apple, Chrome, download, google, ios 4, iTunes, media, service

Google to challenge iTunes with own music store

Photo: Google

How about this? A certain Internet search giant is rumoured to be rolling out a Google music download service built into its search engine in 2010 with a dedicated online subscription service to follow. And in related news, Apple is not happy.

A shot at the core of Apple’s business

A huge part of Apple’s business is built around its iTunes framework. The music download service that has since been used as the launch pad for the company’s extremely successful app store has long been Apple’s digital retail space and a way for the company to tie its users to its hardware (the place where Apple really makes its money). Google, like Amazon before it, wants a piece of that pie, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Details on how this Google music download service will work and whether Google has struck any deals with labels are still scant, but what is clear is the WSJ has heard more than just whispers, with the rumoured service still several months away.

The Google and Apple ring-a-rosy continues

Photo: Stock.Xchng

A couple of years ago, Google and Apple were the best of friends, with Google CEO Eric Schmidt sitting on Apple’s board of directors and the two companies operating in their own markets. Things have changed significantly in recent times, with the list of markets the two technology companies compete in increasing rapidly:

Smartphones: Google Android is currently considered the biggest threat to Apple’s iPhone business.

Tablet computers: Apple’s iPad is selling at an impressive click reaching three million units sold in 80 days. It is widely known that Google is preparing a variant of Google Android (and Chrome) for deployment on tablets some time this year, too.

Advertising: iAd is Apple’s mobile advertising platform developed to compete directly with Google and Google’s recent acquisition, AdMob.

Photo: Apple

Mobile TV: Google TV is the biggest project yet in merging online functionalities with traditional television. The admittedly ‘less interesting’ hobby that is AppleTV came before it and rumour has it Apple is cooking up a cloud-based follow up.

And so on and so on and so on.

This Google Music download service is just another addition in what is shaping to be the most fascinating technology rivalry of this generation.

Google to Debut Their Own iTunes Competitor Through Their Search Engine …

Back in the day if you wanted to buy music without leaving your home you were pretty much forced to use an illegal service such as the late, great Napster. As of late, companies are stepping in to fill the gap and offer completely legal, paid for digital downloads. Some prominent companies that are doing such things are Apple with their immensely popular iTunes and Amazon.com with their own music digital distribution website. Sure, there are still illegal ways to download music and there probably always will be but that’s not what we’re talking about here.

What we are talking about here, however, is new competitors in the digital music industry. Apple can’t take all of the glory and who better than Google to let them know that? Back at their I/O conference, we told you that Google would be updating the Android marketplace to also include a song section. This means if you have an Android powered device running the new Marketplace, you’d be able to download a song through the service. Easy enough.

However, it seems like this isn’t all Google has in the pipeline as rumors have surfaced today that say Google is working on a full fledged digital distribution platform for music. At launch (whenever that may be) Google will provide a website that will allow users to not only purchase and download tracks, but also stream them (much like you would find over at Lala or Pandora.

Furthermore, considering Google is first and foremost a search engine based company, these reports also suggest that the company will provide song downloads straight through search results. So, if this pans out to buy a song all you’ll have to do is go to Google, search for the song you want and presumably the first result will be a link to Google’s music store where you can download the song.

I don’t know about you guys, but if Google can price their tracks competitively enough, I’m thinkin’ Apple’s iTunes is going to have a worthy competitor on their hands. Finally.

Google ‘to launch music download store in 2010′ to rival Apple’s iTunes

Rumours that Google has been planning its own music streaming and download service have been doing the rounds since October 2009, but no confirmed details have yet to come to light.

According The Wall Street Journal, “Google has been stepping up its conversations about offering new music services tied to phones running its Android operating system along with the broader web”. However, the launch of Google’s download music store is still believed to be “still months away”.

The development of a music store would up the ante between the search giant and Apple – which operates the leading digital music store: iTunes. It would mark the latest round in the ongoing competition between the two technology giants, after Google launched its Android mobile platform to rival Apple’s iPhone software.

The first phase is expected to see Google launch a music download store, which is directly linked to its search engine. This would be an “interim step”, according to the report’s sources, on the way to a “more ambitious cloud-based music subscription service compatible with mobile phones built with Google’s Android software”.

Both Google and Apple were unavailable to comment.

Google had begun to take small steps towards the music industry last year when it started linking to partner websites like iLike, which was later purchased by MySpace, allowing streaming with one click from its search page.