Sky Sports Are Cheaper on an iPhone

Today Sky charges from £26.50 a month for Sky Sports 1 or 2, or £35 for its total sports package - excluding ESPN. Now Sky Mobile TV, the latest iPhone and iTouch application, which is free to download, will allow users to watch live sports on Sky Sports and ESPN as well as Sky News over a wifi connection and for just £6 a month. Users will not only be able to watch Premier League, Football League, Scottish football, rugby, cricket and golf and much more sport. The existing Sky users will have to apply separately for the new service as its not bundles to existing TV services.

Sky claim over 2 million downloads of their applications on the iPhone to date, including Sky Sports and Sky Sports Football Score Centre and other mobile carriers have enabled the service other mobile phones over the 3G networks. O2 is offering its iPhone customers three months’ free subscription to Sky Mobile TV.

C5 to Show Live Soccer on iPhone

The iPhone still continues to dominate the mobile world and redefine the boundaries around its use.

Today UK TV Channel Five has announced that it is to offer Apple iPhone live football matches for a one-off fee of £3.99.So if you have an iPhone and you support Glasgow Celtic or Rapid Vienna you can watch Uefa Europa League game tomorrow on your iPhone or iTouch.

Channel five may not broadcast the top European games or the premiership but it can show all 16 rounds of of the Europa league competition.

Cutting the Cost of Textbooks

The New York Times introduced us today to yet another iPhone app which may well prove very popular with many US students. At a time when students are preparing to resume classes that app offers them a price comparison on all those textbooks that the need but don’t want to buy. Bigwords claim average savings of 66% on new books and over 35% over buying online without its search engine.

The Bigwords iPhone App is free and sifts out the best deals based on buying new, used or digital, or just renting. The app collects the details of all the books the student needs and then searches against some 30 sources and identifies the best deal, factoring in shipping costs and discounts etc. The purchase can be then completed through the app or on the student can email their selection and complete the purchase on a PC via a link in an e-mail sent by the app.

We like their app strap line, 'keep it in your pants.'

The offer will certainly will appeal to many students who will have the iPhone but not necessarily the money for the book.

Apple Speaks, Sees and Hears no Evil

We have seen a number of Apple ‘censorships’ on their iPhone apps and now mobilecrunch.com offers another lurch back into draconian times.

The Ninjawords pocket dictionary, which is a paid for $2 app now has been given a 17+ rating and warnings of potential objectionable content. However the Ninjawords for iPhone omits all the words deemed “objectionable” by Apple’s App Store reviewers, who even apparently censored an ordinary everyday English dictionary. The Ninjawords programming team made users type in entire bad words in order to see them but that’s was enough for Apple censors. They also deleted all offensive entries, but unfortunately missed one and were rejected again. Then finally when full clean were given a 17+ rating!

The stupidity of Apple is one thing but what is being censored or restricted are words. Words many of us use everyday. Words that litter the pages of many a modern classic and are probably found in virtually every new novel. Words we hear everyday in all walks of life.

The issue is not whether Apple is right or wrong but why in a world that supports free speech, has with the exception of liable has removed text censorship we are adopting a policy that would be only applauded in repressed societies, dictatorships and probably appeals to governments who disrespect civil rights?

Apple needs to offer control, choice and stop shooting itself in the foot.

Spotify Android Move

It has been widely reported that Spotify, has demonstrated an offline version of the service running on a Google Android mobile phone at Google's I/O developer event and it appears that just like the desktop client it’s a potential winner. It even has "offline mode" that uses cache to store a playlist and turns the phone into an offline MP3 player with Spotify as its client.



Spotify is working on several mobile versions but the big question is wheter Apple will allow or block what is a clear threat to iTunes. Here is an earlier TechDigest video 'showing' Spotify on a iPhone.

BBC iPlayer Under The Sheets?

We have written before about the hugely successful BBC iPlayer but were amazed that it now claims to stream 12GB of data every second, and seven petabytes (PB) of data every month.

BBC iPlayer boss Anthony Rose, who was previously CTO at that famous music file sharing service Kazaa, disclosed much about its future in an exclusive interview with CNET UK, 'BBC iPlayer Numbers Revealed'.

Interestingly they clearly back the streaming route over downloads and according to Rose, its clearly what everyone wants today. He intimates that there could be a personal service feature sending alerts, enabling pre booking and updating your online library. The usage must reflect lifestyle and peaks about 10pm, about one hour later than TV , but the iPlayer on the iPhone peaks at about midnight with a further peak on Saturday and Sunday morning at about 8-10am. So users obvious now curl up with their iPhone to catch up on their favourite TV.

Bring Your Own iPhone to College

It may have been the case once that you could go to school without a pencil or a textbook but the Missouri School of Journalism have taken it to new heights insisting that students who wish to be budding journalists have to bring their own iPhone or iTouch if they wish to attend. According to their web site they have insisted in students having their own wireless laptop since 2005 and obviously have strong ties with Apple and they recommend that too.

Missouri School of Journalism state that students will be able to electronically download material to either of the devices from iTunes University, a no-cost component of the iTunes Store. The school’s technology store, claims that 90% of Missouri students have iPods. Students with financial aid packages may include the cost of the iPod touch or iPhone and packages because it is mandatory required.

So we clearly have the technology companies all lining up to get a slice of the college market and now joined by Amazon with their new Kindle DX and lining up with textbook publishers. Amazon are also playing the iPhone field with their reader application designed for the iPhone and iPod touch, which is available through Apple’s App Store and the announcement yesterday of their Safari book store for the iPhone app.

So the old saying about ‘catch them young’ may be coming true as students who become very familiar with a certain device and technology may be hard to ween off it after they have finished their course and therefore we have a double wammy with the technology companies retaining them for many years. Mind some would say that the banks have done the same for years.

Kindle 3 Versus One Billion iphone Apps

The Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon is developing Kindle 3 and this will be a larger screen version designed to be attractive and compete in the newspaper and magazine markets. The article speculates that the K3 could be out in time for the 2009 Christmas shopping season.

They are obviously aware that Plastic Logic is coming over the hill and both the Hearst and Murdoch empires are looking to do their own thing and also if Barnes and Noble make a move its likely to be around the same time.

The big question is will eink be the technology that prevails and despite the media attention given to these ebook readers today will they merely become the single dimensional dinosaurs of tomorrow? Larger screens add significant cost to the eink technology. Today and for the foreseeable future eink remains grayscale and may be ok for text but is seriously unsexy for graphics, illustrations, photos and can’t play video. No matter how big they make the screen we would rather use the smaller, compact and more portable iPhone or even iTouch.

So it was very interesting to see that Apple have started to countdown not to Christmas but to their one billionth app downloaded milestone on the App Store. iPhone sales hit 17 million last month and in less than a year of their launch the apps have proved a huge market success and huge competitive differentiator with all the competitors now scrambling to catch up.

As we write the counter is at 938,718,000 and counting very fast! Apple are giving away prizes for the lucky billion app person.

The top ten free book apps are:

Kindle for iPhone
Stanza
eReader
Wattpad
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Beamitdown software)
Shakespeare (Readdle Playshakespeare.com)
Love Poems (Beamitdown software)
Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen (Beamitdown software)
King James Bible Audio (iToursoftware.com)
Alice in Wonderland (Beamitdown software)

The top ten free book apps are:

Classics (the only one in either list to feature in the top ten of all application)
Star Trek Countdown 1 (iVerse Media)
Star Trek Countdown 4 (iVerse Media)
Star Trek Countdown 2 (iVerse Media)
Star Trek Countdown 3 (iVerse Media)
Star Trek Countdown 1 (iVerse Media)
King James Bible (DMBC)
Twilight by Stephanie Meyer (iceberg reader)
A Twilight Trivia (twilight Movie and Book)
New Moon: The Twilight Saga, Book 2 by Stephanie Meyer (iceberg reader)
Mohandas Gandhi Quotes (Brighthouse labs)

iPhone App eBook Readers

o the new world is about who has the smartest mobile application. It may appear that these have been around for ever but the reality is they haven’t. We have yet to really see the RIM, Android, Palm, Symbian applications and what once was the territory of Microsoft is now clearly owned by Apple and its ‘I’ family. Its interesting to note that some apps are free whilst others charge a nominal fee. Perhaps with such a low entry point the consumer will download the lot and then choose which they like today and user churn will happen around upgrades. So where is the glue that will retain user loyalty or is it just open season for all?

Nintendo is even reported to be eyeing up the iPhone and success of the Apple Apps Store and looking to compete using its stable of game developers. Nintendo already has its DS Shop and DSi Ware services, to accompany DSi when it launches next month in the US. However is it now seeking non-gaming applications for the DSi to complete head to head with Apple? Alternatively are they now also aiming to try and head off the likes of Apple and Android off from their games market?

So who are the ebook mobile application players today?

The free Stanza reader from Lexcycle is the reader of choice of many and now is fully integrated with Adobe’s ACS4 so offering DRM protected Adobe eBooks and epub files. It has a very customisable user interface especially with the type font and a landscape library view. The app also sorts books by title, author, subject and your latest reads. Stanza enables you to download books from many different sources including Fictionwise and also import your own library using their desktop application and interfaces with Digital Editions.

The Kindle app is part of Fortress Amazon and can only read books from Amazon’s 250,000 titles but offers the best price value and widest range of titles. If current content is what you are after then the Kindle is probably the answer today. However, it offers minimal type customisation other than sizing and its files can’t be transferred anywhere other than to a Kindle.

The free eReader from Fictionwise, or should that now read Barnes and Noble, clearly has the right name and has been around longer than many. It supports many file types, including its own and with it new eager parents, is certainly going to be around for the long haul. It is not clear how the exclusive deal with Ingram now pans out, but like their recent tiff with Overdrive, it will probably get sorted in the background. The eReader application wins many over with its navigation, highlighting, annotations and search. Some would argue that it doesn’t offer the same level of font customisation as others but it still remains very user friendly. The only negative appears to be on performance especially when an ebook is downloaded from another source and read on eReader. This may be seen by some as a feature, not really recognised by others and a pain and frustration to many who have seen comparable readers.

As we have seen through their emailing programme, it often pays to wait until the weekend, or for a discount offer, when buying from Fictionwise as they seem to have one every few days to celebrate nothing except a discount offer.

Bookshelf is not a free app and is from Zachary Bedall. It uses Apple’s networking to let readers set up and manage their own “shelf servers” and supports a wide range of e-book formats. Although it does offer more than 20 scalable typefaces, a range of background colours and its scroll feature works well the application isn’t that consumer friendly in its appearance and feel.

The iFlow reader is a reader in a book as opposed to a book you apply a reader to. They offer tens of different book collections. So you buy multi-volume sets of books with a reader, priced anywhere from free to $10. The text scrolls like a teleprompter that you control by tilting the screen. You cannot import your own books and there isn’t a single instance of the application.

The Classics reader launches a bookcase, you simply tap a jacket and the book opens, tap a page and the page turns. Today there are only a few titles but you can arrange the shelves to your taste. On finishing, a crimson bookmark slides down the left side of the page and the book closes. Fun but limited.


So what will determine the winners from the losers and can a free reader that is not tethered to content make it. Alternately why pay a few dollars for a reader when another is free? Apart from Fictionwise, today there still appears to be many features missing such as annotations, highlighting and personalisation. The mobile platform offers so much and if the larger iTouch becomes a reality these readers will certainly be the ones to watch.

The iPhone Overtakes Windows Mobile in Nine Months

Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS has had the most applications available for many of its 9 years. However, App Store tracker 148Apps.com now report that over 25,000 applications are now available on the iPhone App Store and these have increased by a staggering 5,000 in less than a month. This staggering growth has happened not in nine years but nine months. It clearly shows that smartphones are the new hot spot and also that Apple have clearly taken the initiative through their App Store. Even Amazon joined them last week with their ebook reader.

Some are predicting the Android phone will dominate, others Palm’s Pre, others Nokia and some still believe Windows has legs. Whatever the horse you would back the facts are that Apple has made and continues to make the news, generate the applications and potentially dictate the direction. If you could drop your current smartphone and merely swap it tomorrow for any other on the same terms and even the same network why wouldn’t you select an iPhone? Its becoming an interesting battle with higher syphisication on one side such as the new Sony and LG camera specifications, versus the textbound corporate Blackberry versus applications and design.

We have said repeatedly that the application wars will be decisive and could decide winners and losers and one only needs to use an iPhone to appreciate how they have got the customer interface right. Given the growth of applications it is now down to whether there is enough attention to feed the application developers on one platform or whether they will have to spread their bets and develop on one of the other platforms. The question is which would you choose?

iPhone Makes Music

Take four girls, one cool cover and a bunch of iPhone and iPod touch apps and you can clearly create something uniquely different.

Amazon ebooks Now on iPhones

Owners of a iPhone or iPod Touch can now access and read the same content Amazon content as the Kindle.

Amazon have taken the logic step that they seemed to be avoiding and have opened up their content on the mobile and dedicated reader platforms. The application is downloadable from Apple's online application store and lets users read the same electronic books, magazines and newspapers that Kindle owners can enjoy. The application does not connect to the Kindle store and so users must buy the content through the Safari browser. However, Amazon's program will synchronise the Kindle and iPhone accounts so you can keep your place in the same book on both devices, but importantly you don’t have to have a Kindle to access Amazon’s content and the iPhone is of course in full colour.

So Amazon has been allowed to bypass the Apple store for buying content and Apple have clearly also approved them having the application. The obvious impact is that Apple should see a huge lift in iPhone and iTouch sales and today have a clear one up over their smartphone rivals. Amazon have clearly put a shot across the bows of Stanza with an offer of far greater content and a tie back to a reader so offering choice of reading device to users.

Forgetting the minor inconsistencies that may be there today between Amazon’s offers, forgetting the differences between Stanza and Amazon’s offer, this clearly is a big step change. Amazon is clearly building a device and platform neutral offer which can all be synchronised and this may questions whether the Kindle will be around as we know it in a few years. We see Amazon positioning itself based on its content offer and as a trusted retailer and would envisage them extending the offer to include newsprint, books, audio, video whatever, over whatever, using whatever, and whenever. It is still unclear how long it will be before Amazon breaks out of the US but the iPhone application may provide an interesting option.

The one thing that this has done is further strengthened fortress Amazon.

February 9th - Kindle 2 Day?

So what do; the Beatles and The Ed Sullivan Show, American combat troops and Vietnam, Lithuanian democracy, Carole King and Mia Farrow and Amazon, all have in common?

Amazon has announced a press conference at New York's Morgan Library & Museum, scheduled for Monday, February 9th and hosted by Jeff Bezos himself. As you can see the day is not one of the biggest event days in history, but are Amazon planning on changing all that? The Internet is now rife with speculation that the book giant is planning to launch its long overdue Kindle 2 and a library would appear to be the perfect venue.

The speculation of what it would look like has started. Will it have a bigger screen, more feminine rounded corners, be thinner, rounded buttons, smaller side buttons and come in designer colour packages? Will it have faster screen loading, using the Broadsheet chip used in the Sony 700? Some may say that these are fairy safe guesses, but what may be the surprise, or has it again taken so long to get to this stage that there is very little surprise?

Whatever lands on the street on the 9th it is clear is that Amazon has some catching up to do in the market if it is to regain the initiative it created with the K1. Irrespective of how many of the K1 boxes were shifted, the spotlight has clearly moved from the eink grayscale readers to the full colour and ubiquitous iPhone and mobile platform. It will take more than a quick dust down, lick of paint, rounding of the edges and an Oprah stardust endorsement to get the K2 back to pole position. Sony has consistently plugged away and with its epub credentials and its educational moves and its availability and is starting to make the eink running. We have consistently stated that we believe that the end game is between the shrinking notebook/lapotop and the mobile smartphone, between download and online, between restrictive DRM and DRM free and more likely OLED than eink . It is unlikely that Mr Bezos is going to move any of these goalposts next month.

We now wait, speculate and listen to the noise, but just in case you are curious what some believe will pop out of the box next month here is a ‘leaked’ photograph from the gadget site Boy Genuis Report.

iPod Touch Rumours - Evolution or Step Change?

If Apple wanted to sound out the market, then planting a story to gauge market reaction would make a lot of sense. We don’t know that they have done this, but there is much noise today in the market of a new larger iPod Touch, which if it were to happen, would clearly not only rewrite the notebook world but obliterate the eink readers in a heartbeat.

Apple have apparently been experimenting internally with a large form of tablet for some time but have never taken the bold step into the market. However the huge success of the iPhone , iTunes and IPod family has brought touch screens to everyone and there are now considerable numbers of games, videos, and even books that could find a common home. Apple claim that over 300 million applications have been downloaded since they launched their App Store last July. 2008.

The current iPod touch has a 3.5 inch screen and ranges in price between $229 and $399 so we can expect a iTablet to be higher but it effectively starts to merge the laptop and the IPod with Apps Store and iTunes and in doing so create a family that could hurt the likes of Microsoft, all PC manufacturers and media moguls such as Amazon. It is interesting to note that we all thought that Microsoft was unstoppable, but Apple has continued to chip away, gain iconic status and attack the media market from a completely new angle.

Steve Jobs said he wasn't going to build an ebook reader. He hasn't. He however is building a media platform in which ebooks are accommodated and find a natural home!

The idea of a wireless mini-tablet with the multi-touch interface is insipring. We have seen the pulling power of the iPhone and iPod now to have something a little larger making DVD players, notebooks and ereaders redundant, would be not only natural, but also a clear step change. We predict it would be a category killer that would redefine the category and if it were to happen we certainly want one!

eBooks are Added Value

It amazing how in such a relatively small time the ebook market is flipping from the ‘traditional’ ereaders and moving towards the iPhome and mobile market. To us its both logically and enivitable and something we have been predicting for as long as we remember. Sure Kindle is sold out, Sony have sold 300,000 units but both these are a blip on the number of iPhones being sold and other 3G smartphones out there. Rwemeber that other great culture changer from what seems a long time ago – the Sony Walkman? Any device that has market resonance and arrives at the right time will change the market. Walkman, iPod, iPhone, Flip all have that magic to change and make the incombants lok tired, clunky and so what.

An article in Wired eludes to something else which is quite interesting. Chris Snyder wrote an interesting piece on ScrollMotion, a New York mobile application development for the iPhone which he believes will be the next ereader. ScrollMotion have reportedly concluded deals with a number of major publishing houses, Houghton Mifflin, Simon & Schuster, Random House, Hachette and Penguin Group USA and is in talks with several others.

The claim that they are dealing with front list titles such as Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight," Philip Pullman's "The Golden Compass" wrapped only in the FairPlay iTunes DRM and this differentiates it from the others such as Stanza. They don’t apply reflow keeping each title to the same pagination as the print book, while using the Iphone’s features to zoom in and scroll.

ScrollMotion also intend to roll out the applications on both the Android and Blackberry platforms.

So what caught our eye was not the article as much as the comments posted against it. Already folk are picking their favourites and backing the IPhone applications in a way we never really saw on the ereaders. The enthusiasm and language is different and it makes one think that one side has clearly connected with the street. This next year is going to be exciting as more and more iPhone and 3G users look to get more out of their devices and discover ebooks not as the primary reason they bought them but as added value in their devices.

Music Just Got 'Sticky'

The digital music revolution is now entering its next phase. The first phase merely dumped the music onto your player, the content was the same, played the same but lacked that something that vinyl and CDs had – extra fun. Downloads didn’t have liner notes, photos, lyrics and all those extras that made the physical renditions more tactile, they were just digital content.

Now the mobile application boom has generated a potential answer – the total music experience. Before the December 16 release of Fall Out Boy's "Folie a Deux," the band will release an iPhone application. This is notthe first nor will it be the last and follows the lead taken by the likes of Pink, Snow Patrol and David Cook.

The iPhone application is basically an interactive website, accessing track listings, photos and lyrics from the band's entire discography as well as links to buy its songs from iTunes. As a mobile application it doesn’t need to be static and can be updated with more information and functionality and could include a mobile social network integrated with the community on falloutboyrock.com, Twitter tools, photo uploading and even the ability to find other nearby users with the iPhone's GPS location technology. The application can also contain games and streamed videos. The applications are only restricted by imagination, ability and effort.

By separating the music from the application they have avoided making the download complex, raising its price and best of all retained control. Importantly the applications could generate a new ‘must have’ around the iPhone and in order to compete the other mobile players would have to reproduce the application on their platform. However by tying the application to the device they have joined that current disconnect that occurs between the artist’s web site and the music whilst potentially replicating the web site content and experience on the iPhone. A very clever move and one that increases the overall marketing ‘stickyness’. Not an easy task as it evolves in many directions. Also with each band in effect creating their own application this makes the service even richer and compelling and also again harder to replicate.

Will the music labels follow and try to wrestle control? Some would say that this is inevitable, but again they have sat on their hands and the artists have taken the initiative and many will want to retain that element of brand and social group control. The music labels will also want it to be on every mobile device not just the iPhone. Can you imagine the likes of Sony rolling over and handing it to Apple? The other problem the labels have is that they are music producers and marketers and do not inherently have the skill base or set.