The Engadget Show: Episode 4

The Engadget Show is becoming something of a hit. It has had only 3 episodes but my word has it had some hits, like Steve Ballmer on the day Windows 7 came out. Watch it down below if you'd like, or head over to iTunes and download it there. It is some great show this, the ultimate tech show out there.

Happy New Year from Google

A week or two ago I wrote about one of Google's many easter eggs - if you clicked the 'I'm Feeling Lucky' button without typing anything into the search box, a countdown would appear showing you the amount of seconds until the new year.

Now that the new year is upon us Google has gone a step further.

First of all, and most obviously, they've posted a Google Doodle to welcome the new decade in which fireworks are exploding around Big Ben:

Also... if you click the 'I'm Feeling Lucky' button without typing anything in the search box now, lots of sparkly fireworks will explode onto the page and you'll be welcomed a happy new year!

Admin Note

I will soon be writing some more posts soon but due to technical difficulties I'm afraid to report that there may be a short delay. My laptop repetitively crashes and I may have to fix that problem before the posts appears. But I wish you a happy near year all the same!

Amazon MP3 vs iTunes

I must admit to not being a huge fan of downloading music, basically because I like the hardware of the CD and the knowledge that it is mine. But I do own some iTunes downloads, just because my sister had an account and wanted me to try it out. So I made a few downloads and it was all jolly good, syncing with my iPod and everything. But it isn't great. Until recently its songs were full of DRM and that sucks!

But recently I changed my online download service to Amazon MP3. This is because I had spent over £15 on music (CDs) and they gave me £3 of downloads. And I have to say I was impressed by it all. It was very swift and easy to do and entered my iTunes library easily and without fuss. It did need a tiny app (I mean 2MB) but that was it. It was at a nice 256kbps which is good enough for most people. But it only did music, no videos, TV Shows, podcasts or anything like that. What was good though was the 29p songs which were great, and that most songs were cheaper than on iTunes.

iTunes does benefit from all those Films, TV Shows and podcasts but there is something else in its favour: its ease of use. Since 80% of the market is dominated by the iPod, iTunes is the place to buy music since it goes straight onto your iPod without you having to do anything. Nobody wants to have an extra app on their computer just to put music onto iTunes, they want music from iTunes.

Amazon MP3 will do well, but nothing compared to iTunes has and will keep doing. However, I will continue buying CDs until lossless music is available to download online, which will not be until there is super-fast broadband out there.

iTunes 12 days of Christmas: Day 7

Today it's the first TV episode of the 12 days, and well I'd never heard of it, but I'm sure that it will be good. Click on the picture to direct you to the page on iTunes and be sure to check back here to find out what's happening tomorrow.

Happy New Year