Month: April 2008

Radiohead Gives Up On Free But Cold Play Gives It a Try

April 30, 2008August 20, 2008 Bob Caswell 3 Comments

Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke decided to open up a little on the band’s “pay what you want” experiment from last year:

“I think it was a one-off response to a particular situation… It was one of those things where we were in the position of everyone asking us what we were going to do. I don’t think it would have the same significance now anyway, if we chose to give something away again. It was a moment in time.”

Translation: “We didn’t make as much as we are hoping, and it would only be less if we used that model again.”

Music, Tech News

Online Backup Wars: Mozy Responds to HP Upline

April 25, 2008August 20, 2008 Bob Caswell 3 Comments

Mozy, the online backup solution I use and have mentioned a couple times, is responding to HP’s Upline debacle in an interesting way. First, some background information:

Two weeks ago, HP released HP Upline, a service similar to Mozy that provides unlimited storage for $59/year. HP also released free accounts of the service, limited to 1GB and one year (Mozy does free too, but their version is 2GBs and has no expiration date). About a week and a half later, the Upline service went down for several days.

Do-It-Yourself Tech, Internet, Tech News, Web 2.0

Video Comments Are Here: This Could Be Huge… Or a Flop

April 23, 2008 Bob Caswell No Comments

TechCrunch made the announcement today that all of its blogs will have the option for you to leave video comments via a service called Seesmic. It’s a powerful idea with a dead simple execution. As a result, comments are now a mix of text and video. Take a look.

Internet, Media, Tech News, Web 2.0

Review: SlingVine Makes Sending Files Easy

April 22, 2008 Bob Caswell No Comments

Slingvine is a free application that allows you to send files over the Internet. For me, it felt like a replacement to email attachments. Here’s how it works:

You download and install the client on your computer. Then you right click on any file or folder in Windows and click on “Sling Selected Items.” This uploads your files or folders to a temporary webpage (url) that you then give out to whoever you want to receive your files.

Do-It-Yourself Tech, Internet, Tech Reviews, Web 2.0

How To: Get Consumers to Buy CDs Instead of MP3s

April 17, 2008August 20, 2008 Bob Caswell 15 Comments

I may be alone on this one, but I just noticed a small pattern in my CD shopping habits. Here’s an example:

Over the past couple years, I’ve come to love music from the band Muse. British rockers with some serious talent, they have a great sound that is a mix of britpop, rock, alternative, and electronica.

Amazon, Media, Music

Review: Logitech VX Nano Cordless Laser Mouse for Notebooks

April 16, 2008August 20, 2008 Bob Caswell 4 Comments

Logitech VX Nano Mouse So I had an extra $50 that Amazon gave me for buying an HD DVD player and was interested in getting a new mouse for my computer. For my day-to-day computing needs, I’m a laptop user all the way (and have been since 2001) but still prefer a mouse attached over a touchpad. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t help but try out Logitech’s VX Nano cordless mouse.

Amazon, Gadgets, Tech Reviews

Amazon MP3 Customers Don’t Come from iTunes, But I Did

April 15, 2008August 20, 2008 Bob Caswell 10 Comments

Market research firm NPD Group issued a report today explaining that Amazon MP3 is growing but not taking away customers from Apple’s iTunes. It seems that only 10% of Amazon MP3 shoppers in February were iTunes shoppers previously.

Amazon, Apple, Internet, Music, Tech News

Blockbuster Offers to Buy Circuit City

April 14, 2008 Bob Caswell 4 Comments

Wow. There’s plenty of buzz surrounding Blockbuster’s offer to buy Circuit City. Blockbuster’s reasoning is full of the usual business jargon: cutting costs, benefiting from complementary products, exploiting the growing convergence of media content and electronic devices, etc. All this will result in a “game-changing retail concept with a sustainable competitive advantage.”

Media, Tech News