Hasta La Gadget!

This September, Apple’s expected to flip the switch on iTunes Radio, the music service announced at WWDC in June. But how exactly will Cupertino fund its pricey new streaming venture? Ads, and lots of them — according to AdAge, Apple will serve up an audio advertisement every 15 minutes, while video ads will play every hour, and only at times that users are likely to be looking at the display, such as right after hitting play or jumping to a new song. McDonald’s, Nissan, Pepsi and Procter & Gamble are all on board as launch advertisers, with each deal bringing many millions of dollars in revenue. Only free users will have to deal with frequent disturbances, however. Users paying $25 per year for an iTunes Match subscription will have ad-free access to Radio, letting them stream tunes continuously without interruption.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Internet, Apple

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Source: AdAge

There have been rumors in the past that NFC could be one of the features that would make its way into Apple’s iPhone, and while Apple’s Phil Schiller explained why NFC is missing from the iPhone, it has not stopped the rumor mill from suggesting otherwise. Well a recent patent by Apple has been spotted that seems to suggest that Apple has toyed with the idea of NFC in their phones, although when exactly it will make its debut remains to be seen.

This particular patent describes a method of gifting iTunes purchased products to other iOS devices. At the moment there are a number of ways that one can gift another person an iTunes product, through gift codes and such, but there is currently no way of gifting an iTunes purchase from iOS device to iOS device physically. The patent suggests that the use of NFC could be one of the ways in which someone could gift an iTunes purchase to another person, tap their devices together and the purchase should be transferred. Like we said there’s no telling when Apple will implement NFC in their phones, but at least they’re considering it.

Apple Patent Describes The Use Of NFC To Gift iTunes Purchases original content from Ubergizmo.

Apple isn’t known to be that bullish on NFC use in mobile devices, but a new patent application originally created earlier this year and published by the USPTO today (via AppleInsider) shows it’s thinking about the tech in a few ways at least. The application describes a means for transferring iTunes content from device-to-device, via NFC when two people are in physical proximity.

The patent describes a couple of different media “gifting” scenarios facilitated by NFC. In the first, it would enable the kind of existing media gifting already possible on iTunes via email, where one user buys content for another at time of purchase. But the second scenario is more interesting, because it deals with transferring already-owned media from one user to another.

This kind of “used” digital media sales is something we’ve seen Apple key in on before in patents; Apple previously applied for a patent for a system that would allow for the transfer of previously-owned digital media from one user to another in a patent filed in June, 2012 and published in March.

In both that application and this one, transfer of digital goods is facilitated by use of an authorization key that tells Apple’s servers that the receiving party has permission to access the track, movie, book, etc. The original application was mostly about resale, whereas this one focuses on gifting (and the use of NFC for in-person transfers) but both applications are so similar in basic concept that it seems very likely Apple is seriously looking into how it can make ownership of digital media more like ownership of physical media.

While you could technically just copy files from your library to someone else’s with the current DRM-free iTunes audio media files (though that’s not exactly kosher), it’s still much better to imagine a system in place where gifting and transfer are built-in to digital media marketplaces. And the mention of NFC might give hope to those wishing Apple would start investing in that tech to help encourage its widespread use.

iTunes is having a firesale on movie bundles right now, with some serious movie collections available at crazy low prices. What movie collections, you ask? How about the entire Harry Potter series, normally over $120, for just ten freakin’ bucks? And that’s just for starters. Update: Turns out it really was too good to be true.

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I don’t understand. It’s just Bejeweled. With candy. What’s the big deal? Innocent words from a better time. A better place. Before I’d ever made that deplorable journey to the App Store and downloaded… it. Candy Crush Saga. Now, about a month later, I’ve lost a little over $230, hours of battery life, and any remaining semblance of dignity. Hello, my name is Ashley Feinberg, and I have a Candy Crush problem.

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