Hasta La Gadget!

Let’s face it, folks — the CD insert is no longer “the new hotness.” And besides, those wacky PDFs included with iTunes album purchases never did much more than take up valuable hard drive space anyway, right?. In an effort to get consumers to stop buying single tracks and start buying more filler entire albums, Apple has reportedly joined forces with EMI, Sony Music, Warner Music and Universal Music Group in a project that’s being codenamed “Cocktail.” Financial Times is reporting that said initiative is considering adding “interactive booklets, sleeve notes and other interactive features with music downloads,” with one executive familiar with the situation saying that “it’s not just a bunch of PDFs; there’s real engagement with the ancillary stuff.” Of course, all of this should still be taken with a pinch of salt for now, as even the music companies mentioned above refused to comment. And given the tremendous indifference consumers have shown with that other interactive tech that’s being pushed so hard right now, we’re not even sure it’ll have the desired effect.

In related news, another sect of folks “briefed on the project” have stated that these new content deals could be launched alongside a new, full-featured “tablet-sized computer in time for the Christmas shopping season, in what the entertainment industry hopes will be a new revolution.” Adding fuel to the already raging fire, the report asserts that the “touch-sensitive device… will have a screen that may be up to ten inches diagonally,” and while it will “connect to the internet like the iPod touch, it’ll probably [do so] without phone capabilities.” You do know that Apple has been good for a music / iPod-related event right around September the past few years, right?

[Via AppleInsider]

Filed under: Portable Audio, Software

Apple, record labels working to spur album sales with interactive goodies, tablet due this September? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Jul 2009 01:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Some healthy escalation in the Palm vs. Apple iTunes scuffle: Though Apple tried to block the Pre from syncing with iTunes, Palm has struck back with WebOS update 1.1, which un-breaks Pre-iTunes coupling and adds some great new features.

There are a ton of minor fixes to the Pre, which you can read about in the changelog below. The big standout is re-enabled iTunes compatibility. As Palm says in their blog, “That’s right — you once again can have seamless access to your music, photos and videos from the current version of iTunes (8.2.1).” How they managed to hold back from adding in “…Bitches!” at the end of that, we’ll never know. But there are a bunch of other sweet new features, especially “person reminders,” which let you set individual reminders for each person in your contact list (imagine a buddy calls, and a message pops up, reminding you to, say, congratulate him—or, if you’re like me, to ask him to pay you back the money he owes you). So cool! [Palm]

Update: Confirmed.

Version information

* Version: webOS 1.1.0
* Release date: 23 July 2009
* Configuration: Sprint 1.7

New applications
NFL Mobile Live from Sprint

* Watch or listen to live NFL games right on your phone.

Feature changes to existing applications
Calendar

* For Calendar accounts you create on your phone, the default reminder intervals are 15 minutes for timed events and one day for all-day events. A few notes:
o This change applies only if software version 1.1 was on your phone when you bought it, or if you did a partial or full erase on your phone and signed in to your Palm profile again after updating to version 1.1. If you simply update your phone to software version 1.1, the default reminder intervals in Calendar do not change.
o This change applies only to Calendar events you create on your phone, not to events that are synchronized to your phone from an online account.

Camera

* The Photos application opens more quickly when launched from the camera.

Clock

* Enhanced support for time zones in Clock.
* When you set an alarm in Clock, an alarm icon appears in the notification area at the bottom of the screen. Tap the icon to display alarm details. Alarm details include the following:
o If the alarm is set for the current day, the alarm time appears.
o If the alarm is set for tomorrow, the alarm time and “Tomorrow” appear.
o If the alarm is set for any day other than today or tomorrow, the day of the alarm appears.

Contacts

* Friends added and deleted in Facebook on the web are now correctly added and deleted in the Facebook account in Contacts on the phone.
* As soon as you create or makes changes to a Google contact on the phone, the phone begins a sync to reflect those changes in Google on the web.

Email

* When you set up an Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) email account, you can enter the mail server name as an IP address.
* Support for self-signed certificates with multiple common names has been added.
* When you reply to an email in HTML format using an EAS account, the formatting of the sender’s original message is now retained in the reply.
* Palm’s EAS implementation now supports several Exchange ActiveSync Policies, including the following:
o PIN/Password Required. IT administrators can ensure a password is assigned to the phone. Administrators can also specify the minimum length of the password.
o Inactivity timeout. IT administrators can ensure that an inactive phone goes into a locked state after a certain time period. You cannot set a higher timeout interval for your phone, but you can set a shorter interval.
o Remote Wipe. IT Administrators can remotely erase all data on a phone from their Exchange console. IT administrators can also have the device wipe itself if an incorrect password is entered more than a specified number of times.

Messaging

* You can enter emoticons in new text, multimedia, and instant messages. Emoticons also display in incoming messages.
* If you set the phone to use a 24-hour time format, the message times shown in a conversation appear in 24-hour time.
* If you go into an IM account’s preferences, all the options are available even if you are signed in to the account. You can tap Remove Account to delete the account, enter a new password to update the password, or tap Sign In to sign in with your updated password. Previously, you needed to sign out of the account before you could use these preferences.
* When you delete an IM account, a message now appears asking you to confirm that you want to delete the account.

Phone

* When multiple missed call notifications are displayed on the dashboard, the time of the most recent missed call is shown.
* When you slide the ringer switch off, a bell icon with a slash is displayed. Previously, the icon was a speaker with a slash.
* In Phone Preferences, the Show Contact Matches preference is now turned on by default. When typing on the keyboard in the phone app, the phone automatically displays both the numbers being entered and any contact matches for the characters entered.

System

* Improved functionality of person reminders. A person reminder is a notification that you create in a contact entry. The notification appears when you have a call or exchange an email, text, multimedia, or IM message with a contact.
* Resolves an issue preventing media sync from working with latest version of iTunes (8.2.1).
* When you enter a search term in Card view or the Launcher to perform a universal search, if you select the Wikipedia web search option, results are shown in the Wikipedia Mobile site instead of the Desktop site.

Web

* You can now use symbols from the symbols table (Sym Sym key icon + key) when you enter text into a web page dialog box.
* If you have a page open at a certain zoom level, leave the page, and use the onscreen Back Web Back button button or the back gesture to return to the page, the zoom level is restored right away.
* A new gesture is now available that works the same as the onscreen Forward Web Forward button button. To move forward through open web pages, make a short swipe left to right in the gesture area.
* When using the Wikipedia drop-down search feature in the address bar, results are shown in the Wikipedia Mobile site instead of the Desktop site.
* When you tap a link, the link appears highlighted to indicate it has been activated, even if it takes a moment for the linked page to open.

YouTube

* After you enter search text, you can tap the Search Search icon icon to perform a search. You still have the option of pressing Enter Enter key to perform the search.

Bose announced a new wireless music solution for the home today, the SoundLink. Available August 27th for the serious-commitment price of $549.95, the SoundLink will stream music from your PC’s music library to anywhere in your house. The concept here has already been seen in products from Creative and Altec Lansing, to name two, but these products were more iPod-centric and have not seen the sales success that a typical Bose release enjoys.

The system utilizes a USB key that plugs into your computer and sends its audio output to the SoundLink’s speakers. Bose claims it works well through walls and floors, and since it’s basically just grabbing your PC’s audio out, it’s not just for your music library–you can stream Pandora, Slacker, or any other sound source.

We have no idea how it’ll sound yet, but for the price, it should deliver quality audio. The system has a rechargeable battery and a remote control, as well, that actually allows you to skip tracks in iTunes and Windows Media Player, which is pretty cool. There’s also an Aux input on the speaker unit for your iPod or other sound sources.

PCMag should be getting this in for testing soon; check back for the review in the coming weeks.

If you’re one of those unfortunate Pre users that updated to iTunes 8.2.1 without seeing our warning, there are two options. You could either downgrade to iTunes 8.2, or use one of these alternative apps and future-proof yourself.

The problem with downloading to iTunes 8.2 from 8.2.1 is that isn’t quite as straightforward as replacing the iTunes app. You have to replace some other support files. The easier way is to use one of these four options. And, you have the freedom to update iTunes to any future version without worrying about whether or not it’ll mess up Pre syncing.

1) doubleTwist, by DVD Jon. [Download]

doubleTwist lets you access your iTunes Library in that you can see all the music and playlists (even smart ones) you’ve already established. Once you connect your Pre in USB mode, all you have to do is drag playlists or individual songs over to the Pre to have it sync. There’s no library view, as in you can’t drill down into artists, so you should organize your songs into playlists you want to sync inside iTunes first.

The downside of this method is that there’s no progress bar so you can’t see how much of your sync is done. The syncing process also isn’t foolproof, and froze on me mid-sync. But it does have the ability to import YouTube videos, which is kinda awesome. And, it doesn’t support the actual playlist function on the Pre, so your songs are going to be in one big pile. (You can sift through Artists, Albums, and Genres, of course.)

Update: The Windows version has automatic playlist sync (screenshot here), and the Mac is getting it this fall. What I meant to say was, the playlist support doesn’t work on the Pre side, not to be confused with the playlist support on the computer side. Jon of doubleTwist tells me that the Pre doesn’t actually support playlists in non-iPod mode right now. Hopefully that’ll come some time in the future now that the iTunes sync is becoming an issue. Thanks Jon!

Best all-around experience since this is a media-manager in itself


Doesn’t support playlists, and lack of progress bar when syncing

2) Just dragging music over into the media folder

One feature of iTunes that not many people know about is its ability to just drag and drop songs from iTunes the app to any location. So if you open up iTunes to the playlist, select all the songs inside the playlist and drag it into the Pre’s USB drive.

Drawback to this method is that it’s still one-way sync (you can’t uncheck or check a playlist to sync or de-sync easily), so you’ll have to clean things up yourself after your sync. It has the same no-playlist support problem as doubleTwist

Easiest method


Bare bones: no playlist support, no song management

3) iTunes Sync on Windows [Download]

It’s essentially a very simple version of doubleTwist, where you can select playlists one by one and sync them over to the Pre while it’s in USB drive mode. This does have a progress meter, but it’s Windows-only.

Progress meter is a plus


Windows-only

4) iTuneMyWalkman [Download]

Mac-only, but it creates a M3U playlist when you’re syncing music.

There are other utilities, of course, but one of these four should be enough to get you started. If you have one that does something better than the ones here, feel free to share them in the comments.

Playlist support!


Mac-only

Update: Commenters are also recommending Mediamonkey, Missing Sync and Salling Media Sync. You can give those a try as well.

The latest iTunes update 8.2.1 breaks Palm Pre’s ability to sync with Apple’s music software in a move that should come as no surprise to followers of the recent skirmishes between Apple and Palm.

Palm’s webOS operating system on the Pre has media sync as one of its key features. It allows users to connect their Pre to a PC or a Mac, making the device integrate almost as effectively as an iPhone or an iPod in a trick that was seen as a rather clever move by Palm.

But, as we have pointed out earlier, the feature is dependent to a large extent on Apple’s willingness to play ball. Apple has warned that it does not support or test iTunes’ compatibility with non-Apple digital media players. While earlier versions of iTunes worked with Pre, it seemed just a matter of time before an update would break it. And that’s what has happened.

So far, Palm has responded by blaming Apple. “Palm’s media sync works with iTunes 8.2,” said Palm in a statement. “If Apple chooses to disable media sync in iTunes, it will be a direct blow to their users who will be deprived of a seamless synchronization experience.”

And users still have options, said Palm. “They can stay with the iTunes version that works to sync their music on their Pre, they can transfer the music via USB, and there are other third-party applications we can consider,” it said.

See Also:

• Palm Pre Hits Sprint Stores
• Palm Pre App Catalog Makes a Slow Start
• Snap! Palm Pre Will Sync Seamlessly With iTunes
• 6 Reasons Why the Palm Pre Is Special

Photo: (Maury McCown/Flickr)