Yearly Archives: 2009

[Muzaq] MySpace Take Over iMeem and Shut Down

Golem.de reports that the social music and media streaming service iMeem has been overtaken by Rupert Murdoch’s MySpace.com and eventually been closed. It seems like this buy was intended only to remove a possible competitor from the market.

iMeem was a Start up from San Francisco. It was founded by former Napster Employees. Users could upload music and music videos, that could then be listened to as a stream. In 2007 iMeem managed to make deals with major music labels in the U.S.

» History of MySpace.com on Wikipedia
» History of iMeem on Wikipedia
» Rupert Murdoch on Wikipedia

[Muzaq] Ambient Classics: Autechre’s Yulquen

This track is from 1994. We at incomplete-news feel this is one is still unfolding the same nice brain massage like at that time.

Get yourself headphones, a good drink and close your eyes. Autechre‘s Yulquen, taken from their 1994 album Amber comes simple, but is epic.

Enjoy…

» Autechre on Wikipedia
» Yulquen Album Details on Discogs.co.uk

[misc] Web Empfang von MMS mit Alice / Hansenet

Wir alle kennen die Situation. Ein Freund sendet uns eine MMS und wir erhalten eine SMS stattdessen, obgleich unser Telefon MMS fähig ist. Warum eigentlich?

Nun das ist sehr einfach: sofern man selbst keine MMS bislang versendet hat, geht der Provider davon aus, dass man kein MMS fähiges Mobiltelefon besitzt. Das ist einerseits ein guter Ansatz, andererseits jedoch auch eine nette Art, 60 Millionen deutschen Mobilfunkkunden zu zwingen, zumindest eine einzige MMS zu versenden – nämlich damit sie imstande sind, MMS zu empfangen.

60 Millionen MMS x 0,29€ pro MMS, bei jedem Wechsel des Mobiltelefons… Hmmm, nette Summe für die Portokasse der lieben Telefonkonzerne, aber lassen wir das lieber. Heute ist ja dritter Advent.

Blöd wird es nur, wenn einzelne Provider, die die Netze anderer verwenden, die SMS Benachrichtigungsoption für eingegangene MMS’ nur unzureichende implementieren. So isses beispielsweise bei dem deutschen Anbieter Alice / Hansenet. Hier erhält man folgende Nachricht:

Sie haben eine MMS von +491231234567 erhalten. Sie können diese im Web unter lesen. Ihr PIN lautet aB3D5F.

Tja. Äh wo soll ich die abrufen? Genau, nirgendwo. Der Link ist irgendwie nicht in der SMS enthalten. Einige Tests zeigen, dass in allen SMS Benachrichtigungen über eine vorliegende MMS, die von Alice derzeit versendet werden, die Webadresse fehlt. Macht ja nichts, wenn wenigstens Google etwas Hilfreiches zu Tage fördern würde … Hmm… Google hilft leider nicht… Also Gehirn anstrengen.

Alice ist im Mobilfunkbereich Reseller von O2 Produkten. Also mal bei o2 schauen, wo man die MMS online abrufen kann… Hmm… Google vermeldet (nicht ganz auf Anhieb): http://o2online.de/goto/o2mms

Und tadadada… Alles wunderbar. Meine MMS kann ich nun hervorragend bei O2 im Web abrufen. Oder sollte ich vielleicht doch mal die MMS senden, damit mein Provider merkt, dass ich MMS direkt auf dem Mobiltelefon empfangen kann?

[Muzaq] Artists Sue Major Labels – $6 Bill. Lawsuit

Again the irony of reality strikes back on the major record labels. According to articles on Toronto Star, Golem.de, TorrentFreak.com canadian record companies have illegaly copied thousands of songs from artists without permission and without sharing the profit with the artists.

Instead the record companies put every song on a “pending list”. According to Golem.de this list has been set up in the 1980s until nowadays and comprises 300,000 songs. Following the idea of “exploit now, pay later if at all” the music companies have never shared profits until now.

In october 2008 the estate of Chet Baker (a famous jazz musician in the 1950s) fired a class-action lawsuit against the music industry. Well known artists like Beyonce or Bruce Springsteen have joined the list plaintiffs.

The defendants on the other hand are Warner, Sony BMG, EMI, Universal, and the likes. The irony here is: those four major labels are also the primary members of the CRIA – the Canadian Recording Industry Association.

Michael Geist of Toronto Star writes:

At $20,000 per infringement, potential liability exceeds $6 billion.

These numbers may sound outrageous, yet they are based on the same rules that led the recording industry to claim a single file sharer is liable for millions in damages.

With those news the Music industry’s fights against piracy will not become any easier. Media industry should eventually stop not facing up to reality.

Our comment

Good night major music companies. This is one of the worst message you could have ever been transporting to the consumers: “We exploit everyone, no matter if it is an admonished file sharer, or an artist. As long as we do it, it is right.”

Your business models are dying, and so are you. Creative indy labels that understand how to use technologies like the internet for the consumers and not against them and how to share profits with the artists will survive.

[iPhone] AT&T To Lose iPhone Exclusivity?

The last weeks are full of rumors if AT&T will prolong their exclusive contracts with Apple. Rumors say the original contracts are gonna expire in the middle of 2010.

Thus allowing Apple to negotiate with different carriers like Verizon or T-Mobile. T-Mobile is currently the exclusive partner for Apple in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic.

AT&T is said is willing to prolong their contracts until the end of 2011, but Verizon and T-Mobile seem to be secretely testing Apple’s forthcoming device named internally iPhone 3,1.

» TheStreet.com: Apple iPhone May Go to T-Mobile Next
» iPhoneFAQ.org: Analyst: AT&T Exclusive iPhone Deal Up in June
» JKontheRun.com: A 4G iPhone on Verizon Currently Under Test?

[iPhone] Multi-Tasking With Multifl0w

Multifl0w is an attempt to bring multi-tasking capabilities known from our latest toy – the Palm Pre – to the iPhone. Sadly this nice (and overdue) feature is only available to iPhone customers having jailbroken their devices.

It does not feature the Palm Pre’s multitasking gestures nor the ‘swipe up to exit’ functionality, but it seems to be a first good step into bringing the iPhone to the technological presence.

There is a free trial available via Cydia and Rockyourphone. It costs about 5US$.

Check this video and the Multifl0w website for further details:

via: TechRadar.com

[Pre] Re-Enable Full App Catalog in Europe

The European Update 1.3.1

On Monday European Palm Pre users were just happy to eventually have the 1.3.1 update that has already been provided to U.S. customers two weeks earlier.

Sadly the smiling in our faces didn’t last long. European customers rapidly found out that their App Catalog had been crippled. PreCentral explains why this technically happened, but they cannot explain the marketing logic behind this move.

Luckily there is a strong European community of developers, that Palm should be listening to more carefully, since many of us are iPhone switchers.

The workaround for Europeans

A guy going by the nick Dleira from Switzerland found a way to re-enable many more (all?) applications for European Palm Pre friends aswell. It has been confirmed to be working, but anyway: do this at your own risk. We did not test it yet. This workaround requires root access to your Pre.

Link

» PreCentral Forums: Re-Enable App Catalog in Europe by Dleira

[Pre] Video Recording with Precorder 0.2 Alpha

The long waiting is over. A team around the Precentral’s forum member Prenosicator has released an alpha version of a Palm Pre video recording application. It requires WebOS 1.3.1.

You will not find it in the know homebrew repositories as long as it is in alpha status. Anyway for all of you able to root into your beloved Palm Pre the installation is as simple as drinking beer.

Kudos fly out to Prenosicator and his dev team guys. This is a very nice app, many of us have been waiting for.

Features

Option Description Selections
Audio Format Select what format you would like the audio stream to be saved in. AAC, AMRNB, MP3
Video Format Select what format you would like the video stream to be saved in. Mpeg-4, H.263, H.264/AVC
Container Select what multimedia container the audio/video streams will be in. mp4, 3gp
Media Source Would would you like Precorder to capture. Audio only, Video only, Both
Flash Would you like to use the built in LED for illumination Off, On
  • Options in bold are defaults
  • Recordings land in /media/internal

Installation

  1. root into your Pre (weather via Novaterm or running the terminal installed from within Preware)
  2. go to Pre’s tmp folder
    root@palm-webos-device:/# cd /tmp
  3. download the alpha version of Precorder
    root@palm-webos-device:/# wget http://bit.ly/precorder-bootstrap
  4. install Precorder
    root@palm-webos-device:/# sh precorder-bootstrap

Links

» PreCentral Forums: Introducing Precorder, in Alpha testing form
» WebOS-Internals: Precorder – Version: Alpha 0.2.0

Screenshots

Courtesy of WebOS-Internals.org

[iPhone] Commercial Unlocking Scammers

It is well known, that there are commercial thieves who use freely available programs and ideas by the iPhone Dev Team, GeoHot, Chronic Dev Team and others.

We highly recommend not to buy any unlocking or jailbreaking solution. They are available for free.

We prepped a list of current scammers making a business modell out of other people’s efforts. The links don’t work as we don’t want you to go there.

  • iPhone Unlocking Solutions (http://www.unlock-the-iphone.com)
  • iPhone Unlock UK (http://www.iphoneunlockuk.com)
  • iPhone Unlocking (http://www.iphoneunlocking.com)
  • iPhone Unlock Australia (http://www.iphoneunlockaustralia.com)
  • iPhone Unlock Free Software GUI (http://www.freeiphoneunlock.com/unlock) – installs adware
  • Unlock Ur iPhone Now (http://www.unlockuriphonenow.com)
  • Unlocked iPhone (http://www.unlockediphone.info)
  • Unlock Any iPhone (http://www.unlockanyiphone.net)

iPhone unlocking seems to be a large market. Say any of these companies sold 5,000 unlocks (which is a quite conservative estimation). For an average price of 25US$. This makes 125,000US$ for setting up a stupid internet page with stolen and repackaged content.