Now that’s what I call a new approach to music distribution. David Byrne (of Talking Heads fame) and Brian Eno (of Brian Eno fame) worked together on a new music album and are offering it for free in an online streaming format. Anyone can embed the album in his website with some embed code.

Too bad it doesn’t work in WordPress. But you can listen to it here:

http://everythingthathappens.com/

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Nokia yesterday announced it has started shipping the Nokia N96, which means it will become available, SIM-free, in shops over the next few weeks. Availability via operators will take a little longer; the UK launch on the 3 network is scheduled for October 1st. The N96 is a high-end Nseries device with a focus on mobile TV and video (large 2.8 inch screen, video stand, DVB-H receiver, and preloaded movie content). It also features a 5 megapixel camera and integrated GPS

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I totally agree with Michael Arrington on this one: if creating applications for set-top boxes was more like creating applications for the Web, we’d be able to do a lot more things with our TVs—especially if those set-top boxes were also connected to the Web. Want instant messaging and caller ID on your TV? No problem. Want customized information widgets for the TV that scroll breaking news, weather, sports scores or stock quotes from sources you choose in your own ticker at the bottom of the screen? No problem. Want to turn that annoying ticker off? No problem. Want to control the camera angles on that basketball game? No problem. Want to add the live video stream from your friend’s cell phone who is at the game? No problem. Want to create your own video mashup of fight scenes from various movies that you can edit right on your TV and share with others on their TVs? No problem.

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I made a small discovery in the new iPhone 2.0 firmware. When you take a photo, the iPhone stores the latitude and longitude (your location on the planet) in the photo itself. Geotagging.

JPEG files have meta-data information, the so called EXIF data. These may contain items such as the exposure, the date and the filesize. But you can basically put anything in there. Apple now puts the location data in. This opens up all sorts of location based services. For example, when you upload to MobileMe or Flickr, you may soon see where the picture was taken on a Google map.

Because the pictures I took were taken with an ‘old’ 2G iPhone, it’s not the real GPS data which gets stored. It’s the location, as estimated by my proximity to a cell tower or a WiFi base station. Apple uses Skyhookwireless to retrieve those data.

BTW. My phone is running beta7 of the iPhone 2.0 firmware (available for registered developers only), in beta6, this feature was not yet available, so it has been recently added.

On the screenshot below, you see the GPS information. The free tool I used is EXIF Reader.

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More signs that the problems at Jamba/Jamster are deepening. It seems the downsizing has already begun. Several news sources report that Jamba decided to stop developing its own mobile games, so is shutting its Ojom development unit. Berlin-based Ojom is actually one of VeriSign’s (NSDQ: VRSN) contributions to the venture with News Corp (NYSE: NWS). which will now concentrate only on marketing and distribution as far as games go. Jamba retains non-games production capacity including Fox content like The Simpsons and its latest ringtone irritation factor Schnuffel. CEO Mauro Montanaro says: “We now already have over 100 partnerships with well-known games publishers … Therefore, we no longer see the need to develop our own content in this specific area.”

I estimate another 6 months before this ringtone Titanic goes down.

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One of my biggest irritations are the in-the-face agressive adverts for ringtones by the German company Jamba (known as Jamster in the States). Stupid, shouting, silly adverts for low quality mobile content, targeted towards children and teens. So I was happy to find this in the annual report of Verisign (who acquired Jamba together with Fox/NewsCorp):

“The decrease in content services revenues was primarily due to a $237.7 million decrease in revenues from Jamba, partially offset by a $26.0 million increase in messaging services revenues and a $46.2 million increase in revenues as a result of 2006 acquisitions. The decline in our Content Services business was primarily attributable to increased pricing pressure and a decline in the number of subscribers.”

Could that be the real reason why the Jamba chief got the sack last year? The ringtone business is over. Everone in the mobile industry knows it (just Verisign and Fox didn’t see it coming when they bought Jamba). A 237 million decline in revenue just proves it. Jamba will be dead soon. Mobile phone users and tv-viewers all over the world rejoice !!

Did you know dead people drive Saabs? Vägverket, the Swedish Road Administration, is reporting that General Motors used ten human cadavers for crash research. While it isn’t clear which GM vehicle hosted the corpses on their one-way trip into a wall, a spokesman for Vägverket said it was most likely the Saab brand. The spokesman was also quick to point out that all of the cadavers were people “who had donated their own bodies.” (Well, that is comforting to know!)

What’s new in Zemanta 0.2? I’m checking as I type….

From their blog: Many of you have written to us asking for more images and articles. With today’s update we bring you exactly that. Now every ’suggestions refresh’ brings you more images and articles, together with history of suggestions throughout the post. Moreover when you hover over the images you now get a bigger image preview, together with description and license. This way deciding what picture you want in your blog is easier and without excessive clicking.

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Frankly I am a little surprised by the action. Now if our FTC was the one to raise a stink, it would be normal.

On paper, it seems to be a win-win for European Union. If this deal goes through, then two European companies – Nokia and Tom Tom – would become major players in the digital mapping business and thereby leaders in location based services. LBS and mapping are viewed as the future of mobile industry, a traditional stronghold of Europe.

Barring Nokia, European mobile industry has been ravaged by commoditization and many players have exited the market, and stopped making consumer devices. New comers like Apple and Google are trying to tilt the mobile center of gravity towards Silicon Valley, though it still remains a long shot. In order for Nokia to retain its dominant position, the company needs to look beyond pure vanilla hardware. LBS & Digital Mapping services are part of that future and a competitive advantage. Any delays – like the ones posed by this longer review – are going to put Nokia at a disadvantage.