Interesting news/reviews/deals from the portable audio market
A few days ago the beta version of WMP 11 surfaced, it sports a cleaner look than its predecessor (we had posted a preview with screenshots back in March) and features a built-in music store (like the iTunes Music Store within iTunes) called Urge. Urge is the fruit of collaboration between MTV Networks and Microsoft; [...]
Streaming media charts, based on unique users: iTunes to pass RealPlayer by mid-2006 with just under 30M users, while still being second to Microsoft’s Windows Media Player with 80M users. Also:
RealPlayer’s userbase has remained steady over the last three year with 28M unique users.
Thanks to the built-in podcasting support “iTunes users tune in for an [...]
A short preview of Windows Media Player 11: comes with a cleaner, but still ugly UI. Features tighter integration with PlaysForSure devices. Have a look at the slide show. [via]
Microsoft ceases development of the app, continues to offer the current version for download and offers the Flip4Mac plugin for free. Said plugin allows users to work with .wmv and .wma files in QuickTime.
It’s a win-win for both parts. It didn’t make sense for MS to continue spending resources on a platform dominated by Apple’s [...]
First look: Windows Media Player 11 (on Windows Vista): syncing with PlaysForSure devices has seen several improvements. Also: Urge, MS & MTV’s music store, will be integrated in the app (as we had reported last month). Still, the whole thing looks really ugly.
Some landline connection problems kept me offline for most of last week. I spent the weekend scanning the stories I missed—here are some worth noting:
DVD Jon comes to the US to work with MP3.com founder: why, oh why, would a wiz kid would want to partner with a man who may be bold but fails [...]