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Legitimate music consumers are once again at the receiving end of the bad half of the deal on news that giant US retailer, Wal-Mart, plans to close its DRM-server on October 9, meaning previous purchasers of music through its previous music service will lose their collections.

This move follows similar steps by Microsoft and Yahoo this year. All three companies elected to end support for the DRM keys required to transfer music between computers, which need to be authorised in order to play the tracks. Lack of a DRM server means this authorisation doesn’t take place, effectively depriving music buyers of access to their collections.

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Adobe is likely in hot water this weekend, with news that a security hole in Flash means users can get free access to record and copy video and movies made available using the software.

Amazon.com’s online movie service is apparently affected, meaning users can easily grab a copy of films – even those theoretically protected against such use.

Apparently, the flaw lies in the Flash video servers. “The software doesn’t encrypt online content, but only orders sent to a video player such as start and stop play. To boost download speeds, Adobe dropped a stringent security feature that protects the connection between the Adobe software and its players,” Reuters explains.

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Nokia will unveil its very own iPhone-killer next week, a touchscreen device until now called the ‘Tube’.

Following up last week’s introduction of the first Android-powered touchscreen device, HTC’s Dream, the Nokia gadget is the first device from the manufacturer to employ this technology.

Nokia will introduce its new handset in London next week on October 2. While the company has declined to comment on the launch, a Gartner analyst observed the company continues to lag behind Apple, “We have been wating for the market leader to respond to Apple’s iPhone for a year and a half now.”

The company does have a good track record, the same report explains, observing that while Nokia was late to introduce devices capable of accessing 3G network, the devices it did offer quickly achieved wide market acceptance. Read the rest of this entry »

Three years in development, Rockbox 3.0 has finally shipped online – software that should breathe a little extra life into any aging music players you may have around, including the iPod.

Rockbox is open-source software which replaces the OS on your existing music player which lets them play more music file fomats, delivers audio improvements and includes a tiny version of classic arcade game, Doom and some other games.

Audio improvements include the introduction of support for over 15 formats like FLAC and Ogg, a 5-band parametric EQ, MPEG video, a multilingual interface and the capacity to understand spoken commands (on players with a microphone). Read the rest of this entry »

Apple has reached a deal that will make iTunes, the iTunes Store and iTunes U more accessible to blind and partially sighted people.

Under pressure from the National Federation of the Blind and Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, Apple made the decision to meet its obligations under sundry accessibility laws in various countries. It didn’t require litigation, the company simply saw sense, and agreed to make Apple’s iTunes software, iTunes Store, and iTunes U more accessible to the blind.

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Needham & Co. analyst Charles Wolf thinks Research In Motion is deluded in its guidance, slamming the firm with an under-perform rating on strength of increased competition from the iPhone and other manufacturers.

Wolf despatched the following message to clients today: “RIM reported second quarter results in line with guidance. The major disappointment was guidance going forward – the prospect of lower gross margins extending through 2010. We believe the company is fooling itself in ignoring the increasingly hostile competitive environment. We’re maintaining our under perform rating and reducing 2009 and 2010 earnings estimates. ”

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iPod users in the UK face a tax intended to fund unprofitable shows from Channel 4 and ITV, Ofcom has announced.

Ofcom warned that by 2012, when every household in Britain will have access to more than the five basic channels, between £145 million and £235 million of public funding would be needed to ensure ITV, Channel 4 and Five could continue producing their current level of public service programmes.

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The European Parliament has once again voted to prevent EU member states from imposing a “three strikes” rule against unauthorised file sharers.

In April MEPs supported measures added within a bill “to avoid adopting measures conflicting with civil liberties and human rights and with the principles of proportionality, effectiveness and dissuasiveness, such as the interruption of Internet access”.

Called to vote once again, the majority of MEPs voted against the lunatic measure, which would see file-sharers caught illegally sharing media three times struck off the internet for good. The vote came in at 573-74 in favour. Read the rest of this entry »

Universal Music has yet another DIY plan – this time it’s mulling the launch of its very own music video portal, similar to what broadcaster NBC has done with Hulu.

The music video website would offer music videos, interviews and all manner of artist-focused videos. The world’s largest music company is also keen to carry music videos from other labels too.

The move is seen as a twin strategic response to Read the rest of this entry »

A pre-release alpha version of a Mac version of uTorrent, the popular BitTorrent client for Windows, has been leaked to the public, TorrentFreak has noted.

The software comes from conentious Swedish torrent site The Pirate Bay, and has been expected since 2006 when BitTorrent purchased uTorrent and promised to develop a Mac version.

However, BitTorrent is warning that the alpha software isn’t really ready for release right now (it’s buggy and doesn’t entirely work), but its existence does at least prove a Mac version of the software is in development.

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