Sky Mobile TV app brings live sport to the iPhone

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Spotify generated huge excitement when it launched with its offer of unlimited music for £10 a month, but this simply blows it out of the water. Sky has today launched a new Mobile TV app which offers live streaming of a selection of its most popular premium channels for a monthly fee, and you don’t even have to be a Sky TV subscriber at home.

The core Sky Mobile TV News and Sports app is available for free, and offers full listings for the core sports and news channels. But for the paltry sum of £6 a month, you can stream live coverage from those channels over a Wi-Fi connection. (more…)

Will you hit the Orange iPhone “unlimited” cap?

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

Orange’s big unveiling of its iPhone tariffs has caused a bit of a kerfuffle, not least because its prices are almost identical to those of O2. A lot of people are up in arms about the promise of “unlimited browsing”, which in fact comes with a fair-use limit of 750MB.

But, ignoring the terrible decision to put an “unlimited” label on a very clearly capped tariff, is that amount of monthly data actually “fair-use”?

As discussed in this week’s podcast, there’s a very easy way for existing iPhone owners to find out if that data cap would prove troublesome. Just go to Settings -> General -> Usage, and take a look at your Cellular Network Data. I did just that, believing this cap would be encroaching at least a little on my roaming lifestyle, but I was in for a surprise. (more…)

My favourite Android apps

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

Pure Sensia digital radio: first look

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

The iPhone has a lot to answer for. Ever since it lit a stick of dynamite under the mobile phone industry, technology companies have been itching to, shall we say, “borrow” its magic dust. Now, with the Pure Sensia, two of the iPhone’s key features are arriving in an internet radio.

The Pure Sensia has two standout features: a 5.7in capacitive touchscreen and apps, combining to produce what Pure describes as the “Radio for the Facebook generation”.

The device breaks from the boxy blueprint of previous Pure radios, such as our Recommended award winner, the Pure Evoke Flow. The unusual oval unit is certainly eye catching, even though my MacUser colleague Nik Rawlinson rather cruelly christened it “a noisy rugby ball”. The unit houses 30W stereo speakers that delivered commendable punch and clarity, even in a crowded demo room with plenty of background noise.

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Spotify for iPhone: the verdict

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

I’ve had my week reviewing Spotify’s Premium account and the iPhone app, I’ve listened to an uneclectic mix of playlists that mostly consisted of the song Africa by Toto, and I’ve used it in central London and out in Kent, with all the public transport in between.

And the verdict? I almost, nearly, don’t quite want to pay for it.

It’s not that it’s not brilliant. It is. (more…)

Spotify for iPhone: first look

Monday, September 7th, 2009

The eagerly awaited music-streaming service Spotify has today arrived on both the iPhone App Store and on Android’s Marketplace, and I’ve been granted a seven-day guest pass to see if it’s really worth that £10-a-month premium account.

Over the course of a year that does seem like a lot of money – particularly as most users will already have huge music collections of their own – but the promise of millions of tracks available on the move is certainly tempting.

Starting up

Once logged in, you’ll be delighted to see all of your desktop playlists seamlessly synced with Spotify on your phone, and if that’s what you’re after you can just dive straight in. (more…)

How to stream Spotify to Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and digital radios

Monday, September 7th, 2009

Spotify may have launched its iPhone and Android apps, but how about streaming the Spotify sounds to other devices in the home, such as games consoles and digital radios? After all, many of us have expensive speaker systems connected to the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, while the speakers found on the average laptop give even Barry White the nasally whine of the Bee Gees.

Although the Spotify software itself doesn’t support streaming to other devices, it’s perfectly possible to do so with the third-party software, Jamcast. What’s more, the Jamcast software is completely free of charge and (unlike the iPhone/Android software) you don’t need a premium Spotify account to take advantage.

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iPhone: a return to the golden age of gaming?

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

When I were a lad, a new computer game didn’t cost the same as a tank of petrol. I remember eagerly scanning the shelves of my local WH Smith, hoping to find a new release among the stacks of Commodore 64 tapes priced at £2.99. If I hadn’t given my mum too much lip that week, I might even have been able to persuade her to part with £3.99 for one of the premium titles, such as The Way of the Exploding Fist.

The era of the low-budget game pretty much died with the Commodore 64, Spectrum and Amstrad era. Before long the Amiga and the Atari ST had raised the budget bar to £9.99 – not so much an impulse purchase, as a couple of weeks pocket money at the very least.

Yet, that was nothing compared to the inflation of the console era. New PlayStation titles routinely cost £30. Today, a brand new Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 title can set you back £50. I sympathise with the parents I see dragging their disappointed offspring away from the game aisles in Tesco, explaining they simply can’t afford the latest releases. For my mum it was a couple quid on top of her copy of the Daily Mail and Woman’s Weekly; for today’s mums it’s almost as much as the weekly shopping bill.

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iPhone and Palm Pre owners locked to Britain’s patchiest 3G network

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

Ofcom has published detailed maps of Britain’s 3G mobile data coverage – and they make grim viewing for owners of the iPhone and the forthcoming Palm Pre.

Both Apple and Palm have decided to lock their devices exclusively to the O2 network. But as Ofcom’s network-by-network maps show, O2 has by far the patchiest 3G coverage of any of the UK’s five mobile networks.

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First look: Sony Walkman X-series

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009

Sony has taken the wrapping off its most obvious iPod Touch competitor yet – the OLED-equipped X-series Walkman.

We’ve been hands-on with Sony’s latest addition to the Walkman family at the London launch and, while it’ll have to go some way to beat the all-conquering iPod Touch and iPhone duopoly, we’ve come away impressed.

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