UPDATE: He signed it. We done been terminated.

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Later that day…

Google took us further into the digital media future with some compelling announcements at the fourth annual Google I/O developers conference in San Francisco this week. Recent Google I/O keynotes seem silly in retrospect — both Google Wave and Buzz were epic busts. But this year Google narrowed its focuses to it’s strengths, namely the Android mobile operating system and the Chrome browser and operating system. The gist was this: Use Google’s web-based tools and applications, combine with seemingly infinite storage space in the cloud, and bulky hard drives and desktop PC’s will become mere artifacts of our technological evolution. A Google account combined with a device running Android or Chrome OS will be all you need to do [almost] anything.

The day one keynote (video) included the expected launch of Google’s cloud-based music locker. Google Music Beta, currently invite only, was launched without proper licensing from labels, publishers, and artists. In skirting questions regarding working with labels, Google consistently claimed it had big plans but couldn’t comment on the ongoing negotiations. The beta is a bit half-baked from a user perspective, essentially one must download a Music Manager application to upload mp3s from a computer to a cloud-based server, which then can be played via the web-based player at music.google.com or via the Google Music Android application. Google currently doesn’t offer any MP3s for purchase or download, however, a sampling of tracks from various genres are made available for new users to add to their collections and stream from the cloud. Amazon, which does have a web- and mobile-based mp3 downloads store, launched a cloud-streaming application earlier this year. Apple is rumored to have a cloud-streaming app in the works.

Google also expanded its Android Marketplace to include Books and Movies. Movies can be rented for streaming on the web and on some Android tablets (it was announced that it will soon be available on Google TVs as part of an upcoming full Android Marketplace integration). Movies can be rented via market.android.com/movies from $1.99 – $3.99. Google beat Netflix by about a day with this announcement, as Netflix began rolling out its streaming video service for Android devices on Thursday.

The opening-night afterparty was dubbed Infinite Playground and, as you can see in this video, included awesome inventions such as the Bicycle-Powered Merry-Go-Round in addition to the self-driving Google car and various robots. All enjoyed to a live soundtrack performed by Jane’s Addiction, DJs Mark Farina and Miguel Migs (watch video of all 3 sets).

The highlight of the Day Two keynote (video) was the launch announcement of the Google Chromebook. In June the Chromebook — a netbook with cloud-based applications built specifically for the enterprise and education — will hit the streets, with Samsung and Acer as partners. The Chromebooks will be available to businesses for $28 per user per month and to educational institutes for $20 per user per month.

The Chromebooks, with 11.6-inch (Acer) or 12.1-inch HD displays (Samsung), will be available to consumers from $349 for the Acer to $429 (WiFi only) and $499 (3G) for the Samsung.

Google I/O has become wildly popular thanks in great part to valuable giveaways in previous years (the Nexus One in 2010 and the Android G2 phone in 2009) and this year topped all in that department. Google I/O 2011 sold out in under an hour (early bird registration was $450 for the two-day event). All 5,000 attendees this year were given the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Android tablet a month before it’s available in stores. (Disclaimer: I] shamelessly accepted this gift).

Both Android and Chrome are built on Open Source platforms which provides both developers and users more flexibility and control in customizing or optimizing devices using the operating systems. The I/O conference is not only a showcase for developers who have found ingenious ways to create applications, robots, cars, etc, that rely on Google tools in some form or fashion.

Originally posted at LAist on May 13, 2011

50 cents is a great deal for the savvy investor, however, many users are sure to get got by simply clicking “Get Album” on, say, the new Beastie Boys’ “Hot Sauce Committee Party Two” and pay $14.28 straight up for the 16 tracks.

The downloads come via 7digital in 320 kbps format.

Alternatively, the digital album goes for $7.99 at Amazon (320 kbps mp3), $10.99 on BeastieBoys.com (in multiple formats including lossless plus a bonus remix), and $14.99 at the iTunes store at 256 kbps AAC (incl. 30 minute Fight For Your Right Revisited video download).

When it comes to this particular release — the choices are so varied it could be a toss up. How would you go about purchasing the MP3 download?

Last Friday Spotify rolled out an ambitious software upgrade, making its biggest charge yet in both monetizing its platform and putting the heat on Apple’s iTunes.

Spotify announced the software update on its blog, Twitter, and elsewhere.

The big news: Sweden-based streaming music application Spotify is now selling downloads: $1.29 for one; or purchase 15 downloads for $0.87 each, 40 at $0.63 per, or 100 downloads at $0.50/track. The mp3s are delivered via a partnership with UK-based 7digital.

(Interestingly, it appears that the European and UK pricing for is identical in number — for both premium subscription and downloads — but not in value. In today’s market, $50 dollars has less value than €50 which is worth less than £50. )

Additionally, Spotify’s update enables better syncing across mobile platforms, including the ability to sync with local folders and the iTunes library.

This software update was the culmination of a series of announcements — a mid-April update to the Android app, an update to the Apple iPhone Spotify app and the introduction of iPod syncing capabilities. All of these improvements allowed any of the above devices to sync a user’s chosen playlists (or entire Spotify library) over the internet. Streaming via Spotify mobile is only available to premium subscribers who pay $9.99/month or between £5 and £9.99 in the UK (as it always has been). Spotify also introduced a limit of 10 listening hours of music monthly for its free users last month, in addition to allowing five listens per track.

Over the weekend the response was mixed, however, at some point on Sunday, Spotify’s servers apparently went on the fritz. And the varied tone of user comments on Spotify’s Friday Facebook post shifted to concern. Music could be streamed, but nothing could be downloaded — and syncing was working intermittently.

This screenshot was taken before offline syncing with mobile devices stopped functioning, apparently due to issues with the aforementioned “license server.”

UPDATE: As of Monday 5/9, syncing is now working and the error message above is on longer appearing. However, the desktop interface is not recognizing the device as it did on Saturday (see image below).

The latest Spotify software update introduced this handy syncing interface (PC36100 is the codename for my HTC EVO Android smartphone).

Spotify has yet to comment on any issues in spite of the appearance of disconcerting server warnings including the ominous “We are having problems with the license server. Please try again later. (Error 21)” message that occurred repeatedly on Android devices.*

It does appear that something remains on the fritz as I was unable to download any tracks earlier, instead receiving the message Having purchased 15 downloads for $12.99 (which breaks down to $10.82 plus 20% tax [VAT]) I was anxious to download at least one track. After unsuccessfully clicking the download icon next to several tracks in the Spotify interface only to receive the message “The track you were trying to get is unavailable,” I finally succeeded with “Little Pink Plastic Bags” from Gorillaz 2011 “The Fall” album. As promised, I received a 320 kbps mp3 file in my local directory.

As Monday breaks across the pond I hope to hear something from Spotify. We’re coming to expect only bad news when Internet-based applications and services suffer server setbacks and outages and users are left hanging out to dry (see Sony Playstation).

*UPDATE: I’ve been notified via Twitter that it’s “looking into it right now and will update once we have some more info. Thanks for the notification.”

Assuming everything is resolved there may no longer be any need whatsoever for a Spotify user to open iTunes. Ever. Again.

With over 10 million users in seven countries — Finland, France, Norway, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom (1 million paying subscribers) Spotify is still not available in the U.S.in spite of its arrival seeming imminent since soon after its launch two years ago.

What does this mean? We haven’t been able to monitor our social networks with Hootsuite, check in on Foursquare, ask questions on Quora, or check in on the real news of the day at Reddit for… going on twelve hours!

When can we freely procrastinate again? Amazon’s latest update asks us to give them “a few hours.” But that’s just a “high-level ballpark estimate.”

“Stream it from the cloud.” “Just back it up to the cloud.”

We’ve all heard it said and many of us rely on “the cloud” whether we realize it or not. In most cases its extremely reliable, especially with Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Except, of course, when it’s down.

See AllThingsD for a long post of updates and a list of companies and online services affected by the outage.

Cloud computing, relies on a network of remote servers to host and deliver content. It is generally less expensive and more reliable than managing assets (and backups) in house. When you stream music from SoundCloud, use Google Docs, upload content to your tumblr or use Dropbox or MobileMe to sync you are accessing The Cloud.

Amazon’s EC2 serves a slightly different purpose. Instead of having a content backup and delivery focus, its primary function is to deliver dynamic processor speeds to businesses. This makes it possible for companies with staggering traffic trends to pay for only the CPUs necessary as opposed to paying to power and maintain the equivalent of a supercomputer to serve the occasional burst in traffic. Amazon’s more traditional cloud product is Amazon Web Services, which hosts tons of content, including, for example, your Twitter profile photo.

What websites will you be checking out in the meantime while you’re stuck at home because Obama is bringing a traffic nightmare to town?

This post was syndicated from LAist.com, where I am Associate Editor. A direct link to my LAist.com post index is at the top of my blog. This post was originally published here on April 21, 2011 at 12:20 p.m.

Certainly Verizon would have service in my area, everybody raves about VZW and after all it’s been 5 years since I last did my trials and found that I live in a cell service black hole, in spite of living roughly 3 miles from downtown LA and just over the hill from Dodger Stadium. This was not the case. Verizon service was equally as non-existent for voice calls as was AT&T. The difference being that AT&T offered me a femtocell signal booster (the 3G Microcell) for free whereas Verizon wanted me to pay $250 for their extender. In fact, when I talked to their technical department, I learned that my area is a known trouble zone and that NO TOWER upgrades were scheduled — it would be at least two years before there was any [better] service.

So why didn’t I stick with AT&T? I waited for the release of the Samsung Captivate, the AT&T version of the popular Samsung Galaxy S Android phone, but wasn’t satisfied with it. I am a user and abuser of mobile devices (as far as apps and internet are concerned) and my experience with the Captivate was a bit too laggy and buggy. I felt that perhaps the stock AT&T “bloatware” may have been bogging it down.

But EVO is not the best phone out there? I felt the Motorola Droid X, available on Verizon, edged it out for one reason: the major difference between the two phones is that DroidX boasts a 16GB internal memory while the EVO has a mere 512MB onboard storage. This shouldn’t make a difference to the average user and ostensibly more and more apps will be built to migrate to the external micro SD card (expandable to 32GB). But as a heavy user with 100 or so apps downloaded to my phone, I often get low storage warnings.

Battery life? The EVO will run all day if it’s used gently — primarily for voice or text. But for users like me — and I use it like it’s a second computer — a full charge can be depleted within 4 hours. My workaround was to purchase a backup battery, available for under $10 on Amazon.

I’m happy with the EVO. I’m in love with Android. I highly recommend that you get your hands on a device and check it out — at least for a 30-day risk free trial.

This deal confirms the groudbreaking success that Zappos achieved through widely publicized corporate policies, happy employees, and impeccable customer service which often includes free next day shipping, and always a 365-days-a-year free-return-shipping guarantee. Amazon clearly gains from Zappos ability to literally obsess over customers, be inventive, and think long term (while growing year over year since being founded in June 1999.

Zappos will receive $807 million worth of Amazon stock and $40 million in cash as part of the deal. The purchase price could value as much as $920 million, assuming the deal is for 10 million shares (shares of AMZN opened today at $88.54), according to Sarah Lacy at Techcrunch.

The news comes on the eve of Amazon’s Q2 earnings call and on the heels of heated rumors of an Amazon / Netflix deal.

Huge story here. Watch the video below from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, read the blog post by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh and read the official Лаптоп Магазин р лаптопpress release. And let’s discuss!

When I first learned of Ooma, the idea of having a box at home through which to make phone calls (for free) and having access to messages online and via e-mail was intriguing. I do not have a personal land line and was tired of paying for Skype. I was using GrandCentral but wanted an alternative since cell reception at my house is so spotty. I was lucky to meet Andrew Frame, founder of Ooma, for a tour of Ooma’s HQ in Palo Alto in the summer of 2007, when I was an intern at the San Jose Mercury News (video below).

When I returned to Los Angeles, I signed up as a beta tester and was impressed with the quality, and loved having a phone number that I could remember (909-0090 nearly trumped the AT&T land line number I had when I first moved to LA — 669-9969). I’d recommend it to anyone who uses VOiP and incurs charges above and beyond ooma’s one-time-only charge for their Core system — now $219.90 at Amazon. If it means anything to you, Ooma still has the endorsement of the almighty Michael Arrington as well.

So is Ooma about to take off into the mainstream?
Or is it nearing its last gasp?

Well, aren’t we all in a little bit of debt these days? Me? I’m not looking for millions, but even a couple hundred would help me stay in the black. And what’s more, I’m not asking anyone to pay me on top of some publicly paid salary — I actually do all this blog stuff out of the kindness of my narcissistic little heart. But you can PayPal all your pennies to andy@netzoo.net or hook me up with something from my Amazon Wishlist. I’ll let you read it when I’m done if you’re nice. So there! I’ve got nerve too, Hillary!

UPDATE: It’s been shaky, but back up after nearly two hours of all systems down. AdAge estimates that Amazon lost about $2 million in sales:

E-comerce site Amazon went down this afternoon around 1:30 EDT and stayed down for at least an hour. Attempts to access Amazon.com were met with the following message: “Http/1.1 Service Unavailable.” It’s hard to know exactly how many dollars a minute Amazon loses in sales for every moment its site is down, but simple math pegs it at about $1.8 million an hour, based on Ad Age estimates.

Amazon’s Canadian, UK, and German sites are all fine — appears to be only U.S.-based.

Twitter is also down. Cloudy day on the internet? Or is it something else? more at CNET.