Category: Stories

  • Free music has never looked so cheap

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    For the major record labels, yesterday’s deal between EMI and Apple doesn’t herald a new beginning, but the beginning of the end. From next month, EMI will distribute much of its repertoire without DRM through Apple’s iTunes store. Independent labels have been distributing DRM-free songs for three years, avoiding the lock-ins created by competing hardware…

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  • ‘Please read this important email: you are being shot’

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    These days, no major tragedy is complete without ambulance-chasing technology boosters muscling in on the aftermath. The Asian tsunami and the London 7/7 attacks both provided a tasteless excuse for evangelists to hype their favourite cause: instant real-time communications in general, and blogging in particular. But with the Virginia Tech massacre, the reliance on technology…

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  • Widget-fiddling at Nokia

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    When one looks at the prime assets of the Nokia of five years ago, it’s alarming to see how many have been discarded. At the turn of the decade, the Finnish giant boasted a formidable reputation for reliability, security and ease of use. Now it’s thrown all three out of the window, with security being…

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  • Are you a Top Gear Tiger or an iPod Babe?

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    You’ve heard of Soccer Mom and Mondeo Man. Millions are spent each year on research that segments us to into such convenient categories. But have you ever felt these vague and unimaginative descriptions leave you wanting more? If the marketeers are going to be so reductive, why not get creative and give us a ‘Wolverhampton…

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  • Blog refuseniks facing the sack?

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    We’ve all heard about employees being sacked for blogging. But as the fad begins to wane, will staff soon be sacked for failing to blog? Last week, Sony BMG UK issued a new corporate marketing strategy. According to an official release from the group, Ged Doherty, chairman and chief executive of SonyBMG in UK and…

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  • Can Big Telco do Perestroika?

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    While the CTIA Wireless jamboree took place in Florida this week, European telcos were drawn in a huddle in London at one of the most intriguing events of the telecoms calendar. The theme at STL’s twice-yearly Telco 2.0 Brainstorm is familiar: “How to making money in an IP-based world”. But it has an added piquancy…

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