After some good 8 months worth of waiting, the Palm Pre has finally landed in Europe. Welcome, it was about time. As of today you can purchase a shiny new Pre given that you live in Germany that is, and you're willing to go for O2.
Shortly after our German friends, Spain will also be having a ball, expecting the thing some time tomorrow (on O2 again). And, as we promised you last time, on 16 October the device is going to be launched in the UK.
Unfortunately, currently there are no other European launches planned but we guess it's only a matter of time for it to start spreading across Europe in a blitzkrieg.
In Germany you can have the Palm Pre GSM for 481 euro SIM-free. However if you go for a 24-month contract with O2 (Telefonica) it will cost you only 1 euro (now that's carrier subsidizing!) but you'll have to shell out 20 euro each a month during the next 2 years (which is exactly 480 euro).
The situation in the UK is a little bit different. The most affordable way to get a Pre will probably be the 18-month contract with O2. You pay 96.89 GBP for the smartphone itself and a monthly fee of 29.38 GBP. In the end of the contract you would have paid at least 625.73 GBP.
Well, it turns out that the Pre ain't gonna cost that less than an iPhone 3GS so the decision remains hard. Or maybe not? Give us your thoughts in the comments.
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Napster has relaunched its service, offering unlimited music streaming plus five MP3 downloads for a £5 monthly fee.
A similar deal sprung up in the United States in May for $5 a month.
The move comes hot on the heels of the growing popularity of rival websites like Spotify and We7 which have recently built up a huge following.
Music streaming service Spotify offers users a mobile application and recently announced that it would allow users to download music to their computer.
The service is available to premium subscribers for £10 a month.
Rival We7 is a free streaming service supported by ads, which offers pay-for downloads, and claims to have more visitors than any other British music website.
Competitive marketNapster says users will have access to its eight million songs which include many that other competitors don't have.
Ten years ago Napster was the first site to offer free unauthorised downloads and kicked off the competitive download market that exists today.
Its popularity at the time caused a lot of concern in the music industry and the Recording Industry Association of America sued Napster within months of its launch.
It was eventually shut down following a campaign by record labels and major recording artists, including Madonna.
The website became legitimate in 2002 but since then a whole host of new competitors have sprung up.
Apart from Spotify and We7 there's also Nokia's Comes With Music, which offers customers unlimited downloads when you buy a special handset.
Also on the way are unlimited services from BSkyB and Virgin Media.
The Carphone Warehouse is offering a FREE trial on Napster's new service in all the store nationwide, pop to your local branch to pick up a free promo card today.
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YouTube now gets over a billion hits a day, according to a new video blog post by the founder of the website.
Chad Hurley's blog marks the third anniversary of YouTube's controversial acquisition by Google.
The site was bought by Google in 2006 for $1.65bn - a price it later described as "a premium".
Earlier this year YouTube was at the centre of a content row over the amount of royalties it paid to musicians for hosting music videos.
Six months later the dispute was resolved when Google agreed to pay UK royalty collecting body PRS for Music an undisclosed lump sum.
Music videos reappeared for British YouTube visitors in September.
Mr Hurley co-founded the website in 2004 with Steve Chen and Jawed Karim.
They met while employees at online pay service PayPal.
"We wanted to create a place where anyone with a video camera, a computer, and an internet connection can share their life, art, and voice with the world, and in many cases they can make a living from doing so," Mr Hurley said, reflecting on YouTube's original aims.
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Mobiles sporting the latest release of the Windows Mobile operating system are now available for sale worldwide.
Microsoft is also formally launching its application store, known as Windows Marketplace for Mobile.
While the service will launch with about 60 applications available in the UK, Microsoft's Alex Reeve said that number will soon rise sharply.
Windows-run phones can also make use of the My Phone service, a synchronisation service managed "in the cloud".
The new operating system and the application store were first announced in February, when a "beta" testing version of the My Phone service also launched.
Tuesday's announcement sees a full integration of handsets incorporating the new OS with access to the store and backup service.
Significant changes in the 6.5 release include a move away from the use of the stylus and toward more finger-friendly icons and buttons, and a push to see more "at a glance" from the lock screen and the main menus.
The operating system comes bundled with Internet Explorer Mobile 6.
It includes a significantly updated user interface and Flash Lite for viewing video and animation content.
The My Phone service is also updated compared to the beta version. Users can both backup and manage their applications and multimedia content via the My Phone service, accessible also on a PC. The service offers 200MB of storage for free.
Photos can be published from the My Phone site or directly from a Windows Phone to popular sites such as Facebook and Flickr.
Security features offered for free include the ability to map the last place a phone was synchronised to the My Phone service.
A further, paid "premium package" allows a suite of security features including the ability to locate a handset's current location, present an "if found" message to its screen, or lock it or erase its contents altogether. The premium service is at the time of launch only available in the US.
The Windows Marketplace will launch with applications including Facebook and MySpace and a raft of popular game titles.
It also offers a no-questions-asked return policy on the applications it sells. While the number of applications at the time of launch is just 60 in the UK (and about 250 worldwide), Mr Reeve said that there is a large backlog of applications that will soon be approved and become available.
The only thing that I think will be in the mind of alot of Tech fans is that a vast majority of these features of the OS have been on the iPhone for some time now, is this to little to late?
Right ok, so both Jai and Ryan have done this so who am I to let you go without my input in what I think about Snow Leopard after living with it for a month.
Well the first nice thing SL does for you is it gives you back some space (about 7GB). This is down to the OS being build from the ground up with new technology at its core. I have taken note of this technology as it does show its face every time I use my computer. It has certainly speeded my machine up which just making day to day tasks easy. SL was released to combat what Microsoft are coming out with at the end of this month, Windows 7.
Although it isn't a complete redesign of the OS certainly does show that Apple are keeping up with their tradition of releasing a new OS every year.
I've found SL to be worth the upgrade as it makes using your Mac that much easier. Apple did say we wouldn't be getting a complete new design but, the little changes that have been made are worth it. Only time will tell as to whether Apple made the right decision to not change the looks of SL too much, especially with Windows 7 coming out soon.
If you haven't upgraded to SL yet because you are still hesitant about it, don't be you'll just be missing out. And all the apps I've tried to use have worked without fuss, even apps that needed updating worked before I updated them.
Although this month has been great, going back to the look and feel of SL I do wish they had done more to the look of the OS as I get bored with things after a while. I would never stop using it even if I got really bored, nothing would make me go back to Windows full time. :)
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