Amazon Cloud Player

Today Amazon has announced its brand new Cloud Music service. It seems that it has beaten Apple and Google in what many are calling the future of Music. Amazon are giving each user 5GB of free storage to upload their own music which can then be streamed to the Cloud Player (Mac or PC) and Android mobile Phones. If you buy a MP3 Album though you get a free upgrade to 20GB of storage (promotion only) or you can buy anything from 20GB to 1000GB of storage with all files located on the Amazon S3 Servers.

At the moment it seems the Cloud Music Player only works within the US but hopefully Amazon will open it up to the rest of the world soon. Would you use a cloud service for your music or are you happy storing it locally and syncing it?

London Underground Map

Its just over 1 year until the beginning of the London Olympics 2012. In order to improve internet connectivity BT are rolling out 120 Wifi spots in the London Underground. The wifi will not work in the tunnels but many platforms will be covered allowing tourists to access the web ideal if you wish to use mapping software like Google Maps on your phone. This means more traditional ways of passing the time whilst travelling across London will be replaced with texting and tweeting like in many other cities with metros. Yet there are many wider issues concerning internet security that are still to be debated when it comes to funding the Wifi on the tube; not least that of the internet surfers themselves and their devices that may be under threat from eavesdropping software. This isn’t the first news of tech hitting the underground for the Olympics, in February Huawei a large telecommunications firm from China offered to install a Mobile Network costing around £55 million for free in the Underground as part of a gift from one host to another. However this troubled many MPs who suggested allowing a Chinese firm to have control over such a critical wireless infrastructure is dangerous.

Apple have announced WWDC 2011 kicks off this year on the 6th June. The tagline to the event is “Join us for a Preview of the future of iOS and Mac OS  X.” What’s interesting though is the WWDC is usually the time when a new iPhone along with a new iOS update is announced.  However with the word “Preview” it suggests that iOS (5?) will only be in a preview state then and not a final version. Also no mention at all of new hardware like the iPhone.

WWDC 2011

Also if there is a new iPhone released it seems to suggest it may be running iOS 4.x rather than iOS 5. Some sources are suggesting that the iPhone will be released in the Autumn rather than summer, all we can do is wait and see.

Today is the day some people have been waiting for in the UK. Apple are releasing the upgrade to the iPad, iPad 2. With Smart Covers, faster processor and (poor) cameras Apple’s upgrade is also thinner than before and prices start at £399. People have already been reportedly queuing overnight and the pre-orders on Apples site only recently went live with a expected ship date of 2-3weeks.

Apple's iPad 2 Launches today in the UK

The iPad2 wasn’t the upgrade many were hoping however with a rather low amount of RAM, 512mb, compared to other tablets. Also the iPad only features a rear camera with a sensor resolution of just 0.7mp, yes 0.7mp isn’t a typo, meaning it is the worlds first device that captures images at a resolution lower than the devices screen! Talking of screens many wanted to see a retina update to iPad 2 but sadly it didnt achieve that and the screen is no different from iPad 1.

So will you be getting iPad 2? We certainly won’t be!

Today OSX the core operating system for the Mac turns 10. OSX has devloped a lot since its first release with updates to OSX including Cheetah (first Release), Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard and soon to be released Lion.

OSX Cheetah install disk.

Will OSX be here in the next 10 years? Who knows but I doubt it What do you think?