Blog

In Rainbows, and other pots of gold.

18 October 2007

In Rainbows: Hows it doing?
Radiohead this week released their online-only record “In Rainbows”, pricing it at US$as-much-as-you-want-to-pay, and subsequently took in an estimated US$9m in sales (average of 4 GBP per download) in its first few days. This might not sound like much, but it is, when you consider that most major artists only make around $1-3 per record. I love these guys, just a really great band, kicking it with a really great album, representing a cause (record industry reform) just as vehemently as their rock-and-roll forefathers might have. It does beg the question though, was the album named for an available domain name? Life imitating art imitating domain name registration.

iPhone to be opened for third party apps.
Chalk one up for the customer today, with Apple announcing they will offer a Software Development Kit for the iPhone by February. After months of negative feedback on the closed-system, its great to see another step toward an open mobile computing infrastructure.

Skype hits 10m concurrent users, partners with MySpace
Global IP-Phone giant Skype this week announced a partnership with MySpace, allowing 110 million active users to make free calls. Also this week I hear mention of Naked ADSL plans. The decline of the home phone? I know I recently canceled my home phone line in favour of a Melbourne-based Skype number ($12 per year sounds like a good phone plan?).

Facebook all set to take on LinkedIn
Facebook this week announced it will be targeting commercial users looking to network, which represents a fair challenge on the commercial networking site LinkedIn.com

Wooster Collective – This week represents Melbourne Street Art
I thought I’d also add some light-hearted street-art culture to this here tech blog, courtesy of the fantastic Wooster Collective blog.
This week they bring us two Melbourne corporate crate-people attempting to go AWOL (Liberal Party Front benchers?). Also checkout the drain-people piece, inspired!

– Ben Prendergast