Rapid Web News

So everyone in the computer industry seems to always be on about the next big ‘Holy Cow’ idea, what’s going to be the next processor development? How much RAM can you stack up in a 128bit OS? When will the 15gig graphics card hit the market? – Yeah, ok I’d love to know those things deep down but let’s just look directly under our nose for a second. So who likes music? Surely everyone? Surely…

So the whole office here at Rapid Web have been using Spotify now for quite some time and I’m probably shooting myself in the foot here like I did when I pumped Grooveshark, last time I used it the servers could no way handle all the traffic, ahh heck to it, spread the wealth I say. So what is Spotify? Well in a nutshell its AWESOME, ok you actually wanna know, well it’s a peer to peer music streaming service allowing anyone who can get to a PC with internet the biggest music collection EVER! I’m not exaggerating; according to reports if you listened to the current catalogue of music offered by Spotify it would take you 35 years to listen too, that’s right 35 YEARS!

So what’s the catch? Well that’s the point there isn’t one! Standard DRM rights apply so you can’t save the music to your PC but why would you want to, it’s always accessible. If you do have favourite tunes you can build playlists so you could have a “…I just got in from work, feeling beat, just want to kick back with a beer…” type playlist, right up to a “…let’s call the troops, throe on a shirt and paint the town a bluish green colour…” There are also adverts that appear roughly every 10 tunes but come on its free! There’s a great spread of different music on their site “…do you have Ghosts ‘n’ Stuff by Deadmau5, ya know, the one featuring Rob Swire…” a 5 second search tells me!

You can also pay £9.99 for a premium service which allows some very groovy extras; these guys don’t just wanna sting you for a tenner a moth to get rid of adverts. Offline mode, for one, is a great feature:

“…Offline mode allows you to listen to your favourite tracks even when you’re not connected to the internet. Create a playlist or use an existing one and switch “Available offline” to the ON position. Spotify will sync the tracks to your computer so when you’re on the go or at the summer house with your laptop and no internet connection you can still listen to your tunes. Offline mode allows you to sync tracks on up to three computers or mobiles phones at the same time. Each device can sync a maximum of 3,333 tracks…”

– take that iTunes! And you are reading correctly: sync tracks on up to three computers or mobiles phones, so provided you have a decent phone you also have a huge collection of music that’s instantly accessible – take that iPhone! Ok, just to clarify I’m not an apple hater, far from it, if they supported more hardware and software I probably get one but I just feel there not the most user friendly of devices or software plus they feel a little like devices for the super rich, whoa, almost off on a rant! I hear ya, reign it in Clay…

Back to Spotify then, so say you find a cool new tune and want your friends to hear it, like the Deadmau5 tune I mentioned earlier which, indecently, I can’t stop listening to at the minute. All you have to do is right click on the tune and hit ‘Copy Spotify URI’, paste it into a mail and then hit send! Those said friends then take that link and put it into the search engine on Spotify and Voila! spotify:track:4ua0IepBEISCWwF8dTJvcU – here’s the link for the Deadmau5 tune to get you all started, its super funky and a good tune to put you in the mood for a night out – get in. It’s free to join the basic service which still gives you access to all the tunes, go on, treat yourself…

So Google announced in July that they’re going to have a crack at making an OS (operating system). Interesting, we all mused here at Rapidweb. Will it be just a fancy GUI (graphical user interface) for Linux? Will it just be a proverbial middle finger to Microsoft? I guess most importantly will it be any good? Most of these I can’t answer but let’s look at what we know already.

I’m going to start with a list of technology companies that say they will design, build and I quote “devices that deliver an extraordinary end user experience” – exciting prospect. These companies are: Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba – some REAL big hitters! But are they just talking about pre-installing Google OS on existing netbooks and smartphones? After all it is Linux based and Linux as we all know could run on an 8o’s calculator watch. As you can see from the quote though it does suggest specific hardware to run on, this could just be Google branded products though with sponsorship advertising from the above mentioned manufacturers.

I really like how Google have re-vamped the web browser, I like how quick it is, it keeps the last bunch of webpages on a kind of active favourites homepage – in theory you could always have your favourite webpages on a single page! I also like the fact that the search bar is also the URL bar, something that Firefox also boasts but will all these innovations be enough to push an OS? One of the biggest features they’re talking about is a near instant boot up, this is interesting, and a lot of netbooks do carry a small SSD drive but it’s still not near instant, perhaps they are talking to manufacturers of chips to make their OS embedded? This in itself creates a number of potential problems, firmware flashes instead of updates? Sure it’ll be quicker initially but if it is going to be embedded wouldn’t that be a step backwards? I mean, for instance, how many people actually update their BIOS (basic input/output system) regularly on their motherboard? Ok techies do, sure but it does make it a niche market and not a widespread user friendly piece of software.

According to reports Google are currently working on a video player and a jukebox style program to roll on their new OS. Again I think it’s good that they are deciding to develop their own, after all if they use Linux based applications Google Chrome OS would just be a re-branded version of Ubuntu. This also keeps other companies on their toes, iTunes may face fierce competition if Google’s jukebox style program can sync with an iPod and I doubt Google would accept money from media goliaths like NBC to enforce DRM (digital restrictions management) so that users are prevented from recording television shows that they have the legal right to record (allegedly).

There are some supposed leaked screenshots of Google OS which you can take a look at here draw your own conclusions though, some claim them to be real some not so convinced, one thing is for sure though – it free so it’s got to be worth a look.