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…

I thought I’d stumbled onto a great piece of tech in the Powermat but digging a little deeper I’m not so sure. So what is the Powermat? Powermat is a device that allows you to wirelessly charge devices like mobile phones and portable gaming devices on a magnetic ‘board’ which can take up to 3 devices at a time.

Now as long as you have an iPhone, Nintendo DS or a Blackberry this is true but for most other devices you have to use something called a ‘Universal Powercube Receiver’ which is basically a small box that contains lots of different adapters for various devices. Ok so looking at this there are only actually 3 types of device which are fully wirelessly supported – 4 Blackberry phones, iPhone/iPod touch and the Nintendo DS lite/DSi so if you have to plug in a device to then place on the mat using the Powercube couldn’t you just save yourself a ton (£69.99 for the home and office Powermat and a further £29.99 for any of the charging devices) and use the provided cable?

I’m struggling to see where it has merit but also I don’t want this article to sound like a drubbing. Say there are 3 people in your office all with iPhone or Blackberrys (all be it limited on the Blackberry models) and you all chuck in for the mat and 3 charging cases then you’ll all pay around £63 for the ability to charge your device wirelessly. Alternatively I did look how much a second charger for each of these units would be; it’s less than £15 for an iPhone charger and for a compatible charger for the Blackberry and DS its £4! So again where’s the merit? To me it just looks like a big boy’s toys.

Personally I feel if they had waited a year or so and spoken to manufacturers about incorporating the technology into the devices it would be a far superior product. At work myself, having a HTC phone, I can use a bog standard USB 2 A to mini B lead directly from my PC with the added bonus of being able to plug lots of other things into it also. This type of cable comes with lots of modern devices and if you work in a tech environment I’m sure you have a bunch knocking about the office.

Hopefully a couple of years down the line it will be a larger part of mobile devices and I can see Powermats on boardroom tables throughout the world after all the ‘jet set’ businessman would breath a huge sigh of relief, I’m sure, if he could go into a meeting and just drop his phone onto a Powermat to charge without having to look for the correct attachment. If you still like the idea you can pick one up from here