Apple iPhone release 3G bound for Australia and Spain

Rumours are abound all over the web regarding the new 3G iPhone. Even though we still have no idea when it will hit our shores, the rampant speculation about who will have the iPhone in Australia continues. Last week it was Telstra that was the favourite to have the iPhone in Australia, thanks to the news that Sensis is developing applications for the iPhone. This weeks it's Optus, because it appears parent company SingTel has the Singaporean distribution rights for the iPhone sewn up, according to ChannelNews Asia.

Last year LoopRumours said "Wireless technology company InterDigital announced that it signed a seven-year licensing agreement with Apple, Reuters reports.

The deal will provide wireless technology for Apple's iPhone and future mobile devices that the company might release.

'The deal covers various 2G and 3G cellular technologies encompassing bandwidth allocation, roaming and power efficiency controls, and most likely also includes some type of packet data coding and delivery,' analyst Michael Ciarmoli said".

Wired recently posted rumours about Apples order for more than 10 million 3G handsets on top of an existing order for 10 million first-generation models, based on an analyst's anonymous source.

Chloe Lake recently posted an article on news.com.au ...

IPHONE rumours are heating up again this week with reports Apple has ordered 10 million new 3G handsets to release in the next few months.
The reports suggest Australians may be amongst the first to receive the next-generation iPhone model later this year.

The founder of Digg a social news site, Kevin Rose, fuelled rumours this week by saying a "source" told him the 3G iPhone was due soon and would include video calling. Kevin Rose explains the "iPhone Pro" rumours ...



Spain, like Australia, missed out on the original iPhone release last year. If the Telefonica rumour is true, then Spain could be one of the first countries to receive the 3G iPhone.

Apple has scheduled an Australian iPhone release for 2008 but has not confirmed if this will involve the new 3G model.

Local networks Telstra, Optus, and Vodafone are all in hot contention to be the official iPhone carrier when it is released here.

Recent rumours from Singapore indicate that SingTel, the parent company of Optus, will release the iPhone in September. The carrier would not confirm or deny that it had signed an agreement with Apple, Channel News Asia reported.

TiVo joins YouTube redistribution network

TiVo DVRs will soon be playing YouTube videos. TiVo announced that YouTube video access would be available on the company's latest TiVo HD and TiVo Series3 models later this year. On-screen access to YouTube videos joins a host of other Internet-delivered entertainment options on TiVo, including Amazon Unbox video rentals, Rhapsody's subscription music service, access to Photobucket and Picasa photo galleries, TiVoCast Web videos, podcasts, and Internet radio. While ancillary to TiVo's primary mission of recording and playing back TV shows, the inclusion of such Web-friendly features helps the company delineate its products from the wide range of free DVRs that are available from local cable operators.

Recently I posted about the Convergence of Digital Media and here. The Network Seven ownership of the Tivo brand in Australia makes this service very interesting.

As for YouTube, its appearance on TiVo may be the first of many new venues. The TiVo news was timed to coincide with YouTube's announcement that it's expanding its APIs to allow third parties more direct access to the service. YouTube is currently available on a number of home and mobile devices.

Some of these devices include:

• the Apple TV


• the Netgear Digital Entertainer HD--as well as any product with a full-function (Flash-enabled) Web browser


• the Nintendo Wii


• the Sony PlayStation 3

In the handheld devices include:

• the iPhone


• the Helio


• the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet

Also, the new Skyfire browser promises to bring YouTube (and any other Flash video site) to a range of Windows Mobile phones.

I have both an Apple TV and a Playstation 3 both allow you to play YouTube videos these devices. Watching youtube on my LCD is awesome. You can even watch YouTube videos on your phone.

The latimes said ...

TiVo, which has more than 4 million subscribers, could make YouTube a television star.

YouTube has been a thorn in the side of traditional media ever since the video sharing website was created in 2005. Now owned by Google Inc., YouTube has faced criticism and legal trouble that it benefited from visitors copying TV shows and putting them on the site.

YouTube has also increased the fragmentation of where people, especially teenagers, get their entertainment, with many turning on their computers instead of TVs.

Note: This service will not work for older Series2 TiVos.
It will be interesting to see if TiVo will start filtering what content is available (considering there alliances with Broadcast Networks around the world).

Truth about usability (Apple, Google & your Company)

Apple Insider reports that "Google on Wednesday said it has seen 50 times more search requests coming from Apple iPhones than any other mobile handset -- a revelation so astonishing that the company originally suspected it had made an error culling its own data."

Using the internet on more traditional handhelds is pretty bad. Maybe this is the reason. Bruce from User>Driven posts

By putting a real browser and a usable input paradigm (in other words no more Blackberry 3 clicks for every 1 you'd normally have to make) in the iPhone, Apple has made the mobile net usable.

I found this on tumblr (created by Eric Burke)


Eric Schmidt Google CEO said

Google's architectural model around broadband and services and so forth plays very well to the powerful devices and services Apple is doing. We're a perfect back end to the problems that they're trying to solve. And they have very good judgment on user interface and people. They don't have this supercomputer I'm talking about, which is the data centers.

Did you know that on August 29, 2006 Apple® announced that Dr. Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer of Google, was elected to Apple’s board of directors.

Google’s New Offerings

I came across this great post by TechBytes at UseBytes summarising new offerings by Google.

1. Google Reader - many more countries and subscriber counts.

2. Google Contacts - secure contacts.

3. Google Calendar - now syncs with Microsoft Outlook calendar.

4. Google Analytics - Data sharing, Audio Ads & Benchmarking.

5. Google Search - search within site (aka teleporting).

News via Old Fashioned Means no longer king

Following on from my post of Convergence of Media a small study by Media/Zogby International highlights the trend away from old fashion news to the internet as a reliable source of non-biased journalism. The buzz going around the internet now is does this mean that news via old fashioned means is no longer king.

A study by Media/Zogby International in the US has found that

Internet is the top source of news for nearly half of Americans; Survey finds two-thirds dissatisfied with the quality of journalism

The survey found that nearly half of all people in the United States (48%) cite the internet as their primary source of news and information, compared to 29% for television, 11% for radio, and a dismal 10% for newspapers. There was an age difference at the lower end, with only 7% of people aged 18-29 getting news from newspapers, vs 17% of those 65 and older.

Reuters said that

Nearly half of the 1,979 people who responded to the survey said their primary source of news and information is the Internet, up from 40 percent just a year ago. Less than one third use television to get their news, while 11 percent turn to radio and 10 percent to newspapers.

In a TechCrunch post they said

The figures do suggest that some forms of offline news reporting may well be headed to the Deadpool over the next 5-10 years, at least in the United States. It will be a long and slow death, but as newspapers and radio slump into lower and lower single figures, it’s a given that the presence of both will shrink; we’re already seeing massive across the board downsizing now in print media.