David Emery OnlineGoogle News: A Payment System and A New Search Bar
Google is developing a micropayment platform that will be “available to both Google and non-Google properties within the next year,” according to a document the company submitted to the Newspaper Association of America.
A Google Checkout powered micropayment system could be really quite interesting – not many people have the scale, infrastructure and reach to (finally) make micropayments work, but Google certainly could.
Visit ➔It’s Only Rock and Roll Event Prelude
So my guess is that Cocktail is going to be like a sort of next-generation Dashboard.
I’m thinking (and hoping) the same thing. Not exactly sold on the idea of an iTunes rewrite based on WebKit though – Apple have shown they can write cross platform Cocoa-based apps with Safari, so why wouldn’t they do the same thing with the inevitable Cocoa re-write of iTunes?
Oh, and put me in the ‘Beatles will be on iTunes’ camp – why else would they be doing the event today (Wednesday) as opposed to the more traditional – for Apple -Tuesday?
Visit ➔Dithering: Jonny Greenwood
SASHA FRERE-JONES: Is the MP3 a satisfactory medium for your music?
JONNY GREENWOOD: They sound fine to me. They can even put a helpful crunchiness onto some recordings. We listened to a lot of nineties hip-hop during our last album, all as MP3s, all via AirTunes. They sounded great, even with all that technology in the way. MP3s might not compare that well to a CD recording of, say, string quartets, but then, that’s not really their point.
Exactly.
This is probably the moment I gleefully point out I’ve never used a record player…
Visit ➔Leica M9 and X1 leak out ahead of schedule
We’re told the M9 will sport a full-frame 18.2 megapixel sensor and improved low-light performance, but the real surprise is the X1, pictured above, which’ll supposedly have a 12 megapixel APS-C sensor, a fixed 24mm lens and that funky grip handle, by which we’re oddly fascinated.
The X1 sounds really interesting – a decent sized sensor, auto focus and a nice fixed lens sounds perfect to me. The M9, with a full frame sensor and hence hopefully low noise, is what I will lust for until they bring out a M10 – I will forever want a digital Leica…
Visit ➔Reading '09 Times
As part of my normal pre-Reading preparations I’ve hunted out the schedule for this year’s Reading (as compiled by someone helpful on the internet), which I thought some of you might appreciate.
The most interesting thing though, is the mysterious gap at 16:45 on Saturday on the NME/Radio 1 stage. Odds are good that it’s a performance by Them Crooked Vultures the ‘super group’ featuring Josh Homme, John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin) and Dave Grohl (especially considering the rest of the gang – Spinnerette & Eagles of Death Metal – are all there as well) which would be pretty awesome, quite frankly…
Visit ➔MySpace Disables Auto-Play
MySpace has made a big change to it’s product – songs no longer auto-play when you visit a MySpace user profile. Autoplays accounted for a billion or more song streams per month, and were costing MySpace a significant amount of money. Turning off that hose is a cost saving maneuver. This also has the benefit, sources say, of improving the user experience and providing labels with better listening data.
Hallelujah.
Visit ➔Kurt Vile - Overnite Religion
Unexpectedly loving this – really something quite special, and it isn’t even the best track on the album.
Visit ➔