Mathieu Nouzareth's Blog

Cellphones, Say Hello to iTunes

Starting next year, users of Apple Computer's iTunes music service will be able to play songs on some Motorola cellphones. [New York Times]

RealNetworks Plans to Sell Songs to Be Played on iPods

Without Apple's authorization, RealNetworks will start to give away software that allows people to buy and download songs from its online music store and play them on Apple's iPod. [New York Times]

Apple Strikes Deal With 3 Music Labels (AP)

AP - Apple Computer Inc. has struck licensing deals with three of Europe's largest independent music labels, ending a discord that would have kept many local favorites off the new iTunes Music Store in Britain, France and Germany. [Yahoo! News - Digital Music]

Sony Launches Digital Music Player (NewsFactor)

NewsFactor - Sony (NYSE: SNE) has announced its first hard-disk drive-based digital music player under the the Walkman brand. The product launch, which marks the 25th anniversary of the introduction of the Walkman, could pose a serious challenge to Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPod in the digital music player market. [Yahoo! News - Digital Music]

This look great. This is the first time someone can really compete with the Ipod (although their claim of having 13,000 songs is greatly exaggerated). Let's see how it sells in the coming months. One big problem though : it can't read MP3s...

Copyright bill poses threat to iPod's future (USATODAY.com)

USATODAY.com - Apple's sleek digital audio device is one of the most successful tech toys, selling more than 3 million units since November 2001. [Yahoo! News - Digital Music]

RSS for B2B ?

My company recently set up a RSS feed for partner companies (we sell video game download services for very large ISPs and portals throughout the world). So those ISPs and portals can symply subscribe to our news feed and include that into their portals. RSS is all over the news when it comes to consumers subscribing to newsfeed, yet I beleive there is an enormous potential for inter company exchanges.

Will Apple enter the VoiP market ?

I just saw the latest pricing from Skype (thanks Loic). This sounds great and I can't wait to have Skype on my Mac.

However I wonder how much time it will be before IM companies, like Yahoo!, Microsoft or AOL will launch their VoiP services ? What about Apple ? My guess is that it should be fairly easy for Apple to plug a few switch to connect Ichat users to the old phone system. I guess they would not mind the extra revenues and rising stock price... Now they would also need to devise a new phone headset, like those USB phones you plug into your PC. I would even love to have a wifi headset conencted to my Ichat account ! They could make Ichat free for PC users and start collecting revenues from cheap phone calls placed over Ichat (much the same way they charge music from PC users using Itunes).

Ferrari and Microsoft

I am a long time Formula One fan but I must say that I watch it less and less those days. The fact that Michael Schumarer wins all the time makes this sport more and more boring. My guess is that the company in charge of F1 management is facing a dilemma : how to keep hundreds of millions of fans interested in a competition that has always the same winner years after years (and thus keeping advertising $$ flowing in) ? Should they change the rules to prevent Ferrari from winning ? In other words, should you punish the winning guys in order to keep the game running ?

The same question applies to Microsoft : should they be punished for winning years after years ?