iPhone or Bust?

Record labels are predicting that this month's launch of three new mobile phone music services will usher a return of rising sales after years of decline.
Apple's music-playing iPhone grabbed the headlines with its arrival in Britain last week. But music executives are just as excited about the new unlimited downloads service launched on Vodafone. At the same time Nokia, the world's largest maker of mobile phones, has opened a digital music store here.
Some are predicting a revolution that will see mobile downloading approaching that of highly developed markets such as Japan. Universal, is backing the MusicStation, the Vodafone service. Rob Wells, head of digital at Universal's international division, predicts the £1.99-a-week subscription service will have mass market appeal. "We are at a turning point in the UK," he says, predicting digital music sales here could offset falling CD sales within a year.
Global sales have been falling since 2000. One place where the gap has been closed is Japan. Total music sales there edged up 1% last year. Japan's success is largely attributed to the prevalence of mobile downloads. "Mobile is obviously extremely important because you have the market reach and secondly, the type of demographics that are very important to the music industry will almost certainly have music-enabled mobile phones. PricewaterhouseCoopers analysts say that new handsets are helping the mobile music market move away from mere ringtones to full song downloads. They expect the UK mobile music market to almost double from a predicted $83m this year to $156m in 2011. There are hopes handsets will improve further from a music-playing perspective thanks to the iPhone. Can something like this save the music industry? Well, MusicStation per se in the short term no. Because firstly it's only on Vodafone at the moment and secondly it's very cheap, meaning that the actual revenue for the music industry per user can only be quite small."
Makinson predicts such subscription services will also need a fixed-line service in addition to mobile to have mass appeal - something which is being planned as a premium version of MusicStation. sers want more simplicity in terms of being abile to play what they buy across various devices. That is already happening with developments such as Sony Ericsson's Walkman phones, which synchronise with computers, he says. But he remains cautious about the benefits for record labels.

Do you think the problem of "Internet Piracy" can be solved ?

Do You Believe schemes like this one will make people more keen to buy music online?

Is there any other alternative to this system??

If you have any thoughts dont hesitate to tell.

Thanks Bye xxx

Robotic Cars? What Next?????

Yehh, the title pretty much sums up this article.
For homework i recently logged on to the Beeb's technology page, and what should i see infront of me??

I decided to copy this article onto this post for you.

A driverless car called Boss has scooped a $2m prize in a Californian race for robotic vehicles.

Does this sentence remotely surprise you? That now there are cars that drive themselfs!
Boss successfully drove around an urban environment, avoiding other cars, and covering 60 miles (85km) in less than six hours, all without any human control. The modified Chevrolet Tahoe was one of six cars that crossed the finish line, from a pack of 11 robotic vehicles. The race was organised by the US military's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, and is designed to develop unmanned vehicles that could be used in battle situations. Automotive manufacturers say the technology could eventually lead to self-driving cars. (That sounds familiar??, wasnt that how the Internet started?? The American Military Needing something to communicate or fight for them?? whoever patent's this technology could be in for some serious CASH.) (Then A senior person in General Motors sais "Imagine being able to talk on the phone, eat your breakfast, handle your emails, and leave the driving to the vehicle," he added. "That would be pretty phenomenal. It's going to a big breakthrough. It's technology that's on the way to 'having cars that don't crash'." He believes cars with that level of intelligence could be on the road by 2015. (So my friends, by 2015 you may not even need that super fast fiesta you always dreamed about as a computer may be able to do it for you. But what springs to mind for me is, if technology is designed to make our lives easier, as this surely is, then surely we are all going to be very, very, very, fat by 2020. Also isnt there a certain fun in driving? Dont you love being behind a wheel and driving? I cant wait to pass my test and drive a car beacuse thats been my dream for a very long time. and also cars that drive themselfs, Lights that turn themselfs on?? what will be actually be able to do ourselfs arnt the next generation going to become almost dependant on technology. Ergonomics is the study of technology being implanted into a human to improve various features. To me this sounds absurd and already the topic of a heated ethical debate. If i ever have children theyre probably going to think i used to live in the dark ages.
Anyway, just thought id comment on something of interest to me really. Hope you find it remotely interesting and next post to follow soon. Comment me if you have any thoughts about what i have said in any of my blogs.