If you’ve waited in line for 24 hours to get your PSP, apart from kicking yourself that you could still just stroll into your local WalMart and pick one off the shelf, you probably don’t have a care in the world - apart from losing the object of your desire.
No one is suggesting that the PSP is so light you wouldn’t know you were carrying it, but it’s not large and, let’s face it, it makes a pretty appealing target for a petty theft.
In steps the Freedom Keepsafe, a device that lets you know as soon as you stray too far from your PSP, or it strays too far from you.
You attach a ’son’ unit to the back of the PSP (or anything that you wanted to keep track of including girlfriends etc.) and slip the ‘mother’ into your pocket. As soon as the two units are more than 6 metres apart an alarm sounds.
Neat and effective.
Freedom Keepsafe
April 7th, 2005
The download music industry is fighting a proposal by US Congress to force them to make all downloaded music compatible.
Moving music files between playback devices can be problematic, particularly if, for example, you want to play a tunes downloaded from Apple’s iTunes on a Creative mp3 player.
The Congressional subcommittee hearing on ‘Digital Music Interoperability and Availability’ wants to make this problem a thing of the past by outlawing music protected by proprietary digital rights management (DRM) technology, such as Apple’s FairPlay.
However, the proposal is being vigourously rejected by the music industry, with the message that the problem will be sorted ‘within the family’.
William Pence from Napster said, “It is my belief, and the essential point of my participation today, that marketplace forces will continue to drive innovation in the DRM arena with attendant consumer benefits - new ways to enjoy digital music at a variety of different price points - while also gradually ’solving’ the interoperability problem.”
However, Apple did not accept an invitation to testify at the hearing.
Chariman of the committee, Lamar Smith, said, “Apple was invited to testify today but they chose not to appear. Generally speaking, companies with 75 per cent market share of any business, in this case the digital download market, need to step up to the plate when it comes to testifying on policy issues that impact their industry. Failure to do so is a mistake.”
Slapped wrists all round at Apple then.
April 7th, 2005