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MP3s From The Phone Box
An Economist writes "The .com bubble has come and gone, but the great ideas and implementations are starting to come through thick and fast now. The BBC reports on a planned development in the UK - download MP3s (or the like) from the phone box. Walking along the street and fancy a song - just plug in your iPod/MuVo/iRiver/whatever... awesome! Perhaps the lauded benefits of eCommunication are just beginning to be felt - plus it increases the viability of old-tech phone boxes, which are socially beneficial but financially challenged."
I'm envisioning someone figuring out how to boot off an iPod and using spare hard drive space to trade pirated software.
Hmm... Warezchalking?
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
On their recent tour, the Pixies offered CDs of the show recorded and mized live to fans walking out the door. I could see a kiosk at concert venues allowing fans to downlaod the night's show to their iPod. It would proably be faster than burning CDs. A phone both however, is not something I currently associate with music, and I don't thing it would catch on, but i buy most of my CD's at concerts, where I know the money is going to the artist. Apple is going to realse a U2 special edition iPod next week, and is rumored to be working on A sub $200 flash player. How long till digital complete overtakes cd's?
sorry 'bout the mess...
Sometimes when you're traveling you find out that your provider dosen't work in a certain area. That or your phone decides to die. Not everyday happenings, but they sure as hell seem beneficial to you then.
From the product offering it sounds like the idea was given life from a bunch of yes men, and not things like demographic surveys and similar technologies that are currently in place.
I'm not suggesting stifiling innovation, but to me, this sounds like a sales pitch that will prove worthless in the long run, and come to think of it, in the short run. People just don't need instant gradification under every circumstance. Imagine that, Mr. marketer.Is this reporter guy running some sort of automated essay generation script? These comments read like one of those pages that a link spammer puts out where they take your google search terms and make it look like the page is relevant but then it makes no real sense at all. Go away, reporter troll. Yahoo message boards are more appropriate for you.
When the original MPMan came out in Korea, these little booths popped up close to 10 years ago. I think it succeeded over there, but I don't see it being a big enough market on this side of the ocean.
Shouldn't be making these things any more useful. Publically available land lines for voice communication should be outlawed. If everyone were required to talk over wireless, the government (specifically the NSA) could do a better job at tracking down terrorists that are scouting around our country, using public phones to report their progress. There would no longer be a need for cooperation from the obstructionist telephone companies. Powerful satelites would be able to pluck everything from the air.
I disagree.
Whilst not the big thing they used to be, keeping a few in service is worthwhile.
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
I realize that apple doesn't make such a thing easy with the way the iPod's updating works, I'm just saying a booth like this isn't TOTALLY impractical.
Triv
But now we can download songs? Well! That's something new and useless. Why would I want to do that when I could 1) do it at home more easily or 2) do it at a record store with more selection?
.mp3s for a fee but anything will do, like wifi access just for example. Anything really to justify their existance if for nothing else but 911 access.
I think that's rather the point. Because of mobile phones it seems like the phone booth is less nessicary than it once was. I have to admit, the reason I got a mobile again is simply because because i'm not seeing as many public telephones as i'd like. So why the hell not offer a useful service from these places that are otherwise not as profitable as they once were.
So why the hell not offer some form of useful service. The street locations are already alocated, they have power and phone lines attached to them, why not let them do something. Not nessicarly offering
Public telephones... more than just for drug dealing.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
The phone boxes may already be using VOIP, contain sufficient CPU power, and USB host support might be a no brainer. These phone boxes may already contain a small PC.
TFA also says they will start with their information kiosks which already have net access.
This may be an obvious next step, and a simple software change (though I agree, it seems pointless)
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Buy expensive PDA... use skype. Instant really cool really cheap cell phone.
iPods allow you to load songs onto them, but don't let you take them back off with out resorting to third-party software.
This probably doesn't apply to most of the people here, but the average iPod owner doesn't know about this software and therefore has no way to get music off of the device. For most people, this setup will result in a song that can't be copied to your computer. Since you can only download an iTunes song once, you are be stuck with your one iPod-bound copy unless you buy it from your home computer.
Would be quite useful, except for the fact that most of them are positioned in locations that have nowhere within range suitable for sitting with a laptop ... and especially no nearby car parking spaces.