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Why the Rokr Phone Is An Important Failure
An anonymous reader writes "The Guardian has some interesting commentary on the new iPod cellphone." From the article: "The music-player module works like an iPod - though it lacks the clickwheel that makes its big brothers function so slickly. But overall, the impression is distinctly underwhelming. The word on the streets is that far from being the revolutionary device that will bring about media 'convergence', the Rokr is, well, just the sum of its parts. And that, it seems to me, is the most interesting thing about it."
Your knowledge of copyright law is grossly wrong. The copyright statute itself (you don't need to find court cases or federal regulations) sets out exceptions to the public performance monopolies, and a cellphone ringtone would fall squarely within it. One of the exceptions (there are several -- for church worship, etc.) is that a stereo no more powerful than a typical home stereo is acceptable, and we'd all agree that describes a cell phone speaker. A problem you didn't mention is that in documentary filmmaking, ringtones now need to be "cleared" while previously a telephone ringing did not. The reason isn't what you expect. It's not that documentary filmmakers are worried about losing a lawsuit and paying huge damages, it's that the film distributors won't touch a film if their lawyers see any potential liability. A documentary filmmaker (except for a few like Michael Moore) is likely to be flat broke and not be worth suing, but the distributors have deep, deep pockets and they don't want any liability.
The filmmaking problem comes not from the public performance right of a cell phone, but making a derivative work (the movie) and showing that in theaters (the public performance). The issue of whether the standard copyright defenses (fair use, implied license, first sale, etc.) apply simply doesn't come up.
With great power comes great fan noise.
Convergence sounds so logical when you put it into a business plan. It sounds so great when you ask people if it's what they want. "Do you want one device that cooks your meals, washes the dishes AND entertains you while you eat?" Sure, they say. In the real world, though, convergence devices almost never work in the long run.
I used to believe the convergence myth just as much as the next guy, but a marketing guru by the name of Al Ries convinced me otherwise. If you'd like to see his take on why convergence isn't going to happen, go to this page and click on, "The Convergence Bubble."
http://www.ries.com/Articles/index.cfm?Page=adage
Buy a Treo 650, and it will do these two things very, very well. The extremely well-done contact integration and Palm software support is icing on the cake. Best damn thing I've bought all year, hands down.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
It looks exactly like the e398 i have had for 6 months. The only difference appears to be an itunes button and an itunes application.
The only groundbreaking idea about this product is that motorola and apple have the audacity to rebadge an old product and sell it.
They're selling the phone through Cingular.
Cingular charges $20/month for unlimited bandwidth on your phone.
I'm using a Motorola v551 w/bluetooth to my iBook right now to post this.
Cue the smarm with a link to some clever hacker's rotary cell phone.
Okay.
A quick search on google gave me this: How To Use Your GSM Cell Phone as a Bluetooth Modem on Mac OS X and another hint.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
I recently bought a Sony W800 phone. Wow, all I can say is great sound, easy enough to get my music on there, menus very similar to iPod and easy enough for a phone to play music, great camera with LED flash, and even the speaker does not sound that bad in worse case scenario no headphones. Also, the phone allows any MP3 to be a ringtone or message tone. Fast menus, not quite as intuitive as Nokia but much better than Motorola V3, etc.
Sony did a great job here. Not sure why there is no "buzz" around the phone. Only drawback is it looks like a toy phone with the silly white / metallic orange only case option. Great screen though. And memory stick can provide storage expansion, it came with 512K which is pretty good to start.
Another drawback, can't seem to transfer files over bluetooth, need to use USB cable for that.........
And yes, they do have "store" interface but have not figured out how to use it yet!
Real men don't need signitures!!!
[1] From the Apple website.
[2] Whether it supports higher capacity cards will be discovered when someone makes TransFlash cards bigger than 512MB.
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Just for the record: you cannot thransfer songs to the iPod nano via Firewire. Sadly, transfers are USB only.