A periodic roundup of relevant news… from our friends at Last100:
Spotify, a very compelling music streaming service
My music streaming weapon of choice used to be Pandora until it stopped being accessible from the UK a while back. Enter Spotify, a new music streaming service, which this week publicly launched in the UK. Since the service has licensing agreements with all four majors and a bunch of indies, one way to think of Spotify is as a massive jukebox in the sky.
A year after launch, free music service Qtrax has all four majors but questions remain
Twelve months ago, free ad-supported music download service Qtrax launched in a blaze of controversy, most notably claiming it had support from all four major record labels, which was news to them. Qtrax is going after the holy grail of music, free and legal downloads, and so it wasn’t surprising that the company faced a licensing uphill battle.
HD video coming to a Netbook near you
Intel has released a new version of its Netbook-friendly Atom chip, which although only bumps the speed up slightly, is being paired with the company’s new GN40 chipset, whose graphics capabilities includes hardware-based 720p HD video decoding.
Should Nokia get into bed with Facebook? Err, yes
Nokia is in protracted talks with Facebook about ways to further integrate the hugely popular social networking site into select handsets, reports WSJ. Although any partnership deal has yet to be struck, and may never be, according to the article, citing “a person familiar with the talks.”