Zatz Not Funny!

Sneak Peek: Slacker’s On-Demand Music Service

Tonight at the annual Pepcom holiday event in New York, Slacker will preview its new on-demand music service, a major upgrade to the existing application available on the Web, and on Android, Blackberry, and iOS phones. As long-time Slacker fans here at ZNF, we couldn’t be more excited about the launch. In addition to caching stations and enabling downloads of favorite tracks (available with today’s Slacker premium service), the new on-demand service will let users call up and play specific artists and songs at will. The new genre stations, pre-programmed by Slacker DJs, will provide details on the top station artists and songs, with an option to jump around to those tracks and others at any time. The search function will also provide more information on artists and songs, including what stations they’re programmed on, associated albums, etc. You’ll also be able to sort and play favorites easily, and there will be significantly more functionality for programming your own custom stations from any mobile interface.

Slacker is planning to roll out the on-demand upgrade in October. The company will continue to offer a free service tier, and users will be able to unlock higher tiers for a monthly fee: Slacker Plus at $3.99 per month and Slacker Premium (full on-demand functionality) at $9.99 per month.

I’ve always believed Slacker has the best feature set of any online music service. From the revolutionary offline caching function, to its customization capabilities, Slacker, in my opinion, outperforms the competition. However, its mobile implementations haven’t quite lived up to the browser experience, or to my dedicated Slacker hardware. And the interface has needed an update for some time. Assuming the new upgrade adds the necessary polish, along with the new features, Slacker should have itself a killer mobile music app.

UPDATE: The older Slacker Premium service, which I originally linked to in this post, is no longer available. If you’re interested, just hold out another month, and Slacker should have you covered with the new version.

Bitbop Now Streaming TV to Android ($10/mo)

Bitbop is a service that lets you stream TV shows and movies to a mobile device. The company launched a BlackBerry app earlier this year, and today Bitbop unveiled software that will let you access the service on a Google Android device. The company offers commercial free content from a variety of networks including CBS, … Read more

Blockbuster Imposes 105 Day Game Rental Waits

Silly me, I had assumed Blockbuster’s 12/28/2010 ship date for Halo Reach was merely a typo. As it turns out, their mail-order rental service imposes a 105 day waiting period on new release games. Which means I’m Halo-less this week (thus far). It also means that Blockbuster’s recently enhanced rental service ($9/mo) won’t work for … Read more

Ojo Video Phone Lives! Er, Again!

I doubt I’ll ever tire of covering Ojo video phones. Why, you ask? Because I have a history with these puppies. But more on that in a moment. Today, WorldGate has announced general availability of the Ojo Vision digital video phone with bundled calling plans. Sign up for a two-year contract, and you can get … Read more

The Kindle 3 Upgrade Question

I’d intended to upgrade to the Kindle 3 prior to my cruise, but missed out on pre-ordering when Amazon ran out of inventory. What interested me most from the e-reader refresh is the higher contrast screen and the clever lighted cover accessory. Plus, I figured I could get away with a WiFi only model ($139, versus $189).

However, now that the initial excitement (and my cruise) has passed the impulse to purchase has subsided. The fact is, I don’t read many novels in a given year — averaging less than one a month. So my current Kindle (v2) is probably sufficient. Although I may pick up a third party light of some sort and do hope some of the v3 software tweaks make their way down to my hardware.

DC Rider App Helps You Catch the Train, More Zs

It’s a weeknight. You’re at happy hour when suddenly your internal “I’m too old to be up this late on a school night” alarm goes off. So you say your goodbyes and head to the metro to make your way home. Except you get there just in time to see the train pull away from the platform dooming you to a 20 minute wait. 19 minutes later your friends show up from the bar and get on the same train you do. It’s only 20 minutes wasted, but it’s the principle of the thing. It’s not fair they’re going to get home at the same time you are.

Apps like the Washington Post’s DC Rider are doing what they can to eliminate this minor injustice for Washingtonians. Provided you have a smartphone, of course.

The DC Rider iPhone app layout is simple enough. You’re presented with the standard DC Metro map. Touching a station brings up a webpage inside the app with the arrival times for that station updated in real time.

What the app does isn’t particularly groundbreaking – it’s pulling information directly from WMATA’s website – but it’s free and more efficient than their mobile page which isn’t very user friendly. The app also comes with a few interesting bonuses.

TiVo Fiddles With Premiere Pricing ($0!)

I thought TiVo had moved on from variable pricing schemes, but recent visits to tivo.com suggest otherwise. Traditionally, you’d buy your TiVo hardware and subscribe to monthly service at a single rate ($12.95). Yet, in what I assume is an effort to ease the barrier of entry, TiVo is now offering multiple pricing permutations. Buy … Read more

VLC Media Player May Hit The iPad Soon

VLC is a sort of Swiss Army Knife media player for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The open source software is known for being able to handle almost any video format you can throw at it, and for having a ton of customization options. Now it looks like the iPad could get some of that VLC … Read more