News archive (10 / 1999)

R.E.M.'s new track is available for download in Warner Bros website. The track is called as "The Great Beyond" and it is RealAudio format.

Warner Bros

HanGo released their new portable mp3 player - the trick in this one is that this one is based on harddrive, not memorychips as regular mp3 players. This allows more megabytes for the price. Player is called as Personal Jukebox.

Player should be available in November '99.

Personal Jukebox

SurroundMP3.com is a new player in streaming business -- they will provide multi-channel broadcasts in their site.

Hmh, we got our first review from DJ2000 and they seemed to like our site, which is quite nice since our project is STILL in the beta phase.

DJ2000

Quite popular American band Phish made a deal with eMusic for spreading their music in the Internet. eMusic will celebrate this deal on Halloween by setting Phish tracks for download in MP3 format.

eMusic

StreamBox has released their new WMA encoder that converts CDs, WAVs and MP3s into Windows Media Audio format. The software should have all the major functions that best MP3 encoders already have.

This software will be added to our pages shortly.

Press Release
For release October 8th, 1999 at 10.00 Finnish Summer Time (0700 UTC)

BENEFON INTRODUCES WORLD'S FIRST GSM+GPS PERSONAL NAVIGATION PHONE, THE BENEFON ESC!

On Saturday, October 9, at Telecom 99 in Geneve, Benefon will introduce a revolutionary new wireless instrument one never gets lost with. Featuring electronic maps, a GPS navigator, a personal organiser and an advanced dual-band GSM phone, the Benefon Esc! personal navigation phone is the complete survival pack of the contemporary nomad. Yet it is extremely small (129 x 49 x 23 mm) and weighs only 150 grams.



Benefon Esc! is designed and engineered for the great outdoors. It is water and shock resistant, with stainless steel reinforced casing. Benefon Esc!'s design draws inspiration from the Finnish nature and the pure elements of water, rock, light and metal.

Benefon Esc! has a big screen to display maps and other navigational information, to guide oneself from one place to another, whether globetrotting, backpacking, biking or boating. Several maps, from around Europe, can be downloaded to Benefon Esc!, using any PC with a web browser. Touring maps, city maps, topographical maps and nautical charts are all supported.

Sony Corporation (NYSE: SNE - news), one of the originators of the DVD format, will be honored tonight with an Emmy Award® for Scientific and Technological Advancement from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) for its role in the development of this breakthrough digital technology. The awards ceremony will be held at the New York Marriott Marquis.

Pegasus Imaging is offering free registration of their PICVideo Motion JPEG compressor. The offer is for limited time only, so act now!

Developed for high end video editing solutions, PICVideo provides video enthusiasts and professional video creators with an adjustable compression solution for obtaining fast motion JPEG video compression. PICVideo works in any Windows Media or Video for Windows editor including MGISoft's Videowave and Adobe Premiere. PICVideo is the ONLY motion JPEG codec capable of 640x480 30 fps decompression and 30 fps compression on a Pentium II processor!

Related links:
Pegasus Imaging homepage
Limited time free registration offer

Charity concerts are moving into Internet -- NetAid and Cisco told yesterday about their plans to provide 10hours of concert in Internet. Artists include Sting & David Bowie.

N.Y.Times

A couple of fresh DVD announcement for your pleasure

Paramount:
·Beavis & Butt-Head Do America (11/23/99)
(16X9/AC3/CC/LBX/SUR)
·Chinatown (11/23/99)
(16X9/AC3/CC/LBX/MONO)
·South Park:Bigger, Longer & Uncut (11/23/99)
(16X9/AC3/CC/LBX/SUR)
·Star Trek TV #5:What Are Little/Dagger Mind (11/23/99)
(AC3/CC)
·Star Trek TV #6:Miri/Conscience Of The King (11/23/99)
(DVD/AC3)
·Two Jakes (11/23/99)
(16X9/AC3/CC/LBX/SUR)
·U2:Rattle & Hum (11/23/99)
(16X9/AC3/CC/COL+B&W/LBX/SUR)

Columbia TriStar:
·Five Easy Pieces (11/16/99)
(16X9/CC/LBX/MONO/P&S/REG1)
·Heavy Metal:Spec.Ed (11/23/99)
(16X9/AC3/CC/LBX/REG1/SUR)
·Last Picture Show:Spec.Ed (11/16/99)
(16X9/B&W/CC/LBX/MONO/REG1/RSDL)
·Limbo:Spec.Ed (11/23/99)
(16X9/AC3/CC/LBX/REG1/SUR)
·Loss Of Sexual Innocence:Spec.Ed (11/16/99)
(16X9/CC/LBX/P&S/REG1/SUR)
·River Runs Through It (11/23/99)
(16X9/CC/LBX/P&S/REG1/SUR)
·Splendor (11/23/99)
(16X9/AC3/CC/LBX/REG1/SUR)
·Wolfgang Petersen 3-Pack (11/16/99)
Includes three films directed by Wolfgang Petersen: "Air Force One:Spec.Ed (DVD/LBX/P&S/AC3)" starring Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman, "Das Boot:Spec.Ed (DVD/LBX/AC3/SUB/DUB/aka The Boat)" starring Jurgen Prochnow, and "In The Line Of Fire (DVD/LBX/AC3)" starring Clint Eastwood and John Malkovich.

Philips Inc. - one of largest stand-alone CD-writer manufacturers has added a feature to their CD-Rs that automatically adds serial code for ALL the CDs that user burns with the drive. This makes possible to track down all the pirated copies. Only problem is that Philips hasn't informed customers about this little feature..

Sonique v1.20 is released, even that it is not official yet -- this is the reason why we can't support more information yet. But this version is official anyway and you can download it from our download section.

New competitor in portable mp3 players' market has been released by a company called I2Go Inc. Their weapon against other mp3 players based on memory cards is the amount of memory. Basic version contains 64MB of memory and it's exapandable to 680MBs!!
Player is powered by two AA-size batteries and the package contains MusicMatch Jukebox software and their own mp3agent software that is used for player's organizing.

I2Go

NTT Inc. - a Japanese mobile phone operator has announced their deal with Sony and IBM to create mobile phone system that supports mp3 downloads.

Idea is based on Sony Memory Stick -memorycard and this is how it should work; people order mp3s from music providers with their cellphones and download the tracks to Memory Stick that is attached to cellphone itself.

This service should be availlable in April 2000.

AudioGrabber has moved on after long period - new version is 1.6beta which is available for registered users only from this link.

New version includes better ID3 tagging support, support for part ripping and scheduled ripping.§