News written by Matti Robinson (December, 2008)

Mixtape sites where you can share your music playlists are closing on extinction. RIAA drove Muxtape off in September and now the pressure from the lobbyists has made another mashup, Mixwit, to call it a day.

Mixwit was never sued by RIAA but it was just a matter of time. The service took the songs from the MP3 search engine Seeqpod, which would've led them into trouble with RIAA eventually.

Mixwit founder Michael Christoff was interviewed by TechCrunch, "we thought about continuing with mixwit as a company, but we could never get assurance that the future of mixwit would not be hurt by the perceived liabilities of its past so we decided it was time to to shut things down."

There are a few mixtape sites still keep on rockin', for example Mixaloo and Mixtube. Let us also hope that the upcoming music startups that consumers so much love won't be haunted by the industry.

P2P video service Joost has decided to shift away from P2P and head towards Flash. The company will give up their efforts developing the P2P client that has so far defined Joost.

Joost, which was considered one of the most innovative start-ups in early 2007 when the beta was released, has gone through some hard times lately. Ultimately the P2P client, with its obvious benefits, had more flaws than expected. Without the ability to link to specific videos or embed them on to your own website it became obsolete.

In last September Joost launched the Flash site, which gave users the option to select between Flash and P2P. Now there's no choice to be made. The only platform that will apparently have an own Joost client is iPhone.

Moving to Flash not only means fierce competions with tons of other online video sites, but a much larger bandwidth bill for Joost. P2P streaming was a clever idea, unfortunately it didn't succeed - at least not in this case.

A group of scientists have developed a new audio technology in the Helsinki University of Technology (TKK). Directional audio coding (DirAC) technique aims to produce the best possible sound for the listener regardless of how many speakers the sound system has and where the speakers are located. TKK has now sold the protecting patents to a German research organization Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.

The technique is based on Spatial Impulse Response Rendering (SIRR) and would use for example a remote control to measure and determine what kind of speaker setup surrounds the listener. By transmitting audio and metadata between the microphone, the audio system and the speakers it would produce optimal audio quality for the listener. The technology is said to be suitable for teleconferencing as well.

According to TKK DirAC could become the industry standard. The recordings would hold 1-3 channels of audio and metadata. However, the studies are not yet finished.

TKK and its researchers will continue to work on DirAC with Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.

Elektron EHP-606 is the re-branded sister of network media player Popcorn Hour A-110 which is also based on the same Networked Media Tank platform. With identical file support and user interface, what does EHP-606 offer that Popcorn Hour doesn't? Well, first of all the EHP-606 has a VGA output. It also has support for NMT (also familiar from the Popcorn Hour) applications such as FTP, Samba and NFS servers and most importantly a built-in BitTorrent client - or actually two different BitTorrent clients.

The box included:

Search engine giant Google released its Chrome web browser in early September. As expected the browser was released as a beta version but what was definitely not expected just happened. After three months of beta test development Google has released an official stable version 1.0.154.36 of Chrome.

Approximately 100 days, 10 million downloads and 14 updates. That is the Chrome beta in a nutshell. The latest update improves the stability, speed of start up and JavaScript processing as well as overall performance.

The new stable version also improves the bookmark features - you are now able to easily import and export bookmarks to and from your Google Chrome.

Chrome will be updated frequently in the future as well. Upcoming updates will add form prefilling, browser extension and RSS support as well as Linux and Mac OS X versions of the browser.

Download Google Chrome.

Mozilla has released a new beta version of the popular Firefox browser. According to Mozilla Developer Center Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 includes improvements to speed, performance and compatibility. Download it and you'll also get try out couple of new and anticipated features.

The speed and performance improvements come from the updated version of Gecko layout engine and the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine. TraceMonkey especially is a welcome addition as it provides a huge boost to JavaScript processing speeds. Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 also includes the new Private Browsing Mode which allows users to browse the web without leaving any traces. You can also now choose to remove the history of for example only past hour of browsing.

Download Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 for Windows, Mac OS X or Linux.

California-based Tzero Technologies has demonstrated its new second generation ZeroWire in Tokyo. The new ZeroWire enables wireless HDMI transmission with Ultra Wideband (UWB) technology, which is able to transfer Full HD (1080p) resolution video at 60 frames per second. The product is at first targeted at Japanese market, but has passed the regulatory tests in Europe and the U.S. as well.

Tzero calls ZeroWire the first commercially viable wireless HDMI solution with an estimated material cost of less than $50. It support HDMI 1.3a and HDCP and therefore is "Hollywood Approved", according to the press release. With 480 Mbit bandwidth the ZeroWire is able to transmit Full HD resolution video and 7.1 digital surround audio at ranges greater than 20 meters.

Opera Software has released Alpha 1 version of their new Opera 10 browser. The company claims that the version 10 browser with the new Presto 2.2 rendering engine is 30 percent faster that its predecessor. If you don't mind the bugs that you might - and probably will - encounter you can download it from the AfterDawn.com Downloads section right away.

According to Opera the new Presto 2.2 is not only faster than the 2.1 version - which was released last summer - but renders pages more accurately as well. The new Presto is said to get full 100 points in the Acid3 test, which is the industry standard for testing html, javascript and css rendering. In comparison Firefox 3 gets 71 and Google Chrome 79 points out of 100.

Download Opera v10 Alpha 1 for Windows, Mac or Linux.

Nokia revealed a new N-series phone in its Nokia World event in Barcelona. The new N-series flagship model N97 features a 3,5-inch touchscreen at 360x640 resolution, full QWERTY keyboard, 5 megapixel camera with dual LED flash and a hefty 32GB flash memory.

Nokia told that their first touch-screen QWERTY phone will enable easy access to social media and other web services. Adding to the already mentioned N97 will include A-GPS, standard 3,5 mm jack, FM transmitter, TV-out as well as HSDPA and WiFi connectivity.

"From the desktop to the laptop and now to your pocket, the Nokia N97 is the most powerful, multi-sensory mobile computer in existence," said Jonas Geust, Vice President, heading Nokia Nseries. "Together with the Ovi services announced today, the Nokia N97 mobile computer adjusts to the world around us, helping stay connected to the people and things that matter most. With the Nokia N97, Nseries leads the charge in helping to transform the Internet into your Internet".