Soundtrackr is already growing at a fast rate, with almost 500,000 users only three months after launch. Over 35% of the users are not even from the US. With web based, mobile, and soon to come TV options, there is a great reason why. The service can be used just about anywhere to listen to artist specific or even friend created stations. With the mobile option, you can even listen to the station of someone nearby.

Soundtrackr is hoping to avoid premium subscription fees and ads to raise revenue. Instead, they are banking on a new partnership that will integrate ticket sales into their mobile apps. This is certainly a new, refreshing way to go for streaming music services. So, at least for now, the service will be staying ad free. How long that will last remains to be seen as their streaming service, MediaNet, does cost a lot of money, but provides over ten million music tracks, with about 20,000 being added each and every week. Certainly, with a library like that, the service can remain popular; it just needs the money to stay afloat.

Soundtrackr is currently running off the money they raised from private angel investors, and hopes to get more in their second round in order to offset the costs of streaming, and continue to bring a great, free service to everyone.

The study shows that the percentage of users who obtained their music from a peer to peer (P2P) file sharing service has gone down to 9% (16 million people) in the 4th quarter of 2010 from 16% (28 million people) at the end of 2007. Coincidentally, LimeWire, a widely popular P2P file sharing program/service was shut down in the 4th quarter of 2010. The sutting down of the service was due to a judge’s ruling in favor of the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America ) in a copyright infringement case.

The NPD also found that during the same stretch of time, those who still pirated music, pirated less music, with the average tracks pirate per person decreasing from 35 down to 18. Clearly, LimeWire accounted for a majority of music piracy, but not all. Some users have also switched to other means of P2P file sharing to pirate their music including: FrostWire and BitTorrent.

The closure of LimeWire had a wide sweeping effect on music pirates, as it had been popular for so long. The NPD Group says that it still remains to be seen if the closure actually will significantly decrease the amount of total music pirated, though, as there are still many other alternatives for people to turn to.

While many would like to pin the decreasing revenue on internet piracy alone, there are other factors that have played into it. There are simply more convenient ways for people to obtain their music, even legally, with services such as iTunes, VEVO, and Rhapsody. It just doesn’t make sense for someone to go out and buy a record when they can get the couple of songs they want for much cheaper without even getting up.

Similar services charge money and take a lot more time than Sendoid. This free service can move files in fractions of the time at no cost than services like Yousendit.

The user with the file simply selects it on the Sendoid website and receives a download sharing link. When the link is entered into the second user’s browser, their computers become securely linked together. The file is then transferred straight from computer to computer, and passes through no other servers. This makes the system fast as well as totally private, as no one else can see the data but the sender and the receiver or anyone who gains access to their computers.

The browser based service offers up to a 1GB max file size, but the desktop client does not have a file size cap. Both options are totally free to use, and Sendoid has stated that they have no plans to switch to a paid-for system in terms of file size at all. They will, however, offer a for-charge premium feature set in the future, which will include file grouping as well as additional security layers. The additional security would be great for those transferring sensitive business materials.

Sendoid might just be launching at the perfect time, as the need to transfer larger files has increased with higher resolution images and videos becoming much more popular.

The new rules, expected to be released by ICANN soon will allow for business, brands, trademark holders, organizations, charities, and even entrepreneurs to become the master of their own domain. This means that they will control who can have access to their TLD, so there will be .redcross websites, .coke websites, etc.

TLDs have proven to be an easy way to have an online presence as they are easy to remember for visitors who just see the domain once or even hear it. They have also proved problematic for owners of legitimate websites that are spoofed by people who register TLDs with similar names. While the ICANN has made it easy enough for companies to sue spoofers under various laws, it is still financially not feasible when there are a large number of them. These new laws will serve to protect legitimate companies from these types of Internet attacks by easily showing if a company has taken the time to prove they are not going to be scamming people.

The Internet will soon begin its transition away from the .com era, which was originally reserved for commercial businesses, but has since been flooded with all types of websites. While a .___ might not totally guarantee a website’s legitimacy, it is a step in the right direction for ICANN.

Gosling developed the programming language while he was an employee at Sun Microsystems. He started on it in 1991, and the release came four years later in 1995. He left a few months after Sun was bought out by Oracle in January of 2010. He has been publicly critical of how Oracle has treated his Java programming language, and has even been quoted calling Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, “Larry, Prince of Darkness.”

According to Gosling he does not know exactly what his day to day responsibilities will be at Google, but he is excited about his new job. Having turned down many other “excellent” opportunities, Gosling is looking forward to the “leverage” that his position might provide him. This is most likely in reference to the lawsuit levied at Google by Oracle. He could instrumental in mounting Google’s defense in the case, being the creator of the entity that they are being sued over.

Other than helping in the lawsuit, it is expected that James Gosling will be taking up a position in the development of Android, using Java to its full potential to better Google’s mobile operating system. While the lawsuit does seem to be a large reason he took the job, it also seems that Gosling would be excited about the prospect of working on a project that was resulting in the one of the largest public uses of Java to date, as more people use Android, more people will develop with it as well.

MobileMe currently costs $99 a year, and was originally released as a service called .Mac, which replaced the old iTools service.  The MobileMe service syncs bookmarks, contact information, and calendar information to a cloud. All of that information can then be accessed on any Mac powered device including iOS devices.

Some recent moves have also pointed to MobileMe becoming a completely free service, including the allowing of remotely tracking and locking down iOS devices as well as the ability to have an @me.com email address. Both of these features had previously been only available to paying customers, but were then turned into free of charge services.

This seems to leave recent paying subscribers in limbo, as they paid the full $99, and might now be transitioned into a free service. The iLounge source claims that Apple will still support the old version, but it would seem senseless as the new version would be fully free. So, unless the version has significantly less features than the current MobileMe, there may be a lot of disgruntled Apple fanboys (and girls).

A more conceivable guess would be that Apple’s new version of MobileMe would still have a pay for premium plan that would offer more or higher end features, or both.  Higher amounts of storage and more advanced features will mostly likely stay on premium plans for a while until they are not so fresh or coveted anymore, and then go free.

T-Mobile USA customers currently total up to 33 million, and will be added to AT&T’s humongous user base to create a large mobile phone company servicing about 129 million people just in the United States. Their numbers now tower over Verizon’s 94 million subscribers.

This deal will worry antitrust regulators for reasons other than the subscriber count, however. With AT&T and T-Mobile USA being the only two GSM phone carriers in the United States, there will only be one once the deal is completed. This gives AT&T a complete monopoly on the phone standard, and is definitely something to worry about in terms of pricing.

T-Mobile customers wanting 4G connections will definitely benefit from the deal, though, as their carrier only runs on HSPA+, and has no plans on upgrading to real 4G technology. HSPA+ generally measures up to 4G speeds, but lacks the infrastructure to handle a full network load like 4G technology offers. These customers will not have to worry any longer.

This deal announcement follows right on the heels of the rumors stating that Sprint Nextel was getting ready to make an offer for the company to Deutsche Telekom, who had been reportedly unsatisfied with T-Mobile USA’s recent performance. They were reportedly interested in public offers that would result in the company spinning off, but obviously have taken a liking to this private offer.

This deal has been agreed upon by both company’s boards, but has to go through the regulatory approval process still, where it might get held up due to the monopolization of the GSM carrying business, as discussed earlier.

Comparison –

Both the Apple iPad and Motorola Xoom are much similar regarding their functionality and basic hardware design. Considering the ‘processor’, Motorola Xoom possesses greater RAM that operates multi-task effortlessly as compared to the iPad 2. Hence, Xoom is more advantageous here. While talking about the ‘display’ we can say that the iPad 2 has better display to view angles than that of the Xoom. Taking into consideration the ‘camera’, the iPad 2 has dual cameras of 0.7MP main camera and secondary VGA camera yet the Xoom gains upper hand due to its dual-LED flash and auto-focus 5MP main camera and 2MP secondary camera. Turning to the ‘design and build’, we come to know that the Apple iPad 2 is thinner and lighter than the Motorola Xoom. The ‘operating system’ of the Xoom is of Android 3.0 Honeycomb which is more userfriendly for its boosting multi-tasking capacities and iPad 2 (with iOS 4.3) lags behind in this criterion. Regarding the ‘connectivity’ both have same ones but the Xoom has Micro USB port, MicroSD support and HDMI output which are absent in the iPad 2.

Verdict –

It is hard to judge who is the winner, the Apple iPad 2 or Motorola Xoom. However, it depends on the personal usage and needs that decide the excellence. Needless to say, it is up to you which one to choose from the two.

The Incredible S has already captured the US market due to its interesting and worth-praising features. Its sleek design showcases 4.0-inch capacitive super LCD touchscreen display supporting 480 x 800 pixel resolution, 8MP camera with autofocus and dual LED flash that offers 720p HD video recording capabilities and a bonus of 1.3MP secondary camera is its added advantage too. It has 1.1GB internal memory that can be expanded up to 32GB with the help of a microSD card. Besides this, the combination of stereo FM radio along with RDS and a 3.5mm audio jack will enlighten the music lovers.

The Incredible S comes with high powered 1450mAh battery whereby this new phone gives talk time for almost 10 hours, which is 370 hours on standby. The 1Ghz processor runs on Android 2.2 Froyo which will be an upgrade for the Incredible S as the 2.3 Gingerbread OS. That is why the Incredible S is popular among the celebrities and commoners as well. Evidently, Sarah Harding, the Girls Aloud singer has backed this elegant device. Needless to say, it will receive a warm welcome in the India too.