Posts Tagged ‘Apple’

Facebook’s Musical Quest

Thursday, June 23rd, 2011

As if Facebook couldn’t be more renowned for its attempt to connect people across the globe, Mark Zuckerberg’s 2004 social networking phenomenon is now about to embark on its latest adventure, which if successful, MadBid.com reckons will revolutionise the social aspect of music sharing.

With the uprising of technology has come a huge surge in music sharing and downloading over the internet. Just look at Napster or Spotify, the biggest pioneers of music streaming.  In a similar way, it appears that Facebook’s newest project is being launched in partnership with, the former, Spotify – one of the more notorious names in the online music business industry.

The new feature aims to provide a music dashboard or platform that lets you stream music, see what your friends are listening to and share your favourite tracks. When you log into your account, the music dashboard will display as an official bookmark on the site’s homepage as well as a separate tab on your profile, in which you can access and control the music you want to hear.

The music dashboard will not be tied to Spotify exclusively though, Facebook is looking to incorporate many more music streaming websites, which the music lovers among you may already be familiar with, such as: Pandora, Mog, Rdio, Last.fm, and Grooveshark amongst others. In Facebook’s attempt to create a similar service with similar functionality, the result may be a giant music library, which anyone and everyone can subscribe to.

Here’s a look at just a few of the features that will be included:

  1. Music Notifications
  2. Recommended Songs
  3. Top Songs
  4. Top Albums
  5. Recent listens

This move will ensure that we are better connected than ever: now you will be able to see just what your friends are listening to and even light-heartedly mock them when you see them playing that Boyzone album they said they had thrown out years ago! In addition to this, Facebook’s music dashboard will help you to discover more genres and artists, making the world of music even more social and accessible than it is already.

Techno giant Apple might have brought the social to the music, but now the tables have turned and Facebook is bringing music to the social; a long-time dream its founders have sought to implement into its service. The result is a collaboration of two powerful social forces, both of which bring people together, making the world a more connected place. Keep your eyes and ears open for the potential release date of the music dashboard, which is to be announced after Facebook’s F8 conference in August.

Until then, you can visit MadBid.com for its range of Facebook and Apple friendly products, including our latest instalment, the New Apple TV which lets you stream photos and music from your PC as you please. Alternatively, there is our great range of stereo systems such as the new Samsung Home Theatre System so you can blast your music to the max!

Apple’s got their head in the clouds!

Tuesday, June 7th, 2011

This week at the Apple World Wide Developers Conference a new cloud based storage service was revealed: iCloud. Apple’s iCloud is a new system that will automatically synchronize and backup all of your files across all your apple wireless devices. For the multidevice lifestyle we have all embraced with Apple products, this new way of storing and sharing information will revolutionize how we communicate with each other and how we interact with our devices.

iCloud will be a free service available for users to download this fall. The user will be able to automatically synchronize all their information including music, photos, documents, apps, and books to all wireless devices within range. This will create an automatic backup system similar to Google Docs and Dropbox.

By including the user’s iTunes library in iCloud, when a song is purchased on one device it will automatically be available on up to 10 other devices. So that means you can be listening to a song in a cafe, purchase it on your iPad and then go for a run later that day and listen to it on your iPod touch or iPhone without ever connecting your devices. All of the music purchased through iTunes will be automatically saved to the user’s cloud locker. For £25 a year Apple also has iTunes Match which will scan through all your music not purchased through iTunes and find a copy in their music library of over 18 million songs to replace your song with an iTunes Plus quality copy at 256 Kbps, even if your original copy was of lower quality.

Synchronizing your playlists is just one of the new features of iCloud. All your photos will also be synchronized and updated to each device immediately. With iCloud users can easily share photos and even upload directly to Facebook and Twitter from any device. It will be easier than ever to capture baby’s first beach day and send photos and video to grandma and grandpa immediately from any device.

Music and photos can take up a lot of memory on the iPhone and iPad, but Apple’s thought of that too. There will only be a rolling stream of 1,000 photos saved directly on the smaller devices at any time; the rest of the photo stream will be accessible through the cloud locker through a Wi-Fi or 3G connection. This does pose a problem for users who frequently travel in zones with weak wireless signals. It does not appear that iCloud will be able to stream music from the iTunes library, so there may only be a limited cache of songs accessible when on airplane mode.

iCloud will protect even the laziest users from losing their data. Apple does all the work for you constantly updating and syncing your data. All documents can be easily shared and edited so you are always working on the most up-to-date version no matter what device you use. Sharing and updating calendars and email accounts is another new feature. Text messages and SMS messages are also saved in your cloud locker along with saved ringtones and apps.

We all remember Mobile Me and how that system never really lived up to our Apple expectations. We at MadBid think iCloud is a very different product and will become a formidable competitor in the cloud based storage industry.

We can’t wait to try iCloud out on our Apple products this fall. Which Apple products will you be synchronizing? The benefits of cloud storage and synchronization can only really be optimized when you have more than one device to update, so why not pick up another i-something? At MadBid.com users have picked up the iPad 2 for just £2.52 and the iPhone 4 for £2.34. Those are just a few examples of the deals our users are wining every day, see for yourself.

iPhone 5 Nano or Mini – cheapest iPhone on the market rumoured for less than £125

Tuesday, May 17th, 2011

The iPhone 5 Nano or Mini is expected to launch this summer as the less expensive alternative to the iPhone 5. The iPhone 5 Nano has many new changes from all the other iPhone models we have come to know so well.

This iPhone will be 1/3 the size of the current iPhone 4 with virtually no internal storage, making the new phone significantly lighter in your pocket and lighter on your wallet. Expected to retail at around £125 off contract and even less with a contract, Apple has made this phone so inexpensive by removing the most expensive part: internal memory.

These new phones will operate almost entirely off of Cloud-based storage through MobileMe.  This means that the iPhone 5 Nano will constantly be uploading, and streaming content, through the network. MobileMe is an Apple product that automatically synchs all your files across multiple devices. This online storage service acts as a virtual “locker” to store all your personal media including photos, music, video, email, contacts, calendars, and more.

Some aesthetic changes MadBid.com expect to see in the iPhone 5 Nano, apart from its new size, are an edge-to-edge display and likely no home button.  These changes will also increase the battery life of the phone to 14 hours talk time with 3G and 7 hours talk time with 4G.

A few little perks we found out for the internal workings of the new phone include voice-based navigation and face recognition security. With voice-based navigation you will be able to say your destination and instantly get directions. Face recognition security makes it virtually  impossible for someone to steal your phone when only the owner’s face will allow use of the phone.

Making life just a little bit easier for those of us who constantly drop our phones or leave them next to a nail file in our bag, the new iPhone 5 Nano has a shatter and scratch resistant screen.

It seems Apple has thought of everything to streamline our lives. To get your hands on one of these super small marvels for an even smaller price visit MadBid.com this summer when the phone is expected to become available. Can’t wait all summer? Try the 16 GB iPhone 4 in a live auction on our site right now!

iPhone 5 expected to launch September 2011

Tuesday, May 17th, 2011

The latest Apple technology, the iPhone 5 is rumoured to be available to consumers in September 2011.

The new phone is expected to have a few cosmetic changes from the iPhone 4 including a metal back instead of the current glass backing which will reduce reception interference from the antenna, a larger screen boasting up to 4 inches with an edge to edge display, and a new LED camera flash moved to the right side of the phone opposite the lens to reduce redeye in photos.

But the new iPhone 5 isn’t just getting an external make-over, the inside of the phone is being upgraded too. Apple is expected to put their patented A5 Chip from the iPad 2 in the new iPhone giving it dual core processing power.  It seems however still uncertain whether or not Apple will bring 4G LTE to this new iPhone, or if they plan to wait to include that in a future model.iphone 4

We can expect the iPhone 5 to retail for somewhere between £510-612. The typical summer debut of new Apple products has been pushed back this year with the expected launch of the iPhone 5 in September due to the disaster in Japan earlier this year where the supplier of some key components of the phone was affected. More on the phone will likely be revealed at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 6 June 2011.

Some additional titbits MadBid.com have gleaned through the rumour mill include the inclusion of Near Field Communication (NFC) Technology in the newest iPhone, which essentially turns your phone into a credit/debit card.

Near Field Communication (NFC) Technology was founded by Nokia, Sony, and Royal Philips Electronics in 2004. This technology allows phones to transfer data from other devices at a close range, much like Bluetooth. If this technology is integrated as a part of the iPhone 5 as an e-Wallet app, as we expect it will be, your phone will then become your digital wallet with the ability to pay with your credit/debit cards, customer loyalty cards, and use coupons too. With this technology you may even be using your phone to get on the London Underground one day soon!

Also, the prototype of a smaller iPhone 5 model affectionately called the iPhone Nano is expected to launch this June as the least expensive iPhone model on the market. This smaller and budget friendly phone will have a shatter and scratch resistant screen, up to 14 hours of battery life, and Face Recognition Security making the iPhone Nano nigh impossible to steal.

With all this uncertainty surrounding Apple’s latest invention, one thing is certain: MadBid.com should be your first stop to getting your hands on the latest technology for up to 98% off recommended retail prices! Can’t wait until the end of the summer? We currently have the 16 GB iPhone 4 running live on our site.

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What will the iPad 2 have in store for us?

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

Rumours  always abound when it comes to Apple and new products and everyone is eagerly waiting the next product whether it’s the iPhone 5 or the iPad 2.

With only weeks to go till the expected unveiling of the iPad 2 and all the secrecy around it, it seems that everyone is speculating about the new features it will have.

Will there be two cameras, one at the front and one rear facing as on the iPhone 4? This would hopefully mean that iPad 2 users might have use of the excellent FaceTime video calling software developed by Apple for iPhone 4. Their rival tablet the Galaxy Tab already has two cameras – a rear-facing 3.2 megapixel camera and a front-facing 1.3 megapixel camera for video chatting.iPad

Some others think there will be a USB port added but with Apple strongly headed towards wireless technology (the current iPad already has wireless printing) we are not sure whether these users will get their wish.

Also, at MadBid.com, we wonder if the new iPad will be smaller and slimmer, the current iPad has a screen size of 9.7 inches, but rivals the Galaxy Tab and, the soon to be released, Blackberry Playbook both have optioned for a smaller 7 inch screen. This difference means that tablets like the Galaxy Tab are significantly lighter at 0.84lbs instead of the iPad’s hefty 1.6lbs.

When I asked around the Madbid.com offices for what features we’d like to see we got a loud shout out for official support for Adobe Flash and an almost equally loud shout out for them to be cheaper – you’ll get the latter by bidding on MadBid.com soon!

Being expensive is not something the Madbid.com users have to worry about though as our prices of the first iPad show – it looks like some people will be getting a bargain! On average customers bought the iPad 32GB for £56.16 (plus cost of bids)!

We will be offering plenty more iPad’s this year so if you want join in the bidding then make sure you sign up for a MadBid.com account and check out our forthcoming auctions.

The Sony Walkman: The End of an Era

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

Sony has announced that they are retiring the Walkman, the revolutionary portable tape player which has enjoyed a 30 year lifespan and sales of over 200 million units.

We may have assumed that the tape player died out long ago, having been overtaken my CD players and then digital MP3 players and iPods, but Sony have continued to sell the classic device allowing older generations access to tapes.

Once the epitome of cool, The Sony Walkman was launched in 1979, and was seen as the must-have gadget of the 1980’s, much like Apples iPod is today. The innovative product brought music on-the-go to the masses and led the way for the many other portable devices to come.

In recent years the classic style of the Walkman player has been replicated and used within ‘retro’  fashion trends (queue shell suits and leg warmers). Adapted Walkman shells have even been sold as iPod covers! However, the shabby old technology would never have been able to keep up with the high quality and easy-to-store MP3s.

So it is the end of an era for Sony, RIP The Walkman.

Tech and Social Networking; Sensitive Censoring Settings

Thursday, October 21st, 2010

Mobile phones and Social Networks have fast become avenues for sharing a great deal of our private information, including feelings and photographs. Unfortunately this can cause some people to get into trouble when they share a little too much. Although this information is essentially in our control (we are not forced to send or post embarrassing texts, photos or opinions across cyber space) it hasn’t stopped many risky situations occurring.

Luckily, some tech companies are providing new services to help us save face. Facebook, Apple and Android are the latest companies to cotton onto the fact that we might need a little help avoiding embarrassing and sometimes upsetting situations, and are providing a range of services to help us steer clear of them.

Apple hit the headlines after being granted a patent for an ‘anti-sexting’ device, which aims to filter offensive and inappropriate language from text conversations between young users. Apple hopes the ‘control application’ will be used by parents, worried about their children accessing rude and suggestive messages on their iPhones.

Android have designed a ‘drunk mode’ in their latest update. This allows users to ban themselves from calling anyone work related when drunk, avoiding embarrassing conversations and messages which can land people in trouble in the morning! Users will either be able to ban calls completely throughout the night, or be prompted with a ‘Do you really want to do that?’ message.

Facebook are appealing to our sensitive side by banning any ex-partners from appearing in the ‘Photo Memory’ boxes. After negative feedback from users who did not appreciate constant reminders of past relationship or seeing their ex with a new partner, they have decided to censor photos from anyone who was previously ‘in a relationship’.

These new settings could be very handy in helping people to the avoid scandals, often caused by too sharing through technology and social networking.

The New iPod Nano

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

Apple have release their newest iPod: the Nano 6. The new design is even smaller than the previous Nano models; now a compact square complete with a touch screen.

The new Nano is perfect for those simply wanting a small and fast music playing device. It obviously has far fewer features than the much larger iPod Touch, but comes with a handy and practical clip allowing you to fix it to clothes or bags. The Multi-Touch screen now presents the contents in a similar style to the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad, providing continuity throughout the product lines.

The Nano 6 does miss the voice and video recorders found on the previous model, but Apple are happy to market it as ‘100 percent made for music’, and those looking for a more multi-functional model will find the Touch more pleasing.

Available in seven bright colours, the new Nano is everything you need from an iPod, for those wanting a tiny, easy to use yet stylish device, the new Nano 6 is for you.

The BlackBerry Torch- The best of both worlds?

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

As smarphones continue to take over our work and personal lives, and two of the world’s biggest phone manufacturers go head to head, many of us face a dilemma. Do we choose the sleek, fun iPhone, jammed-packed with apps making it one of the most multi-functional gadgets around? Or do with opt for a more grown-up, professional-looking and reliable BlackBerry model?
BlackBerries may not seem quite as exciting as they hold a stigma of office-bound grumpy commuters, chained to their desks by 24/7 email alerts. However, they have in recent years become one of the most popular brands of phones for teens and young adults alike, drawn in by the lure of free instant messages to other Blackberries and the easy to use full keypads. So it seems the battle is on! And now Blackberry’s manufacturer RIM has confused us even more, by launching the company’s first 2-in-1 touch screen and keypad phone, The BlackBerry Torch.

RIM has made great improvements to its previous attempt at a touch screen model, The Storm, which made a click sound every time the screen was touched. In fact, the Torch screen is now comparable to those of the leaders in the touch screen market, Apple and HTC.
Inevitably, due to having both a sliding touch screen and a keypad, the Torch is slightly chunky, but BlackBerries have always been stocky phones so that shouldn’t come as a surprises, and the iPhone 4 is rather boxy and heavy anyway. So with issues of size and screen type sorted, the real deal-breaker seems to be the extras.

It doesn’t seem plausible that BlackBerry could ever take on the mighty iTunes and App Store as they provide over a quarter of a million different ways to make a standard phone more exciting. They have certainly tried with BlackBerry App World, and maybe now, with this new handset, they have a chance to challenge Apple, as the touch screen should allow for better games.

The BlackBerry Torch is RIM’s attempt at a middle-ground, providing us with both the style of a touch screen and alongside the conventional QWERTY keypad, which seems to be reaching out to a different generation of BlackBerry users and hoping to provide an answer for those stuck in the middle of the BlackBerry versus iPhone war.

HTC HD3 phone details have been leaked

Monday, July 12th, 2010

HTC looks to have another winner up its sleeve in the shape of the updated HD2 called, surprisingly enough, the HD3.

The HTC HD3 will sport a big 1280×800-resolution, multi-touch, 4.5-inch AMOLED touchscreen, driven by a 1.5GHz Snapdragon processor. Although the screen is bigger the actual handset will be smaller than the HD2’s measuring in at 115mm x 65mm x 10mm.

The phone is likely to be one of the first to run Windows Phone 7 Series and will boast 4G connectivity as well as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It’ll have 1GB of onboard RAM, with 32GB microSD storage.

The latest release from HTC should be hitting UK shelves before Xmas.