Sam Davyson

Spotify launched a big updated to their desktop software today with a focus on social.

To kick it off we’ve added a number of social features, centered on a fully editable Spotify music profile, with the ability to publish playlists, top artists and top tracks for public view. Discovering these profiles is simple as we’ve connected with Facebook so that you can instantly add your friends’ profiles.

As well as introducing a variety of new social features, Spotify is evolving into a total music management platform. We’ve added a ‘Library’ folder in the left side bar, enabling you to combine your own music library with ours.

It is a shame that they have integrated with Facebook on this but I guess it is the done thing these days. Crucially you don’t have to have anything to do with Facebook to take advantage of the new features. You can add new friends by searching for them using the syntax:

spotify:user:username

You can now send friends songs, browse their playlists, and subscribe to them. Add to this you can now play local music within Spotify and it will be wirelessly synced to your mobile device!

iTunes: Game over.

There are numerous websites that present you with policies and allow you to answer a series to questions leading to them revealing who they think you should vote for in the UK 2010 General Election.

#1  How To Vote – link

#2  Who Should you Vote For – link

#3 Active History – link

#4 Vote Match – link

#5 Select Smart – link

#6 Vote For Policies – link

See what you get. You may be surprised.

T-Mobile have released their pricing for the HTC Desire and it’s absolutely sensational. This is exactly what was needed. I can only hope that other networks will follow suit with similarly competitive deals.

T-Mobile allow you to specify how much you’d like to pay a month from £10-£40. And then it neatly gives you the plans that fit your budget. They are pushing a £35 / month x 24 months contract with a free handset but it’s really not their best deal. In fact it’s their overall most expensive deal.

All contracts include:

• one flexible booster which you can use to get unlimited texts or unlimited landline calls or various other boosters. This is on top of the allowances listed in the table.
• “Unlimited internet” – capped at 3 GB / month.

Here are all of the plans and their total costs calculated. Click the header of any column to sort it by that column.

Some of the pricing seems to me somewhat strange. E.g. Comparing all of the contracts where you get 600 minutes and 500 texts. There are two which last 18 months and one which lasts 24 months. The difference in overall costs between the 3 contracts is minimal: they cost £579 (18 x £25/month), £600 (18 x £30/month) and £609 (24 x £20/month). The first two are identical but there is a £21 difference depending on how you choose to pay for it. The final one gives you 6 months more of the contract for £9 extra.

How do these compare to buying the phone outright?

The phone is £439 on Amazon.co.uk. It is cheaper to buy the phone on either the £10 or £15 a month contracts (costing £404 and £434) and as a bonus you’ll get some minutes each month. You may not choose to use them – but you can pop another SIM card in and do pay as you go or whatever. You’ll have to pay out the entire contract but this cost is less than buying the phone outright.

How do these compare to iPhone tariffs?

Despite the outright buying price being very similar to the iPhone these contract tariffs are much cheaper than iPhone tariffs. A comparable deal on the iPhone (from O2) to one of those listed here is: 8 GB iPhone 3GS with 600 mins and unlimited texts. For 18 month contract you pay £40 / month and pay £89 upfront for the phone. That’s £809. The same deal on T Mobile with the HTC Desire is £579 (£25 / month x 18 months + £129 up front). Or for 24 month contracts O2 have the same deal (600 mins / unlimited texts) for £929. Which on T Mobile is £609. Obviously there are a lot of tariffs so you can compare all day. But like for like tariffs can be more than £300 cheaper over 24 months.

I’m not sure how long this has been up – not too long I don’t think – but a friend of mine has made himself an online home. I was proud to get a mention and I look forward to future postings.

T mobile have become the first network to announce their HTC Desire pricing which is due to launch on their network in the next coupe of weeks (and every other UK network several weeks after that). Multiple networks from the word go should help to drive down prices. T mobile’s lowest tariff with data is £30 / month x 24 months with 900 mins and 500 texts. Total cost: £720.

Buying the phone outright is £440. With a suitable sim only tariff from any of the main networks you can get unlimited internet and plenty of texts and minutes on a rolling contract for £20 / month. Over 24 months the total cost of ownership comes to £440 + (24 x £20) = £920. So you save £200 by taking the contract with T mobile. This is the price that you are paying to lose the freedom of a rolling contract.

Of course the contract price should be less than the price with a rolling contract: each network wants you to commit for a good length of time to their network. Hopefully tariffs from O2, Vodafone and Orange will lower prices a bit more. Ideally an 18 month contract for £30 / month with unlimited internet.

I can’t help but thinking these prices are a little too high to differentiate from the iPhone. There need to be cheaper and good smartphones.

Davyson Continue is a seamless way to continue browsing the internet as you move devices. Imagine the scenario: you’re reading a news story on your laptop. You’re heading out but would love to continue reading on your iPhone when you get on the bus. With Davyson Continue you hit one button when you leave your laptop to save and then one button on your iPhone to resume. And you can do it back the other way too. Unlimited devices. All you need is the ability to add bookmarks.

No more having to navigate through websites to find where you were on your previous device. No more having to copy and paste or to type out long URLs. Instead Davyson Continue gets you instantly to the content you’re interested in.

Setting up is totally trivial on a computer (10 seconds) but a bit more hairy on the iPhone (maybe 90 seconds). It’s a hosted service available free with no signup required.

Find it in the Projects Directory.

If your home button breaks on your iPhone it’s easy to think that it’s game over. You have to turn off the phone each time you want to return to the home screen. But no! Luckily there is a workaround.

Setup steps
1. Put a passcode on your phone.

To change applications
1. Press the lock button to lock the phone.
2. Press the lock button to unlock the phone.
3. Slide to unlock.
4. Press “emergency call”.
5. Press the back arrow.
6. Key in your passcode.
7. This always returns to the homescreen.

It’s not ideal but it might seem somewhat more desirable than buying a new phone.

He’s calling for everyone to produce content: blog posts, video, tweets, photos. Anything.

He briefly addresses the problem that if everyone produces content there is no way that you’re going to get much attention. He worms out of it by suggesting that good content will surface. Maybe true but it means that 90%+ of content producers have to deal with no audience engagement which is what Leo’s found so rewarding with his TWiT network.

He’s certainly right to an extent but I think “old media” still have a solid position for the moment as places to find entertainment.

People talk about the “apple tax” but the HTC Desire costs the same on pay as you go as the iPhone 3GS does (both £450). Yes you can argue that the HTC Desire better but we all know that Apple will be catching up in most areas in June and they will probably keep the price the same.

It seems to me that there is significant opportunity to offer powerful, cheaper smartphones. I know O2 are touting the HTC Smart as this very thing. But it doesn’t run android. I think (and hope) that when Nexus One and HTC Desire have their contract pricing plans revealed – should be soon as they launch in late March – we’ll see better plans for less. Ideally £30 a month for 18 months. But I fear £35 for 24. In which case they have no edge over the iPhone at all.

The iPhone is expensive and Apple is making huge amounts on it. HTC should be able to hit lower price points: don’t write much software, don’t do as much marketting etc.

[ originally published on Google Buzz ]

I’ve added a bookmarklet to DavysoNub which gives you all the power of DavysoNub from any website you might be on. Particularly improved is adding commands. Find a site that you want to add to DavysoNub just click the bookmarklet and use the “n” command plus the term you’d like it to have. The bookmarklet grabs the URL for you. So all you need to do is add a description and hit done. The bookmarklet throws you back to the URL you just added.

Possible future features include adding a description right from the page, and maybe an overlay so you never have to navigate away from the page.

You can grab the bookmarklet from the DavysoNub homepage.