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Wireless Loading


Fri Jul 25, 2003 - 4:35 PM EDT - By Michael Ducker

The Musically Inclined

Ringtones

The most success carriers have had with mobile downloading is with ringtones. Ringtones are fun to have and the Treo 600 has made it even easier to get ringtones on the device by enabling default support for midi files. The number one thing a mobile ringtone website needs is easy purchasing of ringtones. Credit Card information should be stored by the site, and with one "tap" a user should have that ringtone on their Treo. As with software, a copy should also be emailed to the user for backup of the file. Ringtones are probably the easiest of all the downloading sites to make.

In the future one can hope that an enterprising software developer will be create an application that lets MP3s and other audio be used as ringtones. Until than we will have to live with polyphonic midi files.

Music Store/Music Streaming

The bandwidth of Sprint Visions network was found to be on average 80 kbps in a recent article. As time goes on this speed will increase even more, and a streaming/download music site or store becomes a real possibility. This might sound farfetched but think about it. You want to be able to carry all your music with you, but you only have a 64 MB SD card. Put your 3 GBs of music on a server, and it will stream what you request at radio quality (64kbps) right to your Treo. Or you just heard a song on the radio and you want to buy it. By going online to the Treo Music Store you would be able to buy it, get a radio (64kbps) copy on your Treo 600, and than a real high fidelity version would be emailed, or otherwise sent to you. In fact, Handspring has mentioned briefly in the SDK of a Digital Rights Management DRM system. While details are unknown, this would probably make record companies much happier to offer services such as mobile music.

We are at the very start of the (legal) digital distribution music revolution. With products like Apples iTunes, or Rhapsody users can legally buy music. There is no reason why you should not be able to do this on the go and most of all it wouldnt be that hard for the carriers. They themselves could implement streaming music sites. You add $10 a month to your account, and all of a sudden you have a large collection of music streaming to your ears. Of course, after Music comes Video, and after that comes 2 way video-conferencing - you already have full integration with your files on the web, you can get new games/software any time; what else does one need? The future of mobile communicators holds great things.

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