Jukebox in the sky

Look everyone, its my Master's thesis! View the article here.

Some excerpts:

"This service, offered by RealNetworks, is what Real's CEO Rob Glaser calls "the jukebox in the sky." Originally designed to be used on a PC, Rhapsody allows users anytime access to an Internet library of over three million songs, including most that have ever been commercially released in the United States. Rhapsody subscribers, who pay $10 a month for unlimited access, today listen to about 130 million songs per month...

...When I spoke to Real's Glaser recently he predicted that for the ultimate jukebox in the sky, those of us in the United States will have to wait until 2010 or so. He assumes the entire country will by then have a ubiquitous wireless broadband grid using WiMax or something similar that will allow Internet data to flow everywhere like electricity."

I wrote about the "Jukebox in the sky" 4 years ago - it would be like having an iPod (I envisioned a PDA-ish cellphone back then, since iPods didn't exist yet) which contains almost every song ever created. I was actually able to make it work - over a "trial" version of Globe's GPRS service (they had just rolled it out back then, it was still free), a borrowed Sony Ericsson t68i (I couldn't afford one - they cost p36,000 back then), an HP iPaq (again borrowed), and a Pentium 2 laptop used as a server. It worked in most parts of Manila, Subic, Angeles City and Baguio. My demo included streaming music from MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, and Lady Diane (remember the hit song "Saddam?" hehehe).

Some people (I am not going to say who) thought it was the dumbest idea they ever heard.

I guess it wasn't so dumb after all hehehe.