Zing
I read two different posts about Zing, the project by Tim Bucher, former Sr. VP of Engineering for Apple. Bucher felt he was wrongfully dismissed by the computer maker, and having been in charge of the iPod product line (among other things), it seems he took it upon himself to seek revenge. The first post was on GigaOM, the second on SiliconBeat.
What Zing does is create a wireless bridge between your standard mp3 (or other digital) player and a third party source for content, Yahoo Music for example. The connection is made across any type of wireless connection, from WiFi to 3G (according to SiliconBeat) and even Bluetooth (according to GigaOM). The company has received money from Redpoint Ventures and signed a deal with SIRIUS Satellite Radio, and could be in a position to do goodÂ? things.
The only question we have to ask is whether or not this service is really relevant? It is obviously a good idea to have on-demand access to your music, and some of the features are interesting, but really, we think mp3 players as stand-alone devices are a thing of the past, or maybe the present, but definitely not the future. Your mp3 will soon be a standard feature on your cellphone, which will no longer be a cellphone but more like a mini-computer (somewhere between a Blackberry and an Origami).
This isn’t to suggest that these new products won’t be able to utilize Zing, but it’s not necessarily a question of being able to as much as it is a question of will they want to? Sony Ericsson probably has access to their own collection of digital content that they can probably send very easily on their own. Of course it’s a question of developing an analogous product or utilizing Zing’s product, which means the potential is huge if they can work the right deal. Obviously timing is everything, and arriving on the scene any later would be very detrimental. Hopefully it’s not already too late for this type of service.