Tesco Digital

Tesco has decided it wants to compete with sites like iTunes and have a slice of the mp3 business pie. Tesco already sells some downloads as a WMA file only but from next month it plans to add three million tracks for download in mp3 format. This would be the latest addition to the line of goods and services that the 'Tescopoly' sell.

It also wants to sell more than just mp3s. In addition to music that is free of DRM (digital rights management) it also wants to sell some TV shows, UK and US based. Unlike iTunes, it also wants to sell downloadable games, similar to such applications as Steam and services on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games consoles.

It is thought that Tesco, due to their reputation for undercutting the prices of competitors (and also often controversially), could offer their music at a rate lower than iTunes, who currently are the market leaders in the UK. iTunes sell music for 79p a track, but in my opinion if Tesco do undercut them it would only be by a few pence. I somehow disbelieve that music could be so low valued when you consider the many people and organisations who earn from each sale.

According to Reuters, Graham Harris, Tesco Commercial Director is quoted as saying:

"We wanted to create an exciting and easy-to-use entertainment shop that Tesco customers of all ages and technical ability can use and trust."

Google Reader & Google News

Google Reader is a tool that I found relatively easy to use. I can definitely see why it can be a useful tool. If I needed to know what the latest news were on my bookmarked sites then I could easily find out on a different computer.

However, I found that having to wade through many pieces of unread news can be annoying. I would hate it to be at a point where the amount of unread news resembles my Gmail spam folder size, i.e. quite a lot! I also don't see any use of for it at home where I have RSS feeds on my browser, saving all the hassle of going to Google Reader in the first place.

Google News is also another tool that is relatively easy to use. If I needed to find news sources then it would be so easy for Google News. I also tend to use Google Blog Search alongside this because then I get the sources and viewpoints from bloggers as well as news sites.

I also like the idea of playing about with the news subjects on the main page. At the moment I have Manchester United as one of those topics but I can also change it to something more topical to get up-to-date info on breaking stories. That could be very useful for my blog posts.