TechnoCloud

Another week, another Spotify business model, this time a bundled subscription to Spotify’s premium service on HTC’s Hero Android Smartphone which is available on the UK’s 3 network. For a £35 a month tariff, plus a £99 fee (similar to iPhone pricing), users get two years of Spotify’s premium service included in the deal.

They may have their work cut out after leaked figures emerged for Nokia’s similar ‘Comes with Music’ service indicating they had only signed up 107,000 customers since their January launch, albeit on a less impressive handset.

Just when you thought app stores could not appear on anything else, it seems ‘The Ultimate Driving Machine’ wouldn’t be complete without its own app store. The BMW app store is just a concept for now, but the apps on offer covered the likes of multimedia travel guides, games and inevitably social networks.

So, if your gadget-obsessed friend updates their status with ‘crashing into a hedge’ you know why…

Amazon’s much anticipated international version of the Kindle has finally been launched.

Initially sold through Amazon.com, it is priced at $279 and will ship from 19th October. The international version is the smaller six inch screen Kindle 2, as opposed to the larger Kindle DX only available in the US, and will run on 3G networks (USB syncing where unavailable). Accordingly, Forrester has raised its forecast for e-reader sales in 2009 from 2m to 3m and to 10m in 2010, when colour e-readers are expected to become more widely available.

And if you’re stuck deciding which of the 250k books to read, then why not start with one of the 613 Lonely Planet guides now available on the Kindle…

The Spotify iPhone app has finally been approved by Apple, providing streaming, and more limited offline, access to Spotify’s music catalogue for premium users of the service (£9.99).

It’s been interesting to see the mixed reviews to what is an impressive service, if you’re willing to accept the price that is. Despite making it clear that you could only access the streaming service if you had a premium account, numerous reviewers have complained that their ‘free’ app hasn’t worked, showing the importance of managing expectations very clearly on a free app (or indeed a subscription based app).

The challenge in getting users to click on ads is well known, but an inspired piece of creative for Pringles plays on this by including a mini-story within the ad which reveals itself through a seemingly never ending number of clicks (I gave up at 20), earning itself a gold Cyber Lion award in the process.

See it in action here.

The Uganda Wildlife Authority is using an innovative approach to raise awareness of and funds for endangered gorillas. The ‘Friend a Gorilla’ website allows users to become friends on Facebook with their chosen gorilla for $1. The gorilla will then appear in their friends list and its status updates will appear in their news feed.

This is the first example I’ve seen of paying for friends on Facebook. While a charity is a laudable start, it may open up the practice to commercial organisations. Would you pay £1 to be one of a limited number of friends of Stephen Fry to get exclusive updates? And if so, how long until this practice is extended to creating a private Twitter network?