Nokia Tune Dubstep Edition: The new sound of Finland's phone royalty [VIDEO]

Nokia Tune Dubstep Edition: The new sound of Finland's phone royalty [VIDEO]

When you have the most iconic and recognizable mobile theme in the world, you’d have to be pretty confident to let the general public loose on it, with a mind to then putting the result on 100 million handsets worldwide, but that’s exactly what Nokia have gone and done.

The Nokia Tune competition opened at the start of September and asked musicians, music lovers and Nokia fans everywhere to reinvent the iconic Nokia theme in their own style.

Update: Nokia just came up and made it clear that this new controversial DubStep remix is not replacing the original Nokia tune.

The winner would then have his or her new theme pre-loaded onto over 100 million new Nokia phones to be sold across the globe as well as bagging themselves a $10,000 first prize.

The theme itself originates from Spanish classical guitarist and composer Francisco Tarrega’s piece, ‘Grande Valse’. What we know today as the Nokia tune, is merely an adapted arrangement, dating back to 1902. Nokia first used the theme in 1994 with the Nokia 2100 series and have over time reshaped and updated the theme to suit the devices the company makes and Nokia’s image as a whole.

Video used to promote the Nokia Tune competition

The winner of the competition was 22-year-old Milan based audio design graduate and DJ, Valerio Alessandro Sizzi. Valerio’s theme was one of over 6200 other entries from across the world and received nearly 2000 likes on Facebook in the short time the competition has been running. His theme was handpicked by a group of seven judges, who trawled through around 3000 minutes of audio to find the theme they were looking for.

Winner: Milan-based DJ Valerio Alessandro Sizzi

The winning theme sees classic Nokia tune blended with an aggressive injection of electronic bass lines and synth overtones to create the ‘Nokia Tune dubstep Edition’, which you can listen to here or click play just below.

When explaining why he decided to create a dubstep version, Valerio said:

��I made a dubstep version of the Nokia Tune because the style has become massively popular during the last two years. I just thought that a sparkling, cool version of the Nokia Tune would attract young customers.”

��The original Nokia ringtone is the most representative ��symbol�� of Nokia��s brand identity. It is not just a ringtone, it��s a sound-logo, something that in the last few years has reached a massive importance. Whenever you hear the Nokia Tune, you know it��s a Nokia product.��

With over 1.4 million visits and 11 plays of the various entries, Valerio faced stiff competition, but as you heard, the end result is an exciting refreshing take on the classic and oh so familiar theme.
We hope Valerio will go on to create more great tunes and in the meantime, you’ll be able to start picking up Nokia’s with his new flavor of theme in the not-too-distant future.

If you want to hear the other entries and see the leader boards, you can find that here and a full rundown of the ‘winning tune’ story can be found on the Nokia Blog, here.

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Microsoft take UK retailer Comet to task over claims of producing and selling 94

Microsoft take UK retailer Comet to task over claims of producing and selling 94,000 bootlegged Windows CDs

UK-based electrical retailer Comet have incurred the wrath of the big ‘M’ over in Redmond, Washington.

Microsoft are presently taking legal action against Comet following allegations of the production and sale of bootlegged copies of both Windows XP and Windows Vista recovery CDs.

Microsoft Corp. today began proceedings against Comet Group PLC for allegedly creating more than 94,000 recovery CDs which were then sold onto customers who had purchased Windows-loaded PCs and laptops in their retail stores.

Microsoft’s David Finn, associate general counsel of Worldwide Anti-Piracy and Anti-Counterfeiting, stated that “Comet’s actions were unfair to customers. We expect better from retailers of Microsoft products — and our customers deserve better, too.”

Comet on the other hand argue that they were doing their customers a service, creating and distributing the disks as in recent years, manufacturers have done away with providing bundled recovery CDs with new computers in favor of creating special partitions on hard drives, so users may create a disk in their own time if they so wish.

Comet’s official statement is as follows: “Comet firmly believes that it acted in the very best interests of its customers. It believes its customers had been adversely affected by the decision to stop supplying recovery disks with each new Microsoft Operating System-based computer. Accordingly, Comet is satisfied that it has a good defense to the claim and will defend its position vigorously.”

The ‘dodgy’ disks were apparently produced at a factory in the English county of Hampshire and then distributed to Comet’s 250 retail stores. The company are currently in the process of changing hands, being sold by French parent retail company Kesa Electricals PLC to London-based investment capital firm OpCapita LLP. As such, a costly legal battle is the last thing the company would want, given their current delicate financial situation.

So who do you think are in the wrong? Comet for producing and profiting from software originally created by Microsoft, or Microsoft for berating a company trying to provide a service that they know many of their consumers will appreciate. Leave us your comments below.

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VLC media player gets updates to 2

VLC media player gets updates to 2.0.2, brings Retina display support on OS X

The popular VLC media player for Windows and OS X has received another update, which brings it to version 2.0.2. Among the chief changes in this version is support for the Retina display on the new MacBook Pro. This means that the application interface will be displayed at native resolution instead of being upscaled as before.

Another important change is that VLC will no longer ask users on OS X to wait while updating the font cache. As users of this player will know, you had to wait for a lengthy loading animation as the player built the font cache after every update, but that stops with 2.0.2. Of course it will still build the font cache, just that you won’t have to stare at a dialogue box for ages.

Some of the other changes include:

• Enabled drag and drop of playlist items between the temporary playlist and the persistent media library
• Various video output improvements, notably for crop, zoom, osd and menu support
• Enabled import of playlist items taken from the service discovery modules to the media library or the temporary playlist
• Added media key support for keyboards by other manufacturers than Apple.
• Added HiDPI / Retina Display save UI artwork
• Restored the preferences’ fullscreen options, which allows the user to start videos directly in fullscreen mode
• Keep Aspect Ratio when resizing is back
• Added controls to manipulate the Subtitles Duration to the Track Synchronization panel
• Hidden items in the sidebar are being retained for the next launch now
• Fixed crash when trying to open an Audio CD by drag & drop
• Improve reliability when opening DVDs or BDs by drag & drop
• Fixed a crash when attaching hard drives with multiple partitions while VLC is running
• Improved OSD rendering in fullscreen mode
• Improved fullscreen behavior when using a smartphone remote based upon VLC’s http interface
• The selected audio device is retained throughout multiple VLC sessions now
• Since running the OS X interface as an Extra Interface or Control Interface can lead to undefined results, the respective options will be automatically reset on the first launch, if needed.
• This fixes issues with unresponsive playback controls and crashes on quit.
• Updated Growl plugin supporting Growl 1.3.
• Improved reliablity in detecting VIDEO_TS folders when opened through the “Open Disc” panel.
• Re-implemented the “Window Decorations” option, which, if disabled, hides all the UI elements from the video output window to give you the cleanest experience possible.
• Improved the window title behavior when using the dark interface mode. It correctly responds to right and double-click events now.
• Miscellaneous minor interface improvements

To get a full list of changes, click on the source link below. To download the VLC media player, click here.

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