Yes, that's a double-negative in the headline. In other words Uncle Walt, the leader of all tech writers, isn't necessarily against the Slacker Portable, but he's also not in love with it... yet.

Walt Mossberg (who yelled the infamous words, "I don't give a fuck about your stock price!" at XM's former CEO Hugh Panero a few years back) overall seemed to find the Slacker service/player intriguing. His biggest problem - granted, it was a prototype he was playing with - was the bugs that need to be worked out of the player.

"The two prototype Slacker units I tried, however, were hobbled by bugs and glitches that the company must expunge by the release date, which was originally slated to be this month. For instance, the players sometimes failed to wake up after going to sleep, requiring a reboot. The touch strip was unreliable. One player failed several times to connect to my account. Battery life is well below Slacker’s goal of 12 hours between charges. The company says it is aware of these problems, and pledges all will be fixed."

Which explains why the Slacker Portable player has been delayed. Still Mossberg seems to like what he sees so far, but his hope for the service itself is that the ads aren't too annoying.

One interesting thing to note: he compared the Slacker service to Rhapsody and of course to Sirius and XM:

"And both the Sirius and XM satellite-radio networks offer portable players for listening to their stations, although the stations can’t be customized."

I think that's an important distinction. Slacker is meant for consumers who have no desire to program entire playlists of music - but it still has an easy way to customize the music you're listening to.

Satellite Radio on the other hand has absolutely no interactivity. There is a growing desire by consumers to increase control over their media experiences. Sirius and XM need to come up with solution for this, to create the feeling of interaction and control, because the influence of this trend in consumers' thinking is significant and real. I'm not sure how, I just know what, needs to be done to adapt for future trends.

But I digress.

Watch Mossberg's quickie video review below...

[All Things Digital]

Nokia, the world's biggest cellphone maker, yesterday announced a deal with Universal Music Group that will give customers buying select mobile devices unlimited access to millions of tracks for a year - and lets them keep the music afterwards.

Nokia is hoping that the other Big Three music labels will soon be on board.

Starting in the second half of 2008, the program (called "Comes With Music") lets folks who buy a qualifying phone to have unlimited access to Universal's entire artist catalog for a year. Once the year is over, you can keep all that music without it disappearing when the subscription is over.

The one downside (and it's a big one) is that the tracks are protected with Microsoft's PlaysForSure DRM, according to Ars Technica. If you want to burn the music to a CD, you need to pay. Hopefully Nokia and/or Universal will learn the err of their ways and remove the DRM caveat, because that would be the largest stumbling stone preventing this from taking off.

Of course, Nokia isn't disclosing which phones/devices need apply, and they didn't say what the terms of the deal were. But Universal's digital operations chief, Rob Wells, told Reuters in an interview: "Unless there was enough money for the world's biggest record company we would not have agreed to the deal."

DRM or not, it's still a big deal. And one that has the potential to turn both the mobile audio, as well as the unlimited music subscription services, on their collective heads. Nokia moves a lot of phones, and if they make the "Comes With Music" service available on a large number of handsets, that means there's now instant access to millions of songs in a lot of people's pockets.

Why should Satellite Radio care? Because Nokia obviously is seeing a value in providing music on mobile devices, and is pushing their leadership position hard to make sure they have a foothold.

Just a couple days ago, Nokia unveiled Nokia Internet Radio (pictured at right), a free downloadable application that will also be embedded in upcoming Nokia S60 3rd edition devices. It's essentially a directory, and an interface, of internet radio stations accessible on your Nokia phone.

Browse by station name, genre, country or language. Nokia Internet Radio also updates the top ten most popular internet radio stations hourly in its own special directory. The service also lets you save a list of "Favorites" - essentially presets of your top station - so they're accessible right away. And it's free.

The NAB says that there is no other "Nationwide Multichannel Mobile Audio Service" out there to compete with Sirius or XM.

I beg to differ.