Treo 650 Sets Speed-Typing Guinness World Record

Speed-Typing Guinness World Record Set: Treo 650 UsedDigital-Lifestyles were on hand to witness a new world record being created, as former World Text Champion Arttu Harkki used a Treo 650 smartphone to type the fastest-ever email on the move using a QWERTY keyboard – using a single thumb.

Harkki of Finland looked ready for business as he strode into the room of assembled hacks, his sports vest and multi-coloured headband giving the air of an Eastern European shot-putter.

But Harkki wasn’t here to lob heavy balls around – he was here to unleash his high speed thumb on a Treo 650 – and claim that much prized smartphone texting record!

Speed-Typing Guinness World Record Set: Treo 650 UsedBefore the record attempt could start, Hein Le Roux, official adjudicator from Guinness World Records explained the rules, “There are a lot of phones that incorporate QWERTY keyboards, and we need to make sure that the record is standard across all models. For this reason, we asked Arttu Harkki to type using just the thumb of one hand.”

Speed-Typing Guinness World Record Set: Treo 650 UsedAs the stopwatch-toting Le Roux looked keenly on, Harkki’s mighty uni-thumb went supernova as he bashed out the following message:

“The telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell (UK), who filed his patent for the telephone on 14 February 1876 at the New York Patent Office, USA. The first intelligible call occurred in March 1876 in Boston, Massachusetts, when Bell phoned his assistant in a nearby room and said ‘Come here Watson, I want you.'”

After several attempts, Le Roux announced that Harkki had managed to complete the message in just 2 minutes 22.9 seconds. Huzzah! A new world record!

Speed-Typing Guinness World Record Set: Treo 650 UsedOnce I’d recovered from the high octane excitement of watching someone write a text message repeatedly, I asked Le Roux what the previous record had been, and was surprised to find that there hadn’t been one, because this was a new category.

So, in other words, if I’d stepped up before Harkki, I could have been crowned world champion.

Only for a few minutes, of course – but (best Brando voice – thanks Brian) I could have been a contender!

For you reference (and we know you like the detail), Arttu gained the record for SMS speed typing (2 min 58 sec) back in 2001. The record from today is for a message typed on a mini-QWERTY keyboard.

Speed-Typing Guinness World Record Set: Treo 650 Used

Treo 650

AbbiTalk: UK VoIP Operator Claims Challenge To BT

UK VoIP Operator AbbiTalk Challenges BTAbbiTalk, a West Sussex-based provider of Voice Over IP (VoIP) telephony services, is talking tough about its cut-rate broadband call packages, that offer customers extra telephone lines with discount local and UK call charges and no line rental.

Boldly claiming to be “giving BT a run for its money”, AbbiTalk claim that its customers will “generally” save £90 over the cost of using BT phone lines in year one and a further £110 in subsequent years (dependent on the package concerned).

Paul Perrin, director of AbbiTalk is – perhaps – getting a little carried away here: “Within 18 months, we believe most telephone calls in the UK will be free and the only rental payment will be for a broadband connection. Many international calls will also be free. BT is running scared, and we’re doing the chasing!”

Customers using AbbiTalk’s broadband service pay the installation charge for their chosen VoIP deal to gain access to competitive call rates: free calls to users of AbbiTalk and other UK and international SIP services, 1.2/min to UK BT phones and less than 2p/min for calls to the USA, Australia and China.

UK VoIP Operator AbbiTalk Challenges BTPrices start at £149 for “AbbiTalkBasicOne”, which provides one extra phone line, a unique number with Pre Pay phone account, an adaptor and a DECT digital cordless phone with digital answering machine.

Other packages include “AbbiTalkTwo”, which provides two phone lines with a single, unique number shared across both, a router/hub, digital cordless phone with digital answering machine and an additional digital phone and “AbbiTalkTwoPlus” which offers two extra phone lines, two separate numbers and two DECT digital phones with digital answer machines.

The top package, forgettably entitled “AbbiTalkTwoWF”, adds WiFi networking of the customer’s computer.

New customers can use their existing broadband connection to adopt the service, or plump for AbbiTalk’s own broadband.

UK VoIP Operator AbbiTalk Challenges BTNo line rental is charged and there’s no need to use a computer to make the calls as these are accomplished through the standard cordless handsets.

AbbiTek’s MD, Keith Gardner, got all historical in his statement: “VoIP is now widely recognised as the next ‘disruptive technology’. Historians claim that others were Bell’s original telephone, Marconi’s wireless, the internal combustion engine, etc., so big changes are on the way.”

“We have subscribed to this view for some time, hence our core business, Abbitek, focuses on VoIP services for enterprises. Through AbbiTalk, our customers can access the latest VoIP products. When configured, these enable us to deliver all the benefits of VoIP to domestic, small business and home workers: our simple and affordable packages have something for everyone. Initial reactions have been positive.”

AbbiTalk

Hybrid Hard Drive From Samsung/Microsoft, Buffers In Flash

Samsung and Microsoft Create Hybrid Flash Hard DriveSamsung announces a prototype hard disk drive that includes flash memory, promising longer battery life and less hard disk woes for laptop users.

The Hybrid Hard Drive, the result of a partnership between Samsung and Microsoft, is designed for mobile PCs running the long awaited next version of the Microsoft OS, Longhorn.

Ivan Greenberg, director of strategic marketing at Samsung, claimed that the drive would reduce power consumption of 10% and help prevent problems that occur when the drive is moved while in use.

“The failing item in a returned notebook is typically the hard disk. If we keep that drive spun down, we believe that will have a huge impact,” he added.

A prototype of the hybrid hard drive will be shown for the first time this week at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in Seattle.

The hybrid hard drive will stuff a one-gigabit OneNAND flash chip inside a hard drive, which will serve as a write buffer and as a solid-state boot disk for the operating system.

Samsung and Microsoft Create Hybrid Flash Hard DriveThe hard disk would only spin up when the flash memory’s “write buffer” was full, reducing the time and power needed to keep the drive’s rotating media spinning.

Not unexpectedly, these snazzy hybrid drives will probably cost more than a regular hard disk, but Samsung believes that your extra dollars will be offset by “lower maintenance costs, 95 percent power savings when the disk is not spinning, faster boot time and substantially increased reliability.”

Commercial versions of the drive are expected to emerge in late 2006 – the same time as Longhorn.

Samsung
Microsoft

U100: Toshiba Revives Libretto Ultraportable Laptop

U100: Toshiba Revives Libretto Ultraportable LaptopAs part of Toshiba’s 20th anniversary celebration of the first laptop computer, the company has brought back its libretto line of ultraportables, starting with the miniscule U100.

This cute little puppy weighs in a paltry 2.16 pounds, and includes one of smallest widescreen displays we’ve ever seen.

The libretto brand disappeared some three years ago, but Taro Hiyama, a vice president of marketing at Toshiba, explained that “customer demand”, led to the company reviving the wee chappie.

“As today’s professionals continue to be always on the go, the return of the mini-notebook will allow users to travel with a fully-featured compact design,” he explained.

The libretto U100 is based around an Intel 855 chipset and Pentium M753 processor running at 1.2 GHz and comes with a clever suite of security features.

U100: Toshiba Revives Libretto Ultraportable LaptopFor maximum security, the pint-sized palmtop wedges in a biometric, integrated fingerprint reader with the 60 GB hard drive being protected by Toshiba’s ‘EasyGuard’ technology.

This cunning bit of wizardry calls on a 3D accelerometer to halt the drive heads to prevent data in case of an accidental drop.

Powered by Windows XP Professional, the machine comes with a respectable 512 MB of 333 MHz RAM, of which the onboard Intel Extreme Graphics 2 chip gobbles up between 16-64 MB of memory (needless to say, the libretto isn’t for hard core power gamers).

The titchy Toshiba features a 7.2″ WXGA display that somehow crams in a resolution of 1280 x 760 pixels. Users not gifted with eagle-like eyesight may find the installed screen zooming utility invaluable.

Despite its dwarf-threatening proportions, the libretto manages to squeeze in a slew of connectivity options, including 10/100 Ethernet, a 56K V.92 modem, IEEE1394 (FireWire), two USB 2.0 ports, SD card slot, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR and Wi-Fi 802.11b/g (there’s also an optional docking bay available offering a DVD read/writer)

Although some predicted that the growth of all-singing PDAs and, latterly, smart phones, would sound the death knell for ultraportables, Toshiba are gambling on there being a niche market for smaller, cheaper, Wi-Fi enabled laptops offering the convenience of laptops without the bulk.

U100: Toshiba Revives Libretto Ultraportable LaptopMeasuring in at a humble 8.3 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches, the libretto U100 retails for US$1,999 (£1,045/€1,500) in the US, with a possibility of a European release this summer.

On a personal note, it’s great to see the old brand coming back from the dead.

I bought a Libretto CT50 back in 1998 (see pic), and although the batteries lasted as long as pile of pork piles at a Billy Bunter convention, I loved the little fella.

Libretto

Nokia 5140i: Mobile For Fitness Enthusiasts

Sporty Nokia 5140i Mobile For Fitness EnthusiastsSweatband-toting sporty types will be pleased to learn that Nokia has introduced a new handset for active-minded consumers, the Nokia 5140i camera phone.

The beefy looking triband phone is housed in a dust and splash resistant casing and is described as “an ideal outdoor training partner” (personally I’d rather have Kate Moss jogging alongside me, but each to their own).

Tomi Paatsila, Vice President, Mobile Phones, Nokia, wound up his PR machine and let rip: “The Nokia 5140i offers active consumers a mobile phone that complements their on-the-go lifestyle. With its strong feature set and messaging capabilities, the Nokia 5140i enables outdoors and fitness enthusiasts to stay connected whatever their interests are – during hard-core training or just a leisurely hike.”

Sporty Nokia 5140i Mobile For Fitness EnthusiastsWater-bottle clutching joggers will appreciate the ‘Fitness Coach’ application, offering an ‘always-on’ personal trainer that (apparently) “encourages users to go the extra mile or finish the last set.”

The phone also offers easy connectivity to Polar Electro’s top of the line wrist computers, designed for fitness, running, cycling and outdoor enthusiasts, letting sweaty users view a graphical display of their performance on handset’s display

The Nokia 5140i interfaces with a variety of other Polar Outdoor Computers, such as the Running Computer S625X, Cycling Computer S725, Polar AXN 500, the Polar AXN 700 and the upcoming Fitness F55 heart rate monitor.

Naturally, the phone comes stuffed with all the usual widgets to keep ‘resting’ athletes entertained, with support for MP3 ring tones, a built-in FM radio and Push to talk (PTT) functionality.

Sporty Nokia 5140i Mobile For Fitness EnthusiastsThe phone also includes the Nokia Xpress audio messaging functionality, which enables users to record and send a voice message to others over the GPRS network

Currently warming up on the touchlines, the Nokia 5140i is expected to take off its tracksuit and take to the field some time in the second quarter of 2005 with an estimated retail price of €200 (£136/US$260).

Nokia

Your Stories: BBC Broadcasts Viewer-Produced Videos

BBC Broadcasts Viewer-Produced VideosBBCi has launched a programming service for digital satellite viewers showcasing short films made by ordinary folk across the UK.

Commissioned by BBC New Media and developed by BBC Nations and Regions, the service – dubbed “Your Stories” – is accessible at any time by pressing the red button on the remote control.

The program features content generated under the auspices of two BBC projects designed to give people the skills to make short films about their own lives: Video Nation and Digital Stories.

BBC Broadcasts Viewer-Produced VideosVideo Nation broke new ground when it first hit UK TV screens – running in short slots dropped in to the programming schedule.

It was created in 1993 after the BBC scattered a team of over 30 producers around the UK with the aim of encouraging local people to make short films. Seeing “Real people” on TV, explaining various details of their lives was a refreshing revelation.

The producers trained them in the art of storytelling and the use of camcorders, with the films featuring individuals sharing moments of their lives with the camera.

Digital Stories built on the heritage of the Video Nation taking it to a new audience by delivering the content online.

The team behind it provides digital workshops where people from different backgrounds can hook up and tell their stories with the help of electronic wizardry such as laptops, scanners, digital cameras and editing software.

BBC Broadcasts Viewer-Produced VideosContent on the ‘Your Stories’ service is divided into daily themes, each with its own title. “My Music”, for example, featured an eight-year-old trumpet player and a blind pianist.

New Media Knowledge (NMK) ran an excellent event last year exploring this subject, bringing together members of the Video Nation and Digital Nation, the roots of both were explored.

The showing of the content revealed the power of this content – emotion. ‘Normal’ people in control of making media about their lives, without it passing through all of the editorial filters that are, as a matter of course, applied to broadcast TV – removing the soul from the piece. It was, quite simply, some of the most powerful content I have ever seen.

As a regular reader of Digital-Lifestyles, you will know that we are hugely enthused about the future of the user-generated content as an alternative to media made by the current media companies. If you’re not convinced, watching the online examples of this (linked at the bottom of this piece) will help you understand.

Next month, the BBC intends to feature a week of films created by school students deep in stress and revision as they prepare for their GCSE exams.

Other forthcoming programs will be thematically linked with various linear programming offerings, including the BBC2’s, ‘Coast’, BBC One’s upcoming season of African-themed programs, and programming commemorating VE Day.

BBC Broadcasts Viewer-Produced VideosBBCi controller, Rahul Chakkara, explained the reasoning behind Your Stories service: “The BBCi audience is maturing, and is looking for content that is social and highly involving, available to them whenever they want.”

“Your Stories is the beginning of our efforts to meet this need. We go beyond involvement through interaction and we involve our audiences by encouraging them to produce their own content.”

BBC Your Stories
BBC Video Nation
Digital Stories
New Media Knowledge

PSP UK/ European Release Date, 1 September: Sony Official

PSP UK/ European Release Date, 1 September: OfficialBig sighs of disappointment are heard all around Europe, as Sony officially announce the released date of the handheld gaming/media dream machine, the Sony PSP. It’s going to be 1 September 2005.

The only cheers will be from the companies that are supplying imported PSPs from the US and Japan, where is has been available since the start of the year.

The PSP, or PlayStation Portable to give it its full title, not only plays games, but can show films (playing from its UMD disk) and play music using MP3 or Sony’s proprietary ATRAC-3 format.

Many current users have been finding that by applying a little ingenuity and using the built-in WiFi support, they are able to use the machine as a Web browser and more.

I had my hands on one a little over a week ago and can attest that it is indeed a product of desire. Not only is the design of the device great, but it’s solid feel only accentuates the flimsyness of the Nintendo DS. The screen performance is highly impressive, making the graphics look stunning. We think it will sweep all in front of it.

The DS has its own market of enthusiasts; the Nokia N-Gage QD has the benefit of being a mobile phone and Nokia behind it. Sadly the Gizmondo has none of these advantages and despite our best wishes, we can’t see anything but hard times ahead for them.

PSP UK/ European Release Date, 1 September: OfficialSony have announced the PlayStation Portable Value Pack at €249 (£179/US$323), which includes headphones, a 32Mb Memory Stick Duo, power supply, protective pouch, etc. The hit film Spider-Man 2 will be available on a UMD disc, free to early purchasers of PSP when they register on YourPSP.com.

Sony have created a new disk format with the 60mm wide UMD discs which holds 1.8Gb of data. Initially, Sony were very secretive with it, not even disclosing the capacity of the disc. Following a major change of heart when they opened their music players up to MP3 format, Sony has now opened the format of the disc, letting anyone put their content on it, providing they aren’t a rival games company. Many feel by not letting the public write their own data to these discs is a mistake – but perhaps following this line will boost the sales of the Memory Stick Duo.

PSP UK/ European Release Date, 1 September: OfficialThere are many tales of PSP-owners modifying their pride and joy to browser the Internet via Wi-Fi, or indeed run Instant Messaging client software.

It’s unclear if this opening up to the PSP as a homebrew platform was intended by Sony. What is sure, is they’re not doing anything to try to stop it. We’re waiting for the release of the Skype client for the PSP – that would really put the cat among the pigeons.

With the almost unbearable delay for the PSP in Europe, London chuck-away free “newspaper”, Metro, has been running a competition to win the PSP – Looks like those lucky winners have turned out to be more lucky than was originally thought.
Your PSP

3G boosts Ericsson’s profits

Ericsson's profits boosted by 3G rolloutEricsson has reported a thumping great rise in quarterly profits, helped by the deployment of 3G networks.

The Swedish telecommunications equipment giant reported better than expected first quarter profits of 6.7 billion kronor (£499 million), compared with 3.7 billion kronor last year.

Ericsson, the world’s largest supplier of mobile phone networks, said that net income for the first quarter increased 73 percent to 4.64 billion kronor (US$661 million) from a year earlier.

Sales were up 12 percent at 31.5 billion kronor, buoyed by the roll out of 3G services in Western Europe and increased demand for WCDMA, a high-speed transmission technology, in Eastern Europe and Turkey.

The company also saw solid demand in emerging markets with a substantial rise in sales expected in China in the second quarter.

Ericsson's profits boosted by 3G rolloutThese figures fly in the face of predictions from investors and analysts that sales would drop steadily for the big telecoms firms as Chinese manufacturers took over the industry.

Robert Sellar, head of technology on the equities desk of Aberdeen Asset Management, commented that these predictions failed to take into account the amount of spending that these companies’ customers needed to do to improve their existing networks to support 3G and other new technologies.

Ericsson’s orgy of champagne popping was, however, slightly marred by the news of unexpectedly strong reports from arch rivals Nokia and Motorola.

Ericsson
Ericsson First Quarter report
Nokia’s Quarterly Profit Increases By 18 Percent
Motorola Announces Record First-Quarter Sales and Earnings

Google AdWords Move Up A Gear

Google AdWords Move Up A GearIn a quest to blast their already soaring profits further up into the stratosphere, Google will test a cost-per-impression bidding model for AdWords ads, letting advertisers specify groups of sites or specific sites in Google’s ad network.

Instead of the current cost-per-clickthrough method used for text listings on its search and content networks, advertisers would set a maximum cost-per-thousand impressions price.

Google said it would operate a single auction to determine which ad to show based on the effective cost per thousand (CPM).

Advertisers would have to bid a minimum of US$2 (£1.04/€1.54) to reach a thousand people, while competing against other promoters for the same inventory, potentially leading to lucrative price wars for popular keywords, Web sites or categories.

The site-targeted ads will include static banner ads as well as animated formats – a move sure to annoy hapless surfers already weary of wriggling, spinning and rotating gizmos.

Google AdWords Move Up A GearGoogle has, however, promised limitations on the animated advertising fluff that can appear on their adverts, with blinking ads that continuously loop already declared verboten.

Advertisers will be able to manage ads from their Google AdWords account and create their own “ad networks” by entering the URLs or themes and topics of sites where they’d like to slap up their adverts.

Google will then produce a list of suggested sites (along with a maximum number of impressions for each site), letting advertisers select the sites to run their ads.

The advertising space will come in four formats – banners, skyscrapers, wide skyscrapers and leaderboards – with Google checking submitted ads for “appropriateness”.

Google AdWords Move Up A GearThe search engine heavyweights are hoping that the approach will appeal to advertisers who are fussy about where their brand appears or are aiming for a certain niche demographic.

“This is the first step toward meeting as many of our advertisers’ needs as possible,” said Tim Armstrong, Google’s vice president of advertising sales.

Google’s move comes as arch-rivals Yahoo prepare a significant expansion of its own service to place ads on other websites, also expected to include graphical ads.

Google

Everquest II Virtual Goods Trading Endorsed By Sony’s Station Exchange

Everquest II Online Auction Site offered by Sony's Station ExchangeIn an astonishing volte-face, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) has announced that it now endorses the auctioning of virtual items from its massively popular online game, Everquest II – with the electronics giant pocketing a cut of the cash, naturally.

From late June 2005, Sony’s Station Exchange will provide an “Online Entertainment auction service” enabling players to buy and sell virtual items for real money.

Sony is introducing the service in an attempt to put a halt to ‘plat farmers’. These are dastardly rotters who use macros and bots to harvest rare items in games, level up characters, gain virtual money – and then flog them off on eBay.

Everquest II Online Auction Site offered by Sony's Station ExchangePersonally, we’d rather buy a round of lovely real ale than shell out for the Dark Lord of Deltronia’s Mystical Turbo Sword of Mwegneli, but as we’ve reported before (Sales in Virtual Goods Surpasses $100m, Nov 2004), considerable sums of money are changing hands for virtual items.

SOE director John Smedley has estimated that the market for virtual items is upwards of US$200m (€153m/£104) worldwide and the Station Exchange looks to be an attempt to grab a fat slice of this juicy pie.

So far, Sony have said that the Station Exchange system will only be available on dedicated new servers and that players will be able to transfer to an exchange server but not from one.

Naturally, gaming bulletin boards have been buzzing with debate about this development, with some expressing concerns that the ability for a rich user to “buy” success in a game effectively creates a ‘class’ divide.

‘Miss Minnie’ voiced her doubts on the urban75 gaming forum:

Everquest II Online Auction Site offered by Sony's Station Exchange“There already is a ‘virtual class system’ within the game itself – you earn status and faction standing, money, prestige, titles, fancy clothes and transport, you start living in a hovel but can move on up to luxury apartments etc – But at least till now you could assume that most people had ‘earned’ those things by playing the game.

Now you won’t be sure if someone is a player or a buyer, so I suppose it could be said that touches of real-life’s ‘class system’ will be impinging.

In my opinion, that is the biggest shame – these games are supposed to be fantasy worlds and now real-life threatens to intrude.”

‘Private Storm’, on the same board, was more pragmatic:

“Trading of in-game items etc goes on and it is extremely difficult to stop it.”

Everquest II Online Auction Site offered by Sony's Station Exchange“I’m not sure of the mechanics in EQII, but in WoW (World of Warcraft) they have mitigated the potential for selling items somewhat by introducing the concept of having things bind to that character when it is picked up, meaning you can’t transfer items to other players, hence no selling though eBay and the like.”

“I think Sony has said in their press release that they can’t ignore the fact that the selling of stuff goes on and that a lot of the support they have to give players is to do with this, so they’re creating controlled systems for it to happen. Virtual ‘harm reduction’ as it were.”

“People approach these types of game with different playing styles and with different things they want to get out of it. Such games often require a large amount of time and dedication to actually see any significant progression and not everyone has the time to realise this progress. If you are a cash rich, but time poor player, but still want to play the game, buying items etc to help you get the most out of your time online doesn’t seem so bad.”

“On the other hand, there are players that are time rich, but cash poor who can achieve a large amount of success within the game simply ‘cos they have the time to do so. They’ve invested a large amount of time and money in playing the game and obviously feel that they should be able to benefit in the real world from this. Selling the stuff they acquire seems reasonable in this context.”

Everquest II Online Auction Site offered by Sony's Station ExchangeFor some gamers, an officially sanctioned auction site is an inevitable consequence of the growing popularity of virtual gaming, with Sony’s cut, a reasonable price to pay for eliminating a lot of scams.

If Station Exchange is successful, it may only be a matter of time before other auctions are permitted for SOE’s other games like Everquest I and Star Wars Galaxies.

Perhaps an official virtual auction site might prevent further tragedies like this story we covered last month: Legend of Mir 3 Gamer Killed After Selling Virtual Sword

Sony Station Exchange
urban75 bulletin boards