Hollywood Grabs The 3D Barrier

Disney is publicly stating their commitments to the digital 3D format for films – in our eyes, for good reasons – keeping people in the cinema.

Reuters has a story with a quote from Chuck Viane, Disney’s president of domestic distribution showing his love for 3D, “We absolutely believe in the whole concept of 3D and the enhancement that it brings in the ability to separate us from any of the other mediums.”

Big studios are desperate for ways to differentiate going to the cinema and what people can achieve at home.
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0207 SkypeIn Scandal: Cost Made Skype Drop Numbers

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Skype Bombshell: 0207 SkypeIn Numbers Must ChangeAs you know, we – and a lot of other people – aren’t impressed with Skype’s plans to cut off many of their 0207 London SkypeIn customers.

We’ve been following this story up through various avenues, one being the company that provided the 0207 number to Skype in the first place.

We had an interview with Don McQueen, CEO of GCI Com who provided the 0207 numbers to Skype when they started the service 2-3 years ago.
Continue reading 0207 SkypeIn Scandal: Cost Made Skype Drop Numbers

Google Set To Increase GMail Storage Limit

Google Set To Increase GMail Storage LimitWith punters lapping up the free email storage offered by Google’s GMail service, the company has pledged to accelerate the rate at which it adds storage space.

Google gave the world of free e-mail services an almighty kick up the jacksi back in April 2004 when it began offering 1GB of free storage for its Gmail service.
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Jalipo: Pay-per-minute Sports Video Launched

Jalipo: Pay-per-minute Sports StartingJalipo, an online video service, has announced that they will now be carrying televised sporting events.

As opposed to the more usual way of paying for the pleasure of watching sports events – on a subscriptions or pay-per-view basis – Jalipo will be charged on a pay-per-minute basis.
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Radiohead Tell Fans: “Pay What You Want”

Radiohead Tell Fans: Pay What You WantRadiohead have long been known as a band who like to do things differently, and their approach to selling their long-awaited seventh studio album certainly breaks new ground, with fans invited to pay whatever they like.
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GMail: Pay For Increased Storage: UPDATED

Google have quietly (as ever) introduced a pay for extra storage facility on GMail.

GMail: Pay For Increased Storage

I’ve come close to stop using Gmail over the last 6 months or so, after having heavily used it on a daily basis for over two years. It’s has all of my emails for my numerous accounts going through it.
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Twofour Get Parliament Webcasting Deal

Twofour Get Parliament Webcasting DealTrebles all round at Twofour Digital as they announce the winning of the three year contract to produce and host the webcasts of all proceedings from the House of Commons and House of Lords, made available through the Parliament Web site.

The webcasts include live coverage of all UK parliamentary proceedings and Select, Public Bill and General Committees as well as selected archive footage.

We imagine this is in no small way due to Phil Haggar now being within the Twofour fold, them having bought his Makeni Webcasting production company back in April this year.

What’s the relevance? We first met the very competent Mr Haggar when he ran Westminster Digital way back in 1999 – whose business backbone was … Webcasting Parliament.

It appears that Twofour’s ambitions don’t stop there, besides growing through acquisitions of companies, it’s also working for the European Parliament to design and deliver a ground breaking webTV channel broadcasting scheduled content in 20+ languages.

Twofour Digital

WiiWare: New Original Games Channel Opening

WiiWare: New Original Games Channel OpeningEveryone’s favourite games console manufacturer (except Sony, perhaps), is opening up another channel of content for its Wii.

Nintendo have announced WiiWare, letting people purchase and download original games software.

Nintendo have offered a service to download reworked classic games – Super Mario Bros, etc – to the Wii since last November. Indeed, earlier this month they announced that 4.7m of these classic games had been downloaded already.

WiiWare will attempt to get legions of small software developers to create compelling, less-expansive games, without them having to be concerned with the hassle and cost of creating games on disk.

Nintendo expect the first WiiWare content to arrive early 2008 – so coders, get coding!

Two Thousand Trees Festival, Mobile Tickets By TixMob

Two Thousand Trees Festival, Mobile Tickets By TixMob‘Green’ festival uses mobile tickets to save the world.

With the glorious … or was it gory-est … Glastonbury out of the way for at least another year (as well as the BBC’s over-coverage), the other festivals around the UK now have a chance of getting their messages out that 1) They’re on, 2) that they have everything that you heart desires.

Getting a new festival going these days is pretty hard as so many people are trying to do the same, realising that live music is where-it’s-at as people generally become ever-more atrophied by recorded music.

New festival, Two Thousand Trees, have a very ‘now’ idea, labeling it as a festival for ethical music fans – and a very worthy one it is in our book too. Beyond this they also have a much-to-be-supported goal of “not ripping people off and making sure everyone has an awesome time at our lovely festival.” Long may this ethos last.
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Big Brother Slashes Phone Voting Costs: What About Previous Years?

Big Brother Slashes Phone Voting CostsThe dreadful television programme, that those involved have tried as hard as possible to turn in to an ‘event’, Big Brother, comes on to some UK TV screens tonight. That isn’t of interest really, is it?

What is worth noting is how Channel 4 and Endemol have dropped the price of the phone calls that the show relies on to provide the votes that influence if contestants stay or leave the programme. Being ‘interactive’ with the audience they call it.

By way of a background to the price reductions, it’s relevant to understand that the UK has seen a large and considerable kerfuffle about how TV stations and production companies have been ripping off viewers who have called in to premium rate phone lines. Often the calling contestants had no chance of winning.

Big Brother Slashes Phone Voting CostsThe call price drops
This year eviction votes on Big Brother will drop from 50p per call to 25p (from a BT landline). Of this, 10p will go to charity and the reminder to Channel 4 for ‘administrating’ the calls.

Big Brother SMS voting will be dropped completely.

External vote monitoring
There have for years been unsubstantiated claims that the voting for Big Brother has been rigged by the production team to try and spice up things when it’s looking too flaccid.

This year the voting will be monitored by an external law firm.

Summary: Investigate Previous Years Voting
All of these changes that are being made around Big Brother appear like they’re being made to clear the decks before this years show.

With these moves, especially the SMS voting, is it just us who thinks that there are questions to be answer about the previous years voting, if those votes cast were properly taken account of and whether income generated over those years was legitimately gained.