Month: September 2003

USB drives have become widely popular, within business as well as for personal use. As presenters at business conferences know, if you turn up with your presentation not on one you’re seriously unfashionable. Individuals are using them to share their photo’s, music and video with friends.

The need to pull potentially large files from them in realtime (without copying the data to the local hard drive first) has lead Kingston Technology to bring out the DataTraveler 2.0 line of products. Utilising fast memory and the fast communications of USB 2.0, they have 1/8Gb, 1/4Gb, 1/2Gb and 1Gb models all of which can have their content protected using Kingston’s TravelerSafe software. They range in retail price from $74 – $349 and come with a five year warranty and should hold the data for ten years.

Link

With an estimated 50 million capable handsets in use, Oplayo intend to bring Windows Media 9 streaming to existing 2.5 and 3G phones.

Oplayo currently offer the popular Oplayer application for Symbian mobile phones which offers MVQ compression and throughput from about 10kbs up.

The Java-based Oplayer will adopt WM9 and they will be releasing a number of tools to support content providers – including encoding software, server software and a playlist generator.

Oplayo

The keenly anticipated Keynote at this morning’s d-cinema day at IBC was from Chuck Goldwater of the Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI) outlined the areas that were of importance to them.

The US and Europe have a significantly different view on what digital cinema is all about. The US want to take it to the high end and make it an ‘experience’ that can’t be sampled in anywhere but a new form of 1,000 plus seater venues. The European’s see it as a way to make cinema more democratic, enabling people to see a wide variety at even the smallest venue, eg a small village hall. The difference between these visions lead them at different ends of the projection quality, which could mean that Hollywood studios would not allow their films to be distributed to lower resolution projectors.

Chuck Goldwater told the audience that Hollywood are committed to making d-cinema a “better experience than a 35mm print” currently gives, which translates to content being projected at a 4k resolution. They are also mindful that the currently availability of 4k projectors is restricted so are considering _allowing_ scalable resolution solutions for 2K projection but only until 4k is economically viable. To ensure their aim of 4k is attained they are actively working with the projector industry.

The DCI also see their role as encompassing considering and evaluating the packaging of the content use MXF, content security including key management systems and the exploration of compression schemes.

The DCI are keen that their views of standards are applied across the World. These standard including a common format, compatibility & interoperability and reliable & secure distribution.

It’s not clear yet how this high-end approach will work with the more inclusive European approach.

Where previous studies have been concerned by the belief that mobile phones may cause the brain to swell, or even cause cancer in exposed areas, a new study conducted by Lund University has warned that mobile phones allow albumen to pass into the brain. This in turn may cause the affected person to become senile prematurely. It is not clear if the neurons would recover or repair themselves.

A similar study conducted at Finland’s Nuclear Safety Authority also found that the exposure to radiation in from mobiles causes increased protein activity in hundreds of proteins. They did not conclude if there was any biological effect.

The Independent

Slashdot

Despite a setback last week when eBay pulled his auction, George Hotelling has sucessfully sold an iTune song he no longer had any use for.

The track, an AAC-encoded file of a remake of Frankie Smith’s “Double Dutch Bus” (we’ve never heard of it either), was finally sold to his friend, Keith Elder in Michigan for 50 cents.

However, this transaction isn’t as exciting as it could have been – there won’t suddenly be a huge volume of used iTunes being traded legally on the internet: Hotelling had to transfer his entire iTunes account containing the lone tune to Elder.

Hotelling is still not sure if he has violated his iTunes terms of service and, for some inexplicable reason, Apple refuse to answer any of his questions on the issue.

All we’ve heard is: “Apple’s position is that it is impractical, though perhaps within someone’s rights, to sell music purchased online,” from Peter Lowe, Apple’s director of marketing for applications and services.

The original eBay auction was pulled last week after it reached silly amounts of money with eBay stating that it violated its listing policies. We think that might translate as “raised issues far too difficult to even think about”. Hotelling was obviously determined to make his point, and came up with a slightly elaborate way of continuing the sale: he bought a $29.95 prepaid card and then transferred the card to his friend when there was only 50c left on it. Not quite the easy, legal exchange we were hoping for.

In the end “It was a success,” said George Hotelling. “I was able to transfer the song, I documented it, and Apple even said it was probably legal. I think the biggest success was raising the issue in a lot of people’s minds.”

George Hotelling writes about the event