Digital-Lifestyles

June 2004

  • Neilsen Report: Game Websites Provide Stickiest Content

    Websites offering online games like Solitaire and Bingo are the stickiest places on the internet, according to a new report from Neilsen//NetRatings (whatever committee thought up that cheesy // gets a slap from me).

    46 million (that’s 1 in 3) Americans visited sites like Slingo to buy and download mini-games like Crazy 7s and Amazing Snail. Slingo is now one of the stickiest sites on the internet with surfers spending an average of four hours a month playing cards and throwing turtles. Even jigzone.com, offering free online jigsaw puzzles manages to trap people for an hour and a half of picture-rearranging fun per month.

    But it’s not just playing the games, people like to read about them too – which explains why EA Online and MSN Games are so popular.

    “The diversity of online game offerings showcases the popularity of games in the U.S.,” said Kaizad Gotla, an internet analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings. “Ranging from sites that offer original games to content sites that offer the latest information on popular console and PC games, the gaming industry’s presence online is indisputable.”

    And who is it that’s playing cards, being amazed by snails and lobbing these turtles around? Middle aged American women: 15% of visitors to mini-games sites are American women between the ages of 35 and 49.

    “Contrary to popular belief, the online games category is not dominated by males or by teens,” says Gotla. “Rather, the popularity of online games appeals to a broad demographic online, especially among middle-aged women.”

    So look out for some exciting new games coming from Digital Lifestyles: first up Cat Food Challenge and Polyester Panic.

    Jigzone – strangely relaxing

    Slingo

    Neilsen NetRatings

  • Hosting Provider Pulls 3000 Blogs Without Notice

    weblogs.com, a free hosting service for bloggers, has closed 3000 sites without giving the users notice. Citing health, bandwidth, name server and other problems, the founder Dave Winer has offered to give site owners their data back next month – but the handling of the whole affair has angered many.

    Blogging has become an incredibly popular past time – so much so that Bill Gates is encouraging it at Microsoft, and the company is rumoured to be bringing out a blogging product at some point.

    Winer, now a research fellow at Harvard, found that running the service took too much time and effort, and pulled the plug.

    Scripting News – Dave’s site

    Weblogs.com

  • Microsoft Planning Paid Anti-virus Service

    In a move that is sure to be unpopular with many, Microsoft quietly let slip that it is working on an anti-virus subscription service. MS recently acquired anti-virus company GeCAD in June 2003, and this is the first sign that it is working to release a product based on its acquisition.

    Mike Nash, corporate VP for security at Microsoft said at a dinner with journalists in Seattle “I want to make sure customers have another choice. Some people will continue to use Symantic, and some will use ours.” Symantic’s share price then slid down 5% almost immediately.

    Many people are furious that Microsoft is looking to make money out of a problem that is related to the many security flaws in its products, and considered to be perpetuated by poor coding in MS software such as Outlook and Internet Explorer.

    Microsoft will have to tread carefully with this one – even if they make their product free and bundle it with Windows, thus providing maximum protection, they will probably be accused of anti-competitive practices and end up in court.

    Oh, the irony.

    Microsoft’s security site

    AVG – free anti-virus software

  • Euro iTunes – The Next Day

    There are, I’m told, 700,000 tracks available in iTunes. That certainly does sound like a lot. What are they, though? I must confess, my first few searches came up blank. There I was, yesterday, having just subscribed, thinking “I’m 35. Technologically savvy. iPod owner. Credit card. I AM the physically embodiment of the demographic that iTunes is aimed at.”

    But I couldn’t find any of my favourite artists. Later on in the day, my friend Neil happily told me what the problem was: I listen to weird stuff that no-one is going to put in a music store launch.

    That’ll be it then. No Autechre. No God Speed You Black Emperor. Certainly no Plaid. Oh well.

    But plenty of the Darkness and the Corrs. But where’s The The? Only four tracks from Brian Eno?

    Anyway, on with the shopping. I adjusted my expectations that iTunes would offer me every track I’d ever wanted and started to treat it like a mid-sized branch of Fopp.

    And suddenly it became a lot better.

    Signing up was a little random – I entered my details on no less than three separate occasions during the day, seemingly without a hitch. But after the service was finally happy that it really did have my credit card details, I was off to hit Mastercard for lots of multiples of 79p.

    Perhaps Apple would care to explain why British subscribers pay 79p (€1.19) for a track and our European neighbours pay €0.99? Is it a reward because they’re better at football, or is it because British music execs have more expensive lunches to pay for?

    Navigating through the iTunes store is incredibly easy – and a handy breadcrumb trail will lead you back down each level, from track to artist to genre to home. You can’t get lost, and this has to be the easiest music store navigation out there. Compare it to MyCokeMusic, which had me punching my TFT before I gave up and wrote the rest of my £10 off.

    Celebrity play lists are a great idea – featured artists list a CD’s worth of tracks and they’re right there to buy – though there are only five playlists at the moment, and one of those is from Moby.

    And that’s it, really – that’s all you can say about it: it works fantastically well and it’s easy. Click on the track you want and it’s downloaded. Then it’s on your iPod and you’re listening to it on the bus.

    I suppose it’s expected with a catalogue this size, but there are a few howlers in the track information – weren’t they given the info directly from the labels, or did some work experience person at Apple US shuffle 70,000 CDs into a PC? Even the most casual scout through the store throws up listing errors frequently – my personal favourite being the David Sylvian track “Taking the Evil”. It is, in fact, called “Taking the Veil”, and is about a completely different thing altogether. Freudian slip?

    In short, if your music tastes are similar to 95% of the nation then you’ll get along just fine here – iTunes really is an amazing achievement. If you normally buy your music in a petrol station, then you’ll be laughing. You know who you are, Dido fans.

    If you’d had an iPod since day one, then suddenly it all makes sense.

    Definitely the best and cheapest (but not by enough) music store out there.

    Apple iTunes

  • Real Networks and Starz Launch Broadband Film Service

    Real Networks and Starz Encore Group have launched a new service delivering films over broadband to US subscribers. A US$12.95 (€10.68) subscription to Starz Ticket gives viewers access to a library of major films encoded in RealVideo 10 with download times of as little as 20 minutes. Titles include such reasonably recent fare as Pirates of the Caribbean, and comedy fish movie Finding Nemo.

    Content providers seem to like subscription models, either charging a flat rate for access to all content, or a lower subscription with content priced individually. It’s a good way of locking in customers.

    “In the cable and satellite world the ‘all you can eat’ subscription business model has proven to be much more popular than the transactional pay-per-view model,” said Starz chairman, founder and CEO, John J. Sie.

    Subscriptions are a cheaper business model too, as lots of small individual transactions cost money to process and unless all your customers suddenly jump ship one month, month to month income is more predictable.

    It’s a shame that geographical boundaries still apply to distribution rights – there’s no other reason why Starz Ticket should be US only.

    Starz

    Real Networks

  • Skype Planning VoIP to Plain Old Telephone Service

    Skype, an application that allows users to make free VoIP calls using broadband connections is planning to introduce a new product for calling land line and mobile phones. Called SkypeOut, the service lets subscribers make cheap calls to people with “real” phones in 20 countries.

    Skype’s global rate for these calls ranges from about €0.05 to €1, depending on how pitiful the bandwidth is into the country you’re calling.

    The service is backed with a new version of Skype which has an on screen keypad for dialling destination numbers.

    Skype

  • It Had to Happen: First Mobile Phone Worm in the Wild. A Lucrative New Market is Born.

    A worm for Symbian phones that spreads via Bluetooth has been discovered by Kaspersky Labs, raising substantial concerns in the mobile industry. Cabir, as this specimen has been called, has no payload and is technologically very simple, but spreads through initiating a Bluetooth connection with another phone.

    This doesn’t mean that you could infect your Series 60-based mobile with a virus or worm just by walking within 30 meters of an infected handset – you would have to accept delivery of the file. Although this seems like a fairly conclusive reason why a Bluetooth virus would find it difficult to spread, the rapid spread of worms throughout the internet does demonstrate that some people are daft enough to open any sort of attachment and instal it on their PCs etc.

    A group of virus writers called 29a are suspected of releasing the worm, with their previous “hit” being the Rugrat virus. 29A don’t write malicious worms, preferring to prove the concept.

    Anti-virus software manufacturers must love guys like 29a. No doubt in the near future you can look forward to downloading antivirus software to your mobile, from your usual ringtones and wallpaper provider – I’d better get working on that “Mobile Phone Anti-Virus Software Market Now Worth US$1 Billion” headline.

    Kaspersky

  • Samsung’s Digital Multimedia Chip for Mobiles

    Samsung have developed a low-power chip for processing terrestrial digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB) on mobile phones. The new chip will allow content providers to customise content such as high quality digital terrestrial television for on-demand viewing on mobiles.

    The chip consumes 40% less power than their previous design attempts, making it suitable for inclusion in 3G phones.

    To showcase the technology, Samsung are teaming up with SK Telecom to offer satellite-based DMB by the end of the year.

    Samsung’s Press Centre

  • Broadcast Asia 2004

    The definitive Electronic Media event for Asia, BroadcastAsia 2004 will launch several new initiatives, from media content Production to Management and Delivery to meet the industry needs of today. Special highlights of New Media, Production/ Post-Production services and more will also be on display.

    Digital Lifestyles publisher, Simon Perry, will give the industry address and host a panel discussion.

    http://www.broadcast-asia.com

  • European iTunes Launches – UK79p or €0.99

    Apple’s much-awaited iTunes store has launched in Europe, and is setting a new price for music.

    Offering 700,000 songs for UK79p and €0.99, the price point is considerably less than Napster UK, who last month claimed to us that wholesale prices where the cause behind their UK£1.09 (€1.62) basic price. Most iTunes albums will cost UK£7.99 (€12). However, iTunes UK is rather more than its US equivalent, famous for its US99c price for single tracks.

    Also, note that UK79p is actually €1.19 by today’s exchange rate, so UK music buyers are getting fleeced yet again.

    iTunes has one of the best set of consumer rights behind any music site, allowing users to play a track on up to five different devices along with unlimited CD burning.

    Due to massive interest, the iTunes store is being a little unresponsive at the moment – we’ll be logging in later and taking it for a proper test spin.

    AOL chose today to announce that they have formed a partnership with Apple to integrate iTunes into their product. The main advantage for AOL will be single-click registration, with free downloads promotions and iPod competitions.

    Apple Launches iTunes