Month: July 2004

Gold and Platinum Awards for Music Downloads

The US record industry is to further embrace online music sales by giving Gold and Platinum awards to top-selling artists. Musicians and acts selling 100,000 downloads from a licensed online music store will get a Silver Award, those enjoying 200,000 sales will get a Platinum Award. Multiple-platinum awards will be granted to sales of 400,000 and above.

Currently, artists receive a silver disc for 500,000 CDs sold, and platinum for 1 million sold. As legal music downloads increase, the RIAA may have to revise its new digital eligibility numbers as more and more tracks are sold. The Diamond award was introduced in 1999 for sales of 10 million CDs and above – perhaps they will launch a download version of this for 1 million downloads.

The new awards program launches in late August. “This is a gratifying milestone in the evolution of legitimate digital music services,” said Mitch Bainwol, chairman and CEO of the RIAA. “The fact that the marketplace has already advanced this far, and artists have attained this level of success, speaks volumes.”

The original award programme began in 1958, with Platinum discs first appearing in 1976. So the first Platinum disc was obviously a disco tune then.

RIAA

BBC Closes Five Websites, May Close More

The BBC is to close five websites in the wake of the Graf Report, and is looking at all BBC Online services. The five sites to close initially are Fantasy Football, What’s On, Surfing, Games and Pure Soap. “The process is not over” stated Ashley Highfield after announcing their closure. “The review is going to look at all of our websites. Nothing is going to escape scrutiny of its public value.”

No jobs will be lost immediately as staff will be transferred to other business areas.

Highfield has added another aim to BBC Online’s remit to educate, inform and entertain – connect. BBC sites will connect with audiences whenever and wherever they want. He also added a pledge that BBC Online would never produce e-commerce, e-mail, gambling or dating sites.

This is not quite the bold pledge it sounds – there is already a bbcshop.com, operated by BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the organisation. If the BBC ever wanted to operate any of the services that Highfield has ruled out, BBCWW would be able to do so without breaking any pledges.

BBC Shop

Ofcom’s Broadband Ambitions, Appoints Telecoms Adjudicator

The UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, has outlined its next steps and long term aspirations for the development of broadband.

Ofcom believes that their initial focus on rollout and coverage has paid off, with 512kbps services now common place and around 15% of the population taking advantage of broadband.

The regulator now wants to define and focus on a phase two: “the new generation of broadband services likely to emerge as competition increases between providers.”Ofcom are still as keen as ever to promote local loop unbundling, and have been successful at goading BT into faster action to improve third-party access to exchanges – they they note that the pace in the UK does not match those in other countries: “If there is sufficient progress in reducing costs and improving operational processes, local loop unbundling in the UK has the potential to deliver the same kind of growth and innovation emerging in, for example, France and Japan, where tens of thousands of local loops are unbundled each month.” Although Ofcom’s first attempts at promoting LLU failed, they are pleased that BT is finally getting the message, and is reducing costs.

By promoting greater competition in access networks, Ofcom believes that they can increase adoption of VoIP services in the next 3 to 5 years, with the majority of households benefiting from video-quality broadband by the end of the decade.

To assist in the further progress of LLU and broadband rollout, Ofcom are keen to promote the establishment of a Telecommunications Adjudicator, an independent post designed to resolve working-level implementation disputes. Indeed, they have today named Peter Black as the man for the job – a former senior executive at BT, Thus and NTL, Black is an experienced telecommunications exec.

The post is supported by BT, AOL, C&W, Video Networks, Wanadoo and others. Ofcom chief executive Stephen Carter said in a Statement: “We welcome the fact that 12 of the most significant companies have signed up to the independent Adjudicator scheme; and we hope this drives growth in the future.”

Ofcom’s aspirations

GNER Trains Get WiFi

GNER Trains in the UK is launching a new WiFi service for commuters on its East Coast Main Line. Ten trains will be equipped with wireless internet access, so if your train actually turns up, you can let people know how late you’re going to be. You can even email pictures of the motionless countryside, if you have a camera. A further ten trains will have WiFi installed in them over the summer.

First class passengers will get “free” access (i.e. it’s included in the astronomical cost of a train ticket), whereas standard fare ticket holders will pay between UK£2.95 and UK£9.95 (€4.40 and €14.83), depending on the length of access. Could be particularly expensive in the Autumn, depending on which kind of leaves fall.

The service can operate on trains travelling up to 125 miles per hour, but given that nothing has moved on our rail network at that speed for at least 100 years, passengers should enjoy uninterrupted access.

GNER Mobile Office

Sony Connect Launched in UK, France & Germany

After some delay, Sony have today launched the Sony Connect music download and play service, in UK, France and Germany.

Connect will follow the same pricing as the European version of Apple iTunes, 79p () in the UK and 99c () in Europe, but number of offered tracks will be smaller – around 300,000 tracks.

What currently makes the COnnect offering unique is access to music on Indipendant record labels. Apple negotatioation broke down with the Association of Independent Music (AIM), who represent many UK labels. Sony has been successful with AIM and their European equivilents, VUT (Germany) and UPFI (France).

As with the US version of Connect, the music downloaded will be protected with the ATRAC3 Digital Rights Management software, and will only be playable on Sony music players such as Hi-MD WALKMAN, Net MD WALKMAN, Network WALKMAN and ATRAC CD WALKMAN, or via Sony’s computer software – SonicStage. Sony say they currnetly have around 2 million players in Europe and hope to add to these figures with their new hard disk models.

Sony originally planned to launch the service in June, but were slowed down in negitiations with music labels.

Sony Connect Europe

Sharp e-book, 1mm thin

Sharp e-bookNot to be outdone by Sony, Sharp have announced their own e-book reader. The stunning-looking device is under 1mm thin and Sharp are projecting that it will be available in the shops by 2007.

Any problems with content not being available for it should be lighten by the fact that, In a very smart move, Sharp has already signed up over 7,000 content providers for its Zaurus handheld/PDA.

Clearly from the length of this piece, details are light, but the potential in this field is huge.

FujiSankei Business i

BBC Ten O’Clock News Extra – 1st interactive daily TV news bulletin

BBC Television News is 50 years old today and by way of marking the changing way of delivery news over that period, they have announced ‘Ten O’Clock News Extra’. When it is launched in autumn (fall) this year, viewers will explore additional material about individual news items – giving further depth to the story.

Currently with a fixed length news programme and a pressure to cover the world’s news, much material that has already been shot and edited is not used. The Extra version of the programme will make use of the material, whether it be interviews, footage or further background and make it available via the interactive TV Red button.

The supplementary content, which will be provided by the Ten O’Clock News team, will be made available for 45 minutes from 10pm. The BBC plan to have up to three items covered more thoroughly.

Head of BBC News Interactive, Richard Deverell, says: “This is a hugely exciting innovation for BBC News. It is the world’s first interactive daily TV news bulletin and will help viewers understand the top news stories by providing extra background information in a visually rich and engaging format.”

When the news programme starts, the extra information will be made available to the viewer via the Red button. When it is requested, the broadcast news video screen will shrink into the top left of the Extra template (Picture in picture). The viewer will be able to switch audio channels enabling them to continue to monitor the main news programme while exploring the additional information such as maps, profiles, etc. There will be one additional video stream that will loop over the 45 mins.

Two-Way TV will be providing and integrating the systems to the BBC, to enable them to publish the chosen content automatically to three platforms simultaneously, Freeview (DTT), Cable and Sky.

The Two-Way system works in conjunction with the BBC’s own internal News system. The BBC News team will be providing the additional editorial resources to select and publish the information. The Two-way system then converts the chosen content to be displayed on each of the platforms, attempting to make the content appear as similar as possible across the whole range, despite the wide range of abilities of the STB’s. Two-way have also provided the three front-end application, essentially display templates, that are downloaded to the three STB platforms.

Both the BBC and TwoWay are holding this up as an example of how the BBC working with outsourced partners, following the Graf Report on the BBC’s online service, which said the BBC should farm out at least 25% of new media work. This project has been in development since April/May this year, when the BBC went to tender looking for development partners.

BBC News

Two-Way TV

Digital Envoy Granted Internet Geo-Location Patent

Digital Envoy, an Atlanta, USA company, has been granted a patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, which determines the location of Internet users based solely on their IP addresses.

US Patent number 6,757,740, titled, “Systems and Methods for Determining, Collecting, and Using Geographic Locations of Internet Users,” covers the core methods used to determine the location of Internet users to the city level utilizing IP addresses. Furthermore, this patent claims a priority dating back to 1999 when the patent was first filed, and before any other current geo-location company was in existence.

Geo-location is not thought to be a unique idea, Digital Envoy are keen to protect there, so called “non-invasively” process.

“We feel that no other provider will be able to offer accurate geo-location solutions without infringing on our patent rights,” Friedman said in a statement. “We plan to aggressively defend our patent in order to protect the techniques, methods, and applications of this technology that offer so much value to our partners and customers.”

Digital Envoy and Google have been a technology partners for several years with Google currently paying US$8,000 a month for its use of the Digital Envoy technology and has offered to increase that amount by 50 percent, Kratz said. Not really reflecting the value Google is getting out of it for their location-based adverts.

There are many other uses for knowing the location of a Internet users, including providing information based on where they are or restricting the material to different areas. The last of this is of particular use to media companies.

US Patent 6,757,740, “Systems and Methods for Determining, Collecting, and Using Geographic Locations of Internet Users”

Digital Envoy

Print Your Fingernails with ImagiNail

It’s Friday, so this is our light-hearted selection.

Following the explosion of nail painting shops in both the US and the UK, some bright spark has come up with the idea of a printer that can decorate your fingernails.

The NailJet Pro appears easy to use; select the pattern or images that you want on your fingernail, apply a preparation coat to the nails, place the hand into the machine (which looks like a clumsy old style DeskJet printer), and finally apply a sealer.

Amazingly the process takes less than seven minutes to decorate all 10 fingers.

The selection of graphics is extraordinary and varied. From letters of the alphabet, through painting to religious symbols, they have it all. Anything they might have left out, can be download to the printer.

We’re now off to get our nails sorted out for the weekend.

ImagiNail

Music Store Update: Sony Connect Launches This Monday; US iTunes Counts Down to 100 million

Robert Ashcroft, Sony’s VP for European Network services has commented that the company’s online music offering, Connect, will be launching in Europe this Monday.

All five of the major labels, along with 150 independents, have signed up for the service.

Tracks will be encoded in Sony’s proprietary ATRAC format, not MP3, so you’ll need Sony’s Sonic Stage software to make use of the music store. And forget about using your iPod too.

Meanwhile, Apple are getting the champagne ready for the 100,000,000th iTunes track sold. To mark the event, Apple are giving away 50 new iPods, a gift certificate for 10,000 iTunes downloads (!) and 1 17” Powerbook. iTunes customers around the world are eligible.

“As we approach the unprecedented milestone of 100 million legally downloaded songs, we want to thank our customers who have made the iTunes Music Store such a stunning success,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “iTunes is pulling even further ahead of its competitors, and it’s all due to the wonderful customers we have.” That’s right Steve, don’t you forget it.

Jobs originally predicted that 100 million milestone would be reached within the first year of iTunes – but that would have been the end of April. This celebration is coming a little later than expected, but nevertheless iTunes has been an incredible success and its monthly totals are now far in excess of previous expectations.

Sony Connect

iTunes