Digital-Lifestyles

October 2004

  • Google’s Profit Growth Continues

    Anyone who was concerned that Internet search giant Google would be hampered by going public in August can breathe easy as Google announces, in its first financial results since floating on the stock market, that its profits have more than doubled.

    They have posted third quarter net profits of $52m (£30m), up from $20.4m in the previous year, and its share price has now surged more than 90% since its initial float.
     
    Not bad for a company, which was started in a garage by two students and overtook the established search engine giants Yahoo! and Microsoft to become the most popular search engine in the world.  If only so many rock bands who started life in that same auspicious incubator could have done so well.

    Many have argued that Google is an advertising company, not a search company. As Google strength as a search tool has surged, so has their income from advertising. Demand for their paid-for search text-ads, where advertisers are increasingly willing to pay high prices to have their site listed along side search results in the knowledge that they only have to pay if a potential customer clicks on their link. The move to putting their advert on many other sites, targeting them closely to the pages content by automatically understanding what the page was about, significantly increasing their reach.

    Google hasn’t rested on their advertising laurels, have now moved into email, a core business for its rivals Yahoo! and Microsoft, and it also operates a comparison-shopping search engine called Froogle, which recently launched in the UK. It’s not stop there – it also recently announced a test of a new desktop search product in the US that allows people to search Google using mobile telephone text messages in an ongoing game of chess where they are trying to anticipate what a rival like Microsoft will do.  

    Personally, I get nervous when ‘the suits’ move in on previously laid-back but remarkably successful technology companies. Google and rival Yahoo each get a significant portion of their revenue from the lucrative Web search advertisements, and while some analysts predict that growth in this area will slow down in coming years, its hard to predict where Google will end up if this potential difficulty is realised.

    Google

  • First 100Gb Portable Music Player

    Xclef 500Just when you were find it tough to find enough music to fill your 40Gb iPod, Digital Mind comes along with the DMC Xclef 500 portable MP3 music players. Christened “big brother” it has the largest available storage space of any portable music player on the market. With a price tag of $449.00 (~€355), this bouncing 100Gb baby is capable of holding more than 25,000 music files, so now all you need is the time to listen to them – close to two months of 24 hours a day listen.

    The Mac- and PC-compatible digital music player sports a traditional build because it uses a standard 2.5-inch laptop hard disk drive mechanism, and has already eclipsed its older sibling 80Gb released earlier this year with an incredible 80 gigabytes. With this kind of capacity, it’s more likely that it will be used to either carry data files or backup the entire hard drive of your computer.

    Xclef 500 connects using a USB 2.0 interface and also accepts input from a built-in mic, line-in audio connector and S/PDIF optical mini plug.  The 20 hour plus battery life uses a rechargeable lithium-ion battery, and supports built-in MP3 encoding, voice recording, and FM radio.

    Xclef 500 supports MP3, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, WAV and ASF audio file formats. AAC format, including those Digital Rights Management protected files purchased through iTunes, is not supported.

    Since it is recognized as a USB mass storage device, files can be moved easily between PCs and Macs. Its intuitive user interface allows the user to start navigating through files and playlists almost immediately.

    Of course the cynical might say that the huge capacity of this device, which is larger than most laptop drives and many desktop machines, is unnecessary, but as we know, available space is always filled, even if what fills it becomes worthless.

    DigiMind

  • Mobile vs Web gaming

    Games on mobiles are not new, neither are multiplayer games, but Macrospace have teamed up with Certus to go a step further, by allowing players to compete in real-time using their mobile phones with not only other mobile users, but also PC users via their web browser.

    Global mobile to mobile, Web to mobile gaming creates a whole new multiplayer dynamic. Designed for the more casual gamers, Macrospace hopes to attract a broad range of people who are already familiar with web-based games, but who may not yet appreciate the gaming potential of their mobile phone. The new games, developed in partnership with Denmark’s Certus, use powerful server-side technologies to create a robust multiplayer platform that is simple for even novice users, and three have been launched for openers.
     
    Multiplayer Four-in-a-row challenges you to get four counters in a row before your opponent, while the multiplayer version of the timeless game of strategy, Multiplayer Reversi, allows you to challenge your friends anytime, anywhere in real-time.  Finally, Multiplayer Battle Ocean encourages you to sink your opponents’ fleet of ships before he sinks yours. Players can also chat to each other seamlessly between mobile and Web.

    The games can be played across any Java-enabled mobile or Web platform, and they have been specifically designed to work across 2G, 2.5G and 3G technology, using turn-based gameplay that suits the technical limitations of existing handsets and networks.

    Most importantly, for player kudos, Macrospace multiplayer games utilise global ranking and high scores, allowing users to view other players’ scores and select opponents of a similar skill level. They can also create a permanent username, circumventing the need to create a new one for every game they purchase. It’s a real virtual community affair as Certus’ technology allows operators and portals to run tournaments and create competition leagues.

    People used to miss bus and train stops because they fell asleep or were engrossed in a good book, now it will be because they are preoccupied with multiplayer global intrigue on the tiny screen.

    Macrospace
    Certus

  • TI to put DVB-H in Single Chip

    Texas Instruments have just announced they will be building a single chip that will that will allow cell phones to receive digital television broadcasts over a wireless network.

    Currently if a mobile phone manufacturer wanted to do this they would have to include three separate chips – a TV tuner, a signal demodulator and a channel decoder, but the TI chip, codenamed “Hollywood”, includes all this functionality already.  “Hollywood” will support two emerging digital and open TV standards for the wireless industry – the European, DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting – Handheld); and the Japanese Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting – Terrestrial (ISDB-T).

    Texas Instruments say that the chip will be able to receive a live TV broadcast at up to 30 frames per second, twice the rate that some of today’s top notch phones display video clips.

    While the chip is already being trialled, manufacturers probably won’t receive samples until 2006, pushing commercial deployment to 2007.

    It’s unclear if users will watch TV on a tiny mobile screen.  Furthermore, it is not yet known which mobile phone manufacturers will provide the phones, although Nokia, who announced last year that they are going to put television tuners into all their cellphones, (having already done so with the 7700) could be a contender.

    A time might come when we forget what the mobile phone is really for.  We’ll be so busy playing music and video games, taking photographs, or watching TV that receiving a call will become an irritating nuisance.

    Texas Instruments

  • SCH-250 5Mpx Phone from Samsung Released

    Samsung, the world’s third-largest handset maker has today released the world’s first camera phone with 5-megapixel resolution in Korea. In conjunction with Japan-based camera specialist Asahi Pentax, Samsung have devised a camera module specifically for the mobile phone.  Poor quality mobile pictures will soon be a thing of the past  – a mere grainy memory.  Besides the incredible resolution, the SCH-S250 also includes the first QVGA display (240×320)) in a mobile phone that supports 16.7 million colours.

    Your average mobile-wielding sulky teenager considers built-in cameras with picture resolutions of less than one megapixel passé, but the SCH-S250 will raise their little technical antennae.  The 5-megapixel camera features a high-quality CCD sensor, 1/1000-second shutter speed, and QVGA  (Quarter VGA)video recording. The unique “stretch” design protects the display and camera lens when not in use. 92 MB of built-in memory can store up to 100 minutes of high-quality video, but less than 18 still photos at full resolution. Additional storage can be added and a  32MB auxiliary memory is included as standard. And the people at Samsung and Asahi Pentax didn’t stop here – an MP3 player and TV output round out the features.

    This little phone could be used as your portable office as it also includes a text-to-speech function allowing the phone to “speak” to-do lists and incoming text messages.

    Furthermore, South Korea’s top mobile carrier, SK Telecom, has said it will introduce 10-megapixel camera phones produced by Samsung by the end of this year. The SCH-S250 price will be announced next week, so it is hard to predict yet how soon the kids will be fighting over it in the schoolyard.

    Mobile operators love high resolution photos, as transferring them takes lots of bandwidth and there for cost the user considerably more than low res pictures.

    Samsung

  • WiFi – it’s Everywhere … and Now With Voice

    My local coffee shop and corporate America have one thing in common – they are adopting wireless. WLAN hotspots today are as exciting as the record store of the 1950’s. 

    There are lots of players in the market and already some of them are joining forces to increase their chances of success, small operators needing the resources of bigger players.  The enterprise community needs wireless for its notebook wielding road warriors, and consultants Frost & Sullivan expects total subscription revenues in the European WLAN hotspots market to rise from around € 18 million (~$22,664,522) in 2002 to in excess of € 1 billion by the end of 2006.

    Frost & Sullivan’s study indicates that the key to success lies in selecting the locations most frequented by business travellers, and it would seem that a marriage of convenience between WiFi and VoIP would be very beneficial.

    Boingo Wireless, a CA-based Wi-Fi hot spot operator and aggregator, have just done deals with KPN HotSpots in The Netherlands and The Public Network (TPN) in Switzerland, adding 290 Wi-Fi hot spots in key travel locations in these countries to the Boingo Roaming System. With these new additions, Boingo’s worldwide network includes more than 11,000 hot spots with 5,600 locations in Europe.

    Boingo have also set up shop with Vonage Holdings Corp., a leading broadband telephony (VoIP) provider in North America, in an effort to simplify voice over Wi-Fi services and make them more accessible to customers. This move is the first phase of their VoIP strategy, whereby mobile travellers using the Xpro from Xten, can access the Vonage service from almost any Internet connected personal computer.

    Boingo and Vonage will conduct a trial before the end of the year and the proposed bundle will include a Xpro SoftPhone from Xten and a headset that will allow the user to communicate over the Internet from any of the Boingo hot spots.

    Frost & Sullivan
    Boingo
    Vonage

  • Irish File Sharers Risk Legal Action – IRMA

    Following the pattern of the music associations in the USA and UK, the IRMA (Irish Recorded Music Association) is starting to put pressure on music file sharers. They told Digital Lifestyles that the popularity of P2P is strong in Ireland – “Anything that happens there happens here too.”

    Dick Doyle, Director General of IRMA explained that they will soon run a campaign sending out messages to P2P users warning them to avoid using file sharing programmes and advising them to disable the share feature. While it is true that a large part of their business involves the movement of copyrighted material, BitTorrent and its pals Kazaa and eDonkey are also being used for legitimate content.

    He went on to tell us that they are in the process of litigating, but that it would take a further 2-3 months.  “We are following what the US did a few years ago – suing the end users.  We ask the ISPs to disclose the identification of P2P users, and if they don’t, we take them to court.  We do want to retain a good relationship with the ISPs though.”

    So, how much of the money goes to the artists in Ireland then? “If huge payments are made we will of course share these with the artists”, says Doyle.

    IRMA

  • London Schoolchildren to get Broadband Learning at Home

    Soon, too soon for some, there will be no excuse for not having your homework done as London education authorities are planning to install broadband in the homes of London schoolchildren. , This initiative by the London Education authorities is timely in the light of a recent OECD report that identified “Disappointing” the use of ICT (computer & technology) in upper secondary schools, even in the most advanced countries, despite major investment outlays over the past 20 years.

    With broadband already in more than 80 per cent of London classrooms, the plan now is to extend the initiative and allow pupils at primary and secondary schools, access to high-speed Internet services at home. That means a portal that supports a million people, who will have a personal log-on, 25MB of space, their own email and of course, access to a cornucopia of online learning materials.

    As we’ve previously reported extending learning to the home has been very successful in trials in Kingston Upon Hull in the UK where, using the KIT TVIP service, pupils are able to work on the school’s servers using a keyboard, a Set Top Box and their television.

    It looks like there will be very few excuses left for not attending class either, unless you are at death’s door, since the London Grid for Learning (LGfL) has created an education network that shares IT resources through classes held via video-conferencing, virtual field trips and personalised pupil programmes. Virtual field tripe, eh?  Looks like you won’t even be able to say the damp brings on an asthma attack when the tree identification trip can be done from the comfort of that lovely classroom. The personalised learning feature will facilitate a managed learning environment, through online facilities.

    When you put the words children and Internet together the result sparks fear in the hearts of many parents, so readers will be relieved to learn that the content filtering and managed access in place on the machines in schools is being extended to the children’s homes.  In fact a service called ‘LGfL at Home’ will filter the home broadband service.  Parents can have a password to circumvent the filtering while children can access the online learning resources.


    Last April Digital Lifestyles looked at Kingston Communication’s collaboration with an East Yorkshire school that has led to an exciting project to engage pupils in interactive learning, both at home and in the classroom. (story link)

    London Grid for Learning

  • Halo 2 – Breaking Records Even Before Release

    Halo 2 day is approaching and the worst thing that can happen to a gamer on that auspicious day is to encounter a technical fault with his xBox.  Not even the genetically enhanced super-soldier, Master Chief could help him out on this one.  He’d be too busy acting as a buffer between the relentless Covenant and the destruction of all humankind.

    Halo 2 has broken video game records, with pre-orders of more than 1.5 million in the US alone and is even projected to bring in more revenue than any day one box office blockbuster movie including Spider-man 2, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Matrix: Reloaded. No other game has ever surpassed one million.

    Some 6,500 US stores plan to open just after midnight on Tuesday 9 November for the game’s release, and the Toys R Us in Times Square, New York, will sell the very first copy.  Halo 2 will be released in the UK and Ireland on November 11th. Many are already dubbing this Halo Flu day, predicting the number of people taking the day off sick.

    Five million copies of the original Halo: Combat Evolved, were sold on Xbox, PC and Mac platforms, so one can only imagine that it successor will at the very least equal this figure.

    Halo 2’s burnished armour may have been slightly dulled by the release of a reportedly French language pirate version onto the Internet last week with illicit code turning up on a several piracy websites and newsgroups – a development which apparently angered many fans.  Not surprisingly, Microsoft intends to pursue the culprits using the full rigour of the law.   

    The people at Bungie Studios, Halo 2’s developers are understandably aghast at the thought of years of hard work being stolen, and the ‘Underground Army’ has been called into action to short circuit the spoilers.  Perhaps Master Chief will also lend a hand.

    Bungie
    Microsoft games
    Xbox
    Buy Halo 2 on eBay US/UK

  • Sega Superstars 1st non-Sony use of EyeToy

    Sega Superstar with EyeToySega are launching a wide reaching, active and colourful campaign to trumpet in the arrival of Sega SuperStars, the first non-Sony game developed for the EyeToy. Available from October 22nd, the campaign will highlight the excitement and interactive nature of the game. 

    For those of you who may not know – and they’re might be some – the hugely innovative EyeToy is a camera that plugs into the PlayStation 2 and sits on top of the TV. An exercise in body mnemonics, it projects an image of the gamer onto the TV screen and tracks player’s movements, as they use different body parts to control characters, allowing the player to become an intrinsic part of the game.
     
    “Eye Toy is not as well known as we would like it to be”, says Sega’s Tina Hicks as she elaborated on the military precision of the campaign.  “We are targeting the games press and putting sig sheets in phone booths.  A number of roadshows will be taking place at shopping centres across the UK, as well as in-store promotions from the 28th to the 30th of October.”  Point-of-sale material will also be displayed throughout specialist gaming outlets and mainstream entertainment chains including Blockbuster and Gamestation.

    Features have also been written in those pillars of modern teenage culture – Bliss, Sugar, Smash Hits, Top of the Pops, and TV Hits, so if you are too young to be frequenting the hairdressers, perhaps your Granny might do the necessary reading.  This may be the case since the core target audience for the campaign is children aged between six and 14.

    Sega SuperStars features 12 unique mini-games, each with one of the characters, offering 12 unique interactive experiences.  It uses the in-game motion capture abilities of the EyeToy camera to allow gamers to transpose themselves into some of the most popular Sega characters — including Samba De Amigo, Sonic the Hedgehog, House of the Dead, and Virtua Fighter.

    Sega SuperStars