May 2005

iTunes 4.8 Gains Video, Speculation Starts
With ne’er a whisper or a parp on the PR trumpets, Apple has quietly released an updated version of the iTunes software as a free download from its Web site.
Described as including “new Music Store features and support for transferring contacts and calendars from your computer to your iPod,” iTunes 4.8 has a big surprise lurking in its bag – the capacity to play movies within it.
With all the stealth of a Dickensian pick-pocket, Apple has also added some short promotional music videos to the service, supplementing the music videos and movie trailers hosted through iTunes.
The short .mp4 format promos may not exactly be Hollywood blockbusters, but it’s an effective ‘proof of concept’, illustrating how Apple could easily offer full-length video through its store.
Mindful of the marketing value, Apple has made music videos available initially on purchase of albums or tracks from the Dave Matthews Band, Morcheeba, Gorillaz and The Shins.
For example, fans shelling out for the Dad-friendly Dave Matthews Band album, ‘Stand Up’, can also download a digital booklet containing the album artwork, a five minute video (55MB download) showing the making of the album, with the all the usual bundled extras like interview clips etc.
Downloaded video clips can only be played in iTunes, with an option to watch the video in full-screen mode.
The updated software also lets iPod owners manage contact and calendar information, with the choice of synchronising all or some of the contacts in Apple’s Address Book, as well as all or some of their iCal calendars.
The new version also includes a security fix to patch up a vulnerability relating to MPEG4 file buffer overflows (they sound rather painful).
By bolting on video functionality, Apple seems to be shimmying ever closer to the full integration of iTunes and Quicktime (iQuick? TuneTimes? Quines?), with the iTunes music store now offering videos and movie trailers for free viewing – just like the QuickTime homepage.
Apple
Apple iTunes
10 May, 2005
Taiwan NFC Scheme Moves On, BenQ Supplies Handsets
According to industry insiders, trials of mobile phones doubling as payment tools will be taking place in Taiwan shortly, marking a big step for the nation’s contactless technology development.
They’re using Near Field Communication (NFC), a close-range wireless technology that operates over a few centimeters, enabling the simple transfer of information. Created by Nokia Corporation, Royal Philips Electronics and Sony Corporation, it uses a restricted version of RFID and we’ve been last 18 months, or so.
Taiwanese cardholders can already make payments at contracted petrol stations, coffee shops, video rental stores, train stations etc by simply waving their NFC-enabled device in front of sensor devices.
BenQ, one of the 12 partners in the NFC consortium, is expected to deliver 100 new mobile phones embedded with smart chips for the trial program next month.
Stage one of the trials will be conducted by Taipei Smart Card Corp, who will start testing the BenQ phones as a means of payment for services on bus lines, the MRT and public parking lots in the capital.
If that all goes tickety-boo, developers will look to strike deals with mobile service providers to integrate chips with Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards in handsets, giving access to mobile banking functions and even debit or credit card functionality.
The merging of cell phones and IC-chips is part of the government’s M-Taiwan (mobile-Taiwan) scheme, which put together a (NFC) consortium in November last year.
Taiwan’s alliance pooled the resources of BenQ, Taipei Smart Card, the Institute for Information Industry, five cellphone service providers, MasterCard International and Visa International.
NFC handset payment services are already tickling the public’s imagination in Japan and South Korea.
In Japan, Sony has been conducting contactless payment services with a mobile phone operator and train company, and in South Korea, SK Telecom has launched the Moneta card program with a circulation of 100,000 Visa-enabled mobile handsets.
According to Peter Manners, regional head of Visa International Asia-Pacific, the next phase is to promote the use of Universal Subscriber Identity Module (USIM) cards in 3G handsets.
Addressing besuited execs at the Smart Card Expo at the Taipei International Convention Center, Manners said Taiwan is second only to Malaysia in the Asia-Pacific in terms of chip-embedded card penetration.
Nokia 3220 Brings Contactless Payment and Ticketing
BenQ
NFC Forum
10 May, 2005
Palm LifeDrive “Mobile Manager” Appears On Amazon
After months of rumours on the Web, details of palmOne’s new LifeDrive PDA have finally shown up on Amazon.
Engadget.com reported that the listing confirms that the US$499 (~£262 ~€385) device will come with a 4GB Hitachi Microdrive, SD card slot, 320×480 hi-resolution colour display (with portrait and landscape viewing) and offer Bluetooth and 802.11b Wi-Fi wireless connectivity.
The LifeDrive handhelds will be powered by a 416MHz Intel XScale PXA270 processor and run on the Palm GarnetOS, which includes support for wireless connections such as Bluetooth.
The device will be a little larger than palmOne’s latest high-end model, the Tungsten T5, sizing up at 4.7 inches tall, 2.8 inches wide, and a pocket-threatening 0.8 inches thick. It will weigh 6.8 ounces.
According to sources, the music-playing device will use Pocket Tunes and sync with Real’s Rhapsody music service, suggesting that it could be seen as a turbo-charged challenger to Apple Computer’s US$199 (~£104 ~€153) 4GB iPod Mini.
NormSoft’s Pocket Tunes is able to play MP3, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, and WAV files and the unit will also support full screen video and photo playback.
Business users will be catered for with the bundled DocumentsToGo software supporting Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Acrobat files.
The unit also comes with ‘Camera Companion’ software for transferring photos to and from the device, with ‘Drive Mode’ allowing users to plug their handheld into the USB port on a PC and have the microdrive appear as a removable drive.
The LifeDrive comes with USB 2.0, so transferring files onto the microdrive should be a fairly nifty business.
Despite black leather clad doomsayers predicting the death of the PDA, palmOne clearly thinks that a hard drive-based multimedia device able to take advantage of the immense software resources of the palm platform could be a winner.
There’s certainly industry interest elsewhere, with Dell rumoured to be considering a hard drive based handheld.
Although there’s been no official announcement from palmOne, the LifeDrive is expected to launch in the US on 18th May, 2005.
palmOne
Palm LifeDrive on Amazon
Engadget coverage
9 May, 2005
BlackBerry Harvests More Than 3 Million Subscribers
Research In Motion (RIM) have announced that that the BlackBerry wireless communicator now boasts 3 million worldwide subscribers, with one million subscribers added in less than six months.
The rise of RIM users has been astonishing. BlackBerry subscribers reached the one million mark in February 2004 with that figure being doubled in less than ten months as the company reached two million subscribers in November 2004.
“It’s an exciting time as BlackBerry continues to enjoy enormous success and rapid growth around the world,” purred Jim Balsillie, Chairman and Co-CEO, Research In Motion. “With over 50,000 retail points of presence, accelerated geographic expansion and the anticipated addition of 100 new carriers in 2005, we are scaling our operations for the five million and 10 million subscriber milestones.”
BlackBerry Enterprise Server’s ability to integrate with Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino and Novell GroupWise (and other existing enterprise systems) has proved a hit with corporate customers keen to take advantage of push-based wireless access to e-mail and other corporate data.
Individuals and smaller businesses have also been attracted to the BlackBerry Internet Service, which allows users to access up to ten corporate and/or personal e-mail accounts (including Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino and many popular ISP email accounts) from a single device.
Looking to the future, RIM is teaming up with Microsoft and IBM to extend instant messaging to BlackBerry subscribers through Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 and Lotus instant messaging.
Pulsating with confidence, the company says it is gearing up to cope first with 5m subscribers and then 10m users, although it failed to give any idea of when they might expect to pass these hefty milestones.
With the NTP lawsuit now resolved, RIM is free to follow its European initiative and license its Blackberry Connect software to US mobile phone vendors, so we can expect to see more third-party phones and handsets connecting to the service.
Recent figures revealed that BlackBerry recorded a 76 percent increase in its total sales in the first quarter of 2005, while its main competitor Palm saw its sales slide by 26 percent.
Research In Motion (RIM)
RIM settles NTP lawsuit for $450m
9 May, 2005
Google Web Accelerator Gets Flak, Website Goes Down
It was a bad weekend for Google as the entire site was rendered unavailable on Saturday night and their new Web Accelerator application drew criticism on privacy and security concerns.
The free Web Accelerator app was designed for broadband users to speed up access to Web pages by serving up cached or compressed copies of sites from Google’s servers.
Within hours of release, critics were pointing to a flaw that meant that users could be served cached copies of private discussion groups or password-protected pages.
The issue was first discovered when users of Backpack, a wiki-like service for individuals and small businesses, complained that their Web pages were suddenly disappearing.
Jason Fried of 37signals, the company behind Backpack, discovered that Google’s Web Accelerator was behind the problem, explaining in his company’s blog, “Google is essentially clicking every link on the page – including links like ‘delete this’ or ‘cancel that.’ And to make matters worse, Google ignores the JavaScript confirmations.”
A clearly miffed Fried continued, “So, if you have a ‘Are you sure you want to delete this?’ JavaScript confirmation behind that ‘delete’ link, Google ignores it and performs the action anyway.”
Deeply unchuffed, Fried complained that “Google’s Web accelerator can wreak havoc on Web-apps and other things with admin-links built into the UI.”
Other users of Google’s tool also found themselves loading pages previously cached by other users on Internet forums – letting them view that user’s account information and private messages (Web Accelerator doesn’t cache secure Web sites written in “HTTPS”, so online transaction sites were unaffected).
Web publisher have raised concerns that, if Google is caching the publishers content and readers are using the Google cached version to access the information, the number of people that the server logs are reporting as accessing their content may not truly reflect the number of people reading their site. If this is the case, there would be a direct hit on the publishers advertising revenue.
Conversely, there are others claiming that there were other problems associated with the application’s ability to prefetch Web sites that are never viewed by a user – this could inflate page view numbers and exaggerate views of advertising banners.
Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of Web products, acknowledged the problems while downplaying the threat, saying that it had only affected a small number of sites.
“It looks worse than it is. We’ve cached the page with that username on it. But you are not actually signed in; you couldn’t operate as that person,” she added, before cranking up the PR spin machine, “We’re committed to provide users the utmost of integrity in security and privacy, and we’re working with urgency to solve this problem,” she added.
The program is currently no longer available from Google, with a notice on the Web Accelerator homepage saying, “We have currently reached our maximum capacity of users and are actively working to increase the number of users we can support.”
Sadly, things went from bad to worse on Saturday night when the world’s leading Internet search engine shut down from 6:45 to 7 p.m. eastern time, with some users experiencing longer outages.
It wasn’t just the search engine that had gone down – Gmail, Google News, Froogle and the entire caboodle of Google’s services had all vanished off the face off the earth.
Curiously, when some surfers typed in ‘google’ they found themselves being redirected to a SoGoSearch page, sparking rumours that the site had been hacked.
Google spokesman David Krane pooh-poohed such talk, declaring, “It was not a hacking or a security issue,” while insisting that that the problem was related to a DNS (Domain Name System) problem.
Google Web Accelerator
Google speed bump draws scorn
9 May, 2005
How-To: Sony PSP Internet Access
Looking for a review and background on the Sony PSP? Steve runs through the highlights.
Games developers have included Internet access in their products. The best example of this is Wipeout Pure, which includes a browser, allowing the user to download new game levels and features. Since the game has a browser built-in, it can be reasonable to assume that Sony have actually put all the code to access the Internet in the PSP itself (and made it available to developers).
Some clever users then looked at what the browser was doing (by monitoring the data packets that the PSP was sending across the Internet via their network) and it all looked pretty normal, i.e. it was just a standard browser. In order to access real sites they had to locally pretend to be the Sony servers that the PSP was accessing. This was accomplished by “spoofing” DNS (DNS is the system that maps names to numbers on the Internet, people like using names, but the Internet actually works by numbers i.e. it’s hard to remember something like 127.0.0.1 but easy to remember “localhost” as a name). The spoofing meant that the PSP would no longer go to the games servers to look for content, but rather a local server which could be configured with any content that was so desired, including a text box that allows you to enter another site name.
Rather than everyone set-up spoof servers, some nice people have done it for you, and these then point to a PSP portal which someone has set-up PSP friendly content. You can access the spoof DNS servers by amending your Internet set-up configuration (on the PSP) and leave everything to automatic except for the DNS settings, into which you enter the spoof server settings.
To complement the PSP portal, a PSP irc client has been written. This is actually a script run on a Webserver, but the output fits on the PSP real estate (screen).
There’s probably going to be a lot of copies of Wipeout Pure sold, purely for its browser capabilities.
Once updated versions of the firmware come out, or there are 3rd party applications, the system will have all the features to be a powerful media hub. It supports WiFi, has a decent screen and video capability now, adding other Internet capabilities will just add the finishing touches to a superb product.
9 May, 2005
How-To: Spotlight, Power Search With Tiger, Mac OS 10.4
It’s that time again, a new version of OS X has been released! For those that aren’t aware of OS X, it’s Apple’s operating system. As usual, OS 10.4 is named after a cat: 10.2 was named Jaguar, 10.3 Panther, and the new 10.4 has been titled Tiger.
OS X has been touted by some as uncrashable, and that is how I’ve found it too: After setting it up, I haven’t once restarted my computer despite having installed over 30 applications since. This stability is what makes Apple have such a following of fans, and would be unheard of on a Windows box.
There’s lots of new goodies in Tiger, but in this article I’ll focus on the addition of a search technology called Spotlight, which makes searching through files instantaneous. It also allows the creation of so-called search folders, with links to every file which matches that folder’s search criteria, which I detail lower down.
The clever bit, is that these search folders are self-updating, meaning that as soon as you start writing a document containing the word “banana”, the search folder that is told to look for this word, will find it and create a shortcut to it along with all the other files that contain the word.
This is the spotlight icon in the menubar

Click it.

And type what it is that you are looking for. In my case, I typed ‘Summer’.

Within about one and a half seconds, the above menu appears. Clicking the top icon (Show All), shows a traditional window of all the results for the search. The second icon, labelled Top Hit, is the file that Mac OS X thinks is the most relevant to the search criteria.
The next section of search results lists folders with the word ‘Summer’ in their names. Pretty self-explanatory really.
Then email messages with the word ‘Summer’ in them are listed. The ability to index pretty much anything and then make it searchable is what’s so special about Spotlight.
The following one has items that Spotlight drew up from the calendar application I use.
Images, self-explanatory too.
PDF Documents are listed in the next section. Not many other search applications can index PDF files, but thanks to the tight integration of PDF with Mac OS X it is easily possible.
The last section contains music with the word ‘Summer’ in. Although not apparent here, Spotlight even searches the tags of MP3 and AAC files for words, meaning that if a song file was called, say, Winter but the artist in the tag of the file said ‘Summer’, it would still show up in the list of results.
Searchable folders, or “Smart” folders as Apple likes to call them, work similarly, but they are more use for things you often need to access and don’t want to keep typing into spotlight to find.
Click on the “file” option in the finder and then click on New Smart Folder.

A window appears.

I typed “Summer” in the top right box as before. This instantly showed all the related files:

Next you just have to click on the red circle, the equivalent of the close window button in Windows. Finder asks you where you want to save the smart folder just created. I told it to just save it to the desktop as “Summer”:

Hit Save and the newly created smart folder appears on the desktop:

Summary
Apple are carrying out a pincher movement. Bit by bit, Apple are both removing reasons for Windows users not to switch to Mac, while adding tempting reasons to convert. This latest offering of OS X, in conjunction with less viruses on a Mac, and access to a powerful collection of digital media software (iPhoto, iTunes, GarageBand, iMovie, iDVD) should encourage Windows users to want an Apple computer. Let’s not forget that the next significant version of Windows, Longhorn, and its promised security and anti-virus features, are still likely to be more than a year away,
Overall, there are many more new features in Tiger, over 200 according to Apple. Having made the change from Windows myself, my suggestion is to spend some time with a Mac and experience it for yourself. You too might make the change.
For those wanting to buy a brand new Apple Mac, they can be purchased from Amazon (US|UK), and if you are a student or are otherwise involved in education, you can get a juicy education discount from Apple, so there’s really no excuse anymore!
Apple Spotlight
6 May, 2005
Mobile Penetration In Europe To Hit 100% By 2007: Analysis
Cell phone penetration in Western Europe will hit 100% by 2007 as mobile-loving customers continue to scoop up multiple phones and phone cards.
A report by management consultancy Analysys Research revealed that active mobile penetration – which excludes phones that have not been used for about three months – would rise to 98% in 2006 (up from 90% in 2004) and eventually exceed 100% in western Europe.
The consultancy also warned that the market would stagnate in markets where operators shunned the cheaper pay-as-you-go offerings in an attempt to benefit from more lucrative contract deals.
(Contract deals usually involve customers signing up for 12-18 months, thus delivering stabilised customer revenues – or, as they call it in the trade, ARPU – average revenues per user.)
“In countries such as France and Germany, operators have an opportunity to increase penetration by marketing pre-paid offerings, which is often the best way to attract certain segments of the population, but they should not lose sight of profitability,” commented report co-author, Alex Zadvorny.
“Italy, where ARPU has been in line with the Western European market average and registered the slowest decline among the major European countries between 2000 and 2004, is a good example of how the prevalence of pre-paid does not necessarily suppress ARPU,” be continued.
In countries like Italy, Sweden and the UK, growth in penetration has shown no signs of abating, with penetration rising from 93%, 93% and 89%, respectively, in 2003 to 104%, 103% and 101% in 2004.
Although some people might think that the rise is fuelled by drug dealers toting multiple phones for ‘business’, the increase is actually explained by customers buying multiple phones and/or SIM cards.
Zadvorny explained that sales were also boosted by 3G, giving opportunities to “stabilise and potentially even grow voice ARPU by using the efficiency of the technology and offering large bundles of minutes”
“At the same time, in order to take advantage of the mobile data services opportunity, operators need to address factors such as transparency of pricing, standardisation and ease of use of devices, and the implementation of the relevant billing systems,” he added.
Analysys expects mobile service revenue to grow at a healthy 9% per year between 2004 and 2007, with 3G video phones creaking open more wallets with an alluring fare of video, Internet and music services.
Analysys
6 May, 2005
WiMAX Cuddle Between Sprint And Intel
With a manly backslap, Intel and Sprint have announced that they will work together to advance development of the 802.16e WiMAX standard.
WiMAX is an acronym for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (snappy, eh?) and the technology aims to provide wireless broadband connectivity to fixed, portable and mobile devices without the need for line-of-sight to a base station.
The two companies will share technical specifications and equipment trials, and run interoperability tests to examine possible wireless broadband devices and services.
In case that sounded too simple, here’s Oliver Valente, CTO and VP of technology development for Sprint, to baffle you with a buzzword remix: “Our relationship with Intel will help validate requirements, drive key ecosystem development needs, formulate network strategies and define the potential for advanced wireless services adoption”.
Intel has been bigging up WiMAX with an eye to repeating their successful experience as the leading provider of Wi-Fi chipsets.
Although doubters of WiMAX maintain that competition with the 3G cell-phone service will render the technology redundant, both Intel and Sprint view portability as a winning approach to the technology, insisted that WiMAX “can provide high-capacity wireless broadband coverage and services throughout metro areas and an enriched multimedia user experience.”
Sean Maloney, another executive with an impossibly long job description (“executive vice president and general manager of the Intel Mobility Group”) added: “WiMAX technology has the promise to deliver new broadband services to consumers globally.”
The partnership hopes to draw on Sprint/Nextel’s substantial holdings in 2.5GHz spectrum band, although it’s been described as a “messy complex band” by wireless specialist Joe Nordgaard of Spectral Advantage, who added, “It’s going to be very difficult to come out with a common worldwide solution similar to Wi-Fi.”
Intel WiMAX
Sprint WiMAX
6 May, 2005
Broadcast Flag Knocked Back By US Court
Today, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled that the US FCC (Federal Communications Commission) does not have authority to prohibit companies from making computer and video hardware that doesn’t comply with the Broadcast Flag. This was to come into effect on 1 July, this year.
As far back as 2002, representations were made to the FCC by the content industry to restrict the use video content on US Digital TV sets, as the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group, as it was named then, crossed the line“.
Despite having had some notice on this, today’s ruling will be a shock for content owners.
We spoke to John Enser, Partner in Media and Communications at Olswang, “It isn’t the first time that the FCC have had one of their decisions overturned. There are usually two type of ruling; a firm no, or a softer ‘you haven’t done it right this time, but there may be ways it can be done.’ This at first glance, this looks like a firm no.”
We equated it to either a door being slammed, or it being politely pushed closed, but left ajar. It appear as if it’s the big slam.
Is this the end of the road for the Broadcast Flag? Probably not thinks John Enser, “They can either appeal, or they could go back to Congress to give them the powers.” We’d imagine it’s probably more likely Congressmen will be getting phone calls today as content owners are fierce lobbyists in Washington. When we put this to Cory Doctorow, European outreach officer of the EFF he felt it was less likely, “The only option open to Hollywood is to find a senator so suicidal that they are prepared to force a law that will break their delegates television sets.”
Ren Bucholz, EFF Policy Co-ordinator, America told us that the EFF were “shocked and delighted” by the ruling. In particularly “by the pro-public interest language used” and “unanimity of all three judges voting the same way.” He went on to wonder what it meant to the future of the FCC, “possibly leading to a trimming of their wings.”
A number of calls to the MPAA were not returned before publication.
As to what will happen to all of the TV and computer equipment that has been manufactured in readiness for 1 July is unclear, as is whether the FCC will be compelled to rebate the manufacturers of the effected equipment.
We’ll leave the closing words to Cory Doctorow, “Now the Broadcast Flag is dead, it is essential that the content industry doesn’t introduce the same restrictions into Europe, via the back door of the DVB specification.”
Court ruling FCC
(photo credit: Electronic Frontier Foundation)
6 May, 2005