July 2005

Microsoft Maps WiFi For Alternative GPS System
Trying to work out the law surrounding this Wi-Fi malarkey seems to be a tricky business.
As we reported earlier, it seems that walking around residential streets looking for a Wi-Fi connection is definitely A Very Bad Thing and liable to land you with a trouble.
But if you’re Microsoft, then you’re apparently free to dispatch cars all over US towns and suburbs to trawl for the signals sent out by the millions of short-range home and office WiFi networks.
Microsoft’s somewhat unexpected move – soon to be repeated in the UK and elsewhere – is part of a plan to create a ground-based location system as an alternative to the GPS satellite system.
According to an article in the Financial Times, Microsoft says it has now built a database containing the whereabouts of “millions” of WiFi networks.
Naturally, privacy groups are more than a little concerned about Microsoft sniffing about the hedgerows and alcoves of private networks, but the company claims that it has collected only the unique identifier (MAC address) of each Wi-Fi network and that this cannot be traced to an address or an individual user.
Microsoft says that by recording the position of every MAC address on a giant map, it had created a positioning system that would make it possible for anyone with a WiFi-enabled laptop to flip out their machine and identify their location to within 30.5 metres.
We think location-based information and services are going to be huge and an alternative way of locating yourself without the need for GPS is welcome.
Where this WiFi-based locating will work particularly well is in cities where GPS doesn’t work too well, due to its signal being blocked by the tall buildings, and there a strong concentration of WiFi connections.
Microsoft tracks WiFi for new mapping system [FT]
26 July, 2005
MSN Virtual World Goes Live, Apple Vanishes
Microsoft has launched the first public beta of its Virtual Earth, an online mapping application overlaying satellite images with local searches and maps.
MSN’s Virtual Earth will provide both street-map and satellite views of locations and serve up driving directions between places, competing directly with Google’s popular “Google Maps” service.
Virtual Earth has a trick up its sleeve through its ability to transform Wi-Fi enabled PCs into “location-determining devices” without the need for any separate hardware, as we reported earlier.
The system works by noting the latitude and longitude of available Wi-Fi access points and then triangulating a user’s location after consulting Microsoft’s huge database of router MAC addresses.
A user’s current location is then highlighted onscreen with subsequent search results tailored around that location.
Virtual Earth will also have the capability to visually point out locations for ATMs, restaurants, and petrol stations – something that the rival Google Maps service has been able to do since incorporating satellite imagery in April this year.
“MSN Virtual Earth provides a deeply immersive search experience that lets people see what it’s like to be in a location and easily explore what they can do there,” purred Stephen Lawle, general manager of the Microsoft Mappoint business unit.
The service which currently shows US-based satellite images only and users must download the Microsoft Location Finder client application access the location-finding services.
Microsoft plans to knock out updated versions of Virtual Earth every four months, with the next beta release set to incorporate bird’s-eye imagery licensed from Pictometry International which will add cities, landmarks and points of interest to the product.
Microsoft also plans to integrate traffic data and weather data to the service in the coming months.
Mac users, however, will have to wait until autumn for a version that runs on their machines.
MSN Virtual Earth project manager Mark Law has insisted that MSN Virtual Earth is not a purely consumer-based site only, adding that Microsoft will be making the application-programming interface available to developers.
Microsoft has said that future versions of Virtual Earth will allow users to create their own interactive maps, and add their own reviews of restaurants and other places.
Wags on the Internet are claiming that Microsoft has virtually wiped Apple off the face of the Web, noting that Apple’s Silicon Valley headquarters – which can be seen in their full glory on Google Maps – appears as nothing more than a deserted parking lot in Virtual Earth.
Microsoft insisted that because the service was still in its testing phase, it’s just a coincidence that they used older, black-and-white photographs to display the barren wasteland around Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California in 1991.
Others might put it down to wishful thinking.
MSN Virtual Earth
26 July, 2005
Oakley and Motorola launch RAZRWIRE Bluetooth Sunglasses
Put two cool branded products together – Motorola mobiles and Oakley sunglasses – and what do you get?
A pair of daft glasses more likely to bring forth guffaws of laughter rather then the intended gasps of admiration, that’s what.
Oakley’s new RAZRWIRE sunspecs feature a bolted on Bluetooth module which converges the sun-filtering UV-free lifestyle experience with, err, a phone.
Cos Lykos, vice president of business development at Oakley, set off several Hyperbole Alerts as he gushed wildly about the product: “RAZRWIRE’s fully integrated design takes advantage of the world’s best eyewear and wireless technologies to give freedom of life, movement and communication anywhere and everywhere you want to be, so now seeing and hearing is believing.”
If you’re excited by the prospect of wandering about talking into your sunglasses looking like an arse, we can report that RAZRWIRE specs includes a Motorola Bluetooth module, supporting Bluetooth 1.1 and 1.2, with a range or 30 feet (10 metres).
The Bluetooth box clamps on to one of the arms of the sunglasses and sports volume controls and an answer button on its lower edge.
You’ll also be able to impress people by saying that you have to go off and charge your sunglasses, via the included wall charger or a USB port, with the device offering five hours talk time and 100 hours standby time.
The sunglasses are fashioned from Oakley’s super light O-Luminum and XYZ Optics, and will be available in early August in Cingular Wireless stores, and online at Oakley, Motorola, and Cingular’s websites for US$294.99 (~£170, ~€246).
Users in the habit of regularly sitting on their sunglasses in the pub are advised to avoid this product.
Our verdict: As cool as a heatwave!
Motorola and Oakley Announce Launch of RAZRWIRE With Cingular Wireless
26 July, 2005
Motorola’s Q RAZR Smartphone Guns For Blackberry / Treo
Billed as the “thinnest, lightest, coolest QWERTY on the Planet”, the new Q phone from Motorola has set a few hearts pounding in Chez Digi-Lifestyles.
Claimed to be fifty percent thinner than its top competitors, the lightweight Q is based on Motorola’s successful RAZR-thin design and offers a full QWERTY keyboard, electro-luminescent keys, one-handed navigation thumbwheel and an internal antenna.
The device sports a large high-resolution display (320 x 240 pixels, 65K TFT) with a l.3 mega pixel still/video camera (with photo lighting) onboard, and the whole caboodle is powered by the new Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system.
The Moto Q comes stuffed with multimedia support, playing back iMelody, MIDI, MP3, AAC, WAV, WMA, WAX, QCELP audio files, GIF87a, GIF89a, JPEG, WBMP, BMP, PNG photo files and supports H.263, MPEG-4, GSM-AMR, AAC, WMV video formats.
There’s a Mini-SD slot provided for extra storage and connectivity is taken care of via Bluetooth, IrDA and mini-USB.
High flying execs too busy to even touch their Moto will appreciate the voice-activated dialling, hands-free multi-tasking, speakerphone and built-in support for Microsoft Exchange 2003.
Ron Garriques, president mobile devices business, Motorola wasn’t one to hold back the hysterical hyperbole: “Wickedly cool – when’s the last time you heard those words used to describe a QWERTY device?”
“Probably never. At least until now.”
“With the Moto Q, we’ve combined the best voice, data and design technology in one ultra-thin, intelligent, hard-working, and incredibly must-have device. Today’s office space has the potential to be any place you want it to be with Q.”
Err, thanks for that Ron. But we won’t be calling a QWERTY device “wickedly cool” until it comes with built in Wi-Fi.
The Moto Q is expected to be available in Q1 2006.
Although it’s clearly trying to get a piece of the lucrative Blackberry market, we reckon the collars will be getting sweatiest around the Palm Treo boardroom.
And that’s not a very pleasant thought.
Moto Q phone
26 July, 2005
White PSP: Microsoft Patent Emoticons: Google Rule – News Catch-Up
Microsoft Wants To Own Emoticons
Microsoft has filed an application with the US Patent & Trademark Office to safeguard its rights on “methods and devices for creating and transferring custom emoticons.”
In case you’ve been living under a rock, emoticons are representations of faces made up by keyboard characters and originally all looked like this :) and :-/.
Nowadays, many mobile phones and computers automatically replace the text characters with an appropriate custom image when it spots emoticons in text messages and emails.
It’s far from clear what makes Microsoft think they should own Emoticons – there again, it’s never held them back before.
Microsoft’s patent application
Microsoft emoticons
Sony Whips Out A White PSP
Sony has confirmed that it will be launching a groovy white version of its PSP, but – surprise, surprise – only in Japan.
Sony has a long history of serving up different coloured units in different territories, with the PS2 being released in Aqua, White, Yellow and Silver in the past.
The company has also announced a firmware update (in Japan, natch) so that users can surf the Internet directly from the console.
Some techie users have already been enjoying Web access on their PSPs after a hack was discovered that took advantage of a hole in the operating system used by certain games.
There’s no date set for a US and European patch, although Japanese firmware updates traditionally precede roll-outs in other markets. Sony White PSP
Google Grabs 47% Of All Searches Online
Nielsen//NetRatings “MegaView Search” report has ranked Google as the Big Cheese of search engines, registering 47% of all searches conducted online.
Lagging some way behind was Yahoo! at 22%, with MSN limping into third place at 12% and AOL Search only managing a comparatively feeble 5% of all searches.
Image searching grew hugely in popularity across all the search engines, with MSN seeing the largest increase in its image searches with a massive 90% surge. AOL’s image search zipped up 74%, Yahoo!’s soared 55%, and Google’s jumped by a rather modest 12%. Nielsen//NetRatings
25 July, 2005
Ravensbourne College Publish Course Under Creative Commons
London’s Ravensbourne College is launching a new program called the School of Computing for the Creative Industries.
It’s quite hard to work out what it actually involves as their overview reads like a missive from a Hoxton style bar, babbling on about the “learner-practitioner” using the Internet “as an inspirational resource, drawing on that vast, interconnected meme-pool, but returning far more to it than s/he ever withdraws.”
We had to reach for the dictionary to make sense of this part:
“As the creative industries bifurcate into the twin realities of intellectual property businesses, and crafts-for-hire, the new creative has the skill, and panache, to exploit the opportunities of the new creative landscape.”
Apparently these new creatives are connected citizens, “whose passions and campaigns, ideas and innovations appear first on their blog.”
We would have thought that most of the passion manifests itself in the student bar, but the School insists that the new creative “understands that s/he is defined by the impact and credibility of their online presence.”
Now, some of you may be rightly thinking that this sounds more like The School of Buzzword Bullsh*t, but there is some interesting stuff lurking within the industry-speak.
It seems that School will release its learning materials under a Creative Commons license in an attempt to maximise usage and dissemination.
All the technical facilities in the School will be built on open source platforms, with support offered to students wishing to release projects under free and open source licenses.
Although it’s easy to scoff at their daft Nathan Barley airs, this looks to be a brave and innovative move by Ravensbourne College, which may prove a portent for colleges coming to terms with the impact of new technology on teaching.
Overview of the School of Computing for the Creative Industries
Creative Commons
25 July, 2005
BBC TV Listings Opened Up By Backstage Project
Punters are being invited to get all interactive with the BBC’s TV and radio schedules as part of their Backstage experiment. The call to action was trumpted at the London hosted Open Tech grass roots conference that ran at the weekend.
As we reported in May, BBC’s Backstage project gives coders, computer program writers and graphics types the opportunity to bend and twist BBC digital content into new applications or Web-based prototypes that can be shared with others.
Developers and designers are now being asked to dream up innovative ways of using TV and radio schedules via a BBC competition.
“We want people to innovate and come up with prototypes to demonstrate new ways of exploring the BBC’s TV schedule,” said backstage.bbc.co.uk project leader Ben Metcalfe.
Metcalfe suggested that those taking part might be interested in combining schedules with Web search services, using online social bookmarking managers which let people collect, organise, and share their favourite Web links easily.
He also proposed that developers might like to fiddle about with the TV schedule data mixing it with other social elements, such as recommendation systems for friends and alert systems, or combining schedules with other Web data to serve up genre-based programme searches or listings.
The BBC has already received more than 50 prototype ideas for using BBC feeds and content for non-commercial purposes since the project’s launch in May.
Backstage aims to tap into the resources of the distribution channels and knowledge networks already used by big companies such as Google and Yahoo, who were quick to realise the value of releasing content tool kits for developers to create applications with.
“Companies are waking up and realising that they need to have a conversation with their audience,” explained Mr Metcalf.
“The BBC has a good opportunity to take the lead in that, and others are realising it has its benefits too.”
The competition runs until 5 September, with the winner being invited to take the proposal forward with the BBC.
As we’d reported before, we think that Backstage is a great idea … we just wish they hadn’t used the word Remix – it’s really just a big too much, jumping on the blogging bandwagon. The idea is strong enough with having to resort do that.
BBC Backstage
25 July, 2005
UK Wi-Fi Freeloader Fined £500
A British court has fined a man £500 ($870, €720) for using a residential wireless broadband connection without permission.
In what is believed to be the first conviction of its kind in the UK, a jury at Isleworth, Middlesex court found Gregory Straszkiewicz, 24, guilty of dishonestly obtaining an electronic communications service and possessing equipment for fraudulent use of a communications service.
The case was brought under the Communications Act 2003 with the Crown Prosecution Service saying he was guilty of ‘piggybacking’ a household wireless network.
Police officers nabbed Straszkiewicz after he was spotted by locals wandering around a residential area looking for “free” net connections.
He was reported to have attempted this several times before the Old Bill invited him for a date in the cells.
In addition to the fine, Straszkiewicz was also sentenced to a 12 months conditional discharge and had his laptop confiscated.
We have to say this seems a little harsh as there appears to be no evidence that there was any hostile motive behind his actions.
Earlier this month, we reported on a Florida man being arrested for a similar offence.
It remains unclear whether mobile Wi-Fi users accidentally connecting to another party’s unsecured, unencrypted connection would risk prosecution.
The fact that many cafes and bars now offer free Wi-Fi Web access surely make it difficult to enforce this law, although there’s clearly a different case to answer when individuals are persistently wandering around residential streets with their laptops flipped open.
As ever, the solution is simple, and that’s for people running Wi-Fi connections to use the encryption tools provided.
And if you don’t know how to do that, here’s a tutorial: Wireless Home Networking, Part III – Wi-Fi Security
25 July, 2005
Google Profits Rocket Another 300%
Champagne corks were firing off at Google like a military salute as the Internet search engine kings revealed that their profits had jumped more than 300 per cent in the second quarter this year.
Fuelled by continued growth in Web advertising, Google raked in a revenue of $1.38 billion (~£788m ~€1.13bn) its second 2005 fiscal quarter, up 98 per cent compared with the same period last year.
Once you take off the $494 million (~£282m ~€406m) paid by Google to its ad network partners (known as traffic acquisition costs), revenue racked up to a wallet-delighting $886 million (~£506m ~€728m).
Net income came in at $343 million (~£195m ~€282m), favourably comparing with the $79 million (~£45m ~€64m) recorded in 2004’s second quarter, while revenue from Google sites totted up to $737 million (~£421m ~€606m) – up a thumping great 115 per cent.
Revenue from Google ad network partners was similarly rosy, totalling $630 million (~£359m ~€518m), an increase of 82 per cent.
“We are very proud of our results. Business is very good here at Google,” said chief executive Eric Schmidt, dodging the flying champagne corks. “It’s really because we’ve figured out ways to stay focused on end users and innovation.”
Although the vast majority of Google’s revenue comes from paid advertisements on search results pages and on partner sites, the company has been diversifying with new products and services like video search and mapping.
The company’s fortunes are currently on a stratospheric trajectory, with April’s first-quarter profit almost six times higher than a year earlier.
Not surprisingly, Google’s share price has soared, nudging above $300 (~£171 ~€246) a share for the first time last month and giving the company the honour of being the world’s biggest media group by stock market value.
Recent figures from Nielsen/NetRatings revealed that Google has attracted in excess of 78.5 million US visitors last month, up 25 per cent from a year ago, with the Google and Blogger brands ranked numbero uno in search and Web hosting, respectively.
Meanwhile, Yahoo had to make do with cheapo Cava as figures posted on Tuesday revealed a higher second-quarter profit but with revenue falling short of analyst expectations.
This news sent Yahoo! shares tumbling down as much as 10 per cent in after-hours trading.
Google
22 July, 2005
Mac Mini Overheating Issues?
What with the summer in full swing, and the weather in the good old UK being as warm as it has been, I have observed some serious heat issues while using my Mac Mini.
On particularly warm nights, the fan never seems to switch itself off, and seeing as it’s in my bedroom, I have to switch the computer off so I can sleep.
It’s also my Web server (I’m on a budget, get over it!), and so this means my Website is unavailable on warm nights. This fan issue is also accompanied with terrible performance, and occasional freezes and crashes, which is something that never otherwise really happens on a Mac.
At first, I had put it down to my Mac simply not running as well as it used to for whatever reason, but today it’s been considerably cooler because it’s rained, and all of a sudden my Mac Mini is running perfectly again.
Whether this issue is widespread or not isn’t clear at this point, but I for one, can vouch for the inability of this computer to run properly in hot weather. Is it Apple’s way of getting people to go outside on a hot day, or is it simply Apple cutting costs and making sub-standard products? Who knows, but I sure find it irritating not to be able to check my emails reliably on a hot day!
So, word of warning: Either pack your air conditioning unit along with your Mac for those warm days, or forget using your Mini when the sun’s shining.
Makes me want an iFridge ;-)
Is this a one off or have you had problems with this too? Get in touch and let us know.
22 July, 2005