August 2005

Warner Music To Launch E-Label
Warner Music Group has announced a new digital music distribution mechanism based on downloads rather than physical media like CDs.
Labelling the new mechanism an “e-label”, Edgar Bronfman Jr., Warner Music’s chairman and CEO, told the Progress & Freedom Foundation conference that they were “trying to experiment with a new business model” to “see where it goes.”
With music download services raking in the cash and sales of CDs slipping, Bronfman proposed that e-label artists could churn out music in clusters of three songs every few months rather than a CD every few years.
With far lower production costs, Bronfman claimed that the e-label will give recording artists a “supportive, lower-risk environment” (I think this means “less cash from the record company”) without as much pressure for huge commercial hits – something that could benefit artists with a more “selective audience”.
Interestingly, Bronfman added that artists signed to the e-label will retain copyright and ownership of their master recordings.
“An artist is not required to have enough material for an album, only just enough to excite our ears,” Bronfman said at the conference.
Warming up to the theme of the relationship between technology companies and the entertainment industry, Bronfman reminded attendees at the conference that recorded music has long been influenced by the distribution technologies available – pop songs were traditionally restricted to around 3 minutes because that’s as much music as a 45 rpm record could hold, he said.
Hastily compensating for his brief bout of nostalgia, Bronfman let the gathered suits know that he was a 21st century guy, unleashing two buzzword laden bon mots in quick succession: “Technology shapes music;” “Music drives technology adoption.”
Bronfman called on the technology industry to work on digital rights management (DRM) standards, arguing that compulsory licensing – with support from P-to-P vendors – would set a price for downloaded music while forcing music companies to make their products available online to P-to-P users.
“As a content company, we quite naturally want devices out there that permit consumers to seamlessly access our music without having to worry about the compatibility of operating systems or DRMs,” he said.
“The consumers’ digital music experience should be as seamless and rewarding as possible, but we would be hypocrites to suggest that the government should force interoperability standards on devices while at the same time insisting there is no need for compulsory licensing.”
The latest figures from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, reveal that around 180 million songs were sold online in the first half of 2005, up from 57 million in the same period last year.
Warner Music Group
23 August, 2005
Sony Offers Manga Comics To 3G Subscribers
Sony Pictures Entertainment is set to triple the number of comic books it offers as mobile downloads in Japan, making the company the number one provider of “manga” downloads.
Sony has brokered deals with 10 popular Japanese comic artists, letting comic-mad 3G mobile users download about 300 manga books.
Manga comics are huge in Japan, with the name being coined in 1814 after the famous Japanese artist Hokusai created a book of black & white sketches that he called manga (involuntary sketches).
In Japan, manga comics are targeted at all age groups and cover a wide range of genres, covering a far wider range of topics than Western graphic novels – subjects can range from fantasy & adventure, to sports & cooking.
Sony is hoping to tap into this widespread appeal, offering five stories per month for 315 yen ($2.90), with additional charges for further downloads.
Downloadable manga comics are displayed on mobile phones using a technology called Comic Surfing.
This displays mobile-formatted artwork at a predefined speed and sequence, with pop-up frames and vibration during action scenes adding interest to the stories.
Sony intends to offer more comic books than competitors like NTT Solmare, (unit of telecom firm NTT) and Toppan Printing.
Surprisingly, a spokesman for Toppan Printing opined that Sony’s downloadable manga offerings would prove a good stimulus for growth of the market.
“The market for comics through 3G mobile phone handsets just began to emerge last year, when handsets equipped with clear colour and movies on the screen were put on the market. But we expect it to grow more,” he added.
Competitors NTT Solmare were equally magnanimous about their new competitors, commenting: “We hope that Sony’s entrance will be a path to our mutual prosperity, as it could promote the lifestyle of reading comics by mobile.”
NTT Solmare’s catalogue of 80 comic books have already earned the company more than one million downloads this month alone, so Sony looks to be on a right earner.
Manga [Wikipedia]
23 August, 2005
Google Desktop Search 2 Beta Released
Many who used the original of Google Desktop Search loved it. If you had a mention of the word you’d searched for, whether it be in a word document, an email or even in a IM session, up would come the list of mentions.
The new version of Google Desktop Search (or GDS2 as it’s bound to become) builds on its past strengths and adds to it.
Beyond an enhanced search facility, which now searches network drives too, the big addition is the Sidebar feature. An aggressive move, that will unsettle Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL as it’s moving into their territory.
When in this mode, a configurable selection of information is displayed down the height of the screen either on the right or the left of the screen. You don’t have to go to your Web browser to find the information you’re interested in, it comes to you.
Standard setup comes with email to your gmail account (a new feature), news headlines, stock prices, weather and interestingly Web Clips. Web Clips are RSS feeds – and will come with some controversy attached to them.
Last week a lot of fuss was generated in the blogging world when Microsoft decided to refer to RSS as Web Feeds in their upcoming updated browser, Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1. It will be interesting to see if equal vitriol will be reserved for Google as they ‘rename’ RSS to Web Clips.
We think the interesting boost is the API (Application Programming Interface) and SDK (Software Development Kit) for Sidebar, which enables developers to write plugin to display in Sidebar, but also embed Google Desktop Search into their own applications, bringing fast, convenient search to their users.
There are already some interesting new plugins at the site, such as gdTunes which lets you control iTunes from Sidebar, without having to actually go to iTunes.
Ever mindful of income, Google also are offering an AdSense Status plugin that offers information about your earnings through AdSense.
After a brief look at it, we found that it appears to have rectified one of the problems with the old version – primarily that it slowed your machine down when it was loaded. This slow down often was so significant that it caused those with slower/older machines, or those who actually needed the power of their processors, to remove it – despite its benefits.
As before, there is a long list of software that Desktop won’t work with – the majority of it being anti-virus and anti-spam.
There will be many software and services organisations that will be looking at GDS2 with more than a little concern – they’re starting to tread on a few toes.
At a time when there’s much talk about how there may be a lot of selling of Google shares (the tax paid on selling shares that have been held for more than a year is considerably reduced), and the drop in share price that might bring, isn’t it fortunate timing that this, and the full release of Google Earth is coming on the first day of trading after the one year period is up.
Google Desktop Search 2
22 August, 2005
Moog Dies
Thanks to Tim for the update on the details of this story
It is with great sadness that we heard of the death of Robert Moog, the inventor of the Moog synthesiser – an instrument that not only changed the way that music is created, but what music could be.
Moog had been suffering with an inoperable brain tumour since April and died on Sunday aged 71.
Many, including us, feel his contribution to society is too large to measure.
A humble man, by all accounts, who left the world on physics to work with composer, Herbert Deutsch in 1964 on the development of the Minimoog synthesiser.
While not the first synth, it became popular as it grabbed musicians attention in its flexibility, enabling them to express themselves.
The number of tracks and musicians that used a Moog are too plentiful to mention, but of particular note are Rick Wakeman; Keith Emerson; the Beatles, with their Abbey Road album; Kraftwerk; and Wendy Carlos with her Switched on Bach album. Laterly the Moog has been embraced again by a new generation of young musicians. A more complete list is available at the bottom of the page on Synthmuseum.com
I was lucky enough to see the film Moog, by Hans Fjellestad a couple of week ago and if you haven’t seen it I’d highly recommend that you do. It was clear that Moog was a man who was not only admired by the people around him, but genuinely liked.
As a demonstration of the depth of feeling for Moog around the world, it’s telling to see that close to 2,500 messages have been left for him and his family following the announcement of his illness.
Moog music
Tributes of Robert Moog
22 August, 2005
Open Media Common: Sun’s Open-Source DRM
Sun’s Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Schwartz has been speaking at the Progress and Freedom Foundation Aspen Summit about how incompatible strains of DRM from different companies will not be good for the consumer.
Now, we don’t have the benefit of having heard his speech, but it strikes us that he’s a little late to this party. This idea is hardly news to anyone who’s spent more that half a day thinking about the future of digital media. Projects like Coral Consortium have been underway for sometime, exactly for this reason – but at this time Coral is proprietary.
Jonathan’s proposal to elevate the problems on incompatible DRM systems is Open Media Commons, which would be an open-source, royalty-free digital-rights management standard.
It appears that his idea is to launch the idea/project, not deliver a solution tomorrow. He’s offering to start it off by giving Project DReaM, to an internal Sun Labs project, to the initiative. The strange collection of capitalisation around Project DReaM is derived from “DRM/everywhere available.”
Where this type of headline-grabbing announcement is great, is in starting to bring the debate about who should own/benefit from the locking mechanism placed around digital media to the fore again.
It also panders to the media companies who are generally _totally_ paranoid/fed up with having to not only use a protection scheme they don’t own, but also to pay Microsoft for the pleasure of selling their snippets of media to the general public – each and every time they do.
Reuters, who broke the story, got this quote from Jonathan, “The industry generally falls into two camps: Those who support what we’re up to and others who want to collect a fee” for using their own DRM standards.
If it does nothing more that stopping or delaying a media company in making their decision to sign with one of the major DRM providers, then we suspect Jonathan would be pleased.
Jonathan has over the last year, been blog-tastic, writing long, detailed postings about many things – he’s clearly not someone who sleeps a great deal. A lot of his entries have been about open source, indeed in June Sun started to open-source their Operating System (OS) with the project OpenSolaris and Java server software, calling it Glassfish. Not only that, but they have an Open-Source Officer, Simon Phipps.
All of these actions are designed to attacking any income that their competitors (including Microsoft) derive from selling software. Sun, of course, is also in the hardware business, which conveniently will run the open source software.
What we do find a little strange is there are no references to Open Media Commons or Project DReaM on Sun’s Web Site.
While it is good that a company as large/established as Sun is talking about opening DRM up, not to be locked in to any single provider of DRM – we’re not yet convinced that this particular idea has a solid ring about it.
Open Media Commons – Updated
SunSource
The Progress & Freedom Foundation
Jonathan Schwartz’s blog
Sun Micro shows open-source DRM project
22 August, 2005
HomePlug AV Now Official
The long-anticipated launch of HomePlug AV specification has finally reached its public release on Thursday last week.
HomePlug, or the HomePlug Powerline Alliance to give it its full grand title, is a trade and standards body representing over 50 companies that promote the use of the internal power wiring of a house as a means of providing cheap and quick networking.
The theory behind HomePlug is that you simply buy HomePlug compliant equipment, plug it in to a main socket in your house and you have a home network. A boon you would imagine where the property is a few years old and wasn’t wired for networks when built.
In practice there have been some problems with it, the most glaring being that if a vacuum cleaner is plugged into the house’s mains and used, its interference reduces the data flow to a trickle. At this time, we are not aware if this has been addresses in the AV standard.
The body started in Q1 2000 and knocked out its first specification, HomePlug 1.0 in spring 2001. 1.0 was intended for relatively low bandwidth applications, as it ran at 14 Mbps.
In October 2002, they started discussing the idea of HomePlug AV, a much higher bandwidth version that would enable the passing of digitised video around the house – not only Standard Def (SD) TV, but High Def (HD) too.
Needing to run video, never mind HD video, required lots more bandwidth, so the theoretical speed to HomePlug AV is 200Mbps, with the 100Mbps (again theoretical) being available for use. The AV release also has good things like Quality of Service (QoS), useful when delivery video and voice around the network, as well as strong security, 128-bit AES vs 56-bit DES of version 1.0.
They intend the chips and products which are HomePlug Av compliant to be hitting the market in 3-6 months. We find this pretty surprising given how long the idea has been in gestation, and how many of these standards bodies have pretty open secrets as to which spec they’re going to be running with, well in advance its the public release.
HomePlug Powerline Alliance
22 August, 2005
Google File For A Further $4Bn
The big news late yesterday was that Google announced a second round share offer – on the first anniversary of their IPO.
In their now-to-be-expected kooky way, their planning to sell 14,159,265 shares, which of course is derived from the value of pi.
At the current valuation for their stock, this would bring in another $4Bn, on top of the approximately $3Bn they have sitting in the bank currently.
Why do they need that money? Is the question on many lips. There’s been many project been floating around with Google’s name attached, among them, becoming a WiFi provider.
S&P analyst Scott Kessler view is that with Microsoft ($37.8 billion in cash) and Yahoo ($3.4 billion) having a ton of cash in the bank, Google needs the money to be able to compete in the global Internet market, in an “arms race” as he puts it.
Acquisitions would appear to be an obvious use of the money. To date Google hasn’t had to spent that much when it’s brought companies in to its fold, as it’s bought them at early stages, but perhaps their future targets are larger now.
Mary Meeker from Morgan Stanley clearly feels the same, “this cash balance could allow the company increased flexibility to consider large strategic acquisitions.”
Of the names that we’ve heard being knocked around as possible targets for a Google purchase including Tivo and Infospace and a number of Chinese companies.
Interesting extracts from the S-3 filing reveal some areas that they think are threats.
We face significant competition from Microsoft and Yahoo.
We face formidable competition in every aspect of our business, and particularly from other companies that seek to connect people with information on the web and provide them with relevant advertising. Currently, we consider our primary competitors to be Microsoft Corporation and Yahoo! Inc. Microsoft recently introduced a new search engine and has announced plans to develop features that make web search a more integrated part of its Windows operating system or other desktop software products. We expect that Microsoft will increasingly use its financial and engineering resources to compete with us. Both Microsoft and Yahoo have more employees than we do (in Microsoft’s case, currently nearly 14 times as many). Microsoft also has significantly more cash resources than we do. Both of these companies also have longer operating histories and more established relationships with customers and end users. They can use their experience and resources against us in a variety of competitive ways, including by making acquisitions, investing more aggressively in research and development and competing more aggressively for advertisers and web sites. Microsoft and Yahoo also may have a greater ability to attract and retain users than we do because they operate Internet portals with a broad range of content products and services. If Microsoft or Yahoo are successful in providing similar or better web search results compared to ours or leverage their platforms to make their web search services easier to access than ours, we could experience a significant decline in user traffic. Any such decline in traffic could negatively affect our revenues.
Other headline include
We expect our revenue growth rate to decline and anticipate downward pressure on our operating margin in the future.
We rely on our Google Network members for a significant portion of our revenues, and we benefit from our association with them. The loss of these members could adversely affect our business.
New technologies could block our ads, which would harm our business.
Google
Google’s S-3 filing document
19 August, 2005
Shuffle Art Archives – Decorate Your iPod Shuffle, Free
Shortly after the launch of the Apple iPod shuffle, if not simultaneously, manufacturers were quick to jump on the bandwagon by producing and offering thin cases or skins.
I didn’t ever understand the point of this. I found the shuffle to be made of pretty tough stuff, quite happy knocking around in a pocket of change, with smudges wiping off easily.
Not only that, but it attacked one of the very things that I found desirable about the shuffle. Being a male of a certain age, I liked the way I could wear it under my tops and it didn’t add to the girth of my waist. Adding a case around the shuffle would extend my wait by a few additional millimeters.
Many of you will also have seen the devoted souls who have been arranging a packet of chewing gum around their shuffle, aping the comparison that Apple used at its launch, when the Apple product evangelists held the shuffle up with the packet of gum.
NB. At the UK press launch the US Appleittes brought US gum packets over with them, noted with some amusement by some of the assembled hacks.
Well, I’ve just come across an alternative to buying a cover.
Design your own shuffle cover Shuffle Art Archives is an enterprising Japanese Web site which has assembled collections of designs for decorative stickers that you can apply to your little white pride and joy.
It brings together all of the aspects of shuffle decoration – make your own; share your designs; and photo galleries of others designs.
Once you have downloaded your blank shuffle-sized templates as Photoshop file or GIF, you are then free to decorate, upload and share with your fellow shuffle customisers.
User Generated Content doesn’t just have to be digital.
Designs to Download The libraries of designs cover a really impressive range of designs and styles. These are easy to preview and download for you to print out to sticky-backed printer paper for your use.
Most of the designs for download leave the round controls uncovered, as I would assume that the print would wear out with use and it is possible that not seeing the functions of the keys could confuse the owner.
Rather than ignoring this large circle, a couple designs make use of the circular gap left in the print. One of particular note is Crow’s who uses an open mouth to surround the controls.
Another treats the shuffle as a phone, displaying the numbered keys in the lower section, with the controls taking the position of the ear piece
While some people take the simple approach and cover only one face of the player, others are more devoted and produce stickers for each of the exposed surfaces.
Once created or downloaded, they can be printed out on to sticky paper and applied to your virginal-white shuffle.
The quality of some of them is extraordinarily high. Two by Thomas Hui, could almost be sponsored version of the shuffle for the Basketball league.
Gallery The final part in the jigsaw is a photo gallery showing how enthusiastic people have been in customising their pride and joys.
As with the other sections, the range and quality is highly impressive with quite a few playfully mocking trade names such as a Sony battery, and a packet of Viagra.
As you might tell, I’m pretty enthused about the site – providing the tools to make your own covers and providing the inspiration to do it.
Shufflesome – has turned this idea into a business, even using RSS to alter you when new designed (or Outfits as they call them) becoming available.
Again, an impressive site with good designs – but of course you have to pay them for it!
Shuffle Art Archives
Shufflesome
19 August, 2005
3D TV: In Japan By 2020
You may think 3D TV is the kind of technology that will only ever appear in pages of a Dan Dare comic – a pipe dream.
Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications feel differently. They have stated that they plan to make it a commercial reality by 2020.
Japan is well advanced in TV technology – they’ve had HDTV for _ever_, so it makes sense that they start to purse what many feel should be the ultimate extension of TV.
Given their HD TV background, the 3D TV would be displayed at HD resolution, but it doesn’t stop there, they’d also have the sensation of touch and smell. This isn’t 3D with big clumpy glasses, but is watched with the naked eye.
There have been a number of research projects working on this over the last few years, indeed I was lucky enough to see one demonstrated last year. It was impressive.
A US company deepLight is claiming that they will be shipping displays in the first quarter of 2006, initially for commercial use, but as prices reduce home use will become practical.
Reuters interviewed Yoshiaki Takeuchi, director of research and development at the Ministry, giving an interesting example of, “Can you imagine hovering over your TV to watch Japan versus Brazil in the finals of the World Cup as if you are really there?”
3d TV forms part of a grand national project, formed around “universal communication,” which Reuters define as “a concept whereby information is shared smoothly and intelligently regardless of location or language.” Their serious about it too – the ministry will be requesting a budget of 1Bn Yen for the project.
deepLight
Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications
19 August, 2005
Traffic Hacking, Mac Madness, Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev , .xxx interference – Teenage Tech News Review
Traffic Light Hacking
We’ve had hackers doing all sorts of naughty things in the past, but one thing I heard about recently is new to me: Hacking traffic lights. You heard right: traffic lights. However, these traffic lights aren’t used to harvest credit account numbers of passers-by or to spam traffic: They are simply used to enable people to get to work that bit faster, if a little less legally. These hackers use technology originally intended for use with emergency vehicles and mass-transit systems. The way it works, is that a lot major traffic lights in the US have infrared receivers built into them. These receive one of two frequencies of infrared pulses: The first is a low frequency, and intended for use by mass-transit like buses. This low frequency makes traffic lights stay green for that bit longer, enabling the bus to pass through and thus speeding up public transport. The second frequency is intended for use by emergency vehicles, and switches traffic lights from red to green within two seconds of activation, allowing them (and anyone possessing a similar device) to pass through traffic lights unhindered.
These sorts of devices had a dodgy legal status in the States up until recently, when they were outlawed entirely and use of them declared a federal crime.
Mac Madness
It seems people are getting less civilized by the day: In a scene reminiscent of the riot caused by the opening of an Ikea store in Edmonton near London, there was another riot when a school in Virginia decided to sell its old laptops for $50 a piece. Apparently, “One woman went so far to wet herself rather than surrender her place in line.” The school was selling laptops that were worth around $1,500 dollars 4 years ago for a meager $50. This kind of event does showcase the fact that a lot of people are eager about technology as long as it is at the right price. Maybe if manufacturers decreased their prices by half, although they might initially make a loss, the hugely increased bulk of sales could lead to much lower production costs. Of course, they will never do this, as it will both cut their profit margins as well as saturating the market. Nice thought though!
Cosmonaut Capers
Russian Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev is now the person who has spent the longest time in space, ever. The Russian is currently the commander of the ISS, and now has 750 days in space to his name. Spending this amount of time in space can be detrimental to a person’s health: 6 months in space typically leads to a loss of about 1.5% of bone mass, which can take years to grow back. 2 years of life in space could lead to a variety of problems when the Russian cosmonaut returns back to earth, but the extent of these remains to be seen. In the worst case, his bones could be unable to support his weight here, although NASA suspects it shouldn’t be anywhere near as bad. While in space, people must stick to a strict regime of exercise to simulate the stresses that bones receive during life on earth to ensure they lose a minimum of mass. This along with the increased danger of high radiation (which can lead to cancer), makes space have many more risks than the obvious danger of your vessel disintegrating. Maybe in the future these will be solved, but bar artificial gravity, I fail to see how this might work.
Although I of all people think Space is a pretty cool thing to explore, issues like this must be solved before any lengthy extra-planetary stays are considered.
They Couldn’t Give a .XXX
This week, it seems like we have another nice example of people in government being quite the opposite of liberal and interfering with technology: Various suit-wearing, self-important men/women of power have objected to ICANN’s newest top-level domain (things like .com, .net), .xxx: according to them and others, introducing a .xxx top-level domain will mean “Pornographers will be given even more opportunities to flood our homes, libraries and society with pornography through the .xxx domain.”
Apparently, the American Department of Commerce has received a “staggering” 6,000 emails and letters protesting about the creation of a .xxx domain. Ok, so 6,000 sounds a lot, but when you think about it, 6,000 people out of the approximately 600,000,000 who use the Internet worldwide, it isn’t quite so impressive.
Surely, the creation of a .xxx domain might even help people distinguish from a filthy porn site and a normal one: It would mean it would be easier for people to block these kinds of sites from opening, and would mean that classification of Web sites as containing porn or not would be easier, and thus the subsequent blocking of offensive content would be made easier.
Although this doesn’t directly affect me, as I am still under the age of 18, I still believe that political objectives should not be allowed to interfere with the running of the Internet. Besides, the Internet is a virtual, international, entity and as such shouldn’t be allowed to be governed by a single country and it’s respective governing body’s re-election agenda.
18 August, 2005