October 2005

Businesses Are Blasting Out One Billion IMs Daily
According to a study by IDC, instant messaging in the business world is going bonkers and looks set to continue its huge growth, but experts are warning of security risks.
Their research found that the worldwide enterprise instant messaging market (which includes instant messaging server products as well as enterprise instant messaging security, compliance, and management products) leapt 37% in terms of year-over-year revenue in 2004, and is expected to skyrocket from $315 million in 2005 to $736 million in 2009.
“With more than 28 million business users worldwide using enterprise instant messaging products to send nearly 1 billion messages each day in 2005, and many more crossover corporate consumers who use consumer instant messaging networks in the workplace, these products are clearly reaching more mainstream users,” said Robert P. Mahowald, program director for IDC’s Collaborative Computing research.
“Especially in compliance-driven sectors like Wall Street, financial services, and government, instant messaging is a critical differentiator. In the next few years, IDC expects instant messaging – once the plaything of teenagers – to continue to grow into its role as a substantial business collaboration application,” he added
The growth in the enterprise segment is being fuelled by domestic users of IM tools like MSN Messenger bringing their online chatting habits into the work place and using the service as a business collaboration tool.
The report identified financial services and the public sector as the keenest to take up enterprise IM, with business IM monitoring and archiving tools able to keep a watchful eye on yapping employees.
According to a recent Gartner poll, instant messaging is now used in 70% of all companies, but figures from the Yankee Group reveal that only 15-20% of those companies operate IM administration, leaving 50% of office IM use unmonitored.
This wouldn’t appear to be the brightest idea as a new IMLogic study reveals that an increasing number of virus authors are starting to focus on IM clients as virus spreading agents.
IMLogic says that the attacks on the IM clients have reached record values – up 14 times on last year – with the complexity of the attacks also increasing.
The company’s IM monitoring service showed that MSN Messenger suffered the highest attack rate at 62% of the reported cases, with AOL’s AIM client coming at second with 31% of the attacks and Yahoo third with 7% of the attacks targeting their client.
IMLogic’s research found that the majority of the attacks were worm-based (87%) with 12% of the attacks aimed at spreading a virus.
IDC
IMLogic
6 October, 2005
Dell Serves Up OS-free Desktop For Open Source Fans
Dell have started shipping a Windows-less desktop PC for customers looking to install other operating systems on their PCs.
The company, who already sell high-end PCs and servers equipped with Red Hat Linux, claimed that they were reacting to “growing consumer demand for open source ready” computers.
Although many users have elected to strip out pre-installed copies of Windows in the past, Dell is hoping that open source punters will appreciate the cheaper cost and lack of hassle.
Dell’s new Dimension E510n PC comes with a blank hard drive untouched by all things Microsoft, with the company bunging in a copy of the obscure FreeDOS operating system for users to install, if they so desire.
FreeDOS is an open-source version of MS-DOS, although the E510n PC is advertised as “a desktop on which you can run Linux or other open-source operating systems.”
But don’t go looking for support if your Linux-based machine throws a wobbly as the product’s Web page clearly states, “Dell does not support non-Dell installed operating systems.”
The base machine’s reasonably specified (a Pentium 4 processor, 512Mbytes memory, 128MB ATI Radeon X300SE HyperMemory video card, Sound Blaster®Live! 24-bit Audio and 80GB hard drive), and knocks out for $774 (~e647~£439).
As ever, there’s also a host of customisable configurations available on Dell’s US site, although we couldn’t find any mention of it on the UK site.
Dell US
6 October, 2005
“Web’n’Walk” Mobile Internet Service Launched By T-Mobile
T-Mobile have launched ‘Web’n’walk’, their mass-market mobile Internet service, and are confidently predicting that it expects to lure hundreds of thousands of customers onto the service over the next couple of years.
Cocking a snoot at the punter-displeasing “walled garden” restrictions of rival operators like Vodafone and 3, T-Mobile’s new service allows users to browse the full Internet on their phones.
UK Managing Director Brian McBride was clearly enthusiastic about the idea: “We’re all about the full Internet, not quasi Internet…not a walled garden. We kick off with (search engine) Google on your front page, click one button and you’re away,” he told a conference call with journalists.
Conceding that Internet services on mobile devices to date had so far been, well, rubbish, McBride bigged up T-Mobile’s approach for fast, simple and affordable services and products, saying that mobile networks will eventually carry more Internet traffic than fixed-line computers or phones.
Unlike most network providers who target mobile Internet devices at the swivel-action executive mob, T-Mobile are one of the few focusing on regular punters who are keen to take advantage of all the fancy gizmos on their Internet-enabled handsets. The three tariffs offer 100, 200 or 400 inclusive call minutes with an Internet bundle covering 40 megabits of data usage (this works out to something like 2,500 ‘average’ emails or 500 ‘average’ Web pages, whatever they are.)
“Web’n’walk redefines internet on mobile,” insisted T-Mobile chief executive Rene Obermann in a statement. “The comparison is no longer with other mobile internet services. It is with fixed line Internet.”
T-Mobile’s Web service will be available in the UK on products including the MDA range, the new Nokia N70 and N6630 handsets and Sidekick II.
T-Mobile UK
5 October, 2005
SP-700 Digital Camera Announced by Olympus
Olympus have unveiled the SP-700, a new addition to their new SP series of cameras with a special guide function for beginners explaining what button does what.
The 6.0 million pixel camera comes with a 3x zoom lens (equivalent to 38-114mm in 35mm format) with the company enthusiastically claiming that it’s “the latest gadget to be seen with.”
Churning out of the factories in time for Christmas, the SP-700 is aimed at the mainstream market, offering a barrow load of pre-set scene modes to make it easy for fumbling amateurs to take half decent photos.
Amongst the 24 scene modes on offer, punters can chose from presets like Portrait, Landscape, Landscape and Portrait, Night Scene, Sunset, Fireworks and curiously ‘Museum’.
We couldn’t find a preset for ‘pub’ or ‘all night rave in a dingy warehouse’, but there’s an underwater mode included too (just so long as punters remember that they’ve got to slap on the PT-013 underwater case before dunking their expensive camera into the sea).
The big selling point is the huge 3 inch, 230,000 pixel screen which all but fills up the back of the camera, echoing the trend for bigger camera screens for composing and viewing pictures.
The camera also boasts a movie mode capable of recording VGA clips at 30fps with sound, a movie digital image stabilisation system, 11 MB internal memory and a Super Macro mode able to focus down to a mere 1cm (not recommended if you’re zooming in on a Sydney Funnel-Web Spider.)
Olympus is making a big hoo-hah about its ‘Compare and Shoot’ function which lets users check and compare results before re-shooting or adjusting settings if needed.
There’s also some basic image editing functions onboard, including red-eye fix, brightness, saturation, trimming, B&W and sepia, letting users fiddle about with photos without the need to hook up to a PC.
The metal-housed camera measures up at a compact a 3.8 x 2.2 x 1-inches and weighs 4.9 ounces
The camera is pitched directly in competition with the Sony DSC-N1 which also offers a whopping great 3″ screen, but the Sony comes with photo ‘pocket viewer’ functionality which may just prove more attractive to its target audience.
Pricing may prove to be the decisive factor here, so we’ll have to wait to see what price tag Olympus slaps on the SP-700.
Olympus
5 October, 2005
Microsoft In The Sights As Google And Sun Announce Deal
Google and Sun Microsystems have come up with a broad, but fuzzy, deal which will see the two companies developing and distributing each other’s technology in a move to challenge Microsoft’s Office suite dominance.
“We’re going to put our assets together so we can leverage one another’s distribution,” said Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive officer (and former Sun executive).
Under the deal, Sun will bundle the Google toolbar as an option when consumers download the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) from Java.com, while Google will distribute the java technology.
With Sun’s JRE already registering 20 million downloads per month, the move looks set to dramatically increase the number of Google toolbar deployments.
It’s also expected that the deal will make it easier for freeloading punters to obtain OpenOffice, Sun’s well-regarded, freely distributed office productivity suite which directly competes with Microsoft Office.
“Working with Google will make our technologies more available more broadly, increase options for users, lower barriers and expand participation worldwide,” said Scott McNealy, Sun’s chief executive officer.
“We want to leverage the network economics. There are 80 million unique Google site users per month,” he added.
Both companies have suggested that the toolbar bundling is merely the start of a beautiful friendship, although neither would offer any specific details.
Schmidt dropped a few hints, “Google and java are two of the most widely recognised technology brands because they provide users with online tools that enhance their lives on a day to day basis,” he said. “We look forward to exploring other areas of collaboration.
Bundling the two products together seems a wise move, increasing the appeal of the Google Toolbar and making Java a more attractive proposition for software developers.
Although Schmidt wasn’t in the mood to chat about it at the launch event, many pundits are expecting Google to offer a hosted version of the OpenOffice productivity suite.
“We will work to make the distribution of [OpenOffice] become broader. We are not announcing specifics,” he said.
Execs were equally tight-lipped when asked about the financial terms of the deal, although they expected it to generate substantial revenue.
“We’ll use their advertising and they’ll use our technology,” said Sun’s McNealy.
“There is going to be a lot of money flowing both ways if we do this thing right,” he added.
Java
5 October, 2005
Sony Gets Colourful With Vaios
Fashion aficionados concerned that the hue of their laptop may clash awfully with their high fashion clobber will be delighted to learn that Sony is releasing their Sony F-type laptops in four stylish colours.
With Sony offering the laptops in white, pink, green and blue, fears of a haute couture faux-pas should be banished forever, although uptight Daddy-o’s can still purchase the laptop in sensible, corporate silver.
The slimline F series Vaios come in F20, F30, F50, and F70 flavours, with the top of the range F70 offering a 15.4inch widescreen with 1680×1050 pixels, fast Pentium M780 2.26Ghz processor, 1 gig of RAM, Geforce GO 6200 and 128MB of video RAM in a 2.8kg package.
Measuring 14.3-inches wide, 10.4-deep, and just 1 inch-thick, Sony’s engineers have managed to wedge in a 100GB drive, dual-layer DVD±R/RW/RAM and a Webcam for showing your friends your latest Pierre Cardin outfit.
Carbon Fibre Laptops
It seems that Sony can’t get enough of the funky finishes right now, with Sony Korea announcing two new carbon fibre laptops last week, the VGN-TX17LP/B and VGN-TX16LP/W 2.
Using space age technology usually being used for, err, planes and racing cars, Sony claims that these new VAIOs are twice as strong compared to existing T series notebooks, and weigh 30% less.
The display panel is a mere slip of a thing at 4.5mm thick with the designers waxing lyrical about the “sapphire black and platinum white” finish.
The Vaio TX series offer a handy AV mode button which makes the machine available for watching movies or listening to music in just 12 seconds with no need to boot up Windows.
The claimed battery life is impressive – up to 9 hours and 14-15 hours with an extended battery.
We’ve no idea of the price yet and – yes, you’ve guessed it – it’s only being released in Korea for the time being.
5 October, 2005
Blinkx Builds Free Online Video Library
Search company Blinkx have launched a free service that lets amateurs and pro filmmakers upload and store their video files to a searchable online library.
The service, called My Blinkx.tv, will make filmmakers’ work available for viewing to Web searchers via a clever conversion process.
Videos submitted to the library are automatically converted into Flash format, with speech soundtracks transcribed and indexed.
Metadata, such as creation date, length, title, owner’s name along with any other relevant information, will also embedded into the content.
Once indexed, uploaded videos can be retrieved and viewed by visitors to My Blinkx.tv via keyword searches.
Users of the Blinkx.tv service will also be able to create custom channels, based on a specific search term.
Blinkx founder Suranga Chandratillake explained that users could, for example, create a channel for all video results from a My Blinkx.tv search for the term, “Hurricane Katrina.”
My Blinkx.tv service would then continue to add new videos matching the search terms in the background, so that returning users would be presented with up-to-date listings.
The system relies on cookies but Chandratillake said that the company would consider using a more reliable logging in system if there’s enough demand for it.
Users will also be able to access their channels without visiting My Blinkx.tv by setting up a “smart folder” on their PCs.
This will be automatically populated in the background with videos that match a chosen search term, encouraging users to have the occasional rummage around in their smart folder to see what new videos have been added.
Chandratillake said that Blinkx will initially only feature non-commercial videos – mainly from grassroots groups, individuals and amateur video bloggers – but the company plans to cut deals with commercial video producers keen to include their videos in the service.
The service is free for visitors viewing videos, but Blinkx may introduce the option of charging for video views, with revenue split between Blinkx and the content owners.
The company may also consider raising revenue though video advertising.
According to Chandratillake, My Blinkx.tv already features user-generated video from 3,500 to 4,000 sources, with the service competing with video search services from Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN. Notably, none of these services currently offer My Blinkx.tv’s automatic, continuous streaming video.
Blinkx
4 October, 2005
Sony Layout TV Plans For PSP’s Future
Listen to Howard Stringer’s speech
Those coming all the way to Tokyo from around Europe and the US, in a hope that Howard Stringer would continue his already well documented shake-up of Sony by making big announcements at his Keynote at the first day of Ceatec would have been disappointed.
If you’re interested in the development of Sony products and where Sony will be going in the future, you were in luck.
The queues to get in for press and punters were huge, with one wag wondering if the hall was full of Sony people trying to find out if they still had a job.
The message from Stringer was strong. It needed to be. Sony is undergoing a massive transformation.
Politically, presenting in Tokyo was an important act – delivering this radical message in the home town of Sony’s head office.
The summary? The three pillars – Restructure, Sharpen, the use of software to “use Sony’s marriage of content and technology to create unique competitive advantages and compelling user experiences.”
While admitting that they have “fallen short in matching innovation with the expanding appetites of our customers,” he told those gathered that gone are the competitive businesses units (silos in Sony lingo) that many claim are partially responsible for Sony wobble. The future will be a united Sony, with a centralised management, looking across the business creation tools; content; phones; games.
Of all the tempting nuggets that Stringer, we’re going to focus on the PSP.
In the nine months that its been on the market, it’s sold 6m units worldwide, making it, they claim, the most successful portable games machine to date.
That’s all fine and dandy, but how will they change the way PSP users consume other media?
Well, here’s the exciting part, he promised that owners will “soon be able to deploy the device’s built-in WiFi, to watch video from home entertainment terminals, anytime, anywhere in the world.”
Now if that doesn’t excite, he also said “to expect to see” a PSP with a high capacity MemoryStick which can be synchronised a Digital Video Recorder (DVR).
The tempting morsels cry out for more details, ones that weren’t provided – which I guess is the point saying them at a big event like this.
Quite what Sony’s definition of a ‘home entertainment terminal’ is, wasn’t explained, nor was if it will require the purchase of another piece of kit.
It’s also unclear if the PSP that we should ‘expect to see’ will be a new model of the machine, or a new MemoryStick with increased capacity.
We’d imagine that PS owners will be prepared to put their hand in their pockets to get any of these and will be tempted by being able to download their choice of TV shows to PSP overnight ready for the trip to work does.
If you want to check out further details, feel free to listen to Howard Stringer’s speech (30Mb) yourself.
4 October, 2005
Google Maps-Based Toys, Distractions And Timewasters
Oh we like this!
Seeing as we’re nowhere near New York right now, it’s of absolutely no practical use to us whatsoever, but – hey! – that’s no reason to stop us wasting precious time playing about with this brilliant implementation of Google Maps.
NYSee – a Web project by developers alkemis – uses Google’s mapping system to provide up to date traffic news and display traffic cam feeds from in and around Manhattan.
The information is presented via the familiar system of different coloured pins stuck on the map, and clicking on a green pin will bring up a live video feed for the traffic cam at that particular location – great fun!
The locations of the cams can be viewed via the Google maps interface as a map, satellite view or hybrid.
Live cams that aren’t working are – appropriately enough – shown as black pins while gray pins seemed to indicate cams on the blink.
The NYSee map also offers regularly updated traffic news (sourced from Google rivals traffic.yahoo.com) displayed as yellow pins on the map.
If clicking on Web cams in foreign countries doesn’t take your fancy, you can always waste away a few more idle minutes calculating national and international areas using the Google Planimeter.
Google Sightseeing, another Google maps-based site, asks, “why bother seeing the world for real?”, inviting surfers to visit the “best tourist spots in the world via satellite images from Google Maps & Google Earth.”
ViaVirtualEarth uses the MSN map interface to graphically show the location of MSNBC news stories on a world map, while ChicagoCrime lets surfers view the locations of specific crimes from the database of crimes reported in Chicago.
Finally, we took a shine to Found City, a community-generated map of interesting places in New York City, with growing resources for Brooklyn, San Francisco, LA, London, Boston, Chicago and Portland.
4 October, 2005
Japan’s Ceatec Show Opens Today
Japan’s largest annual IT show, Ceatec (Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies), opens today and will feature around 700 companies, according to the organisers.
Last year, the show – the largest international exhibition in Asia for the technology and electronics sectors – attracted 182,000 people with greater numbers anticipated this year.
Naturally, Simon Perry – the Digi-Lifestyles big cheese – is at the show, so you can expect hot news and updates from the floor over the next couple of days.
Running from Tuesday until Saturday at the Makuhari Messe convention centre, Chiba, just outside Tokyo, the show is designed to provide a platform for Japan’s technology vendors to display their latest gear and showcase prototype products.
The anticipated unveiling of rival HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc players could prove to be a show highlight, and there’s great interest in the eagerly awaited new high-definition TVs.
Sharp is expected to show off a hard-disk drive-based digital recorder that is capable of recording two HDTV programs at once, with the machine ready to roll just one second after being switched on.
Toshiba has promised to display a super-slim 12.7 millimetre high drive designed for laptops which can read HD-DVD discs and read and write DVDs and CDs.
Naturally, there’s loads of activity on the mobile phone front, with new products and technology on offer, including portable fuel cells from network operator KDDI.
The company has been working with Hitachi and Toshiba to develop fuel cell-based chargers for cell phones, with the first commercial products expected on sale before the end of March 2006.
As well as shiny new consumer boxes, Ceatec also showcases the products of component makers, with Matsushita showing off a flexible optical circuit board and Seiko Epson displaying a flexible memory chip for use in flat-panel displays.
Born out of a merger between Japan Electronics Show and Com Japan, Ceatec attracted 172,053 visitors in its debut year in 2000, rising to 182,490 visitors last year.
Ceatec
4 October, 2005