2005

All Your Google Base Are Belong To Us
All Your Google Base Are Belong To Us – headline explained
The web wires are waxing wildly with rumours about Google Base, a hush-hush Google project that “accidentally” appeared on the Web for a few hours yesterday.
The “inadvertent” (yeah, right) unveiling of base.google.com sent bloggers into a screengrabbing frenzy, prompting the search engine giant to confirm that the fleeting snapshot was indeed a legitimate Google page.
Under pressure from bloggers, Google company product manager, Tom Oliveri, revealed a little in his blog:
“You may have seen stories today reporting on a new product that we’re testing, and speculating about our plans. Here’s what’s really going on.
We are testing a new way for content owners to submit their content to Google, which we hope will complement existing methods such as our web crawl and Google Sitemaps.
We think it’s an exciting product, and we’ll let you know when there’s more news.”
The screenshots revealed an entry page where Google suggests the type of information to submit to Base, with one sharp eyed Dutch blogger Wouter Schut, saying that the test pages also included presets for housing, products, reviews, services, travel, vehicles and want ads.
A Google Base screengrab posted on flickr revealed the following text:
“Post your items on Google.
Google Base is Google’s database into which you can add all types ofcontent. We’ll host your content and make it searchable online for free.
Examples of items you can find in Google Base:
• Description of your party planning service
• Articles on current events from your website
• Listing of your used car for sale
• Database of protein structures
You can describe any item you post with attributes, which will helppeople find it when they search Google Base. In fact, based on therelevance of your items, they may also be included in the main Google search index and other Google products like Froogle and Google Local.”
Naturally, the speculation-o-meter has been in overdrive ever since, with many believing it to be the start of a foray into the online classified field, with Google placing popular services like eBay and Craigslist directly in their sights.
This service would let individual punters submit classified adverts for free on Google Base and could possibly signal the imminent arrival of the much rumoured Google Payment (aka Google Wallet) product.
Rumours have spun up to tornado force by a recent Classified Intelligence report which claimed that Google had been discretely asking job boards and other classifieds providers to submit feeds of their listings.
And while we’re speculating with such wild abandon, we can’t help thinking that if Google Base does indeed materialise, Google could offer sellers a GoogleTalk button for their listings and offer similar functionality to the much-anticipated SkypeMe buttons on eBay listings…
Google Base
27 October, 2005
Sky Says Easynet Purchase “Solves All Problems”
BSkyB’s Director of Product Management, Gerry O’Sullivan couldn’t help sounding smug as he took centre stage at The Connected Home conference in London today.
“Those of you who read the papers may have noticed we bought a small Internet company last Friday,” he announced. “To have a combination of satellite distribution and broadband connectivity solves all problems”.
O’Sullivan’s presentation focused on Sky+ and stated the need for a “whole home solution” but he was keen to distance himself from existing IP-based offerings such as the Windows Media Player.
While Microsoft’s Cynthia Crossley and Telewest’s Mark Horley nodded collaboratively to Merlin Kister of Intel’s assertion that “We mustn’t be close minded and pick a winner. It’s important for all players to work together,” O’Sullivan looked disinterested.
“I’m a fan of Media Player – but my mum doesn’t want a reminder to renew her anti-virus subscription while she’s watching Coronation Street,” he said.
And, in response to an audience show of hands revealing nearly all had regular problems with programme crashes on their PCs, O’Sullivan added:
“There’s zero tolerance (among our customers) for that sort of unreliability and pain…we can only roll out products that you switch on and they work.”
And BSkyB has the money and ambition to keep turning out products it thinks consumers may need – the five day old Sky Gnome for example, enabling you to listen to satellite radio in the garden, or the new movies over IP service, Sky By Broadband – due to launch in the next two weeks.
The third generation Sky+ boxes have 160GB of space – only half are visible to the consumer – the other 80GB of disc space is for BSkyB to keep as a store for future ‘on demand’ programming, O’Sullivan revealed.
Horley mentioned that Telewest was launching its own 160GB PVR in early 2006, with the WHOLE disc available for recording “as we already offer video on demand”.
Sky can’t support true VOD – it’s satellite distribution network has limited bandwidth and lacks an intrinsic return path – but do consumers care?
With Sky+ proving a virtually churn-free proposition (apparently 90 per cent of viewers say they’re very satisfied), Easynet on board and plenty of money in its pocket, O’Sullivan can’t help but smile – looks like BSkyB is onto a winner.
The Connected Home 05
27 October, 2005
Wharfedale DV832B Review: Digital TV Box
After several years of battling with the clunky interface and weird quirks of our museum-ready OnDigital digital terrestrial television box, we decided it was time to replace it with something a little more contemporary.
With digital broadcast delivery technology moving so fast, we weren’t minded to shell out too much for something that may be rendered obsolete by some funky new feature in a few years, so we went looking for a cheap’n’cheerful option.
A quick visit to box-shifting supremos Argos saw our eyes fixing on an ideal candidate: the Wharfedale DV832B digibox.
Sure, it’s not much to look at and the plastic case – with its cheap, old-school red LCDs – is unlikely to woo the neighbours, but the feature list was far more than what we expected at the price level.
For the princely sum of just £35 (~$62, €52), the Wharfedale offers a digi box with a 7 day electronic programme guide (EPG), digital text, digital interactive services, DVB subtitles, auto scan and setup and 2 SCART sockets.
Suitably impressed, we shelled out the readies and plugged the unit into our home entertainment system.
Once powered up, the unit asks if we want it to automatically scan for stations and after saying “Yes please Mr DigiBox”, we were presented with a long list of available digital TV and radio stations.
Onscreen menus
As with most digital boxes, you need the remote control to access the key functions with the front of the unit only offering controls for on/off and program up/down.
The onscreen interface was simple, crisply designed and easy to navigate, and proved fairly intuitive in operation.
Using the onscreen menus we were given options to delete channels, rename channels, select favourites, set up to five timers, add a parental lock, choose TV type and set up Over-Air software downloads.
Within minutes of getting the DV832B out if its box, we were skipping channels with glee, pausing momentarily to wonder who on earth watches those dire Bid TV programs.
Picture quality
Picture quality was good with no nasty outbreaks of the jaggies to be seen (although we do live within eyeshot of the Crystal Palace transmitter so we can’t say how it might perform in areas with weaker coverage), and we found the overall performance to be perfectly satisfactory.
The slimline silver unit (4.8 x 30 x 20.6cm) comes with a simple and straightforward 24-page manual, a SCART lead and a run-of-the-mill remote control (there’s no Top Up TV compatibility on board, but we’re not complaining at this price!).
Our conclusion
The Wharfedale DV832B provides outstanding value for money, is a thoroughly capable performer and we have no hesitation in giving it five stars.
27 October, 2005
Fujitsu Siemens Launches Pocket LOOX N GPS PDAs
Fujitsu Siemens have launched the “first handhelds with fully integrated GPS functionality”, the Pocket LOOX N500 and Pocket LOOX N520 PDAs.
Delivered with Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 and optional NAVIGON MobileNavigator 5, the new LOOX models offer an integrated SiRFStar III GPS Receiver for GPS functionality, making them “robust without compromising on design”.
Powered by an Intel XScale PXA270 312 MHz CPU, the devices come with a SD/MMC slot (with support for SDIO), USB 1.1, IrDA and Bluetooth, with the Pocket LOOX N520 offering integrated wireless LAN 802.11g Wi-Fi.
Both units offer a large 3.5″ screen (active area: 53×71 mm) with a resolution of 240×320 pixels, 64K colours and 10 levels of backlighting brightness, supported by 64Mb RAM and 64Mb flash memory (LOOX N500) and 128Mb (LOOX N520).
The attractively finished silver and slate grey LOOX devices come with a removable Li-Ion 1200 mAh battery which should provide something like 16 hours of MP3 playback.
A new Persistent Memory feature has also been added, providing secure storage for programmes and documents when the power gets low.
There’s also a ton of Fujitsu Siemens-branded applications bundled in the package, including Voice recorder, AudioPath and Key Look, along with a Microsoft Mobile suite including Excel, Power Point, Outlook and Internet Explorer.
They’re not the smallest PDAs on the market, with pocket-straining dimensions of 116x71x14 mm (bigger than the previous LOOX 420 model) and a weight of 160g, but they do come with a cool blue illuminated keypad and base station with headphones.
Both handhelds are available now from £239.00 (~US$434, €351~) and £259.00 (~US$459, €381~) respectively (excluding VAT).
Fujitsu Siemens
26 October, 2005
BitTorrent File Sharer Arrested
A Hong Kong doleboy has been slapped down by The Man after he was found guilty of distributing three Hollywood films using BitTorrent’s peer-to-peer file sharing technology.
A report in the Taiwanese English-language newspaper The China Post named unemployed Chan Nai-Ming in what is believed to be the first case of its kind.
The 38 year old used BitTorrent to distribute “Miss Congeniality”, “Daredevil” and “Red Planet” and heard the knock on the door from customs officers in January 2005.
Nai-Ming pleaded not guilty to copyright infringement but was convicted after a four day trial. He will be sentenced on 7 November, 2005, although some Websites are reporting that he’s already been fined $641 (~£360, ~E529).
The Hong Kong government is claiming the action as its first successful action against peer-to-peer file sharing, with Hong Kong Commerce Secretary John Tsang confident that it would deter other potential file-sharers.
Since the arrest, the Hong Kong customs department said that illegal file-sharing had plummeted by 80%.
The OpenSource BitTorrent software has become one of the most popular means of downloading large files, with the technology allowing users to download fragments of a large file from multiple users, rather than in one hefty lump.
Initially, the program needed centralised tracker files to manage this process, but BitTorrent’s creator, Bram Cohen announced that they were no longer needed in the last year.
As it’s grown in popularity, BitTorrent has garnered the unwelcome attentions of spyware and adware pushers along with the corporate might of recording companies and movie studios.
Thousands of peer-to-peer downloaders using software like Napster and SoulSeek have already been sued for copyright infringement over the past few years, with the US Supreme Court ruling last year that peer-to-peer makers could be sued if they encourage users to copy material.
We expect the corporate-profits-defending big boot of The Man to be seeing a lot of door-kicking action in the upcoming months.
BitTorrent
MPAA to pursue film file-sharers
26 October, 2005
Networked Home “too confusing” for consumers
The futuristic vision of a connected home with content moving seamlessly from our TV to our PC and on to our mobile device is still a long way off, according to key speakers at The Connected Home conference in London today.
While David Sales (pictured right) from BT Entertainment waxed lyrical about broadband; Microsoft’s Elena Branet praised IPTV; and Mary Francia of Philips presented the Streamium product range; they conviently avoided the the area of interoperability.
It took Dimitri Van Kets (pictured left), from Belgian telco, Belgacom, to voice what many were thinking by announcing that the networked home was “little more than a mass of standards” and “too confusing” for the average consumer. Unless the service providers get together and educate customers, he said, true home connectivity was never going to happen.
Sky Interactive’s Paul Dale, speaking from the audience, said he’d been annoyed when a perfectly legal DVD of Thomas The Tank Engine wouldn’t play on his Windows Media Player. Luckily he’d been able to hack into it – but clearly this wasn’t the preferred way forward!
Paul Szucs of Sony said that service providers should “try not to lose the plot with content protection”, adding that “consumers simply want their devices to work together and share content.”
The mood was best summed up by Peter King of Strategy Analytics: “We’re not going to move any further without a massive consumer awareness programme funded by all players in the chain.”
Even Microsoft’s Branet admitted there was a need to “focus on educating consumers”.
But until the key players stop operating in silos, this isn’t going to happen.
Microsoft
Streamium
26 October, 2005
BT Starts Trials Of 8mbps Broadband
BT is planning to turbo-boost broadband connectivity by quadrupling basic connectivity speeds to 8mbps nationwide and giving the service a snappy name, “ADSL Broadband Max”.
Compared to some of the competition, BT’s current 2mbps basic broadband connectivity speed (quadrupled from 500kbps to 2mbps earlier this year) makes a glacier look light footed, so the upgrade is desperately needed to keep customers from straying elsewhere.
The 8mbps service will see BT reaching the theoretical top ADSL speeds it announced when the broadband service first launched in 2000.
BT has said it will begin trials of its ADSL Broadband Max service next month in London, Cornwall, South Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, with the trials gradually expanding into a national 8mbps roll out starting in spring 2006.
Cameron Rejali, managing director for products and strategy at BT Wholesale, was on-message, “BT is committed to ensuring everyone benefits from the broadband revolution, whether they live in valleys, villages or city centres”.
With the industry rapidly consolidating, BT is coming under increasing pressure from newly merged uber-telecos like Telewest/NTL and Sky/Easynet, with the former already offering speeds of more than 8mbps for no extra charge on existing broadband subscriptions.
Elsewhere, BT has started trialling optical fibre broadband services in Wales, connecting business to ultra-high-bandwidth services using strands of blown fibre run along using existing telegraph poles.
This technology saves BT having to mess about digging optical fibre trenches to properties and reduces costs of delivering optical services in “the last mile”.
BT
26 October, 2005
Samsung SCH V700, The World’s First PMP Phone
Released today in Korea, the land where they get all the cool gadgets first, Samsung’s new SCH V700 handset has the honour of being the first PMP (Portable Media Player) phone in the world.
But before you get really excited and suspect that this PMP gadget will provide a rush of excitement on a par with its near namesake, PCP, allow us to explain:
PMP is just another new marketing tag dreamt up by PR types in a froth of cappuccino to describe a common or garden multimedia handset, i.e. a hard disk/flash memory based gizmo capable of playing back/recording MP3s and video.
The V700 comes in Samsung’s favoured clamshell design with the added twist of a tilting display which lets users rotate the screen 90 degrees to take advantage of a wider display (it looks a bit like ET to us in this position, but maybe we’ve been overdoing it a bit recently.)
Clad in an unspectacular silver finish, it’s not the smallest ot most attractive phone around, but it serves up a reasonably generous 320 x 240 pixels main QVGA display, with a quirky circular LCD fitted on the phone’s exterior.
Inside, there’s a capacious 200 megabytes of internal memory on offer with additional storage offered by a T-flash card slot.
We’re impressed with the onboard TV out port which could prive a great way of sharing your photos with chums.
We’ve no idea when it’s likely to be on the streets of the UK, but the price looks like it’ll be hovering around the €450 mark (£350, $540).
Samsung
via akihabara news
25 October, 2005
EX-600: Casio Wafer Thin Digital Camera Announced
CASIO have announced their new, wafer-thin EXILIM CARD EX-S600 digital camera.
Small enough to slip in your pocket without inviting Mae West quotes, the 16mm thin camera sports a 3X optical zoom (38 – 114mm, F 2.7 – 5.2), with a nippy start up time and super fast 0.007 second release time lag.
Offering a healthy six megapixels resolution, this card-sized diminutive snapper comes with “Anti Shake DSP” which Casio claims can reduce or eliminate blur caused by shaking mitts or moving subjects.
Compared to its predecessor, the EX-500, the camera offers an updated CCD imager, 50% improved battery life, a slightly closer macro focusing distance of 15 centimetres and a new “Revive Shot” feature which attends to the rather obscure needs of people taking digital pictures of old album photos.
According to Casio’s announcement, Revive Shot mode “adjusts for obliquity as well as brightly refreshes faded colours.”
Our dictionary says that obliquity means, “the presentation during labour of the head of the foetus at an abnormal angle” and “the quality of being deceptive,” so we’re not entirely sure what they’re on about, but we figure that it just sprinkles a bit of fairy dust over old images and boosts up the colours.
Unlike Pansonic LX1’s mechanical Optical Image Stabilisation, the Casio achieves the effect with digital bodgery, automatically bumping up the ISO and thus making faster shutter speeds available (at the expense of more noise.)
The camera offers quick picture playback of approx 0.1 seconds interval on the large 2.2 inch LCD, which Casio claims is “twice as bright as previous models” (good job too as there’s no optical viewfinder onboard.)
As is de rigeur on consumer compacts, there’s a built in movie mode with the Casio capturing MPEG-4, VGA (640×480 pixels) at 30 frames/second.
Battery life is a beefy 300 still pictures or 1 hour and 50 minutes of movie recording per battery charge, with the EX-S600 connecting to a TV or PC via the multi cradle, which also doubles as the battery charger.
As ever, there are enough scene modes (34) on offer to ensure that even an Icelandic daytripper to the Amazon should be able to capture every atmospheric eventuality on the way, although we imagine most people will just go along with the ‘auto’ option.
Currently only available in Japan and other Asian markets, the EX-S600 comes in a selection of colours, sparkle silver, fiesta orange, mistral blue and luminous gold.
Casio
25 October, 2005
FUD Encouraged By Macrovision Report
Macrovision, a company who sell content protection (DRM) system, have today released a report they commissioned into content copying.
The findings? That ‘Casual Piracy’ is “a Growing Challenge in the Entertainment Industry” and that “mass market penetration of digital recording devices and broadband/file-sharing networks are prompting many entertainment brands to enrich their content protection strategies and influence bottom line performance.”
Let us translate. Digital Rights Management (DRM) is coming and the public had better start getting used to it.
This is on the basis of what to us appears, from a quick once over of this report, a pretty unscientific approach, as the following paragraph from page 10 illustrates.
“In order to estimate exactly what effective content protection represents, respondents were also asked to estimate how many units/titles were copied (burnt) for each 100 sold and how many were illegally downloaded for every 100 sold.”
How can someone write “estimate exactly” without seeing the paradox? They just have well asked them “How paranoid are you about content copying?”
Their conclusion directly under this nonsense? “None of the figures make for comfortable reading.” WHAT?!?!? Just because these figures are presented in a table in a report with graphs next to them, doesn’t elevate them from what they are – guesses. At this point we stopped reading this report – we had some drying paint that needed watching.
I hope that each time a ‘report’ or so called research like this is published, that it is gone through with a fine tooth comb pointing out its weaknesses. This kind of nonsense needs to be countered.
FUD rules
I have, for years, been questioning the content industry – How are you going to sell DRM to the public when what you’ll be selling them some less good/useful than they had before? The answer has always been a resounding silence.
When I asked a very senior person at Fox (his name escapes me) why DRM would be required when the vast majority of their customers are fair, reasonable and trustworthy, his response stunned me – “We take the opposite view, we treat everyone as dishonest.”
To me, that summed up both the arrogance and distain of the company, and possibly that of the current ‘entertainment’ industry. Any company that has such a low opinion of their customers, will eventually come to a sticky end – and it’s quite right that they do.
Through the sheer panic of suddenly waking up to the changes that technology has been bringing to media for decades (hell, I had digitised audio tracks on my Mac Plus, soon after it was released in 1984), the ‘entertainment;’ business has been listening to technology companies, who by strange co-incidence have something to sell – content protection systems.
That combined with the universal truth that fear is contagious, leads to a point where we are now. The current media companies being near terrified that _all_ of the customers are waiting to steal from them, so they must be restricted – and DRM-selling companies are more than happy to help them in their fear.
Their perceived need to restrict their customers is costing them _huge_ amounts of money and it will continue to … and to what gain?
They stop their customers from using their purchases how they feel fit – well, at least until the latest hack removes the protection – and in the process, further alienate their customers, building resentment.
Why don’t they spend all of this effort, time and money creating new content – engaging their audience further?
I wonder if the ‘entertainment’ companies have spared a thought as to what would happen if their businesses did fail? Do they not see that generally the technology companies are going to win anyway even without them?
PDF of complete report.
BTW, don’t try copying text out of the report, it’s protected unsurprisingly.
25 October, 2005