2005

Lazer TripWire: Get On A Mission
Fancy getting all very Mission-Impossible at home or round about? Concerned that you need to protect yourself against International terrorists, your elder brother or members of a rival spy gang?
Wild Planet, based in San Francisco, will be able to fulfil your paranoia/technology dreams with their Lazer Tripwire. From the product name, it’s not exactly surprising that it act as a tripwire, but uses a laser to do it.
Using a low-power beam of light that won’t burn you retina out even if you look directly into it (not a laser then), for detection, the three supplied devices clamp on to relevant surfaces. Each of these units has an angle-able transmit and receive heads, so lining them up creates an invisible barrier around whatever is inside. As you all know from the movies, breaking the beam will set of the alarm, alerting you to the intrusion.
It’s an interesting adoption of technology that is used to protect really rather serious things, like armed fighter planes sitting on a runway and power stations, as Rayonet from UK company, Integrated Design, does.
Clearly devices like Rayonet are a little different in that they use infrared light and have a _little_ more sophistication in them, like the ability to ignore birds flying through the beam, but the Lazer Tripwire fundamentally uses the principles.
Michael Bystram of Integrated Design tells me that the initial ideas for Rayonet started 24 years ago, With a considerable step forward in intelligence around 8 years ago. Jump to now, and there’s a toy using the same principles.
The Lazer TripWire comes from Wild PLanet’s Spy Gear equipment range which, if I was in the process of going through childhood, I would been quite obsessed with getting hold of (frankly I’m pretty tempted now).
Wild Planet
Watch the Lazer TripWire Tv advert
Integrated Design’s Rayonet
18 August, 2005
Freeplay DEVO Wind-Up DAB Radio Announced
The world’s first wind-up FM and DAB digital radio, the Freeplay Devo, will be on sale in the UK soon.
Built on the well-regarded Freeplay power platform, the Devo wind-up wotsit offers DAB and FM waveband powered by an internal battery, AC via mains adapter or – when the power fades – some manful wrist action.
Sporting an attractive rugged black and silver finish with a blue LCD screen, the radio offers 5 DAB station presets with old-school rotary analogue tuning for FM.
The unit measures 122h x 114d x 205w mm, with the fascia being dominated by a large loudspeaker.
There’s a set of handy stereo RCA (phono) sockets onboard, letting users plug the radio into their home entertainment system, with a built in headphone socket for late night listening.
The Devo comes with a built in rechargeable battery with a claimed life of 6 hours DAB listening time (or 36 hours FM) per full charge.
When the batteries run out, a 60-second burst of action on the wind-up lever should reward the user with 3-5 minutes DAB reception or one hour of FM pleasure at normal volume
The Freeplay Devo is being launched in October 2005 with a retail price of £100 (~$180, ~€146).
Freeplay Devo
17 August, 2005
.xxx domain: US Gov Tells ICANN To Wait
Back in June this year, the .xxx domain appeared to be have been cleared by ICANN (Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers), the organisation that has control of domain names with world over.
Now Michael D. Gallagher from the US Department of Commerce (DoC) has now written to ICANN asking them to delay the ICANN Board of Directors wait for a week in what was to be a rubber-stamping of the final approval. Involvement of the US government with ICANN at this level is without precedence.
Gallagher sights nearly 6,000 letters and email from ‘concerned families’ that have been received to the DoC. In a country of over 296m people (assuming only US citizens have written in), 2.027e-5 is beyond a rounding error. It’s the rounding error of a rounding error.
We all know how easy it is to send an email – it takes seconds. And as the BBC found out when they received a flood of over 20,000 emails objecting to the showing of “Jerry Springer The Opera”. It’s no concern that very many of these mails were identical – as ‘the faithful’ from various religious groups were rounded up to form a virtual lynching posse.
The Bush administration doesn’t appear to have taken in to account any of this, and all of a sudden are interested in the views of the people. Wouldn’t it have been great if they’d listened to the view of the people before invading Iraq.
Gallagher’s letter draws to a close with, “Given the extent of the negative reaction, I request that the Board will provide process and adequate additional time for these concerns to be voiced and addresses before any additional action takes place on this issue.”
The Bush administration say that they have a concerns that the .xxx domains become a virtual red-light district, reserved exclusively for pornography.
Which way do you want it? Protecting those who don’t want to view porn, or not?
Porn on the Internet is a fact, and will not go away – just as porn in print will not vanish.
Surely it’s better to know where the porn is, rather than those not looking for it stumbling across it by accident.
Others see the creation of a separate TLD for ‘objectionable’ material as a step towards censorship of the Internet. Their concern is who becomes the arbiter of what is and isn’t ‘objectionable’, would a pencil drawing of nude be lumped in with hardcore porn, or would a slightly racy story be forced into the same category.
Is it just us, or do you feel that the steadily increasing involvement of Governments in areas which they really shouldn’t been getting involved with is a concern?
ICANN
17 August, 2005
PMR 1.8″ Hard Drive 1st, Claims Hitachi
Toshiba claim a first with their release of what they claim is the first commercially released Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) hard drive.
Measuring 1.8 inches, the incy-wincy drive can hold 40Gb on its single platter, providing around 10,000 music tracks, or 25k photos. Running with the oh-so-memorable OEM name of the MK4007GAL, it weighs in at just 51g and measures 54mm x 78.5mm x 5mm. They plan to release a two platter version, the MK8007GAH, which has 80Gb storage and only an extra 3mm thickness, next quarter.
They’re also using the drive to make their Gigabeat music player sexier. The introduction of PMR technology into the Gigabeat F41 not only gives them 40Gb of storage, from a previous 20Gb, but lets them shrink the thickness by 3m.
Drives like this are becoming more important as digital media moves further into the mainstream, and consumers digital appetites expands from music to video. With the drive being this small it will fit into really compact devices like mobile phones.
How does it work its magic? Today’s drives typically use Longitudinal Magnetic Recording (LMR). In simple terms, the difference between the two is LMR has the magnetic field pointing either left or right, while PMR has them pointing up or down. This helps to achieve higher and more stable recording densities, and in turn improves storage capacity. The images from Toshiba should help make it a bit clearer (if you happen to speak Japanese).
While the theory of PMR has been around for a number of years, Toshiba has taken 1-2 quarters longer than they’d expected in getting the MK4007GAL to market.
Toshiba roadmap with PMR appears impressive with their 3.5in PMR drives giving 1Tb of storage in Q4 2006/Q1 2007. They estimate that PMR should give their 0.85″ drives 6-8Gb per platter.
It is generally thought that all hard disk manufacturers will move in this direction in the pursuit of ever higher storage capacities.
17 August, 2005
Amazon A9 Search Offers Street Level Photos
Amazon is testing its new A9 mapping service that lets users view street-level photos of city blocks surrounding a requested address.
Barging its elbows between online mapping giants like AOL’s Mapquest.com, Yahoo, Google and Microsoft’s MSN.com, Amazon is hoping that its novel street level photos will give them a critical edge amongst consumers.
The company has amassed an index of 35 million photographs spanning 22 neighbourhoods of US cities, letting users view photographs of entire city blocks alongside a traditional map showing a grid of streets.
Amazon first introduced street-level photographs of specific addresses as part of its Yellow Pages listings, but the company believes that consumers will find the A9 service a more helpful view than Google mappings satellite views.
“We’re making maps slightly less abstract and closer to the real world,” said Udi Manber, A9’s chief executive.
Obtaining driving instructions with the service is easy enough, with users clicking on starting and destination points on the map rather than having to type in addresses. Clicking on a point on the map will get the corresponding address to pop up.
There’s some clever business tie-ins built into the service, with driving instructions providing photos of all the businesses along the recommended route (if the images are stored in the search engine’s index).
Amazon have been photographing city streets like Cartier Bresson on amphetamines, adding over 15 million more pictures since the January debut of the Yellow Pages service.
Not surprisingly, the horizon-challenged photographs ably illustrate that there’s none of Bresson’s magic in evidence, with pictures being automatically snapped by trucks equipped with digital cameras and GPS, receivers.
Despite being backed by an industry underweight, the two year old A9 search engine remains a Johnny-come-lately in the lucrative search engine industry, processing just 4.9 million search requests in June.
This gives it a lowly ranking of 27th amongst Internet search engines – a figure which equates to a measly US market share of 0.1 percent.
A9’s maps will display photos from 22 cities: Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Boston; Chicago; Dallas; Denver, Detroit; Fargo, N.D.; Houston; Los Angeles, Miami; New York; Philadelphia; Phoenix; Portland, Ore.; Sacramento, Calif.; Salt Lake City; San Diego; San Francisco; San Jose, Calif.; Seattle; and Washington D.C.
maps.a9.com
16 August, 2005
Apple Cock-Up May Earn Microsoft $10 Per iPod
Apple may be forced to shell out royalties to Microsoft for every single iPod it sells after it emerged that Microsoft was first to file a crucial patent on technology used in its iPod.
With Apple selling more than 18 million iPods in the past year alone, the total bill could result in hundreds of millions of dollars pouring into Bill Gates’ coffers.
Someone at Apple must have royally cocked up because although the iPod was introduced in November 2001, they didn’t get around to filing a provisional patent application until July 2002, with a full application only being submitted in October that year.
In the meantime, Microsoft submitted an application in May 2002 to patent some key elements of music players, including song menu software, letting them claim ownership to some of the iPod technology.
The US Patent and Trademark Office rejected Apple’s application in July, saying some ideas were similar to an earlier application filed by John Platt, a Microsoft employee.
The application doesn’t identify the iPod by name (usual for such petitions), describing a “portable, pocket-sized multimedia asset player” capable of managing MP3 music files including “a song title, a song artist, a song album, a song length”
The dispute could lead to Apple having to pay a licence fee for the technology of up to $10 a machine
Microsoft, has magnanimously offered to licence the technology to Apple if awarded the patent with Microsoft intellectual property licensing and business development director David Kaefer smirking, “Our policy is to allow others to licence our patents so they can use our innovative methods in their products.”
Apple representatives have stated they will appeal the decision, a process that could drag on for up to 18 months.
iPod patent rejection shocks Apple
16 August, 2005
Mobile Email Desire Revealed By Pointless Survey
It seems that there’s a never ending supply of companies ready to shell out for surveys asking the most inane questions.
So, why do they do it? Simple marketing usually.
The surveys are invariably designed to highlight some supposed shortcoming or growing need for some service or product that the company commissioning the survey just happens to offer!
This latest piece of survey fluff comes from Critical Path who wanted to “research consumer attitudes about the use of email and, in particular, to gauge interest in the use of mobile email services.”
What they really wanted to do, of course, was to show investors and consumers that their product is going to be a soaraway success, and by releasing a populist survey hopefully pick up a bit of free publicity along the way (and we’ve fallen for it. Damn!)
So naturally, the survey – as hard hitting as a soft marshmallow on a bed of feathers – concludes that there’s a massive potential market for mobile email and – would you believe it – Critical Path have got just the product the market needs!
Shamelessly trying to garner a mention in the lifestyle press, their survey trots out some truly vacuous dross claiming that people would rather get emails from an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend than their boss during their personal time.
Plundering the depths of inanity further, the survey revealed that 34 per cent of females ranked spouse emails as the most important, and 10 per cent more blokes reckoned mobile email would make their lives easier. Fascinating.
The survey thoughtfully reminds us “how essential email communication has become in everyday life”, dazzling readers with the revelation that 88 per cent of their respondents check their email for messages from family and friends while on holiday.
Continuing their amble down State-The-Obvious Boulevard, the authors reveal that 56 per cent of UK consumers would feel “out of touch” with friends and family without email access for just a single week, while 84 per cent of UK consumers wanted the ability to select which messages they receive on their mobile phone.
Gesturing wildly at his own product box, Mike Serbinis, chief technology officer at Critical Path, claimed that consumers want “an affordable service that is easy to use, works on their current phone, and can deliver messages from their current email account.”
With a large “BUY NOW” sign flashing above his head, Serbinis continued, “Operators who offer a simple, affordable mobile email service that allows consumers to use their current phone and choose the messages that matter will reap the biggest rewards.”
Critical Path
16 August, 2005
MX 5000: Logitech Announces Cordless Desktop Laser Keyboard
It could be argued that a keyboard’s beauty lies in its simple elegance. No flashing lights, no blinking screens, no whirring eye candy, just several rows of dumb keys obediently awaiting your input.
Simple. Classic.
Boring.
Clear your desks for Logitech’s new Cordless Desktop MX 5000 Laser keyboard – a futuristic, gadget-tastic affair that will makes your current keyboard look more at home in a Stone Age cave.
The Bluetooth keyboard features a built-in LCD which can display a ton of useful (and not-so-useful) information including e-mail and instant message notifications, favourite playlists and Internet radio stations.
Ever found yourself typing an email to your Gran and wondering what the ambient temperature of the room was? No problem – the MX 5000’s got a built in room temperature readout.
For MP3 junkies, there’s one-touch access to music playlists from popular player like iTunes, Windows Media Player and Musicmatch, with keyboard bashers also able to access and launch categories and themes of music through Musicmatch’s Internet radio stations.
The keyboard LCD screen provides instant notification of new e-mail and instant messages and there’s also a humble calculator included, but this one’s got a clever twist, with calculation results automatically being saved to the computer’s clipboard. Neat.
Naturally, if you want indicators, the MX 5000’s got ’em, with the LCD screen keeping users informed about the vital status of the caps lock and F lock keys, volume levels and mute.
The MX5000 reflects the trend which sees dumb-as-a-rock keyboards slowly turning into smartypants devices, capable of both sending and receiving info from the computer and, in this case, even acting as a Bluetooth 2.0 Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) wireless hub.
“Logitech introduced the world’s first mouse-and-keyboard combination in 1998 with the goal of removing cord clutter from the desk,” gushed Denis Pavillard, Logitech vice president of product marketing for desktops.
“We succeeded in delivering on that vision, and we are now addressing a different kind of clutter – cleaning up the mess of notifications and information that are displayed on the computer monitor.”
“The Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 5000 Laser desktop pushes that information to a peripheral screen so that people can choose when to glance at their notifications and status information, and can therefore clear their monitors — and their minds,” he added.
The Cordless Desktop MX 5000 package comes with Logitech’s MX1000 Cordless Laser Mouse, a laser powered chappie in a matching blue-slate/black finish.
Of course, the more functionality you squeeze into a keyboard, the greater the power needs, and Logitech have included a smart power-management solution which seems to comprise of a decidedly low tech on/off switch on the keyboard and an integrated battery indicator light.
We could have used one of them for our Logitech MX700 mouse which promptly ran out of juice half way through writing this review and is now pointlessly blinking away in its recharging dock.
The Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 5000 Laser will be available in October in the U.S. and Europe with a suggested retail price of £119.99 (€176) in Europe ($149.99 US).
Logitech
16 August, 2005
Silver Surfers Send Sales Soaring
The UK market for online shopping looks set to soar to £60 billion (~€88 billion, US$108 billion~) by 2010 according to a new report.
Research carried out by The Future Foundation for The Air Miles Travel Company claims that within five years 20% of all retail spending could be generated by items bought over the trusty Internet
The report also highlights the growth of silver surfers – old ‘uns aged between 55 and 64 – a demographic traditionally ignored by e-tailers.
According to the report, nearly two-thirds of people heading for retirement are currently clicking away on the web – up from only a third in 2001.
These figures suggest a silver surfer shopping boom is only five years away as there’s traditionally a two to six year delay between first using the Internet and whipping out the wallet online.
James Roper, chief executive of industry body for global e-retailing IMRG, warned that companies assuming that online shopping is only young hipsters could be restricting their growth.
“It’s essential for company growth to invest in this older online shopper,” he added.
The Future Foundation commented that websites sporting yoof-orientated design, teensy weensy text and kray-zee interfaces are likely to miss out on silver surfer sales.
Instead, the report stressed the importance of creating accessible sites with clear navigation, letting age-challenged users unleash their pensions and Spend! Spend! Spend!
Internet shopping continues to increase overall, with nearly 40% of people in the UK spending online during the past six months – up 100% from three years ago.
“Today’s online shopping market is certainly booming and is set to evolve dramatically over the next five years,” said Michael Wilmott, chief executive and head futurologist at the Foundation.
“If current trends continue, the proportion of Internet users among the general population could be as high as 85% by 2010 – with a whopping 80% of people shopping online.”
The Future Foundation
15 August, 2005
CC75, C110 Handsets: Siemens Goes Simple
Following hot on the heels of Vodafone’s successful stripped-down phone ‘Vodafone Simply’, Siemens has introduced a similarly frill-bereft mobile, the CC75.
The no-nonsense blower is designed for easy going folks who don’t want to do battle with a crateful of technology every time they want to make a call.
Accordingly, the Siemens CC75 has no camera, no Java applications, no memory expansion, no Bluetooth, no email, no video and no inbuilt speaker phone, serving up its set of Ye Olde basic functions in a simple, stylish design.
Simple doesn’t have to mean crap though, and the thin and light phone offers a 65k colour display, SMS and MMS with an innovative button on the side of the phone allowing a MMS voice message to be recorded easily.
In line with its Stenna stairlift shuffling demographic, the CC75 provides a screen with 16-dot lettering making characters 33 percent larger than usual and visible from any angle – so granny will have no problem finding a nephew to nag from her address book.
The Siemens CC75 will be available in Q4 2005, retailing in the “medium price range”.
Siemens have also announced their new CF110 slim slider phone.
Aimed at those weird people who like to “use their phone as a fashion accessory” (rather than talking into them), the attractive tri-band GSM CF110 offers a 130×130 pixel trans-missive 65K TFT, served up in a “Moonlight Silver” and “Midnight Blue” finish.
The CF110 is also something of a frill-free affair, with no camera, Bluetooth or music playback functionality onboard.
It does, however, offer a pretty useful set of day-to-day functions: WAP 1.2 browser, polyphonic ringtones, Java support, MMS, GPRS, basic PIM functions and a rather anorexic 1.5Mb of memory
The Siemens CF110 will be available in Q4 2005 in the mid to low price range.
Siemens
15 August, 2005