2005

T-Mobile Plunders Guerilla Tactics To Promote Phone
Following a long tradition of The Man stealing ideas off the street to flog their products, T-Mobile is organising a series of impromptu ‘street gigs’ to promote their new Sony Ericsson D750i camera phone.
The ‘spontaneous’ performances will take part in London and Birmingham over the summer, with text and picture messages bring sent out to invite T-Mobile customers 90 minutes before the start of the gigs.
Offering ‘last minute invites to unusual locations for hedonistic fun’, you can see some of T-Mobile’s previous (ahem) ‘Guerilla street gigs’ on their T-Mobile Streets’ website
Wielding its corporate chequebook with devastating force, T-Mobile has booked a selection of hot’n’happening music artists like Mercury prize nominee The Magic Numbers, Lemar and El Presidente, along with some unknown acts.
Keen to milk every last ounce of PR potential from the gigs, T-Mobile will be broadcasting the performances online, with company bods on hand to encourage T-Mobile subscribers to test the new handset ~~run off with the thing~~.
Throughout the two-month event there’ll be a photo competition inviting punters to find the picture that best captures the spirit of the gigs.
“T-Mobile Street Gigs is the first of our new initiatives to deliver unique experiences for customers,” grooved Phil Chapman, UK marketing director, loosening his tie and turning down the David Gray.
Forthcoming gigs are currently being flagged up in T-mobile stores, with only the name of the next band to play appearing on posters.
T-Mobile customers can log into the edgy, stencil-graffiti-strewn website to register their interest and are free to invite as many of their chums as they like once they receive gig details
28 July, 2005
Amazon Revenue Rockets, Income Slips
Amazon.com’s revenue soared internationally in the second quarter as electronics and other non-book bits’n’bobs made up more of its business.
The cash tills rang loud to the tune of US$1.75 billion (~£1bn, ~€1.45bn) in the quarter ended June 30, up a healthy 26 per cent from US$1.39 billion in last year’s second quarter.
Amazon’s international segment – which includes its UK French, German, Japanese and Chinese units – climbed 33 per cent from last year to reach US$793 million (~£456m, ~€661m).
The behemoth of online book floggers saw its sales of electronics and general merchandise grow to 26 per cent of its worldwide sales from 23 per cent a year earlier.
Amazon.com’s chief financial officer, Tom Szkutak, announced that third-party sales accounted for 28 percent of Amazon.com’s total items sold, sprightly stepping up from 24 percent for this time last year.
Szkutak said that the company was chuffed with the “heavy shopping” undertaken by Amazon Prime customers who have been clicking madly for electronics, tools, kitchen supplies, and health and personal care products.
“Though expensive for the company, Amazon Prime creates a premium experience for customers who join, and as a result we hope they’ll purchase more from us in the long term,” Szkutak said.
It wasn’t all pearly-white grins, as Amazon announced that net income declined to US$52 million (~£30m, ~€43m) from US$76 (~£44m, ~€66.3m) million in the second quarter of 2004.
This includes US$56 million (~£32.25m, ~€46.6m) in income tax expense, which was up from US$5 million (~£2.87m, ~€4.16m) a year earlier.
Amazon’s earnings were US$0.12 per share, slipping down from US$0.18 per share in last year’s second quarter, but still ahead of analyst’s predications.
Amazon said it expects sales to increase of 20 percent to 31 percent in the current quarter compared to last year.
Amazon
27 July, 2005
iBook And Mac Mini Range Beefed Up By Apple
Apple Computer has unveiled updates to its iBook laptop and Mac Mini lines, lobbing in new features, more memory and built in wireless technology – although the anticipated widescreen models failed to run up at the launch party.
Mac iBook
Apple’s new iBook line now comes with a scrolling trackpad and a clever sudden motion sensor which helps protect a spinning hard drive if some clumsy klutz drops the notebook.
The new iBook G4s now come with a faster Power PC G4 processor running up to 1.42 GHz, with 512MB memory as standard, higher performance graphics and built-in AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth wireless connectivity.
The enhanced range features the ATI Mobility Radeon 9550 with 32MB of dedicated video, with machines either offering a slot-load SuperDrive (for burning DVDs and CDs), or a slot-load Combo drive (for watching DVDs and burning CDs).
Built-in Bluetooth 2.0 (Enhanced Data Rate), 10/100 BASE-T Ethernet and integrated AirPort Extreme 54 Mbps 802.11g WiFi wireless networking is provided as standard, with Apple claiming up to 6 hours battery life.
The 1.33 GHz PowerPC with 12″ screen G4 iBook retails at £699/US$999 and its bigger 1.42 GHz PowerPC G4 iBook with 14″ display knocks out for £899/US$1299.
‘The new iBook is the perfect portable for the go anywhere, do anything digital lifestyle of consumers and students,” roared David Moody, Apple’s VP of Mac Product Marketing.
“With improved performance, double the memory, and new mobility features like the scrolling TrackPad, Sudden Motion Sensor and Bluetooth, the new iBooks are an amazing value,” he positively insisted.
Mac Mini
The diminutive Mac Mini range features three new models – the 1.25 GHz Mac Mini, 1.42 GHz Mac mini and the new 1.42 GHz Mac Mini with SuperDrive – with memory upgraded to 512 MB throughout.
Prices start at £349/US$499, with a version featuring built-in AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth selling at £429/US$599.
A further model offering DVD and CD burning capabilities via a SuperDrive will knock out for £499/US$699.
They may be pat-on-the-head teensy, but Mac Minis come stuffed with connectivity options, including one FireWire 400 and two USB 2.0 ports, DVI (supporting VGA), and built-in 10/100 BASE-T NIC.
All of the machines ship with Mac OS X version 10.4 ‘Tiger’ OS and iLife ’05
“Mac Mini has been a popular choice for consumers getting started with Mac OS X and iLife ’05,” beamed Moody.
“With double the memory and new features like built-in wireless networking and DVD burning, the new Mac Mini delivers an even greater value in an innovative compact design,” he purred.
Apple
27 July, 2005
Music File Sharers Spend The Most
Illegal music downloaders shell out more for legitimate music downloads than goody two-shoes music fans.
The results of the ‘2005 Speakerbox’ study by market researchers The Leading Question revealed that music fans who download music illegally via file-sharing networks also fork out four-and-a-half times more on legitimate music downloads than average fans.
The survey asked 600 British PC and mobile-owning British music fans about their downloading activities and discovered that music pirates spend substantially more on legally downloadable music through sites like Apple’s iTunes Music Store or Napster
According to the report, pirates who regularly download or share unlicensed music spend an average of £5.52 (~US$9.63, ~€7.99) per month on legal digital music, while average music fans only spend £1.27 (~US$2.21, ~€1.84) on digital tracks.
How much both groups spend on CDs wasn’t specified.
“Music fans who break piracy laws are highly valuable customers,” said Paul Brindley, director of The Leading Question.
“Legal actions are making something of an impact but unlicensed file sharing will never be eradicated. The smart response is to capitalise on the power of the p2p networks themselves to entice consumers into more attractive legal alternatives,” he added.
The research also revealed that illegal downloaders were mustard keen to try emerging music services, with 60% wanting to get their hands on a MP3-enabled phone, compared to just 29% of other music fans.
“There’s a myth that all illegal downloaders are mercenaries hell-bent on breaking the law in pursuit of free music,” Brindley continued. “In reality, they are often hardcore fans who are extremely enthusiastic about adopting paid-for services as long as they are suitably compelling.”
The survey highlighted that phones still have some way to go before they can compete with dedicated MP3 players as de-facto music playing devices.
Only 8% of punters surveyed were planning to buy a music playing mobile phone in the next 12 months, compared to 33% ready to rip out the readies for an iPod or dedicated MP3 player during the same period.
Respondents cited built-in cameras, organiser functions and video cameras above music players in their preferences for mobile phone features.
Punters expressed concern about the low battery life of music playing phones, with some fearful of losing their music collection if they lost their phone.
With many consumers getting their phones for nowt through contract deals – and often replacing them regularly – the survey concluded that most punters have a low “emotional attachment” to their phones.
Despite this, 38% of those surveyed liked the idea of downloading full-length tracks direct to their mobiles, with the figure rising to over 50% for punters already downloading tracks to their computers.
Mobile phone manufacturers trying to tempt new users with bigger onboard memory will note that only 4% of the survey respondents wanted more than 1,000 songs worth of music to take with them on holiday.
Online file sharers ‘buy more music’ [Guardian]
The Leading Edge
27 July, 2005
Motorola Adds Yahoo! Web Services To Mobiles
As part of Motorola’s strategy to tempt home and business with new services, the company has announced that it will add Yahoo! Web services to their Linux-based mobile devices.
The company intends to integrate Yahoo Internet services – such as e-mail, search, instant messaging and news – into its handheld and desktop devices throughout the major markets, starting in 2006.
As well as phones, the deal will also see Yahoo’s services pre-installed into home broadband-enabled products and its soon-come digital radio and MP3 device, iRadio.
Motorola plans to make these services available to operators worldwide with the aim of increasing consumer adoption of mobile data services.
Ron Garriques, president of Motorola’s mobile device business, said: “By optimising these products for our leading Linux and Java software platform, we’re making it just that much easier for operators to maximize revenue while delivering the most innovative consumer experiences.”
This announcement follows Motorola’s launch of their new daft Bluetooth sunglasses.
Elsewhere, the company have also announced that Vonage will offer the new Motorola VT2442 voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) gateway to its Internet telephony customers.
It hasn’t exactly got the sexiest of names, but Motorola VT2442 is touted as greatly simplifying the process of adding broadband telephone service into a home network.
The technology also serves up a fully-featured home network router, offering four Ethernet ports for connecting computers or gaming consoles, and an advanced firewall for Internet security.
Yahoo
Motorola
Motorola, Vonage Team
27 July, 2005
Microsoft Maps WiFi For Alternative GPS System
Trying to work out the law surrounding this Wi-Fi malarkey seems to be a tricky business.
As we reported earlier, it seems that walking around residential streets looking for a Wi-Fi connection is definitely A Very Bad Thing and liable to land you with a trouble.
But if you’re Microsoft, then you’re apparently free to dispatch cars all over US towns and suburbs to trawl for the signals sent out by the millions of short-range home and office WiFi networks.
Microsoft’s somewhat unexpected move – soon to be repeated in the UK and elsewhere – is part of a plan to create a ground-based location system as an alternative to the GPS satellite system.
According to an article in the Financial Times, Microsoft says it has now built a database containing the whereabouts of “millions” of WiFi networks.
Naturally, privacy groups are more than a little concerned about Microsoft sniffing about the hedgerows and alcoves of private networks, but the company claims that it has collected only the unique identifier (MAC address) of each Wi-Fi network and that this cannot be traced to an address or an individual user.
Microsoft says that by recording the position of every MAC address on a giant map, it had created a positioning system that would make it possible for anyone with a WiFi-enabled laptop to flip out their machine and identify their location to within 30.5 metres.
We think location-based information and services are going to be huge and an alternative way of locating yourself without the need for GPS is welcome.
Where this WiFi-based locating will work particularly well is in cities where GPS doesn’t work too well, due to its signal being blocked by the tall buildings, and there a strong concentration of WiFi connections.
Microsoft tracks WiFi for new mapping system [FT]
26 July, 2005
MSN Virtual World Goes Live, Apple Vanishes
Microsoft has launched the first public beta of its Virtual Earth, an online mapping application overlaying satellite images with local searches and maps.
MSN’s Virtual Earth will provide both street-map and satellite views of locations and serve up driving directions between places, competing directly with Google’s popular “Google Maps” service.
Virtual Earth has a trick up its sleeve through its ability to transform Wi-Fi enabled PCs into “location-determining devices” without the need for any separate hardware, as we reported earlier.
The system works by noting the latitude and longitude of available Wi-Fi access points and then triangulating a user’s location after consulting Microsoft’s huge database of router MAC addresses.
A user’s current location is then highlighted onscreen with subsequent search results tailored around that location.
Virtual Earth will also have the capability to visually point out locations for ATMs, restaurants, and petrol stations – something that the rival Google Maps service has been able to do since incorporating satellite imagery in April this year.
“MSN Virtual Earth provides a deeply immersive search experience that lets people see what it’s like to be in a location and easily explore what they can do there,” purred Stephen Lawle, general manager of the Microsoft Mappoint business unit.
The service which currently shows US-based satellite images only and users must download the Microsoft Location Finder client application access the location-finding services.
Microsoft plans to knock out updated versions of Virtual Earth every four months, with the next beta release set to incorporate bird’s-eye imagery licensed from Pictometry International which will add cities, landmarks and points of interest to the product.
Microsoft also plans to integrate traffic data and weather data to the service in the coming months.
Mac users, however, will have to wait until autumn for a version that runs on their machines.
MSN Virtual Earth project manager Mark Law has insisted that MSN Virtual Earth is not a purely consumer-based site only, adding that Microsoft will be making the application-programming interface available to developers.
Microsoft has said that future versions of Virtual Earth will allow users to create their own interactive maps, and add their own reviews of restaurants and other places.
Wags on the Internet are claiming that Microsoft has virtually wiped Apple off the face of the Web, noting that Apple’s Silicon Valley headquarters – which can be seen in their full glory on Google Maps – appears as nothing more than a deserted parking lot in Virtual Earth.
Microsoft insisted that because the service was still in its testing phase, it’s just a coincidence that they used older, black-and-white photographs to display the barren wasteland around Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California in 1991.
Others might put it down to wishful thinking.
MSN Virtual Earth
26 July, 2005
Oakley and Motorola launch RAZRWIRE Bluetooth Sunglasses
Put two cool branded products together – Motorola mobiles and Oakley sunglasses – and what do you get?
A pair of daft glasses more likely to bring forth guffaws of laughter rather then the intended gasps of admiration, that’s what.
Oakley’s new RAZRWIRE sunspecs feature a bolted on Bluetooth module which converges the sun-filtering UV-free lifestyle experience with, err, a phone.
Cos Lykos, vice president of business development at Oakley, set off several Hyperbole Alerts as he gushed wildly about the product: “RAZRWIRE’s fully integrated design takes advantage of the world’s best eyewear and wireless technologies to give freedom of life, movement and communication anywhere and everywhere you want to be, so now seeing and hearing is believing.”
If you’re excited by the prospect of wandering about talking into your sunglasses looking like an arse, we can report that RAZRWIRE specs includes a Motorola Bluetooth module, supporting Bluetooth 1.1 and 1.2, with a range or 30 feet (10 metres).
The Bluetooth box clamps on to one of the arms of the sunglasses and sports volume controls and an answer button on its lower edge.
You’ll also be able to impress people by saying that you have to go off and charge your sunglasses, via the included wall charger or a USB port, with the device offering five hours talk time and 100 hours standby time.
The sunglasses are fashioned from Oakley’s super light O-Luminum and XYZ Optics, and will be available in early August in Cingular Wireless stores, and online at Oakley, Motorola, and Cingular’s websites for US$294.99 (~£170, ~€246).
Users in the habit of regularly sitting on their sunglasses in the pub are advised to avoid this product.
Our verdict: As cool as a heatwave!
Motorola and Oakley Announce Launch of RAZRWIRE With Cingular Wireless
26 July, 2005
Motorola’s Q RAZR Smartphone Guns For Blackberry / Treo
Billed as the “thinnest, lightest, coolest QWERTY on the Planet”, the new Q phone from Motorola has set a few hearts pounding in Chez Digi-Lifestyles.
Claimed to be fifty percent thinner than its top competitors, the lightweight Q is based on Motorola’s successful RAZR-thin design and offers a full QWERTY keyboard, electro-luminescent keys, one-handed navigation thumbwheel and an internal antenna.
The device sports a large high-resolution display (320 x 240 pixels, 65K TFT) with a l.3 mega pixel still/video camera (with photo lighting) onboard, and the whole caboodle is powered by the new Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system.
The Moto Q comes stuffed with multimedia support, playing back iMelody, MIDI, MP3, AAC, WAV, WMA, WAX, QCELP audio files, GIF87a, GIF89a, JPEG, WBMP, BMP, PNG photo files and supports H.263, MPEG-4, GSM-AMR, AAC, WMV video formats.
There’s a Mini-SD slot provided for extra storage and connectivity is taken care of via Bluetooth, IrDA and mini-USB.
High flying execs too busy to even touch their Moto will appreciate the voice-activated dialling, hands-free multi-tasking, speakerphone and built-in support for Microsoft Exchange 2003.
Ron Garriques, president mobile devices business, Motorola wasn’t one to hold back the hysterical hyperbole: “Wickedly cool – when’s the last time you heard those words used to describe a QWERTY device?”
“Probably never. At least until now.”
“With the Moto Q, we’ve combined the best voice, data and design technology in one ultra-thin, intelligent, hard-working, and incredibly must-have device. Today’s office space has the potential to be any place you want it to be with Q.”
Err, thanks for that Ron. But we won’t be calling a QWERTY device “wickedly cool” until it comes with built in Wi-Fi.
The Moto Q is expected to be available in Q1 2006.
Although it’s clearly trying to get a piece of the lucrative Blackberry market, we reckon the collars will be getting sweatiest around the Palm Treo boardroom.
And that’s not a very pleasant thought.
Moto Q phone
26 July, 2005
White PSP: Microsoft Patent Emoticons: Google Rule – News Catch-Up
Microsoft Wants To Own Emoticons
Microsoft has filed an application with the US Patent & Trademark Office to safeguard its rights on “methods and devices for creating and transferring custom emoticons.”
In case you’ve been living under a rock, emoticons are representations of faces made up by keyboard characters and originally all looked like this :) and :-/.
Nowadays, many mobile phones and computers automatically replace the text characters with an appropriate custom image when it spots emoticons in text messages and emails.
It’s far from clear what makes Microsoft think they should own Emoticons – there again, it’s never held them back before.
Microsoft’s patent application
Microsoft emoticons
Sony Whips Out A White PSP
Sony has confirmed that it will be launching a groovy white version of its PSP, but – surprise, surprise – only in Japan.
Sony has a long history of serving up different coloured units in different territories, with the PS2 being released in Aqua, White, Yellow and Silver in the past.
The company has also announced a firmware update (in Japan, natch) so that users can surf the Internet directly from the console.
Some techie users have already been enjoying Web access on their PSPs after a hack was discovered that took advantage of a hole in the operating system used by certain games.
There’s no date set for a US and European patch, although Japanese firmware updates traditionally precede roll-outs in other markets. Sony White PSP
Google Grabs 47% Of All Searches Online
Nielsen//NetRatings “MegaView Search” report has ranked Google as the Big Cheese of search engines, registering 47% of all searches conducted online.
Lagging some way behind was Yahoo! at 22%, with MSN limping into third place at 12% and AOL Search only managing a comparatively feeble 5% of all searches.
Image searching grew hugely in popularity across all the search engines, with MSN seeing the largest increase in its image searches with a massive 90% surge. AOL’s image search zipped up 74%, Yahoo!’s soared 55%, and Google’s jumped by a rather modest 12%. Nielsen//NetRatings
25 July, 2005