2005

How-To: Sony PSP Internet Access
Looking for a review and background on the Sony PSP? Steve runs through the highlights.
Games developers have included Internet access in their products. The best example of this is Wipeout Pure, which includes a browser, allowing the user to download new game levels and features. Since the game has a browser built-in, it can be reasonable to assume that Sony have actually put all the code to access the Internet in the PSP itself (and made it available to developers).
Some clever users then looked at what the browser was doing (by monitoring the data packets that the PSP was sending across the Internet via their network) and it all looked pretty normal, i.e. it was just a standard browser. In order to access real sites they had to locally pretend to be the Sony servers that the PSP was accessing. This was accomplished by “spoofing” DNS (DNS is the system that maps names to numbers on the Internet, people like using names, but the Internet actually works by numbers i.e. it’s hard to remember something like 127.0.0.1 but easy to remember “localhost” as a name). The spoofing meant that the PSP would no longer go to the games servers to look for content, but rather a local server which could be configured with any content that was so desired, including a text box that allows you to enter another site name.
Rather than everyone set-up spoof servers, some nice people have done it for you, and these then point to a PSP portal which someone has set-up PSP friendly content. You can access the spoof DNS servers by amending your Internet set-up configuration (on the PSP) and leave everything to automatic except for the DNS settings, into which you enter the spoof server settings.
To complement the PSP portal, a PSP irc client has been written. This is actually a script run on a Webserver, but the output fits on the PSP real estate (screen).
There’s probably going to be a lot of copies of Wipeout Pure sold, purely for its browser capabilities.
Once updated versions of the firmware come out, or there are 3rd party applications, the system will have all the features to be a powerful media hub. It supports WiFi, has a decent screen and video capability now, adding other Internet capabilities will just add the finishing touches to a superb product.
9 May, 2005
How-To: Spotlight, Power Search With Tiger, Mac OS 10.4
It’s that time again, a new version of OS X has been released! For those that aren’t aware of OS X, it’s Apple’s operating system. As usual, OS 10.4 is named after a cat: 10.2 was named Jaguar, 10.3 Panther, and the new 10.4 has been titled Tiger.
OS X has been touted by some as uncrashable, and that is how I’ve found it too: After setting it up, I haven’t once restarted my computer despite having installed over 30 applications since. This stability is what makes Apple have such a following of fans, and would be unheard of on a Windows box.
There’s lots of new goodies in Tiger, but in this article I’ll focus on the addition of a search technology called Spotlight, which makes searching through files instantaneous. It also allows the creation of so-called search folders, with links to every file which matches that folder’s search criteria, which I detail lower down.
The clever bit, is that these search folders are self-updating, meaning that as soon as you start writing a document containing the word “banana”, the search folder that is told to look for this word, will find it and create a shortcut to it along with all the other files that contain the word.
This is the spotlight icon in the menubar

Click it.

And type what it is that you are looking for. In my case, I typed ‘Summer’.

Within about one and a half seconds, the above menu appears. Clicking the top icon (Show All), shows a traditional window of all the results for the search. The second icon, labelled Top Hit, is the file that Mac OS X thinks is the most relevant to the search criteria.
The next section of search results lists folders with the word ‘Summer’ in their names. Pretty self-explanatory really.
Then email messages with the word ‘Summer’ in them are listed. The ability to index pretty much anything and then make it searchable is what’s so special about Spotlight.
The following one has items that Spotlight drew up from the calendar application I use.
Images, self-explanatory too.
PDF Documents are listed in the next section. Not many other search applications can index PDF files, but thanks to the tight integration of PDF with Mac OS X it is easily possible.
The last section contains music with the word ‘Summer’ in. Although not apparent here, Spotlight even searches the tags of MP3 and AAC files for words, meaning that if a song file was called, say, Winter but the artist in the tag of the file said ‘Summer’, it would still show up in the list of results.
Searchable folders, or “Smart” folders as Apple likes to call them, work similarly, but they are more use for things you often need to access and don’t want to keep typing into spotlight to find.
Click on the “file” option in the finder and then click on New Smart Folder.

A window appears.

I typed “Summer” in the top right box as before. This instantly showed all the related files:

Next you just have to click on the red circle, the equivalent of the close window button in Windows. Finder asks you where you want to save the smart folder just created. I told it to just save it to the desktop as “Summer”:

Hit Save and the newly created smart folder appears on the desktop:

Summary
Apple are carrying out a pincher movement. Bit by bit, Apple are both removing reasons for Windows users not to switch to Mac, while adding tempting reasons to convert. This latest offering of OS X, in conjunction with less viruses on a Mac, and access to a powerful collection of digital media software (iPhoto, iTunes, GarageBand, iMovie, iDVD) should encourage Windows users to want an Apple computer. Let’s not forget that the next significant version of Windows, Longhorn, and its promised security and anti-virus features, are still likely to be more than a year away,
Overall, there are many more new features in Tiger, over 200 according to Apple. Having made the change from Windows myself, my suggestion is to spend some time with a Mac and experience it for yourself. You too might make the change.
For those wanting to buy a brand new Apple Mac, they can be purchased from Amazon (US|UK), and if you are a student or are otherwise involved in education, you can get a juicy education discount from Apple, so there’s really no excuse anymore!
Apple Spotlight
6 May, 2005
Mobile Penetration In Europe To Hit 100% By 2007: Analysis
Cell phone penetration in Western Europe will hit 100% by 2007 as mobile-loving customers continue to scoop up multiple phones and phone cards.
A report by management consultancy Analysys Research revealed that active mobile penetration – which excludes phones that have not been used for about three months – would rise to 98% in 2006 (up from 90% in 2004) and eventually exceed 100% in western Europe.
The consultancy also warned that the market would stagnate in markets where operators shunned the cheaper pay-as-you-go offerings in an attempt to benefit from more lucrative contract deals.
(Contract deals usually involve customers signing up for 12-18 months, thus delivering stabilised customer revenues – or, as they call it in the trade, ARPU – average revenues per user.)
“In countries such as France and Germany, operators have an opportunity to increase penetration by marketing pre-paid offerings, which is often the best way to attract certain segments of the population, but they should not lose sight of profitability,” commented report co-author, Alex Zadvorny.
“Italy, where ARPU has been in line with the Western European market average and registered the slowest decline among the major European countries between 2000 and 2004, is a good example of how the prevalence of pre-paid does not necessarily suppress ARPU,” be continued.
In countries like Italy, Sweden and the UK, growth in penetration has shown no signs of abating, with penetration rising from 93%, 93% and 89%, respectively, in 2003 to 104%, 103% and 101% in 2004.
Although some people might think that the rise is fuelled by drug dealers toting multiple phones for ‘business’, the increase is actually explained by customers buying multiple phones and/or SIM cards.
Zadvorny explained that sales were also boosted by 3G, giving opportunities to “stabilise and potentially even grow voice ARPU by using the efficiency of the technology and offering large bundles of minutes”
“At the same time, in order to take advantage of the mobile data services opportunity, operators need to address factors such as transparency of pricing, standardisation and ease of use of devices, and the implementation of the relevant billing systems,” he added.
Analysys expects mobile service revenue to grow at a healthy 9% per year between 2004 and 2007, with 3G video phones creaking open more wallets with an alluring fare of video, Internet and music services.
Analysys
6 May, 2005
WiMAX Cuddle Between Sprint And Intel
With a manly backslap, Intel and Sprint have announced that they will work together to advance development of the 802.16e WiMAX standard.
WiMAX is an acronym for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (snappy, eh?) and the technology aims to provide wireless broadband connectivity to fixed, portable and mobile devices without the need for line-of-sight to a base station.
The two companies will share technical specifications and equipment trials, and run interoperability tests to examine possible wireless broadband devices and services.
In case that sounded too simple, here’s Oliver Valente, CTO and VP of technology development for Sprint, to baffle you with a buzzword remix: “Our relationship with Intel will help validate requirements, drive key ecosystem development needs, formulate network strategies and define the potential for advanced wireless services adoption”.
Intel has been bigging up WiMAX with an eye to repeating their successful experience as the leading provider of Wi-Fi chipsets.
Although doubters of WiMAX maintain that competition with the 3G cell-phone service will render the technology redundant, both Intel and Sprint view portability as a winning approach to the technology, insisted that WiMAX “can provide high-capacity wireless broadband coverage and services throughout metro areas and an enriched multimedia user experience.”
Sean Maloney, another executive with an impossibly long job description (“executive vice president and general manager of the Intel Mobility Group”) added: “WiMAX technology has the promise to deliver new broadband services to consumers globally.”
The partnership hopes to draw on Sprint/Nextel’s substantial holdings in 2.5GHz spectrum band, although it’s been described as a “messy complex band” by wireless specialist Joe Nordgaard of Spectral Advantage, who added, “It’s going to be very difficult to come out with a common worldwide solution similar to Wi-Fi.”
Intel WiMAX
Sprint WiMAX
6 May, 2005
Broadcast Flag Knocked Back By US Court
Today, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled that the US FCC (Federal Communications Commission) does not have authority to prohibit companies from making computer and video hardware that doesn’t comply with the Broadcast Flag. This was to come into effect on 1 July, this year.
As far back as 2002, representations were made to the FCC by the content industry to restrict the use video content on US Digital TV sets, as the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group, as it was named then, crossed the line“.
Despite having had some notice on this, today’s ruling will be a shock for content owners.
We spoke to John Enser, Partner in Media and Communications at Olswang, “It isn’t the first time that the FCC have had one of their decisions overturned. There are usually two type of ruling; a firm no, or a softer ‘you haven’t done it right this time, but there may be ways it can be done.’ This at first glance, this looks like a firm no.”
We equated it to either a door being slammed, or it being politely pushed closed, but left ajar. It appear as if it’s the big slam.
Is this the end of the road for the Broadcast Flag? Probably not thinks John Enser, “They can either appeal, or they could go back to Congress to give them the powers.” We’d imagine it’s probably more likely Congressmen will be getting phone calls today as content owners are fierce lobbyists in Washington. When we put this to Cory Doctorow, European outreach officer of the EFF he felt it was less likely, “The only option open to Hollywood is to find a senator so suicidal that they are prepared to force a law that will break their delegates television sets.”
Ren Bucholz, EFF Policy Co-ordinator, America told us that the EFF were “shocked and delighted” by the ruling. In particularly “by the pro-public interest language used” and “unanimity of all three judges voting the same way.” He went on to wonder what it meant to the future of the FCC, “possibly leading to a trimming of their wings.”
A number of calls to the MPAA were not returned before publication.
As to what will happen to all of the TV and computer equipment that has been manufactured in readiness for 1 July is unclear, as is whether the FCC will be compelled to rebate the manufacturers of the effected equipment.
We’ll leave the closing words to Cory Doctorow, “Now the Broadcast Flag is dead, it is essential that the content industry doesn’t introduce the same restrictions into Europe, via the back door of the DVB specification.”
Court ruling FCC
(photo credit: Electronic Frontier Foundation)
6 May, 2005
Yahoo Video Search Leaves Beta, Adds Content
Yahoo has pulled a fast one on its rivals by unexpectedly taking it’s five month long ‘Beta’ video search service to a full release, and adding some new media partners to provide searchable material.
The service enables Web users to find and view a wide variety of video content including news footage, movie trailers, TV clips and music videos.
The announcement comes just days after Google had proudly paraded new partners for its beta video search service, which lets users search closed captioning content and view still shots of video clips.
Google has also been seeking original material by inviting users to submit their own video to the service.
Finding video content on Yahoo’s new search facility is easy enough: type in the relevant keywords and you’ll be taken to a results page showing thumbnails of the video files. Clicking on the thumbnail takes you to the hosting page with an option to directly view the video.
Sources for Yahoo’s new search feature have been expanded to include CBS News, Reuters, MTV, VH1.com, IFILM.com, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Travel Channel, as well as an assortment of independent producers and content pulled by spidering the Web for video content.
In the interests of research, we rummaged around for naughty porn, but couldn’t find anything too racy – until we spotted the ‘turn safe search off’ option. Clicking on this released a veritable cascade of filth that would send Mary Whitehouse’s graveyard residence spinning in turbo mode.
This latest development adds more fuel to the almighty bun fight currently being battled out between Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Ask Jeeves and less well-known names like Blinkx, as companies compete to grab a juicy slice of the lucrative video search advertising business.
These companies clearly understand that in the future of a near infinite number of sources for content, the consumer is going to become very confused and possibly overwhelmed by choice, unless someone, or a service guides then through it. Having identified this, they’re all chasing it.
Yahoo Video Search
5 May, 2005
3 Get Granada’s Celebrity Wrestling TV Footage To Mobiles
UK third-generation mobile phone network 3, have teamed up with TV production and distribution company Granada to bring the popular ITV show, Celebrity Wrestling, to video mobiles for the first time.
(Note to readers unacquainted with this particular TV show: it’s a series of dreadful wrestling matches featuring barrel-scraping Z-List ‘celebrities’ desperately seeking tabloid fame).
The new agreement will give 3 network users access to the show’s ‘highlights’ with the added ‘bonus’ of backstage outtakes.
Gareth Jones, COO of 3 thinks the idea is a whoop-de-do winner: “TV shows like this are ideal for our ‘Today on 3’ service, we’re tapping into programmes that we know our customers really enjoy and we’re providing it to them in bite-size chunks on 3.”
Building up to a crescendo of celebrity-fuelled excitement, Jonesy went on: “Our customers are watching Celebrity Wrestling at home on TV, reading about it in the newspapers and through this new agreement with Granada, they can now watch the highlights on 3.”
Katrina Moran, Granada Interactive lined up for a synergistic snog: “We’re excited to be working with 3 and delighted to see Celebrity Wrestling proving so popular on 3’s video mobile network. We know Celebrity Wrestling fans won’t want to miss any of the action, with 3 they can watch their favourite moments on the move and even get the backstage uncut action too.”
Lord knows who would want to fork out for this dreadful tack, but Granada will be supplying around sixty video clips to 3 customers over the course of the eight week series, with the clips charged at 50p each (or included within add-on packages).
Why anyone would want to fork out to view the cray-zeeee backstage antics of a load of stretching-the-definition-of-the-word ‘celebrities’ on a mobile screen sure beats us, but it provide ample proof of the old adage; ‘where there’s muck, there’s brass’.
Celebrity Wrestling
Granada TV
5 May, 2005
T-Mobile Trials 2Mb WiFi On Southern Trains
T-Mobile is offering a free WiFi pilot service on Southern Rail’s busy London-to-Brighton train service in readiness for a full launch in June.
The service, part of a £1 billion improvement project for Southern Rail, will be rolled out on 14 trains supplied by 60 Wi-Fi base stations along the route.
T-Mobile have been trialing the service for several months, with a limited amount of base stations offering 256K upload speeds and download speeds at 2Mbit. T-Mobile has said these speeds will be upgraded on launch.
Despite limited publicity, freeloading passengers have been using the service, with T-Mobile logging seventy-five users over a ten day period from 1st April.
Most of the users were morning commuters, alerted to the service by stickers in the carriage windows.
From June onwards, passengers will have to fork out for the service as T-Mobile introduces its national HotSpot prices.
T-Mobile manager for WiFi Jay Saw was in full corporate PR spin mode as he enthused: “We are the only operator that has placed GPRS, 3G and WiFi at the centre of its strategy. That differentiates us from the competition. We’re the world’s largest network – by our own definition.”
“The Brighton Express has four million regular commuters. We’re the first to install broadband on a train,” beamed Saw, adding that, “Southern, along with our own research and feedback, tells us that there’s a lot of demand. And the feedback from the early users so far has been very positive. We are trying to maximise the value of dead time for commuters.”
Nomad Digital executive chairman Nigel Wallbridge, whose company is responsible for the build and operation of the WiFi network, sounded positively loved up as he set his backslap motors to full: “In my business life, I have rarely had a better experience than working with T-Mobile and Southern, and the railways rarely get good press in Britain.”
We hope to have a hands-on test of the service shortly.
Southern Railway
T-Mobile UK
5 May, 2005
iPod shuffle Scoops Up 58% Of US Flash Player Market
Purring like a cat recumbing in cream, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer revealed that Apple’s iPod shuffle has snaffled a 58 per cent share of the flash-based digital media market in the US.
The iPods shuffle’s market share rose from 43% in February to 58% in March, with Oppenheimer positive that the flash-player market share will continue to grow.
He told Merrill Lynch analyst Steven Milunovich that Apple was “supply-constrained in March” suggesting that the figures for April will be more sales-tastic.
According to Apple’s own figures, the company now boasts a 90 per cent share of the hard disk-based MP3 player market and 70 per cent of the digital music download market.
Apple’s CFO asserted that “Apple isn’t feeling the competitive heat yet” from other digital media device manufacturers like Creative, Sony, iRiver and others, insisting that Apple “doesn’t appear concerned” about the threat from music-playing mobile phones.
Positively glowing with confidence, Oppenheimer claimed that MP3 capability in handsets will be more complementary than a replacement, with handsets suffering from “a worse user interface and limited battery life,”
Despite the much-publicised non-appearance of the iTunes-capable Motorola handset, Oppenheimer was equally upbeat about working with mobile phone operators.
Milunovich expects Apple to reveal iPods with wireless and video capacity before Christmas, guessing that new Ipods will be able to play short video clips.
Apple Exec: Shuffle Grabs 58% of Flash Player Market; What Cell Phone Threat?
5 May, 2005
Webroot: Spyware Makes $2bn a Year Claim
Anti-spyware firm Webroot have produced a survey which claims that spyware – invasive programs that generate pop-ups, hijack home pages and redirect searches – generate an estimated US$2bn (~£1.05bn~€1.54bn) in revenue a year.
The report suggests that a huge number of consumer computers are infested by some form of spyware, with their SpyAudit software revealing that 88 per cent of scans found some form of unwanted program (Trojan, system monitor, cookie or adware) on consumer computers.
Based on their scans from the first quarter of 2005, the vast majority of corporate PCs (87 per cent) were also found to have undesirable programs or cookies lurking within.
Excluding cookies, more than 55 per cent of corporate PCs contained unwanted programs, with infested consumer PCs crawling with an average of 7.2 non-cookie infections.
Dastardly system monitor programs (key loggers) were found in seven per cent of consumer and enterprise PCs scanned using Webroot’s software, down from 19 per cent in Q4 2004.
Lallygagging trojan horse programs were found on 19 per cent of consumer PCs and seven per cent of enterprise PCs, a figure unchanged from Q4 2004.
“To combat spyware effectively, the anti-spyware industry must be fully informed about the origins of spyware, its growth path and the impact it has on consumers and businesses,” warned David Moll, CEO at Webroot.
“Our previous Quarterly SpyAudit Reports have provided a numerical analysis of spyware’s growth, but our industry has been lacking a comprehensive resource that fully documents the spyware threat. The State of Spyware Report fills that void and delivers the most in-depth, expansive review and analysis of spyware to date.”
Webroot’s data comes from an analysis of stats from Webroot’s consumer and corporate SpyAudit tools and from online research conducted by Webroot’s automated spyware research system, Phileas.
Although most spyware is associated with flesh-tastic porno sites and deeply dodgy warez sites, Phileas recognised 4,294 sites (with almost 90,000 pages) containing some form of steeenkin’ spyware.
Here’s the science: Webroot reached their figure for the value of the spyware market by multiplying the average number of pieces of adware per machines (4.38, they say) by the number of active users on the net (290m – according to Nielsen Netratings) times the value of each adware installation per year – US$2.25 (~£1.18~€1.73), a figure derived Claria’s filing that it made US$90m (~£47.3m~€69.5m) a year from 40m “users”.
Although these figures seem disturbing, many industry eyebrows have arced skywards at Webroot’s figures, with an article in Techdirt suggesting that the company might be trying to pump up its own value by exaggerating the threat.
The scathing piece points out that Webroot is using a highly controversial method of including “mostly harmless tracking cookies” and lumping them in with spyware to boost the apparent size of the market.
Webroot Justifies Its Own Over-Valued Existence
Webroot
4 May, 2005