2005

ROB-1: Bluetooth Controlled Remote Camera From Sony Ericsson – CeBIT 05
Straight out of the Billy Bonkers School of Barking Inventions, Sony Ericsson’s new Bluetooth controlled camera, ROB-1, lets users steer a wheeled camera around using the joystick or keypad on a mobile phone.
The yo-yo shaped device can rove around for a distance of up to 50 meters from the user, sending back a streaming video to the phone’s display.
Images can then be captured on the phone in the usual manner.
Eleven centimetres in diameter, the roaming ROB-1 can move forwards, backwards, look around corners, pivot on the spot or tilt the camera 70 degrees upwards and 20 degrees downwards.
The device’s three wheels and spherical shape make it an agile and flexible fella, with clever camera technology offering a wide field of vision.
The ROB-1 also features an ultra bright light on the front allowing shots to be taken in dark spaces.
The perambulating picture-taker comes with ample onboard memory, capable of storing lots of photos. These can then be uploaded to the user’s phone or transferred to a PC via the supplied USB cable.
Our darkly twisted minds can’t stop coming up with so many dodgy, dangerous and downright illegal uses for this sneaky, swivelling, straying camera that we’d best let Ulf Persson, Corporate Vice President and Head of Accessories for Sony Ericsson, give us the squeaky clean version:
“This is a great gadget for people who really like testing the latest technology first hand and having fun with new applications. Just like the Sony Ericsson Bluetooth Car which appealed to a wide range of gadget fans, we believe that ROB-1 will become the ‘must have’ Bluetooth gadget to show off to friends and family!!
The Bluetooth Motion Cam ROB-1 will be available during Q3 2005.
Sony Ericsson
14 March, 2005
MTV Unveils Interactive TV Portal – CeBIT 05
MTV in Germany has been demonstrating an interactive TV portal that combines satellite and broadband services.
The interactive portal will shunt a veritable cornucopia of personalisation and revenue-boosting options to customers, including games, news and the latest pop-tastic charts.
A deal with T-Online will also let annoying teenagers download the latest cray-zee ringtones for their mobiles, with the option to download extra goodies like wallpapers and song downloads from the comfort of your armchair.
There are also plans afoot to provide interactive voting and advertising, as well as offering access to video-on-demand archives.
Content and links to the interactive television services will be transmitted via satellite, while a broadband connection will be used to deliver specific items requested by the user (viewers will need an MHP compatible satellite receiver with broadband access to take advantage of the service).
The service was showcased at the CeBIT trade show in Hannover and MTV intends to introduce the service as soon as suitable receivers are available in retailers.
“Being the first to offer this interactive TV technology, MTV has once again confirmed its leading role in the field,” beamed Catherine Mühlemann of MTV.
MTV is using Alticast for the technical implementation and broadcast of the interactive service.
The company will be using Nionex´s HTML-based pontegra platform, which acts as a browser supporting a fully compliant subset of DVB-HTML, OCAP 2.0 and ACAP-X.
Pontegra’s open-ended concept makes it suitable for all kinds of iTV services, with the company claiming it to be the “iTV platform par excellence for all kinds of iTV services as EPGs, iTV-portals, T-commerce, voting and polls, interactive TV shows and commercials, community functions such as email and chat, etc.”
MTV in Germany
Nionex pontegra platform
14 March, 2005
Skype 1m SkypeOut. Voice Mail and SkypeIn Coming
Skype is proudly trumpeting the fact that more than 1,000,000 users have subscribed to SkypeOut, their premium service offering global calling to PSTN numbers for local rates.
This makes Skype the 1000lb gorilla of the VOIP-category product, worldwide.
“We’re thrilled about Skype’s growth and credit support from users who have told their friends and family about the cost and quality gains they’ve found with Skype,” cooed CEO and co-founder Niklas Zennström, speaking from the CeBIT tradeshow in Hanover, Germany.
“Our one million SkypeOut users prove that savvy consumers will pay for value – and we will continue to delight users by delivering the software and services they seek to realize the potential of modern communications.”
Describing themselves as the ‘fastest-growing global communications tool in history’, Skype have got a shedload of facts to back up their claims: the company now boasts more than 29 million registered users and they’re adding more than 155,000 new users per day.
At most times, 2 million people are simultaneously using Skype to connect with friends, family members and colleagues and ‘Skypers’ have now talked for approx six billion minutes.
The company intend to hang on to their numero uno position with soon-to-be-announced new premium offerings and enhancements to the basic free service.
Hotly anticipated is Skype’s new voice messaging service which is currently in beta trial with pundits expecting an April roll out.
New information on Skype’s website has the pricing details:
“The price for Voicemail is 5 Euro for a 3 month subscription or 15 Euro for a 12 month subscription. If your billing address is in the EU, you will be charged 15% VAT when you purchase a Voicemail subscription. Therefore the prices will be €5.75 (US$6.70/£4) for 3 months and €17.25 (US$20/£12) for 12 months. However, a Voicemail subscription comes free with purchase of a SkypeIn number!”
There’s also a new section in the Skype knowledge base describing SkypeIn, the forthcoming additional pay-for service where you can get a phone number and people can call you (similar in concept to what rival Telcos offer).
Skype have also stated their commitment to expanding platforms beyond the Mac, Linux, Windows and Pocket PC platforms currently available, although there’s been no indication of a Palm release (a source of much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the Palm community).
Skype
11 March, 2005
Is 3G Content Delivering? – Pt 2
Unlike the creative whirlwind that accompanied the dot.com explosion, innovation seems to be a lot slower in the 3G content market.
Limited by strict marketing and corporate product strategies, 3G owners haven’t exactly had a lot to shout about when it comes to mobile content.
Although watching tiny video clips of goalmouth action has a certain appeal (particularly when it’s Cardiff City doing the scoring), all of the networks seem to be offering much the same collection of services.
Predictably, there’s already been many lucrative tie-ins with popular TV shows.
Fans of the teen soap Hollyoaks were offered daily MMS picture slide exclusive stories and Celebrity Big Brother fans could download “behind the scenes” shots, updates and summaries of the show.
ITN news got in on the act too, supplementing their mobile news updates with “today in history” style clips trawled from their vast video archives.
Perhaps Vodaphone’s 60-second “mobisodes”, based on the hugely successful ’24’ series was one of the more successful TV offerings on 3G, with scenes written and shot exclusively for 3G.
All twenty-four instalments of ’24: Conspiracy’ ran for sixty seconds with a cliff-hanger ending leading directly into the next instalment, thus keeping consumer’s fingers hovering over the ‘download video’ key.
“Joel Surnow, Bob Cochran, Howard Gordon, Kiefer Sutherland and their entire creative team have built ’24’ into one of the world’s leading television brands. It’s incumbent upon us at the studio to continually develop new initiatives to service, enhance and extend that brand,” commented Twentieth Century Fox Television President Gary Newman.
“The ’24’ mobile series and the licensing and marketing partnership with world wireless leader Vodafone are truly unprecedented in our business, as they capitalize on the absolute latest in technological innovation and represent a whole new way to reach our fans and promote the original television series.”
So far, almost all the 3G content has been linked to a TV show or brand and mobile consumers seem to value the exclusivity of such content.
While this kind of cross-platform repurposing of content appeals to opportunistic TV stations looking for additional revenues, for the mobile platform to flourish as a medium in its own right, it needs content that exists in its own right.
We’ll take a look at what kind of ideas are bubbling up in part 3.
Hollyoaks Interactive
Fox 24
11 March, 2005
SXSW 2005
Established in 1994, the SXSW Interactive Festival consists of four days of panel programming, a Trade Show & Exhibition, plus a full schedule of exciting evening activities. This is a unique event where top-notch developers, cutting-edge designers and out-of-the-box thinkers share their inspirations about the future of the web. While we cover the how of new technology, SXSW Interactive pays particular attention to discussing the larger questions such as why did this happen and what are the long-term implications of this innovation. Austin, Texashttp://2005.sxsw.com/interactive/
11 March, 2005
Samsung 82FS: Largest LCD TV Launched, 82inch – CeBIT 05
After getting the world very excited about their yet (if ever) to be produced 102″ plasma (PDP) screen, Samsung has today just announced the availability of a 82″ LCD TV. It’s for people who don’t live in houses with lounges (or media-consumption-arenas as they may become to be known) that are the size of the Albert Hall.
It’s not possible to commercially produce a single 82inch panel, so they seamlessly combine four 40″ LCD panels. For all of you firsts followers, Samsung are also claiming it to be the worlds first screen to offer 180 degree of viewing angle, something that other companies are going to struggle to better – and even if they do, why would they?. If you’re interested, these are produced using Samsung’s seventh-generation LCD process.
Not surprisingly, it can display full HD (High Definition) 16:9, 1920 x 1080 resolution, with a contrast ratio of 10,000:1 and a response time of 8ms. With this, we’re day dreaming thoughts of video gaming on this beauty – live the action.
If you’re looking for a slightly more pedestrian use for it, it’s fitted with an HDMI interface, so all of that HDCP-protected content can be displayed on it.
As a side note, it was interesting to see how many people were at the press conference. Seating capacity was 400 and there was about a hundred extra standing. Samsung has become a company that now demands press interest.
Samsung
11 March, 2005
Ikivo, Adobe In Mobile Content Deal
AB (formerly ZOOMON), has announced Ikivo Animator for Windows, a Mobile SVG software application for producing high-quality SVG Tiny animations.
Designed to work with the industry-standard Adobe Creative Suite, Ikivo Animator offers tools to let designers and developers rapidly design, animate, test, and deploy rich Mobile SVG content to mass-market devices.
“Adobe Creative Suite has revolutionized print and Web workflows and is now poised to have a similar impact in mobile content authoring,” said John Brennan, senior vice president of business development at Adobe.
“Designers have previously been hampered by the lack of visual design tools for authoring mobile SVG content. Working with Adobe, Ikivo is introducing an effective mobile content creation workflow based on Ikivo Animator and Adobe Creative Suite, enabling designers and developers to create extraordinary content for mobile distribution.”
Ikivo is hoping that their software will soon become an integral tool in a mobile designer’s armoury and we’ll all soon be grooving to Ikivo-created cray-zeee animations on our handsets.
SVG content created in Illustrator CS can be imported into Ikivo Animator where a set of tools will allow designers to move, scale, rotate, and change their attributes over time; embed interactivity; and output the finished animation in SVG Tiny.
In-between cappuccinos, designers can use the preview tools in Ikivo Animator to see how their work will look on different targeted mobile devices.
Designers can then incorporate their animated SVG Tiny graphics into XHTML pages or MMS presentations using GoLive CS.
This new workflow enables designers and developers to prepare animated SVG Tiny graphics, such as comics, infotainment, location-based services, maps, financial services, and – more than likely – really irritating cartoons for distribution to mobile consumers.
Ikivo CEO Stefan Elmstedt comments “Ikivo solutions are being used by major phone manufacturers, such as Siemens, Sony Ericsson, and network operators throughout the world. Now we are extending that value by partnering with Adobe to provide strategic mobile solutions.
The combination of Adobe’s design and publishing power and Ikivo’s unique Mobile SVG software applications create a fantastic push for overall support of Mobile SVG within the emerging market for 2D based mobile graphics.”
Ikivo Animator for Windows is available immediately with Ikivo Animator scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2005.
Ikivo
Adobe Creative Suite
SVG (w3.org)
11 March, 2005
Apple To Join Blu-ray – CeBIT 05
In a board meeting yesterday, Apple computers committed to join the Blu-ray Association and will occupy a seat on the main board.
In the battle of Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD disc formats, this is pretty big news. Although in the current percentage of computers sold, this isn’t a massive surprise, with Apple keen on pushing themselves (successfully) as a media company, this will have a significant impact on the success of the Blu-ray disc format.
Importantly Apple joinging will generate lots of news discussion about Blu-ray. On that note … did you know that pre-recorded Blu-ray discs were see through? Me neither, until I got my hands on one at the Sony press launch (see image at top of story).
Currently Dell and HP are the other two computer companies that sit on the board. Apple will be the 16th company to join the board, joining the 110 companies that have committed to Blu-ray.
Steve Jobs said “Apple is pleased to join Blue-ray Association board as part of our effort to drive consumer adoption of HD.” In return Apple will include the same HD video CoDec that Blu-ray uses in QuickTime 7.
There’s big money and effort being put behind the success of Blu-ray, and with a lot of content companies, CE companies and, computer companies getting behind it, it appears to be pulling ahead.
Blu-ray has been shipping in Japan now for quite some time. Sony’s BDZ-S77 (catchy name) was the first product to ship, and has been followed by other companies, some of which support the dual-layer 50Gb version.
During CeBIT, Philips and Sony have announced computer drives capable of burning Blu-ray disks, or “BD” as those in the know call it. The first Blu-ray consumer device to hit the market in US and European market will be the Sony Playstation 3.
Why does anyone need it? The quick and simple answer is HD TV. Because of the resolution of an HD picture, considerable amounts of storage are required. By 2008 12% of European homes will have HD-capable TV, and more importantly, at the same time, 3m homes to have HDTV service. Clearly HD is already big in Japan and in growing the US.
Blu-ray disc carry 25Gb per layer. There are two layers currently in market, single and dual layer. Others multi-layers discs are being brought to market and we understand that Sony has an eight layer, 200Gb disc running in the Lab.
Blu-ray
10 March, 2005
ineen Challenges Skype With Free VoIP/Video Client
With the soaraway success of Skype’s VoIP client, we’ve been waiting for other companies to try and elbow themselves a piece of the action.
Hot off the blocks is the rubbishly named ineen, a new piece of P2P IM software pushing all the right industry buzzword buttons – VoIP, P2P, video conferencing, free, open standards, cross-platform – in a package that the makers are claiming is “easy and free to use”.
If you’re going to try and take on something as popular as Skype, you’ve got to attack its weaknesses. Given a lot of Skype calls and its software are free, you’re not going to compete on price. One vulnerability Skype has is that it’s not based on open standards, despite them being freely (pun intended) available.
Built using Xten’s eyeBeam SDK, the client makes use of SIMPLE for P2P IM and Presence. VoIP is supported by SIP and the Video media is H.263[+].
ineen uses SIP [Session Initiation Protocol] and other open standards which makes it interoperable with various SIP networks including Free World, Dialup, SIPphone, TerraCall and Iptel.org
Sadly, none of the bigger IM networks [AOL/ICQ/Yahoo/MSN Messenger or Skype] use SIP, so you won’t be kissing goodbye to your favourite IM application quite yet.
Ineen offers video conferencing, with conference support for up to four users and audio conferencing for up to ten chatterers.
The interface looks slicker than Frank Sinatra on a hot date, although the less technically minded may run screaming to the hills when presented with its feast of buttons and blinking lights.
What isn’t so slick, however is ineen’s insistence of users using “phone numbers” to create computer-to-computer VoIP calls and we’re a little concerned by the lack of published technical details or details of their business model.
Unlike Skype’s proprietary technology, ineen was created with Open Standards, that it hopes will ensure greater future inter-connectivity.
The software is currently available for PCs and Macs, but there’s no sign of PocketPC and Palm versions on the horizon.
Thanks to Pete Ferne for the tip.
ineen
10 March, 2005
‘Podvertising’ Supports Virgin Radio Daily Podcast
Virgin Radio is making highlights of its breakfast show available for digital audio players like the iPod, in what it claims is a first for “podcasting”.
The station began making its Pete and Geoff show available to download today, saying it is the first UK station to podcast a daily show.
Podcasting allows audio programmes to be downloaded and later replayed on a computer or popular digital audio players such as iPods, Creative Zens or Walkmans.
The BBC has already been experimenting with the new audio distribution model, introducing weekly podcasts of Five Live’s weekly sports quiz Fighting Talk after a successful trial using Melvyn Bragg’s ‘In Our Time’ series on Radio 4, downloaded by more than 70,000 users.
Listeners can sign up to the service on Virgin’s Website, with a link encouraging users to download the free iPodder desktop software for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Once subscribed to the service, listeners will get the latest show highlights every time they synchronise their MP3 player with their computer.
The Virgin podcast sidesteps the still-unresolved copyright issues of distributing music via podcasting by simply editing it all out – Virgin will serve up a half-hour edit of its four-hour breakfast show with all the music, news, weather, traffic and travel cut out.
Interestingly, the UK government Central Office of Information and online travel company Expedia are sponsoring the service via what Virgin cringingly describes as “podvertising”.
Virgin Radio sales director Lee Roberts said: “Radio stations have to adapt to the changing market and new platforms in order to create new revenue channels. We’re proud to be the first with podvertising.”
The Virgin sponsorship deal ensures that their podcasts will be relatively ad-free, although some advertisers may be reluctant to invest too heavily in a format where the ‘fast forward’ key only an iPod twitch away.
Pod casting has already taken off in the United States but has been slow to find an audience in Europe.
Although the format is already creating a few podcasting stars, it has to be said that most of the thousands of personal radio broadcasts currently available to download are home-made, rough-edged, and, frankly, pretty crap.
With increasing sales of MP3 players sales, there’s every possibility that Virgin’s commercial initiative may help push the format into the mainstream.
Virgin Radio Podcasts
Adam Curry Wants to Make You an iPod Radio Star (Wired)
iPodder
10 March, 2005