May 2006

Google Splashes 4 New Tools
Google took the opportunity of their annual press briefing at the Googleplex to inform the assembled hacks of four new applications. The theme they were trying to push was ‘honest we _are_ a search company.”
In no particular order, the new apps are …
Google Notebook
Yet to be launched, but supposed to be making an appearance next week. Used when you skip around Web sites and want to gather bits and pieces from them such as text, URLs and graphics. These will then be stored online and you can choose to make them available to others.
Google Trends
Ever wanted to have access to the information that Google gathers on all of the billions of searches that flow through their simple search box? Yes, you’re not alone, we’d love to as well. This is the closest that Google is going to let you get to it. Type in a search term and you’ll get a plot of how popular the term has been with peaks highlighted on particular news stories.
There’s also a feature to compare two search terms, our favourite so far being good vs evil (glad to see good winning). Breakdowns that can be further explored are cities, regions and languages.
Google Co-op
Adds user knowledge to the power of Google’s search engine. Individuals or companies will add their particular knowledge to sites or searches that they share with people who subscribe to them. Those who you do subscribe to, will appear in your google search results.
This is what we’d long imagined. It’s an expansion of the idea of blogging where people gather knowledge and share. Could become the most significant announcement of the set, marking the next stage in search.
Google Desktop 4 & Google Gadgets
Not surprisingly the fourth release of this app that indexes all of the content on your machine, including what you get up to online. When this first came out, we realised that Google had beaten Microsoft as they’d become the way to locate your document on your PC, side-stepping Windows Explorer.
Everyone and their wife appear to be knocking out different versions of Apple’s Dashboard or Desktop Widgets. For examples Yahoo bought Konfabulator (arguably ‘the original’) and then gave it away to the Yahoo-faithful.
Like Yahoo, Google are making them programmable, so code-fanatics will be able gain global fame.
Either this is a me-too product, which is pretty unlikely, or one step further into Google taking over Microsoft’s dominance of the desktop, by placing apps on the desktop.
Google Trends
Google Co-op
Google Desktop 4
12 May, 2006
Sky High Vlog: The Army On Everest!
Sky News are very proud of what they’re billing as the Highest Ever Video News Podcast (or HEVNP to all of you acronym manufacturers out there).
We genuinely do admire reporter Gerard Tubb and producer Jon Gripton who are doing the video pieces from the slopes of Everest. They’re joining the 21 UK Army mountaineers from the regular UK and territorial armies (Special forces of some sort, we’d wager) who are aiming to get to the top via one of the toughest routes, The West Ridge – also worthy of huge admiration.
Tubb and Gripton have been in training for three months and have been using oxygen-reducing respirators to alter their blood so it can cope with life at high altitude. Tubb has also been to the Alps to be taught ice-climbing and crevasse rescue techniques by legendary mountaineer and mountain guide, Twid Turner (great name), who trained the expedition team.
From the report we’ve already seen, it’s rather cold there, especially at night where temperatures are dropping to -1c. Even if you don’t happen to freeze to death, we don’t envy finding yourself waking up every 10 mins during the night with the feeling that you’re drowning. As Tubb’s says on the blog “the depressed CO2 levels can make you stop breathing until it builds up and triggers a fit of hyperventilation.” Nice.
We’re not ones to pick nit (well, OK we are), and we’re certainly not deriding the amazing accomplishment of what they’re doing, but as to whether they’re the highest? Rumours are abound that people have seen higher vodcasts shot on location in Amsterdam, and others insist that they’ve seen other shot in planes (but that’s not on the Earth is it).
What kit to take to Everest?
OK … We’d imagine that after reading this, you all planning your own assent of Everest, right?
Question number one, before you get to pick a splendid new jacket, is what tech kit you need to take with you? Clearly it’s pretty specialist.
You’d imagine that it would be something with a huge keyboard, so you can type while wearing huge mittens. Well you’d be wrong clever sticks.
The laptop of choice is the Panasonic Toughbook. We’d been really impressed when we’d had this at Digital-Lifestyles towers. It’s got great features like the hard drives sit in a bath of oil that gets pre-heated to a temperature it can work at. In this case they’re not using those drives. They also chose them as reliability is top priority, as there aren’t too many laptop repair shops on the Everest slopes.
The video is being shot on two cameras, both Sony’s, the HVR-Z1, or Z1 as it’s know in the trade and the HVR-A1 (A1), having the advantage that it’s really small – pretty useful when you’re having to lug it up Everest.
Once shot, the video has some light editing done on the Toughbooks using Avid Express. The video is then fired back via a satellite dish at Base Camp to Sky HQ.
Cool bits from the Army
The army’s really gone to tech town on this one, with great stuff like providing Google Earth place holders showing things like the teams routes and amazingly cool, dynamically updated team positions.
The army aren’t just leaving the videocasts to Sky, they’ve got a lot of their own sitting on the podcast section of their site. Some of them are pretty interesting.
Good to see that even the army uses the tried and tested ‘hold your comms device in the air to get reception’ trick that we’ve all used at one time or another.
Also pleasing to see that the Junior team contains a fair number of women in it.
To top it off, they’re also doing exclusive videos to your mobile for free.
12 May, 2006
Nokia 5500 Sports Phone Launches
For hyperactive sporty types, lardy lumps looking to lose some weight and headband-totin’ workouters, Nokia has trotted out its new super-sporty phone, the 5500 Sport.
Apparently their first handset with (ahem) “athletic lifestyle appeal”, the phone is moulded out of bits of trainers – or, as they put it, “engineered with materials used in the latest high performance running shoes”.
Pitched at sweaty joggers and wheezing Seb Coe wannabes, the phone comes in a liquid and dirt-resistant housing, complete with rubber grips.
Jog the line
Lurking inside the handset, there’s a work-out mode for ~~timing your stumble to the pub~~ keeping track of your running times, a planner for setting up an exercise schedule and a pedometer to let you see if you’ve reached your recommended limit of 10,000 steps every day (yeah, right!).
The cunning boffins at Nokia have even included a calculator for working out the calories used up during your workout, with speech software keeping you updated about your pie-cancelling progress.
Music on the go
Personally, we find jogging to be as exciting as a day at the ‘Watch Paint Dry’ club, but at least there’s a built in music player for getting some motivational Toto on the go as you shuffle around your local park.
If you need to stock up on a wide selection of tunes to keep you thumping the tarmac, the 5500 comes with a MicroSD slot (up to 1GB) with the player supporting most of the popular music formats.
Conveniently, there’s a dedicated key that makes it easy to switch between phone, music and training modes with text to speech software feeding you text messages and workout status reports on the move.
A 3D motion sensor also adds new features, including the ability to tap the phone to start/stop the inspirational magic of Totos’s “Africa” while sweating through Stepney .
The phones should be jogging into Europe in Q3 for around €300 ($381/£205) and will be available in a grey and yellow ‘sport’ colour scheme and other, more business-like, hues.
Nokia
11 May, 2006
Internet Useful For Shopping (Non) Shock Report
Yahoo have released a report with communications company OMD today that looks into how the Internet influences peoples shopping habits. Not surprisingly it covers online purchases, but far more interesting is how people are using the Internet and other technology to inform their ‘real-world’ purchases.
They describe it as follthows
The Internet offers a collaborative environment where consumers turn for advice and the experience of others in weighing brands, discovering alternatives and distilling prices, as they weigh their purchase decisions
We think what they mean to say is people have a look around online and read stuff, helping them to make up their minds.
They found three things that are looked up online before people cough up the cash
- Trusted information. Consumers say the Internet is the most trusted shopping information source (54 percent), followed by magazines (34 percent) and TV (23 percent). Seventy-four percent of people use trusted, familiar Web sites when purchasing online, and 55 percent opt-in for e-mail marketing messages from companies they trust.
- Choices. On average, consumers consider three brands before making a purchasing decision. Many “comparison shop” using the Internet, but 38 percent of consumers still want to be able to see and touch products before they buy. The Internet helps narrow down options before they purchase either online or offline. In addition, 61 percent agree that Internet search engines are one of their favourite tools for finding product information.
- Price. The research shows that 61 percent of people consider themselves to be serious bargain shoppers. The Internet is changing the concept of fixed pricing by enabling consumers to search for the same product at myriad prices, as well as actively monitoring a product for price discounts or finding coupons and rebate offers.
Other tools in the consumers tech-arsenal
Interestingly they’ve found that camera phones and text messages are powerful tools in the consumers tech-arsenal. Shoppers are now text messaging each other, sending pictures of merchandise and using Internet-enabled phones to compare prices, all from the point of sale (shop to you).
One of the ‘old fashioned’ methods that we’ve often used, is to call up a mate who you know will be in front of a Browser and ‘speak to them’, asking if they can check something online for you while you wait. Perhaps they didn’t mention it because it wasn’t hi-tech enough.
They also found that this has ‘given consumers a new kind of “social empowerment”‘ Oh, but of course.
Internet now first point of reference
The surprising shift is towards the Internet being the first point of reference to find out stuff. Surprising because it’s above friends and family which were always the golden choice. Less surprising is that offline reviews and traditional media sources are losing out, perhaps because people generally don’t even believe the news that they print.
Having come from a communications agency, this report, “Long and Winding Road: The Route to the Cash Register”, won’t surprise you in using all sorts of language in a way that hasn’t ever been seen in English before. They’ll also grab hold of words that you have heard before and use them to create comfortable categories. Oh and tell you things that really are patently obvious but wrap them up in a different way ….
Consumers Travel Four Distinct Paths
The findings from the Long and Winding Road research can help advertisers connect with consumers online at crucial stages of the decision-making process. The study uncovers four distinct paths that consumers take on their way towards making a purchase:
- QUICK: This path involves little consideration. Consumer packaged goods are often quick paths.
- WINDING: Comparison shopping between different channels, including online and offline retailers, typifies this path. Retail goods are often winding paths.
- LONG: This path involves researching various options over an extended period of time. Technology purchases are often long paths, particularly if the price tag is high.
- LONG AND WINDING: This path requires investing a considerable amount of time researching across several channels. Many big ticket items — including automobiles and financial services — follow a long and winding path. These paths offer marketeers the most opportunity to impact and possibly sway a purchase decision in their favour, because consumers of these products are the hungriest for information.
That’s funny
We found it pretty funny that a ‘worldwide media communications specialist’ that OMD proclaim themselves to be, is the third search result for omd on Google, behind ’80s UK pop phenomenon Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) and the On-line Medical Dictionary.
Soak yourself in the delicious detail.
11 May, 2006
Home Wi-Fi Usage Soars
The space-age wireless house is coming ever-nearer with new figures from Strategy Analytics revealing the growth of Wi-Fi networks amongst the sofas, dining tables and four poster beds of the home.
The study found that a fifth of broadband subscribers in the US and Europe-land now use Wi-Fi to share Internet connections between their PCs, laptops and other wireless devices – adding up to a total of 19 million connected homes.
When it comes to wireless connectivity in the home, 7 percent of all households are now buzzing with wireless networks.
The Americans were found to be leading the world with 8.4 percent penetration, followed by the nippy Nordic region with 7.9 percent.
As we reported back in January, Brits have been slow to embrace Wi-Fi, and this latest survey found that wireless usage in the UK still lags below average at just 6.1 per cent.
Surprisingly, Germany was found to be even less enthusiastic about having a box of blinking lights in the house, with just 5.1 per cent penetration.
Mind you, seeing as the survey only asked 2,000 home Internet users in the US, France, Germany, UK, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden we’d recommend taking all these figures with a large slab o’salt.
“Rich people have more electronic gadgets” shocker!
To the surprise of, well, no-one with half a brain, Strategy Analytics’ study also found that consumers in the highest income groups were three times more likely to use WiFi than those in the least affluent income band. Well, I never.
Early adopters love Wi-Fi
“WiFi has become the preferred networking technology for affluent early adopters,” commented David Mercer, Principal Analyst at Strategy Analytics, as he sagely puffed on an over-sized pipe.
Mercer added that rising ownership of laptop PCs and other portable Internet devices will soon make Wi-Fi the dominant home networking choice for most broadband subscribers.
Actually, we made that bit up about the pipe.
Strategy Analytics
11 May, 2006
UK e-Shoppers To Spend £26bn In 2006
UK shoppers are set to spend an average £1,000 each online in 2006, according to the yearly report by the Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG).
The ‘industry body for e-retailing’ has forecast that mouse-clicking Brits will shell out £26bn online in the UK in 2006, as online shopping goes stratospheric.
According to IMRG’s figures, online shopping has grown by 2,600 percent over the last five years, with the £2bn sales notched up in November and December 2005 representing a hefty 50 percent rise the same period in 2004.
Moreover, IMRG predicts that 2006 will see ten percent of all purchases being made online.
The explosive rise in Internet shopping is seen as a result of more consumers having broadband and retailers making better use of the Internet, but the report warned of online retailers still facing challenges.
According to IMRG’s own research, usability, customer retention, and interactive marketing were cited as the biggest concerns by over half of their members, with e-crime and delivery fulfilment seen as high-priority issues by around a third.
IMRG
Why-aye Big Spender!
Elsewhere, web testing firm SciVisum’s recent research on regional e-commerce spending found that consumers in the north east of the UK spent the most online, and were also the most likely to fork out for high-value goods.
The survey found that a third of consumers in the NE spent between £50 and £100 per month and had no qualms about dishing out sums as large as £5,000 for a single online purchase.
Compare that to stingy shoppers in the south who said that they’d spend no more than £50 per month online, and wouldn’t dream of shelling out sums as high as £5,000.
Not surprisingly, the most popular online purchases were books and CDs, purchased by three quarters of shoppers.
Around fifty per cent of shoppers said they would buy holidays and electrical goods online, while a quarter do their grocery shopping and finances online.
SciVisum
10 May, 2006
Whee! Here Comes Nintendo’s Wii!
Video game kings Nintendo have opened hostilities with arch-rivals Microsoft and Sony with the unveiling of its new “Wii” console.
The Japanese game maker launched their new console at the E3 show in Los Angeles, claiming that it will “revolutionise” gaming just as soon as it’s unleashed on the public, sometime during the last quarter of 2006.
Pricing, details and specifications of the Wii are still a bit thin on the ground, but Nintendo are insisting that “You’ll get more fun for less money” when the product finally launches.
The Wii will certainly be considerably cheaper that its rivals when it goes on sale later this year, with pundits predicting a price around the $250 mark – cheaper than the Xbox 360 and around half the price of the top-of-the-range PS3.
With the Wii console being cheaper to produce (Sony’s new PS3 will be a loss leader with the company clawing back profits from software sales), Nintendo are expected to turn a profit on their console far quicker than their rivals.
Sporting an unusual, one-handed wireless controller, the remote control-shaped Wii handset comes with motion sensors and speakers, letting users interact with games by waving their arms about and looking like a bit of a nutter.
The built-in speakers should add extra realism, with, for example, sound travelling from the controller to the TV when you blast your turbo space gun at an onscreen evil Thatch-monster from Granthaxia.
Nintendo reckon that users will find their one-hand, noise-making controller more fun and intuitive: “Our goal is to expand the total number of people playing games,” said Nintendo president Satoru Iwata
“To do this, we needed to target gamers who played and had lost interest, as well as those who have never played,” he commented, adding that the one-handed design, “breaks down the barrier for non-gamers. The most difficult job is to approach people who have never played before.”
Reggie Fils-Aime, chief marketing officer at Nintendo, was even more enthusiastic, insisting that the Wii was designed so “even your mother could use it.”
If she’s not dribbling over her blanket in an old folk’s home, of course.
Nintendo Wii
10 May, 2006

Ofcom GSM Guard Bands License Awards Explained

Ofcom Awards Licenses For The GSM Guard Bands The frequencies 1781.7-1785MHz paired with 1876.7-1880MHz known as the GSM Guard bands have been made available to 12 licensees under the Wireless Telegraphy Act. They are national UK licenses, though the operators of the licenses will have to cooperate amongst themselves so that interference between themselves doesn’t occur. Ofcom expect the licensees to form an industry body that will self-regulate. Operators will also be required to register all radio equipment in the “Sitefinder” database (currently populated by the GSM and 3G operators).

Even though the licenses are only low power (sub 200mW compared to 10’s of Watts for traditional GSM systems), they are suitable for services such as in-building GSM, local area GSM (such as in a theme-park) or other constrained areas. There are 15 GSM channels available, each one being able to carry 8 voice calls i.e. 120 voice calls in total. Having a reasonable number of channels will allow multiple operators to co-exist in an area and also allow single operators to cover larger areas (in such a way that multiple GSM basestations won’t interfere with each other).

Though it is expected the main use will be low power GSM, Ofcom have not specified what the licenses should be used for and as such, can be utilised for any service, such as localised wireless broadband, as long as the GSM spectral masks are adhered to (which will ensure interference doesn’t occur with the existing GSM operators).

Ofcom Awards Licenses For The GSM Guard Bands Winning Licensees
The 12 companies winning licenses and the prices they paid were: – (note all bids in GB pounds £)

British Telecommunications PLC	275,112
Cable & Wireless UK ( England)	51,002
COLT Mobile Telecommunications Ltd	1,513,218
Cyberpress Ltd	151,999
FMS Solutions Ltd	113,000
Mapesbury Communications Ltd	76,660
O2 ( UK) Ltd	209,888
Opal Telecom Ltd	155,555
PLDT ( UK) Ltd	88,889
Shyam Telecom UK Ltd	101,011
Spring Mobil AB	50,110
Teleware PLC	1,001,880

Ofcom published the complete matrix of bids as the award was for between 7 and 12 licenses. It was a close thing at 8 licenses as a few bidders put in high entries for low numbers of licenses and dropped the amount as the license numbers increased.

Ofcom arranged the auction in a sealed bid process in a “what you bid is what you pay” arrangement, which lead to the lowest price paid as £50,110 by Spring Mobil and the highest £1,513,218 by COLT (30x as much). Some have argued that the highest bidders paid over the odds, but they are putting a good spin on it saying that it’s in-line with their mobile strategy. The total amount of the licence fees paid was £3.8million, not bad for Ofcom’s first spectrum auction.

Of course, compared to the license fees paid for 3G spectrum (around £6bn per license) it’s peanuts.

A license, but what to do with it?
Having a license is all very well, but now licensees must be wondering what they’ve got themselves into. Just because they can run a GSM service doesn’t mean anyone will use it, in fact it may well be difficult to get people onto your network.

It’s extremely unlikely the existing mobile operators are going to want to have anything to do with these new upstarts, they’ve invested millions (err, billions) to get to where they are today. The last thing they want is new entrants poaching customers or moving users off their networks when they move into, say, an office environment. They especially don’t want their customers doing it with equipment (i.e. handsets) that they’ve heavily subsidised.

Unfortunately, what this means is that the new players are going to have to issue new SIMs (Subscriber Identity Modules) and they won’t work on existing GSM networks, or users will manually have to select the new network when they’re in range. This makes it all very difficult, and users won’t bother if it’s hard.

Ofcom Awards Licenses For The GSM Guard Bands New entrants could enter into roaming agreements with the current operators, but unless Ofcom mandates this (which is unlikely) there’s likely to be strong opposition. Since some of the license winners already have GSM networks, they can offer localised services knowing there’s no interference problems with existing infrastructure.

Deals with foreign GSM operators?
One way ahead is for a licensee to make an agreement with a foreign operator and the localised network just becomes an extension of their foreign network, but then when users roam on to the network they’ll be subject to roaming charges which, as both Ofcom and the EU Government know too well, can mean very high charges for the end-user. If roaming charges do decline then this may well be a way forward.

There’s also a big potential opportunity for the Channel Islands GSM networks here, as they abide by UK numbering plans, so though they are considered “foreign”, their numbers look like UK numbers, including mobile ranges. They could offer roaming agreements and even offer SIMs which would still look like UK numbers.

So the future’s bright, but it will be an interesting few years to see if any of the new entrants can really pull anything off.

10 May, 2006

BBC Hots Up High Definition (HD) TV: Starting May
The BBC is making its first steps into the super-crisp world of high definition television (HDTV) with transmissions of Planet Earth and Bleak House in the new format at the end of this month.
The transmissions – the first free-to-air HDTV shows in the UK – will be available to satellite and cable viewers armed with an HD-ready television set and a decoder (or set top box).
Cable company Telewest are already screening hi-def BBC shows, but things should heat up in the summer when Auntie Beeb starts to tempt sports fans with HDTV transmissions from this summer’s football World Cup and Wimbledon championships.
HD TV broadcasts can also beef up the whole big match experience by incorporating 5.1 surround sound and displaying the (Rooney-less) stadium action in widescreen.
The BBC will limber up its HD programming by broadcasting a promotional preview for users of Sky’s electronic programme guide on 11 May, with Bleak House and part one of Planet Earth following on 27th and 29th May.
“These are small but exciting first steps in the BBC’s ambition to offer the option of high definition to all in the future,” said Jana Bennett, BBC director of television.
“We really feel that high definition will be the standard definition of the future,” she added.
Although high definition broadcasts contain four to five times as much picture information than a standard television signal, BBC research has found that you’ll need a giant sized screen (28 inches/69cm and up) to really notice the difference – so there’s not much to be gained by watching it on your dinky portable TV.
Q&A: High-Definition TV [BBC]
HDTV [CNet]
10 May, 2006
Sony PS3: Prices And Release Dates
Sony has announced the pricing for its eagerly anticipated next generation PS3 console at a pre-E3 conference in Los Angeles.
With a scheduled US release date of November 17, the PS3 will be available in 20GB and 60GB configurations, priced at $499 and $599 respectively (the same cost in Euros), making the unit at least $100 more costly than its main rival, the Microsoft XBox.
Sony have some catching up to do with their main rival Microsoft, whose Xbox-360 console has already shifted some 3.2 million units since its launch last November.
The higher price and inclusion of the brand new, high-def Blu-Ray disc drive is something of a gamble for Sony, but some analysts believe that the package – and particularly the Bluetooth wireless controller – may prove simply irresistible to gamers.
There’s certainly a lot at stake for Sony, with the company expected to lose several hundred dollars per unit – while hoping to rake in fat profits from software sales over the life of the console.
Kaz Hirai, head of Sony’s US gaming business was confident, “We must take risks to reap the reward. We’re not interested in conventional thinking.”
“The next generation doesn’t start until we say it does. Today the PlayStation 3 is real,” he added.
The company expects two million of the puppies to have shunted off their production line and into the shops during the ‘launch window,’ four million by the end of the year and six million worldwide by March 31, 2007.
Japan is set to get the machines a week earlier – November 11 – while we assume that Europe will get deliveries the same time as America (a slide at the conference proclaimed, “Worldwide Launch, Early November 2006”).
Pricing for Europe will be €499 for the 20GB model and €599 (£410) for the 60GB big boy. Sony haven’t released UK pricing as yet
Playstation
9 May, 2006